Former Marine Held in Psychiatric Hospital Over Facebook Posts Questioning Govt.
Thus spoke John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, in reference to the arrest and involuntary commitment of former U.S. Marine Brandon J. Raub (pictured) of Chesterfield County, Virginia. On August 16, Raub was visited at his home by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and Chesterfield County police because of alleged complaints about Raub’s Facebook posts, many of which questioned the received wisdom from Washington, D.C., and a few of which suggested violence. According to the Rutherford Institute, which is defending Raub, police and FBI agents “did not provide Raub with a search warrant,” but he nevertheless “was cooperative and agreed to speak with them.”
“Without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, law enforcement officials then handcuffed Raub and transported him first to the police headquarters, then to John Randolph Medical Center, where he was held against his will,” wrote the Institute.
Chesterfield County Police Chief Col. Theirry Depuis told the Associated Press that Raub was detained “upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers,” who apparently considered dangerous the Marine sergeant who served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan and who, according to Richmond television station WTVR, has a “clean” criminal history and “no mental health history.” Under Virginia’s emergency custody statute, an individual can be subjected to civil detention and psychiatric evaluation if he is considered a threat to himself or others.
At a hearing before a special justice on August 20, Raub was asked about his Facebook posts.
“He had an opportunity to share and respond to the questions being asked him about his Facebook posts,” his mother, Cathleen Thomas, told WTVR. “He responded and explained himself, and the judge also allowed me to give some facts and basically a character representation of my son, which I did. And then he proceeded to read the (mental health) evaluation that was given on Brandon. The evaluation, I was told by my son, was 15 minutes long, and basically the evaluator said that he was not ready to go back into society and he needed additional psychiatric treatment.”
And with that, the special justice ordered Raub’s continued detention at a Veterans Administration hospital for up to 30 more days.
“For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here,” Whitehead said. “Brandon Raub is no different from the majority of Americans who use their private Facebook pages to post a variety of content, ranging from song lyrics and political hyperbole to trash talking their neighbors, friends and government leaders.”
Indeed, as WTVR noted, “Raub’s postings seem no different than those questioning the government’s version of the 9/11 [attacks] or the role of the Federal Reserve. He believes the government is corrupt and ready to fall, which is why he has a home business dealing in silver coins.”
A November 2011 post entitled “The Truth” that Thomas supplied to WTVR bears out these assertions. “America has lost itself,” Raub begins. He lays out a positive vision of the United States:
This is the land where you can start from
the bottom and get to the top. This is the land where regardless of you
[sic] race and ethnicity you can succeed and build a better life for
you and your family. This is the land where every race coexists
peacefully. This is the land where justice wins. This is the land where
liberty dwells. This is the land where freedom reigns. This is the land
where we help the poor, and people help each other. This is [the] land
where people beat racism.
Then he lists those things he believes have sent America down the
wrong path: the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the wars and
empire-building, the “systematic[] dismantl[ing]” of the Bill of Rights;
9/11 (an “inside job” by the government, in his opinion) and all that
followed from it; politicians beholden to special interests and
“brainwashed through the Council on Foreign Relations.”“There is hope,” Raub concludes. “WE MUST TAKE OUR REPUBLIC BACK.”
In the entire missive, there is not one suggestion of violent revolution. In fact, he very specifically denounces the use of force. (His brother, Brent Raub, told WTVR that Brandon “doesn’t even own a gun.”)
Authorities have released a couple of examples of Raub’s posts that suggest violence. At least one of them — “Sharpen my axe; I’m here to sever heads” — comes from a rap song. Others were “trash talk” among friends playing an online game, Raub told the special justice.
“The posts I read that supposedly were of concern were libertarian-type posts I see all the time,” Whitehead told the AP.
So why was the FBI investigating run-of-the-mill online speech, and why has Raub been committed to a psychiatric hospital for a month because of it?
“We received quite a few complaints about what were perceived as threatening posts,” FBI spokeswoman Dee Rybiski told the AP. “Given the circumstances with the things that have gone on in the country with some of these mass shootings, it would be horrible for law enforcement not to pay attention to complaints.”
Whitehead wasn’t buying it. He told the AP that “some of the posts in question were made on a closed Facebook page that Raub had recently created so he questioned whether anyone from the public would have complained about them.” In his opinion, adds the news service, the government may well be “monitoring citizens’ private Facebook pages and detaining people with whom they disagree.”
Even worse, those who get on the government’s bad side can end up being sent to mental hospitals until they come around to the “correct” opinions. As Christopher Manion observed on the LewRockwell.com blog: “Be sure to re-read 1984, especially O’Brien's ‘medicating’ of Winston in the Ministry of Love, and Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn’s account of the psychiatric torture that political prisoners endured under the Soviet system.”
Fortunately, Raub’s plight has generated a great deal of outrage among informed Americans. Cellphone video of his cuffing and stuffing — not an “arrest,” authorities insist, though there’s no other way to describe it — quickly went viral. As of this writing, the Support Brandon Raub Facebook group has over 8,000 members. Internet commentary about Raub’s situation has been overwhelmingly in his favor. Even some who disagree with Raub’s sentiments, including one “lifelong progressive” with “Marxist tendencies” at DailyKos.com, are disturbed by his treatment.
