Joe Biden’s pitch to the American people in 2020 hinged on the simple fact that he was not Trump. Moreover, his election would reverse the previous four years of caustic division that had defined the Trump era.
“On this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause … I pledge this to you: I will be a president for all Americans, and I promise you I will fight as hard for those who didn’t support me as those who did,” he promised in his inauguration speech.
We would become one America again.
Biden’s brand of unity, however, seems to demand the suppression of dissent.
Attorney General Merrick Garland sent out a memorandum Monday directing the FBI to hold meetings with state and local education officials to discuss strategies for countering “threats of violence,” “intimidation” and “harassment” toward teachers and school administrators.
Concerned parents have flooded local school board meetings to protest the implementation of critical race theory (CRT) and mask mandates. CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
The FBI may not have the jurisdiction to actually target parents, but the memo sends a clear message: the FBI can engage in intimidation too. The vast majority of these protesters are concerned about their kids’ education; they’re not professional activists. Most of them probably don’t even want to be on camera, lest the woke mob come after their jobs, and they almost certainly don’t want to start fights with the feds. Just the fact that federal agents are getting involved at all will be enough to discourage many parents from attending any more school board meetings.
Additionally, the vague definition of “harassment” and “intimidation” almost begs for an overzealous interpretation from politically-minded officials. Does picketing outside of a school represent “harassment?” Does a parent raising her voice in the midst of an impassioned plea to stop CRT during a school board meeting count as “intimidation?”
Biden and the FBI won’t stand for parents gathering outside the homes of school officials who push a dangerous ideology onto schoolchildren. But when the same thing happens to Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joen Manchin for their opposition to a massive spending bill the country can ill-afford, it’s “part of the process,” according to the president.
This move to intimidate parents from attending school board meetings is only part of the Biden administration’s efforts to tamp down on opposing views.
On the internet, dissent has been rebranded as “disinformation.” We saw it unfold in the Hunter Biden laptop story, where an entire news outlet was shut out of Twitter for pursuing a story, which was backed up by “acceptable” sources months later, that could damage the president’s image.
But we’ve seen it in full force in regard to COVID, particularly the lab leak theory. For nearly a year, to even entertain the possibility that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab was considered heresy by every mainstream media outlet and “expert” in the country.
The government has reportedly issued warrants to Google ordering the company to track people who look up certain names and addresses. The warrants claim that this is to help investigators detect criminals who have looked up their victim’s name or address, but it takes almost no imagination to envision these warrants being misused to persecute political opponents. Perhaps the warrants will soon be used to track down people who have looked up the name of a school administrator or the location of a school board meeting.
The Biden administration has also endeavored to purge the government of “extremism,” using the Jan. 6 riot as a pretext. One of the firms the Pentagon has contracted to help root out far-right radicals in the military, Moonshot CVE, has downplayed antifa’s far-left fanaticism and is associated with an initiative that is partnered with the far-left Linke party in Germany.
We’re seeing the pieces being moved into place for a coordinated, whole-of-government repression of the left’s political enemies. It started once leftists gained control of major institutions like the public education system and government agencies, and they’re about to reap the rewards of their patient infiltration.
The government is in the process of purging dissidents, and potential whistleblowers, from the federal bureaucracy, allowing it to be turned wholly toward policing the thoughts and actions of the citizenry. Government-partnered Big Tech giants hold an iron grip over online information, striking down anyone who questions the mainstream media dogma and throttling any potential competition. And federal law enforcement agencies are threatening investigations into “harassment” and “intimidation” from parents who have organized grassroots movements to prevent a toxic and racist ideology from being shoved down their children’s throats.
When there’s only one de facto legal viewpoint, in Biden’s mind at least, that is unity.
Hayden Daniel is the opinion editor at the Daily Caller.