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Understanding State Responses to Left- versus Right-Wing Threats

The FBI's Repression of the New Left and the Ku Klux Klan

Abstract

Between 1956 and 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operated five counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) designed to repress a range of threats to the status quo. This article examines more than twelve thousand pages of memos related to FBI programs against white hate groups (mostly the Ku Klux Klan) and the New Left in an effort to gain insight into the Bureau's repression of left- and right- wing targets. The article's goals are both general and historically specific: First, to introduce a two-dimensional typology to organize and categorize repressive acts generally and then to use this typology to examine the patterning of repressive acts across the COINTELPROs. This approach allows for the uncovering of distinct overarching strategies applied to left- versus right-wing targets. These strategies are emergent in the sense that they are not apparent from a textual analysis of Bureau memos or through a comparison of the outcomes of each COINTELPRO. Recognition of these emergent strategies provides insight into the complex, ambiguous relationship that the FBI had with both the civil rights movement and the Klan.