From LifeNews:
‘Pro-life paradigm’ motivates domestic terrorism: West Point report
BY BEN JOHNSONWEST POINT, NY, February 4, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A study published by West Point’s anti-terrorism center claims the “pro-life paradigm” is a motivating factor in domestic terrorism.
Dr. Arie Perliger, director of terrorism studies at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), makes the allegation in his report, “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.” The document – which references abortion 76 times in 146 pages – was issued in November but only reported last month. [Issued in November? Before the election?]
In an analysis of “far-right terrorism,” Perliger likens the pro-life movement to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, and Christian Identity (a racist Christian heresy). [It’s the flip-side of the gun-control hysteria, isn’t it?]
“The Christian fundamentalist violent far right emerged from two ideological platforms,” he wrote. “The more influential and popular one is that of the Christian Identity school of thought” – a tiny sect that teaches that Jesus Christ came to save only white people and that Jews are the literal biological children of Satan. [Emphasis on “tiny”.]
“The second is the anti-abortion/pro-life paradigm,” Perliger wrote. [And this is much more problematic. Remember, the hijacking of pro-life language by those who are having a spittle-flecked nutty about scary-looking guns, are being directed by people who could care less about guns. They don’t like the people who uphold the 1st and 2nd Amendments. They are the real targets: the people. All these talk about making the world safer is really about shutting up the people they don’t like. “And those people think babies have a right to be born? those mouth-breathing, knuckle-draggers, those Tea-Party-types!”]
Perliger writes that the “ideological principles of pro-life violence” include the beliefs that “the abortion industry” engages in “the systematic killing of innocent and pure human beings”; [sounds like Planned Parenthood, originally founded systematically to kill black people…] that “since every human being is created in the image of God, it is by definition a sin to end their lives”; and that “any violent acts to end their lives [of ‘fetuses’] are immoral and should be prevented.” [In the gun debate right now, there is more and more talk of expanding “mental health” checks and sharing records. The next step will be to start labeling political and ideological as having “mental health” problems. If you think that from the moment of conception a human being is present, made in the image of God with the inalienable right to be born, then you must be crazy. The feds will have to come and confiscate your guns, take your children from your homes, and keep you under watch.]
Perliger also raps liberty-minded small government activists, whom he calls “anti-federalists.” [You mean… Tea Party types?] According to the report, such purported would-be terrorists believe the government has “a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights,” and they “support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government.”
According to Perliger, small government advocates’ views are not merely violent but “designed to exclude minorities and foreigners.” [Those xenophobes! They must be sick in the head.]
The section on the pro-life movement links Dr. C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer‘s statement that Roe v. Wade “symbolize[d] the triumph of evil over good” to a 1979 attack on an abortion facility and likens it to “the ideological rhetoric of the Identity movement.”
Perliger accuses pro-lifers of “using chemical and biological weapons” by “contaminating the medical equipment of abortion clinics with chemical materials.”
If you don’t think this country could turn in a bad direction really fast, then you are the one who is crazy.
Read history.
And read the rest about this B as in B, S as in S, over there.
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John Fund wrote on this a couple of weeks ago, including a staffer description of it as a “junk study,” which it pretty clearly is:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/338049/new-anti-terror-front-yes-government-thinks-its-right-wing-extremists-john-fund
As Dep writes above, This well may be a junk study. However, such junk studies have been repeatedly used over the years by tyrannical governments to justify policies of evil.
For example, the “science of eugenics” used to justify a host of evils in the early part of the last century was as junky as a “science” can get. But it sure paved the way for the deaths of millions of people, and I’m not just referring to fascist states like Germany and Italy. The USA’s own Planned Parenthood is a fruit of this “junk science” that still manages to poison our culture long after the rejection of the eugenics that lead to it’s founding.
Friends, do lot let yourself be deceived by the evil one. Stand fast to the gospel truths as held in the deposit of faith of the Church. The “new truths” that we are going to be presented by our government are not to be trusted.
dep,
You are assuming that the purveyors of this garbage are interested in the truth.
They are not. For them, science is only a means to power.
If you look to history, totalitarian states have ALWAYS perverted science to their own ends. The Soviet Union was famous for declaring dissidents and troublemakers “insane” and shipping them off to mental institutions for indefinite “treatment”.
What I see happening here is the government redefining “crime” and “mental illness” to mean “anybody who is doing something we don’t like”, whether that is opposing abortion, objecting to intrusive government, supporting the Constitution, or just wanting to live as a good Catholic and thus not agreeing with the aims of the Almighty State.
And once they declare us “criminals” or “mentally ill”, then our rights to free speech, gun ownership, political association, even freedom can be stripped away.
