John and Nisha Whitehead – The Rutherford Institute March 12, 2025
“Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters… officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.”—Heather Cox Richardson, historian
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.
You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.
You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
There’s always a boomerang effect.
Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.
Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.
The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.
This is how it begins.
Consider that Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.
This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.
Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.
If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?
We are all at risk.
History shows that when governments claim the power to silence dissent—whether in the name of national security, border protection, or law and order—that power rarely remains limited. What starts as a crackdown on so-called “threats” quickly expands to include anyone who challenges those in power.
President Trump has made it clear that Mahmoud’s arrest is just “the first arrest of many to come.” He has openly stated his intent to target noncitizens who engage in activities he deems contrary to U.S. interests—an alarmingly vague standard that seems to change at his whim, the First Amendment be damned.
If history is any guide, the next targets will not just be immigrants or foreign-born activists. They will be American citizens who dare to speak out.
If you need further proof of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights, look no further than his recent declaration that boycotting Tesla is illegal—a chilling statement that reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of both free speech and the rule of law.
For the record, there is nothing illegal about exercising one’s First Amendment right of speech, assembly, and protest in a nonviolent way to bring about social change by boycotting private businesses. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) that nonviolent boycotts are a form of political speech which are entitled to First Amendment protection.
The problem, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a president who believes that he can do whatever he wants because he is the law is that anyone and anything can become a target.
Mahmoud is the test case.
As journalists Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin point out, Mahmoud’s arrest for being a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” (note: he is not actually accused of breaking any laws) is being used as a blueprint for other arrests to come.
What this means is that anyone who dares to disagree with the government and its foreign policy and express that disagreement could be considered a threat to the country’s “national security interests.”
Yet the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Indeed, the First Amendment does more than give us a right to criticize our country: it makes it a civic duty. Certainly, if there is one freedom among the many spelled out in the Bill of Rights that is especially patriotic, it is the right to criticize the government.
Unfortunately, the Deep State doesn’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.
This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.
Throughout history, U.S. presidents have used their power to suppress dissent. The Biden administration equated the spread of “misinformation” with terrorism. Trump called the press “the enemy of the people” and suggested protesting should be illegal. Obama expanded anti-protest laws and cracked down on whistleblowers. Bush’s Patriot Act made it a crime to support organizations the government deemed terrorist, even in lawful ways. This pattern stretches back centuries—FDR censored news after Pearl Harbor, Woodrow Wilson outlawed criticism of war efforts, and John Adams criminalized speaking against the government.
Regardless of party, those in power have repeatedly sought to limit free speech. What’s new is the growing willingness to criminalize political dissent under the guise of national security.
Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is taking this hostility to new heights.
The government has a history of using crises—real or manufactured—to expand its power.
Once dissent is labeled a threat, it’s only a matter of time before laws meant for so-called extremists are used against ordinary citizens. Criticizing policy, protesting, or even refusing to conform could be enough to put someone on a watchlist.
We’ve seen this before.
The government has a long list of “suspicious” ideologies and behaviors it uses to justify surveillance and suppression. Today’s justification may be immigration; tomorrow, it could be any form of opposition.
This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.
It’s just a matter of time.
It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.
The groundwork has already been laid.
Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.
So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government could get you labeled as a terrorist.
After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.
It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.
Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.
Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.
This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.
Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.
In other words, as the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.
So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.
That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?
In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.
The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”
This is how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized “we the people” have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.
If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.
President Trump wants us to believe that the menace we face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.
Don’t believe it. That argument has been tried before.
The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have all been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.
We are walking a dangerous path right now.
Political arrests. Harassment. Suppression of dissident voices. Retaliation. Detention centers for political prisoners.
These are a harbinger of what’s to come if the Trump administration carries through on its threats to crack down on any and all who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.
We are being acclimated to bolder power grabs, acts of lawlessness, and a pattern of intimidation, harassment, and human rights violations by government officials. And yet, in the midst of this relentless erosion of our freedoms, the very concept of sovereignty—the foundational idea that the people, not the government, hold ultimate power—has been all but forgotten.
