While The Rest Of Us Die 1x3

1. - The first pictures now coming in from Puerto Rico

2. after taking a direct hit,

3. Hurricane Maria slamming into the island.

4. - When major disasters strike,

5. it's always been the President of the United States' job

6. to arrive on the scene with promises of help.

7. - Emergency management now confirms

8. 100% of Puerto Rico now without power.

9. Flooding in every direction.

10. - One official saying the island is destroyed.

11. - He's also there to offer emotional support

12. to locals confronting death and destruction.

13. - I've been to Puerto Rico many times.

14. I've always loved it, and your weather is second to none,

15. but every once in a while, you get hit,

16. and you really got hit.

17. - You know, he goes down there, says a few words.

18. - There's a lot of love in this room.

19. There's a lot of love in this room.

20. - Tosses a few paper towels, shrugs a little bit, and leaves,

21. and then blames the Puerto Rican government for all the problems.

22. - Survival cannot be our new way of life.

23. Mr. Trump, do your job.

24. - Can I get a selfie with you?

25. - Calling it negligent,

26. it seems to be, like, the understatement of the century.

27. - Great people.

28. - We've seen it time and again, just how vulnerable we are

29. and how wide the chasm is

30. between the powerful and the rest of us.

31. - For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing

32. under the bright lights.

33. - The protection of the lives and property of Americans

34. is the responsibility of all public officials.

35. - I care. We're trying.

36. - And it is my first duty as president

37. to protect the American people.

38. - We have it so well under control.

39. - But America's shadow government has spent trillions of dollars

40. on secret plans that serve one premise —

41. when the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own.

42. - I have nothing. Nothing.

43. - For decades, the government has invested trillions of dollars

44. in a secret plan to save itself...

45. while the rest of us die.

46. - Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I had better news for you,

47. but we are facing a storm that most of us have feared.

48. - 12 years before Puerto Rico was leveled by Hurricane Maria,

49. a massive storm barrels toward the Gulf Coast.

50. - The warnings get more and more dire,

51. and people in New Orleans are ready to essentially

52. do what they normally do — stay and ride it out.

53. You know, your government is here to protect you.

54. Why should you worry?

55. - The Americans living in its path failed to understand

56. that their lives were in the hands

57. of a government that had prioritized its own survival

58. over their wellbeing.

59. - There were multiple warnings

60. that this levee system wasn't ready

61. for anything approaching a storm of this magnitude.

62. - The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers

63. started building a levee system to protect New Orleans in 1965.

64. They were supposed to have finished by 1980,

65. but it was nowhere near complete

66. when the Category 3 Hurricane Katrina

67. descended on the Crescent City

68. and the waters began to rise.

69. - Katrina was predictable. It was preventable.

70. We could have mitigated the damage.

71. We could have rebuilt quicker.

72. Homeland Security is a term that emerged after 9/11.

73. And after 9/11,

74. we saw how insecure our homeland was.

75. - The U. S. government had other priorities —

76. the so-called Global War on Terror,

77. first invading Afghanistan, then Iraq

78. just two years before Katrina makes landfall.

79. - We had spent billions of dollars and countless lives

80. in overseas operations at the expense of levees.

81. We have been busy fighting outside,

82. and we failed to guard our own back door.

83. - We are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters

84. in our nation's history.

85. - As the waters of Lake Pontchartrain

86. flood into New Orleans,

87. hundreds of residents are killed,

88. tens of thousands of displaced.

89. - You had an entire American city essentially wiped off the map

90. while an American government stood by and watched.

91. - President Bush, returning to D. C. from vacation,

92. diverts his flight to watch the unfolding crisis

93. from 2,500 feet above.

94. - It is a cataclysmic failure on every level.

95. - Nowhere is the devastation greater than

96. in the largely African-American Lower Ninth Ward.

97. - The images from Hurricane Katrina

98. of people clinging to life on rooftops

99. has been burned into my memory, my conscience.