Watch for it.
A fellow prayer warrior in the pro-life movement was horrified to learn from her son in boot camp with the Marine Corps that pro-life people are considered “terrorists” and the recruits are told this.
We have gone far past just the calling of good, evil and evils to be good for our government promotes, protects, provides, pays for evil and will be persecuting those who have the courage to stand against it.
Yeah, right–pro-life vigil keepers who stand and pray at the killing centers in all types of weather can sneak in the put chemicals on instrument….give me a break!
Dr. Arie Perliger reminds me of Dr. Strangelove – scary stuff there. He needs to get back on his meds. I don’t know how anybody can take this gibberish as a serious report. Sounds like a flake, to normal people.
Sad thing is Obama people just might try to run with this stuff.
God bless us and help us all.
Welp, guess I’m a terrorist then. Abortion is the systematic murder of innocent human beings. I don’t know what they mean by ‘pure’ and how that might jive with original sin, but otherwise yup– I’m a straight up terrorist.
Hey Barry O,
Come find me meeting with other members of my terrorist cell we get together at 10 o’clock Sunday mornings. Big brick building with a bell tower, can’t miss it.
Study can be found at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ChallengersFromtheSidelines.pdf
It gives a history of the prolife movement that jumps straight from “in 1974 the United States Catholic Conference sent four cardinals to Washington, DC in order to convince Congress to legislate a national prohibition on abortion” to “Dr. C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer” to “the Army of God (AOG), the organization which would become the public face of the violent campaign against abortion clinics and their staffs during the 1980s and 1990s.”
“Violent Far -Right? 600,000 Pro-Lifers protested in Washington without any violence.
Heh! Are you considered a terrorist by the Obama Administration?
You might be a redneck!
A few things strike me odd… Despite the disclaimer, this guy works for a organization located at the US Military Academy (where college age students become Army officers, who will fight OVERSEAS, not in the United States). This “report” is open-source, otherwise it would be classified, so one can only imagine where the material for this document came from. It is obvious that this guy doesn’t like Catholics, so it’s surprising that they would release such an obvious piece of junk that has no objectivity. As much as this administration probably applauds this “report,” I am surprised and disappointed at the USMA for publishing it.
NBW writes:
“Violent Far -Right? 600,000 Pro-Lifers protested in Washington without any violence.
Yeah, and why was there no media coverage of these terrorists? It must be a coverup by the all too conservative media! /sarcasm
I already KNOW how fast this country can turn…I have gone, in just afew short years, from
being mainstream, conservative, Christian ( as in Catholic) to now being marginalized to
the FAR RIGHT! I did not change, not an iota but in my country ( and in so many ways, my
church also ) drastic changes have occured all around me. It is if I fell asleep on the beach and
the tide came in; awakening, I don’t recognize my surroundings as I am surrounded by water. The narrow road upon which we must walk however, becomes more clearly defined daily. The Lord warned us to be watchful and stay awake. I am listening…and I don’t like what I am hearing.
Two quick observations. First, the 147-page long report is not very good, from a number of aspects. Second, perhaps a bit of context may clarify the actual impact of such a report.
First, the report itself. In its methodology and its style and its sourcing, the report clearly comes from secular academia, not from policy makers. It’s main problem, IMO, is that while claiming to clarify who the “hard right” groups are, it gives no rationale for why Perliger clumps together racists, nativists, anti-federalist militias, and anti-abortion activists as the authoritative “far right.” He also makes a slew of unsupported assertions about the entire pro-life movement–much like a good portion of the academic literature from which he derives his research. That said, he does deserve some credit for saying up front that “this study concentrates on those individuals and groups who have actually perpetuated violence and is not a comprehensive analysis of the political causes with which some far-right extremists identify.” He tries to limit his study to actual violence, although he does not clearly deliniate conceptual boundaries.
Second, a bit of context. I am familiar with how this fits into West Point and how it fits into the broader policy debates. First, the Combating Terrorism Center is a privately-funded (largely by USMA graduates, and they have not been pleased with this report, BTW) think tank associated with the faculty at West Point. It is focused on writing academic works on terrorism, and I think this is the first report to come out in the 10 years or so of the center having to do with anything in domestic US politics. Second, Mr. Perliger appears to be a visiting scholar–he is an Israeli professor who did his dissertation and early research on Israeli right-wing groups. I would imagine there may be some intra-faculty “we’ll just let him do his thing” involved. Finally, while the center puts out a lot of stuff on terrorism, it is not widely influential outside of academia, and even there terrorism studies are a specialized subfield of a subfield of international relations theory. While there may be folks in the Administration who sympathize with the conclusions of the report, one can hardly claim it is a statement of policy from any government entity. How many other USMA-sanctioned studies enter the national political debate at all?
