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Internal FBI memo warns against ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology’, whistleblower says

February 9, 2023 | | Print Article

Meet Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI special agent who’s now blowing the whistle on the agency’s continued attacks on Christians.

Indefinitely suspended without pay last June, Seraphin is now out with a report published at Uncover DC detailing the FBI’s agenda going into 2023.

According to him, last month the FBI’s Richmond office released an ominous document about “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and their interest in “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ [that] the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” he wrote on Wednesday for Uncover DC.

(Source: Uncover DC)

Notice the term Radical-Traditionalist Catholics, or RTCs.

“The acronym, new to many in the Domestic Counterterrorism field, comes with a footnote by the writer [of the document] explaining RTCs are ‘typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council,'” Seraphin explained.

“This writer draws the important distinction between ‘traditional Catholics,’ who simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings, and RTCs, who espouse ‘more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric,'” he wrote.

This distinction is buoyed by “sources,” albeit very questionable ones such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is nothing more than a left-wing propaganda outfit.

“For example, Appendix D is a direct copy of the SPLC list of ‘Radical Traditional Catholicism Hate Groups,’ including the web address accessed. The SPLC appears to be a source for the intelligence analyst’s beliefs that RTCs exist and that they are anti-Semitic. The SPLC description for this ‘hate group’ states RTCs ‘may make up the largest single group of serious anti-semites in America,'” Seraphin noted.

“Additionally, SPLC states RTCs ’embrace extremely conservative social ideals with respect to women.’ Nothing reported by the SPLC indicates the number of adherents to this alleged ideology nor any instances of violence. This lack of evidence and blatant partisan blindness is one of many reasons the FBI has distanced itself from the SPLC as a source in the past 10 years,” he added.

Except of course for this time, inexplicably enough.

(Source: Uncover DC)

Amazingly, the FBI document also cites Salon as a source. Salon is, as previously reported, a highly partisan, left-wing blog.

“The Salon articles cited are typical of partisan click-bait writing: ‘Traditional Catholics and White Nationalist Groypers Forge a new Far-Right Youth Movement’ and ‘White Nationalists Get Religion: On the Far-Right Fringe, Catholics and Racists Forge a movement,'” Seraphin noted at Uncover DC.

“The articles offer only circumstantial suggestions of affiliations between inflammatory figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes and a man pictured standing on the steps of a Catholic church in New York after the Dobbs decision. The Salon writer makes the wild leap that using a photo of someone at a church indicates the pictured individual or his beliefs are relevant within a religious institution with 70 million adherents in the United States alone and over 2000 years of tradition and history,” he added.

This would be like the FBI relying on InfoWars, a far-right conspiracy site, for its investigations.

Seraphin continued his piece by noting that the writer of the FBI’s RTC document is obsessed with abortion and frequently uses the term “abortion rights.”

“Documents like these can be used to drive the FBI’s priorities in specific regions and boost the visibility of non-existent threats. …. Americans will remember a flood of conservative news outlets covering arrests of numerous pro-life protesters at the end of 2022,” he wrote.

Never mind that there were 100 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers — not abortion clinics — in 2022.

Seraphin concluded his column by warning that this could just be the beginning and that there’s no limit to what innocent parties the FBI will target next.

“Products like this can be used to support the opening of information-only cases, and there is no reason to expect Radical-Traditionalist Catholics are the end point of this train track – they will be the beginning. Opening the door to associating white supremacists with traditional religious practices based on common Christian positions on abortion and the LGBTQ political agendas is a dangerous step,” he wrote.

“Such investigations can easily lead to the same analysis of Radical Traditional Baptists, Radical Traditional Lutherans, and Radical Traditional Evangelicals. The FBI is forbidden from opening cases or publishing products based solely on First Amendment-protected activities. By tolerating the publishing of intelligence products as shoddy as this, they are crossing a line many Americans will find themselves on the wrong side of for the first time in history. This is what a politicalized FBI looks like; it should not be tolerated if Americans expect to enjoy the protections of our Bill of Rights,” he added.

Vivek Saxena
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