Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Cartoon
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The FBI Targets Black “Ideology”
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
11 Oct 2017
The FBI Targets Black “Ideology”
The FBI Targets Black “Ideology”

“It is a catch-all for blanket repression of Black activism of any kind.

The FBI has apparently chosen a new heading under which to lump Black Americans targeted for political persecution: “Black Identity Extremists.” There’s a simple explanation for the new categorization. The FBI is a bureaucracy whose day-to-day work involves drawing up lists of people and organizations to be surveilled, disrupted and prosecuted. The dramatic increase in Black “movement” activity since the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has presented the FBI with a much larger field of targets, including youthful elements loosely grouped under the Black Lives Matter banner. When bureaucracies compile new lists, they typically file them under new names.

In a sense, the change in nomenclature is an acknowledgement by the FBI that, after nearly two generations of Black political stagnation and capitulation, there is finally a Black “movement” with the potential to upset the status quo. The leaked FBI counterterrorism division report, scooped by Foreign Policy magazine, also signifies that Black grassroots political activity is under the purview of the national security state’s War on Terror and, therefore, subject to the awesome array of repressive measures authorized to law enforcement and intelligence agencies since 9/11.

“The change in nomenclature is an acknowledgement by the FBI that there is finally a Black ‘movement’ with the potential to upset the status quo.”

COINTELPRO – the FBI’s program to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" those designated as enemies of the state – was itself exposed as an illegal police state mechanism in the mid-1970s. Since 2001, the government’s COINTELPRO-like programs have been superseded by a far more repressive regime, inaugurated by President George W. Bush and strengthened under Barack Obama. The post-9/ll national security state has legalized the world’s most intrusive surveillance apparatus and detention without trial or charge, a system designed specifically to crush targeted ideologies – meaning, modes of thought and political identification.

It is in this context that the FBI’s umbrella designation “Black Identity Extremists” is so insidious and dangerous, in that it targets people based on their (stated, imagined or inferred) beliefs and ethnic loyalties, rather than specific criminal acts or even organizational affiliation. It is a catch-all for blanket repression of Black activism of any kind.

“Since 2001, the government’s COINTELPRO-like programs have been superseded by a far more repressive regime.”

The FBI mindset has clearly been shaped by its frustration with so-called “lone wolf” Islamic jihadists -- individual actors not directly affiliated with al Qaida or its offshoots. U.S. police and intelligence operatives speak constantly of the need to identify and neutralize Muslims in our midst that have been “radicalized” or “self-radicalized” and thus are fair game to be subjected to every tactic of entrapment and dirty tricks. The FBI views Black activists in the same light -- as potentially dangerous, “self-radicalized” threats. The counterterrorism division report cites six armed attacks on U.S. cops in the post-Ferguson period, including Dallas, Baton Rouge and New York City, as justification for its ideology-based categorization of the Black menace. Micah Johnson, who shot 11 cops in Dallas, “appeared to have been influenced by BIE ideology” based on his “journal writings and statements to police,” said the Bureau.

“BIE ideology” is whatever the FBI thinks it is. In the tortured logic of white supremacist law and order, Black identification with other Blacks is inherently subversive and a prima facie justification for surveillance. The Bureau’s BIE list could eventually accommodate every conceivable political tendency of Black thought -- including the “ideologies” resident in the venerable old NAACP, which issued a statement on the leaked FBI document.

“In a time when white supremacists are marching down city streets with loaded weapons and tiki torches — organizing rallies of terror around the country — it comes as a great shock that the FBI would decide to target black identity groups protesting police brutality and their right to exist free of harm, as a threat,” said NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson.

“The designation targets people based on their (stated, imagined or inferred) beliefs and ethnic loyalties, rather than specific criminal acts or even organizational affiliation.”

