At a glance
The Guardian's Kenneth Roth compares Trump's targeting of progressive organizations to J. Edgar Hoover's illegal surveillance campaign, warning of authoritarian tactics.
Kenneth Roth, drawing on newly available records, is directly comparing the Trump administration's surveillance of progressive organizations to COINTELPRO—the FBI program that ran from the 1950s through the 1970s and illegally targeted civil rights groups, antiwar activists, and other political opponents. The comparison isn't metaphorical. COINTELPRO involved warrantless wiretaps, infiltration, and fabricated evidence designed to discredit or neutralize organizations deemed threats to the political order. Roth's warning is that the current targeting of left-leaning groups follows the same playbook.
What makes this more than just rhetorical alarm is the pattern. COINTELPRO was exposed only because it was discovered by accident in 1971; without that disclosure, it would have remained buried. The fact that critics are already drawing this parallel suggests they're seeing enough structural similarity—government resources aimed at political opposition, limited oversight, legal methods deployed for political ends—to sound the alarm before similar damage accumulates. The comparison implies this isn't just surveillance; it's selective surveillance tied to political identity.
Citation trail
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