[PEN-L:12016] Self-criticism

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I erred the other day when I said that "Law and Order" was not a liberal
TV show. After watching a rerun last night, I have come to my senses. I
must be spending too much time on the Spoons Marxism lists where
ultraleftism reigns supreme.

The episode was based on the events surrounding an alleged attempt by
Qbillah Shabazz on the life of Louis Farrakhan. Qbillah is the troubled
daughter of Malcolm X whose son was found guilty recently of the arson
murder of Malcolm's widow Betty Shabazz.

The show follows the real-life events with a high degree of faithfulness.
Qbillah had gone to high-school with a man who had become an
agent-provocateur connected with the Jewish Defense League. This character
had persuaded Qbillah to give him money to kill Farrakhan. A jury found
her not guilty because the agent-provocateur had a history of setting
people up.

In the "Law and Order" show, the agent-provocateur is an African-American
woman and her activities prior to setting up a character based on Qbillah
were with a survivalist Christian cult. She informed on them for the FBI
and got paid $40,000 for her efforts. The show is an indictment of the
FBI's involvement with these sorts of loose cannons who often drag
unwitting people into their plots.

There are a couple of criticisms that can be made of the show, however.
One, the role of the FBI in actually organizing entrapments is not made
clear. The Cointelpro papers reveal instance after instance in which the
FBI actively directed its hired hands to recommend bombing plots,
assassinations, etc.

The other criticism is that the NY police are represented as high-minded
opponents of entrapment, when the evidence is rather overwhelming that
they have been involved in exactly the same kind of provocations for years
and years themselves. The notion of a conflict between the FBI and the
local police is a little silly, but it is a convenient liberal fiction.
This was the premise of "Mississippi Burning" as well, an entirely false
portrait of FBI "crusaders" against local police vigilantism. If both FBI
and local cops were to be represented as murderous thugs on a TV show or
movie, the politics would then be radical and not liberal, however.


Louis Proyect