By Michael Bielawski
Nationally acclaimed author William Federer warned Vermonters Thursday in Barre that our society is under “5th generation warfare” from adverse foreign and domestic efforts and it’s time for independent-minded citizens to speak out.
The event took place at the Elks Club, where a modest but impassioned crowd of 25 attended with several left-wing protestors outside. Moms for Liberty and VTGrassroots organized the event.
Federer has published about two dozen books including his first “America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations.” He’s a regular on major radio and TV outlets.
Federer identifies patterns that repeat in history every time a totalitarian state emerges, such as there is always a concerted effort to erase history and present a new future once the old ways are forgotten.
He draws numerous parallels to the old Soviet Union, the French Revolution, and other examples going back to ancient civilizations.
“So they go into the classrooms and they tell the kids negative things about the founding fathers,” Federer said.
He said that current education describes them as aggressors, racists, and other negative characterizations.
“And many of the kids went, ‘ew they’re bad’, forget the fact that they gave you a country where you get to be a co-king.”
He also explained that in order to take over a democratic government there will always be efforts to buy up media, academia, and other major institutions so the public only gets the information that the controlling party wants them to know.
He frequently referenced the work of Edward Barneys, an early 20th-century American theorist who is largely considered the pioneer of study in public relations and propaganda. Barneys was adamant that peer pressure is the most effective tool in getting large populations to buy into policies that they may not otherwise accept.
He said that Barneys had figured out “that you can get people to buy something if they think everyone else is using it.”
He explained how the fundamental values of religion, in particular, Christianity and Judaism, include strong individualism and free will. These values are diametrically opposed to the values of Communism and other totalitarian type of governments.
A Vietnamese journalist
Speaker Chau Kelley, a Vietnam-born journalist based in New Hampshire, said that her family emigrated to the U.S. in the early 90’s to escape an oppressive government.
She said her father was a political prisoner in their home country. Now she is wary that the same subversive techniques used to bring down her home country are currently being implemented in the states.
She cautioned against the human tendency to want to fit in the crowd.
“You don’t do that, you have to use your common sense,” she said. “… With the communists, if you just obey you will die, very soon. You will lose everything, very soon.”
She talked more about the conditions in Vietnam when she left. Political speech that criticized the ruling parties was strongly prohibited.
“You don’t say anything against the public servants,” Kelley said. “Just like here now. … Communism is bad news for everybody.”
She said authoritarians will focus their efforts on children in our schools.
“So in the future, we are fighting against our own family members who are brainwashed to be communists already inside and out. If you don’t talk to your children and train them, you will lose them,” Kelley said.
Vermonters speak out
Ben Olsen, a business owner and homeschooling parent, and Elizabeth Miller, an artist and homeschooling parent, each spoke. VDC spoke with them separately after the event.
Olsen shared his concerns about COVID vaccines. He carried with him books and documents alleging that the side effects have been much worse than reported in the mainstream media.
“There’s lots of information already out there,” he said. “There are books, great newspapers, I just hold together a group of tools that I can use as an information warrior.”
He gave Ed Dowd’s book “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022” to his doctor as well as family members and friends. The response has been mostly very positive.
Miller shared with VDC about her journey to discover how to speak up for herself against professionals who wanted to dictate her personal health choices.
“Being able to have the courage to stand up to a professional and question their line of reasoning and choices that they are making for me,” Miller said. “And that has to be fixed, I think there are a lot of people like me who have to address the issue of not speaking truth appropriately in society,” she said.
She added that the lockdowns and other pressures during COVID-19 helped to awaken her that our freedoms and way of life are being chipped away.
The author is a reporter for Vermont Daily Chronicle