I do my best to keep things light and goofy on Conspiracy Friday, but today I chose a rather serious and current topic involving a federal agency and one of the most despised hate groups active in America today.
National Public Radio reported that the FBI has repeatedly invited members of the Westboro Baptist Church to their law enforcement and agent training sessions. According to the FBI, the group was invited “to establish open dialogue in an academic setting to train law enforcement on how to more effectively engage with the activist community.”
That statement is insulting for about six trillion reasons. If the FBI was truly interested in furthering an academic dialogue with the activist community, there are literally hundreds of activist groups who don’t spew hate from their megaphones, activist groups who don’t get off by telling homosexuals and the families of dead soldiers that God hates them.
So my question is: why invite a universally loathed group to give seminars and classes to federal agents and police officers? The official who extended the invitation to the WBC was too cowardly to give his name to the press, but he insisted the FBI only wanted to learn the history of the ‘terrorist group’ and find ways to build a relationship with them. Timothy Phelps, who led the seminars, maintains that he did not know they were participating in a training class on domestic terrorism.
It doesn’t matter which lie the FBI and media decide to feed to the masses. The important thing is this signifies some very evil-doings amongst our intelligence agencies, and they aren’t interested in the War of Terror, they’re interested in the war on your right to be an activist. I personally feel like the FBI isn’t trying to learn from Westboro, they’re trying to figure out how to infiltrate and blend into groups like Westboro.
This type of government infiltration to deter fringe and activist groups from forming has already happened. The mass suicide in Jonestown had so many ties to the CIA. So many details reveal that it was not simply the story of one crazy guy who convinced a bunch of Americans to kill themselves. I’m not going to say that it was a massive mind control experiment, but I do think it had something to do with federal intelligence agencies tightening the noose around an American’s right to organize. COINTELPRO isn’t a conspiracy theory concocted by the tin-foil-hat-wearing basement dwellers. It’s a very real government operation that ultimately ignored and abused the rights of Americans.
On the surface, yes, Westboro Baptist Church is the enemy. But they are being used by a greater enemy to deter citizens from taking an active role in any movement the government frowns upon. It doesn’t matter that the WBC is a horribly racist and misguided group, and I assure you the FBI doesn’t give a crap about the invidual and nuanced beliefs of each group. They only care that you’re against them, that you are a dissident who wants to rip the fabric of our great nation into pieces. In this light, every political group who wants their opinion acknowledged on a federal level is our ally, even the WBC, against a group who indiscriminately infringes upon the rights of American citizens: our own government.
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