In the US anything goes against dissidents

Any threat to the status quo of capital will cause all cannons to be used to quell the “rebellion”

Date December 15, 2023 00:12:55

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

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The list of activists, musicians, managers and promoters who died in strange circumstances is enormous. One of those cases is that of John Lennon. Photo: BOB GRUEN/EMI

In the 1960s and 1970s in the US, the special services waged a major battle against anyone who dissented from the status quo. Being considered an offsider could have serious consequences.

The list of activists, musicians, managers and promoters who died in strange circumstances is enormous. Jimi Hendrix died from a drug overdose when he was no longer a drug addict; John Lennon, Michael Jeffrey, Donald Rex Jackson, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Bob Marley and Sal Mineo make up an index of more than 50 artists killed in situations doubtful

Alex Constantine, in the book Covert War on Rock, states that “intelligence sectors responded to the anti-war and civil rights movements by carrying out a program of covert assassinations.”

Provocative elements infiltrated the main civil rights organizations of anti-war, student, youth, feminist and political minorities. Each and every one of those identified as enemies of the system was subjected to close surveillance.

They planted false stories; They launched apocryphal proclamations of a violent or racist nature; They used disinformation to hold events and meetings in which false addresses or double summons were sent, and the content of the letters was changed to create discontent and internal divisions among the members and activists of the groups.

The leaders were blackmailed, the leaders were constantly harassed, false groups were created with undercover agents to carry out actions that provoked rejection in the population. Nothing was left to chance.

In 1971, the Police and the National Guard, summoned by Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, forcibly repressed the students of the University of Berkeley, who, together with various volunteers, had built the People’s Park in 1969. The The park was razed and, on top of it, a multi-story car park was built, in an attempt to erase the symbol of unity and utopia from the imagination.

With similar purposes, woodstockmania was created, a big business that sold thousands of records; Rock entered the circuit, attempts were made to domesticate it, make it commercial. Long hair, jeans and sandals became fashionable.

Propaganda accentuated the negative side of the counterculture, sold the image of drug addiction, psychedelia, and alcoholism, distorting the essence of the anti-war fight, of the fight against racial discrimination, against the intolerance of the system. Everything was perfectly framed in sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The CIA and the FBI worked together to prevent, at all costs, the fusion of the Black Political Revolution and the White Cultural Revolution.

This entire gigantic apparatus of covert war was also going to be directed against revolutionary Cuba. The CIA would do everything possible to avoid meeting points between Cuban socialism and the American counterculture.

Source: Imperialism of the 21st century: The culture wars.