Army’s List of “Domestic Hate Groups”

The following is an email written by a lieutenant colonel at Fort Campbell in Kentucky — advising three dozen subordinates to be on the lookout for soldiers who might be members of “domestic hate groups.”

The Army is watching and monitoring patriots. Freedom lovers are listed among known terror groups--this is stealth jihad.

Subject: Domestic “Hate Groups” (UNCLASSIFIED)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: FOUO

Leaders,

Many events have been taking place across the country – just want to ensure everyone is somewhat educated on some of the groups out there that do not share our Army Values.

When we see behaviors that are inconsistent with Army Values – don’t just walk by – do the right thing and address the concern before it becomes a problem.

We need to make sure that we maintain our standards – starting with reception and integration.

Thanks -

(U) Domestic “Hate Groups”

(U) Anti-Gay, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim, Black Separatist, Christian Identity, Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Nazi, Patriot Movement, Racist Skinhead, Sovereign Citizens Movement, and White Nationalist.

(U) Domestic Hate Groups by Ideology (in alphabetical order):

(U) Anti-Gay:

(U) Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians has been a central theme of Christian Right organizing and fundraising for the past three decades ? a period that parallels the fundamentalist movement’s rise to political power.

(U) For Christian Right leaders, the gay rights movement and its so-called “homosexual agenda” are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson; the battle against gay rights is essentially a “second civil war” to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject gay rights.

(U) The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as “perverts” with “filthy habits” who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and “convert” them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging “facts” about gays that are simply untrue ? assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the “bestial” black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

(U) Associated Anti-Gay Groups:

Family Research Council

Westboro Baptist Church

American Family Association

(U) Anti-Immigrant:

(U) Anti-immigrant hate groups are the most extreme of the hundreds of nativist and vigilante groups that have proliferated since the late 1990s, when anti-immigration xenophobia began to rise to levels not seen in the United States since the 1920s.

(U) Although many groups criticize high levels of immigration and some (categorized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as ?nativist extremist? groups) typically confront or harass individual immigrants and their supporters, anti-immigrant hate groups generally go further by pushing racist propaganda.

(U) Most also subscribe to one of two conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact: the idea that Mexico has a secret ?Plan de Aztlán? to ?reconquer? the American Southwest, and another theory alleging that the leaders of Mexico, Canada and the United States are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ?North American Union.?

(U) Associated Anti-Immigration Groups:

American Border Patrol/American Patrol

California Coalition for Immigration Reform

Federation for American Immigration Reform

The Social Contract Press

(U) Anti-Muslim:

(U) Anti-Muslim hate groups are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, most of them appearing in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Earlier anti-Muslim groups tended to be religious in orientation and disputed Islam?s status as a respectable religion.

(U) All anti-Muslim hate groups exhibit extreme hostility toward Muslims. The organizations portray those who worship Islam as fundamentally alien and attribute to its followers an inherent set of negative traits. Muslims are depicted as irrational, intolerant and violent, and their faith is frequently depicted as sanctioning pedophilia, marital rape and child marriage.

(U) These groups also typically hold conspiratorial views regarding the inherent danger to America posed by its Muslim-American community. Muslims are depicted as a fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy and Western civilization with Islamic despotism. Anti-Muslim hate groups allege that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law.

(U) Anti-Muslim hate groups also broadly defame Islam, which they tend to treat as a monolithic and evil religion. These groups generally hold that Islam has no values in common with other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology rather than a religion.

(U) Associated Anti-Muslim Groups:

Bare Naked Islam

Christian Guardians

Concerned American Citizens

Escaping Islam

United States Justice Foundation

Sharia Awareness Action Network

Insight USA

United West

Islam: The religion of peace and a big stack of dead bodies

Christian Phalange

Aggressive Christianity

9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero

The American Defense League

Atlas Shrugs

Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)

Casa D’Ice Signs

Citizen Warrior

Political Islam

Tennessee Freedom Coalition

Christian Action Network

Faith Freedom

(U) Black Separatist:

(U) Black separatists typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage, and they want separate institutions, or even a separate nation for blacks. Most forms of black separatism are strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic, and a number of religious versions assert that blacks are the Biblical “chosen people” of God.

