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Chip Gibbons is a journalist whose work has been featured in In These Times and the Nation. He is also the policy director of Defending Rights and Dissent, where he authored the report "Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Problem of FBI First Amendment Abuse." The views expressed here are his own.
The police and national security state need far less power, not more. We should oppose any attempts, by both Democrats and Republicans, to use the Capitol riot to pass new domestic terrorism legislation expanding state surveillance powers.
Edward Snowden performed an immense act of public service to the American people by blowing the whistle on the National Security Agency’s vast, clandestine surveillance programs. President Donald Trump should pardon him.
The US is attempting to imprison one of its critics, Julian Assange, by claiming a global right to prosecute any journalist in the world. If that prosecution succeeds, it would be a severe blow not just to press freedom, but to our very right to oppose imperialism and empire.
Rep. Karen Bass is no socialist, but she's hung around a few of us in the past. Because of this, as her name was floated for Biden's vice presidency, she's been subjected to McCarthyist-style smears. We on the Left have to clearly and loudly stand against these attacks — they’re designed to make socialism politically beyond the pale.
Donald Trump's deployment of federal agents to American cities is a continuation of bipartisan police repression. But make no mistake: he's also tapping into some of the darkest corners of far-right authoritarianism, which seek to stamp out the radical "enemy from within."
Recently revealed emails show that a wide range of public entities were used to police a California graduate workers strike. It’s part of a long tradition of government agencies spying on labor organizers and radicals — but now with cross-agency coordination and ever-expanding budgets.
Donald Trump is attempting to drum up hysteria about antifa to clamp down on protest and dissent in the United States. Don't let him.
The recent failed invasion of Venezuela by several clown cars worth of idiotic “freedom fighters” is almost too absurd to believe. But the goofballs aside, this misadventure can only be understood in the context of Donald Trump’s increased aggression toward Venezuela and open desire to overthrow its government.
The Bolsonaro government’s attack on Glenn Greenwald is an attack on free speech and democracy. We should unequivocally stand by his side.
In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting, some are pushing to expand the FBI's powers. That's a huge mistake: a domestic terrorism law would almost certainly be used to silence left-wing dissent.
The US government is holding Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement again. It’s a vindictive, unconscionable attack on a brave truth teller.
The FBI has historically served as a political police force, tasked not just with monitoring dissent but actively destroying it. Nowhere is that clearer than in their infiltration of the Left in the 1960s and ’70s.
Early American socialists like Eugene Debs fought for free speech rights as a bulwark against state tyranny and employer despotism. We should take up their radical struggle for civil liberties today.
Recently released FBI documents detailing the bureau's actions against George Crockett Jr show how the bureau acts as the nation’s political police, relentlessly hounding radicals.
We obtained the FBI's files on Delmer Berg, a Communist and Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran. They show the bureau's determination to surveil and crush dissent.
Lawmakers around the country are attempting to stifle protest movements. They're the real threats to free speech.
The Espionage Act was passed today in 1917. It helped destroy the Socialist Party of America and quashes free speech to this day.
The FBI embodies authoritarianism more than any other domestic agency. It can’t curb Trump’s autocratic tendencies.
Couching opposition to Trump in anti-Russia language will only end up benefiting the Right.
In the 1930s and '40s, conservative forces waged a relentless campaign to deport militant labor leader Harry Bridges.