When it comes to politics there are large perceived divides. One of the most notable today is the apparent divide between the Tea Party and Occupy movements. Members of the Tea Party movement accuse members of the Occupy movement of being godless communists who want to redistribute the country’s wealth. Meanwhile members of the Occupy movement accuse members of the Tea Party movement of being fascists who advocate violent solutions and hate the poor. What could these two organizations have in common? They’re both fall under the state’s criteria for potential terrorist organization [PDF]:
Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.
Extreme Left-Wing: groups that want to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes. This category also includes secular left-wing groups that rely heavily on terrorism to overthrow the capitalist system and either establish “a dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marxist-Leninists) or, much more rarely, a decentralized, non-hierarchical political system (anarchists).
Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.
Ethno-Nationalist/Separatist: regionally concentrated groups with a history of organized political autonomy with their own state, traditional ruler, or regional government, who are committed to gaining or regaining political independence through any means and who have supported political movements for autonomy at some time since 1945.
Single Issue: groups or individuals that obsessively focus on very specific or narrowly-defined causes (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-nuclear, anti-Castro). This category includes groups from all sides of the political spectrum.
One thing is for certain, if you’re not an obedient dog of the state you are a potential terrorist. This is something we all have to realize, it’s not about left versus right or conservatives versus progressives, it’s about us versus the state. According to the state the Tea Party movement are right-wing extremists while the Occupy movement are left-wing extremists. Are you a single issue voter or a member of a single issue organization? Then you’re a potential single issue terrorist. Do you strongly believe in a religion? Then you’re a potential religious terrorist. Are you an advocate for secession? Then you fit the criteria of an ethno-separatist terrorist.
Many people in the gun rights community have raged at the statement about individuals “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and/or “reverent of individual liberty” being a sign of terroristic potential but didn’t seem to bat an eyelash at the other groups. When I read through this document I realized that, according to the state, we’re all terrorists. It doesn’t matter if you’re left-wing or right-wing, a Tea Party member or an Occupy member, an advocate of individual liberty or a believer in collectivism, we’re all enemies in the eyes of the state. Anybody who rocks the boat is a potential enemy. To quote George Carlin:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it…
That’s what the state wants. Anybody who doesn’t fit their mold is automatically considered a potential threat. What really hurts is that the state is either brilliant, the majority of the human race is incredibly stupid, or both. Instead of fighting those who are currently taking our shit, putting us in cages for disobeying their decrees, and actively killing people they dislike we’re fighting each other. The state has us fighting each other instead of fighting them. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend, in which case we’re all friends of the state because we’re all enemies of the state. The right accuses the left of wanting to take everybody’s shit while the left accuses the right of wanting to throw the poor out onto the street. While this debate about hypotheticals is waged the state is actively taking everybody’s shit and throwing the poor out onto the street while also convincing both the left and the right that it’s the only thing stopping their opponents from achieving their goals. It should come as no surprise that an entity built entirely upon violence and deception is so exceedingly good at violence and deception.
Perhaps we should stop fighting amongst each other and start fighting our common enemy, the state. One thing we can all agree on whether we’re anarchists, socialists, progressives, or constitutionalists is this: the current state of affairs is unsuitable. So long as the status quo is maintained our debates are hypothetical since we’re not free to enact the plans we believe are best.
Well one thing we can be sure of is that the human race when allowed to think as one is about as smart as your average slug, and I don’t know if the state is necessarily smart or that its “intelligent” moves are a part of its very structure but it is a sad state of affairs.
I think you’re not giving enough credit to slugs. Slugs at least hold the ability to avoid hazards whereas humans in groups seem to be incapable of such feats (for example, in groups humans seem to think disarming themselves and putting themselves at the mercy of the violent state is a good idea).