The FBI looks for...you

A brief article from bayareapoliticalreview.org summarizing how the FBI has decided the main threats to U.S. security are the ALF, the ELF and the ABCF.
What this means for you, your friends and organizations is foreboding.
Better text and other articles can be seen at the website.
The chase is on...for a straw dog
The Aryan Nation is actively trying to collaborate with Al Qa'ida. The Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by an associate of the Michigan Militia; Eric Rudolph, a member of the Army of God has been charged with carrying out the Olympic Park Bombing in 1996. Robert S. Mueller was involved in the prosecutions of John Gotti, Manuel Noriega and the Lockerbie bombers.

But what has the ABCF done?

Like all questions, there's a simple answer and a complicated answer. In this case the simple answer is, nothing.

In fact no one is even claiming that they have. But unfortunately for them, that's not keeping them out of the limelight.

The chase is on

Last month Robert S. Mueller, the head of the FBI, gave testimony to the Senate Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate. The speech was a telling summation of his organizations goals, within the confines of an hour's time he managed to use the word terrorism 37 times, and the name al Qa'ida 20 times.

Buried beneath all of the emotional detritus those cultural hot buttons stir up, were some meaningful warnings, and anyone less than pleased with the emerging political zeitgeist should take note.

After summarizing what the FBI believes to be the greatest threat to the US government, "international terrorism" Mr. Mueller cast his cold gaze on domestic soil and outlined the US's domestic threats."White Supremacists, Black separatists, Animal rights/ Environmental terrorists, Anarchists, Anti-abortion extremists and self-styled militia."

Out of these 6 categories of "threat" only the left flank get any name mention.

So, though there are at least 615 active right wing hate groups in the US, and an uncounted number of militia, only 3 organizations were deemed important enough for mention. The Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF).

Not to be outdone by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently circulated an internal paper titled "Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011." In this paper, priority is placed again on the ELF/ ALF and no mention is given to the much larger and better-organized groups on the right of the political spectrum.

For who?

The ABCF is a small prisoner support organization. Within this small organization there is a small caucus, the Tactical Defense Caucus. This TDC trains interested parties in armed self-defense. They offer courses in several different types of firearms; sell videos of the same, and they put out a single issue of a gun magazine in 2001.

It's not possible to know the size of the ABCF's TDC. BAPR requested comment several times, but never received any response, and they don't publicize their membership. They do self-describe as a small "but active" caucus, and seeing the Left is rarely humble about membership, it seems safe to guess that they have no more than 20 members.

Given that the average US gun owner owns 2 guns, we could make an estimate of 40 guns between them, just to put a number on it.

That's potentially 40 guns out of 258 million currently in the US; not even a percentage point. But reality not withstanding, the head of one of the best-funded policing organizations in the world has them in his sights.

The ELF/ALF are dedicated to the liberation of the Earth and Animals respectively, but neither could be described as an organization in the classical sense. Neither has a centralized decision-making process, or membership per say and each are bound only by a loosely accepted set of rules. Amongst those rules, the DHS note's is, "publicly promoting non-violence toward human life."

The groups do pursue massive property damage, and have been credited with a $50 million arson in San Diego. Neither group has been charged with the loss or damage of human life.

Who else is out there?

Well...lots of people.

Among the groups not deemed important enough for mention by the FBI and the DHS are some pretty famous names. Such as, the Michigan Militia; famously attached to Turner Diaries salesman Timothy Mc Veigh. The Army of God, moral compass for Eric Rudolph abortion clinic/ Olympic Park bomber. The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, who dialogued with Jeff Weise before he killed 7 people at the Red Lake Senior High School last week. The Aryan Nation, whose leader August Kreis recently told CNN that he wants his organization to make common cause with al Qa'ida.

The list goes on. The KKK, National Alliance, White Revolution, American Nazi Party, White Power Liberation Front, Imperial Klans of America, World Church of the Creator; and on and on.

If we've ever lacked anything in the US, it wasn't white supremacists, political extremism or the willingness to kill people.

Though each of these groups, and the many others whose names I have spared you, is better funded and mostly better armed than the ABCF or the ELF/ALF. None of them get a mention as an emerging threat. They and the 600 plus other groups widely acknowledged as active hate groups all get upstaged by the 5 chapters of the ABCF, and the non-entities of the ELF/ALF.

If it seems like a miss-allocation of resources, it is, if it seems abnormal, it's not. In fact, at the FBI it's tradition.

Tradition

Lots of people smarter than this writer have been studying the development of popular left wing movement in the US, for a long time. I won't make you suffer through my observations.

Suffice to say, movements develop, they gain a place in the public dialogue and then federal policing organizations react. At the times when US political movement has hit it's high water marks the FBI has been right there with them.

