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Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States
"When there is every reason to believe there’s a ‘bad moon rising on the right,’ leftists need to understand how the state suppresses the rising tide of popular resentment. The strategy is multifaceted and sophisticated, as Jules Boykoff explains in this timely analysis of how the government has marginalized, channeled, infiltrated, co-opted, and repressed progressive movements in the US over the past hundred years. Paranoia and freak-out only play into their hands. Read Boykoff to understand where the real danger lies and how best to defend against it."—Robin Hahnel Jules Boykoff teaches political science at Pacific University, Oregon.
400 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 24, 2023
5 stars. In ‘Beyond Bullets’, Jules Boykoff skilfully dissects the mechanisms behind the suppression of dissent in the United States (though it’s applicable to many other rich, industrialised, and developed countries, such as here in Australia), shedding light on historical and contemporary examples that have shaped this troubling reality. Boykoff compellingly and very effectively illustrates how dissent is stifled not only through overt violence, but also through more subtle means, such as through the intricate cooperation of various societal elements, like the news media and larger population.
Drawing frm instances mostly throughout the 20th century, Boykoff exposes the disturbing truth of direct and indirect violence targeted against marginalised communities, movements, and organisations, such as the Black Panthers, AIM, the Young Lords, and Earth first!, among others. The revelation of modes of suppression such as infiltrators, agent provocateurs, surveillance, and a tactic called “badjacketing” or “snitchjacketing,” (a term I hadn’t heard before), which describes individuals who infiltrate dissident social movements and intentionally generate suspicion that legitimate, committed members of the group are actually informants (usually FBI or police in the US), which often can lead to violence being done against legitimate members, all adds a disturbing layer to the narrative, highlighting the calculated efforts to undermine genuine social movements and activism and incite violence against members of these movements and organisations advocating and fighting fr real and lasting change.
As well, another of the book’s crucial contributions lies in its insightful examination of the media’s role in the suppression of dissent. Boykoff delves into how media, often closely tied w the state and corporate interests, marginalises and downplays the significance of dissident movements. This deep-rooted cooperation between media, corporations, and the state can erode the impact of genuine protests and activism, thereby perpetuating an environment of control and silence. Like consider the current day’s dichotomy of social media’s influence on political participation. This isn’t something Boykoff specifically mentions, as he mostly focuses on news media, but it’s worth mentioning. While social media has the potential to - and often does - greatly amplify the voices of marginalised groups and progressive social movements and organisations, it‘s also harnessed by the state and law enforcement to spread disinformation and even fuel communal tensions, effectively smothering and silencing dissent, and this shows the complexities and immense challenges that today’s activists face in utilising social media as a tool fr organising and broadcasting their/our movements and messages.
Social media has facilitated widespread awareness and mobilisation around various social issues and concerns, but its impact on political participation is also a double-edged sword, as while it empowers and connects activists and social movements and marginalised, vulnerable, and targeted communities, it also presents significant hurdles due to the potential fr misuse and manipulation. Consider the use of "shadowbanning” on sites like Instagram and Tiktok, which refers to the practice of limiting or restricting a user’s visibility on such social media platforms w/out their knowledge, often involving reducing the reach of their posts, excluding them frm search results, or suppressing their content in some way. While these platforms claim it’s to combat spam and abusive behaviour, w some even outright claiming shadowbanning doesn’t exist, it’s seen to be most often inflicted on marginalised people and communities, such as sex workers, queer and trans people, BIPOC, and activists, etc etc, to silence and suppress certain viewpoints. This book was published in 2007, and I read that the percentage of US adults who use social media increased frm roughly 5 per cent in 2005 to 79 per cent in 2019, so I’d really love to see Boykoff’s take on social media’s affect on suppressing dissent, especially in today’s political climate, alongside his take on news media manipulation.
But anyway, that’s all to say that in ‘Beyond Bullets’, Jules Boykoff delivers a thought-provoking and meticulously researched account of how dissent is suppressed in the United States. His analysis compels us to confront the multifaceted nature of suppression, transcending mere physical violence and encompassing subtler forms of manipulation and control. This book is a must-read fr anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the intricate forces at play in stifling dissent and preserving the status quo and power of the state and law enforcement. Boykoff’s work shines as a compelling call to action, urging us to critically examine the structures that hinder meaningful change. Because, as he claims in the final chapter, “If it is meaningful social change we want, we must press forward with fire and passion, with resolution and grit, with knowledge and spirit, with fight back and counterpunch.” None of us are free till all of us are free.
