'Battlefield America The War on the American People': John Whitehead at RPI Media & War Conference
Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead warns us about the greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life: an increasingly militarized government at all levels in the United States. This speech is from the Ron Paul Institute's 2018 Media & War conference on August 18th in Washington, DC.
Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead warns us about the greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life: an increasingly militarized government at all levels in the United States. This speech is from the Ron Paul Institute's 2018 Media & War conference on August 18th in Washington, DC.
Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead warns us about the greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life: an increasingly militarized government at all levels in the United States. This speech is from the Ron Paul Institute's 2018 Media & War conference on August 18th in Washington, DC.
Our next speaker, I'm very excited about having joined us for the first time at a conference.
We've had him on the Liberty Report several times.
We've admired his work for many, many years.
John Whitehead was a founder of the Rutherford Institute, which is one of the premier organizations really going to battle to protect our civil liberties.
And I'll tell you what, if you don't read John's weekly column, the only hesitation I would have to recommend it is that you will get depressed.
You will feel terrible about what's happening to our civil liberties in this country.
But if you want to be informed, I'll tell you what, his column every week, if you don't read it, it's got about 50 or 60 links.
Everything that he asserts in the column, you can go boom right there to the source and see exactly the case he's talking about, exactly the incident he's talking about.
It is so valuable to read John's work.
He's such a terrific writer.
the way he articulates what's happening to our society is so compelling, and we're so happy to have him here with us.
John Whitehead.
Thank you very much.
I hope there's not going to be a SWAT team raid today because there is.
You need to know your rights, okay?
These are on the table if you'd like to get one.
It says know your rights, and you better know them.
I'm going to give you a few stories about the cases that we handle and what I'm seeing happening across the country.
But, you know, our founding fathers warned us clearly, the people who wrote the Constitution, George Washington and others, do not have a standing army on American soil.
We did not heed that warning, ladies and gentlemen.
We do have a standing army on American soil.
It's composed of local police across the country, federal agents.
How many people in this room?
This is another thing.
We're talking about the media here.
The media doesn't cover these things.
How many people in this room know that there's at least 175,000 federal agents running around this country armed to the teeth ready to arrest you?
How many people know that?
How many people know this?
80,000 SWAT team raids occurring across this country, annually in America, where they're going through doors, smashing people's doors.
For what?
Most of the time, they're in the wrong house.
Through the middle of the night, kids are getting shot.
80-year-old women are getting smashed face down on their living room rug.
How many people, the media doesn't, we're talking about the media here.
The media doesn't give a poop about this.
They're too busy covering what Donald Trump is saying on Twitter to go to the real facts of what's happening in America.
I've been doing this for 40 years, talking about these issues.
In the early days, people were going, hmm, aren't you crying, Wolf?
I don't always respond.
The little boy who originally cried, Wolf, why do people believe him?
Because there's wolves.
Thus, I wrote a book called A Government of Wolves from the Edward Murrow quote, which is, a nation of sheep will what?
Beget a government of wolves.
I'm telling people, you better wake up.
There's a battlefield here in America as well.
All this gear that local police have today, Kelbar helmets, salt rifles, grenade launchers, night goggles.
Go down the list, folks.
Dressed in camouflage outfits now.
They're dressed in camouflage outfits.
That doesn't look like the Army to you.
I'm very, very concerned what I'm seeing happening here.
And we're involved in a lot of cases that will, hey, there's a lot of good policemen, by the way, who police chiefs that contact me and stuff across the country.
They read the stuff.
They send me email messages.
They're sounding the alarm as well.
They're trying to get people to wake up.
I had a local police chief contact me about a year ago and he says, John, I may do something about my SWAT team.
I said, why?
He said, the other night, my SWAT team raided a home.
Unbeknownst to me, it was in the wrong home.
But one of the police officers put his automatic rifle to a four-year-old kid's head.
That's happening.
He said, I've got it.
I said, you better do something about it because what we're seeing happening is too far out.
I'm from Charlottesville, Virginia.
I don't know if you don't remember last weekend, a few days ago, Charlottesville locked down.
It's the first time I've ever been right up on a police state.
A thousand police officers, helicopters, MRAPs, all this stuff, circled it, searching bags of people.
The police state was there.
And you know something?
The local people, many of them finally woke up and said, whoa.
And were quoting me in the local newspaper and across the country that, hey, martial law.
This is martial law in America and small towns.
And for what reason?
No credible facts.
The people they supposedly were worried about, the alt-right, were up in D.C.
They weren't in Charlottesville.
So what happened?
Very much it's like a training exercise, which leads me to a fellow that we were helping there.