100. - Without adequate food, water, shelter, or medical aid,

101. residents are left on their own to survive.

102. - It's a disgrace.

103. We've been sleeping in the street for five days and nights.

104. Somebody have to come to our rescue.

105. - I got to Katrina as a reporter three days after the storm.

106. I had been in Iraq three weeks before.

107. It was disturbing how familiar the scene was,

108. of this destroyed infrastructure,

109. civilian population in need,

110. and there being no government to meet that human need.

111. - And like in Iraq,

112. when the U. S. military first arrived in New Orleans,

113. the health and safety of the local inhabitants

114. didn't appear to be the mission.

115. - A black helicopter literally came into New Orleans

116. amidst the worst of the tragedy, and it turns out

117. that they had been ordered into this federal building

118. because there were blank passports there.

119. We undertook this expensive and elaborate rescue effort

120. to get blank passports out of a building in New Orleans

121. rather than to save people.

122. And that, to me, kind of symbolized also the fact

123. that sometimes the federal government

124. can have its own priorities,

125. and they're not human priorities.

126. - There's an old saying — "When your only tool is a hammer,

127. every problem looks like a nail,"

128. which might explain why law enforcement came down so hard

129. on survivors in the Big Easy.

130. - The crisis in New Orleans was presented

131. as if this was a crisis of security

132. in terms of law and order and violence,

133. and that the appropriate response

134. was militarized policing.

135. - With many of the jail facilities flooded,

136. a makeshift holding facility

137. is built in the city's bus terminal.

138. People call it Camp Greyhound.

139. Over 100 residents

140. are rounded up and cycled through the jail.

141. Basic rights are ignored.

142. Many are never charged with a crime.

143. Most are African-American.

144. - You see, you know, the overreaction to people of color

145. getting water for their survival

146. as opposed to white people getting water.

147. The white people are doing it to live,

148. and the black people are looters.

149. - We see America's prejudices start to manifest

150. in mass senseless, unnecessary tragedies.

151. - So, at one point, people are trying

152. to walk out of New Orleans,

153. and they're crossing the Danziger Bridge,

154. and police on the other side are trying to turn them back.

155. - Alright, where they at? We're on the left side.

156. Where are they?

157. - In the bloodiest incident of police violence,

158. New Orleans police officers in a commandeered Budget rental truck

159. unleash a storm of gunfire

160. into an entirely Black crowd.

161. - I see them running! Stop!

162. They're on the other side of the bridge past the hotel.

163. - Two people are killed,

164. including a 40-year-old mentally disabled man

165. shot five times in the back.

166. - It was almost as if it was to send a message, you know,

167. that people should not get out of line,

168. people should be afraid.

169. - With the breach of three levees protecting New Orleans,

170. the landscape of the city... - While survivors

171. wait in vain for help from the government,

172. celebrities band together for hurricane relief.

173. During the live fundraiser,

174. Kanye West indicts the sitting president.

175. - George Bush doesn't care about Black people.

176. - When I saw Kanye West say

177. that George Bush doesn't care about Black people,

178. I felt like he was telling me what I already knew.

179. Well, you cannot call it a natural disaster

180. unless you believe that it is, in fact, natural

181. for a government to neglect its citizens of color

182. in such a way.

183. - Under mounting pressure to do something,

184. Bush sends in reinforcements to help the National Guard,

185. mobilizing U. S. Army troops to New Orleans.

186. Today, I ordered the Department of Defense

187. to deploy additional active duty forces to the region.

188. - Many of the troops had recently returned from combat tours.

189. - They had been steeled and forged

190. on the battlefields of Baghdad and Fallujah.

191. Their training, their experiences

192. in some ways hardwired them

193. to behave more like occupiers

194. and less like helpers.

195. They were the wrong tool for the job.

196. - Soldiers wandering around, as they were in Iraq,

197. unable to really deal with the fundamental problems

198. that the society faced.

