On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 13:17:59 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
>
> On Jun 25, 2006, at 12:55 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> > This whole episode reminds me not only of the
> > tactics that the Feds used against the left back
> > in the 1960s and 1970s but also of the tactics
> > used by the Czarist secret police in Russia.
> > They used to send out agents to student hangouts
> > and such in order to recruit disaffected young
> > people into joining, what they were being
> > led to believe, were revolutionary conspiracies
> > against the regime.
>
> But those were actual revolutionaries, or at least folks with
> serious
> potential of making trouble.
In a great many of those cases, certainly. However, if you look back, I think you will find that a lot of fairly harmless people would get swept up in these operations. Presumably the regime was more than willing to accept inflicting that sort of collateral damage.
> Seems like our government is just
> fishing among the huge number of alienated and not very
> well-informed
> people we've got here in the USA. The authorities get a double
> bonus:
> the reassure the masses that they're on top of the terrorist threat,
>
> while keeping the undercurrent of fear alive.
In other words it's more of a cheap political stunt than anything else. Alas, there isn't the sort of movement in this country can really put the "fear of God" in the hearts of this country's rulers. People like Nixon were scared shitless by the antiwar, student, and civil rights movements. Dubya has it easy by comparison.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>