(A  shorter version of this essay was originally published at LewRockwell.com)
“There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat,” warns an unusually strident house editorial by the Los Angeles Times. “They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal.”

That description was not applied to the masked, armor-clad Berserkers who kick down doors in the early morning or late at night and terrorize families over non-violent “offenses.” Nor was it offered in reference to the militants who have purchased more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition — much of it hollow-point rounds unsuitable for military use — while distributing armored vehicles and other military hardware to their adherents in practically every city nation-wide. The Times didn’t direct that rhetorical salvo at the people who are openly discussing plans to fill America’s skies with robot planes that can — and will — be used as weapons platforms.

The Times editorial collective focused its indignation upon a much safer target — namely,  “white, right-wing Americans, all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.” 

This steroid-enhanced militant doesn’t bother the SPLC.

 The statist screed makes passing reference to what it calls “the massacre of a bizarre sect by federal agents in Waco, Texas,” twenty years ago – without passing moral judgment on the “massacre” in question. 

Slaughtering religious eccentrics is a venial offense compared to the grave heresy committed by those who speak ill of the Holy State, since their “blather” — not the murderous actions of those who impudently presume to rule us, mind you — “tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world.”

Once again: Immolating harmless people in a church is a perfectly proper thing, assuming that this act of mass murder is carried out by the consecrated hands of the State’s enforcement caste, but referring to it as mass murder is the sort of thing only an incipient terrorist would do.

In recent days, we’ve heard that the Obama Regime — which is running out of plausible foreign enemies — is seeking to broaden the scope of the “war on terror” to include “offshoot” groups that are connected only by rumor to al-Qaeda (which was always more of a brand name than an actual organization). Terror Warriors need not fret; ere long we’ll harvest the nettles that have been so plentifully sown by the Regime’s implacable aggression abroad. In the meantime, however, the Times suggests that the “war on terror” should re-direct its focus inward.

These “angry men” armed for combat are cool with the SPLC.

Citing the most recent missive from the self-appointed Stasi at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Times claims that there are 1,360 proto-terrorist groups — sneeringly denounced as “patriots,” “constitutionalists,” and “sovereign citizens” — scattered throughout the Soyuz. “These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists,” concludes the paper.

Reconfiguring the “war on terror” from an imperialist venture into a domestic purge was the central idea of a letter sent by the SPLC to the Department of Homeland Security.

“Nothing to see here!” insists the SPLC.

Allusively, but unmistakably, Rep. Slaughter was referring to the prospect of making war against the people of the united States — which, as it happens, meets the specific constitutional definition of “treason.” Only those who have lost interest in living, or who have acquired an interest in auto-erotic asphyxiation, would hold their breath awaiting SPLC’s condemnation of the vulgar threat that emerged from the tax-devouring gullet of the appropriately named Rep. Slaughter. 

Echoing the central theme of Cohen’s letter to the Feds, SPLC spokesman Mark Potok, “We are in a scary moment. It is very much reminiscent, at least to me, of the months leading up to the Oklahoma City Bombing.” This is indeed quite ominous — not because the SPLC has correctly gauged the public mood, mind you, but because the group was deeply involved in the Fed’s PATCON false flag operation that precipitated the OKC bombing. The FBI spent the last decade running COINTELPRO-style provocation operations against American Muslims. There’s every reason to suspect that they’re busy seeding informants and provocateurs in every cohesive group of right-wing dissidents they can find.

The SPLC-derived Los Angeles Times editorial — which could be digested into the phrase, “The conspiracy theorists are plotting against us!” — brings to mind an incident in the early 1980s in which East German officials arrested a group of human rights activists for “defaming” the state by claiming that it suppressed freedom of speech. As Tony Cooper, an instructor in terrorism negotiation at the University of Texas-Dallas, pointed out in 1995, the Regime in Washington is perfectly capable of such totalitarian behavior.

“I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,” Cooper told the Washington Post in 1995. “It’s an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage.”

Never forget: A “conspiracy theorist” is someone who notices things without official permission — and a “terrorist” is anybody who challenges the government’s monopoly on violence.