199. They couldn't even rescue people who were trapped in their homes

200. because, you know, it wasn't Zodiacs

201. and, you know, chain saws

202. and this sort of civil defense equipment.

203. It was Heckler & Koch machine guns

204. and armored personnel carriers,

205. all of which were largely useless.

206. All that produces a mentality of — of warfare and repression.

207. - On the anniversary of 9/11,

208. Bush himself finally arrives in New Orleans,

209. landing on an aircraft carrier docked just offshore.

210. - Four years after the frightening experience

211. of September the 11th,

212. Americans have every right to expect a more effective response

213. at a time of emergency. When the federal government

214. fails to meet such an obligation.

215. I as president am responsible for the problem

216. and for the solution.

217. - The mightiest government on earth can do better

218. than abandon people in this way within our own country.

219. - and will once again show the world

220. that the worst adversities

221. bring out the best in America.

222. - Katrina made it obvious

223. that despite all the weaponry in the world

224. and all of the intelligence in the world,

225. that in the case of a storm in New Orleans,

226. we were unable to take care of our own.

227. - But the tragedy of Katrina

228. came out of a much deeper and darker Cold War history,

229. where a narrow view of national security

230. justified oppressing innocent civilians.

231. Stability at any cost.

232. - We've got both sides of the road engulfed now.

233. - Wildfires rage in Northern California.

234. - It's not looking good for getting people out.

235. - The Federal Emergency Management Agency,

236. or FEMA, deploys.

237. - FEMA often is a very good and useful piece of the government,

238. but FEMA has gotten a bad reputation,

239. partly because it has been run by incompetents.

240. - During Hurricane Katrina,

241. FEMA's bad reputation was earned.

242. The man Bush appointed to run FEMA was a Republican insider

243. and an expert in Arabian resources

244. with no experience in disaster planning...

245. - FEMA and the government

246. should have came in here the very next morning

247. when all this shit happened.

248. - ... making FEMA an easy target.

249. - The man running FEMA, he's an asshole.

250. - There were a few disasters I was on

251. where it was recommended that, you know, after hours,

252. you don't walk around with your FEMA jacket on.

253. - First of all, FEMA is the agency

254. that's responsible for emergency response,

255. but it's also the agency that's responsible

256. for continuity of government.

257. - Continuity of Government, or COG, is a set of elaborate plans

258. to ensure that no matter what happens,

259. the U. S. government elite and its institutions will survive.

260. - Enemy jet bombers carrying nuclear weapons

261. can sweep over a variety of routes

262. and drop bombs on any important target in the United States.

263. - The plan was born in the early days

264. of the Cold War, when Americans lived

265. under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

266. Citizens were reassured that plans were in place

267. to keep them alive...

268. - These facts may save your life.

269. - ... while privately, officials admitted few could be saved.

270. - It was emotional management

271. to make the American people feel okay.

272. - What you continually see

273. is that the government is more interested

274. in continuing its own power and its own authority

275. than it is at seeing after the basic needs of its people.

276. - FEMA's forerunner agency was responsible

277. for securing and protecting top government officials.

278. With an emergency declared

279. and the Constitution effectively suspended,

280. the post office would be in charge

281. of registering the nation's dead.

282. The National Park Service would run the refugee camps.

283. The Department of Agriculture would distribute rationed food

284. while below ground, government officials

285. continue to run the show.

286. - The local government has moved

287. to a point some 6 miles out of town.

288. Buried in a hill is a blast-proof, radiation-proof

289. operations center

290. where government can continue to function.

291. - Billions were spent on these secret plans

292. to protect the government elite and the institutions of state

293. in the event of a Soviet attack.

294. - Thousands of demonstrators opposed to the Vietnam War

295. assembled in the nation's capital for a mass protest.

296. - But as American society began to unravel in the 1960s,

297. the government began to see the movements for civil rights

298. and against the Vietnam War

299. as just as big a threat to national security

300. as an incoming Soviet missile.

301. And now the government's law enforcement

302. and national security resources

303. are tasked with confronting this new enemy within.

