 A couple of days ago in the program we talked about a tweet from journalist Ford Fisher where he details the way that the government describes domestic violent extremists or TVEs and it lays out some various examples that are a bit bizarre to me right. Of course it lists all of the far right extremists but then it also has pro-choice and pro-life as if these are comparable. I mean you don't really see much violent pro-choice extremists so it seems as if you know this document that Ford Fisher shared was an attempt to conflate all of these groups. Having said that though simply put if you want to interpret that document in the most charitable way possible you can basically view it as all right look any ideology could potentially become violent and the government isn't necessarily saying that pro-life activists and socialists anti-capitalists are inherently violent. Having said that though to even put them in the same category with far-right extremists is worrying to say the least. Now to complement what we found out through Ford Fisher journalists Ken Klippenstein obtained a document from the United States military it's a training document and it does appear to conflate left-wing people socialists anti-capitalists with far-right extremists including neo-nazis. So this is incredibly worrying but it's not necessarily very surprising because anti-capitalists socialists they threaten the status quo and even if they're not vocally violent or they don't advocate for violence their ideology is still a threat to the government or they perceive it to be a threat so they are instructing everyone to view them essentially the same as fascists which as a socialist I take issue with obviously so journalist Ken Klippenstein explains a navy counter-terrorism training document obtained exclusively by the intercept appears to conflate socialists with terrorists and lists the left-wing ideology alongside neo-nazis a section of the document subtitled study questions includes the following anarchists socialists and neo-nazis represent which terrorist ideological category the correct answer is quote political terrorists a military source briefed on the training told me the document titled introduction to terrorism slash terrorist operations is part of a longer training manual recently disseminated by the naval education training and commands navy tactical training center in conjunction with the center for security forces the training is designed for masters at arms the navy's internal police the military source said while the right has been vocal with its concerns about being unfairly targeted for political opinions media coverage of the Biden administration's focus on domestic extremism has paid considerably less to what it might mean for movements on the left including black lives matter antifa short for anti-fascists and the environmental movement in fact internal fbi documents I reported on in 2019 specifically list anarchists and environmental extremists among its counter-terrorism priorities as the intercept reported in a recent series the justice department's handling of domestic extremism can often be arbitrary and disproportionate to any threat its targets may pose one example of this is black activist groups which as former fbi agent mike german has pointed out the fbi has been targeting for many years not surprising there in 2019 I obtained internal documents revealing the fbi's counter-terrorism priorities in the fiscal years 2018 to 2020 while the bureau's 2018 priorities included right-wing groups like militia extremists sovereign citizen extremists and white supremacy extremists it also included black identity extremists and anarchist extremists the fbi documents suggest without evidence that the term black identity extremist grew out of the black lives matter movement which is not typically associated with violence so this is a huge red flag the media gets people to go along with the government cracking down on who they deem extreme because they're not necessarily giving you the full scope of what's happening sure it's the case like reasonable americans are going to see what happened on january 6 they'll feel terrified and think okay the government should take meaningful action to crack down on violent extremists but the media just frames it as well as just cracking down on right-wing extremists when an actuality is cracking down on anyone who they purport to be extremists and who isn't isn't extreme is a very subjective term but based on the documents we've read over the course of the last week the government's definition of who is extreme is very very broad and that's intentional right black identity extremists what does that even mean when you think about all of the extremism that we see in the country do you think black identity extremists like are they going around harassing people no that is not the case black lives matter protests which is targeted here they're overwhelmingly peaceful a report by the washington post conducted in 2020 found that the overwhelming majority of violent instances they happened to be directed at black lives matter protesters it wasn't conducted by black lives matter activists itself having said that though it's easy to think that black lives matter is disproportionately violent because the media back in 2020 they were reporting on the violent instances of the black lives matter protests right and sure that happened and but many marches across the country also happened simultaneously but the media isn't going to cover the things that aren't sexy they're not going to just cover a peaceful march of black lives matter protesters they're going to cover what's going to get them eyeballs and so you kind of create this false narrative that conflates you know black lives matter with right-wing extremists and then this leads to the american people getting duped by propaganda from the mainstream media and sensationalist coverage of news events and basically tacitly accepting a crackdown on all extremists as if black lives matter or black identity extremists are comparable in any way to the far right who had a plot to kidnap the governor of michigan who's actually doing terrorism around the country so look what we have to do is be very very cautious here i absolutely do not want the left and even centrists to give the government permission to crack down on on extremists if that means that we're going to see you know um our civil liberties be violated of course the government is expected to stop extremism and violence as american citizens we have a right to be safe right having said that though we can't allow propaganda and fear to lead to us seeing our fourth amendment rights being eroded even more our first amendment rights being eroded even more and you know with the patriot act after 9 11 we saw how fearful americans were and the government took advantage of them and we cannot let that happen again long story short the cognizant of what's happening be aware of who the government says is and isn't extreme and make sure that you push back in the event you see a crackdown on your first and fourth amendment rights in the event it comes to that right now you know the these are just classifications that don't necessarily amount to much yet when it comes to policy but that can change and we have to make sure that we pay attention so we don't allow the government to do what they did after 9 11 and you know have some patriot act 2.0 you know under the guise of you know tackling extremism in the united states