I just started reading the Overstreets' The Strange Tactics of Extremism. This book examines the extremist Right in mid 60s America. The Overstreets (husband and wife) had done previous work in examining Communists, and would later write another book discussing the FBI's work against subversion, The FBI In Our Open Society.
Steve The Extremist
Now, to be upfront, I am an extremist. I am an minarchist who thinks that the government should have limited power over our lives, but where we have given it power, namely in protecting our security and liberty, it should act forcefully and decisively when necessary. Think Hobbe's Leviathan. I advocate setting law to specify security threats so that any such action is done via rule of law, and not dictatorial mandate or a Calvinball of regulations and burrocrats.
Interesting that Calvinball of Calvin and Hobbes came up so soon after bringing up Leviathan; that just happened
See Calvinball
In any case, I am an extremist in not just my fanaticism towards the idea of limited (not NO) government and rule of law; I am also an extremist in the harshness of my punitive recommendations. People that can't learn to keep their hands off other people and their property should be broken and disposed of. I have no tolerance for the idea that all human life is worth the same.
Some people can only make this world a better place by leaving it
I am not going to defend these views here; I wanted to acknowledge them before I move on
Extremism in America
Political violence has been fairly common in our history up until the early 20s, when the leftists pretending to be anarchists were dealt with. Political violence never completely disappeared, and began in earnest as Southern blacks began standing up for themselves in the 50s...and the Klan began a terrorist campaign against them.
I am also reading Days of Rage, about the terrorists of the New Left. We should note that the Black Panthers (who should be considered a subset of New Left terror) had their genesis in the armed self-defense groups that blacks used to protect their families against the Klan. It is also worth noting that the wall of bayonets protecting the right of black children to attend the same schools as whites was formed by white Southerners against the terror of other white Southerners.
That is quite a contrast to the leftist operatives of SDS and SNCC that argued against a reconciliatory agenda in the civil rights movement and demanded violent confrontation.
COINTELPRO
These themes of Klan terror and the rise of the New Left come together as the FBI is ordered in turn to deal with these new threats. There had been two formal COINTELPRO programs before, against the Communist and Social Worker's Parties. These were successful in neutralizing the subversion presented by these groups.
There was also an informal program directed at Dr. King, motivated by Hoover's jealousy and hostility towards King and supported by the Kennedy's distrust of Dr. King. William Sullivan, the head of the FBI's domestic security activities, felt that Hoover's fall began with the personal attacks Hoover directed towards King. I'm not going into the level of Communist involvement in the Civil Rights movement at this point; it is extremely complicated and people get angry and demand either/or answers
Due to the success of COINTELPRO:CPUSA and COINTELPRO:SWP, and action demanded by Presidents Johnson and then Nixon, the FBI created new COINTELPROs against the Klan and the New Left.
- COINTELPRO: WHITE HATE
- COINTELPRO: NEW LEFT
- COINTELPRO: BLACK HATE
I'll be discussing these operations in more detail in later posts.
The only thing I will highlight right now is that in descriptions of COINTELPRO by people with agendas, it is always described with the intent of "silencing dissent"; these people never acknowledge the terror, the bombings, and the assassinations that the targeted groups were conducting against the American people
The greatest success of the Weatherman's war was when they blew themselves up
Returning to the Radical Right
Arguably, the first casualty of COINTELRPO ops was Kathy Ainsworth. A pretty young schoolteacher who abandoned her family to die in a gunfight with the FBI and Mississippi police. The FBI had ambushed her, and a Minuteman/Klan terrorist who was wanted for several bombings, Tommy Tarrants. Ainsworth and Tarrants were ambushed as they tried to set one more bomb off.
My own study into this began with a simple question:
Why did the FBI wage a successful war against the KKK, but failed to do so against the New Left?
Unfortunately, simple questions don't always have simple answers. When this contradiction first came to my attention, I just assumed that the Red Diaper Babies of the New Left and their Black Panther "allies" (everything I have seen has led me to believe that the Panthers despised the pompous college kids) had been protected by the political influence of rich parents (ahem, Bill Ayers). It just isn't that simple
This post is the first of several that will attempt to look at this question from different viewpoints; liberty versus security...rule of law...ideology as security threat...et cetera
Stay tuned to this channel ;>
Read the books
Burrough, B. (2015). Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (1St Edition edition). New York: Penguin Press.
(link on left)
Overstreet, H. A., & Overstreet, B. (1964). The Strange Tactics of Extremism. W. W. Norton.
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