Are France’s “De-Radicalization” Centers Coming to America?

“Terrorism,” or at least fighting terrorism, has been used as an excuse to create vast government bureaucracies, intrude on personal liberties, and generally scare the daylights out the public in order to expand control over people under the purported need to keep them safe from terrorists who just might pop up anywhere.  It’s a statist’s dream come true.  All sorts of advances in population-control and the abridgment of personal liberties can be advanced during crises that would not be possible under normal circumstances, a point Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago is famous for making.

So now we find France opening dozens of — get ready for this term —  “De-Radicalization Centers.”  What are these centers and what are their expressed purposes?

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday France would open a dozen de-radicalization centers meant to identify people at risk of joining jihadi groups and prevent them from further radicalization.

We’re all against jihadi attacks on our populations, but how are these centers supposed to work?  Who decides who needs “de-radicalization” treatment?  Will such “treatment” be restricted only to those tending in the direction of Islamic jihadi attacks?  Or will those individuals determined to need “de-radicalization” be expanded to other groups with views at variance with official government policy.

Establishing such centers is incredibly serious stuff, filled with almost limitless opportunities for abuse.

At least half of the new centres will hold those deemed by a judge to be at risk of radicalisation but cannot be placed in detention, Valls added.

It gets worse — much worse.  Just take a look at one way people will be identified as candidates for de-radicalization treatment in one of these prisons centers.

France has already experimented with ways to detect people at risk of joining jihadi groups. In 2014 it set up a phone line for the public to report terrorism suspects. That line will be extended as part of this new plan…

Okay, Americans.  Red Alert. Don’t think for a minute that there aren’t those in U.S. government positions watching this abomination in France very closely, officials who would like nothing more than to establish such centers here.

And if you think the re-education process here would be restricted to Islamic jihadis, you’re dreaming. Any group of individuals whose views do not support the hard-core leftest agenda — Constitutionalists, Evangelical Christians, free-speech advocates, and Second Amendment supporters for example — could be targets for “de-radicalization.”

This is one more in-your-face example of the need to be very vigilant, lest you find yourself transferred to a re-education camp.

Source: The Atlantic