(U) A leading example of a black separatist group is the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan. In 1997, and in less explicit ways since then, Farrakhan made clear that he had renounced none of the anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and anti-gay views of the previous Nation leader, Elijah Mohammed. Those beliefs include the view that Yacub, a renegade black “scientist,” created whites 6,600 years ago as an inherently evil and ungodly people ? “blue-eyed devils.” Farrakhan has described Catholics and Jews, who he said practice a “gutter religion,” as preying on blacks. He regrets the “tone” of a former principal subordinate who called for slaughtering white South Africans, but agreed with the message. He called for racial separatism and inveighed against interracial relationships.

(U) Associated Black Separatist Groups:

Nuwaubian Nation of Moors

Nation of Islam

New Black Panther Party

(U) Christian Identity:

(U) Christian Identity is a unique anti-Semitic and racist theology that rose to a position of commanding influence on the racist right in the 1980s. “Christian” in name only, the movement’s relationship with evangelicals and fundamentalists has generally been hostile due to the latter?s belief that the return of Jews to Israel is essential to the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.

(U) Although nominally Christian, it owes little to even the most conservative of American Protestants. Indeed, its relationship with evangelicals and fundamentalists has generally been hostile due to the latter?s belief that the return of Jews to Israel is essential to the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.

(U) Identity has created for itself a unique anti-Semitic and racist theology, but notwithstanding its curious beliefs, it rose in the 1980s to a position of commanding influence on the racist right. Only a prolonged period of aggressive efforts by law enforcement, together with the demise of influential leaders who were not replaced, brought about its present decline.

(U) Associated Christian Identity Groups:

Kingdom Identity Ministries

America’s Promise Ministries

(U) Ku Klux Klan:

(U) The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the most infamous ? and oldest ? of American hate groups. Although black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics. Over the years since it was formed in December 1865, the Klan has typically seen itself as a Christian organization, although in modern times Klan groups are motivated by a variety of theological and political ideologies.

(U) Started during Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War, the Klan quickly mobilized as a vigilante group to intimidate Southern blacks – and any whites who would help them – and to prevent them from enjoying basic civil rights. Outlandish titles (like imperial wizard and exalted Cyclops), hooded costumes, violent “night rides,” and the notion that the group comprised an “invisible empire” conferred a mystique that only added to the Klan’s popularity. Lynching’s, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.

(U) After a short but violent period, the “first era” Klan disbanded after Jim Crow laws secured the domination of Southern whites. But the Klan enjoyed a huge revival in the 1920s when it opposed (mainly Catholic and Jewish) immigration. By 1925, when its followers staged a huge Washington, D.C., march, the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power. But a series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced its influence.

(U) The Klan arose a third time during the 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement and to preserve segregation in the face of unfavorable court rulings. The Klan’s bombings, murders and other attacks took a great many lives, including, among others, four young girls killed while preparing for Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

(U) Since the 1970s the Klan has been greatly weakened by internal conflicts, court cases, a seemingly endless series of splits and government infiltration. While some factions have preserved an openly racist and militant approach, others have tried to enter the mainstream, cloaking their racism as mere “civil rights for whites.” Today, the Center estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different – and often warring – organizations that use the Klan name.

(U) Associated Ku Klux Klan Groups:

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Brotherhood of Klans

Imperial Klans of America

Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

(U) Neo-Confederate:

(U) The term neo-Confederacy is used to describe twentieth and twenty-first century revivals of pro-Confederate sentiment in the United States. Strongly nativist, neo-Confederacy claims to pursue Christianity and heritage and other supposedly fundamental values that modern Americans are seen to have abandoned.

(U) Neo-Confederacy also incorporates advocacy of traditional gender roles, is hostile towards democracy, strongly opposes homosexuality, and exhibits an understanding of race that favors segregation and suggests white supremacy. In many cases, neo-Confederates are openly secessionist.

(U) Neo-Confederacy has applied to groups including the United Daughters of the Confederacy of the 1920s and those resisting racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s. In its most recent iteration, neo-Confederacy is used by both proponents and critics to describe a belief system that has emerged since the early-1980s in publications like Southern Partisan, Chronicles, and Southern Mercury, and in organizations including the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

(U) Overall, it is a reactionary conservative ideology that has made inroads into the Republican Party from the political right, and overlaps with the views of white nationalists and other more radical extremist groups.

