INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY DEFENDS RACIAL-RELIGIOUS PROFILING

by M.F. Luder
November 16, 2007

The intelligence community is defending the addition of non-mainstream Caucasian Protestant groups to its racial-ethnic-religious profiling guidelines. In a press conference this morning, national security associate director John C. McGrathnick described surveillance and cataloguing of “pre-fundamentalist Caucasian Protestants” as a natural next step in the progression of demographic profiling by police agencies. Under the new practices national and local agencies, from the FBI and NSA to community police forces, will be required to maintain lists of “potential asymmetricalities” in American communities. Individuals and groups placed on these lists will for the first time include Caucasians and Protestant Christians whose lifestyles and religious beliefs fall outside the norm, under the rationale that non-mainstream religious and cultural groups are at higher risk for producing terrorists and other national security threats.

“It’s not just a case of keeping tabs on people who are different,” says McGrathnick. “It’s a matter of priorities. Non-mainstream religious and cultural groups frequently have beliefs and ways of life where adhering to the American status quo is not the most important value. It’s simple logic. If you believe that God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or whoever, is more important than being a good neighbor, and a law-abiding citizen, then it’s a no-brainer that you’re a potential threat to this nation.”

Under the new guidelines, for example, Free Methodist groups in Washington State are not considered high-risk groups, while Free Baptists in Alabama are. Last-wave New-age Acolytes in Southern California are not on the list, but Latter-day Saints in Southern Utah are.

The degree of devotion that individuals show to their “alternative ideologies” is also an important factor in whether or not they will be subject to police scrutiny.

“We are not nearly as concerned, as a security-minded nation, about the tendencies of individuals whose behavior patterns show little influence from their alternative ideologies,” said McGrathnick.

Thus, Reform Jewish synagogues are not being catalogued, while Hasidic Synagogues are high on the list.

“When you come to understand just how much of daily life is influenced by some of these alternative ideologies, you begin to comprehend the level of security threat such people represent to this nation,” said Angela Merdin, Assistant Secretary of National Security Matters. “We are finally facing the glaring fact of White political-religious extremism in this country. Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Jim Jones, David Koresh, the Ruby Ridge incident… the list goes on and on. If those kinds of people are able to exist in this country, then we’ve clearly got a problem with certain groups and mindsets.”

Although Merdin has described the demographic profiling as “nothing for ordinary citizens to be concerned about,” she also hinted that individuals and communities listed as potential threats may be required to maintain their own registration with national and local police agencies in the future, or face legal consequences such as permit revocation or financial asset seizure.

Civil liberties groups have already voiced strong protests, several promising lawsuits. However, according to Alan Jackman of the Civil Defense Action Group, there is a concern that these efforts are doomed due to “…the American public’s willingness to rubber-stamp anything with ‘national security’ in the title, since 2001.”

The above is a totally fictitious parody, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental, just like in the movies (luckily, so is this, at least for a little while, although similar plans have been proposed in other U.S. cities). I wrote this less to make definitive statements than to keep thinking about the questions.