And I'll give you some of our cases as I go through this stuff.
A veteran, 70-year-old veteran, on his walker.
They had a list of items you couldn't bring on the downtown mall, which was cans, razor blades.
So he goes through light bulbs.
Bug, I mean, any kind of aerosol can.
Well, our friend John Mishka, whom I've known for years, he works with veterans, by the way.
He protests at veterans' hospitals because he doesn't believe they care for veterans properly.
He went on a downtown mall.
You couldn't bring him on the downtown mall, but you could bring weapons.
He brought his two pistols, by the way.
He looked like a cowboy.
And he got into the downtown mall with pistols, but you couldn't bring a can of Coke on them.
Does that make sense?
He goes into the local CVS, and he said he loves Arizona tea, Arizona tea.
How many people like Arizona tea?
Yeah, well, he bought two cases.
He put them on his walker.
He bought some light bulbs.
He bought, mosquito problem, he bought an aerosol can of bug spray and some razor blades to scrape off decals on his car.
He goes in, he asks the store manager, this is on a downtown mall where you can't have any of these items.
He couldn't bring them on, but you could buy them.
He bought them.
He walks outside and swarm, 12 policemen surround him immediately and go, I'll search you, sir.
Well, he had asked the manager out loud in the store.
So obviously there was an undercover cop at the store, obviously.
They were everywhere.
And he had also said he was going on social media, he Facebook page.
He said he was heading downtown to buy some bug spray and stuff like that.
So they do read social media.
We know that.
They surround him.
And he goes, what?
And one of the policemen actually took his bag.
He said, may I search your bag, sir?
And he knows his rights.
He said, no, this is a search and seizure.
You can't do that.
I've not done anything wrong.
Policeman grabs his bag and putting it up into his face.
This is on camera.
And he's staring at it.
And he goes, oh, look, here, an item.
They pull up the razor blades.
And they said, sir, we're escorting you.
You better get off the mall.
And he stood us down.
He said, I'm having lunch here.
They immediately arrest him, put one of those plastic ties around him.
This is a large dude.
He's six foot eight.
They take him to the paddy wagon.
This is the far-out part.
This is a guy who can barely walk in a walker.
He's got his Arizona T and those light bulbs and bug spray is pretty dangerous.
They actually, one of the officers took his foot and shoved him in the paddy wagon, slashing his arm and his knees.
They took him to the court and charged him with trespass.
We're defending the guy.
What kind of mentality is that?
This is a guy on a walker.
How many people in this room think he's a dangerous man?
Well, they took his guns, and this is the funny thing.
They took his guns away and all our spray.
And he had a friend there.
They just threw it to him and said, hey, take this home, will you, buddy?
He walked off the mall.
What is going on in this country?
And that's the question I'm raising, ladies and gentlemen.
Like I said, I've been talking about this for years, and people say you're a crying wolf.
Well, I'm going to cry a little bit louder, as you're going to see.
The battlefield is here, ladies and gentlemen.
And I know what a police state looks like.
It's one composed of surveillance, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarized police, all the things we're seeing.
And you know, another thing I'm seeing in the government as I work on these cases is there seems to be basically an extreme paranoia in a lot of government officials about American citizens.
Here's another thing that maybe the mainstream media hasn't told you.
How many people in this room know that the Department of Homeland Security does threat assessments on many American homes?
Did you know that?
They run from green to red.
If you own a gun, a licensed gun, your threat assessment goes up.
And you wonder why sometimes policemen, some residents, some of the cases we have, policemen arrive at people's doors very agitated.
We had a case in Texas where a group of policemen came up to a door, a nice couple, which we defended, and asked them, is there a certain guy in the home?
They said, no.
And the policeman said, we're coming in.
They said, wait a second, you don't have a warrant coming in our home.
They say, we're coming in.
Anyway, they went in, the husband started arguing with them.
So they decided to handcuff the husband, about a 50-year-old guy.
Took him outside.
He was still arguing with him.
So the policemen decided what to do.
They slammed him face down on the sidewalk in front of the home, smashing his face.
And he took him to court.
Basically, no charges were levied.
We sued and won the case.
But what is the mentality of what are we facing here, ladies and gentlemen?
Again, we're seeing these cases are legion across the country.
And talk about paranoia.
How many people have seen the Pentagon video predicting by 2030 major cities across the world, including those in the United States, they're going to probably have to impose martial law?
How many people have watched the video?
Pretty far out thing.
It's actually directed by a Hollywood director who has remained anonymous.
It's well done, but it's pretty scary if what they're predicting may happen.
And so you're seeing a lot of agitation and things across the country.
