Biden administration policymakers hated you more than you knew.

Four years ago, I warned at the Libertarian Institute:

“Libertarians are in the federal crosshairs…Many libertarians assume they have nothing to fear because they are not engaged in seeking to violently overthrow the government. But the feds will be able to find many other pretexts to target peaceful citizens with supposedly subversive ideas.”

Three years ago, I warned at the Institute that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was damning anyone who did not kowtow to the regime:

“’When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.’ That wacko definition of extremism designed to vilify anyone who doubts Biden will save America’s soul.”

In October 2023, I warned at the Institute:

“Federal bureaucrats heaved together a bunch of letters to contrive an ominous new acronym for the latest peril to domestic tranquility. The result: AGAAVE—’anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism’—which looks like a typo for a sugar substitute. The FBI vastly expanded the supposed AGAAVE peril by broadening suspicion from ‘furtherance of ideological agendas’ to ‘furtherance of political and/or social agendas.’ Anyone who has an agenda different from Team Biden’s could be AGAAVE’d for his own good.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently declassified a December 13, 2021 report by the National Counterterrorism Center. Gabbard’s version had a more honest title than the original version: “Declassified Biden Administration Documents Labeling COVID Dissenters, Others as ‘Domestic Violent Extremists.’”

President Joe Biden’s Brain Trust sounded the alarm on criticisms such as “COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.” After government lockdowns had destroyed millions of jobs, only the paranoid would fear the government would ever violate their liberties or subvert their livelihoods.

Biden policymakers pretended that the surge in criticism of COVID policies was proof of the psychopathology of Biden’s opponents. But in September 2021, Biden dictated that one-hundred million Americans working for private companies must get the COVID vaccine. The official counterterrorism report stated that it anticipated that “the threat will continue at least into the winter, as many of the new COVID-19 mandates in the U.S….are implemented, including U.S. workplace vaccination policies that carry disciplinary or termination penalties.” The Supreme Court struck down most of that vaccine mandate as illegal in January 2022 but not before it had profoundly disrupted legions of lives and businesses—as well as American health care.

The other factor spurring the surge in COVID criticism was the failure of the COVID vaccines. In early 2022, the effectiveness of the COVID booster shot had fallen to 31%—too low to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Though most American adults had gotten COVID vaccines, there were more than a million new COVID cases a day in January 2022. Most COVID fatalities were occurring among the fully vaxxed. Studies showed that people who received multiple boosters were actually more likely to be hit by COVID infections.

So obviously, the Biden administration had no choice but to demonize any and all COVID critics. A confidential 2022 Department of Homeland Security report detailed pending crackdowns on “inaccurate” information on “the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,” among other targets. A few months earlier, Jen Easterly, the chief of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, declared, “We live in a world where people talk about alternative facts, post-truth, which I think is really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts.” Plenty of Biden administration officials considered it “really dangerous” to permit people to assert that COVID vaccines were failing.

The National Counterterrorism Center report noted, “The availability of a vaccine for all school-age children might spur conspiracy theories and perceptions that schools will vaccinate children against parents’ will.” Like the same way that some states and many school systems have sought to enable children to change their gender without their parents’ knowledge or consent?

The report also warned that “new COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly mandates or endorsements of vaccines for children—will probably spur plotting against the government.” The FDA knew that COVID vaccines sharply increased the risk of myocarditis—an inflamed heart—in young males but the Biden White House browbeat the agency into fully approving the COVID vaccine anyhow. New York Governor Kathy Hochul sought unsuccessfully to mandate vaccines for all schoolkids in the Empire State even though her State Department of Health reported in May 2022 that the Pfizer vaccine was only 12% effective for children during the Omicron surge. The Biden administration included COVID vaccines in the semi-mandatory regimen for young children despite the vaccine’s failure and perils.

The vilification of COVID doubts propelled the Biden crackdown on uppity parents. As governments shut down schools and issued mask mandates in failed responses to COVID, parents raised hell at school board meetings. The National School Board Association denounced such criticism as “a form of domestic terrorism” and urged Team Biden to deploy the FBI and the Patriot Act against protesting parents (an initial draft of the letter called for sending in the National Guard to protect school boards).

On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the FBI would speedily “convene meetings” in every state aimed at “addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The Justice Department announced that its National Security Division would help determine “how federal enforcement tools can be used” to prosecute angry parents. The Biden administration effectively announced plans to drop legal nuclear bombs on school board critics. An FBI whistleblower revealed that FBI counterterrorism tools were being used to target angry parents. FBI agents across the nation began interrogating parents whose names were reported on a “tip line” set up for people to phone in accusations against anyone who complained about school closures, mask mandates, or other issues.

Portraying doubts on COVID policy as a warning sign of domestic violent extremism unleashed the FBI to target anybody who howled against mandatory injections or the near-total destruction of their freedom of movement. That December 13, 2021 National Counterterrorism Center report may be only the tip of the iceberg of federal mischief. We may soon learn of far more direct machinations to vilify, undercut, or other stifle COVID critics.