“After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.”— Historian Robert Gellately
“Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.”—Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, on the danger posed by the FBI to our civil liberties

Lately, there’s been a lot of rhetoric comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

The concern is that a Nazi-type regime may be rising in America.
That process, however, began a long time ago.
In fact, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order, implemented his tactics in incremental steps, and began to lay the foundations for the rise of the Fourth Reich.

 Sounds far-fetched? Read on. It’s all documented.

As historian Robert Gellately

recounts

, the Nazi police state was initially so

admired

 for its efficiency and order by the

world powers

 of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo.

The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the

New York Times

, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively

recruited at least a thousand Nazis

, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.

All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—

including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others

—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies and informants, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while,

thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas

 to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national security.

Adding further insult to injury,

American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll

 ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion,

anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon

, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.

As if the government’s

covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II

 wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.

Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.

These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.

That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using

intimidation tactics

 to silence Americans who are critical of the government;

recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students

 who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then

entrapping them

, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Whatever minimal restrictions initially kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law have all but disappeared post-9/11. Since then, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency that largely operates as a power unto itself, beyond the reach of established laws, court rulings and legislative mandates.

Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves—

much like their Nazi cousins

, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.

Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.

Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI has also built a vast repository of “profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime.

What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor

.” The FBI’s burgeoning databases on Americans are not only being added to and used by local police agencies, but are also being made available to employers for

real-time background checks

.

All of this is made possible by the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was

$8.3 billion

), the government’s vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.

Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.

 Working through the U.S. Post Office, the

FBI has access to every piece of mail that passes through the postal system

: more than 160 billion pieces are scanned and recorded annually. Moreover, the agency’s

National Security Letters

, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose those demands to the customer. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread

constitutional violations

.

Much like the Gestapo’s sophisticated surveillance programs, the FBI’s spying capabilities can delve into Americans’ most intimate details (and allow local police to do so, as well).

 In addition to technology (which is shared with police agencies) that allows them to listen in on phone calls, read emails and text messages, and monitor web activities, the FBI’s surveillance boasts an

invasive collection of spy tools

 ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls. In one case, the FBI actually managed to

remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card

 so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.” Law enforcement agencies are also using

social media tracking software

 to monitor Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. Moreover, secret FBI rules also

allow agents to spy on journalists

 without significant judicial oversight.

Much like the Gestapo’s ability to profile based on race and religion, and its assumption of guilt by association, the FBI’s approach to pre-crime allows it to profile Americans based on a broad range of characteristics including race and religion.

The agency’s

biometric database

 has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to

DNA

, and is being

increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies

 in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime. This is what’s known as pre-crime. Yet it’s not just your actions that will get you in trouble. In many cases, it’s also

who you know

—even minimally—and where your sympathies lie that could land you on a government watch list. Moreover, as the

Interceptreports

, despite anti-profiling prohibitions, the bureau “claims considerable latitude to use race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion in deciding which people and communities to investigate.”

Much like the Gestapo’s power to render anyone an enemy of the state, the FBI has the power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.

 As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force has begun using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist”

interchangeably

. Moreover, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual (especially anyone who disagrees with the government) as a

potential

 domestic terrorist. For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:

• express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
• read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
• show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• fear an economic collapse
• buy gold and barter items
• subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
• voice fears about Big Brother or big government
• expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
• believe in a New World Order conspiracy

Much like the Gestapo infiltrated communities in order to spy on the German citizenry, the FBI routinely infiltrates political and religious groups, as well as businesses.

 As Cora Currier

writes for theIntercept

: “Using loopholes it has kept secret for years, the FBI can in certain circumstances bypass its own rules in order to send undercover agents or informants into political and religious organizations, as well as schools, clubs, and businesses…” The FBI has even been

paying Geek Squad technicians at Best Buy to spy on customers’ computers

 without a warrant.

Just as the Gestapo united and militarized Germany’s police forces into a national police force, America’s police forces have largely been federalized and turned into a national police force.

In addition to government programs that provide the nation’s police forces with military equipment and training, the

FBI also operates a National Academy

 that trains thousands of police chiefs every year and indoctrinates them into an agency mindset that advocates the use of surveillance technology and information sharing between local, state, federal, and international agencies.

Just as the Gestapo’s secret files on political leaders were used to intimidate and coerce, the FBI’s files on anyone suspected of “anti-government” sentiment have been similarly abused. 

As countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians,

spy on celebrities

 and

high-ranking government officials

, and

intimidate and attempt to discredit dissidents

 of all stripes. For example, not only did the FBI follow Martin Luther King Jr. and bug his phones and hotel rooms, but agents also sent him anonymous letters

urging him to commit suicide

 and pressured a Massachusetts college into dropping King as its commencement speaker.