Whether it was in the 20's when the FBI (then named the BOI) raided the homes of any one even suspected of being Left sympathetic in the Palmer raids. Or in the 60's and 70's when they ran counter intelligence programs against every Left organization large or small, they have been right there with us.

In each case there has been a larger and more powerful organizational structure on the right, which by and large gets a pass from the FBI et al.

The same pack

When you look at the history of US government repression of Left movements, the release of these last 2 reports and the focus on the Left is hardly surprising.

But in this case it may be prescient. While many on the Left look at our current capacity for movement building disparagingly, the FBI and DHS seem to see potential where we don't.

If the FBI were expecting social conditions to retard the development of the Left over the next decade, they wouldn't be paying as much attention.

They obviously are, and must be expecting big things, cause you can be sure that Robert Mueller didn't take down Gotti and Noriega just to sate himself with a handful of people in Florida.

While this whole thing is clearly going to start with a focus on the ABCF and the ELF/ALF, you can be sure that it will ripple outward from there.

Directly after the remarks made by Mr. Mueller the Boston Herald ran a story about how anarchists in Boston are being watched by the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force. Sgt. Tom Sexton of the Boston PD was quoted in the article saying that ``Investigators have been aware of this particular group, and we are working collectively with our partnership on the state and federal level.''

The "anarchist's" in question are that first ripple; the group in question is a local Anarchist Black Cross Network group. The ABCF and ABCN are completely separate organizations, despite being only one letter off in acronym.

In an interview with BAPR, John Riley, a member of the Boston ABCN group reaffirmed that Boston ABC is "not connected to the ABCF in any way. We certainly support their work, however our politics are not in line with their internal structuring."

"We live in a world of political witch-hunts and massive surveillance/repression from the state. It seems that those of us who have moved to defend those targeted by the state have now become targets ourselves." John said, when asked about what this newly reinvigorated interest with the Left will mean.

Starting with a few easily isolatable groups, the FBI wants to cut away at the Left, and at what they see as our potential.

Make no mistake about their choice of targets. If there were a large group with the political capacity of the BPP or AIM around in '05, the FBI and DHS wouldn't care a whit about 20 guys in Florida with a few modified AR-15's. The ABCF is not the real target in this, just a convenient one.

The real victory for the FBI and DHS in all this has been the opportunity to mention Left organizations along with al Qa'ida, Al Aqsa, and Islamic Jihad.

By painting the Left with the same brush as they paint al Qa'ida the FBI seeks to cut the Left off from potential sources of support. To scare away liberal support from civil society, and politically and socially isolate us in order to more efficiently eliminate our potential as a political movement.

It is this goal that we need to keep our focus on, because even though the ABCF may be a straw dog for the FBI, we are all running in the same pack.

Bedfellows

The FBI and DHS can afford to be complacent to the burgeoning right, in fact on many levels they're not separated by very many degrees.

With the last 2 elections Christian Fundamentalism has come several steps closer to the seat of power. In many ways, throughout the history of the US the far right and the federal government have shared political views, members, and goals.

But over the next decade or so those goals will diverge, as they have in the past periodically. As the US seeks greater global connectivity and requires more and more immigrant labor to keep the economy going, the intellectual points of departure between the far right and law enforcement will grow. When this chasm becomes large enough the FBI and DHS will find themselves facing the task of reigning in this behemoth they helped create. The question then will be, is it too late?

Will the FBI the DHS, or, the Left for that matter be able to contend with this swollen right wing of the future?

We've been warned

With a renewed interest in the Left from the FBI and DHS, imprisonments are sure to follow. The last time the FBI paid so much attention to Left organizations we lost an entire generation of political leaders to prison and pine boxes. The far right has not had to contend with a similar campaign of terror and from the looks of things they seem to continue to get a pass.

So as their growth is nurtured, and ours is retarded, how do we plan to struggle against them in the near and distant future?

The smaller, numerically, the Left seems to get the more intellectually preoccupied we seem to be. The more intellectually preoccupied we are the more we seem to disagree with and distance ourselves from each other.

And so it goes, that within a small social movement volumes of people consider themselves to be going it alone. A movement of Socialists who don't associate with Communists, of Progressives who don't associate with Anarchists, of Gramscians who don't talk to Fanonists, etc. etc.

Unfortunately for us, in our Quixotic quest for intellectual purity, we have taken our eye off of the prize. We lost track of the fact that the people paying the most attention to us don't care about the finer intellectual points.

To them we are all running in the same pack, and we will all bear the brunt of their efforts, whether we are working together or not.

The first impact from this now fomenting offensive may be in north Florida, but you can be sure we will all be rocked by its wake.

We can be thankful, at least, that our foes telegraph their punches, and we can't say that we haven't been warned.

Colin Asher

colin@bayareapoliticalreview.org
2005 Bay Area Political Review. Share freely for non-commercial purposes.
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