RIGHT SPEAK: ICYMI: New Intelligence Rules Let The U.S. Military Help Kill Americans, But Not Directly: The Directive is Authorizing Military Intelligence Assets to Surveil, Monitor, and Evaluate U.S. Citizens So Civil Authorities May Kill Some of Those Same Citizens

Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase/Joint Base San Antonio/Public Domain

New Intelligence Rules Let The U.S. Military Help Kill Americans, But Not Directly:

The directive is authorizing military intelligence assets to surveil, monitor, and evaluate U.S. citizens so civil authorities may kill some of those same citizens.

American politics has turned into a gladiatorial arena of battling hoaxes. Whether it is “Trump-Russia collusion” or “very fine people” or “the laptop is Russian disinformation,” our politics and our society have been shaped by a cascade of lies, at least since 2016, and probably a lot longer than that.

While Democrats have mastered the art of doing this through major media sources, the Republicans are no slouches at doing the same through new media. One such case relates to a recently revised U.S. military document called DOD Directive 5240.01, “DOD Intelligence and Intelligence-Related Activities and Defense Intelligence Component Assistance to Law Enforcement Agencies and Other Civil Authorities.”

Before I dive into this “DODD,” I’m going to take a step back and explain why we on the right need to be consistently accurate and truthful in what we say and what stories we choose to believe.

If you (like me) are an addicted consumer of political discourse on X, formerly known as Twitter, you know who the “Black Insurrectionist” was. This was a now-deleted X account that also went by the X handle “@docnetyoutube.” The person behind this account was responsible for two massive hoaxes, one of which gained traction at very high levels inside the GOP. One of these hoaxes was the infamous “ABC News whistleblower” affidavit claiming ABC gave the Harris campaign preview copies of the questions for the Trump-Harris debate. The other hoax involved claims by a purported former high school student of Tim Walz that Walz had sexually abused him. Both of these hoaxes have been thoroughly discredited, and I maintain that these hoaxes did far more damage to the right than to the left.

To wit, we all saw the ABC News presidential debate. We all saw how one-sided the questioning and “fact checks” were. This was a reality. However, the “ABC News whistleblower” hoax served to discredit and diminish our legitimate complaints about ABC News.

Further, we all know Walz has a history that gives many conservatives pause: getting arrested for drunk driving, spearheading an afterschool LGBT club, and taking high school kids to China to learn about the joys of Maoism. These are all realities. However, the “Touchdown Timmy” hoax (as it came to be known) served to discredit and diminish our legitimate complaints about Walz.

This brings me back to DODD 5240.01, a government document that provides for objectionable and potentially illegal things, but also a document which a hoax has grown up around regarding the wrong objectionable and potentially illegal things.

Let me start by saying this: DODD 5240.01 does not authorize the U.S. military to kill civilians on U.S. soil. Period. But it does do some other awful stuff I’ll get to.

Unfortunately, the DODD 5240.01 hoax has taken root at some very high levels, as RFK Jr. (someone I admire) has himself stated that the Pentagon now has “power — for the first time in history — to use lethal force to kill Americans on U.S. soil who protest government policies.”