Just as the Gestapo carried out entrapment operations, the FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment. 

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured or

blackmailed them

 into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing or deporting them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “

forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions

.” In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the

FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law

, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.

USA Today

 estimates that

agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day

. Some of these

informants are getting paid astronomical sums

: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America, in much the same way that the empowerment of Germany’s secret police tracked with the rise of the Nazi regime.

How did the Gestapo become the terror of the Third Reich?

It did so by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “

rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk

.”

In other words, ordinary citizens working with government agents helped create the monster that became Nazi Germany. Writing for the

New York Times

, Barry Ewen paints a particularly chilling portrait of how

an entire nation becomes complicit in its own downfall

 by looking the other way:

In what may be his most provocative statement, [author Eric A.] Johnson says that ”most Germans may not even have realized until very late in the war, if ever, that they were living in a vile dictatorship.” This is not to say that they were unaware of the Holocaust; Johnson demonstrates that millions of Germans must have known at least some of the truth. But, he concludes, ”a tacit Faustian bargain was struck between the regime and the citizenry.” The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference.

Much like the German people, “we the people” have become passive, polarized, gullible, easily manipulated, and lacking in critical thinking skills. Distracted by entertainment spectacles, politics and screen devices, we too are complicit, silent partners in creating a police state similar to the terror practiced by former regimes.

Can the Fourth Reich happen here?

 As I point out in my book

Battlefield America: The War on the American People

, it’s already happening right under our noses.

President Trump on Wednesday appeared to hold former CIA Director John Brennan partly responsible for the investigation into alleged collusion between his campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance, the White House announced. It was the first decision to come from a review of access for several officials who served under President Obama.
“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal hours after the announcement was made. “And these people led it. So I think it’s something that had to be done”

Brennan snapped back at Trump in a tweet, saying the White House’s decision was part of a broader attack against the freedom of American citizens.
TRUMP REVOKES EX-CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN’S SECURITY CLEARANCE
“This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics,” Brennan wrote. “It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.”
Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders read a statement on the president’s behalf during the press briefing and said Brennan “has a history that calls his credibility into question.”
The statement also claimed Brennan had been “leveraging” the clearance to make “wild outbursts” and claims against the Trump administration in the media.

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham.”
– President Trump to the Wall Street Journal

“The president has a constitutional responsibility to protect classified information and who has access to it, and that’s what he’s doing is fulfilling that responsibility in this action.”
Last month, the White House said they were looking into the clearances for other former officials and Trump critics, including former FBI director James Comey; former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe; former director of national intelligence James Clapper; former national security adviser Susan Rice and former CIA director Michael Hayden (who also worked under President George W. Bush).
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Elizabeth Zwirz contributed to this report.

The street artist Banksy has disavowed any support for a popular exhibition of his work in Moscow, saying he would never charge people to see his art.
Moscow’s most controversial exhibition this summer has been an exhibition of Banksy’s graffiti works, including an original canvas of his Mona Lisa and 25 other original works that organiser Alexander Nachkebiya had called “one of a kind”.
Billed by Moscow’s Central House of Artists as the city’s art event of the year, it has attracted 200,000 visitors in its first two months, according to Russian media reports. But it appears the entire thing took place without the artist’s knowledge.
In a screengrab of an online chat posted by the artist on Wednesday, Banksy responded to a photograph of Moscow’s exhibition hall by saying: “What the hell is that?”
Told it was an exhibition of his work and it cost £20 to get in – it actually costs closer to £10 – the artist was not amused. “I wish I could find it funny,” Banksy wrote in the online conversation with an unnamed person. “What’s the opposite of LOL?”
The exhibition has the sponsorship of a number of Russia’s biggest companies, including the mobile provider MTS. The antivirus company Kaspersky was a partner for the exhibition, and a number of Russia’s most prominent news agencies were informational partners.
“You know it’s got nothing to do with me right? I don’t charge people to see my art unless there’s a fairground wheel,” Banksy wrote in the online chat. The artist is reclusive and is not represented on a number of social media sites. A representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The organiser of the exhibition previously said publicly that Banksy was not involved. In an interview in June with a Russian state television broadcaster, Nachkebiya, listed online as the CEO of the IQ Art Management Corporation, said he had not spoken with Banksy or his representatives before the exhibition.
“Banksy is always against exhibitions that he doesn’t organise himself,” the businessman said. “As to Banksy I can say that he still works on the street, he still is a rebel, he still does very relevant, very urgent work. So I think it’s not that important to him.”
The exhibition is the first time Banksy’s work has been shown in Russia. VIP tickets allow viewers to skip the line and join guided tours of the work.
Urged to put out a press release disavowing the exhibition, the artist did see some irony in going public, saying: “Hmm – not sure I’m the best person to complain about people putting up pictures without getting permission.”

