THE Biden administration designated critics of covid vaccine and mask mandates ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’ or DVEs, according to documents declassified last week.
The documents included a December 13, 2021, report by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) labelling views opposing mandates and restrictions as ‘prominent narratives’ that may be connected to violent extremism, including militias and groups ‘motivated by QAnon’.
Those views included ‘the belief that Covid-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order’.
According to the document, linking, citing, quoting, or voicing the same narratives raised by these DVEs is ‘likely’ protected by the First Amendment, unless the people expressing these views were ‘acting in concert with a threat actor’. It did not define ‘threat actor’ or explain how such a determination is made.
The documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Public website and Catherine Herridge Reports. Former FBI Agent Steve Friend told Public that the DVE designation created an ‘articulable purpose’ for the FBI or other government agencies to begin an ‘assessment’ of specific individuals. According to Friend, such an assessment is often the first step toward a formal investigation.
Writing on X, Catherine Herridge said the documents appear to ‘draw a straight line between opposition to vaccine mandates and elevated levels of domestic terrorism’.
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, applauded the release of the documents, which show ‘how perilously close we came to this Orwellian nightmare’.
She said: ‘The administration’s redefinition of the word “extremism” is as outrageous as its redefinition of “vaccine”. While we are not yet in the clear, at least we have a better idea of what we’ve been up against.’
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said he was not surprised by the revelations in the newly declassified documents.
‘By the summer of 2021, it became obvious that the Biden administration would deploy all features of the pandemic response for political purposes,’ Tucker said. ‘What began in bad science became, over time, the deployment of weaponised political division.’
Another of the documents declassified last week, a ‘special analysis’ dated February 3, 2022, and authored by the FBI, DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, suggested that ‘adherents’ of ‘DVE ideologies’ continued to show ‘anger at government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic . . . thus increasing the likelihood that violent extremist messaging or an attack would encourage other DVEs to take action.’
According to the document, such people were likely to target ‘federal government officials, healthcare workers or others who enforce vaccination mandates or participate in vaccination efforts’, potentially in connection with policies including ‘workplace vaccination policies that carry disciplinary or termination penalties’.
Sayer Ji, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said the documents show ‘the goal was never health, it was obedience’.
‘Public health became the new religion, and dissent was labelled blasphemy,’ Ji said. ‘But beneath it all, this was about narrative monopolization – centralized control of science, speech and sovereignty.’
According to the 2021 report, ‘the controversy surrounding vaccination mandates for school-age children, employees facing termination for lack of compliance, or perceptions of unfair healthcare treatment for the unvaccinated might trigger increased violence by DVEs.’
The report cited opposition to school vaccination programmes.
‘The availability of a vaccine for all school-age children might spur conspiracy theories and perceptions that schools will vaccinate children against parents’ will and may increase the potential for violence,’ the report states. ‘DVEs would most likely plot violent acts to intimidate healthcare workers and officials charged with implementing Covid-19 mitigation measures as well as, possibly, killings or kidnappings of state, local, or federal government personnel.’
Parents in at least three states – Maine, North Carolina and Vermont – have sued local school districts and officials after their children were administered the covid vaccine at school without consent.
A 2024 report by the US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government noted that, during the pandemic, the FBI sought to investigate parents who expressed opposition to covid restrictions at school board meetings. The report referred to this as an example of a The report referred to this as an example of a ‘two-tiered system of government’.
Michael Rectenwald, author of The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, said the newly declassified documents suggest covid measures were less about public health and more about targeting potential dissenters.
‘It is not at all surprising that resisters of the measures were labelled DVEs. If public health had been the major concern, then said populations would have been treated and labelled medically and not in terms of their positions with reference to government actions,’ Rectenwald said.
Jeffrey Tucker agreed. ‘The mask mandates were, in part, a tool of humiliation and a drive to ferret out dissenters. It was the same with vaccine mandates: they drove the noncompliant out of government work, health care and university life.’
Speaking to Public, Friend said the DVE designation also gave the Biden administration leverage to pressure Big Tech companies and social media platforms to censor content critical of government covid policies.
He said: ‘It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content”.’
Documents released as part of the ‘Twitter Files’ revealed how agencies like the FBI and DHS participated in a ‘censorship industrial complex’, pressuring Big Tech to censor narratives questioning covid policies. In 2023, the US House of Representatives heard testimony about FBI collusion with Twitter to censor content.
Ji said the newly declassified files and previously released documents reveal ‘a sprawling, coordinated machine involving federal agencies, tech giants, NGOs and transatlantically co-ordinated intelligence actors working together to erase dissent’.
‘The FBI, DHS and White House treated concerned citizens not as fellow Americans, but as threats to be neutralized,’ Ji said. ‘This wasn’t about “misinformation”. It was about protecting the profits, power and psychological control mechanisms of a technocratic elite.’
In March 2021, Ji was included on ‘The Disinformation Dozen’, a list produced by the Center for Countering Digital Hate of the 12 ‘leading online anti-vaxxers’ responsible for most online ‘misinformation’ about vaccines. Ji connected that list to a broader effort to censor voices opposed to establishment covid narratives.
‘This was not a debate over science. It was a full-spectrum information war. They weaponized fear, shame and classification systems originally built for violent threats and redirected them at wellness educators, doctors, scientists and parents,’ Ji said.
This article appeared in The Defender on May 27, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
