From: Tony Hollick (anduril@cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: Sun Feb 01 1998 - 10:40:00 MST
Tim Starr <TimStarr@netcom.com> asked me for corroboration of the
proposition that J. Edgar Hoover was the most evil man in American history.
Let's look at that:
Stalin's and Beria's NKVD; Hitler's and Mueller's GESTAPO; Hoover's FBI:
All of these organizations of social control were similarly structured.
The evils of the NKVD and the Gestapo require no introduction to
libertarians. Well, Hoover's FBI was America's Gestapo.
The NKVD, the Gestapo and the FBI all combine omnipresent social control;
ideological control; specialized policing functions;; and -- most
dangerous of all -- counterespionage functions.
The combination of counterespionage (NOT counterintelligence) and internal
policing is extraordinarily hazardous to the survival of a free society.
Free societies are unpredictable; and are made up of unpredictable people
who have their own aims and ideas. This is _anathema_ to the
social-control mentality.
We all see the world (quite literally) mediated through a perceptual and
cognitive framework which is structured by our ideas about it. A hungry
man sees possible sources of food; a cold, wet man sees possible places of
shelter; a frightened man sees possible threats.
(As Popper says: It is often thought that we are bad -- perhaps even
wicked; and we are also clever; and it is this combination of badness and
cleverness that is at the root of humankind's problems. As aginst this
(says Popper): we are good (perhaps even too good): but we are also rather
stupid. And it is this combination of goodness and stupidity that
underlies most of our problems. This second view has the great advantage,
that we know more about enlightening peoples' stupidity than we know about
correcting their evil).
A policeman sees potential offences and offenders everywhere. A
counterespionage man sees everything as a potential threat -- possibly
something other than what it _appears_ to be (see 'The Wilderness of
Mirrors' by David Martin or Ed Epstein's 'Deception' for an immersion
course). This is exactly analogous to the occult Weltanschaung or
World-View, and incorporates a Manichaean 'good-vs-evil' polarization;
with the added twist that fair can always be 'really' foul, and foul can
always be 'really' fair.
This is profoundly corrupting and perilous psychological territory. Many
counterespionagw controllers reckon that three or four years is about all
that anyone can handle before their thinking becomes pervaded by a
paranoid 'sick-think.'
Worse: the counterespionage chief practices deception all the time, which
is _morally_ hazardous.
Worse still: all internal-security chiefs end up thinking that they know
best what is going on in society, _and what is best for other people_.
They cannot explain _why_ they know better, because "it's a secret" -- and
because their world-view is so at variance with everyday reality that
'no-one will understand us anyway.'
(Compare and contrast: James Jesus Angleton (CIA _Counterintelligence_
chief) spent four hours one day explaining his version of 'the big
picture' to Bill Colby (DCI); and Colby said afterwards that he simply
couldn't even _understand_ it, never mind accept or reject it. Bill Colby
was really bright (and well-versed in covert operations)).
Worst of all: because they see the worst elements in society, and then, in
the worst possible light, they see society as under mortal and multiple
sustained _threats; and they are the only ones who stand between an
egshell-like 'normality' and horrifying chaos. They then justify what
they're doing (i.e. anything) by saying: "We do this so that ordinary,
decent people can sleep safely in their beds at night" (John le Carre).
Like the people at Waco?
Ask yourself what sort of person is drawn into this sort of vocation.
Hoover may well have started by doing some good work, and with the best of
intentions. But so did Heinrich Mueller (from his own point of view).
However, he became aware of the extraordinary powers conferred by being
the President's eyes and ears. Then, the files on politicians -- full of
all those incriminating and salacious tit-bits -- steadily built up.
Hoover was soon 'hooked' on hard-core political pornography (including
'kiddie-porn' -- 90% of U.S. 'kiddie-porn' is under FBI or State control).
Hoover's intelligence-gathering ambitions steadily extended, first to
Latin America, then -- megalomaniacally -- to the _entire world_. He
fought tooth-and-nail to get CIA strangled at birth, as a potential rival,
and as a threat to his monopoly of information. (See 'The Wedge' on the
CIA-FBI wars). Clearly, if he had been able to monopolize
intelligence-gathering, analysis, reporting (including via a vast network
of servile media assests), political blackmail and entrapment, and
policing powers, he would be the diametric opposite of everything the
Framers of the Constitution sought for a free society. He directly
abrogated the Separation of Powers. In actuality, for most significant
purposes, he _directly controlled_ the United States (including via
servile political proxies like McCarthy and Nixon).
Hoover openly boasted that he owned and controlled the Communist Party of
the United States of America. 50% of CPUSA members were agents or
informers. That didn't stop him using it to orchestrate vast 'Red Scares'
(see i.e David Caute, 'The Great Fear'), so as to gain extra illicit
powers for himself and the State he also owned and controlled. Perhaps
this is why he wanted Japanese-Americans remaining at large -- to whip up
'Yellow Peril' scares. If you read Hoover's -- aptly-named -- book 'the
Masters of Deceit', it's clear that he hates communism for all its
democratic and libertarian bits, not the 'social-control' aspect.
Hoover _organized_ 'Organized Crime', which can only survive with
State-conferred approval -- approval that only Hoover could confer.
Hoover operated the -- clever -- 'no-empty-rooms' scheme, whereby _every_
significant alternative political niche was colonized by the FBI. Then,
in the second stage, Hoover spread this fact about -- the
'agent-behind-every-mailbox' tactic -- so as to to disillusion and
dispirit actual and potential political activists, and make organized
political resistance appear to be _impossible_
And no-one _dared_ openly to defy him, because he could ruin their life,
and/or murder or otherwise destroy people. As he -- very publicly --
murdered the Kennedys. And Martin Luther King. And Jean Seberg. And
_hundreds_ of other radical political activists and intellectuals -- an
official serial-kiling spree that only slowed and near-stopped when Hoover
died of old age (or whatever).
The extended authoritarian extreme-Right subculture of social control
freaks that Hoover spawned and bred _still_ plagues America (and American
'law-enforcement'; and American politics -- especially Republican
politics; and the media).
Can anyone point to anyone more evil in America's entire history?
And who did more to destroy the Constitution?
And whose authoritarianism nearly cost us the Battle for the World?
Judge William Webster was no libertarian. Yet his first act as FBI
Director was to seize the bust of Hoover its prominent place in the J.
Edgar Hoover Building's Reception Area, take it out into the street,
and contemptuously hurl it into the gutter.
It's about time we did the same with Hoover's entire grotesque and
morally filthy social-control legacy. Janet Reno please note!
/ /\ \
--*--<Tony>--*--
Tony Hollick, LightSmith
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/la-agora (LA-Agora Conference)
http://www.agora.demon.co.uk (Agora Home Page, Rainbow Bridge Foundation)
http://www.nwb.net/nwc (NorthWest Coalition Against Malicious Harrassment)
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<EOT>
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