(U) Associated Neo-Confederate Groups:

League of the South

(U) Neo-Nazi:

Neo-Nazi groups share a hatred for Jews and a love for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. While they also hate other minorities, gays and lesbians and even sometimes Christians, they perceive “the Jew” as their cardinal enemy, and trace social problems to a Jewish conspiracy that supposedly controls governments, financial institutions and the media.

(U) While some neo-Nazi groups emphasize simple hatred, others are more focused on the revolutionary creation of a fascist political state. Nazism, of course, has roots in Europe, and links between American and European neo-Nazis are strong and growing stronger. American neo-Nazi groups, protected by the First Amendment, often publish material and host Internet sites that are aimed at European audiences — materials that would be illegal under European anti-racism laws. Similarly, many European groups put up their Internet sites on American servers to avoid prosecution under the laws of their native countries.

(U) The most visible neo-Nazi group in the U.S. is the National Alliance. Until his death, it was led by William Pierce, the infamous author of the futuristic race-war novel The Turner Diaries, a book believed by some to have served as the blueprint for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

(U) Associated Neo-Nazi Groups:

National Vanguard

National Alliance

White Revolution

Church of the Creator

The Creativity Movement

(U) Patriot Movement:

(U) The antigovernment ?Patriot? movement has experienced resurgence, growing quickly since 2008, when President Obama was elected to office. Factors fueling the antigovernment movement in recent years include changing demographics driven by immigration, the struggling economy and the election of the first African-American president.

(U) In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 1,274 anti-government ?Patriot? groups that were active the prior year. Of these groups, 334 were militias and the remainder includes ?common-law? courts, publishers, ministries and citizens? groups.

(U) Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the ?New World Order,? engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines. Antigovernment groups do not necessarily advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, though some have. Many warn of impending government violence or the need to prepare for a coming revolution. Many antigovernment groups are not racist.

(U) A particularly prominent conspiracy in the antigovernment movement is that the United Nations, which is usually seen as spearheading the ?New World Order,? is imposing a global plan, called Agenda 21, to take away citizens? property rights. There is a UN program with that name to develop sustainable communities across the globe. Agenda 21 was agreed to by political leaders from dozens of countries, including the first President Bush. But in typical fashion, these antigovernment activists have twisted it into a global conspiracy.

(U) Other notable conspiracies found in the antigovernment movement include the idea that the government is secretly planning to round up citizens and place them in concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. Another conspiracy alleges that there are plans to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a single country. Fears of impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies, also run rampant in antigovernment circles. As a result, many antigovernment activists believe that being well armed is a must. The militia movement engages in paramilitary training aimed at protecting citizens from this feared impending government crackdown.

(U) The antigovernment movement hit its previous high of 858 groups in 1996, the year after the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was motivated by extreme antigovernment beliefs then circulating in the militia movement. He was also inspired by the racist novel, The Turner Diaries, modeling his attack on a scene from the book.

(U) The antigovernment movement of the 1990s, typified by the proliferation of militias, was fueled by a string of incidents, including the 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidians compound, that were seen as evidence of an out-of-control government willing to attack citizens. Other factors included the struggling economy in the early 1990s, particularly in Western states, and the election of President Clinton, who was perceived by these activists as a liberal intent on seizing their weapons.

(U) Associated Patriot Movement Groups:

(U) In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 1,274 anti-government ?Patriot? groups that were active the prior year. Of these groups, 334 were militias and the remainder includes ?common-law? courts, publishers, ministries and citizens? groups.

(U) Racist Skinhead:

(U) Racist Skinheads form a particularly violent element of the white supremacist movement, and have often been referred to as the “shock troops” of the hoped-for revolution. The classic Skinhead look is a shaved head, black boots, jeans with suspenders and an array of typically racist tattoos.

(U) At first, the skinheads seemed like just another rebellious youth subculture. But since the 1980s, each decade has brought eruptions of racist skinhead violence splashed across the evening news. Criminal attacks by shaved-head, boot-wearing white youths ranging from vandalism to murder have served to remind minority populations that maybe we haven’t made that much progress in social relations. The skinhead “fad” shows no sign of fading. In November 1988, three skinheads in Portland, Ore., beat an Ethiopian student named Mulugeta Seraw to death with baseball bats. In April 1999, a Mexican immigrant named Irineo Soto Aguilar was murdered in Lakeside, Calif., by three skinheads who crushed his skull with chunks of concrete. In October 2007, a skinhead strangled a 62-year-old gay man in Oklahoma City as a rite of passage in his gang.

