The Suppression of Dissent

Despite longstanding traditions of tolerance, inclusion, and democracy in the United States, dissident citizens and social movements have experienced significant and sustained--although often subtle and difficult-to-observe--suppression in this country. Using mechanism-based social-movement theory, this book explores a wide range of twentieth-century episodes of contention, involving such groups as mid-century communists, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the modern-day globalization movement. First it delineates a typology of actions the state and mass media engage in that suppress dissent. Then it shifts analytically from these twelve Modes of Suppression to the five interactive Mechanisms of Suppression that animate demobilization: Resource Depletion, Stigmatization, Divisive Disruption, Intimidation, and Emulation. Acting individually or in concert, these Mechanisms of Suppression operate across time and place. Drawing from mass-media accounts, Federal Bureau ofInvestigation (FBI) documents, secondary histories, and other data sources, Boykoff explains how the state and mass media have engaged in activity that--operating through social mechanisms--inhibits the preconditions for collective action, either through raising the costs or minimizing the benefits of mobilization.

Jules Boykoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.