COINTELPRO Lorenzo Komboa Ervin 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 it 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 anti-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 represion 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 partipation" 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. Back to Anarchism And The Black Revolution