A guy I went to school with in Geneva, was very active in left wing politics, organizing demos and other such stuff. When he got his Swiss citizenship he was given a look at his police file. In it were dozens of photos of him at demonstrations and meetings. Ok, not that surprising. But they also had photos of him hanging out with his girlfriend some random night in a park. He went to college at Stanford and was a leader of the student anti Gulf War movement. During one conversation with a senior university official, over a banned event, he assured them, falsely, that it was off. The official responded by quoting verbatim from a phone conversation he'd had the night before with another activist.

When I inquired about Swiss citizenship, in addition to explaining that my being white and not a 'fake white' from the south was an advantage, the official also said that I had should have no political issues, having only taken part in two demonstrations. All I did was attend - how the fuck did they know - maybe I signed something and that got into my records?

I would not be surprised to find in my file photos of myself taken by fat Birchers in what passed for a protest march in Tucson, AZ in '66, a series of letters to the editor of the Tucson Citizen in '65 responding to an editorial, "Regents Better Face the Facts," which criticized about 100 professors who signed an open letter to LBJ requesting that he reconsider his escalation in Vietnam. (The "Facts" were, of course, that these were a bunch of pinkos.  My letter suggested that the Regents obtain the assistance of the FBI and CIA in administering polygraph tests to all incoming out of state faculty and students to determine their compliance with President Johnson's war policy.)  Etc. etc. etc. up to and including everything I have posted on ET correlated right back to my name, address, phone number and social security number.  

I do not advocate violence and can only hope to be seen as harmless.  But then all the videographers arrested in St. Paul were doing was filming or planning to film police activity.  I fully expect that at least some of the "anarchists" who broke windows in St. Paul were hired provocateurs.

The term Fascism derives from the bindings around the bundle of sticks surrounding a headman's ax that were carried by the "lictors" escorting Tribunes in ancient Rome.  The sticks were used to beat miscreants and the fascia were seen as representing the bonds that held together that authoritarian society.  The term does not just apply to Hitler and Mussolini, but to societies where exemplary violence is used as a means of social control.  That certainly defines the historic behavior of the Los Angeles Police Department and many others.  

 

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."