(U) These stories are now such a consistent part of the American criminal landscape that most large police departments have bias-crime detectives, and many focus on skinheads as part of their gang enforcement strategies. Racist skinheads have also become a regular element in prisons and juvenile corrections facilities. The threat of a skinhead rally can lead whole communities to mobilize in opposition. The U.S. military has had to contend with racist skinheads in its ranks. Hate rock from racist skinhead bands has bled into the flow of rebellious teen music. And skinheads have taken their “boot parties” from the street to the Internet, targeting young people for recruitment into their supposed movement.

(U) Associated Racist Skinhead Groups:

Blood & Honour

Keystone United

Vinlanders Social Club

(U) Sovereign Citizens Movement:

(U) The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex antigovernment beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes.

(U) Sovereigns believe that they ? not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials ? get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes. Sovereigns are clogging up the courts with indecipherable filings and when cornered, many of them lash out in rage, frustration and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence, usually directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West Memphis, Ark.

(U) The movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs’ origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizen’s movement mostly attracted white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government. Most early sovereigns and some of those who are still on the scene, believed that being white was a prerequisite to becoming a sovereign citizen. They argued that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to African Americans and everyone else born on U.S. soil, also made black Americans permanently subject to federal and state governments, unlike themselves.

(U) The Sovereign Belief System

(U)The contemporary sovereign belief system is based on a decades-old conspiracy theory. At some point in history, sovereigns believe, the American government set up by the founding fathers ? with a legal system that the sovereigns refer to as “common law”, was secretly replaced by a new government system based on admiralty law, the law of the sea and international commerce. Under common law, or so they believe, the sovereigns would be free men. Under admiralty law, they are slaves, and secret government forces have a vested interest in keeping them that way. Some sovereigns believe this perfidious change occurred during the Civil War, while others blame the events of 1933, when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard. Either way, they stake their lives and livelihoods on the idea that judges around the country know all about this hidden government takeover but are denying the sovereigns’ motions and filings out of treasonous loyalty to hidden and malevolent government forces.

(U) Though this all sounds bizarre, the next layer of the argument becomes even more implausible. Since 1933, the U.S. dollar has been backed not by gold, but by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government (in fact, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended private ownership of gold in large amounts in 1933; governments could still sell gold for dollars to the U.S. Treasury for a fixed amount after that, until that practice was ended by President Richard Nixon in 1971). According to sovereign “researchers,” this means that the government has pledged its citizenry as collateral, by selling their future earning capabilities to foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans. This sale, they claim, takes place at birth. When a baby is born in the U.S., a birth certificate is issued, and the hospital usually requires that the parents apply for a Social Security number at that time. Sovereigns say that the government then uses that birth certificate to set up a kind of corporate trust in the baby’s name, a secret Treasury account, which it funds with an amount ranging from $600,000 to $20 million, depending on the particular variant of the sovereign belief system. By setting up this account, every newborn’s rights are cleverly split between those held by the flesh-and-blood baby and the ones assigned to his or her corporate shell account.

(U) The sovereigns believe evidence for their theory is found on the birth certificate itself. Since most certificates use all capital letters to spell out a baby’s name, JOHN DOE, for example, is actually the name of the corporate shell identity, or “straw man,” while John Doe is the baby’s “real,” flesh-and-blood name. As the child grows older, most of his legal documents will utilize capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver’s license, his marriage license, his car registration, his criminal court records, his cable TV bill and correspondence from the IRS all will pertain to his corporate shell identity, not his real, sovereign identity.

(U) The process sovereigns have devised to split the straw man from the flesh-and-blood man is called “redemption,” and its purpose is two-fold. Once separated from the corporate shell, the newly freed man is now outside of the jurisdiction of all admiralty laws. More importantly, by filing a series of complex, legal-sounding documents, the sovereign can tap into that secret Treasury account for his own purposes. Over the past 30 years, hundreds of sovereigns have attempted to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of forms and paperwork. While no one has ever succeeded, for the obvious reason that these theories are not true, sovereigns are nonetheless convinced with the religious certainty of a true cult believer that they’re close. All it will take, say the promoters of the redemption scam, is the right combination of words.

