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.”