West Point Cadets Taught Patriots Are
Terrorists
February 13, 2013 AFP
• Influential study published by an Israeli academic at America’s top
military school seeks to brainwash future military leaders into
believing those who advocate small government, individual sovereignty,
freedom and liberty are the enemy
By Victor Thorn
At West Point where cadets are groomed
into officers, a new 148-page report released on January 15 is urging
enlisted men and women to be on alert for “terrorists” in the form of
those who consider themselves patriots.
This study, released by the United
States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, is entitled
“Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent
Far-Right.” Its author, Professor Arie Perliger, the Director of
Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and Assistant
Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, holds
membership in the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, as well as being a former instructor at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Considering his background, Perliger
warns that growing legions of conservative-minded citizens across the
U.S. pose a serious threat to our nation’s safety. Yet, whom precisely
does Perliger deem as being affiliated with what he labels the “violent
far right?”
In his own words, Perliger placed a
bulls-eye on those who “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal
government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural
tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.”
Even more specifically, Perliger
asserted that other so-called extremists fall into the categories of
anti-federalists, fundamentalist Christians, survivalists, gun-rights
advocates, libertarians, pro-lifers, and those who oppose high taxation.
Not content with simply fingering
these broad-reaching factions, Perliger zeroed in on another favorite
globalist target. “Some groups are driven by a strong conviction that
the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external
forces interested in promoting a New World Order.”
This umbrella characterization
includes constitutionalists, those wary of a growing police state, and
political activists such as some tea partiers. Thus, by using
manipulative, emotionally-charged language intended to
divide-and-conquer, Perliger equates those interested in preserving
their individual freedoms with skinheads, neo-Nazis and militia members.
Or, even more condescendingly, he smears conservatives as being
backward, archaic and living in an era that has passed them by. In
contrast, Perliger applauds liberals as future-oriented and progressive
in their views.
Dr. Herbert W. Titus, a constitutional
law professor and former dean of the Regent University School of Law
“says it’s an attempt to link conservative thought with violence.”
Titus told WorldNetDaily: “Professor
Perliger has adopted the strategy of many left-wing members of the
professoriate, concentrating on the behavior of a few in order to
discredit many who hold similar views but who do not engage in any form
of violence.”
“His theory is that of the iceberg,
that which as seen may be small, but it hides what is a much larger
threat just below the surface. Obviously, the professor disagrees with
those who favor small government, cutting back of federal government
encroachments upon the powers of the state and to discredit this
movement focuses on a few gun-toting militia,” Titus said.
“Like so many in the Obama
administration, Perliger does not want to engage in any dialogue on the
issues, but just discredit an entire political movement by ad hominem
charged words,” Titus said. “Perliger is not a serious scholar, but a
propagandist for the existing regime.”
West Point Urged to Fire Nutty Professor
• Citizens up in arms over professor’s attempt to demonize true American
conservatives
The president of a popular
conservative advocacy group is calling on West Point to fire the author
of a controversial report that paints conservatives as terrorists. In a
January 29 interview with AMERICAN FREE PRESS, Bill Wilson of Americans
for Limited Government expanded on these thoughts.
“I’m sending a letter to the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee insisting that all funds be withheld from
their Combating Terrorism Center until this guy [Perliger] is fired and
his report withdrawn,” he told AFP.
When asked what most incensed him,
Wilson replied, “Perliger’s report isn’t an isolated incident. We’ve
seen this type of demonizing ever since Obama took office. The left is
going for the kill by using raw partisan political propaganda. The
author of this report wants people to look those of us with traditional
conservative values who support limited government as dangerous and
suspect. He’s saying: this is somebody you don’t want to be. Instead,
Perliger favors those who always submit to collectivism and the group.
But this type of mindset is what doomed the former Soviet Union.”
Wilson added, “The military
implications are really dangerous because Perliger wants to breed a
whole generation of officers that may not respect sovereignty and
autonomy.”
In a January 28 article, Wilson
expanded on this notion. “[We] are being taught to view freedom-loving
Americans as violent racist terrorists-in-waiting as part of the federal
government’s ongoing jihad against common-sense fiscal conservatism and
constitutionally limited government.”
AFP inquired about what forces were
behind Perliger’s work. “In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security
offered a course curriculum prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center
[SPLC] that was meant to cast suspicions on returning vets because they
might harbor right-wing affiliations,” he said. “The SPLC is a sleazy
left-wing group.”
But he didn’t stop there in terms of
culprits. “The mainstream media is owned by a handful of corporations
that are completely compliant in their worldview that government is
always best and correct, and those who don’t support it are wrong,” he
said. “Real journalism doesn’t exist in the mainstream media any more.”
The conversation then turned to
another subject that contradicted Perliger’s conclusions. “The hard
left,” Wilson stated, “is far more violence prone that anyone on the
right. Groups like the Earth Liberation Front and animal rights
advocates will sabotage train tracks, spike trees, and have threatened
to destroy the Keystone Pipeline.”
Wilson emphasized that an unmitigated
assault is being waged against the citizens of this country. “Every day
the First Amendment is being shutdown, and now Obama is trying to kill
the Second Amendment. Why shouldn’t everyone be suspicious of what
they’re doing? The left is waging an incredible assault on our Bill of
Rights by undercutting and taking away this contract between the
American people and the states.”
In closing, Wilson pointed out a more
subtle aspect of Perliger’s smear tactics. “In the past, we didn’t let
politics get involved in the military,” said Wilson. “But Perliger gave
the officer corps pure political indoctrination as if they were the old
Red Army. What used to be a very important feature—the non-political
nature of our military—is now being turned on its head.”
