U.S. Disinformation Against Progressive Social Movements 1917-2017

In 2017, the issue of mis and disinformation came to my doorstep when the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division invented a brand-new label, designating the movement in defense of Black lives as “Black Identity Extremists.” 

The FBI used acts of violence unrelated to BLM to justify targeting Black dissident voices. 

Their goal was to broadly categorize Black activists as threats to national security, justifying an intensification of government surveillance, domination, and punishment. 

At the same time, Russian operatives were working overtime to stir discord related to America’s longstanding racial divides by infiltrating online communities of the Black Lives Matter movement—and, to an even more significant degree, the online groups frequented by everyday people.

The use of propaganda to delegitimize social movements isn’t a new tactic. In this snippet from Nonprofit Quarterly from a panel on combatting propaganda in the 21st century, I outline some history of these attacks on progressive social movements between 1917 and 2017.

You can read the panel recap or watch the panel entirely, which features the brilliance of Sabrina Joy Stevens, Kris Hayashi, Jacquelyn Mason, and Joseph Phelan here.