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Martin Luther King was spied on and blackmailed by the FBI. It's a bit dated, but a good place to start. http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a

• hga 13y ago
  Oh, there's a whole bunch of pre-Church Committee, especially J. Edgar Hoover (died a few years before the former) ... incidents, but the current authorities can and will say they aren't like those abusive folks 4 decades ago. And in e.g. the case of MLK they were famously unsuccessful. I claim you need atrocities committed upon "victims most will empathize with"; the latter excludes "rioting hippies" and the like, especially after the Weather Underground and company started bombing and killing people. E.g. I was just past the threshold of becoming politically aware when this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing and it shocked and appalled the nation.
  • rdl 13y ago
    It's interesting what external events are formative. For me, it was the SSC being cancelled (thus, wanting to be in private business and then funding science vs. government-funded big science at risk always to Congress), the MOVE bombing in a nearby city (learning that even a black mayor can be racist, as well as incompetent), and Challenger ("perfect systems aren't", kind of the Rumsfeld thing).