We Must Understand Repression to Be Able to Resist It

A primer on COINTELPRO, surveillance, and how our movements are attacked and undermined

A business card left for me in 2018, when the FBI attempted to contact me as part of a sweep targeting radical environmentalists. I declined to speak with them.

Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by auther and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

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From the history of McCarthyism, blacklisting, union-busting, genocide, COINTELPRO, and the green scare to the tactics revealed by Edward Snowden and Wikileaks, we know that the United States and other allied governments have consistently used both overt and clandestine tactics to infiltrate, undermine, destabilize, and destroy revolutionary and social movements.

Nelson Comstock, the preeminent historian of the illegal COINTELPRO program, which the FBI ostensibly ran from 1956 to 1971, notes that while the government made mistakes during the program, its goals are clear:

“The COINTELPRO papers and other files reveal some stupid FBI blunders and misestimates,” Comstock writes. “The total picture, however, is of cool, calculating technicians, not crazed paranoids, going about the business of secretly combating people who are challenging the rule of the rich. That’s the FBI’s job.”

COINTELPRO is worth studying in detail because, despite claims to the contrary, the tactics employed by the FBI during that era never stopped — and understanding them helps us to protect our movements.

Gabriella Coleman describes some of the activities within COINTELPRO in her 2015 book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous in a chapter worth quoting at length:

“[Leaked COINTELPRO] documents provide clear evidence of the elaborate steps the FBI took to monitor [Martin Luther] King in particular. The illegal surveillance lasted for years, starting in the late ’50s when the program was first authorized by Hoover. When King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, William Cornelius Sullivan, associate director of the FBI, wrote to Hoover, ‘We must mark [King] now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of Communism, the Negro and national security.’

King was considered ‘an unprincipled man’ who had a ‘weakness in his character. Sullivan wrote, ‘We will at the proper time when it can be done without embarrassment to the Bureau, expose King as an immoral opportunist who is not a sincere person but is exploiting the racial situation for personal gain.’ Soon after King was named ‘Man of the Year’ by Time magazine, the FBI was illegally authorized to bug his hotel room; ‘trespass is involved,’ they wrote. The resulting transcripts were presented to Hoover, who responded, ‘They will destroy the burrhead.’

The FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. As the first head of the FBI, Hoover routinely violated both federal law and FBI policy, harassed and attacked political dissidents, and leveraged the agencies surveillance to amass personal power. Photo by ajay_suresh. CC BY 2.0.

The bugs captured evidence of King’s marital infidelity, which excited Sullivan and Hoover, since the recordings could be used to destroy the ‘animal.’ An excerpt from the FBI letter sent to blackmail King evinces the ugly historical truth that the US government terrorized one of the nation’s most revered and peaceful civil rights crusaders [by attempting to coerce him into suicide]: ‘King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.’

… The government similarly targeted many other groups: Students for a Democratic Society, white supremacists, branches of the feminist movement, the radical Puerto Rican independence movement, and countless anti–Vietnam War associations [as well as CORE, SNCC, Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, socialist organizations, and many others]. Their aggressive and multi-pronged methods included predatory infiltration strategies with the purpose of sabotage: sustained, planned, and organized disruption of political movements so as to stamp them out of existence.

They seeded misinformation, blackmailed activists, took them to court over tax mishaps, and sometimes even resorted to direct physical violence. Government agents’ reckless mandates saw them feed the media false stories and forge correspondences in the name of targeted groups. Some of the most lasting damage came from agents planted in movements so deeply that their disruptions completely eroded the kernels of trust these groups were built upon. COINTELPRO agents fostered a climate of fear and demoralization, draining the vitality of what had been legitimate and deep reservoirs of political activity.”

Left: Part of the 1964 "suicide letter" that the FBI mailed anonymously to Martin Luther King Jr.. King interpreted the letter as an effort to persuade him to commit suicide. Right: COINTELPRO memo proposing a plan to expose the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the Black Panther Party, hoping to "possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public". Covert campaigns to publicly discredit activists and destroy their interpersonal relationships were a common tactic used by COINTELPRO agents.

The Modern COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO was only exposed when an anonymous group called the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office in Pennsylvania band stole documents which they shared with the press.

Similarly, the little we know about modern COINTELPRO equivalents comes from ethical theft — mostly from leaked documents which hint at a modern equivalent that is more technical and sophisticated than ever.

One example exposed by Snowden was a program called JTRIG, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, housed inside the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters — the UK’s equivalent of the NSA). JTRIG is known to have shared its techniques with all of the so-called “Five Eyes” countries (a group of nations — the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) which closely share intelligence and surveillance data).

Glenn Greenwald’s article on this program explains the tactics used to suppress social movements and threats to power at the time:

“Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: ‘false flag operations’ (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting ‘negative information’ on various forums.”

Slides leaked by Snowden detailing JTRIG techniques for undermining opposition.

This was over a decade ago. In today’s era where the internet and smartphones have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, ubiquitous mass surveillance, AI data analysis, voice cloning, and video generation, intelligence agencies can engage in more sophisticated programs of misinformation and disruption than ever before.

And as this recent interview documents, the next generation of these tools — AI-based predictive policing “pre-crime” based on total surveillance — are already being deployed today.

