“…[W]e seek to go as far beyond the myth of the FBI as a crime-fighting agency as is possible, given the information available to us. We posit that Hooverian propaganda [the narrative that the FBI was or is anything but a self-glorified political policing agency] was never so much an overstatement of the Bureau’s gang-busting exploits, or even a pure fabrication, as much as it was a deliberate and sophisticated ruse, a calculated and intentional diversion of public attention away from the FBI’s real purpose from the first day of its existence. Specifically, we argue that the Bureau was founded, maintained and steadily expanded as a mechanism to forestall, curtail and repress the expression of political diversity within the United States. Viewed as an essential component of enforcing the socio-political status quo, the Bureau’s receipt of unwavering governmental support regardless of its “abuses,” even at the moment when it was conclusively demonstrated to have so far exceeded its authority as to have temporarily threatened the stability of the status quo itself, begins to make the most fundamental kind of sense.”

Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall | Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (1988)

(Source: fullpraxisnow)