Marine who served with kidnapped Brandon Raub testifies to his sanity + Who Is Brandon Raub and Why Maybe it Matters to the Rest of Us

By SYWTSAR:  
Who Is Brandon Raub and Why Maybe it Matters to the Rest of Us: 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 cavalry is coming.

(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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