posted
FBI terrorism unit says 'black identity extremists' pose a violent threat
Leaked report, citing concerns of retaliation over ‘perceptions of police brutality against African Americans’, prompts fears of crackdown on activists
The US government has declared “black identity extremists” a violent threat, according to a leaked report from the FBI’s counter-terrorism division.
The assessment, obtained by Foreign Policy, has raised fears about federal authorities racially profiling activists and aggressively prosecuting civil rights protesters.
The report, dated August 2017 and compiled by the Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, said: “The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.” Incidents of “alleged police abuse” have “continued to feed the resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity within the BIE movement”.
The FBI’s dedicated surveillance of black activists follows a long history of the US government aggressively monitoring protest movements and working to disrupt civil rights groups, but the scrutiny of African Americans by a domestic terrorism unit was particularly alarming to some free speech campaigners.
“When we talk about enemies of the state and terrorists, with that comes an automatic stripping of those people’s rights to speak and protest,” said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It marginalizes what are legitimate voices within the political debate that are calling for racial and economic justice.”
The document has emerged at a time of growing concerns about Donald Trump’s links to the far right and white nationalists, and increasing anxieties about his administration’s efforts to further criminalize communities of color and shield police from scrutiny. Anti-Trump protesters and Black Lives Matter activists have continued to face harsh prosecutions and close federal monitoring.
The FBI did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Friday, but defended its tracking of “black identity extremists” in a statement to Foreign Policy, claiming the “FBI cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights”.
The FBI’s report noted specific cases of recent violence against police, most notably Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old shooter in Dallas who killed five officers and said he was targeting white people and law enforcement. Black Lives Matter – a movement protesting the disproportionate killings of black citizens by police in the US – had no ties to Johnson or other targeted killings of police and has condemned those shootings.
The number of police officers killed on the job also remains a fraction of the number of citizens killed by officers each year, and statistics suggest that more white offenders than black offenders kill officers.
The new FBI report said “BIE violence” peaked in the 1960s and 1970s “in response to changing socioeconomic attitudes and treatment of blacks”, adding that possible indicators today for “BIEs posing a violent threat to law enforcement” include “violent anti-white rhetoric” and “attempts to acquire illegal weapons or explosives”. BIE appears to be a very new term within law enforcement, Foreign Policy noted.
Elsa Waithe, a comedian and activist with Black Lives Matter, said she feared the FBI’s classification could deter people from joining protests and further “criminalize anyone who is already in the movement”.
She noted that she often wears a “black power” button and could easily see the FBI labeling her as a threat as a result: “The term ‘black identity extremist’ is so vague on purpose … If I wanted to do a picnic for black folks, is this now some sort of terrorist activity?”
But law enforcement threats would not discourage her, she said. “This changes nothing. For some people, this means we fight harder.”
Some reports have suggested that the Trump administration has also pushed to focus counter-terrorism efforts solely on Islamist extremism and no longer target white supremacist groups. The president further faced significant backlash in August for saying there were “very fine people” on both sides of a neo-Nazi rally where a civil rights activist was killed by an alleged white nationalist.
The FBI document seemed to be aligned with far-right figures who have increasingly called Black Lives Matter a terrorist group, some comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan, noted Tajsar.
DeRay Mckesson, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, likened the “black identity extremist” monitoring to the FBI’s highly controversial domestic counterintelligence program known as Cointelpro, which was used to target political groups and activists like the NAACP, Martin Luther King Jr, socialist and communist groups and anti-war protesters.
“We knew that we were likely being watched,” said Mckesson, who has spoken out about being monitored by the US government and FBI. “This is confirmation that the work of social justice continues to threaten those in power.”
posted
So basically people like Shaun King etc and people who fight for social justice are labelled extreme terrorists. Yet, KKK members including their violent leadership (past and present) are not seen as a terrorist group, which of course is a very interesting evaluation.
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
What did you expect that 400+ years of chattel slavery wasn't created to put blacks on equal footing and the madness wrought after "emancipation" sure as hell didn't help to alleviate black issues plus the near constant attack on black people should've former an identity like this sooner.
Posts: 1123 | From: New York | Registered: Feb 2016
| IP: Logged |
posted
^ One could argue that 45 is now basically fulfuling the promise David Duke was taking about, when he said: "I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.".
Ironically he was never blocked by 45. However, several people who did speak out against social injustice on 45s twitter page, have been blocked by 45.
"Why we voted for Donald Trump": David Duke explains the white supremacist Charlottesville protests.
David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard, is unambiguous about what Saturday’s alt-right and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, means to him: It’s the fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s vision for America.
“We are determined to take our country back,” Duke said from the rally, calling it a “turning point.” “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”
The Charlottesville rally is nominally about the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee rather than anything in the Trump administration. But Duke was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump as far back as the Republican primary in 2016, and Trump’s reluctance to disavow that support was, briefly, a big issue.
Duke has remained a faithful Trump supporter since then, insisting that the president-elect’s policies line up with the former KKK leader’s vision for America.
He was less happy with Trump’s vague tweet condemning the violence later Saturday afternoon: …
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic