“The F.B.I.’s Black Phantom Menace”

Source: The F.B.I.’s Black Phantom Menace – The New York Times

A scary essay from Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times, reawakens many suspicions I’ve had about the FBI for decades.

I wrote “suspicions” but they were more than that: they came out of shards of information, bits and pieces here and there.

Excerpts:

In a report that was never supposed to be made public, but was on Oct. 6 by foreignpolicy.org, the F.B.I.’s Counterterrorism Division has concluded that there is a real threat from the “black identity extremist” movement.

It said “Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans” has been responsible for “an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence” in the future.

Wait, what exactly is black identity extremism? The answer is: nothing.

It’s a fiction, as others have powerfully argued, including Andrew Cohen, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

But that doesn’t make the report any less sinister. As Cohen pointed out, the F.B.I. has a “history of surveillance and intimidation of black Americans that frequently goes beyond legitimate law enforcement into paranoia, racism, and political expediency.”

Be chilled, folks. This is bad, paranoid stuff–a conspiracy by the FBI to demonize and criminalize a minority against whom deadly force has been wrongly used.

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