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Geopolitics & Empire:

Geopolitics & Empire is joined by John Whitehead, an attorney and author widely recognized as one of the nation’s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys. He’s won numerous accolades and accomplishments, and in 1982 he founded the Rutherford Institute, which has become one of the leading advocates of civil liberties.

He’s author of the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and the best selling Battlefield America: The War On The American People. Also, The End of Man, published in 1986, but sounds like it was written yesterday. Mr. Whitehead, welcome to Geopolitics & Empire, which the Ron Paul Institute describes as “the real underground, where the real intellectual revolution is taking place.”

John Whitehead:

Anyway, thank you sir for having me on. I appreciate it.

Geopolitics & Empire:

I do urge people to support the Rutherford Institute. I’ve got my Rutherford coffee mug, which I don’t think you sell this one anymore, and I’ve got the pamphlets as well that you sell. I love the work you’re doing, but let’s get right into it. You recently wrote that, “Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in, the constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation. We’re witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time,” end quote.

Myself as a former history teacher, professor, I saw all of this coming. In the 2000s, a nation and republic in a downward spiral. Economic decline, spiritual decline, cultural degeneration, devolution into authoritarianism and tyranny. And it seems we’ve arrived. What’s sort of the big picture here and where are we on the timeline?

John Whitehead:

Well, the government that we have in this country, and I’ve warned people for years about, is not what you think it is. It’s a different type of government. There was an expansive study that came out of Princeton University in 2014, which studied 20 years of laws and policies passed in Washington, DC. The professors came to the conclusion that we live in what they call an auto [inaudible 00:01:55] elite in Washington, DC where all the money congregates.

Washington, DC’s basically run by, at the time they estimated 585 billionaires. It later became known as the Deep State. The Deep State is a group called the 7th Floor Group. It was a leaked FBI memo, which said that the government is basically run by the 7th Floor Group, which is, and I’ve known this for years cause for over 40 years, I’ve sued in and out of Washington, DC. I’ve sued the president of the United States, I’ve seen some stuff. I’ve had congressmen, former NSA agents meet with me and say, “Here’s some more facts that you need to know” and, they’re seeing it and they don’t like it.

We live, basically, in the United States now, a total surveillance state. We’re be watched, and as the future of techno-authoritarianism, our commentary from last week, goes into the fact that the Chinese government, by the way, has a tremendous impact globally, but is having a really big impact in the United States. They have 400 detention camps, they publicize it in China, where people are taken away for whatever, saying the wrong word, wrong religion, those kind of things.

What I see the future of this country is everything that the great science fiction writers have prophesied about, like George Orwell, Phillip K. Dick, and others saw it coming. But now with the emergence of the Chinese government having a new police station now in New York City, three in Canada, 25 cities across the globe, 56 different secret police stations are operating where they’re going after former dissidents and people that have escaped to another country from the Chinese tyranny of a detention camp.

They’re working with these other guys… This is what blows my mind in a way. They’re working with the so-called land of the free government, the American government, to capture people and take them back and put them in detention camps. The people who wrote this constitution, the people who such as it would say, “Are you nuts?” I mean, the fellow who wrote our bill of rights, James Madison said, “We ought to mistrust all those in power.”

You studied just the history, and you mentioned some of my books, my book Battlefield America and A Government of Wolves, goes into the history that we faced in the world or whatever from Nazi Germany, before Nazi Germany, the collapse of the Roman Empire. I’m really seeing more as I studied the Roman Empire, the collapse of the United States into a government where people were supposed to be taken away.

I remember the Romans were big into really cruel punishment like crucifixion, stuff like that. Those were lessons, by the way. They were, “If you do this, if you speak truth to power, you’re going to get in a lot of trouble,” and they would crucify people. We haven’t seen that yet, no. I think they’re going to be slicker now with the emergence of artificial intelligence and with the coming of singularity in 2029, according to Google, where the human mind’s going to fuse with AI, artificial intelligence. That’s very likely, in my opinion. People are not going to understand what’s going on.

