In late December, pollster Scott Rasmussen released an interesting report. A poll conducted earlier in the month of 1,000 likely voters uncovered a welcome development: Americans don’t trust or like the FBI.
Even more revealing is the wording used in the poll, which actually came in the form of a statement that read:
“Roger Stone, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, has said there is ‘a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI … as Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo.’”
A startling 46% of respondents said they “agree” with this statement, which included 29% who say they “strongly agree” with a characterization of the nation’s top law-enforcement agency as a totalitarian tool. Remember that the Gestapo was Hitler’s secret police force. The opposing numbers in the poll are equally encouraging: Only 38% disagreed with the statement. Even 30% of Democrats hold an unfavorable view of these rogues.
Voters tend to shy away from such inflammatory descriptions of government agents, especially since September 11, 2001, when “law enforcement” became the country’s new religion. But in this poll, respondents didn’t hesitate to point fingers right at the top: 50% said FBI director Christopher Wray lacks independence and “in his decision making” is more likely to defer to the president.
Half the country sees the FBI as a group of jackbooted thugs acting personally on behalf of the president, which helps to explain why the number of Americans who support violence against the government is rising. A recent Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that just over a third, 34%, believe “violent action against the government” is “justified,” up from just 16% in 2010, more than a doubling in twelve years. The obverse of this poll also reveals how far things have come: 62% said violence is “never justified,” down from 90% in the 1990s.
As far back as the Truman administration in the 1950s, the Bureau of Investigation, which would later become the FBI, was considered a threat to civil liberties. Under J. Edgar Hoover, it gathered intelligence on politicians and prominent public figures under the guise of “fighting communism,” but in reality, this was done to cause fear and intimidation. Hoover seemed to have a special hatred for homosexuals. Anyone crossing him faced ruin. During World War II, Japanese Americans were firmly in his cross hairs, for no other reason than the color of their skin. Framing innocent people was just part of his playbook.
In the 1960s, the FBI, through its COINTEL program, infiltrated and radicalized leftist groups with the purpose of “undermining” them (a technique that would surface again during the “war on terror”). Agents infiltrated a political organization and encouraged its members to plot violent acts. When the “plan” – a product of the FBI – was executed, federal agents swooped in and saved the day, always at the last second. The public believed that if not for the FBI’s vigilance, disaster would have struck. If not for the FBI’s provocation, however, the “violent extremists” would never have acted in the first place.
Nothing has changed in almost a century under this playbook. In the 1990s, the FBI was murdering unarmed mothers with babies in their arms and burning religious weirdos to death in their own church. Today, the Department of Justice, the FBI’s daddy, thinks parents at school-board meetings are an existential threat to the safety and security of the nation. No clairvoyance is needed to see how it will use the new “domestic-terrorism unit” announced by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen on January 10. A federal entity known as the Pretrial Services Agency will begin storing personal information on employees who apply for religious exemptions to federally mandated vaccine requirements – information it could share with Olsen and his jackals.
The FBI is an enemy of freedom, and Americans are finally figuring that out. Calls for change are coming from across the political spectrum. In an op-ed for the left-wing Boston Globe (December 7), criminal-defense and civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate gave an “amen” to the idea of scrapping the agency altogether. “Calls for reform … are Band-Aids covering a serious gunshot wound,” he wrote. “I’ve concluded that the FBI must be abolished.” Republicans are the most wary of the FBI, a welcome change considering those on the right have historically fawned over anyone with a badge. Back on September 21, the right-leaning Wall Street Journal ran its own op-ed titled simply, “Abolish the FBI.”
It can’t happen soon enough.
