A National Guard drill based around dealing with civil unrest after a
dirty bomb attack in California featured role players acting as angry
Americans yelling ‘right-wing’ rhetoric.
The exercise, which Infowars reporters were barred from attending,
took place in Richmond this past weekend and involved more than 200
soldiers, airmen, local law enforcement and firefighting personnel.
Footage captured by a local shows
Guard troops pushing irate citizens away with batons before one of the
protest group states, “I’m a sovereign citizen, I refuse to recognize
you guys, I refuse to recognize you.”
“Why in the course of a drill for a dirty bomb, would an actor claim to be a sovereign citizen?” asks Keith Johnson,
who filmed the footage. “The San Francisco Bay Area is not known for
it’s sovereign citizen militia population and hearing this shouted
during a mock terrorist scenario was disturbing. Anybody familiar with
Richmond will tell you it is not a rural ‘militia’ environment. Located
in the East Bay Area near Oakland, it is a community with reduced
circumstances. No one there is going to be proclaiming to be a sovereign
citizen.”
Johnson goes on to express his
concern that young National Guard troops are being conditioned to accept
a ‘Kent State’ mentality where their role will be to police unruly mobs
of liberty activists.
Back in February, the Department of Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment which focused on the threat posed by right-wing sovereign citizens and other domestic extremists. CNN subsequently reported that federal and local law enforcement groups view sovereign citizens as a bigger threat than ISIS or any Islamic terror group.
Sovereign citizens refuse to
acknowledge federal law and believe the U.S. government is illegitimate.
Members of the movement have been involved in sporadic violent
confrontations mainly targeting police officers over the last five
years.
Sovereign citizens are habitually
lumped in with law-abiding conservatives and libertarians whenever the
federal government publishes reports on the subject of domestic
extremism.
As we have exhaustively documented,
the federal government has consistently downplayed the threat of
Islamic terror in favor of pushing hysteria about right-wing extremism.
The FBI’s most recent national terror threat assessment list completely omits Islamic terrorists, instead focusing on sovereign citizens and the militia movement.
A 2012 University of Maryland study funded
to the tune of $12 million dollars by the DHS characterized Americans
who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of
individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists while glossing
over the threat posed by Islamic extremism.
Fears that the National Guard and
military are preparing for civil unrest in America have heightened in
recent weeks following the announcement that a “realistic” military
training exercise called Jade Helm will take place in nine U.S. states
this summer. The drill revolves around troops operating “undetected”
amongst local populations.
As we reported last month,
footage shot during a similar drill in Fort Lauderdale showed military
and law enforcement practicing the internment of citizens during
martial-law style training.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
