Once hated by the left, the FBI is the new demon of conservatives and supporters of Donald Trump

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Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are accustomed to criticism, but never in the history of the agency have they faced something like the charge of conservatives after the search of the residence of former President Donald Trump in Florida last week.

In its more than 100-year history, the FBI has been hated by racist and segregationist southerners, by civil libertarians, and by African-Americans whose 1960s liberation movement was treated as a grave national threat by the agency.

But the extraordinary threats of the past week originate from his political base: Republican conservatives.

“It’s the world upside down,” says Kenneth O’Reilly, a retired University of Alaska historian and writer of books on the FBI and politics.

In his opinion, the FBI was always a “deeply conservative institution” with bipartisan support in Washington.

Billboards in front of the FBI headquarters in Washington, this Wednesday. Photo: REUTERS

republican attacks

But ever since Trump called the body corrupt and fascist After his property in Mar-a-Lago was raided on August 8 for illegally withholding secret documents, the attacks did not stop, and his supporters continue to stoke the fire.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel accused the office of “abuse of power.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, likened the agency to the secret police of a Marxist dictatorship, while Rep. Paul Gosar declared, “We must destroy the FBI.”

On the web, and even on Trump’s social network, Truth Social, the threats were more violentand they came true.

On August 11, a 42-year-old gunman attacked the FBI headquarters in Cincinnati after writing on social media accounts attributed to him that people should “respond with force” to the raid on Trump’s residence and “kill to the FBI.”

Former US President Donald Trump launched harsh criticism against the FBI after the search of his residence in Florida.  Photo.  REUTERS

Former US President Donald Trump launched harsh criticism against the FBI after the search of his residence in Florida. Photo. REUTERS

The man failed to get into the office in that Ohio city, and He was killed by a police shot.

A day later, another 46-year-old man was arrested in Pennsylvania for similar threats.

“If you work for the FBI you deserve to die,” he wrote on social media.

myth and reality

The FBI, long mythologized in film and television as the home of the “G Men” in the 1930s and the powerful and inscrutable J.Edgar Hoover, has received recurring criticism from all quarters, O’Reilly told AFP.

“Among racist southerners in the early 1960s there was a huge backlash against the FBI, which they treated like the Gestapo” for investigating the lynching of African-Americans.

The worst period, O’Reilly says, was also in the 1960s, when the agency spied on and tried to undermine the civil rights movementsmearing Martin Luther King Jr. and fueling violence between rival groups to discredit them.

But the reactions at the time were one of outrage and litigation, which led to a broad investigation in Congress that exposed the abuses committed, says the man who documented the war waged by the FBI against the black nationalist movement.

“There was no violence directed against FBI agents.”

In 1995, the actions of the FBI sparked a violent attack. Anti-government extremists detonated a bomb at a federal office in Oklahoma City, where the FB’s regional headquarters were located. 168 people died.

The extremists’ reaction was motivated in part by the FBI’s poor handling of two deadly hostage-takings in 1992 and 1993.

But despite everything, the FBI generally maintained strong political and popular support.

The battle of Donald Trump

The current wave against the agency stems from Trump’s long battle with the federal office, and, in particular, the FBI’s investigations of hundreds of supporters of the former president who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

For O’Reilly, it’s the open threats from politicians and Trump supporters that make the current moment so shocking.

“I think a vast majority of FBI agents voted for Trump,” he said. “So it’s a wild idea by the most conservative elements of the Republican Party to see the FBI as a tool of the radical left.”

The strong response of the judicial authorities of the United States to the threats was also extraordinary.

Fences were erected to protect the FBI headquarters in Washington.

“Violence and threats against law enforcement officials, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be of grave concern to all Americans,” said agency director Chris Way.

The Department of Homeland Security warned in a special bulletin that the agents could be in danger.

“I don’t recall a threat similar to this in recent years,” Brian O’Hare, president of the Association of FBI Agents, told NPR.

“It’s troubling. It’s unacceptable. And it should be condemned by everyone who knows it.” “It’s a climate of acceptance of violence that needs to be changed,” she added.

Fuente: AFP

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