The thing that you have to be concerned about, and you can't just brush it by, is that everything you are doing is being watched.
ATT has towers in eight major cities.
They work with the NSA.
All your phone calls, all your emails, the post office is x-raying your mail.
They're actually photographing it, watching you.
They're trying to find out who the extremists are and who the terrorists are in this country.
And as a gentleman before me, the National Defense Authorization Act will allow the president, basically, if he thinks you're an extremist, he can send people to get you and you become a detainee and you can be taken to a determent camp and taken away.
This is the future of America.
Like I say, it's a battlefield.
We had another very, very important case.
And again, we have tons of them that we see happening.
There was a fellow named Brandon Robb several years ago, a decorated Marine.
One of his main functions was diffusing minefields.
He also captured rifles.
And when we handled the case, Facebook ran pictures of our fellow Brandon Robb holding a rifle.
And people were going, this guy's a rifle owner in America.
No, he was holding in Afghanistan.
He was holding Afghanistan, but they were kind of pigeonholing him as a crazy guy.
Magistrate's Hearing Controversy00:02:20
But what happened was he had started jogging.
He jogged every Saturday morning near Richmond, Virginia, and without his shirt on.
He got back home one morning and he was typing.
He has a home business dealing with his money business he does.
And he heard a noise outside.
This is an astute Marine.
He heard cars pulling up.
He went to his front door and whoa, police cars pulling up, SWAT team guys running toward his home.
People in their black outfits with their little ties are running toward his home.
And he said, well, whoa.
They came to his front door.
And what was funny was they couldn't, they didn't have a search warrant to do anything because he didn't own a rifle.
The only thing he had in his house that was dangerous was his parry knife, which he cut his fruit with.
So they came to the door and Brandon said, hey, what do you guys, what is this?
And they go, we're concerned about your Facebook post.
He's a 9-11 truther.
Boy is he.
9-11 truther.
He didn't like Obama's.
This is when Obama was still in office several years ago.
He hated Obama's executive orders.
He was blasting Obama, said Obama should be arrested.
He was also playing a private Facebook game called, I think, Dear Mr. Illuminati with his sister and brother.
The FBI actually penetrated that and watched that.
So they rushed his home and they said, sir, would you step out?
As soon as he did, they grabbed him.
They handcuffed him behind his back.
They walked into the police car.
He was arguing with them, obviously, because he was going, this is nuts.
What are you guys doing?
And he slammed him against the fence, slashed his back.
They took him to the local police station.
He was bleeding badly.
He asked for bandages.
They put one of those prison shirts on, which he said stuck in the back hurt him.
His mother freaked out, called the ACLU, all groups.
No one would handle the case because they said this is a civil commitment, which I want to talk to you about in just a moment.
A civil commitment.
He had a hearing before a magistrate, a 70-year-old magistrate, who brought in, and this is with a number of other people, he brought in a cassette tape, which I thought no one had anymore.
It didn't work, so we didn't actually get a transcript of the hearing.
He was actually, the magistrate ordered that he be put in a mental hospital.
He was put in a mental hospital.
Amendments Under Threat00:07:44
When I heard about the case, I said, this is insane.
And so we filed a lawsuit.
It took a while.
We finally got him out.
The judge ruled he shouldn't have been there in the first place.
But some of the most bizarre things happened that it lasted one week.
Was that he called me the Thursday before the Friday that we actually got him out by court order?
And he said, John, the psychiatrist here is saying he's going to force meds on me.
He didn't want the medications.
And I'm freaking out.
And so the psychiatrist was actually listening on the phone.
I said, well, you tell me, you have to have a court order in Virginia to force medications on people.
So when this case is passed, Brandon, we're going to sue this guy, which we did.
We finally got him out and won the case and sued the police, by the way, and everybody involved.
And you know what, the federal appeals court ruled?
But they had complete immunity.
They couldn't be held liable.
And this is happening, ladies and gentlemen, in over 90% of the cases.
And this is why you see some of this stuff being prolonged and continuing and continuing, continuing across the country.
And what you're facing, and like I say, is a battlefield.
When you have the Department of Homeland Security purchasing from the AT Corporation over a million hollow point bullets, I'm a former infantry officer.
We weren't allowed to use those things.
Hollow point bullets because they expand on contact.
They expand and bang.
If you get shot in the head like JFK was, part of your skull is going to fly off.
You have agents from the Department of Agriculture.
They have 320,000 hollow point bullets.
Whoa, watch out.
Social Security Administration, 200,000 Hollow Point bullets.
What are they running around with Hollow Point bullets for?
Again, let me ask you, if we're talking about the media, is the media covering this stuff?
