CNN propaganda: Constitutionalists, sovereign citizens are bigger terrorist threat than ISIS

October 20, 2015 By: J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) The corporate media, which has acted as a Pretorian Guard of sorts for Big Government for years, is jumping the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) bandwagon after the agency released a report decrying the "dangers" posed by "sovereign citizens."

One of the report's biggest cheerleaders has been CNN, whose guest "analysts" and hosts have described such Americans as being a bigger threat to the country than the terrorist group ISIS.

CNN further noted that the "new intelligence assessment" by DHS "focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism."

The term "right-wing" has often been used by mainstream media and government officials as code to describe Americans who tend to be more conservative, believe in the letter of the Constitution, prefer smaller, less intrusive government, are religious and, in particular, Christian.

The first 24-hour news broadcaster, in an online report, claimed that some federal and local law enforcement agencies are viewing domestic terrorism from so-called sovereign citizens as a threat equal to, "and in some cases greater than," those posed by "foreign Islamic terror groups" that tend to get more public attention.

Not as big a threat as made out to be
The DHS report, which was written in conjunction with the FBI, listed 24 incidents of violence committed by or related to sovereign citizens in the U.S. since 2010. Put in context, that's fewer than six per year in a country of 310 million people; by comparison, the CIA estimates that ISIS ranks may consist of as many as 31,500 fighters. What's more, given the Obama administration's lax enforcement of U.S. borders, some analysts and experts are concerned that terrorists from the Middle East could slip into the U.S.

Nevertheless, the DHS report cites homegrown terrorism as a bigger concern. In specific, it describes the sovereign citizens as "extremists" who think they can ignore U.S. laws and that their individual rights are under attack (interestingly, it is the Obama administration and the president himself ignoring laws).

One of the incidents cited by DHS in its report occurred in 2012, in which a father and son were accused of initiating a shoot-out with police in Louisiana after an officer pulled them over for a traffic violation. Two officers were killed and several more wounded in the ensuing firefight.

"(Sovereign citizen) violence during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home, during enforcement stops and at government offices," the report claimed.

However, the libertarian-leaning Reason magazine, in an online blog post, debunked the "sovereign citizen is the country's primary terrorist threat" hypothesis.

In the post author Jesse Walker described the movement as a "largely unorganized subculture whose elaborate legal theories say they do not have to follow most laws." But a threat? "The report's rather measured contents might surprise you," Walker observed.

"The document declares on its first page that most sovereign citizens are nonviolent, and that it will focus only on the violent fringe within a fringe - the people it calls 'sovereign citizen extremists,' or SCEs," he wrote.

He further noted that the SCE's were a "fringe within a fringe," and that in the 24 cases cited by the DHS, there were only two cases where a sovereign citizen actually killed anyone.

Denying politically unfavorable Americans the right to keep and bear arms
"In short," Reason said, "the DHS report presents sovereign-citizen violence as a fairly rare risk that officers should nonetheless be prepared for should it arise. It does not claim that the threat to police is growing, it does not conflate the sovereigns with other anti-government groups, it makes no broad claims about terror on the right (the word 'right-wing' appears nowhere in the document), and it does not compare the sovereigns to ISIS or to any other foreign terrorists."

At the same time, House Democrats and one Republican have crafted legislation that, if passed, would give the U.S. attorney general broad powers to designate certain individuals or groups "terrorists," and deny them the right to purchase firearms.

That story is here.

With this kind of mindset already prevalent within the government, the last thing it needs is the power to determine who is and is not a threat based on arbitrary (political) definitions.

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com

http://cis.org/edwards/iran-in-latin-america

http://www.wnd.com

http://www.theblaze.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051625_homegrown_terrorists_gun_control_homeland_security.html#ixzz3pD6voAPl