Fool Me Once: The FBI's White Supremacy Problem & Big Tech OpSec / Akin Olla
Political strategist and organizer Akin Olla joins me to discuss the history of the FBI’s assault on left-wing activists over the decades and the absolute necessity for organizers to have operational security in today’s political climate as Big Tech companies “depoliticize” their platforms in the wake of the Capitol siege last month. We address several of his recent articles published at The Guardian, including The FBI can't investigate white extremism until it first investigates itself, Facebook is banning leftwing users like me – and it's going largely unnoticed, and The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression.
In this interview, Akin dives into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's long and violent history of surveilling, attacking, and undermining leftist organizing in the United States since the agency’s inception in the early 20th century. Since the Capitol siege on January 6th, the FBI has turned its attention and resources toward identifying and detaining the participants in the riot, which has led liberals, and unfortunately many that would claim themselves to be on the left, to celebrate the agency's decision to pursue seditious white extremists for a change. But, considering the history of this agency, for those organizing movements of resistance to systems of white supremacy in the US, it's a bit difficult to trust the agency with this task.
The FBI has a long history of fulfilling the function of white supremacy in the United States. While the Tulsa Massacre was ongoing, the FBI’s predecessor was busy investigating Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. The FBI’s first director, J Edgar Hoover, waged war on the civil rights movement from its onset. The war was ramped up in the age of Cointelpro, an FBI program designed to surveil, dismantle and destroy any movement working to end racism or capitalist exploitation in the United States. The FBI occasionally investigated white supremacists during this era (1956 to 1971),but spent the vast majority of its resources fighting those committed to Black and Indigenous liberation. And many of the bureau’s investigations of white supremacists were disingenuous; the FBI knew for a fact that the Birmingham police Department had been infiltrated by the KKK, for example, but continued to feed the department information about civil rights activists. During Hoover’s half century as director, the FBI sent a blackmail letter to Martin Luther King encouraging him to commit suicide and was probably involved in the assassination of 21-year-old NAACP and Chicago Black Panther party leader Fred Hampton. (http://bit.ly/3b7FFmY)
Bio:
Akin Olla is a Nigerian-American political strategist, organizer, and writer based in Philadelphia, and is the host of This Is The Revolution podcast.
Episode Notes:
Read Akin’s op-eds published at The Guardian: The FBI can't investigate white extremism until it first investigates itself / Facebook is banning leftwing users like me – and it's going largely unnoticed / The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression
Read Facebook restricted a West Philly activist as it grappled with fallout from the Capitol riots at the Philadelphia Inquirer
Follow and support his podcast This Is The Revolution
The song featured is “Tezeta (Nostalgia)” by Mulatu Astatke from the album Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale (1969-1974)