Why aren't they covering it?
They don't want you to know or they don't give them food.
That's the question.
So I think what we're facing is something that's amazing.
How many people know in this room that there's a database the government has called Maine Corps?
Main Corps?
Over 8 million names are on that database.
And who are these people?
Extremists who in times of distress could be rounded up.
Daniel Nick Adams might be on that list.
I definitely think I've been told I'm on that list by former NSA agents.
Anybody out there that's speaking up, taking a stand, and you all should be taking a stand on how in the world are we going to fight back on this thing that we're seeing happen?
We've allowed it to go so far down the line.
And I'm telling people, if you don't stand for something, you're going to die for nothing.
We need a nation of people.
We need to start taking control of our government.
And people say, well, how can I take control of my government if it's in Washington, D.C.?
Well, that's an issue.
You can take control at the local level.
I'm advising people to say, hey, start these civil liberties oversight committees.
Get your neighbors together.
Some people are starting to do this, where you're demanding that your local city council conduct some kind of oversight on these activities.
Do you want your local police dressed in black garb smashing through people's doors in the middle of the night?
Do you want that?
Well, you can probably stop that if you get your act together.
How many people are familiar with knock and talk in this country?
A very few.
Number of cases across the country where police are showing up at people's doors in the middle of the night doing knock and talk.
Well, you hear someone banging on your door at night.
I would be disturbed.
They go to the door holding their pistol, thinking they're getting, might be getting robbed.
I mean, come on, it's black.
And the police see the gun.
And these are actual cases.
In Florida recently, they shot a guy through the door.
They saw this gun.
Now, the thing is, it's not going to stop, again, if we don't take control.
But the bureaucracy is so large with the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, which in my opinion, by the way, you talk about the deep state.
I know these agencies are running the country.
They have so much power.
They're everywhere.
There may be agents here right in this audience watching this.
They infiltrate everything.
So, I'm just telling people, if you want some kind of help in this country, one, know your rights.
Listen, the public schools today, I'm getting these kids, law students in my summer Into program, they can't tell me what's in the First Amendment.
I had one student last year in my class said, she said, whoa, my constitutional law professor started off the year in our law school, and you know what he said?
There's one part of the Constitution we won't be studying this year.
That's the First Amendment.
Why aren't they studying the First Amendment?
Do you see it across the country?
I tell people you can actually teach your kids the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights.
You can teach them at home.
In fact, I was on a radio interview not too long ago, and some guy called in and said, hey, I got your Bill of Rights pamphlets, John Whitehead, and my kids are learning the Bill of Rights at home.
You're putting all this money in public education and they're not teaching them civics anymore?
They don't even know what's in the Fourth Amendment.
I talk to the average cop who can't tell me basically what's in the Fourth Amendment.
If you don't know your rights, how can you exercise them?
And the other thing they're teaching, the college students, a recent Brookings Institution report shows that 44% of college students say that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
Really?
51% say it's acceptable to shout down a speaker you disagree with.
Hmm.
20% say you can use violence to stop a speaker.
Do you guys agree with that, Miss?
What's hell no?
There you go.
That's hate speech.
Let me tell you, the only way to preserve free speech is with more free speech.
I'm seeing the groups clash now.
I'm seeing the groups clash now in each other's fate, screaming, yelling, I'm saying, don't be idiots, talk.
Studies actually show by biologists that the less free speech you get, the less you discuss things, the less you talk about things openly, our prefrontal cortex stops thinking.
And we don't analyze anymore.
Especially when you've got young people today watching up to 150 hours a month of screen time.
They're going numb.
They're not thinking.
So what I'm encouraging people is speak up, disagree, because you might be wrong.
Remember, all reality is socially constructed.
You may be wrong.
So find out what the other person has to say.
We recently held a symposium in Chauceville on this issue, saying, hey, it's time to listen to what other people have to say.
And again, I'll say it.
Do We Want Unchecked SWAT Raids?00:00:55
The future of the country is up to you, ladies and gentlemen.
Change can be made if you work to make the change.
If you care about America, I hear people say, I love my country.
Well, if you love your country, you'll get out there and stand for something.
You'll go down to that local city council and you'll say, hey, do we want MRAPs?
Do we want grenade launchers?
Do we want assault rifles?
Do we want SWAT team raids without oversight in our community?
And I'll echo the gentleman there.
Hell no, we don't want that.
What we want is accountability.
How's the Constitution start?
Who's the government?
We the people.
It ain't Trump.
It ain't Congress.
It ain't them.
It ain't the judges.
We're the government.
So if the government's going wrong, who's to fall?