Amendments to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which has already been passed by the House, would empower the Attorney General Eric Holder to define gun owners, anti-abortion activists and tax protesters as domestic terrorists in light of recent federal reports that classify millions of Americans as “extremists”.

Former impeached Florida judge and now Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings has introduced amendments to H.R. 2647: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, which would give Holder dictator powers to demonize legitimate protest groups as being affiliated with violent race hate organizations.

The bill is ostensibly aimed at preventing race “extremists” and gang members from joining the Army, but since the Army already hires felons, criminals, racists and gang members, the real purpose behind the legislation is to codify the move to label gun owners, “anti-government” activists and tax protesters as domestic terrorists, a process that has been ongoing since at least the start of the decade.

The bill’s definition of “people associated or affiliated with hate groups” include, “Groups or organizations that espouse an intention or expectation of armed revolutionary activity against the United States Government,” or “Other groups or organizations that are determined by the Attorney General to be of a violent, extremist nature.”

The evidence required to show that such an organization is affiliated with a violent hate group includes people possessing tattoos identifying them with the group, individuals who attend conferences or rallies sponsored by a “hate group,” people who engage in online discussion forums of an “extremist” nature, people who possess documents, books or photographs or simply “related materials as defined by the Attorney General” that represent “hate propaganda.”

The amendments introduced by Hastings were passed by the House and the bill now moves on to the Senate for approval before it is signed by the President.

Since the definition of an “extremist” has already been established by numerous federal documents over the last few years that list law-abiding citizens as domestic terrorists, Hastings’ amendments are simply an attempt to centralize the power to demonize such groups into the hands of the Obama administration.

“This is arguably one of the worst pieces of legislation to come down the pike in a long, long time. In essence Attorney General Eric Holder — a Bill Clinton retread — will have the discretion to label Americans terrorists. Hastings is a dangerous man and should be forced to resign from congress. This amendment is part and parcel of the trend in this country to suppress dissent by patriots by calling them domestic terrorists,” warns writer Mike Baker.

Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) expressed his concern about the amendment on the house floor, noting that under Homeland Security’s very definition of what constitutes an “extremist”, the majority of Americans will be characterized as hate criminals.

“While the amendment seeks to keep gang members and members of violent groups out of the military, the amendment by its language is much more broad. Specifically, it confers upon the Attorney General the ability to categorize groups as hate groups, and this sounds an alarm for many of us because of the recent shocking and offensive report released by the Department of Homeland Security which labeled, arguably, a majority of Americans as “extremists,” warned Franks.

“I take extreme offense that the federal government — through a report issued under the authority of a Cabinet-level official — would dare to categorize people who are “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition or abortion or immigration” as “right-wing extremists” and it begs the question of whether the Attorney General, under Mr. Hastings’ Amendment, can look to the Napolitano report to decide who is an extremist, or can make the same categorization of the majority of Americans as extremists who may then be kept from joining the military, or who may be discharged,” said Rep. Franks.

As we reported in April, a recent Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment equates gun owners with violent terrorists and states that radical extremists are “stockpiling” weapons in fear of an Obama administration gun ban.

The document,  Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, states;

“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

A similar report was also issued by the DHS at the end of March which listed the “alternative media” with other radical extremist groups and implies that people who disagree with the mass media’s version of events are potential domestic terrorists.

Both documents were just the latest in a long sordid line of training manuals in which the federal government characterizes millions of American citizens as potentially violent terrorists who are a threat to law enforcement, and designates them under the umbrella term of “extremists,” in the same context cited in Hastings’ amendments.

As we have exhaustively documented with the MIAC report and a whole host of others, the federal government apparently has very little concern for any perceived terrorist threat to America coming from the MIddle East or Al-Qaeda cells within the country, and indeed if any such threat existed we are only in more danger, because the feds have been busy training law enforcement that law-abiding American citizens who exercise their legal right to purchase firearms or who exercise their first amendment right to discuss politics or run websites, are potential terrorists who want to instigate a violent revolution.

In addition, current Department of Defense anti-terrorism training course material states that the exercise of First Amendment rights in the U.S. constitutes terrorist activity.

Over the last few years we have documented countless examples of security assessment reports from the likes of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as police training manuals, which state that anti-war protesters, gun owners, veterans, Ron Paul supporters and those who merely cite the Constitution should be equated with extremists and domestic terrorists.

The fact that the government is now treating people who merely criticize its conduct as domestic terrorists is the clearest signal possible that the United States has entered a period in history similar to Germany in the early 1930’s and that it can only be a matter of time before the right “emergency” provides the justification for dissidents to be targeted for round-ups and mass imprisonment.

No one can claim now that this is merely a paranoid delusion – the government itself is training its law enforcement and military arms that protesters and people who use their First Amendment rights are domestic terrorists.

The facilities for round-ups of “extremists” who dare to exercise their First or Second Amendment rights are already being prepared, again with the help of Hastings, who sponsored (HR 645) – the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act.

The bill authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.

Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.

The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.

The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.

The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.

As we have previously highlighted, in early 2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”

As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.

A much discussed and circulated report, the  Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, was more recently updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.

Hastings’ efforts to have millions of law-abiding American citizens lumped in with racist gangs and designated as “extremists” arrives on the back of Federal hate crimes legislation, which in reality would criminalize “thought crimes,” that has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act).

S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:

“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)”

In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.

If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.

All of these coordinated moves to demonize informed, armed and pissed off Americans as extremists, terrorists and hate criminals represents the federal government’s final push to brainwash the population into accepting the notion that some Americans are dangerous, that they are enemies of the state, and that they can be targeted in the same way that victims of the “war on terror” are now being targeted across the world – through misappropriation of guilt, torture and indefinite imprisonment.