"COINTELPRO: And Now It's Called Government"

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, July 10, 2002

COINTELPRO, a series of programs set up and run by the FBI in the 1950's and
60's, not only crushed the movements that existed in the 1960's, but also
altered the political reality of the later period. Even before the Christian
Right helped to elect Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, Right-wing
conservatives had taken over the political agenda in the USA; also, ideals of
revolutionary politics and racial justice were placed way on the margins,
and the state assumed even more of an internal national security role. In
fact, the government's Department of Justice is being used to dismantle any
civil right gains for Blacks or other ethnic groups, so that racial or
ethnic equality does not exist. This is the legacy that we are living with
today. So COINTELPRO did more than crushed the Black Power movement and the
New Left.

In political terms, what happened exactly? Both wings of the Black and
youth-led social change movement were smashed when Malcolm X and Martin
Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. The Black Panther Party was destroyed
with police and military violence in the mid-to late 1960's, and the New
Left was undermined. Further, by 1972, radical ideals were coopted by the
surviving Liberals, and the Left itself captured by the Democratic Party,
reappearing in the academy, labor bureaucracy, and middle class sectors of
the economy. Those left groups outside the Democrats were either bought off
by corporate grant money, or driven out of mainstream political life. That
is why the radical Left is so marginal at this time; of course, that is an
opening for Anarchism, but that's another story.

Thousands of Black, Xicano, Puerto Rican, white anit-war, and other
activists were thrown into prison, driven into exile, or silenced through
fear and intimidation in the 1970's and '80's. The communities of color (and
of poverty) were harshly disillusioned by the state's counter-attack. The
community that had turned to itself in the 1960's and challenged the status
quo, now began to turn on itself and self-destruct. Government-orchestrated
drug-dealing and gun-running in the ghetto, depression levels of poverty in
Black and Brown communities, and police terrorism of peoples of color beat
down the population. Further, the industrial base of the country made
millions of poor and homeless people, a new lumpen class.

In addition to this, the massive use of imprisonment and police paramilitary
forces became an even more prevelant fact of life from the 1970's onward,
(e.g. SWAT teams and mass imprisonment of Black youth) to hold back social
change. Today, over 2.5 millions people are in the American prison and
jutice system, not even including jails and maximum security juvenile and
mental facilities.

So, if we look at the dregs of the Left today and the existence of hardly
any radical Black or youth movements, this is what we must say: We do not
have authentic movements or grassroots leaders, but rather political
opportunism and symbolic representation. There is massive fear, confusion,
and weakness in both the radical and Black/POC movements. There is an
unstated fear among activists of government repression because of the proven
willingness to use massive force by the state. That's why so much pacifism
dominates today's social movements. The limits have clearly been set, and
unless they want to be bloodied, most radicals obey them.

That is why an outright rebellion like the recent events in Cincinnati
against racism and police repression were spontaneous, since none of the
established "leaders" would be seen leading them. But that is also why such
a spontaneous event is just as important as the anti-globalization protests;
even though they are localized, they are a direct challenge to the state by
voices of the voiceless. This was a rebellion of the poor against the police
state, rather than a race riot directed against white people generally.

So today, there is no pretense that the common people have a voice in the
government or that there is racial justice, as the New Left's "radical
participation" and the civil rights movement's campaigns called for. In this
bleak period, the government and corporations run the economy and the state,
with no real "interference" from the masses of people. Further, the national
security wing has unquestioned authority to wage war, use police or military
force to intervene in any domestic neighborhood or any foreign country, and
have created a massive prison-industrial complex to exploit prison labor and
maintain absolute social control of the poor and workers. This is a fascist
state, although it has kept the trappings of deomocratic rule. With the
passage of even more repressive laws, crime bills and anti-terrorist
leglislation, the government now has an all-powerful apparatus, even
threating to dispense with civilian rule entirely, and go to a shadow
government accountable only to the Bush administration. I am interested in
seeing if there will be elections in 2004, and if so, will Bush step down if
defeated or try to lead a coup like Richard Nixon.

Our task, which we must accept, is to build a movement, not only to demand
the protection of civil rights and democratic liberties, but to build a new
society entirely. We need a social revolution, not more reforms. We need to
continue the battles of the 1960's, but go beyond them to dismantle the
state and capitalist society altogether. But although we must understand
that the state will always use repression, we must build movements strong
enough to resist it, and to deal a death blow to not only capitalism, but
all forms of authoritarian rule. COINTELPRO still exists, but today it's
called government.