Divide and Conquer

Much of the infighting seen between political movements today bears the hallmarks of COINTELPRO-style tactics implemented using JTRIG methodology: political differences magnified into divisive hatred through paranoia and the spread of hearsay.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, these techniques were used to defang and destroy groups like the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement. Destabilization tactics encouraged activists to create rivalries, vie against one another, and break ties. In many cases, it even led to violence: prominent, good hearted activists would be labeled “snitches” by agents, and would be isolated, shunned, and even killed by their (former) comrades.

Ultimately, these movements were torn apart in violence and suspicion. In many cases, we still don’t know if the FBI was involved, but what is certain is that the FBI-style tactics — snitchjacketing, rumormongering, the sowing of division and hatred — were being adopted by paranoid activists, and what had been a culture of solidarity becaome one of distrust.

It shouldn’t come as a total surprise that those in power use lies, manipulation, false information, fake identities, “manipulation [of] online discourse,” and brutal violence to further their ends. They always fight dirty.

And as they well know, violence works. That’s why they use it.

Corporate Surveillance and Disruption

Corporations and the rich can count on the United States government, FBI, and other agencies to have their back, but they’ve also developed their own organizations and methods to engaging in similar tactics.

For example. a 2011 leak of documents from private security/intelligence company STRATOR included information about corporate strategies to neutralize activist movements. They recommended their clients — including oil companies and other transnational corporations — categorize their opponents as one of four character types: radicals, idealists, realists, and opportunists. These camps can then be dealt with summarily:

“First, isolate the radicals. Second, ‘cultivate’ the idealists and ‘educate’ them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.”

In their view, radicals are the real threat. (Opportunists, who are generally involved in organizing only for prestige and power, don’t even merit mention in this neutralization strategy, because they have no value for social movements at all. They should be excluded from our political organizing out of hand.)

This is how movements are neutralized: those who should be allies are divided, infighting becomes rampant, and paranoia reigns.

Overt Repression

Of course, the clandestine tricks detailed above are most effective at preserving the status quo when paired with outright repression and violence.

That violence can be seen regularly, from the National Guard being called in to serve as pipeline police at Standing Rock to them serving today as forces of domestic control in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Portland — from the murder of Fred Hampton and the bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia to the brutal suppression of the Occupy encampments and pro-Palestine campus demonstrations.

Environmentalists are targeted as well. The “Green Scare” in the mid-2000s targeted Earth Liberation Front activists who used sabotage, eventually leading to many serving hefty jail sentences after a former comrade of theirs, an active drug addict, turned snitch and wore a wire. After burning SUVs as a protest against climate change, one activist was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Similarly, Jessica Reznicek was given a “terrorism enhancement” after she was arrested and charged with sabotaging the under-construction Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.

This is happening around the world. Alexandra Shaner notes that in Italy, “In a disturbing trend that has become the new normal in Italy, peaceful eco-activists are being branded a “danger to security and public order,” served with specious charges, banned from cities without trial, and criminalized under anti-terrorist laws intended to prosecute the Mafia.” In the UK, Roger Hallam was sentenced to five years in prison for simply joining a Zoom call to plan a disruptive non-violent direct action protest (the action was never carried out). State security forces from South Africa to China have worked to undermine movements for justice consistently for decades.

Recently, the Trump Administration has supercharged these efforts by signing National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 which “directs a new national strategy to ‘disrupt’’ any individual or groups ‘that foment political violence,’ [with a focus on those who hold anti-capitalist and other left-wing views, such as supporting Luigi Mangione] including ‘before they result in violent political acts,’” by designating ANTIFA (not an organization, but a tactic, and one which is not always used strategically) as a domestic terror organization. The administration is also planning to designate ANTIFA as a foreign terrorist organization, a much more serious legal designation that experts predict will have severe negative consequences for free speech, dissent, and protest. As the Civil Liberties Defense Center notes:

“The Trump regime will likely use [these designations] to increase surveillance and criminalization of its adversaries (increasingly similar to Putin’s Russia, where political opponents are murdered in prisons). They may attempt to use it to target, threaten, and punish people who openly protest the regime’s policies and actions. When the FBI has carried out previous domestic terrorism investigations against neo-Nazi groups like the Base and Atomwaffen Division, US prosecutors used criminal enterprise laws like RICO. We’ve seen an uptick in the State’s use of RICO to target political expression — e.g. the Atlanta Cop City cases, where a judge recently tossed out the abusive and illegal use of RICO against activists. The regime may use this designation to place the military in US cities to enforce the will of the dictator, and justify it as ‘fighting antifa protests.’”

They conclude, “It’s critically important for Americans to continue to fight against fascism and to defend our imperfect democracy.”

Fighting Back

We live in a particularly repressive moment. However, it is by no means unique. In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, for example, the United States government collaborated with corporations to gun down striking workers, deport anarchists, communists, and other dissidents, and even conduct aerial bombing attacks on rebellious miners. And of course, this isn’t even to mention the slavery, indigenous genocide and land theft, and ecocide upon which American empire was founded, or the scores of overseas invasions, coups, assassinations, death squads, proxy wars, despots, and other outrages this country has been responsible for.

Elites and the ruling class always fight to protect their interests, and the tools of overt and covert violence are among their favored means.

The small blessing in this long history is that we don’t have to start from scratch. We can learn from what past revolutionaries, activists, and social movements have done — or failed to do — to stay as effective and safe as possible.

The next article in this series, coming next week, will share a number of these lessons.

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