Since Donald Trump’s presidency ended with a violent insurrection at the US Capitol that left five people dead, the country and its leadership have focused on how to address the “new” threat of “terrorism.” Bipartisan efforts backed by President Joe Biden seek to further escalate an already out-of-control US Intelligence apparatus.
Supporters of civil liberties and defenders of Black, immigrant, and Muslim communities have urged caution against such measures. Nonetheless, we are told by some opponents of the far-right that supporters of equality and civil liberties should not be worried about expansions of US surveillance and counterterrorism capabilities.
They are wrong. A new report published by Project South, a movement-building organisation rooted in the Black radical tradition, describes the lengthy history, practices, and law behind the US surveillance state and its systematic targeting of Black, immigrant, and/or Muslim communities, with a particular focus on the US South. Spying on the Margins: The History, Law, and Practice of U.S. Surveillance Against Muslim, Black, and Immigrant Communities and Contemporary Strategies of Resistance is intended as a useful guide and tool for community organisers, lawyers, activists, and all those concerned about the practical effects of the massive growth of the US surveillance state.
Many associate systematic state surveillance practices against Muslims in the US with the 9/11 attacks and the “war on terror” that followed. But the reality is that Black and immigrant Muslim communities were subjected to discriminatory and abusive surveillance practices long before that.
After the first world war, an increasingly nativist US government subjected diverse Muslim communities to surveillance and deportation when they began to engage in political organising. For example, as the US government passed overtly xenophobic laws such as the National Origins Act of 1924, restricting non-white and non-Christian immigration, the FBI began to aim its surveillance at pan-Islamic and Islamic-influenced Black and pan-African movements that opposed white supremacy. During the second world war, the US government spied on Black Muslim organisations, alleging without basis that they might be allied with the Japanese government. And following the war, Black, Indigenous, and immigrant movement leaders, Black Muslims and Arab leftists were among many activists and civil rights groups targeted by the FBI’s infamous domestic political spying programme, COINTELPRO.
A Senate Select Committee that investigated COINTELPRO in the 1970s, known as the Church Committee, found that a combination of factors led “law enforcers to become lawbreakers”. The Church Committee’s exposure of the COINTELPRO abuses led to a series of reforms, including laws designed to regulate government surveillance and internal guidelines…
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