In Christ,
I am irked that pro-lifers are being brainded as terrorists by the military and the Feds, just when the presidency has taken upon itself the right to kill American citizens without a trial (drones). The president claims the authority to kill American citizens based on the risk that they might pose in the future. Self-defense is not being used in the traditional sense here, as in someone directly attacking a cop and the cop shooting back. Here self-defense means that the cop can go around and shoot gang-members who are not actively engaged in a crime, because they have the potential to commit violence in the future. Early in Obama’s presidency, a similar document was circulated by the Dept. of Homeland Security (correct me if it was another agency). Connect the dots and you’ve got a bad scenario.
Anyone ready to be a Papal Anarchist?
There are a couple of sweet ladies I know who volunteer as sidewalk counselors outside the local Planned Parenthood – I’ll have to let them know they are now considered terrorists!
I tried reading the report but couldn’t get past one of the early sources he referenced; the Fortean Times. I went to their site and the lead story there was how a woman committed homocide with her 38DDD breasts. I figured it wouldn’t be much further in the report before the National Enquirer got cited. I know that any junk science will do as justification for persecuting the innocent (Protocols of the Elders of Zion anyone?) but really!
I’ve been called a lot of things. I guess I need to add right wing terrorist to that list as I am pro-life, patriotic, pro Constitution, anti gun control, anti-same sex marriage, anti amnesty for illegals, and have worn a uniform in service to my country for nearly as long as the little Marxist would-be dictator has been alive. Yep, guilty your honor. Catch me if you can and molon labe!
EXCHIEF, I am proud to stand with you.
Ditto EXCHIEF.
Have you thought about running for office? ;-)
Being pro-life is a good not a paradigm as long as there is no toleration of evil, usually.
God bless
He cited the FORTEAN TIMES??? That is even still around? When I was in high school decades ago I was fascinated by Forte, who collected reports of things like rains of toads. NOT exactly a reliable source.
His first mistake is buying into the media assumption that there was not a vigorous pro-life movement before Roe; in fact, that is why Roe passed when it did, b/c pro-abortion groups knew CA and NY’s laws were being targeted for repeal. His second is to refer to peaceful and democratic actions in one paragraph, then proceeding to discuss those who are clearly militants and outside the mainstream pro-life movement (outside it in its entirety might even be more accurate).
re: Fortean Times — so THAT’s where the Weekly World News got their material!
Nathan, assuming you are right in your details re. context, how did Dr. Perliger (1) come to write this paper under (in whatever sense) CTC auspices, and (2) come to be invited as visiting scholar in the first place? What does this say about those in positions of responsibility – and purse-strings – at CTC, and about its ‘intellectual ambience’ generally (with or without the cognizance of various of its funders)?
And what of the parallel with far more official documents (such as the DHS one someone aptly mentions) – and Joseph-Mary’s striking anecdotal evidence?
For anyone interested in gaining or consolidating power, control (in various senses) of military forces is obviously important (Tacitus’s account of the Year of the Four Emperors springs – if somewhat fuzzily – to mind, as well as what seems to be the current policy and practice of the governments of Turkey and Egypt).
Venerator Sti Lot–very good questions. I cannot claim knowledge of what is going on in the CTC, especially in their choice of research topics. Looking across what the center has produced before, there are a lot of specific studies of a number of terrorist groups.
What I am a bit more familiar with is that USMA departments seek to bring in visiting scholars from around the world and across the ideological spectrum. I do know that these mostly serve to foster debate in academic circles–over the past decade or so, among places in Washington where the policy debates occur simply haven’t been influenced much by anything any USMA center puts out. The DC-based think tanks (and to a degree, the National Defense University) have a much greater voice in what actually gets discussed and decided. And my colleagues on the USMA faculty in the past have aimed to stay largely in the academic, not policy, discussions.
As to the DHS reports, I would pay more attention to them, as long as one understands where they come from and how much actual attention they’ve gathered among decision-makers. That’s not a particularly easy task, BTW.
In Christ,
Hooah, EXCHIEF! I’d be proud to stand by you, anytime.
While the paper under discussion is kooky to say the least, that doesn’t mean that the powers that be are not prepared to act in accordance with its conclusion. Otherwise why this?
http://www.infowars.com/dhs-purchases-21-6-million-more-rounds-of-ammunition/
The government has purchased enough ammo in the past year to supply the needs of the US Army which were used in the Iraq invasion for 30 years.