Jim wrote:
--
>> > there are plenty of SDS and
>> > Black Panthers running around today, the vast majority
>> > never went to jail.
>
> Faustine:
>> Of course they didn't. The bottom line is that their organizations
>> were torn apart by operations conducted against them,
>
> This is incorrect. The black panthers were torn apart because they
> murdered dissidents, and "dissidents" came to include anyone who
> wondered if Newton was snorting too much of the Black Panther funds.
>
> The same is true to a greater or lesser extent of most of the other
> communist armed communist organizations. The first target of those
> arms was always themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, though this
> was most dramatic and bloody in the case of the Black Panthers.
The FBI explioted this mindset to the hilt--COINTELPRO kept them all
twitching like galvanic frogs. The merest stimulus and they exploded right
on cue. Getting your enemies to destroy themselves, what a strategy.
The whole thing is a depressing reminder of what happens when hot-headed
idealism faces off against cold-blooded realism. Call me a fence sitter,
but there's got to be another way.
Here's a great link, if youre interested:
The COINTELPRO Papers
Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars
Against Dissent in the United States
by Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall
South End Press ISBN 0-89608-359-4
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htm
~Faustine.