Vol. 76/No. 34      September 24, 2012

The FBI’s attempts to fit a snitch jacket on Richard Aoki poses decisive questions for the working class. At stake is our ability to effectively engage in politics and resist victimization and disruption of our organizations by the class enemy.

The goal of government snitch-jacket tactics is to turn political organizations in on themselves in a destructive hunt for spies; breed distrust, suspicion, and infighting; and ultimately tear them apart.

Bourgeois governments have sought to use such methods from the earliest days of the workers’ movement. They unsuccessfully attempted to use them against the Communist League founded by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and other working-class fighters who fought to break from conspiratorial traditions and organizational methods that had dominated the radical workers movement.

These lessons guided the Bolshevik party in making the Russian Revolution and has continued to guide the communist movement in the U.S. and worldwide. The Socialist Workers Party does not lie and does not spy. It openly explains its aims, does what it says, and welcomes into its ranks those who accept its program, actively engage in its work and agree to submit to its discipline.

This approach makes government disruption operations more difficult, minimizes the damage they can cause, and ensures attempts by government agents and other enemies to generate agent-baiting suspicions within the party ranks will always fail.

The rulers and their cop agencies, however, have succeeded in disrupting groups in the workers’ movement all too often, including the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party and others. The CP, for example, expelled its New York state chair, William Albertson, in 1964 after FBI agents fabricated material to indicate he was an informer and planted it for party members to find.

As the crisis of capitalism deepens so too do the propertied rulers’ attacks on the jobs, wages, working conditions and social and political rights of the working class. More and more, they will employ their secret police and conduct spying, disruption and other operations designed to weaken vanguard forces who are fighting back.

Those who give any credence to Seth Rosenfeld’s FBI-based snitch-jacket allegations, including with calls for “independent investigations” of FBI “evidence,” create an atmosphere where agent-baiting stirs interest and gets a foothold—exactly what the enemy class is hoping for.

As the SWP statement distributed at the meeting in Oakland, Calif., Sept. 9 states, “The party stands with those who place no credence in charges and ‘evidence’ coming from the FBI” and joins with those who oppose the snitch-jacket campaign against Richard Aoki.
 
 
Related articles:
Author pushes FBI ‘snitch-jacket’ allegations against deceased activist
Suit against FBI spying dismissed on ‘security’ pretext  
 
 
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