Had Richard Nixon ever been impeached, one of the charges levied against him would have been that he used tihe FBI to surveil anti-war protesters, using the FBI and J Edgar Hoover, who was among the most anti-Communist in American government since the 1930s,
When Vietnam was still Lyndon Johnson’s war, until 1969, the Communist Party was illegal in the US, as was membership in it, and a long list called the Attorney General’s list, which was still in effect when I got my first security clearance in 1971 listed all the known Communist-front groups, dozens. Being domestic, the FBI was tasked with the chief watchdog mission.
When anti-war protests broke out in 1965, primarily over the draft, and heated up through 1968, once LBJ had decided not to seek re-election, and the anti-war joined forces with Black Power groups, the FBI began looking more and more deeply into just who it was that was founding these groups. We’re doing the same thing today, trying to figure out who is paying for all those poor “refugees” from Honduras trekking (when the cameras are on) in our direction.
The anti-war groups were no more organic or spontaneous than these “refugees” and J Edgar Hoover knew it. In spirit, and apparently through grandchildren, they are with us still.
I was a liberal in my college days, so had the good fortune to hang around their periphery in those same LBJ years. So when they took over part of my campus around 1970, maybe Kent State related, I got to sit in on one of their sessions in the basement part of a history building. I had a friend who was friends with some of the leaders.
They were remarkably like they are today; long hair, bearded, using rock terminology to discuss weighty concepts of Lenin and Marx, which, having a minor in studying both, I knew they couldn’t get close to with a divining rod. Of course, police were “pigs” then, and the girls, much more than the guys, were almost identical with how they appear on the streets of protest Oregon, semi-pretty at best, but no pink hats to add even a splash of color to. If there were 50 girls on our campus who for-sure did need to wear a bra, these were them.
The point is, after the Chicago Democrat Convention and Richard Nixon became president, and Vietnam became Nixon’s War, and no longer a Democrat mistake, (and as it remains in most modern histories today) it became very fashionable to begin attacking FBI surveillance of these anti-war and Black Power Groups with the financial links that trickled back to Moscow. Considering that Frank Sinatra’s FBI file was more than 2000 pages in these pre-computer days for his connections to Da Mob, you can imagine how large the matrix of files the FBI had on these soldiers during the “Nascent Spring” of the Marxist Left in America.
This surveillance was justified then, and it’s justified now. And for the very same reason, to monitor and bust up, when the opportunity arose, the silent partners behind these, the older protesters whose purpose it always was… to destroy the United States.
If you believe in the cosmic Good and Evil, and believe that was Satan, posing as a snake, that tempted Eve in the Garden, then you know that their battle had been raging for eons before our world was even born, and Man placed upon it.
But, if you don’t believe these superstitions, “honest” hard science will still tell you the same story, only in terms of human behavior that is conducive to human survival and conduct that endangers it. On this account Darwin agrees with God. and the American Constitution proves you don’t have to have a PhD, JD, or even a Doctor of the Church to understand this fundamental element of human survival; reciprocity.
So, treason, schmeason. Like their parents, these front line troops are too stupefied to know what they really represent, except that they “hate the good, for being the Good”, something they had ingrained in them since they were in 4th grade. They do not think because they cannot think, or connect more than two dots. Very sad, actually.
But they are in the front lines, and in sufficient numbers that some will break out and start breaking things, including peoples’ heads.
Successive governments since LBJ and Nixon have spied on citizens with this specific purpose to determine if they are working with or being funded by, foreign enemies of the United States.
So Left wing groups were constantly in court about FBI spying during the Nixon-Hoover years, claiming right of privacy, illegal search-seizure, a bagful of constitutional privacy issues, until of course, the Democrats came into power, as they did in 20009-2017. By then the game had changed significantly because it had all gone high-tech, and the people (Google, et al) who earned their spurs helping China put tens of thousands of citizens of China in prison for thinking pro-democracy thoughts out loud on the internet.
Government spying on citizens had become viral enough that by the end of the Clinton presidency, 1998, Hollywood was making movies about it, “Enemy of the State” (Will Smith, Gene Hackman) which revealed a lot of high tech spy capabilities out there. I know I was shocked a little, especially the ease with which government could get inside the people’s private banking and credit cards. I know I was shocked a little, and it was on Clinton’s watch these things were revealed.
Then came 9/11 and people were grateful that George W Bush was in charge; even Al Gore was grateful for awhile, until his campaign team told him to shut up. But the necessity for government to surveil citizens increased, so the rules in doing so became more complex. It was Robert Mueller who helped create, then headed up the new Counter Terrorism unit in the FBI thus laying claim to his one shining star in American history. (He probably still cherishes that.)
I think Bush largely kept faith with the Constitution on this account, under some very stressful circumstances, for he was breaking new ground. But hearkening back to a late summer conversation had around a pool in Annapolis, just before I went to the USSR in 1991, the point was made that we can’t always rely on good people being in charge in Washington, and that those not-so-good people might abuse the rules once in power. Clinton proved that, 1993-2000. As did Barack Obama, 2009-2017. What no one accounted for was the arising, from the 1990s on, a tech sector that had other plans for government of their own, and a position they largely thought they could buy. Obama worked with them to bring about the catastrophe called Arab Spring, which killed hundreds of thousands, still I don’t think those arrogant men and women in the high castles know what they have done, or what they are dealing with, or who will come out on top in this eventual power struggle between the Corporate Men in the High Castle and the more ancient Democrat Party, who wrote the book on fighting dirty and stabbing friends in the back.
While both are despotic, their visions of power are not the same.
The best we can do here is consider the goons on the street, and, where possible, de-fang them without becoming like them. For if we disrupt their ability to recruit and mobilize ground soldiers the manipulators will be in a quandary about what to do. Their ground plans are directly linked to their “social media messaging” which is supposed to convey a different reality, especially of winning, which, on their best day, no more than over 35% of the people ever believed was actually happening.
Actually, with this bunch, it’s easy. You don’t have to lay a glove on them. Or even kill any of their rose bushes. All you have to do is find as many ways possible to put a bottle of Scope in their mail box as you can imagine. and simply put them and make them fear the things that go bump in the night. A bloody nose, tops.
(I know, you’re too young to remember the old Scope Mouthwash commercials from the 60s, about the lengths people in the office would go to tell a co-worker he/she had bad breath. George Carlin, the stand-up comedian from that era, suggested that maybe the Texas Tower sniper, Charles Whitman, who killed 14 in 1966, might have been triggered by a bottle of Scope in his mailbox, hence the punch-line.)
I’m sure all of you can think of a hundred different non-internet ways to let a goon know you’ve identified that you know who he/she is, and where he/she lives and works.
9 out of 10 will stop dead in their tracks. This is not the same thing as trolling on the internet. This is much more intimate, more close. Boots on the ground. But much more invigorating. And that will dash their manipulators’ plans at the same time yours become invigorated.
All the specific To-do’s are found at “Dead Rosebushes” specifically and Dark Alley (16 pgs, in general). There are dozens of ways to blight their path. Just pay attention to the self-preservation protocols.
This sort of activity trickles up. Trust me, their front office will know, and become less sure of their plans a well.
So surveil them. This is a helluva of a lot better way to spend an evening than following their antics on Twitter.
It’s all about Intel and the gathering of it and using it without giving yourself away.
