(Also murders and discredits civil rights activists in the 60s-80s, so that’s a thing to keep in mind…)
Man, their reputation really has gone to shit
Submitted 3 days ago by Gonzako@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/30aa28ee-0371-4833-bd44-1bf6a63bceec.jpeg
Comments
guaraguaito@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Gonzako@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh, yeah, I definitely ain’t supporting their actions this way. It’s just funny seeing a coup happen in public and them doing nothing
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The people who are doing the coup are aligned with the historical practices of the FBI so it makes perfect sense to me.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Since 9/11, the FBI just wastes resources tricking vulnerable people with terrorism entrapment schemes.
Before 9/11, it was a lot of drug entrapment schemes, like the one they tried on DeLorean. While they enjoy McCarthy style entrapment of high-profile celebrities and such, they figured out it was better for their careers to go after people without the means to fight the charges. So they get an innocent person to agree to a plea deal, build a resume of successful convictions, and there’s less public scrutiny when it’s found out the whole thing is just another illegal entrapment.
seven_phone@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think that extends to America generally, all the talk of freedom and equality and now so easily camps are being set up to concentrate undesirable groups of people in and everyone is complying or pretending it’s not happening.
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
I don’t know how much help we can expect from FBI and law enforcement. There was a bill a few years back proposing an investigation to see how deep white supremacy had penetrated law enforcement and the military. EVERY Republican representative voted it down.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We can expect zero. The FBI has a long history of suppressing the civil rights movement and other progressive causes.
Depress_Mode@lemmy.world 3 days ago
CIA, too. I thought they kind of did their own thing and kind of aren’t really beholden to the president. People think the CIA is such a rogue organization that some people have suggested they killed JFK because he sought to shrink the org and make them more accountable. Whether that’s true or not, apparently all it takes to completely take it over is just to change around some personnel, though.
Like, my head cannon is that the new leaders would be figureheads only and that there’d be someone secretly chosen to keep things running behind closed doors and pulling the real CIA strings to resist such changes (and maybe have an encore, pretty please?), but that’s based on nothing at all. I’m no fan of the CIA or anything, but I do fear what such a shadowy government org might do when wielded by Trump cronies even more than the stuff they usually get up to.
BakerBagel@midwest.social 3 days ago
If tou look into the plans and wacky shit the CIA has tried to do over the years, you realize they are just daycare for Ivy League grads. They are absolutely useless at anything beyond intelligence gathering
Depress_Mode@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s true, but intelligence and counterintelligence is kind of their whole thing, isn’t it? They’ve certainly had a long list of laughable fuckups, like their many failed assassination attempts on Castro, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Iran-Contra, etc., but they’ve also successfully toppled governments in South/Central America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, etc. Apparently they’ve made at least 70 attempts at regime change since the end of the Cold War, according to Wikipedia. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the CIA as a non-threat, personally, especially if they’re going to be following the malevolent orders of a Trump loyalist. I fear the CIA will turn more inwardly to our own country and use their efforts against US citizens (more than usual, that is), specifically against those who would oppose a Trump regime.
We already saw FBI agents engaging in 60s-and-70s-style surveillance of BLM activists in 2020, where they and other feds went around in unmarked vans snatching random activists off the street and traded literal baseball cards they made about different individual activists for fun. Those feds were also sent in at the express direction of Trump. With that in mind, I have no doubts the CIA would do the same in heartbeat. I know they already conduct domestic surveillance operations, but I’d predict a substantial increase in that under the current administration, especially given the ways things have been going after only the first couple weeks with Trump demanding absolute fealty throughout the government and vilifying all opposition. It’s just frightening that Trump had a ready-made intelligence org that was so easily converted to his agenda and seems poised to be his personal secret police. I think that’s probably even scarier than the CIA of old. At least for right now, I might somehow prefer a CIA that says, “Sorry, Mr. President, but we don’t follow orders.”
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The intelligence agencies aren’t interested in protecting this country anymore.
It’s too easy to just suck billionaire cock.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 days ago
anymore
Point to the moment in history when intelligence agencies were interested in protecting anyone worth less than $10M.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Also 1980s: providing some C4 to bomb a black apartment block in in Philadelphia: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world 3 days ago
FBI should kill elon
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Should, but won’t. They only do that to progressives.
lost_faith@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Careful, maybe disappear him to some black site
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
This was always the truth of it. The FBI was always the organization the people in power wanted it to be. They love that the FBI takes the blame for their policies.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Can’t even coup venezuela these days lol
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 days ago
salon.com/…/fbi-takes-a-page-from-breitbart-far-r…
In meetings, the Justice Department and senior F.B.I. officials agreed that making the Clinton Foundation investigation public could influence the presidential race and suggest they were favoring Mr. Trump. . . . They agreed to keep the case open but wait until after the election to determine their next steps. The move infuriated some agents, who thought that the F.B.I.’s leaders were reining them in because of politics.
Its the same FBI. They’re a pile of writhing fascist maggots, all too eager to get back to their COINTELPRO days of breaking the knees of union organizers, torching the homes of civil rights activists, and padding their wallets with protection money from the New York Mafia.
The MAGA is coming from inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just to nitpick, the CIA is more the “topple governments” organization.
I am sure the FBI is involved, but their operations are primarily internal affairs. It’s like MI5 and MI6 in the UK.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The CIA topples foreign governments.
The FBI topples progressive movements within the US.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Tbf they also target white supremacist organisations within the US.
Targeted.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah…and they’re being threatened too.
I wonder if they’d ever consider the White House to be a foreign government to topple.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 3 days ago
When I heard about the targeted moves against the FBI by DOGE, I got to thinking that the FBI is not the sort of organization you want to anger if you have skeletons in your closet. And even if you don’t, they’ll put one there to find.
But I’m worried we’re already at the point where the entire agency can be discredited (not entirely undeservedly) just because President Cheeto and Supreme President Musk could label any findings as “fake news” and the majority of Americans would take it as fact.
They could be the SA to whatever SS the Trump admin wants to replace them with (the Proud Boys?)
Gonzako@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah, this meme is just a glimpse at my external view of the events. To me the CIA, the FBI and those kind of agencies are just lumped together. Appreciated the info tho
ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
I mean, that nice and all but it’s objectively wrong. That’s not how alphabet agencies work.
Dasus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
OOOOohhhh that’s their difference. I never really bothered to check. Did know the difference for CIA and FBI though, but this I somehow thought of less idk
Stovetop@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If you want more info about some other Anglosphere countries and their comparable organizations, along with a healthy dose of “Wait what the hell are these governments doing”, the Five Eyes article on Wikipedia has a helpful table of its member states and their respective intelligence apparati.