Recently the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that undermining trust in the government was achieved by individuals spreading “false” narratives and that this was tantamount to terrorism. In other words, no US citizen has any right to question government policy. If they do, they are spreading disinformation. Consequently, the DHS suggests that not trusting the government should be prosecuted as a crime.
This is the claimed justification for the focus of the new domestic terrorism unit working alongside the US Justice Department’s National Security Division. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen told a Senate Judiciary Committee that the unit was created to combat the growing threat of “extremism,” which apparently includes “anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
To question either “authority” or “government” is an extremist position, according to the US Justice Department and the DHS. There is no room for freedom of speech in the government’s extremist ideology. Without freedom of speech, US democracy is finished.