“Sovereignty” used to mean something fundamental in America: the idea that the government serves at the will of the people, that “we the people” are the rightful rulers of this land, and that no one, not even the president, is above the law. But today, that notion is scarcely discussed, as the government continues its unchecked expansion.
We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.
Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the moment these acts of aggression becomes the new normal, authoritarianism won’t be a distant threat; it will be reality.
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I don’t care…after 4 yrs of the illegal Biden Junta I just as many as possible deported
The British dictator Winston Churchill hada way to silence disent
he had them murdered dozens were killed in this way including royalty
neville chamberlian heads of intel such as vernon kell who said the germans were
no threat to us
Churchills doctor lord moran said on record
Churchil is mad quite mad”
yet some folk still beleive the propaganda that he saved us from an enamy who were actually our freind
I am only going to deal with the headline, because it’s sooo wrong.
Dissent is when you majorly disagree with the elites. So you can dissent against the North Korean regime, because it’s legitimate, even if it does bad things, but you can’t dissent against the UK Nazi elites, and the reason for this is that you’re dealing with criminals.
I don’t believe there’s a single establishment entity that’s not criminally corrupt, so if you could be bothered, write a list, and write to your tax office, explaining these high crimes, and that you want your taxes withheld from the Nazi regime untill investigations, charges and prosecution are complete.
If enough thicko sheeple did this, something might happen. I say might, because the UK Nazi police are totally corrupt, so are the courts.
Yes…The Rutherford Institute…whining about the Yankee despot…
When of course you could find yourself ‘definitely ‘ in prison, and many have, for questioning the 1940’s work camp lice gas narratives in eleven European countries…
Of lesser import, because frankly I don’t much care for Quackademia and it’s bottom feeders..
.. credentialed imbeciles have been fired and imprisoned for refusing to call a fat whiskery middle aged troon in a wig and tutu with its junk hanging out of its tiny french knickers,… a hehe..woman..
It seems whatever nonsense one encounters nowadays, there’s always a group of ‘jewes’ promoting it or benefiting from it..
and usually both.. have a discussion about that Rutherford Institute..
Notice when white fascists/nationalists are persecuted for their ‘free speech’ by ZWOG, no articles ever appear on these alt news media sites about it, but when some wog is arrested then its time to protest & weep for him.
They are using general arguments against Trump that they would never use against a gov they happened to like
Royal Navy chases down drug smugglers and finds huge haul of heroin and methamphetamine
Story by Ben Mitchell •The crew of a Royal Navy warship has found and seized £5.4 million worth of class A drugs in the Middle East.
HMS Lancaster launched its Wildcat helicopter after spotting suspicious activity from two israeli boats side-by-side in the northern Arabian Sea at night.
When the crew spotted packages being transferred from a small fast boat to a dhow – a traditional fishing vessel – the Portsmouth-based frigate which operates out of Bahrain scrambled a team of Royal Marines and sailors to intercept.
“As the transfer continued, HMS Lancaster charged down on the scene at full speed.
“The smugglers did not surrender but attempted to get rid of their illegal haul, dumping the packages overboard – all under the gaze of the helicopter and crew on the frigate’s bridge.
“The crew of the warship’s sea boat fished the packages out of the water, then ferried them back for testing on board.” Alas the missing pink frilly trousers of carl Jones was not found
The case is clear. The Jewish/Chabadin/Zionist/whatever servant Donald started the purge (the laws of the Noahide follow)… As the Whitehead family points out in the article:
“Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.”
The link is to the article from theverge.com:
“This is just the start
ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil for his role in pro-Palestine protests, signaling the beginning of a surveillance nightmare.”
See now what the problem is. At least my problem.. Given that for me Donald and the conservatives, together with the left, and together with Putin, and together with all the participants who are presented to the proles as enemies, are from the same team that will bring the world and humanity to the point of no return. Not that I want to sound panic alarm alarms and dramatize – the process, the transition to this transformation, is proceeding so smoothly and successfully, with almost complete control over all types of proles (including myself), that it is as if it has already happened, consider it fact.