Johnson then attempts to lay the blame for this state of affairs on President Trump, who has “emboldened... right-wing extremists, white nationalists and white supremacists.” But, the FBI has been surveilling Black Lives Matter activists ever since the explosion of resistance in Ferguson. As early as December, 2014, the FBI was discovered to have tracked Black Lives Matter activists at the huge Mall of the Americas in Bloomington, Minnesota, in conjunction with state and local officers of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. In July of 2015 The Intercept reported that “Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson,” exposing extensive surveillance of the rejuvenated Black movement by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The FBI has been spying on Black activists since its founding in the early 20th century. COINTELPRO was created during the Eisenhower administration, and never died. Under President Obama, Black activists became targets of the War on Terror, and now the FBI has conjured up a rationale to criminalize African American political thought as “Black Identities Ideology.” The Bureau will ultimately decide what this ideology actually is, and whose head it is lurking in.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

#COINTELPRO
#Black Liberation Movement

Trending

Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be
Rwandan President Paul Kagame is Not Papa Africa Saving Slaves
“Nissan, You Made Us Mad”: Union Promises to Fight Mississippi Defeat
How Identity Became a Weapon Against the Left
Why Claudia Jones Will Always Be More Relevant than Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's Getting Real – Google Censors the Left. And Us.

Related Stories

MLK: A Snap Shot in Time
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
MLK: A Snap Shot in Time
05 April 2018
“There is no reason to believe that Dr.
Against False Conflation: JFK, MLK, and the Triple Evils
Paul Street
Against False Conflation: JFK, MLK, and the Triple Evils
04 April 2018
“The Kennedy brothers approved racist FBI director J.
Black Women and International Women’s Day
Ken Morgan
Black Women and International Women’s Day
14 March 2018
“Alongside Assata and Rosa and Harriet and Sojourner, let’s celebrate Grace Campbell, of the Blood Brotherhood and the Communist Party.
A Black Radical Defense of the Second Amendment
Patrick D. Anderson
A Black Radical Defense of the Second Amendment
07 March 2018
“Black communities have differentiated individual firearm ownership from structured self-defense organization
The Funke Wisdom of Chocolate Cities
Mary F. Corey
The Funke Wisdom of Chocolate Cities
07 March 2018
“The West becomes West South; the North is Up South; the Middle West is Mid South.”
The Great, Bloody Black Dispersal from the Cities
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
The Great, Bloody Black Dispersal from the Cities
01 March 2018
“The grand plan is to reverse the demography of the Seventies by forcing Blacks out of the central cities and
The FBI's War on Black-Owned Bookstores
Joshua Clark Davis
The FBI's War on Black-Owned Bookstores
28 February 2018
“In Hoover’s eyes, black-owned bookstores represented a coordinated network of hate-spewing extremists.”
Black Liberation Means Rejection of National Security (State) Citizenship
Aziz Rana
Black Liberation Means Rejection of National Security (State) Citizenship
14 February 2018
“Oppressed communities have to articulate their own independent foreign policy grounded above all in the inte
Criminalizing “Panther Love” and the New Wave COINTELPRO Tactics in Texas Prisons
Keith “Comrade Malik” Washington
Criminalizing “Panther Love” and the New Wave COINTELPRO Tactics in Texas Prisons
14 February 2018
“I represent a new generation of freedom fighters who have learned from the mistakes of our fallen ancestors.”
Is a Court Case in Texas the First Prosecution of a “Black Identity Extremist”?
Martin De Bourmont
Is a Court Case in Texas the First Prosecution of a “Black Identity Extremist”?
07 February 2018
“Daniels’s arrest poses the even more troubling possibility that his case could be just the first of many.

More Stories


  • Kiilu Nyasha
    Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence
    For Sistar Kiilu Nyasha: Freedom Is A Constant Struggle…
    19 Apr 2018
    Never thought I’d see the day that I’d pray for: Fake News; Never thought I’d see the day that I’d pray for: Alternative Facts from Boss Tweet— pray that
  • White Lies and Black Disbelief in a Fading Empire
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    White Lies and Black Disbelief in a Fading Empire
    18 Apr 2018
    “What would prevent Russia from attacking the United States because of all the people that the United States is killing in our communities.”
  • Why Don’t We All Vote to Commit International Crimes?
    Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
    Why Don’t We All Vote to Commit International Crimes?
    18 Apr 2018
    “Congress can’t authorize the unilateral use of military force abroad without violating the first principle of international law established by the UN Charter:
  • Freedom Rider: Syria and Press Propaganda
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Syria and Press Propaganda
    18 Apr 2018
    “Trump protects himself with war as Democrats and the rest of the ruling elite support his militarism.”
  • Independent Journalist Corner: A Conversation with Ajit Singh
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Independent Journalist Corner: A Conversation with Ajit Singh
    18 Apr 2018
    “China’s rise, which is at the heart of the multipolar trend, is the primary threat to U.S. international supremacy.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us