Doug Henwood wrote:
> Charles Brown wrote:
>
> >criminal conspiracies - COINTELPRO
>
> That wasn't a conspiracy, it was basic police work. What's gained by
> calling it a conspiracy? Cops have been spying, infiltrating, and
> fucking-with radicals since the dawn of time.
It is worse than irrelevant to call it a conspiracy. One of the most difficult things to get through the heads of any embryonic leftist is that the cops really are dangerous. COINTELPRO is a magnificent illustration of that danger, *if and ONLY if* one sees it as "basic police work" and NOT some special conspiracy.
In fact, conspiracy theories for the most part, including those instances where there really is a conspiracy (Iran-Contra), really confuse public opinion about the oppressive nature of the bourgeois democratic state and the vicious nature of liberalism (e.g., that war criminal Kennedy).
Carrol