The man arrested on suspicion of terror offences after a car crashed outside the Houses of Parliament has been named as Salih Khater by government sources.
The 29-year-old British citizen, originally from Sudan, has also been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, Met Police said on Wednesday.
He came to the UK as a refugee and was granted asylum, the BBC understands.
His brother described him as a “normal person” with no fanatical ideas, and no links to any religious group.
Abdullah Khater also said his family – who are originally from Darfur in Sudan – was in “a state of shock” over the incident.

Three people were injured after the car hit cyclists and pedestrians during Tuesday morning’s rush hour.
The silver Ford Fiesta then crashed into security barriers outside the Houses of Parliament just before 07:40 BST.
A man and a woman were taken to hospital after the crash and later discharged, while another man was treated for minor injuries at the scene.
The suspect is not believed to have been known to MI5 or counter-terrorism police, but is understood to have been known to local police.
He did not co-operate with officers after his arrest, Scotland Yard said. The investigation team’s priority “continues to be to understand the motivation behind this incident”, a spokesman added.
Police have concluded searches of two properties in Birmingham and one in Nottingham, and are currently searching a third address in Birmingham.

What else is known about the suspect?

Mr Khater came to Britain in 2010 and successfully applied for UK citizenship in the past two years.
His brother said he had been planning a trip back home to see his family, having not seen them for some time.
Mr Khater is believed to have lived in a first-floor flat above a parade of shops in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham until four months ago, when he moved to the city’s Highgate area.
Neighbours called him a quiet man who frequently visited an internet cafe and a nearby shisha lounge, both on Stratford Road.
Local resident Ahmed Abdi described him as a man who “never spoke to anybody”, and added: “I recognised his picture from the news and I was shocked.”
Having completed his secondary education in Sudan, he studied electrical engineering at university there before moving to the UK.
He studied English as a second or foreign language at City College from 2010 to 2011, later studying a diploma in science at South and City College in Birmingham from 2014 to 2017.
More recently, Mr Khater studied accountancy at Coventry University from September 2017 to May this year, a spokesman for the university said. He is no longer enrolled there.
Members of the Sudanese community have suggested Mr Khater may have had an appointment in London at the Sudan embassy to obtain a visa for his trip.
Birmingham Central Mosque said its inquiries with the community found he did not worship at the mosque and had showed no signs of radicalisation.

What happened on Tuesday?

A number of witnesses said the car, which was travelling westbound in Parliament Square, appeared to deliberately hit members of the public as it swerved into the opposite lane.
Footage released by the BBC showed the moment of the crash. A police officer can be seen jumping over a barrier to get out of the way.
A passenger in the first car behind the cyclists said they had been “thrown everywhere” after being hit at what she estimated to be 25mph.
The car was driven to London from Birmingham the night before, arriving just after midnight on Tuesday.
It then spent nearly five hours in the Tottenham Court Road area before being driven around Westminster for more than 90 minutes before the crash.
Police have been able to trace the route taken thanks to automatic number plate recognition cameras.
Mr Khater was detained at the scene \under the Terrorism Act and taken to a south London police station. No-one else was in the car when it crashed and no weapons were found in it.
Police are treating it as a terror-related incident “given that this appears to be a deliberate act, the method, and this being an iconic site”, Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism Neil Basu said.
No other arrests have been made, Scotland Yard said.

What happens next?

Britain’s most senior police officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, said Westminster could be pedestrianised to stop vehicle attacks, calling them terrorists’ “weapon of choice”.
She said it was “a matter that will be discussed no doubt between parliamentary authorities, us, the intelligence agencies and indeed the local authorities and the mayor”.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said he was also in favour of more security measures being introduced in Parliament Square and around London.
“I’m an advocate of part-pedestrianising part of Parliament Square,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“Not only would it make Parliament Square more attractive, but there are clever technical ways to make Parliament and pedestrians and visitors safer as well.
“There are now very attractive small bollards in place which actually stop vehicles hitting pedestrians or buildings.”
British Transport Police said it was increasing patrols in England, Scotland and Wales and that its officers would be “highly visible on trains and at stations”.
Specialist officers skilled in recognising if “someone may be in an area for terrorist or other criminal purposes” have been deployed in Westminster, with uniformed and plain-clothed officers patrolling.
The prime minister’s spokesman said, as of the end of June 2018, there were 676 live investigations into potential terrorist plots. Since March 2017, 13 Islamist plots and four far-right plots had been foiled, he added.