304. - We see that the government is treating its own people

305. as if they are a threat to the government

306. and that they need to be treated as enemies of the state.

307. - These students whose activities you have just witnessed

308. are toying with treason.

309. The Communists have admittedly chosen the minds of our youth

310. as a number-one area for their insidious attack.

311. - Everything from the FBI to the CIA to the National Guard

312. have been mobilized as defenses against national threats.

313. - The federal government was involved in contingency plans

314. to round up dissidents.

315. - My own grandfather had to testify

316. before the House Un-American Activities Committee

317. to deny he was a member of the Communist Party.

318. - ♪ We shall overcome

319. - Civil rights leaders

320. now considered heroes of American democracy

321. were seen as part of a Communist plot

322. and as a threat to national security.

323. - J. Edgar Hoover particularly picks out Martin Luther King

324. for special — not just surveillance,

325. but infiltrate and disrupt

326. the efforts of the civil rights movement.

327. - The FBI begins a massive covert counterintelligence operation

328. known as COINTELPRO.

329. - It comes out of the Cold War surveillance state

330. born out of controlling the internal population.

331. - Agents send Martin Luther King Jr. a letter

332. urging him to commit suicide.

333. They infiltrate the Black Panthers

334. and turn them against each other by spreading false rumors.

335. Others are shot by police.

336. - It frequently sounds crazy if you say these things,

337. but all of this stuff

338. is a matter of public record, right?

339. There is thousands of pages of documents.

340. You don't get more substantiated than that.

341. - But the covert efforts

342. to contain and control the movement failed.

343. And when Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in April 1968,

344. riots break out in over 100 cities.

345. - In America, Black people are treated very much

346. as a colonized people, because we're used.

347. We're brutalized. The police in our community

348. occupy our area, our community

349. as a foreign troop occupies territory.

350. - For a government focused on its own survival at any cost,

351. the enemy was now inside the house,

352. and the vast apparatus of a system

353. supposedly there to protect all its citizens

354. was turned against some of them.

355. And those under attack began to fight back.

356. - We gon' walk on this racist power structure,

357. and we gon' say to the whole damn government,

358. "Stick 'em up! This is a holdup. We come for what's ours."

359. - In the face of a perceived homegrown rebellion,

360. the Pentagon draws up Operation Garden Plot,

361. a detailed blueprint for how the U. S. military would deploy

362. simultaneously to 25 American cities

363. to put down racial unrest.

364. Drills are held, but for now,

365. Operation Garden Plot isn't mobilized.

366. And by the 1970s, the civil rights movement

367. is neutralized through infiltration,

368. arrest, and assassination.

369. But a new perceived threat to national security emerges.

370. Nicaragua, 1979.

371. A U. S.-backed dictator is toppled in Central America

372. by leftist rebels.

373. By the time Ronald Reagan takes office in 1981,

374. the region is in flames, and many in the American elite

375. are convinced a new existential threat

376. is right at our front door.

377. - El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.

378. Nicaragua is just as close to Miami,

379. San Antonio, San Diego, and Tucson

380. as those cities are to Washington.

381. Only last week, an official of the Soviet Union

382. reiterated Brezhnev's threat

383. to station nuclear missiles in this hemisphere,

384. five minutes from the United States.

385. - Hollywood helped spread Reagan's fear of a red planet.

386. The popular 1984 movie "Red Dawn"

387. imagines the American heartland

388. invaded by ruthless Cuban troops.

389. But in reality, it's America's anti-communist allies

390. that begin committing atrocities against their own people,

391. - Death squads are believed to be responsible

392. for more than half of the political murders committed.

393. - And when news makes its way back home,

394. many Americans begin to question U. S. support

395. for hard-line regimes in Central America.

396. - U.S. support for the repressive governments in Guatemala,

397. El Salvador, and Honduras, and support

398. for the counter-revolutionary Contra forces

399. that were fighting the Sandinista government

400. in Nicaragua provoked serious opposition

401. from American citizens.