Drawing frm instances mostly throughout the 20th century, Boykoff exposes the disturbing truth of direct and indirect violence targeted against marginalised communities, movements, and organisations, such as the Black Panthers, AIM, the Young Lords, and Earth first!, among others. The revelation of modes of suppression such as infiltrators, agent provocateurs, surveillance, and a tactic called “badjacketing” or “snitchjacketing,” (a term I hadn’t heard before), which describes individuals who infiltrate dissident social movements and intentionally generate suspicion that legitimate, committed members of the group are actually informants (usually FBI or police in the US), which often can lead to violence being done against legitimate members, all adds a disturbing layer to the narrative, highlighting the calculated efforts to undermine genuine social movements and activism and incite violence against members of these movements and organisations advocating and fighting fr real and lasting change.
As well, another of the book’s crucial contributions lies in its insightful examination of the media’s role in the suppression of dissent. Boykoff delves into how media, often closely tied w the state and corporate interests, marginalises and downplays the significance of dissident movements. This deep-rooted cooperation between media, corporations, and the state can erode the impact of genuine protests and activism, thereby perpetuating an environment of control and silence. Like consider the current day’s dichotomy of social media’s influence on political participation. This isn’t something Boykoff specifically mentions, as he mostly focuses on news media, but it’s worth mentioning. While social media has the potential to - and often does - greatly amplify the voices of marginalised groups and progressive social movements and organisations, it‘s also harnessed by the state and law enforcement to spread disinformation and even fuel communal tensions, effectively smothering and silencing dissent, and this shows the complexities and immense challenges that today’s activists face in utilising social media as a tool fr organising and broadcasting their/our movements and messages.
Social media has facilitated widespread awareness and mobilisation around various social issues and concerns, but its impact on political participation is also a double-edged sword, as while it empowers and connects activists and social movements and marginalised, vulnerable, and targeted communities, it also presents significant hurdles due to the potential fr misuse and manipulation. Consider the use of "shadowbanning” on sites like Instagram and Tiktok, which refers to the practice of limiting or restricting a user’s visibility on such social media platforms w/out their knowledge, often involving reducing the reach of their posts, excluding them frm search results, or suppressing their content in some way. While these platforms claim it’s to combat spam and abusive behaviour, w some even outright claiming shadowbanning doesn’t exist, it’s seen to be most often inflicted on marginalised people and communities, such as sex workers, queer and trans people, BIPOC, and activists, etc etc, to silence and suppress certain viewpoints. This book was published in 2007, and I read that the percentage of US adults who use social media increased frm roughly 5 per cent in 2005 to 79 per cent in 2019, so I’d really love to see Boykoff’s take on social media’s affect on suppressing dissent, especially in today’s political climate, alongside his take on news media manipulation.
But anyway, that’s all to say that in ‘Beyond Bullets’, Jules Boykoff delivers a thought-provoking and meticulously researched account of how dissent is suppressed in the United States. His analysis compels us to confront the multifaceted nature of suppression, transcending mere physical violence and encompassing subtler forms of manipulation and control. This book is a must-read fr anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the intricate forces at play in stifling dissent and preserving the status quo and power of the state and law enforcement. Boykoff’s work shines as a compelling call to action, urging us to critically examine the structures that hinder meaningful change. Because, as he claims in the final chapter, “If it is meaningful social change we want, we must press forward with fire and passion, with resolution and grit, with knowledge and spirit, with fight back and counterpunch.” None of us are free till all of us are free.
May 15, 2008
Book Review-
Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States
By Jules Boykoff
Review by James Generic
Edited by Alice Johnston
The history of the United States is filled with stories of government repression of dissenters. While we know about the violent means of suppressing dissent, the more subtle means are harder to get a grasp on. In "Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States", author Jules Boykoff lays out theory on how dissent is suppressed and backs it up with historical and current examples, mostly from 20th century United States. In many places in the world—and even here in the US—the crushing of dissent by the state is the pure violence we imagine, but overall, in "rich" countries like the US, the suppression of dissent requires a lot more cooperation from the larger population, the media, and such. There are no tanks rolling through neighborhoods enforcing subjugation in most places in the US, but the near universal media and an omni-present police force, coupled with all sorts of extra legal rules for dissidents that are not enforced for others, does the job.
