Saturday, July 9, 2016

A Brief History of COINTELPRO in America

Another week, another mass shooting in America.  (Actually, there were several, but only one managed to be selected as worthy of national news coverage.)  I overheard a couple of co-workers yesterday talking about what happened in Dallas on Thursday night.  They were eyeing me during their undertone conversation, so, having no TV and blissfully unaware of Thursday's events, I strolled over cheerfully and asked, "What's up?"  They proceeded to tell me, and to offer a number of opinions regarding how American society should view both Black lives and police lives.  My next words must have shocked them.  "Have you ever heard of a false flag operation?" I asked.

From the looks on their faces, I could tell that this was not a possibility they had considered, even though one of them acknowledged that he knew what the term means.  I consider this to be a shocking failure of our outlets of culture and media to inform adults who have the right to vote, who live in what is supposedly the "most powerful country on earth," and who therefore should be much better informed.  Consider this post to be my attempt to rectify this deficiency.

I want to begin by introducing a potentially unfamiliar term to you.  According to Wikipedia, COINTELPRO "was a series of covert, and at times, illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations."  The COINTELPRO operation was conceived under FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.  Note the words, "discrediting" and "disrupting."  If you read the Wikipedia article, you can see the United States from the 1950's to the 1970's as a nation whose favored members enjoyed the greatest privilege the world had ever seen - yet that privilege was built on the backs of those peoples of the world who had been violently oppressed in order to build that privilege.  So the favored members of American society lived in a great deal of insecurity and felt horribly threatened by the presence of any voices challenging their privilege and the oppression on which that privilege had been built.  They were frightened by those voices which were asking for a more equitable life for all.  COINTELPRO was designed by the FBI and others as a way to discredit and neutralize the voices of those who protested the oppressive order set up by the United States and other First World nations.  Read how COINTELPRO especially targeted the leaders of the Black Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's.  One of the tactics of COINTELPRO was the use of agents provocateurs, paid police agents used to attempt to incite protest organizations to engage in illegal activity so that law enforcement would have a justification for arrests.

One thing to note: there is at least one case on record of undercover police being implicated in staging violence by protesters against police during a political rally.  I am sure there are many more cases that can may be discovered by an enterprising researcher.  I leave that as an exercise for the reader.  (You might start here, here, here, here, or here.  Goodness gracious, I think I've done a lot of the work for you!)

Now a funny thing happened in the 1970's.  In 1971, the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI managed to break into an FBI office, and stole several files which contained records of the COINTELPRO operation.  (See this also.)  They then dutifully leaked these records to the press.  Many press outlets refused to publish the leaked documents, but they eventually were widely circulated, and the FBI was forced to ostensibly "end" COINTELPRO.  But like many things that are evil (including sewage leaks), the basic mechanisms of COINTELPRO never really ended.  They just went underground.  (See what was done in the 1980's to environmental protest groups, for instance.)  Indeed, the Wikipedia article cited at the beginning of this post shows that from 1980 onward (and especially during the presidency of George W. Bush), there has been a sharp revival of COINTELPRO-like operations.

As far as the Dallas sniper incident, note the following details:
  • Not only were police shot, but protesters as well.  (How very similar to what happened in Maidan in the Ukraine just before the Western backed coup that plunged that country into civil war.)  
  • Initial reports stated that several snipers were involved, and a number of Black men were arrested.  However, the official police story against these men fell apart, and the official narrative was changed to implicate only one man, who, of course, "died in a gun battle with police" after managing to fire on police from several positions in a superhuman feat of mobility.
  • Police responders and media were conveniently on scene to provide an instant high-drama "response" to the incident.
  • The man who has been implicated as the lone sniper is conveniently very dead right now, and therefore cannot stand trial.
  • The dead man was implicated in less than 24 hours after the incident, in contrast to the many unreported mass shootings (defined as shootings in which four or more people are hit), in which police don't find a perpetrator for days or weeks. 
  • The dead man's race and supposed political ideology were used to attempt to implicate and scapegoat entire group of people in order to justify the ongoing oppression and violence practiced by a dominant majority against this group.
In the details of the list I have presented are similarities with a number of high-profile incidents over the last two years, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Paris Massacre, the San Bernardino shootings, and the Orlando nightclub shootings.   The official narrative of these incidents has been mercilessly picked apart by a growing spectrum of people who are tired of being oppressed and especially tired of a dominant society which seems bent on finding ongoing excuses to continue the oppression and scapegoating.  So it is not surprising that one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement is identifying the Dallas shooting (and similar incidents which have taken place in other parts of the United States in the last two days) as a false flag operation.

