> I think I would define "Death Squads" as private groups _having links to
> the police and/or military_. Lynchings under Jim Crow would qualify. The
> Minutemen were perhaps would-be death squads, but the ruling class
> wasn't quite that scared yet in the '60s to "unleash" such groups. I
> received several of those minutemen postal cards in the late '60s, and
> had bricks tossed through my windows several times, but that was the
> extent of it here.
Agreed. For all the talk among some leftists about this country being on the verge of Nazism, the Jim Crow/lynching period was probably the closest the U.S. ever got to that sort of condition, although the Cointelpro/J. Edgar/Tricky Dick period was certainly a runner-up.
The relationships between these private groups and various and assorted police and military units are often very ambiguous, I think. In the late 60s, the FBI infiltrated groups such as the Minutemen and foiled some of their plots (including the one I mentioned), but at least some parts of the FBI and local police here and there were also not averse to making use of them -- as well as carrying out their own "actions" against the Black Panthers and others. All a part of the murky spy/counterspy, double/triple-agent world of violent politics.
BTW, the Minutemen (or their successors) are still around (check out www. minutemenofamerica.com), but I'm not sure how much of a threat they are at this point. Of course, there was the whole "militia" scare a few years ago, in which it seemed that goofy guys were spending their weekends training with shotguns and combat boots in nearly every patch of woods around, but concern about them seems to have petered out. Still, if, as you say, the ruling class gets scared enough, this will not be a joking matter. Right now, they are riding high, of course, and aren't at all worried about being unhorsed, but these would-be death squads are always something to keep an eye on.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org ______________________________ We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside... -- Sunflower Sutra, Allen Ginsberg