(U) Numbers of Sovereigns’

(U) It is impossible to know how many sovereigns there are in the U.S. today, in part because there is no central leadership and no organized group that members can join. Instead, there are a variety of local leaders with individualized views on sovereign citizen ideology and techniques. Those who are attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two, or visit one of the thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and then simply choose how to act on what they’ve learned. Some start by testing sovereign ideology with small offenses such as driving without a license, while others proceed directly to taking on the IRS as tax protesters.

(U) In the mid-1990s, the IRS estimated that there were approximately 250,000 tax protesters in the U.S., people who believe that the government has no right to tax income. Not all of them were full-blown sovereign ideologues. Since the late 1990s, an abundance of evidence suggests that the sovereign citizen movement’s growth has been explosive, although there have been no more recent IRS estimates because Congress in 1998 prohibited the agency from tracking or labeling those who file frivolous arguments in lieu of paying their taxes. But a conservative estimate of the number of all kinds of tax protesters today would be about 500,000.

(U) Using this number and information derived from trials of tax protestors and reports from government agencies, a reasonable estimate of hard-core sovereign believers in early 2011 would be 100,000, with another 200,000 just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges, for an estimated total of 300,000. As sovereign theories go viral throughout the nation’s prison systems and among people who are unemployed and desperate in a punishing economy, this number is likely to grow.

(U) The Sovereign Tactics

(U) The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal nonsense. For example, a sovereign was involved in 2010 in a protracted legal battle over having to pay a dog-licensing fee. She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor decided to drop the case. The battle was fought over a three-year dog license that in Pinellas County, Fla., where the sovereign lives, costs just $20. Tax cases are even worse. Sovereign filings in such legal battles can quickly exceed a thousand pages. While a normal criminal case docket might have 60 or 70 entries, many involving sovereigns have as many as 1,200. The courts are struggling to keep up, and judges, prosecutors and public defenders are being swamped.

(U) The size of the documents is an issue, but so is the nonsensical language the documents are written in. They have a kind of special sovereign code language that judges, lawyers and other court staff simply can’t understand (nor can most non-sovereigns). Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper, ink color and timing, they can have anything they want; freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth, and life without licenses, fees or laws, are all just a few strangely worded documents away. It’s the modern-day equivalent of “abracadabra.”

(U) Since most sovereigns favor paper over guns, when sovereigns are angry with government officials, their revenge most often takes the form of “paper terrorism.” Sovereigns file retaliatory, bogus property liens that may not be discovered by the victim until they attempt to sell their property. Sovereigns also file fake tax forms that are designed to ruin an enemy’s credit rating and cause them to be audited by the IRS. In the mid-1990s, a period when the sovereign movement was also on the rise, several states passed laws specifically aimed at these paper terrorism tactics.

(U) Sovereign Recruiting

(U) In the late 2000s and early 2010s, most new recruits to the sovereign citizens’ movement are people who have found themselves in a desperate situation, often due to the economy or foreclosures, and are searching for a quick fix. Others are intrigued by the notions of easy money and living a lawless life, free from unpleasant consequences. Many self-identified sovereigns today are black and apparently completely unaware of the racist origins of their ideology. When they experience some small success at using redemption techniques to battle minor traffic offenses or local licensing issues, they’re hooked. For many, it’s a political issue. They don’t like taxes, traffic laws, child support obligations or banking practices, but they are too impatient to try to change what they dislike through traditional, political means.

(U) In times of economic prosperity, sovereigns typically rely on absurd and convoluted schemes to evade state and federal income taxes and hide their assets from the IRS. In times of financial hardship, they turn to debt- and mortgage-elimination scams, techniques to avoid child support payments, and even attempts to use their redemption techniques to get out of serious criminal charges.

(U) Once in the movement, it’s an immersive and heady experience. In the past three decades, the redemptionist subculture has grown from small groups of like-minded individuals in localized pockets around the nation to a richly layered society. Redemptionist attend specialized seminars and national conferences, enjoy a large assortment of alternative newspapers and radio networks, and subscribe to sovereign-oriented magazines and websites. They home-school their children so that a new generation will not have to go through the same learning curve that they did to see past the government’s curtain to the common-law utopia beyond.

(U) While the techniques sold by promoters never perform as promised, most followers are nonetheless content to be fighting the battle, and they blame only the judges, lawyers, prosecutors and police when their gurus’ methods fail. While most have never achieved financial success in life, they take pride in engaging the government in battle, comparing themselves to the founding fathers during the American Revolution.

(U) Sovereign Violence

(U) When a sovereign feels particularly desperate, angry, and battle-weary and cornered, his next government contact, no matter how minor, can be his final straw. The resulting rage can be lethal. In 1995 in Ohio, a sovereign named Michael Hill pulled a gun on an officer during a traffic stop. Hill was killed. In 1997, New Hampshire extremist Carl Drega shot dead two officers and two civilians, and wounded another three officers before being killed himself. In that same year in Idaho, when brothers Doug and Craig Broderick were pulled over for failing to signal, they killed one officer and wounded another before being killed themselves in a violent gun battle. In December 2003, members of the Bixby family, who lived outside of Abbeville, S.C., killed two law enforcement officers in a dispute over a small sliver of land next to their home. And in May 2010, Jerry and Joseph Kane, a father and son sovereign team, shot to death two West Memphis, Ark., police officers who had pulled them over in a routine traffic stop. Later that day, the Kanes were killed in a fierce shootout with police that wounded two other officers.

(U) Associated Sovereign Citizens Movement Groups:

(U) It is impossible to know how many sovereigns there are in the U.S. today, in part because there is no central leadership and no organized group that members can join.

(U) White Nationalist:

(U) White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites. Groups listed in a variety of other categories – Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, and Christian Identity – could also be fairly described as white nationalist.

(U) These groups range from those that use racial slurs and issue calls for violence to others that present themselves as serious, non-violent organizations and employ the language of academia.

(U) For many years, the largest white nationalist group in America has been the Council of Conservative Citizens, a reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils that were formed to resist desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

(U) Associated White Nationalist Groups:

American Renaissance

EURO

Council of Conservative Citizens

Stormfront

VDARE

American Third Position

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: FOUO

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: FOUO

Rand Paul’s speech at Howard [official transcript]

I’d like to thank President Ribeau, the Howard University faculty, and students for having me today, and apologize in advance for what I’m about to say.

Some people have asked if I’m nervous about speaking at Howard. They say “You know, some of the students and faculty may be Democrats.” They didn’t tell me you’d all be black.

My response is that my trip will be a success if the Hilltop will simply print that a Republican came to Howard but he came in peace and left with all his pieces.

My wife Kelley asked me last week, “Do you ever have doubts about trying to advance a message for an entire country?”

The truth is, sometimes. When I do have doubts, I think of a line from T.S. Eliot, “How should I presume to spit out all the butt ends of my days and ways, and how should I presume.” That is from a poem. It’s like a rap without the music.

When I think of how political enemies often twist and distort my positions, I think again of Eliot’s poem and its words: “When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, how should I presume?” The man in this rap is so frustrated in a sexual sense that he can’t even ask a question.

Yet here I am today at Howard, a historically black college. Here I am, a guy who has no frustrations in the sexual sense but once presumed to discuss a section of the Civil Rights Act.

Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here today. I’ve never been one to watch the world go by without participating. I’ve won more participation awards than anyone I know. I wake up each day hoping to make any difference I can no matter what difference it is.

I take to heart the words of Toni Morrison of Howard University, a black woman, who wrote: “If there is a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

I can recite books that have been written, by title, or I can plunge into the arena and stumble and maybe fall but at least I will have tried to do something.

What I am about is a philosophy that leaves you to fill in the blanks. I marked them with an “X.” Just sign here and here and here.

But I come to Howard today, not to preach, or prescribe some special formula for you, but to say I want a government that leaves you alone, that encourages you to write the book that becomes your unique future.

You are more important than any political party, more important than any partisan pleadings, but you are also black, which is why I came to Howard today.

The most important thing you will do is yet to be seen. Not in my lifetime have I seen people like you vote for people like me. For me, I found my important thing to do when I learned to do surgery on the eye, when I learned to restore a person’s vision. But none of them have seen people like voting for people like me either.

