[Peace-discuss] Letter in today's N-G

[David Green]

Jim Dey and News-Gazette editors have utilized the publication of Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage to foreground the violence of 1960s radicals. Clearly, context is needed, and is lacking by propagandistic design.Blacks have a long history of being subjected to state-sponsored and vigilante violence, from slavery to “slavery by another name” (1880-1940) to the “war against drugs” (1970--) and mass incarceration. Race riots during the lynchmob era were invariably white on black, in places such as Wilmington, NC, Tulsa, East St. Louis, Springfield, IL, and Chicago. Black urban rebellions of the 1960s were primarily directed at property, as are current rebellions.The Black Panther Party was a response to institutionalized police violence in this urban context. Sound familiar? Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Panthers—as well as antiwar and Indian groups—were all subject to Cointelpro: FBI surveillance, infiltration, provocation, and violence.The FBI/Chicago Police Department assassination of Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969 epitomizes the aggressive actions of the state against a charismatic and non-violent leader who was negotiating a truce among Chicago gangs. J. Edgar Hoover was most enraged by non-violent tactics; hence his ballistic hatred for King.Aggressive violence by radicals during the later years of our genocidal war in Vietnam was morally reprehensible and politically counterproductive. But in context, it’s remarkable how little of it there was. Nevertheless, News-Gazette editors can’t resist exploiting it on behalf of their ongoing white supremacist, militarist, Islamophobic, and neoliberal agendas. But at least they’re consistent.David Green
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