402. - As a new protest movement gathers steam,

403. deep in the basement of the White House,

404. a little-known national security adviser

405. begins drawing up an exercise

406. to game out how to locate and forcibly detain dissidents

407. if the U. S. government decides to invade Central America.

408. - Oliver North had written a proposal called Rex 84

409. that proposed rounding up political dissidents

410. who opposed the Reagan administration

411. funding right-wing death squads in Latin America

412. and interning those people in camps.

413. - Who were those dissidents? Those dissidents were very often

414. members of the Catholic Church, Quakers, peace groups.

415. - The agency that will create the camps

416. and hold the dissidents?

417. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

418. - The fantasy/justification for infiltrating, disrupting,

419. and spying on these totally legal,

420. peaceful lobbying and protest organizations

421. was this fantasy that they were vehicles

422. of foreign communist infiltration, and they were not.

423. They were American citizens exercising their rights

424. to try and oppose the misuse of their tax money

425. in the support of really fascistic regimes

426. in Central America.

427. - Rex 84 never happened,

428. but the government has interned people

429. who have done nothing wrong in the past,

430. and they have considered doing it again.

431. - I will die on my feet before I'll live on my knees.

432. It's as simple as that.

433. - You smell like alcohol! Get away!

434. - Hey, hey, hey, get that camera out of my face, okay?

435. - April 29, 1992.

436. Los Angeles residents take to the streets

437. to protest the beating of Rodney King

438. and the acquittal of the LAPD officers who did it.

439. The city erupts in flames.

440. - That's up. That's up.

441. Whoever did that is up.

442. - As local police struggle to contain the violence,

443. the Pentagon activates Operation Garden Plot,

444. the Vietnam-era military operation

445. to squash domestic unrest.

446. - And let me assure you,

447. I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order.

448. - If you have a government that wants to create the narrative

449. that there are scary brown and black people

450. who want to take your kids and take your job

451. and have this terrible revolution

452. that's going to hurt you, what better way to create that

453. than to put some tanks out there,

454. shoot some tear gas at these folks,

455. shoot them with rubber bullets, kill a few?

456. And then the madder and more upset they get,

457. the more evidence you have that, "Look! Look what's happening."

458. - Okay, you two, come on.

459. - I'm a innocent victim. - Let's go.

460. Yeah, we all are.

461. - But as the government once again

462. focuses on maintaining control in Black communities,

463. they overlook a growing movement

464. of white, self-proclaimed "patriots"

465. who are organizing and taking up arms.

466. - All of these groups from the beginning

467. were deeply engaged with this idea

468. that it was their duty as a well-armed militia

469. to fight against tyranny, as they saw it,

470. encroaching on the lives of U. S. citizens.

471. - As President Bush celebrates the end of the Cold War...

472. - This is a time when the future seems

473. a door you can walk right through

474. into a room called tomorrow.

475. - ..."patriots" fear America's tomorrow will be

476. as part of the so-called New World Order,

477. in which the U. S. government

478. bends to the will of the United Nations.

479. - Like any true freedom fighter,

480. I will die on my feet before I'll live on my knees.

481. It's as simple as that.

482. - These groups have convinced themselves the government

483. will turn its command and control infrastructure

484. and its supposed fleet of black helicopters

485. against its own citizens

486. who oppose surrendering America's independence.

487. As the patriot movement grows,

488. it begins to associate the agency

489. designed to ensure continuity of government

490. with this dark plot to control their lives.

491. - FEMA was incorporated as a federal agency

492. under President Carter and pretty much immediately

493. became the subject of conspiracy theories.

494. Patriot movements were claiming in newsletters

495. that FEMA was creating concentration camps,

496. and that patriots were going to be rounded up and put in camps.

497. - It's all there. All the government documents,

498. all the government mentions

499. a civilian inmate labor camp program

500. run by the army — where they're at,

501. how they're going to break the families up

502. and where the children go

503. and the forced inoculations and everything.