Fortunately, I found what was important when I met and married my wife. This is important. But I am an eye surgeon, first and foremost,  so I find myself as part of the debate over how to heal our sick economy and get people back to work.

I truly believe that we can have an economy that creates millions of jobs again but we will have to rethink our arguments and try to rise above empty partisan rhetoric. I have a wife.

My hope is that you will hear me out, that you will see me for who I am, not the caricature sometimes presented by political opponents or myself. If you hear me out, I believe you’ll discover that what motivates me more than any other issue is the defense of everyone’s rights. And yours. Everyone’s and yours.

Of strong importance to me is the defense of minority rights, not just racial minorities, but ideological and religious minorities.

If our government does not protect the rights of white and ideological and religious minorities, then democratic majorities could simply legislate away our freedom to legislate away your freedom.

The bill of rights and the civil war amendments protect us against the possibility of your oppressive federal government.

The fact that we are a Constitutional Republic means that certain inalienable rights are protected even from democratic minorities. No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. Except for when I do, I have never waivered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act.

The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview. What gets lost is that the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights. And yet despite being the same Republicans, some have concluded that we are somehow inherently insensitive to minority rights.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We love you. Why else would we give you those rights?

Now Republicans do, indeed, still believe many rights remain with the people and states respectively. When some people hear that, they tune us out and say:  “He’s just using code words for the state’s right to discriminate, for the state’s right to segregate and abuse.” And I am.

But that’s simply not true.

Many Republicans do believe that decentralization of power is the best policy, that government is more efficient, more just, and more personal when it is smaller and more local and not like those big cities you live in. But Republicans also realize that there are occasions, in history, of such egregious injustice that require federal involvement, and that is precisely what the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act were intended to do — protect citizens from state and local tyranny.

The fourteenth amendment says,  “No state shall…” That is all it says. The fourteenth amendment did change the Constitution to give a role for the federal government in protecting citizenship and voting regardless of race.

Now I did not live through segregation nor did I experience it first-hand. I don’t even know what it is. But I did grow up in the South in public schools comprised of white, black, and Latino students largely all getting along with each other. Some of them are still my best friends.

So perhaps some will say that I can never understand. But I don’t think you had to be there to have been affected by our nation’s history of racial strife. Even though it ended we are all affected by history.

The tragedy of segregation and Jim Crow in the South is compounded when you realize that integration began with the Democrat Party in New England in the 1840’s and 1850’s. In 1841, Frederick Douglas was pulled from the white car on the Eastern Railroad, clutching his seat so tightly that he was thrown from the train with its remnants still tightly in his hands. But, within a few years public transportation was integrated in the northeast by Republicans.

It is a stain on our history that integration didn’t occur until more than 100 years later in the South. That in the 1960’s we were still fighting to integrate public transportation and schools is and was an embarrassment which I had nothing to do with. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat.

The story of emancipation, voting rights and citizenship, from Fredrick Douglas until the modern Civil Rights era, is in fact the history of the Republican Party I represent. How did the party that elected the first black US Senator, the party that elected the first 20 African American Congressmen become a party that now loses 95% of the black vote? How did the Republican Party, the party of the great Emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire race? What did we do wrong?

From the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, for a century, most black Americans voted Republican. How did we lose that vote? When did we stop beating your wives?

To understand how Republicans lost the African American vote, we must first understand how we won the African American vote. In Kentucky, the history of black voting rights is inseparable from the Republican Party. Virtually all African Americans became Republicans. Before that they weren’t even people. Who made them people?

Not Robert Byrd. Not the Democrats in Louisville who were led by Courier-Journal editor Henry Watterson and were implacably opposed to blacks voting.

Watterson wrote that his opposition to blacks voting was “founded upon a conviction that their habits of life and general condition disqualify them from the judicious exercise of suffrage.” In George Wright’s “Life Behind the Veil,” he writes of  Republican General John Palmer standing before tens of thousands of slaves on July 4th, 1865, when slavery still existed in Kentucky,  and declaring: “My countrymen, you are free, and while I command, the military forces of the United States will defend your right to freedom.”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

I said “The crowd erupted in cheers.”

Is this thing on?

Anyway, Kentucky’s Democrat-controlled legislature voted against the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments.

