The view of the FBI that is widely promoted by the anti-Trump section of the ruling (capitalist-imperialist) class, and widely believed by millions of decent people who also oppose Trump—is that the FBI is a great organization of which we should all be proud, a firm opponent of Trump’s “authoritarianism” and a guard against dangerous criminals, mobsters, drug cartels and so on.

In reality, the FBI is an instrument of capitalist-imperialist dictatorship, and nobody should want to preserve this or the capitalist-imperialist system it enforces. Listen to Bob Avakian, revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism, break this down in his social media message Revolution #105, NO: Accepting, and Refusing To Resist, This Trump/MAGA Fascism, Will NOT Make Things “OK!”:

Despite constant attempts to mislead people away from a true, scientific understanding of this, the rule of the capitalist class, in any form, is actually a dictatorship: it is the monopoly of political power by the capitalist class—and in particular its monopoly of “legitimate” armed force and violence, by its police and military. This dictatorship is based on the domination of the economy by the capitalist class: its ownership and control of what is produced, how it is produced, how goods and services are exchanged (sold) and the profits that come from this.

In the “democratic” form of this capitalist dictatorship, people are, to varying degrees, allowed certain rights, and the “rule of law” is applied as a general principle, even while all this is based on, confined within, and conforming to the rule of the capitalist class and the oppressive relations of the capitalist system. (In today’s world, this is the system of capitalism-imperialism. Capitalism-imperialism refers to the fact that capitalism has, for some time, been an international system of exploitation and oppression.)

In the fascist form of capitalist dictatorship, the “rule of law” is essentially what the fascists say it is, and the rights of people are more or less openly limited to what is allowed by the fascists, while such rights are only extended to those who go along with the rule of the fascists.

With that in mind, let’s look at what the FBI actually is and is not. 

The FBI is the main national political police force in the U.S., with over 10,000 special agents in more than 450 offices across the country and an $11 billion budget. It is a key instrument of the dictatorship of the capitalist-imperialist class, a key way that this whole oppressive setup is enforced. One of its main tasks in that includes spying on, disrupting, harassing, jailing and sometimes murdering any individual, group or movement that it perceives to be seriously challenging the oppressive order. And as such, it has an unbroken record for over a century of horrendous crimes against the people. (See “An Unbroken Record of Crimes Against the People” below.)

But here is a contradiction that is very important to grasp: The FBI has, up until now, operated within the framework of the “democratic” form of this capitalist dictatorship, and not within the fascist form of capitalist dictatorship. And that means that it has been, to some degree, “constrained” by the rule of law. It cannot openly or legally persecute or arrest people for expressing an opinion, wiretap people without a warrant, torture people, and so on. 

Now, in reality, they do a lot of these things, but the fact that they are not officially allowed to does serve as a not insignificant constraint. Many things are done secretly, which is also a constraint. And when wholesale violations have been uncovered, as with the COINTELPRO program in the 1960s (see here and here), it created a huge scandal and social uproar. 

Once this broke into the open, the dominant forces in the ruling class felt compelled to “rein in” the FBI. Partly this was to prevent the FBI from being used by one section of the ruling class against another (as had happened in the 1960s/’70s, for example during Watergate). But another reason was that the exposures hurt the legitimacy of the U.S. system as a whole, making a mockery of its claim to be pillar of “democracy,” “human rights,” and “rule of law.” Congressional hearings were held, and new rules and laws established to limit abuses.

While these restrictions did constrain the FBI to a certain degree, they did not fundamentally change it. Since those hearings, the FBI has helped the Philly police drop a bomb on the home of the Black activist group MOVE in 1985, killing six adults and five children, and setting fire to 61 homes in the neighborhood. After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the FBI was involved in rounding up 1,200 Muslims—being Muslim was all it took to be a suspect. In 2017, they were infiltrating and spying on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, trying to brand the nonviolent protests against an oil pipeline as “terrorism.” They conducted significant surveillance, disruptions and set-up prosecutions in the radical section of the environmentalist movement. They have gone after pro-Palestinian activists for decades. And earlier this year, they were carrying out SWAT raids on the homes of activists protesting the “Cop City” police training center in Atlanta.

The FBI: An Unbroken History of Crimes Against the People

But it goes back way further.

The FBI’s “origin story” lies in the Palmer raids of 1919-20, during which as many as 10,000 suspected anarchists or communists, mostly immigrants, were ripped from their homes, classrooms, union halls and cultural centers. They were beaten, sometimes tortured and often deported—when no actual crime had been alleged, much less proven. 

During World War 2 (1939-45), the FBI was involved in rounding up 120,000 Japanese-Americans, interning them in concentration camps, and spying on them even there. 

In the 1950s and ’60s, the FBI targeted the civil rights movement as it faced down KKK (Ku Klux Klan) terror in the fight for basic rights. FBI operatives (so-called “informants”) were in the midst of planning some of the most vicious attacks on activists, including mob beatings of Freedom Riders using chains and baseball bats in 1961, which FBI headquarters knew about well in advance and did nothing to stop. In 1965, an FBI operative was involved in the murder of Viola Liuzzo, a white working class woman who answered the call for volunteers to join the fierce battle over voting rights in Selma, Alabama. After her death, the FBI spread rumors and innuendo about Liuzzo in the media, painting a picture of “an unstable woman who had abandoned her family to cause trouble in the South,” stopping just short of “she got what was coming to her.”

The FBI also targeted Martin Luther King, the main leader of the civil rights movement and a strict advocate of nonviolence. They wiretapped his phone, bugged his hotel rooms, and planted informants. In 1964, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover publicly denounced King as a “notorious liar,” and Hoover’s top aide even tried to blackmail King into committing suicide!

In the 1960s and ’70s, the FBI went after a wide range of people, including John Lennon of the Beatles and the TV rock band the Monkees. 

And they went full blast after revolutionaries. They were directly involved in the Chicago Police Department murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, killed in his sleep after having been drugged by an FBI operative. They developed an entire operation targeted at the Panthers nationally—aimed at framing people up, disrupting local chapters, and either alienating or persecuting prominent supporters. They also went after the American Indian Movement (AIM) with particular venom after the AIM-led occupation of the Wounded Knee reservation, murdering or inciting the murders of scores of members and framing Leonard Peltier for the killing of two FBI agents who had raided the Wounded Knee reservation. 

Even into the 1970s, the FBI was spying on revolutionary communist leader Bob Avakian, going so far as to diagram the layout of his apartment (!), ominously evoking the murder of Fred Hampton.

Kash Patel is not “corrupting” a good organization dedicated to “defending Americans”—he is ascending to the head of an organization with a well-documented, century-long history of spying on people, repressing them and even murdering them for opposing the government. And he intends to take that to a whole new level.