504. I mean, it just boggles the mind that all of this is happening.

505. - It had some weird elements.

506. Militia movements became convinced

507. that FEMA was going to put people in concentration camps

508. with the help of the Bloods and the Crips.

509. By the 1990s, they actually believe

510. that the federal government was directly waging war on them.

511. - The government's actions to rein in

512. some of these lawbreaking, heavily armed groups

513. serve only to fuel their paranoia.

514. Just months after Bill Clinton takes office,

515. federal agents raid a radical Christian cult in Waco, Texas,

516. and a vicious firefight breaks out.

517. 76 members are killed in the ensuing inferno,

518. including 25 children.

519. - We did everything we could to avoid the loss of life.

520. They made the decision to immolate themselves,

521. and I regret it terribly, and I feel awful about the children.

522. For many on the fringes of the right-wing conspiracy world,

523. Waco is a catalyzing moment.

524. One of them is a 24-year-old Gulf War veteran.

525. He would later write that the true horror of the event

526. had been held back by the media,

527. which didn't air images of the carnage

528. so people, "didn't cares when these families died

529. a slow, torturous death at the hands of the FBI."

530. And two years to the day after Waco,

531. this angry young veteran would rock the foundations

532. of America's national security state.

533. - A massive bomb goes off at a federal building

534. in Oklahoma City, killing 168,

535. including 19 children at a daycare center.

536. - There are those who hate our government so much

537. that they're willing to conduct acts of terrorism

538. directed at innocent civilians.

539. - Oh, no! No!

540. No!

541. - It was one of the most devastating

542. domestic terror attacks in U. S. history

543. up until that point.

544. - Let me have him. - I can't.

545. - I know, hon. - It's horrible.

546. - The Cold War era, we had this paranoid kind of mentality.

547. The threat is out there. It's external.

548. And so there's America, right,

549. and it's spending like trillions of dollars

550. on its national security apparatus —

551. the CIA, the FBI, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

552. The threat turned out to be homegrown.

553. - And white.

554. The person behind the bombing was Timothy McVeigh.

555. As an army gunner, McVeigh saw action in the first Gulf War.

556. - Iraq's army is defeated.

557. Our military objectives are met.

558. We must now begin to look beyond victory and war.

559. We must meet the challenge of securing the peace.

560. - While others celebrate, McVeigh leaves the army

561. and becomes radicalized by a series of events

562. that would galvanize right-wing extremists for years to come.

563. - Somebody like McVeigh thinks

564. that they're actually a soldier in an invisible war.

565. - The FBI raid on the heavily armed Christian cult

566. in Waco, Texas, that left 25 children dead

567. left McVeigh outraged — not at the cult leaders,

568. but at the U. S. government.

569. And when President Clinton pushes hard

570. to ban assault-style rifles,

571. McVeigh and many on the right-wing fringes

572. see an elite plot to rip away their freedoms.

573. - I have heard people with a straight face saying,

574. "Well, there are some adults

575. that like to go target practice with these things."

576. Well, they need to read a good book.

577. - Two years to the day after Waco,

578. in an act of retaliation,

579. McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City

580. he believes houses the local FBI headquarters.

581. After the attack, President Clinton becomes terrified

582. that he might be the next target

583. of a growing radical right-wing militia movement.

584. - He greatly increased the amount of money

585. we were spending on counterterrorism,

586. and he also created a new position.

587. And that new position was called the National Coordinator

588. for Security and Counterterrorism.

589. And I was that person.

590. No longer was it just about nuclear war.

591. What if there were a terrorist attack

592. like the Oklahoma City bombing, but it was in Washington,

593. and it took out the White House?

594. - Oklahoma City was a wake-up call, frankly.

595. We should have learned that terrorism

596. can be a domestic-based act of violence.

597. - It's a rearguard action.

598. They're caught with their pants down.

599. They've been allowing this right-wing movement

600. to get out of hand.

