J. Edgar Hoover Testified in 1967 on Race Riots in America. What He Described Sounds Eerily Familiar.

J. Edgar Hoover Testified in 1967 on Race Riots in America. What He Described Sounds Eerily Familiar.

Duane Lester

Tarkio, MO

Duane Lester is a former Navy journalist turned new media pundit. In 2012, he was the first Heritage Foundation and Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity Breitbart Award winner. He lives in Missouri with his wife and seven kids.

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Yesterday I was doing a lot of research for a new video I produced on the #BlackLivesMatters movement and the impact decades of leftist social experimentation has had on the black community.
One of the books I found included testimony former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover gave to a House subcommittee regarding the racial unrest America experienced from 1964 to 1967. As I read it, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. What Hoover described sounded like what we’re seeing in Ferguson and New York and other cities across America.
Remember, this was in 1967. I’m going to walk through it a bit at a time. Hoover testified:

“For the most part, the riots and disorders that have occurred in this country since the summer of 1964 were sparked by a single incident, generally following an arrest of a Negro by local police for some minor infraction of the law.”

Mike Brown was stopped for walking down the middle of the road. Eric Garner was stopped for selling singles. Both minor infractions of the law. Both confronted by local police. Hoover continues:

“Although most of the riots and disturbances have been characterized by spontaneous outbursts of mob violence dominated by young hoodlums, the involvement of other violent, lawless, subversive and extremist elements became readily apparent as the rioting grew and spread.”

In Ferguson, the protests were peaceful the first night. On the 10th, things turned violent. On the 14th, the communists were in town. According to the News Commenter:

There’s a lot of buzz on the ground about a communist group that’s bussing members into Ferguson from Chicago. The Revolution Club Chicago members provoked the police with Molotov cocktails the night of August 13th while the local protesters peacefully protested. That’s when police then responded with gas and flash grenades. Their reported goal is to make the protests go super-violent, spread across the region, and spark a revolution.

Protesters opposed to the communists being in Ferguson said on Twitter that the radicals were the ones that brought the firebombs and were teaching others to use them. I repeatedly heard that the troublemakers in Ferguson were from out of town; Mother Jones, a progressive outlet, pointed them out. There were also anarchist groups, the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party, and its former leader Malik Shabazz, who a local pastor called an “instigator.”
Here’s video of Shabazz leading a chant, where you can hear protesters saying they wanted Officer Darren Wilson “in jail,” “indicted” and “dead.” Much like in 1967, “violent, lawless, subversive and extremist elements” went to Ferguson.
But why? Here’s what Hoover said next:

“The riots and disturbances of recent years have given Communists a golden opportunity to emphasize the Marxist concept of the ‘class struggle’ by identifying Negro and other minority group problems with it.
“Communists seek to advance the cause of Communism by injecting themselves into racial situations and in exploiting them (1) to intensify frictions between Negroes and whites to ‘prove’ that the discrimination against minorities is an inherent defect of the capitalist system, (2) to foster domestic disunity by dividing Negroes and whites into antagonistic, warring factions, (3) to undermine and destroy established authority, (4) to incite Negro hostility toward law and order, (5) to encourage and foment further racial strife and riotous activity, and (6) to portray the Communist movement as the ‘champion’ of social protest and the only force capable of ameliorating the conditions of the Negroes and the oppressed.

Remember, that was in 1967.
The photo-blogger known as ‘Zombie’ found a flier on the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco in December. An excerpt reads:

There’s countless videos where these fuckin’ pigs wantonly murder people right in front of a camera knowing they’re being recorded! What the fuck is it gonna take to get these muthafuckers to stop?! The answer is Revolution — Nothing Less! Nothing less than overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist system that they so viciously serve and protect…

Hoover’s testimony could be given today and it would have been just as accurate. One final quote:

“The net result of agitation and propaganda by Communist and other subversive and extremist elements has been to create a climate of conflict between the races in this country and to poison the atmosphere.”

There’s no doubt that a “climate of conflict” exists today “between the races,” as Hoover put it. And there is a poison in the atmosphere that is dividing Americans. What Hoover and his G-Men saw in the 1960s is exactly what we are witnessing today. The extremists in America travel from shooting to shooting in the same way that Grateful Dead fans used to follow the band. The same faces could be seen in Ferguson and Baltimore and McKinney. That’s not me saying it, but Deray McKesson, a vocal #BlackLivesMatter protester:
Professional protesters, extremist agitators, and communist instigators travel the country and wreak havoc, turning protests into riots with the hopes of someday turning riots into a revolution. Hoover’s testimony proves this playbook isn’t new. They were using the exact same strategy fifty years ago.