FBI counterintelligence programs targeted civil rights activism as threats to national security

Evidence

Most famously, the FBI’s notorious counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) targeted Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), and others, subjecting them to tactics adopted from military counterintelligence that, a Senate intelligence committee later found, “would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity.” As explained in that committee’s report, published in 1976, COINTELPRO functioned as “a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security.” The unstated premise of COINTELPRO operations was that activism challenging racial, social, and economic injustice was dangerous and “that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” Over the course of fifteen years, under the leadership of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO infiltrated numerous organizations devoted to Black freedom, such as the Black Panther Party, harassing, imprisoning, torturing, and even murdering its members, including Fred Hampton. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 392

Categorization

• SEED: The COINTELPRO premise — that challenges to the existing social order count as national-security threats — is a strong hook for an essay on how states conflate ‘dangerous ideas’ with ‘dangerous groups,’ and how surveillance frames dissent as crisis.
• XREF: connects to: The FBI operated a documented program undermining civil rights leaders — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 153; The FBI manufactured ‘black identity extremism’ to justify policing black protest — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 209; The FBI ran genuine conspiracies against black activists in the 1960s — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 150 (+4 more)