601. - In a preview of conspiracy theories

602. that will spiral around mass shootings two decades later,

603. many in the militia movement refuse to believe

604. Oklahoma City was the work of one of their own,

605. but rather was a pretense by the government

606. to mobilize against them.

607. - The Oklahoma City bombing was immediately subject

608. to conspiracy theories.

609. Patriot movements viewed it as a false flag attack

610. that had been perpetrated to make patriot movements look bad,

611. discredit them, justify a crackdown against them.

612. - False flag operations involve one group

613. pretending to be another to shift blame.

614. - There were congressional hearings

615. after the Oklahoma City bombings

616. where members of a Michigan militia

617. were questioned by members of Congress.

618. And the militia members speculated

619. that the bombing had been undertaken by the CIA

620. or that McVeigh had had ties with the Japanese government.

621. It's also where Alex Jones got his start,

622. by claiming that Oklahoma City had been a false flag

623. perpetrated by the government.

624. - We've been investigating this tragedy for over six years.

625. The amount of evidence is staggering.

626. Out of hundreds of people we interviewed,

627. we couldn't find a single person

628. who said they'd heard only one explosion.

629. - It's all part of a growing movement on the right

630. questioning elite control of society.

631. - People need to realize this,

632. that the militias aren't a terrorist organization,

633. like Morris Dees has labeled us as being,

634. and we're just average, ordinary, everyday folks

635. just battling for our freedom and keeping our Constitution.

636. - The militias are the bottom line and — and the last resort

637. to the difference between freedom and slavery.

638. - Those FBI guys over there and all over,

639. they all know, April 19th, to beware.

640. Don't make a move on anyone,

641. because then I'm afraid that all hell's going to break loose.

642. - A lot of these people are reacting to something very real,

643. but they're doing it in totally crackpot

644. and hateful ways that exacerbate the problem.

645. - White revolution, my friends. - White revolution.

646. - There's a general sense of growing insecurity

647. in part due to rising inequality,

648. and so instead of fixing their sights on the real enemy,

649. which is the elites who are ripping them off,

650. they attack other victims of the same process, right?

651. People of color, immigrants.

652. - Congratulations, Mr. President.

653. - Under President Barack Obama,

654. there's a surge in right-wing militia activity.

655. Groups grow from 149 in 2008

656. to 1,360 in 2012.

657. And under Trump, militias go mainstream,

658. holding large public rallies,

659. many purchasing arsenals of high-powered weaponry.

660. This member of the Virginia branch of a militia

661. known as the Ghost Squad was in Charlottesville

662. and says the militia movement has spread throughout society.

663. - There's police officers that are militiamen.

664. There are first responders that are militiamen.

665. There's people in the churches

666. that are militiamen.

667. We stand for our God, our country, and our families.

668. We the people,

669. and we will stand for what's right,

670. and we will win this fight.

671. - And while the U. S. government has often underestimated

672. or downplayed the threat of militias,

673. Trump appears to actively encourage them.

674. And one militia makes international news

675. when they try to act on his perceived call to arms.

676. - We begin with stunning allegations

677. about a plot to overthrow the state government in Michigan,

678. to kidnap the governor, attack the police,

679. and attempt to ignite a civil war in the U. S.

680. - In September 2020,

681. 13 men, including members of a Michigan militia

682. known as the Wolverine Watchmen, are arrested

683. for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan,

684. Gretchen Whitmer.

685. Two are former Marines,

686. but they all appear to share the belief

687. that big government is the enemy

688. and the Michigan governor's COVID-19 policies

689. were part of a larger plan to strip away their rights.

690. - The irony is that militia movements are deeply afraid

691. they were going to be rounded up in FEMA camps,

692. but they don't seem to have a ton of historical awareness

693. about who these tools of oppression

694. have actually been used against.

695. - There's a face and an image and a perspective

696. that we associate with what is dangerous in this country,

697. and that's what gets people killed.

698. - And this is America, right?

699. - Breonna Taylor! - Say her name!

700. - Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor! - Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor!

