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How We Found Out About COINTELPRO (2014)

83 pointsposted 15 hours ago

45 Comments

caseysoftware

14 hours ago

> On June 25, 1971, one Robert Hardy appeared at the FBI office in Camden, New Jersey and told agents of a plan by several of his friends to raid the draft board in that city, remove the files, and destroy them. Hardy was one of the gang, but changed his mind. He was immediately hired as an informer and told to return to the gang and report on their plans, which he did. On August 22, the FBI was waiting when the group struck, and twenty-eight were arrested. The trial began on February 5, 1973. Hoover died in May 1972, but his ghost must have suffered a shock as Hardy changed his mind again and became a witness for the defense. He told the truth, namely that the FBI had used him as a provocateur, and that the burglary could not have taken place without him and the burglary tools that the FBI had supplied.

What are the odds the FBI has done this more recently than 1971?

jordanb

12 hours ago

Most of the "foiled lone wolf Islamic attacks" in the US were planned by the FBI. They'd find some kid, radicalize him, recruit him, supply him with dummy weapons, plan a terrorist attack for him to carry out, then arrest him for it.

hugh-avherald

11 hours ago

Here's an Australian example: https://www.childrenscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/20... [PDF]

https://www.childrenscourt.vic.gov.au/file/cdpp-v-carrick-ps...

rekttrader

14 hours ago

It is a fair assumption that they do this regularly, politics aside one should ask why were there so many FBI agents at the Jan 6 debacle and why didn’t they do more to quell the violence. The origins of Ruby Ridge and Waco are fine examples of insanity. Nevertheless inciting crime and capturing bad guys seems like a game they like playing.

was8309

9 hours ago

"...so many FBI agents at the Jan 6" citation? thanks

caseysoftware

6 hours ago

According to the FBI:

> The after-action responses – 50 pages in all – were located by current FBI Director Kash Patel’s team and recently turned over to the House Judiciary Committee and its special subcommittee investigating security failures and weaponization of law enforcement during the Jan. 6 riot.

> The document has proven a bombshell to lawmakers, revealing for the first time that the FBI had a total of 274 agents deployed to the Capitol in plainclothes and with guns after the violence started but with no clear safety gear of way to be recognized by other law enforcement agencies working in the chaos of the riot.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/fbi-bombshell-274-age...

jazzyjackson

44 minutes ago

You can't believe "just the news dot com" is a reputable source can you?

The documents don't mention or imply the officers were plainclothes, it's a lie, that number is regular agents deployed after violence had occurred.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fbi-275-agents-jan-6/

stinkbeetle

13 hours ago

[flagged]

konmok

10 hours ago

The problem with this thinking is that the US government regularly engages in actual conspiracies, which the public only finds out about much later. COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, the Tuskegee experiments, Operation Paperclip, the list goes on [1].

So, while it's true that the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories are dumb nonsense, it remains unwise to dismiss a theory just because it is a "conspiracy theory".

[1] This is almost certainly true of other governments as well! I'm just less informed there.

therobots927

7 hours ago

Am I crazy or was the parent being sarcastic? I know it’s hard to tell but it read that way to me

therobots927

13 hours ago

No self respecting liberal would believe such a thing.

anonymars

14 hours ago

"Why don't Americans protest?", everyone wonders...

Edit to clarify: perhaps the various sentiments described in the replies didn't come about entirely organically

ch4s3

10 hours ago

I think many American movements tend to take on an everything bagel quality and it becomes too unclear what the actual demands are and what any politician could do to achieve the goal.

kelseyfrog

14 hours ago

I had a conversation about this with my French teacher a few months ago

It was striking how different our outlooks were on the effectiveness of protests. Her position was that together, she and her fellow protesters _could_ enact change. When I look around, the stench of preconsigned defeat permeates the space. We've lived in it for so long that we've become blind to it. We've learned to be helpless.

Not to mention, when a fresh face inevitably proposes large scale action, the responses always include FUD about needing to solve the poverty issue first so that participants can even attend such action. The end result is that it's stopped at the idea stage, nothing changes, and six months later a new freah face will repeat the cycle.

Part of the issue is that without social safety nets, much of the public is afraid that missing a week to a month of work will guarantee them homelessness.

pixelready

13 hours ago

I believe this is the intended effect of maintaining some level of homelessness and unemployment in American policy decisions. Full employment and suffering reduction through a strong safety net are the correct moral imperatives, but they reduce the leverage of a central authority. You can see whose priorities win out.