“Our views are very strong because we are patriots,” Thomas told WTVR. “Our stance in this family is to question everything ... when we lose the right to be able to stand up and say how we feel, no matter what it’s about, I think that we need to be very concerned. Because what it speaks to me is that they’re trying to shut people up. They’re trying to squelch the message.”
With family, friends, and much of the public on Raub’s side, his message of liberty will not easily be squelched.
Marine Vet detained for FB posts - Brandon J Raub being "arrested": http://youtu.be/nLpChd1-8Q4 via @youtube
Who Is Brandon Raub and Why Maybe it Matters to the Rest of Us [Update: Raub has been released]
Brandon Raub is a former Marine who had long been posting on Facebook his belief in a 9/11 conspiracy, chemtrails, that our government is communist, and his distrust of the Illuminati. He likes rap groups and conspiracy theories. He considers himself a Christian and expressed disgust at the TSA pat down of a child last year. Some of his posts, although violent in nature, do not target specific people or groups.Friends, You deserve to kow[sic] the truth. There has been an overwhelming amount of evil enacted and planned against you, your children, and your countrymen. It is great in scope. Your government evil. It is as simple as that.
And the calvary is coming.
(August 12 at 10:02am)
(August 12 at 10:02am)
and
I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting. (August 10 at 12:11am)and
Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads. (August 13 at 10:38am)
According to Business Insider, the former Marine was taken into custody by members of the FBI, Secret Service and Chesterfield County Police Department this weekend and continues to be held in a psychiatric hospital in Hopewell, Virginia.
Raub told the Times-Dispatch that he served as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2005 to 2011, was a combat engineer sergeant and does not own a gun. His mother said he returned from Afghanistan about a year ago and does not have PTSD.Why then was it so important for the law enforcement authorities to take him into custody? According to online news outlets, Raub was taken into custody stemming from complaints arising from his posts on Facebook. We already know that Big Brother is constantly monitoring social media. Not surprisingly, one of my acquaintances had his Facebook posts used against him in his court case that was related to his activism. Despite the violent nature of some his Facebook posts, Raub is well-spoken and articulate when writing for Don't Tread on Me, a blog with obvious conservative/libertarian leanings that appears (after a cursory examination) to be more geared towards the preparation for socio/economic collapse and as advocates for change by the implementation of more conservative policies. From what I did see, the site surprisingly lacks the more gratuitous expressions of violence sometimes used by other conservative websites.
An excerpt from one of his writings:
The Constitution was constructed to restrict a government from encroaching on their (and our) economic liberty as given to us by the Creator. Many of them favored state power because they rationalized that you could restrict a states government from encroaching on liberty more easily than a large federal government. The civil war was fought because a group of states took issue with the growing power of the federal government because they recognized that their liberty was at stake. It is the epitome of irony, because those states were predominantly slave owning states. They were restricting the hearts and minds and economic liberty of blacks. Slavery was and is an affront against nature and the heart of God, because in order to keep someone enslaved you must keep their minds enslaved and their minds cannot grow as god intended.I could not find any references on his Facebook wall endorsing or demonstrating his involvement with groups advocating violence or having a connection to U.S. hate groups. The same goes for his posts at Don't Tread on Me. More important, I think, than Raub's postings about the revolution on Facebook, was a recent and violent incident that occurred on August 16, in Louisiana. No doubt law enforcement in Virginia were hyper-aware of the ambush that took place in Louisiana that killed two deputies and wounded two more. According to the Daily Reporter, the suspects in the Louisiana shootings had ties to the "sovereign citizens" movement.
Raub, I think, stumbled into the perfect storm of saying something stupid online at the exact moment that law enforcement became aware of just how dangerous home-grown hate groups have become. The fact that he was former military didn't help either, as there has been much discussion regarding the recruitment of veterans who may be more vulnerable by internal terrorism groups. It also didn't help Raub, that Wade Michael Page, whose shooting spree at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin killing five earlier this month, was a former veteran with ties to the Neo-Nazi movement.
As a lifelong progressive, there is lots about Raub I disagree with, but I don't know that I can say that his posts were an example of a clear and present danger. To me, he seems a bit deluded, but didn't appear to be so deluded that he could present a danger to himself or others.
With my Marxist tendencies, I have often said "eat the rich," and made allusions to revolution myself on Facebook. My blog is even called "So You Want to Start a Revolution." But it would appear for some, the government feels there is no difference now between talking about revolution or violence and going on a shooting spree.
I have said stupid things on Facebook and online (and in person, too), but I would hope that no one would look to me as a terrorist. And I am positive I am not the only one. And I will vociferously defend Raub's right to say stupid things anywhere as well, even though I think he may be a complete twit.
But this is chilling, that any person, anyone of us, could be labelled a terrorist because we said something ill-conceived on Facebook or on our blogs, or on twitter. There is a huge difference between words and actions. But to the authorities, that would appear to no longer matter. I hope that Raub, although unfortunate, was the isolated overreaction of law enforcement made extremely paranoid from two other terrorist acts committed earlier this month and that Raub gets the opportunity to clear his name and is able to obtain some sort of compensation.
If not, then it could mean that our government means to silence us all. And permanently.
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