701. - Spring 2020.

702. Possibly the largest mass protest movement

703. America has seen sweeps the nation with a simple message —

704. Black Lives Matter.

705. - I can't breathe!

706. - I can't breathe! - I can't breathe!

707. - I can't breathe! - I can't breathe!

708. - I can't breathe! - I can't breathe!

709. - Behind the scenes, federal agents, including some

710. from FEMA's parent department, Homeland Security,

711. are monitoring activists,

712. even snatching them off the streets.

713. It's nothing new.

714. - No justice! - No peace!

715. - We've seen this happen for decades now.

716. Every time there's a moment of either civil unrest

717. or a moment of protest movement,

718. we see the government start to use that apparatus again

719. and treat its own people as if they are enemies of the state.

720. - In 2018, the FBI implemented a program titled Ironfist

721. targeting African-American activists.

722. Black extremists are listed at the top

723. of the Bureau's counterterrorism priorities,

724. above even groups like Al-Qa'ida.

725. And yet, over the last 25 years,

726. only a handful of so-called Black extremists

727. have been tied to acts of violence.

728. - Now you step back! We step back, now you step back!

729. We step back, now you step back!

730. - We step back, now you step back!

731. - This overdeveloped surveillance state

732. is borne out of the Cold War.

733. It is a very, very long history

734. that goes way back in American history

735. through the '60s, '50s, beyond World War II,

736. into the Red Scare of the '20s.

737. Labor unions, socialists, feminists,

738. African-Americans and other communities of color

739. that struggle for full civil rights,

740. these people have always been attacked.

741. - And now, once again, the vast machinery

742. of a system there to protect its citizens is turned on its own.

743. - The Department of Homeland Security,

744. through aviation security, maritime security, FEMA,

745. port security, border security, cyber security,

746. protects Americans at the 1-yard line.

747. But you go from Charlottesville in August 2017

748. to what happened in Portland...

749. - Don't shoot.

750. and on the streets of Washington, D. C.,

751. the Trump administration

752. has used the Department of Homeland Security

753. as a hammer to pursue its aggressive agenda.

754. - I honor law enforcement.

755. We wouldn't be here right now

756. if it wasn't for law enforcement.

757. We have to stop this horrible left-wing ideology

758. that seems to be permeating our country.

759. - Breonna Taylor! - Breonna Taylor!

760. - Breonna Taylor! - Breonna Taylor!

761. - We've seen a consistent use of DHS

762. as a secret police for an executive branch.

763. We're seeing Americans picked off the street,

764. treated as if they are enemies of the state,

765. treated as if they are terrorists, and disappeared.

766. - Y'all got the same shit going on with y'all.

767. - Help me help us. - Come on, man.

768. - We colored, bro. Help me help us.

769. - There's a face and an image and a perspective

770. that we associate with what is dangerous in this country.

771. And, you know — And it's imbued within.

772. my — essentially my melanin,

773. and that is what gets people killed.

774. - Both hands. - I didn't do nothing.

775. - Put your hands up right now.

776. - Stand up.

777. - Please, please!

778. - Oh!

779. Whoa.

780. - Get back!

781. - No! No! - Hey, hey!

782. - No, you cannot. You cannot pull me out of —

783. - I'm not with you. - Yo!

784. - It just — just is too many people.

785. And if you think that that trend can continue

786. and that price is worth your feelings of security,

787. then I would like to understand

788. what your ideas of America are.

789. I would like to understand what your idea of freedom is,

790. because it is certainly different than mine,

791. because in your idea of freedom,

792. there is no room for me.

793. - What started out as the War on Terror

794. has become the forever war

795. with any number of enemies in any number of places.

796. - Many of the operations that are happening are so secretive

797. that even the American people are not aware who the enemy is.

798. - America is constantly at war everywhere around the globe.

799. We're still bleeding our blood of our country every single day.

800. - And meanwhile, back home, we're dying constantly

801. in just really overtly incompetent ways.