I think there is a soft self-destruction happening among millennials and beyond in the US and similar societies. They have been so worn down by living in a system that refuses to invest properly in them that they are taking the fatalist route of simply refusing to participate in the building of a future.

Limited procreation, disengaging from politics or mindlessly bandwagoning demagogues, deaths of despair, etc… it’s not universal but the trend lines are certainly worrying.

antonymoose

13 hours ago

I feel like, historically, protests have beared fruit in America for leftist / progressive causes. Everything from Suffragettes and Civil Rights / anti-Vietnam to the Floyd protests of the modern day. Maybe they didn’t overthrow an entire government but the marked forward progress of each one is clear.

asveikau

13 hours ago

I feel there is currently a bit of of internalized propaganda about protests being stupid or worse. Witness any cause which involves protesting by blocking the street. You get an army of internet trolls talking up the idea that this is somehow evil.

In the civil rights era, events like crossing bridges on foot were a key feature, done by people like Martin Luther King. In the modern era, if you see a protest on the golden gate bridge as an example, they'll be called terrorists and people will advocate for violence against them.

10000truths

12 hours ago

Oh, there was plenty of internalized propaganda about civil disobedience being the "wrong approach" [0] - it is by no means a new phenomenon. Such criticism was common enough during the civil rights movement that MLK addressed it in Letter from Birmingham Jail:

> You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

[0] https://reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/1l7b30j

asveikau

11 hours ago

> Oh, there was plenty of internalized propaganda about civil disobedience being the "wrong approach"

Yes, I'm aware of this. But I think it's surprising to me because decades later, MLK et al. are nearly universally accepted to have been right, but people using the same tactics are not.

But the cyclical propaganda lines do cross the decades. In the Bush 2 years I was rather taken by similarities between discussions of the Vietnam war or Watergate (which I read about in books or heard about from boomers) and what was then current events. A lot of the right wing stuff we've encountered more recently reminds me a lot of the 90s, when Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich bursted on the scene. All of the same talking points go in waves. Nothing new under the sun.

watersb

13 hours ago

35 years ago, protesters blocked the Golden Gate Bridge.

I'm pretty sure they were protesting the war with Iraq (Bush the First) in response to Iraq's invasion and capture of oil wells in Kuwait.

But far more clear is my memory of the searing rage of a coworker that day. She was flying on it, the hatred coming out of her mouth.

It shocked me for a couple of reasons. She was close in age to me, just out of school. I think that my college years had led me to presume to most young people would be more sympathetic to opposition of general warfare. There was lots of talk of forcing military enlistment among people our age.

But the main reason was that the trigger for her rage was the temporary threat to her right to drive her car wherever she wanted to.

You think Americans are nuts about their guns, don't you ever threaten their right to kill people with cars.

Any sympathy she could have felt for the protesters' cause was gone because they blocked a highway.

cool_dude85

12 hours ago

And nowadays, if this happened in Florida, she could pretty credibly run the protesters down in the street and avoid even getting charged.

ThrowawayTestr

11 hours ago

Unpopular opinion but blocking traffic is akin to cutting power lines. Don't fuck with people's utilities.

ronsor

11 hours ago

kelseyfrog

7 hours ago

Is this different than tone policing[1]?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing

anonymars

9 hours ago

What are your thoughts on, for example, dumping a boatload of tea into Boston Harbor?

krapp

10 hours ago

Well, then I suppose feminism, civil rights (to say nothing of ending slavery,) labor rights and literally every other right you enjoy didn't deserve to advance because all of them are the result of some people at some point at the very least being a dick to others.

bigstrat2003

10 hours ago

> Witness any cause which involves protesting by blocking the street. You get an army of internet trolls talking up the idea that this is somehow evil.

"Evil" is a stronger word than I would use, but I think it's fair to say that blocking the streets is both reckless and extremely antisocial. Making my life harder when I didn't do anything to wrong you doesn't make me more sympathetic to your cause, it makes me think "wow the people who support X are real dicks".

Also I like how you label this as a position espoused by "Internet trolls", as though no normal decent person could be irritated when they get screwed over by protesters.

kelseyfrog

11 hours ago

12 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking

this sums it up nicely:

"A study from Australia and the United Kingdom by Lorraine Sheridan and David James compared 128 self-defined victims of gang stalking with a randomly selected group of 128 self-declared victims of stalking by an individual. All 128 "victims" of gang stalking were judged to be delusional, compared with only 5 victims of individual stalking."

Traubenfuchs

6 hours ago

Don‘t ask, it‘s just schizophrenia, makes no sense at all and is depressing, unsatisfying and just keeps on going.

jihadjihad

11 hours ago

How do you know?