I agree with her.

7 comments:

Five Hundred Pound Peep said...

I agree with you about the false flag operations. For some reason the powers that seem to want to have as much racial discord as possible. Like they desire race wars and as much chaos as possible. I'm not sure of what to think about Black Lives Matter, I fear I see some racism in this circles too and wondered how much of that is being "managed". Remember they can use two ends against the middle.

I think those who focus on "white priviledge" sow as much racial discord the other side. I wrote about that here.

http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.in/2015/09/putting-down-one-group-wont-elevate.html

I fear the final desired by the elites outcome is a federalized police force, the tool of all totalitarian nations world wide and historically and a strengthening of the police state to the max. The racists who say black people deserve thug cops to shoot first and ask questions later, don't seem to get that soon it will be the entire country under trigger happy militarized police.

The country over all is growing far more racist. I've never seen it this bad in my entire life. Oh and they really want to take the guns away at any cost. One can tell.

TH in SoC said...

Hello again, Five Hundred Pound Peep. Good to hear from you. Thanks for reading this post. I think that the purpose of the false flag operations implicating people of color in this country is to stir up a climate of hate and fear that will be helpful to the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump, just as the false flag operations against Muslims and refugees from Syria in European countries were used to legitimize the exclusion of refugees from European countries and the Brexit. What the most powerful members of societies in Europe and in North America seem to fear the most is the emergence of a multipolar world in which no one group will be able to dominate any other group. I've been reading a book called "Work Abuse" by Judith Wyatt and Chauncey Hare, which describes how those with prerogative power freak out when their power begins to decline - as it does when the people they consider to be their possessions begin to break away from them.

TH in SoC said...

Ah, someone else "gets" it! See https://www.corbettreport.com/dallas-ambush-follows-pattern-of-provocateured-false-flags/ and http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/08/ffwn-dallas/. Note especially what the writer at Veterans Today has to say about the Trump campaign.

Five Hundred Pound Peep said...

TH check out this article, linked to another and comments, I think you will it interesting...

http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2016/07/h1-b-blues.html

I find myself wondering if they desire Trump, to bring in the next world war and war of civilizations. Even the constant racial drum beat may help bring Trump in as people fear riots in the inner cities, and see Hillary as being ineffectual. Some are already crying for a stronger police state and that is scary. The false flags sure are setting up for war itself in Europe. I agree with you about the fight for dominance and even the elite may have their infighting. What do you think of my theory that the coup in Turkey is about telling that guy to get back in line?

Five Hundred Pound Peep said...

Did you see the video of Bush dancing at the memorial service for the "deceased cops"...I think the elite love to rub things in people's faces. I agree with them about the possibility of false flags.

Five Hundred Pound Peep said...

Sometimes I think they desire chaos for a Trump win. Trump will continue the Plan for a New American Century plans, and war with Syria and Iran is on the General Clark seven war roster.

TH in SoC said...

Hello Five Hundred Pound Peep,
My apologies for my tardiness in posting your comments. Housework and other things intervened. I heard about the coup attempt in Turkey, but I don't yet know enough about it to have an informed opinion. I think Trump's candidacy is simply one of the most visible signs of a malignantly narcissistic society. I didn't know about Bush dancing at the memorial - that's creepy! I will try to write more this weekend. Also, I'll check out the post you linked.