No government is just going to let itself be subverted. So it should not be surprising that the US government has pulled out all the stops in its attempt to suppress people of dissent in this country today.
We have countless examples of past oppression. There has been more than one “red scare” period, with the last being in the 1950s. There was the hanging of Anarchists near the turn of the last century as in the Haymarket Affair. There was the COIUNTELPRO of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During those years, the FBI had a program to discredit the “New Left.” They did this by trying to create the illusion that hippies and leftists were one and the same. They tried to make it look like all the leftist were actually hippies using LSD and other drugs. They tried to get the news media to portray the Black Panthers as “militant black hate groups.” They tried to get articles and letters published in school newspapers that would intentionally blur the difference between hippies and leftists within the Students for a Democratic Society.
So now the government is using all its weapons to discourage, bully and smear those who have opposed it. Hit hardest has been the anarchist groups. But socialist and communist groups have also been targeted.
Three men were arrested for being connected to an “anarchist event” according to police, last April. Anarchists are being arrested these days for just being anarchists or they are suspected of taking part in Black Bloc tactics. According to the Kasama Project;
“August 2nd was the first hearing of the Seattle grand jury that has been formed to investigate Northwest anarchists [Eric Ribellarsi editorial note: communists of the Kasama Project and Red Spark Collective are also being targeted by this repression. They have faced SWAT team raids and continue to be targeted]. Leah-Lynn Plante read a statement that detailed her non-cooperation and then proceeded to go inside the court house to refuse to answer their questions.”
The Kasama Project has given considerable coverage, including Case study: Agent provocateurs exposed in Occupy Austin, 6 Occupy activists convicted in Seattle: Sentencing Sept. 20, Raids and Grand Jury witchhunts: Solidarity with Pacific Northwest Resistors, and Case studies of police agent provocateurs.
No one should under estimate what our government operatives will do to persuade us not to engage in revolutionary politics. The news media helps by smearing Occupy and other groups, portraying them as “hippie-wanna-bes.” They have entrapped anarchists and Islamic people with fake explosives and illegal equipment. Activists need to be on the look-out for people who are trying to entrap activist for minor violations of the law. FBI agents are sure be infiltrating our groups.
But we need to keep taking part in revolutionary activities and continue to look for ways to undermine the system and bring it down. Our survival demands that. -សតិវ អតុ
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