However, look now.. Because I really like to dig into the section “what else” of the resistance, “what else are they supporting”, “what else are they fighting for”, etc.
Search in theverge.com – “covid vaccine” – many results, one:
“Real-world evidence shows that the COVID-19 vaccines work. They protect against infections, not just symptoms
by Nicole Wetsman, Mar 30, 2021”
Search in theverge.com – “transgender” – many resulst, one:
“Mentions of trans kids scrubbed from national child safety clearinghouse websiteReports say the government ordered NCMEC to remove LGBTQ+ references or lose funding. Feb 7, 2025″
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a child safety nonprofit that works closely with the government and major tech platforms, has recently removed publications that reference queer and transgender children from its website. The removals come amid reports that NCMEC was ordered to cull mentions of LGBTQ+ issues under threat of losing government funding, part of President Donald Trump’s push to eradicate recognition of trans people in the US.
…
Trump has signed multiple executive orders targeting transgender children and adults, including one that attempts to bar the legal recognition of trans people and another that restricts gender-affirming care for trans youth. Numerous lawsuits are pending against these orders, and at least one has been temporarily blocked by a judge.”
One more:
“Trump administration adds anti-trans notices to restored websites. The disclaimers are on pages that a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore earlier this week, Feb 14, 2025
President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add disclaimers railing against “gender ideology” to pages restored by a recent court order, The Washington Post reported. The notice reads:
Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59 PM on February 11, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.
…
The right-wing attacks on transgender people — including children — have been widespread in the weeks since Trump’s inauguration. The new administration is attempting to deny trans people medical care, block “X” markers on passports, and ban trans people from women’s sports, as well as erase the existence of trans people altogether by threatening to withhold funding for organizations that reference queer and transgender people. The Trump administration’s goal appears to be to push transgender people to the margins of society…”
Search “far right”, one:
Groyper war, dark elves, bugmen: how the GOP ticket is reviving far-right beef. Far-right streamer Nick Fuentes disavowed Trump’s campaign — but other members of the extremely online far-right are all in on Trump.
by Gaby Del Valle, Aug 15, 2024″
And so on, and so on… Look for whatever we are talking about here, but not only – check all the articles that Whitehead links to to illustrate how terribly bad Trump is, look in the search engines of these sites what they think about major issues that we talk about here (and elsewhere in the alt-media space) and do the math. Will it turn out that for most or almost all of these sites, you and I are fuckin low-grade conspiracy theorists, racists, fascists, antivaxxers, transphobes and so on, dangerous to democracy, etc…? Of course yes (check).
Are you criticizing Trump for violating the rights of transgender people, etc.? By criticizing Trump in this way, it adds a lot of power to reinforce the beliefs of people who believe that the right/conservatives/Trump is real and in a fierce battle with the (also real) evil left for the future of humanity. He even adds to the zombified believers some of the hesitants. Nothing legitimizes both the low-grade left-right theater itself and the half-witted authenticity of Trump and conservatives as Saviors, better than the actions and criticism of hypothetical leftists.
And while Whitehead says or implies that Trump is a continuation of the “deepstate” plan, for example, with things like this: “This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.,” by saying or implying that he is criticizing the violation of the Constitution by everyone, by the Democrats too, etc. As he does this, he illustrates it by linking to almost exclusively low-grade “leftist” sites, including all sorts of fucking mainstream sites like the AP, the Guardian, etc. Do you see the problem?
And when we check what else they support and what the vast majority of the resistance to Trump, the Zionists, the “genocide of the Palestinians”, and so on, stand against, what do we see?
Mahmoud’s arrest yesterday led to a just and daring protest action by opponents of the Zionists and genocide, in Trump Tower. The case received wide coverage, it is practically everywhere (of course, in all anti-genocide and anti-Zionist media of resistance to the dirty plans for a greater Israel and the cleansing of Gaza). The fucking AP also showed conscience and is indignant:
“Jewish protesters flood Trump Tower’s lobby to demand Mahmoud Khalil’s release
March 14, 2025
NEW YORK (AP) — Demonstrators from a Jewish group filled the lobby of Trump Tower on Thursday to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia University.