Several Google executives recently resign. One said he resigned because he was really concerned about what they were doing at Google. He said, “We’ve created God.” In other words, what the Chinese government does now with their AI will be operating across the globe. You say the wrong word, you do the wrong thing, you wind up in a real bad situation. That’s what I see coming to this country. We’re run by people, like I say, the so-called Deep State. They want money, they want control, they want our tax money.

Very similar to that movie by John Carpenter called They Live. The motto was, “They live, we sleep.” We’re not awake. We’re very a lazy populous right now because we’re addicted to our screen devices. The average American watches approximately 150 hours of television a month.

Listen, Carl Bernstein of Bernstein & Woodward, when he left after the Nixon debacle and helped expose, he was Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. He started working with the big news publications, the big New York Times and people like that in college. He wrote a very good article, by the way, where he said that it’s shocking to find out that the major publications and television network worked with the government to vet articles, help write them.

What you’re getting today is, off of mainstream media, I keep warning people, that’s why I don’t watch mainstream media. I don’t need to watch it. I do my own research and I say this and I mean it. Education precedes action. I’m telling people, if you want to act, get educated, folks. If you’re quoting somebody from CNN to me, I’m going, “Well, wait a second. That may be a government agent. Do I really want to believe that?” Cause James Madison said, “We ought to mistrust people,” and I mistrust people, by the way. I clarify what people are saying if they say something to me.

That’s the key thing that we’re losing in this country today, is critical thinking. They don’t want us to think. That’s why children in public schools in America, they are not taught to Bill of Rights anymore. Many of them don’t read the Declaration of Independence, and the reason they don’t, if you read the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, it says that the government’s getting out of control, you can throw it away, get rid of it. They don’t want people to think like rebels.

Listen, authoritarian governments have never wanted that. The sad thing about history, as I’ve seen it, and my book, A Government of Wolves, comes from a great George Merrill quote where he said, “A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves.” That’s where we’re at. We’ve begat a government of wolves because we’re not the kind of people checking on government. We don’t get involved. Most people don’t get involved even in their local city governments, which I’m saying if there’s going to be, let’s create islands of freedom and take control of our local city governments.

Our 10th amendment in the US Constitution says that local governments can nullify acts of the federal government. That’s federalism. We can do that. But getting people involved today, today the thing is, “Oh, I voted. I did my duty.” I’m going, “No, you didn’t do your duty.” Voting is not your duty. Your duty is to get up all your butt, get active in your governments, run for government, make sure it’s operating correctly.

I mean, America, again, people watching this show today should realize that in America, we’ve gone kind of bananas and like I say, the mainstream media doesn’t publicize it. In the 1980s in America, there were approximately 3000 SWAT team raids annually. Today in America, over 80,000 annually. Up to 500 dogs a day are shot in this country. Kids are getting killed. I mean, if you go to our website at Rutherford.org, we’ve written on how people are getting their heads blown off and stuff in the middle of the night, flash-bang grenades.

Decorated Marine Jose Guerra in Arizona, the police are doing a sweep of his neighborhood, trying to find marijuana, by the way, they’re crashing in home. They crash into his home in the middle of the night, this decorated Marine grabs the only weapon he has in his home, his hunting rifle. Stands at the end of his hallway, puts his wife and child behind him. And the police see him, shoot over 70 times and hit him over 20. He falls forward and dies. His wife comes out screaming, tries to help him, they push her away, he dies on the rug.

Wait a second, no marijuana was found in his home. What a ridiculous thing for police to be busting through doors trying to get people for smoking marijuana. Like I had one coffee with Dylan, he says, “I think it makes you more mellow, John.” I went, “It may make you more mellow. So, why are police crashing doors trying to kill people?” And they’re doing it in this country.

There are 175,000 federal agents in America running around with hollow-point bullets now. I’m a former army officer. I was an infantry officer, taught people how to shoot. We could not use hollow-point bullets. They were considered inhuman. They expand on contact. What went through John Kennedy’s head, Martin Luther King’s head, four of them went into John Lennon of the Beatles’ chest hollow-point bullet. They’re intended to kill, wipe out. They’ve been limited to the government now and they’re everywhere. I mean, you got local cops running around with hollow-point bullets.

I mean, what in the world are we doing, folks? This has all taking place, I’d say, in the last 20 years or so. It’s just expanded very rapidly. This is 9-11. I mean, we’ve got a government now, and I’ve used this example, we’re very similar to what happened to Nazi Germany. We’re kind of copying them. I know you may have some questions that you want to ask, but when you look at history and study history, study good books. My books are all documented, but when you have Project Paper Clip, which was a program that allowed over a thousand top Nazis to come into America and feed into the government, the education system and whatever, after World War II, what were we thinking, folks? Who’s running this government? It isn’t we, the people.

When the Constitution starts, the three really beautiful words, “We the People,” do ordain and establish this constitution, we are the people, supposedly the people running the government. The people in DC or our local city government are merely our representatives. We are the government. But if you’re not the government, if only thing you’re saying is, “I may vote or whatever, and then I’m going to turn the tube back on and that’s it.”

We have a responsibility. A responsibility. I’ll say this, that responsibility goes beyond our temporal existence. When we die, if there is a place that’s a better place in here or whatever, I mean, and there’s karma, whatever, what we do here is going to have a great impact on how we live out our eternal existence. Just sitting on your butts watching TV, folks, you’re going to be in change at some point.

Eventually, it isn’t going to work. Get up and take a stand for freedom. That’s what we need in this country. Because like I say, with China coming in now, and it’s a really scary thing. People don’t realize this, but the country the United States owes the most money to is China. Almost, we owe a trillion dollars to China. Wait a second here. I have friends that have gone to China and told me stories. One was sitting in a restaurant. She said a car pulled up, a guy was walking down the street, she was eating her food and a bunch of Chinese cops got out. Grabbed him and shook him up and flew in the backseat of a car and drove off. She said the people on the street, the Chinese people, just kept walking as if they didn’t see it. “It didn’t happen. We didn’t see it.”

Outrage, at a certain point like that. Come together and just throw them out. Don’t let them be doing this stuff because sooner or later, if you love your children, your grandparents or whatever, you want them to be taken care of, they’re not going to be in a society we’re living in today. It’s going to get worse. If this so called land of free collapses, and it’s headed in that direction, by the way, clearly, because we’ve lost our roots in this country. We don’t study the history, we don’t know what’s going on, we’re destroying. We don’t mention names of certain founding fathers in this country.

Now, people who wrote like Thomas Jefferson, his Declaration of Independence was used by the UN Declaration of Human Rights as an example of how to write. The place of his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, they don’t even want to mention his name anymore. You can’t live life like that. That’s what I mean by critical thinking, and critical thinking’s really, really important. You may not agree with somebody, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t respect them for some of the things they’ve done and whatever. Listen, without some of the people that they were eliminating from our system, we would not have a free America.

Geopolitics & Empire:

Yeah. On this podcast, I’ve spent less time on geopolitics and more on what you described as the techno-authoritarianism because I feel that’s the biggest threat. You mentioned Nazism. I feel like the medical tyranny, COVID-1984, as I call it, the biomedical security state, that’s right out of Nazi Germany. The Nazi health passes, I actually bought one right behind me. I’ve got 1938, this Ahnenpass.

John Whitehead:

That’s an old one.

Geopolitics & Empire:

It’s crazy because I’ve interviewed Edwin Black, he calls it the algorithm ghetto. In China, it’s the social credit system. As you said, they say now, Wall Street Journal said, one wrong move or thought, you are in digital death. They shut off all of your accounts. You literally can’t buy… It’s like the Book of Revelation, you can’t buy or sell. We saw Canada freezing and locking down bank accounts of thought criminals recently.

There’s this German journalist, Alina Lipp, she had her accounts frozen by Germany in the EU and then they shut off her parents’ accounts in the US. We’ve seen Nick Fuentes, Kanye West had his bank account closed. I was just reading yesterday in Brazil, people protesting Bolsonaro’s defeat are having their bank accounts frozen.

Any further thoughts on this cashless society? It’s really scary. It feels like we’re in it now. I’ve had, since April, my pay, I’m banned from PayPal. The Department of Homeland Security told PayPal to ban me along with others such as Mintpress and Consortium Used. I mean, this is fascism. We see the FBI telling Facebook what to do, the White House telling Twitter who to de platform. Any further thoughts on this sort of digital dictatorship, electronic concentration campus, as some people call it?

John Whitehead:

Oh, it’s coming. Like I said, that Google executive said, we’ve created God with the AI robots. They are machines in the truest sense of the word, unless they figure out a way to somehow inject some kind of human empathy into them, are going to be terrorists. They’re already terrorists. They’re going to be taking your money, they’re going to be spending your money, by the way. They’re going to be ripping your money and taking it and say, “This is for taxes, this is for saying the wrong word or whatever.”

It’s already, it’s happening in China. You’re saying it’s happening here. It is true, everywhere in the world it’s going to happen as we move more and more into a global environment. With the technology they have, it’s like I say, they’re going to be able to say, “You can’t travel, you can’t go here, you can’t go there. You’re locked in your home and we’re coming to get you if you say the wrong word.” And they will, with the SWAT teams. The SWAT teams, by the way, everything’s going robotic. Elon Musk even said this recently. He said, “I’m trying to warn people, but they won’t get it until they see the robots coming down the street at them.”

In some parts of this country already, they’re using robot dogs to go to the door. The police aren’t going anymore. They have robots, by the way, they’re going to be searching, walking down the streets sooner or later. It’s coming, folks. They’re doing it in airports already in this country. It’s coming. Like I say, we have a few years, I’d say maybe a decade, to get our act together before it’s so, so powerful. Like I say, 2029 is the era of singularity, but here’s the other thing. With all this increasing machines and AI, whatever, there’s a concern that the economy’s going to collapse and culturally it’s going to collapse, too. And they’re going to have to impose martial law, the so-called dictatorial state.

That’s why there’s that 2030 video that the Pentagon put out four or five years ago as a training video for police and the military to get ready. They’re basically saying by 2030, they’re going to take over and impose martial law, not only in the United States, but other parts of the world. The American military is already thinking globally in that sense. But the fact that they’re training for martial law, the fact that the towns of 5,000 people in this country, small towns, have police that have grenade launchers, sniper rifles, armed military gear, MRAPs, which are basically tanks on tires and all that equipment and the FBI is training police chiefs at Quantico in different parts of the country, it’s getting very, very scary.

I mean, they’re ready and they’re going to… Again, they’re trained, by the way, in the worst case scenario of the police today and that is when they face you, no matter who you are, you can be the most dangerous person in the world. That’s why they’re agitated. In some of the cases we’ve had, people have said, “Why the police so agitated when they come to the door?” It’s because on their phones they have a lot of information about you because the Department of Homeland Security is already doing threat scores on homes in America, going from green to red. They do the same thing in China.

We’re already adopting Chinese policies. When they’re doing threat assessments, it’s predictive policing, which studies show that in some cases, in 80% of the cases where people are arrested thinking they might do a crime or whether they’re doing committed crime, they were found not guilty. There are going to be people in jails that we have in this country, private prisons, which are making a lot of money off of people being in prisons. People are there that work for Microsoft, Facebook and all the big companies and making products, Walmart, etc.

The country we’re living in today is moving really aggressively toward an artificial intelligence system that is just basically about one thing, control and money. Once we go to digital currency, watch out. They’re going to be blocking what you do, what you buy, they’re going to know everything about you. With the smart cities developing in this company, they have in China with thermal imaging devices, they can basically track wherever you go. The drones today, from two miles up, have facial recognition software. They can watch you, control you, and sooner or later, they’re going to shoot you or stun you with a taser from a distance.

The average American’s not going to have any of this stuff. We’re not going to have the guns, the technology or whatever. There are going to be some radicals, by the way, which are going to do it. I wrote a book called the Erik Blair Diaries a year ago. It’s a novel that goes into all this, what I think the future’s going to be. It’s not a very pretty future, but here’s the key, I think.

I keep telling people, one person can change the world. If people get up off of their butts and start getting active in society, I think we can turn some of this back. But here’s the thing, don’t be silly. It’s going to be very, very difficult. The only way you’re going to do it, folks, is start reading. Get educated and get your friends together in groups and say, “We’re the new founding fathers of the New Republic. We’re going to create islands of freedom in America.”

Geopolitics & Empire:

We can do that everywhere. Even here in Mexico, there’s people getting together and starting to resist. I discovered two years ago, I live in Guadalajara, the second biggest city in Mexico. It’s a resilient city. It’s a smart city, I found all of the concept papers. It’s funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the concept papers to say get rid of cash, go cashless, pre-crime, everything that you described. I’m shocked that I’m living in a smart city, I’m trying to escape.

Just on China, it’s portrayed today that the world is divided in the battle of USA versus China, but a number of guests I’ve had on posit, I think what you’re saying that it’s more like the Chinese and American oligarchies and governments are working together against their own populations, us. You said in your recent article that, “China and the American Deep State have joined forces. A world in which the Deep State is not merely entrenched, but has gone global.” Would you say it’s basically all of our governments versus us and that the Chinese and US oligarchs are sort of working, they have more common interests?

John Whitehead:

Oh, sure they do. People don’t realize the National Security Agency, the NSA, Snowden blew the whistle where he had to run out of the country and hide in Russia. But he said recently he was really surprised himself at the impact China was having on the world. But most people don’t realize this. And the NSA has their Five Eyes program. They have bases all over the world where they’re doing a total surveillance and creating a world surveillance system. They’re working with the Chinese government and they have their [inaudible 00:25:16] program where they meet annually with 17 countries across the globe in coordinating all this stuff.

They now have, in eight major cities, AT&T towers, they have AT&T towers in eight major cities where they’re watching everything in all the big cities and through their so-called artificial intelligence and their surveillance devices. Everything that we’re seeing in China, anywhere in the world that’s scary, it’s happening in America. It’s going a little, they’re keeping it hid.

Here’s the thing, most Americans, like I say, are hooked to digital heroin. They’re just staring and they’re not getting it. They don’t understand it. They’re drugged. Once your eyes are blasted open, you see it, people start screaming, “Why didn’t I see this before?” Well, there’s people like you and me and a good portion of people out there are talking about this and saying, “Get ready, folks.”

Listen, when we have cases where former veterans do emails about something, this or that, and the next day they have SWAT teams come and get them and drag them away, or their doors are knocked upon. We’ve helped some of these people. Like I say, they’re watching anybody that might have the ability to fight back. Mainly veterans, they’re watched. It’s called Operation Vigilant Eagle, run by the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, they do all the flag waving at the football games and all this stuff, militainment, we call it and do all this stuff. But if you say the wrong word is a veteran, they come and investigate you and scare you and threaten to deport people out of the country. They’re doing that. We have actual cases that show that.

Do they really respect us as the American citizens? Remember the basic model of American is, we are the masters, the government is our servant. The so-called government, our representatives. We don’t enforce that today. I mean, most Americans, I got to say, they think voting is the only thing that matters. And they go home, watch TV, and basically do Heil to their government officials. Listen, again, we ought to mistrust all those in power, and that’s the key. If you’re going to be a rebel, we need more rebels in America, especially right now.