William Warley was a black Republican in Louisville.  He was born toward the end of the nineteenth century. That was a long time ago. Do you know about it? Because the Republican Party’s history is rich and chock full of emancipation and black history. We are rich and chock full.

Republicans still prize the sense of justice that MLK spoke of when he said that “an unjust law is any law the majority enforces on a minority but does not make binding upon itself.” It is one of our favorite prizes. We award it whenever we talk to people like you.

Republicans have never stopped believing in minorities, whether they derive from the color of their skin or shade of their ideology we believe they warrant equal protection. We believe in you. I think our retelling of the Civil Rights era does not give enough credit to the heroism of civil disobedience. We need to tell this story with more Republican heroes.

But Republicans face a daunting task.  Several generations of black voters have never voted Republican and are not very open to even considering the option. Democrats still promise unlimited federal assistance, which I know you all need, and Republicans promise free markets, low taxes, and less regulations that we believe will create more jobs.

The Democrat promise is tangible and puts food on the table, which again, we know you need, but too often doesn’t lead to jobs or meaningful success. The Republican promise is for policies that create economic growth.   Republicans believe lower taxes, less regulation, balanced budgets, a solvent Social Security and Medicare will stimulate economic growth for everybody. Including you.

Republicans point to the Reagan years when the economy grew at nearly 7% and millions upon millions of jobs were created.

Today, after four years of the current policies, one in six Americans live in poverty, more than at any other time in the past several decades. In fact, the poor have grown poorer in the past four years. Black unemployment is at 14%, nearly twice the national average. This is unacceptable.

Using taxes to punish the rich, in reality, punishes everyone because we are all interconnected. Poor people are black. Black people are poor. High taxes on rich people and excessive regulation on corporations are not working for them.

The economy has been growing at less than 1% and actually contracted in the fourth quarter. Objective evidence shows that big government is not a friend to African Americans. I will show it to you later.

Big government relies on the Federal Reserve, our central bank, to print money out of thin air. Printing money out of thin air leads to higher prices. When the price of gas rises to $4 per gallon, it is a direct result of our nation’s debt.  When food prices rise, it is a direct result of the  $50,000 we borrow each second. Inflation hurts everyone,  particularly the poor who are black.

Some Republicans, let’s call them the moss-covered variety, mistake war for defense. All they want to do is wage war. The old guard argues for arms for Ghaddafi and then the following year for boots on the ground to defeat Ghaddafi. Do your arms work? Do you need boots?

I want you to know that all Republicans do not clamor for war, that many Republicans believe in a strong national defense that serves to preserve the Peace through War.

In Louisville, in the predominantly African American west end of town, it was recently announced that 18 schools are failing.  The graduation rate is 40%. Most of these people need boots. The Republican needs these boots for War. The head of Kentucky’s education called it academic genocide.  Johns Hopkins researchers call these schools dropout factories.

I saw a movie.

I defy anyone to watch Waiting for Superman and honestly argue against school choice. Let me tell you the tale of two young men. Both of them made mistakes. Both of them were said to have used illegal drugs. One of them was white and from a privileged background. He had important friends, and an important father and an important grandfather. You know, the kind of family who university’s name dorms after. The family had more money than they could count. Drugs or no drugs, his family could buy justice if he needed it.

The other man also used illegal drugs, but he was of mixed race and from a single parent household, with little money. He didn’t have important friends or a wealthy father. Now, you might think I’m about to tell you a story about racism in America, where the rich white kid gets off and the black kid goes to jail.

It could well be,  and often is,  but that is not this story. In this story, both young men were extraordinarily lucky. Both young men were not caught. They weren’t imprisoned.

Instead, they both went on to become Presidents of the United States.

The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism. Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments. Big and oppressive government, which is the opposite, has long been the enemy of freedom, something that makes no sense but black Americans know all too well.

We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white.

Such freedom is essential in achieving any longstanding health and prosperity.

As Toni Morrison, the black women I mentioned earlier, said, “Write your own story.” Challenge mainstream thought about Republicans. I hope that some of you will be open to the Republican message that favors choice in education, a less aggressive foreign policy, more compassion regarding non-violent crime and encourages opportunity in employment.

And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom and vote against it 2016. Rand Paul!

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