Welcome to the American gulag
Using involuntary commitment laws to silence dissenters
By: | The Daily Progress
Published: September 23, 2012
Published: September 23, 2012
What happened
to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub — who was targeted because of his
Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government
corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to
so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will
in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends
and attorneys — has happened many times throughout history in totalitarian
regimes.
As Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in “Gulag: A History”:
“The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to
society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or
their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself.”
The advent of
psychiatry eliminated the need to exile political prisoners, allowing
governments instead to declare such dissidents mentally ill and unfit for
society.
For example,
government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric
hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of
society, discredit their ideas and break them physically and mentally through
the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.
In addition
to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made
use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were
considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan
describes a process in which:
“The
obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime ... but if, in the opinion of
the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is ‘prejudicial to
public order’ or ‘incompatible with public tranquility,’ he may be arrested
without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then
be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there
be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to 10 years.
Administrative exile — which required no trial and no sentencing procedure — was
an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political
opponents of the regime.”
Sound
familiar? This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their
critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them
up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in
present-day China.
What is
particularly unnerving, however, is that this practice of making individuals
disappear is happening with increasing frequency in America. Indeed, Raub’s case
exposes the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting
Americans — especially military veterans — for expressing their discontent over
America’s rapid transition to a police state.
It’s no
coincidence that within days of Raub being seized at his Virginia home on Aug.
16 and forcibly held in a Veterans Administration psych ward, news reports
started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences. These incidents
are merely the realization of various U.S. government initiatives dating back to
2009, including one dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle which calls for surveillance
of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as
extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be
“disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Under the
guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government
psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly
being portrayed as ticking time bombs in need of intervention.
One tactic
being used to deal with so-called “mentally ill suspects who also happen to be
trained in modern warfare” is through the use of civil commitment laws, found in
all states and employed throughout American history to not only silence but
cause dissidents to disappear. For example, in 2006, National Security Agency
officials attempted to label former employee Russ Tice, who was willing to
testify in Congress about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, as
“mentally unbalanced” based upon two psychiatric evaluations ordered by his
superiors.
In 2009, New
York police Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had his home raided, and he was
handcuffed to a gurney and taken into emergency custody for an alleged
psychiatric episode. It was later discovered by way of an internal investigation
that his superiors were retaliating against him for reporting police
misconduct.
Most
recently, of course, Virginia’s civil commitment law was used to justify
arresting and detaining Marine Brandon Raub in a psychiatric ward. A swarm of
local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub’s home, asking to
speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song
lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a virtual card game. In a
hearing on Aug. 20, government officials pointed to Raub’s Facebook posts as the
sole reason for their concern and for his continued incarceration. Ignoring
Raub’s explanations about the fact that the Facebook posts were being read out
of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a
psychiatric ward.
On Aug. 23,
Circuit Judge Allan Sharrett declared the government’s case to be lacking in
factual allegations and ordered Raub immediately released.
However, for
the tens of thousands of individuals detained — wrongfully or otherwise — under
civil commitment laws every year, regaining their freedom is nearly impossible,
predicated as it is on a bureaucratic legal and judicial system. The problem, of
course, is that the diagnosis of mental illness, while a legitimate concern for
some Americans, has over time become a convenient means by which to penalize
certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.
Of course,
this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is
criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced or declared
unfit for society.
Governmental
authorities at all levels have made it abundantly clear that they want no one
questioning their authority. And for those who do take to the streets to express
their opinions and beliefs, rows of riot police — clad in jackboots, military
vests, and helmets, holding batons, stun guns, assault rifles, and sometimes
even grenade launchers — are there to keep them in line.
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