People that will stand, not violent rebels, but rebels who will just look. The government [inaudible 00:27:49] says we’re going to fight you to the end. We’re going to throw you out of the office. Sooner or later, we’re going to gather our groups and we’re going to fight back on this policy. Again, let me say this, they’re going get PO’ed at you. Listen, under the National Defense Authorization Act, which every president has upped for years, gives the president, if he thinks you’re an extremist, he can point his finger at you and the military can come get you and take you away to a camp or whatever, and you won’t see your lawyer or your family.

Again, that’s why groups like the Rutherford Institute exists. People call us and say, “Wow, you won’t believe what happened.” And we try to help them. That’s the key. We need to get together though, with more lawyers across the country and more freedom fighters and say, “We’re going to get rid of this National Defense Authorization Act. It stinks.” And get your so-called representatives to do something besides take money from lobbyists.

Geopolitics & Empire:

You mentioned the military veterans, and I just remembered. I think one of my very first podcasts over a decade ago, my first guess was Corporal Jesse Thorsen, who I think you worked with. He just was messaging friends, talking about 9-11 and stuff and then they came to his house and tried to take him away.

In any case, any final thoughts? You told us what we need to do. I like to cite recently the premier of Alberta in Canada, and she declared humans are not QR codes. I like to summon the ghost of Patrick McGoohan, number six, from The Prisoner. We are not to be pushed, file stamped, index, briefed, debriefed or numbered. It’s going to be rough trying to survive in this algorithm ghetto and dystopia. Any final thought for us?

John Whitehead:

Well, if hearing this today between me and you, this discussion, doesn’t ignite a thought of freedom, then there’s not a lot of hope for you. Listen, get up, get off your butts, like I say. Your local communities, by the way, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says that local governments can nullify the federal government. You can take over your local communities. Get rid of the SWAT teams, get rid of the people shot in the middle of the night, get all this stuff out of your home and make sure your kids, when they walk out of grade school, can cite the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Tell you what’s in the Fourth Amendment. Make sure they read the Declaration of Independence.

Make them think critically. I’ve told school principles, by the way, “Listen, instead of just x-ing words out, why don’t you put the two students that disagree on the stage and have them debate and bring out more debaters and make people think about these terms. Don’t do away with words. I mean, in China, 1984, Animal Farm, the word disagree are all, you can’t say any of those things anymore.

It’s coming to that way in America. We’re starting to repeat tyranny. Let’s not do that. We can take over our local communities. Washington, DC is one of the most corrupt places I’ve ever… I’ve sued in and out of there for 40 years. It’s totally corrupt, but you can change the face of the globe. If we can get our cities, our local cities saying no to Washington, DC, stick it. We’re going to fight for freedom. We’re going to stand for freedom, and we’re not putting up with anymore of your tyranny.

Geopolitics & Empire:

It’s a great place to end. Stick it. Finally, where’s the best way for people to find you online? And how’s the best way for people to support your work and the Rutherford Institute?

John Whitehead:

Well, we’re a nonprofit group. We accept donations to fight cases and put all our education materials out at Rutherford.org, Rutherford.org. Sign up to get our weekly newsletters and our press releases and you’ll see what’s going on. I think, again, education precedes action. Get educated and get out there and create islands of freedom so America can survive.

Geopolitics & Empire:

I definitely recommend people support, donate to Rutherford, get John’s books, subscribe to the email list and their socials. Again, thank you for being on Geopolitics & Empire.

John Whitehead:

Thank you, sir.

About John Whitehead

John Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law, human rights and popular culture. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys, Whitehead’s approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades and accomplishments.

Whitehead’s concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead has filed numerous amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, has been co-counsel in several landmark Supreme Court cases and continues to champion the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights in and out of the courts.

John Whitehead is a frequent commentator on a variety of legal and cultural issues in the national media and writes a weekly opinion column, which is distributed nationwide. He has authored more than 30 books on various legal and social issues. His most recent books include the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People and the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. In addition, he wrote and directed the documentary video series Grasping for the Wind, as well as its companion book, which focus on key cultural events of the 20th Century. The series received two Silver World Medals at the New York Film and Video Festival.

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