How does it work? Boykoff describes the methods and gives examples. He starts with the obvious one: Direct Violence, most often used against people of color in groups like the Black Panthers, AIM, the Young Lords, and others. This involves direct assassinations and attacks, like the killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago by the Chicago police or the attack by FBI agents at Pine Ridge that Leonard Peltier was framed for. The next method he examines is Public Hearings and Prosecutions, like those used against dissidents in the 1950s to frame any radicals as "Communists". These hearings mainly targeted labor activists who had just initiated a huge strike involving 2 million people in 1946 and Hollywood intellectuals and workers involved in the film industry. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a crusade against anyone who dared speak out against the Cold War or capitalism, framing the hearings so that only friendly witnesses were allowed to speak and dissident witnesses were routinely cut off. This was a way to whip up support for the Cold War and squelch the rising labor movement by blaming it on the tiny Communist Party USA. Part of the same routine is to Deny Employment, or blacklist dissidents, as occurred when Angela Davis was fired from UCLA in 1970 in response to the demand of Governor Ronald Reagan. Arresting dissidents on trumped up or rarely enforced charges also saps the energy of activists. They are put on the defensive in the courtroom where resolution can take years. The mass arrests of global justice demonstrators outside of the World Bank meetings in September 2002 tied hundreds of people to the courts for years. This intimidates people from expressing their opinion and puts a black mark on their criminal record.
Surveillance and Break-ins rank highly in the bag of dirty tricks to suppress dissent, especially in the FBI-run COINTELPRO program which operated until the mid 1970s to smash the "New Left". Martin Luther King and the Southern Poverty Leadership Conference were targeted as Communist-groups for neutralization to prevent the rise of "a black messiah". From there, they turned on any Communists (active or not members) in close company with King, taped affairs that King was having, and sent threatening letters demanding that King commit suicide. The FBI broke into Civil Rights organization offices many times for the purpose of planting warrentless wiretaps. In general, Civil Rights leaders always knew that the FBI, with its "red" obsessed director in Edgar Hoover, was watching them closely and would pounce at any embarrassment.
Actually infiltrating groups with Agent Provocateurs and trying to steer their direction, placing informants in groups, and trying to make people think that leaders of groups are actually FBI agents, a process known as "Badjacketing", stand out as more direct ways that the FBI used and uses to suppress dissent. Douglas Durham infiltrated the American Indian Movement (AIM), and steered it towards aggressive violence, opening fighting with other left-wing groups. Within two years, Durham's actions had fragmented AIM as a group. In the case of Anna Mae Aquash, Boycoff shows, the loss of trust by her AIM group because of FBI badjacketing directly led to her suicide. Even further, "Black Propaganda", or false hostile mail sent by the FBI in the name of one group to another with the intent to raise conflict between the two groups, led the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves (a black nationalist cultural organization) to actually start attacking each other, leading to the deaths of several members in both groups. The FBI also mailed a fake cartoon to a mostly Black political group in DC supposedly from a mostly white group, telling them to "suck my banana, you monkeys."
The final piece of suppression of dissent is the way the media, closely tied with corporations and the state, marginalizes and minimizes dissident movements. Most recently, protesters in 1999 against the World Trade Organization and subsequent anti-corporate globalization found that their views became news a way that didn't focus on the issues (as Boykoff shows in a study of major newspapers and television news). Instead, stories reported that organizers only got a few hundred people (even in cases where the number was much higher, that freaks and weirdos showed up to protests, that the message wasn't clear, and that protesters sought uninformed violence and often didn't know anything about the issues (as portrayed by the media, anyway.)) Boykoff moves into examples of suppression of dissent in recent years, such as the "Green Scare" in which anti-terrorism laws are used against militant environmental dissidents, even to the point of having an FBI infiltrator ("Anna") lead a group to almost bombing a cell phone tower and then giving one of the participants, Eric McDavid, a draconian prison sentence of 20 years for a crime that never happened. Anyone interested in being informed instead of paranoid should pick up this book, because this could happen to anyone who speaks out against the state and capitalism.
Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States
By Jules Boykoff
Review by James Generic
Edited by Alice Johnston
The history of the United States is filled with stories of government repression of dissenters. While we know about the violent means of suppressing dissent, the more subtle means are harder to get a grasp on. In "Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States", author Jules Boykoff lays out theory on how dissent is suppressed and backs it up with historical and current examples, mostly from 20th century United States. In many places in the world—and even here in the US—the crushing of dissent by the state is the pure violence we imagine, but overall, in "rich" countries like the US, the suppression of dissent requires a lot more cooperation from the larger population, the media, and such. There are no tanks rolling through neighborhoods enforcing subjugation in most places in the US, but the near universal media and an omni-present police force, coupled with all sorts of extra legal rules for dissidents that are not enforced for others, does the job.