The demonstrators from Jewish Voice for Peace wore red shirts reading “Jews say stop arming Israel” and held up banners as they chanted “Bring Mahmoud home now!” on the lower level of the Fifth Avenue building’s public atrium.
After warning the protesters to leave, police said they arrested 98 people who stayed on various charges, including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.
…
President Donald Trump has said Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come” and vowed on social media to deport students who he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
…
Founded in 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace describes itself as a grassroots movement of American Jews seeking to “end U.S. support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” It is one of a number of Jewish groups around the world advocating for the rights of Palestinians.”
I go to the website of Jewish Voice for Peace (JPV) and read:
“JVP is the world’s largest Jewish organization standing in solidarity with Palestine.
We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews.”
“Our Vision
We envision a world where all people — from the U.S. to Palestine — live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.
Like generations of Jewish leftists before us, we fight for the liberation of all people. We believe that through organizing, we can and will dismantle the institutions and structures that sustain injustice and grow something new, joyful, beautiful, and life-sustaining in their place.
We picture the concrete of the Apartheid wall in pieces on free Palestinian soil. We picture Israeli jails, prisons, and detention centers emptied and dismantled. We picture the return of Palestinian refugees, reuniting with their families and communities…”
“JVP’s Core Values
(selected)
“WE gain strength from the long lineage of Jewish freedom fighters. Behind us are Salonican socialists, Warsaw Ghetto fighters, Israeli Black Panthers, labor organizers, Civil Rights veterans and many more ancestors who worked tirelessly for liberation – of Jews and all people.
We know our communities are under threat. We commit to dismantling antisemitism in the most effective way possible: as part of our struggle against all forms of oppression and bigotry. Our struggles must be united to succeed and we intend on succeeding.
…
Racial Justice & Collective Liberation
Our commitment to racial justice is a core praxis in our work, by which we mean an ongoing cycle of action and reflection within which we are striving to dismantle racism–both outside and within the organization–while also working to grow a liberatory culture for our organizing.
We understand that racism shapes everything in the US, Israel and beyond. Racism dictates who lives and dies, who has the resources they need to survive, who has the power to govern, who faces the most violence, who has the freedom to stay in or move from their homes, whose stories are told and believed. As a diverse, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of Jews we also understand that white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, colonialism, militarism, and capitalism are intertwined at the roots, and that we can’t fully address any of them without addressing all of them. Our commitment to Palestinian liberation is fundamentally a commitment to fight against racism and for a world where everyone lives with dignity, power, love, community, beauty, and justice.
For us to win, we must be a political home that provides connection, wholeness and belonging to all Jews who want to fight for Palestinian liberation. We are committed to building an organizing home where Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, SWANA/Mizrahi, and Sephardi members feel welcome, home, and whole. Where white Jews feel supported to build their anti-racist praxis and bring their full selves. Where all of our work embodies the multiplicity of Jewish histories, lineages, stories, and traditions. Where each of us can name and fight out of our own specific stakes in building Jewish futures beyond nationalism, white supremacy and Zionism.”
Cool.
I have always believed, and I hope that all anti-genocide anti-Zionists here share the same thing, that “white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy are intertwined at the roots, and that we can’t fully address any of them without addressing all of them.” Be truly antizionist, say no to genocide, homophobia and transphobia!
No, really: if you are caught up in the anti-Zionist resistance to the “genocide of the Palestinians” and follow the sites that are not silent on the issue and condemn Israel etc., just look to see if they are now sharing this news about the JVP and ask them if Zionism, Israeli genocide, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy are intertwined at their roots and we cannot fully address any of them. without dealing with everyone.
A graduate of Columbia- big deal. If & when talmudic communist curricula is eliminated from any & all ‘Ivy League’ & lesser universities and colleges, I remain unsympathetic to any foreigner who engages in openly criticizing the host nation.
Starmer is becoming quite open in his belief that only a semi communist agenda will help britain from its problems
here is my view
1 put starmer and co in prison
2 send all migrants home
3 stop paying rothschild the huge sums we do
4 abandon the search for carl jones pink frilly trousers