The US government targets activists and civil rights leaders to suppress protests, discourage dissent, and stifle change. Most people are not aware of the history and severity of attacks on movements for justice, nor are they aware of the current wave of increased suppression.

Infamously, COINTELPRO, a program created to “disrupt Communism” in 1956 was used against civil rights and anti-war activists. According to an FBI memo, their objective was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” civil rights groups in general, and especially the Black Panthers.

Methods of “neutralizing” included arrest, cop-jacketing, discrediting people (with both false and true information), harassment, false charges, intimidation, black mail, and assassination.

It is documented that the FBI and the Chicago police worked together to execute Fred Hampton. Then they falsely claimed he was killed in a shootout. The FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. for surveillance and black mail, and they tried to break up his marriage. They thought that they could make him suicidal, and they tried to do it but failed. The FBI sent false information to encourage violence between street gangs and the Black Panthers, leading to beatings and deaths.

COINTELPRO officially “ended” in 1971 after activists stole documents revealing the existence of the program, but suppressive activities continued.

In 2009, the FBI targeted anti-war groups with informants trying to get information to incriminate members. When this failed, the FBI trumped up charges against 23 activists. They followed through with more arrests of activist leaders the next year. The charges were eventually defeated because no one took the deals asking them to lie about their fellow activists.

In 2017, the FBI began classifying people fighting for police accountability as “Black Identity Extremists”. This categorized the Black Lives Matter movement as potential “domestic terrorists” and treated Black people wanting racial justice the same as violent white supremacists groups. The FBI began increased surveillance and suppression activities against civil rights activists.

Threatened by the uprisings of 2020-2021 and growing pro-Palestine/anti-war sentiment in 2024, the government has again stepping suppression of activism with increased militarized response from police, mass arrests of protesters, targeting journalists at protests, criminalization of protests, and a new wave of discrediting and sowing conflict within justice movements.

A current wave of legislation criminalizes protests, with charges of up to a year in jail for blocking traffic and sidewalks. How do you have a large protest without blocking something? You don’t. That’s the point.

In Oklahoma, protest organizers can now be targeted with felony conspiracy charges. Cop city protesters in Atlanta were charged with domestic terrorism. The Tampa 5 in Florida faced bogus felony charges. Increasingly, mass arrests are used to deter people from using their first amendment rights. Pro-Palestine student protesters are expelled, suspended, fined, and kicked out of student housing.

Militarized response to protests with armies of cops in riot gear, military weapons such as LRADs, overuse of chemical weapons, and misuse of “less lethal” weapons have all increased. Liberal and conservative politicians alike target protesters with unjustified militarized response. You may think of Donald Trump and Tim Walz as adversaries from the election, but they both support police violence toward protesters. Trump speaks to it regularly, and Walz responded with unjustified, even illegal, use of force again and again in 2020-2021. The two men then argued online about which of them was better at violating our first amendment rights - like it was a badge of honor for them.

There is a dramatic increase in manipulation and lies to discredit activists and create internal conflict, but we’ll do a whole piece on that. The short version is that divisive ideas are fed into movements by infiltrators and more gullible activists. Social media is also being used very effectively to turn groups that should be working together against each other. Realize that COINTELPRO never stopped, and watch for those tactics being used to distract, divide, and destroy movements for justice.

Conservative media paints people standing up for justice as crazy people, thugs, and terrorists; but other media tends to ignore activism or characterize it as odd and ineffective. If we put 2000 people in the streets, the media might report “hundreds”. If we send a press release clearly outlining our concerns and demands, the media will often present as if our demands are uncertain, or instead, interview a bystander who knows nothing about the issue. Much of social media increasingly favors conservative material.

The new Trump administration will only make things worse. They have announced intent to legally target political rivals and activists. Trump calls protesters terrorists and will likely increase use of antiterrorism laws to stifle free speech. Violent cops will feel even more empowered to arrest and assault protesters. Trump is threatening to use the military for his crackdown. We don't know how bad it will be. It is already bad, and it will get significantly worse.

Any of us who can, we need to keep fighting oppression. The fear is supposed to silence us. We need to consider our tactics more closely and prepare legal support for activists who are targeted. We need to show up for protests and call-in events for comrades facing charges. We need to find better ways to get our message despite a complicit corporate media and social media controlled by right-wingers. We need to organize person-to-person. We need to find ways to create accountability for corrupt officials even with slimy oligarchs and their patsies controlling all branches of government. We need to stop helping the state by unnecessary infighting with other leftists and progressives. We need to push back against respectability politics that say we need to be polite about people's rights and lives being stolen. We need to work to make sure the outrage for state oppression and state violence stays on the front burner and is channeled to effective action. We need to preach everywhere we can that the real “culture war” is not liberal versus conservative, but the super-rich versus everyone else.

www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/fbi
www.rightsanddissent.org/news/leaked-fbi-documents-show-fbi-developed-iron-fist-to-counter-black-identity-extremists/
fightbacknews.org/articles/resistance-key-2010-fbi-raids-anti-war-and-international-solidarity-activists
https://digitalchicagohistory.org/exhibits/show/fred-hampton-50th/the-assassination