How does it work? Boykoff describes the methods and gives examples. He starts with the obvious one: Direct Violence, most often used against people of color in groups like the Black Panthers, AIM, the Young Lords, and others. This involves direct assassinations and attacks, like the killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago by the Chicago police or the attack by FBI agents at Pine Ridge that Leonard Peltier was framed for. The next method he examines is Public Hearings and Prosecutions, like those used against dissidents in the 1950s to frame any radicals as "Communists". These hearings mainly targeted labor activists who had just initiated a huge strike involving 2 million people in 1946 and Hollywood intellectuals and workers involved in the film industry. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a crusade against anyone who dared speak out against the Cold War or capitalism, framing the hearings so that only friendly witnesses were allowed to speak and dissident witnesses were routinely cut off. This was a way to whip up support for the Cold War and squelch the rising labor movement by blaming it on the tiny Communist Party USA. Part of the same routine is to Deny Employment, or blacklist dissidents, as occurred when Angela Davis was fired from UCLA in 1970 in response to the demand of Governor Ronald Reagan. Arresting dissidents on trumped up or rarely enforced charges also saps the energy of activists. They are put on the defensive in the courtroom where resolution can take years. The mass arrests of global justice demonstrators outside of the World Bank meetings in September 2002 tied hundreds of people to the courts for years. This intimidates people from expressing their opinion and puts a black mark on their criminal record.
Surveillance and Break-ins rank highly in the bag of dirty tricks to suppress dissent, especially in the FBI-run COINTELPRO program which operated until the mid 1970s to smash the "New Left". Martin Luther King and the Southern Poverty Leadership Conference were targeted as Communist-groups for neutralization to prevent the rise of "a black messiah". From there, they turned on any Communists (active or not members) in close company with King, taped affairs that King was having, and sent threatening letters demanding that King commit suicide. The FBI broke into Civil Rights organization offices many times for the purpose of planting warrentless wiretaps. In general, Civil Rights leaders always knew that the FBI, with its "red" obsessed director in Edgar Hoover, was watching them closely and would pounce at any embarrassment.
Actually infiltrating groups with Agent Provocateurs and trying to steer their direction, placing informants in groups, and trying to make people think that leaders of groups are actually FBI agents, a process known as "Badjacketing", stand out as more direct ways that the FBI used and uses to suppress dissent. Douglas Durham infiltrated the American Indian Movement (AIM), and steered it towards aggressive violence, opening fighting with other left-wing groups. Within two years, Durham's actions had fragmented AIM as a group. In the case of Anna Mae Aquash, Boycoff shows, the loss of trust by her AIM group because of FBI badjacketing directly led to her suicide. Even further, "Black Propaganda", or false hostile mail sent by the FBI in the name of one group to another with the intent to raise conflict between the two groups, led the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves (a black nationalist cultural organization) to actually start attacking each other, leading to the deaths of several members in both groups. The FBI also mailed a fake cartoon to a mostly Black political group in DC supposedly from a mostly white group, telling them to "suck my banana, you monkeys."
The final piece of suppression of dissent is the way the media, closely tied with corporations and the state, marginalizes and minimizes dissident movements. Most recently, protesters in 1999 against the World Trade Organization and subsequent anti-corporate globalization found that their views became news a way that didn't focus on the issues (as Boykoff shows in a study of major newspapers and television news). Instead, stories reported that organizers only got a few hundred people (even in cases where the number was much higher, that freaks and weirdos showed up to protests, that the message wasn't clear, and that protesters sought uninformed violence and often didn't know anything about the issues (as portrayed by the media, anyway.)) Boykoff moves into examples of suppression of dissent in recent years, such as the "Green Scare" in which anti-terrorism laws are used against militant environmental dissidents, even to the point of having an FBI infiltrator ("Anna") lead a group to almost bombing a cell phone tower and then giving one of the participants, Eric McDavid, a draconian prison sentence of 20 years for a crime that never happened. Anyone interested in being informed instead of paranoid should pick up this book, because this could happen to anyone who speaks out against the state and capitalism.
July 5, 2021
This is a broad analysis of state suppression of radical and progressive social movements throughout the past century. Boykoff uses examples from the Palmer raids to the Patriot Act to illustrate the methods used to muffle and destroy activist groups. It comes off as a bit over-broad and the examples are all quite well known (murder of Fred Hampton? Check. Causing schisms with infiltration in AIM? Check. McCarthyism? Check.) It is a good read though.
September 2, 2022
Very comprehensive documentation of the subject matter. Should be read by anybody who values freedom of speech and social change.
October 30, 2011
This should be on everyone's Occupy movement reading list.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews