An extremist studying extremism (COINTELPRO #1)(Repost)
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 lol
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 (false dichotomy) 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.
Overstreet, H. A., & Overstreet, B. (1964). The Strange Tactics of Extremism. W. W. Norton.
This is a repost from 7 months ago
nice re-post. The only thing to keep us from "rage" is work or war. Once the work runs out, the war starts rolling on mass
@stevescoins got you a $3.02 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
Want a boost? Click here to read more!
Not necessarily a bad thing to be an extremist. Some times the deservingly get a bad rap. But you can't hold everyone accountable for some. Good post
most people really don't like politics and confrontation
you also have to balance what wroks in real life vs. what makes people's feel-feels tingle
I really don't care if the sheep get shorn as long as they don't demand I get shorn as well...the problem is they usually do ;>
I agree politics is typically one of those grey topics people don't like to talk about.
Awesome info steve thanks for posting!...😉
Resteeming for sure.
I'm a Constitutional extremist like you...
thanks for the reSteem!
Yw. Your post is worth it...;)
Well, I acknowledge the violence of such factions, and agree they need to be stopped. However, I also find silencing dissent part of the purpose of Cointelpro ops, and much worse, as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center revealed.
Such ops now are basically manufacturing terror, and 9/11 is probably the penultimate achievement of Cointelpro.
I deeply appreciate your honest convictions, even if I do not always agree with them.
Thanks!
I'll need to do a new post based on this response ;>
COINTELPRO can be used to describe the specific operations I am discussing, or as a method in Information War, although the methods cross over into assassination and dirty tricks, a hybrid to the next step on the warfare continuum.
and the government under the Nixon administration did use some of these methods with the intent of silencing anti-war activity (see CHAOS and the Huston Plan), not all of which was leftist controlled; such methods have been used since( and before) that time.
In fact, there is a whole post's worth of material about the break between Nixon and Hoover, long time allies, about the scope and responsibility for those efforts. believe it or not, Hoover was on the liberty side of that argument ;>
My comment was to make the break between these operations and the idea of the methods
This post has received a 2.52 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @stevescoins.
I don't consider you to be an extremist.
...a little bit left of me actually.
....quite a bit come to think...
going by my Left-Right continuum, very much so...but I hope you agree I am still very Right of Center ;>
If I used the Left-Right continuum I would....
I dunno what I use but it's not that.
....which is MUCH too simple to describe a complex phenomena.
...The Pournelle Political Axis is better BUT.
....still...no cigar.
statism versus liberty...everything else is poli-navel-gazing ;>
Statism is insane and inherently violent. It's an attempt to force the less powerful to provide for the parasites. It all began with Noah's flood. The flood myth was caused by the melting glaciers at the end of the last global glaciation. Some folks found it easier to take rather than to make. To justify their violent behavior to themselves and others they invented religion , the divine right of kings and other nonsense.
Best they could do in a refugee environment with all their infrastructure and technology destroyed I suppose.
We have rebuilt the tech and infrastructure so should be able to do better now.
rent-seeking, government capture, the "Iron Law"...all pretty much dexcribe the same thing you are talking about
Rich also clued me into a nice study that desribed the "transition" of bandits into chiefs , maybe I'll remember the name. it's in my reference Db anyway
But there is a flip side of this...to of them, actually
the rent-seekers COULD NOT hold power if there wenn;t enough people who wanted to believe their lies
crazy isn't it?
oh wait...I went and mentioned religion again ...I'm sorry.
"pie in the sky by and by".
Psychic trauma from the horrible time of the Glacial Melting do you think?
Looking forward to this series.
So you really believe that because a person fights and steals, the punisment should be death. In my opinion the punisment should fit the crime for which someones being punished for. Besides that, what about when they are falsely accused. So now some one is being put to death simply for being accused of stealing a lofe of bread.
good job on reading into the post what YOU wanted to argue against
I don't play Hegelian Dialect, buddy. take it somewhere else
I never argued, just stated my believes. The beginning of the post i agree with 100 %. I like to read all kinds of views. most the time i learn alot more from people that are less like me, than i do from the people that are simular to me.
Last thing im going to say and i'll go away. I didnt insult your opinion at all. I just wanted to hear your view, im interested into what lead you to this way of thinking, and if yhere is any logiacl thinking in it. I mean im sure you have your reason. Me personally i dont like to argue, but i like talk to people with different opinion that mine, to hear what they have to say, and exchange ideas with each other in a raesonable manner. I like to see everything from all angles, i was not trying to be disrespectful at all and im sorry. Well best luck with your postings.
you don't have to go away. I understand you weren't trying to be disrespectful. However, in the way that you asked the question, you framed it in a way that made some assumptions. while this kind of question can be innocent, I hope you understand that it is very often used in deceptive argumentation. I'll take your word that wasnt the intent.
there are 4 modes of puntitive justice:
For the most part, we only hear about the Deterrent and the Rehabilitative modes. Sometimes we hear about the Incapacitive, but usually only in regards to how the Deterrent and the Rehabilitative modes are more "just".
The Retributive mode is truly the only "just" mode, as it is founded on morality, and not on supposed efficiency in preventing crime. Essentially, the Retributive mode is revenge on the part of society AND the victim for the transgressor's violation. At it's most basic, it is "an eye for an eye" justice.
I'll make clear that any given punishment can fit within multiple nodes. A prison term is Incapacitive, or in other words keeps the criminal away from possible victims and prevents additional crime: while at the same time, prison is supposedly Deterrent at the same time, or in other words gives the offender a reason not to do it again ("scared straight"). In addition, prison can be used as a setting for Rehabilitative processes as well, or in other words, teaching the offender to be a better person who won't commit the crime again out of the goodness of his now-sweet little heart. To complete the cycle, prison can also be looked at as a Retributive treatment as well in the restriction on liberty.
Now the people that don't like to punish criminals will tell you that the Deterrent and the Rehabilitative modes are the only..."efficient"...modes of preventing additional crime. These people are known as do-gooders. While Deterrent and the Rehabilitative modes CAN BE effective, there are specific situations in which these modes work...they most certainly don't work in the cases of the most violent of criminals. In fact, there are a variety of circumstances in which one mode or combination of modes is effective; the true goal of criminology is to find out what works, and where...at least it should be ;>
see also
https://steemit.com/crime/@stevescoins/ethics-and-punitive-modes-in-justice
https://steemit.com/justice/@stevescoins/rorschach-and-retribution
I m really am sorry, part of what attracted me to steemit, was that everyone can express themselfs freely, and sense ive been here a little under a month ive seen very little bickering. And can agree with alot of your response, you see Knowning some ex convicts from my earlier years, ive see this first hand. I ve even seen ex convicts intensional go back to jail because there life outside of jail got too hard.
Which is the norm here.
I am a bit more assholish than the norm, and that is reflected in my (followers/steempower/rep) as compared to Steemers who have been here as long as I have...I have less LOL
But, I'll put it this way...I have seen the method used many times as I said. which is why I responded as I did.
I got no problems with ya ;>
if you'd like to ask how I would apply harsh measures, that is fine. you made assumptions.
I do want to here more on your views, but right now im at work, so i dont have the time.but i look foreward to having more conversation with you soon.
as an asshole, I am more entertaining and interesting than normal people LOL j/k