The FBI Held a Black Activist for 5 Months for Legally Owning a Gun and Attending a Protest
Late in 2017, news leaked that the FBI had invented an entirely new kind of terrorist, which they dubbed the "black identity extremist." The move was alarming. According to critics, this extremely broad designation meant that black Americans could be suspected terrorists without committing any crime or having any connection to known extremists. Simply being aware of egregious police brutality is enough to put black citizens in the FBI's crosshairs.
And that's exactly what happened. Rakem Balogun was arrested in December 2017 and held for five months, without bail, as the FBI tried and failed repeatedly to find something to charge him with. While the FBI kept him locked up, Balogun lost his job and his home, his son was forced to move and change schools, and Bolgun himself now struggles to get over the trauma of his detention. "This has been a nightmare for my entire family," he told The Guardian.
While Balogun was never formally charged with being a "black identity extremist," the nature of his arrest and the charges brought against him suggest that he's the first known case of the government using the description. He's an activist and gun-owner, and those were essentially the only two things the FBI had on him. Prosecutors tried to failed to accuse him of illegal firearm possession, and and they also tried to charge him with... attending a rally. The testimony of special agent Aaron Keighley illustrates exactly how vapid the FBI's reasons were for arresting Balogun in the first place. Per The Guardian:
Keighley made no mention of Balogun’s specific actions at the rally, but noted the marchers’ anti-police statements, such as “oink oink bang bang” and “the only good pig is a pig that’s dead”. The agent also mentioned Balogun’s Facebook posts calling a murder suspect in a police officer’s death a “hero” and expressing “solidarity” with the man who killed officers in Texas when he posted: “They deserve what they got.”
Keighley, however, later admitted the FBI had no evidence of Balogun making any specific threats about harming police.
Balogun described those posts to The Guardian as "venting" his frustration over the endless stream of police murdering unarmed black civilians, saying "I just mimicked their reactions to our killings.” But, to be perfectly clear, why he wrote it is immaterial. No one is legally required to like the police, and by the FBI's own admission, there was no evidence of a real threat. In fact, Balogun only looks like a threat at all when viewed through the lens that the FBI fabricated whole cloth. He was arrested for no other reason than attending a rally and posting on Facebook, things that should worry anyone concerned with free speech.
The question remains, though, how did Balogun even get on the FBI's radar in the first place?
The FBI, Keighley said, learned of the protest from a video on Infowars, a far-right site run by the commentator Alex Jones, known for spreading false news and conspiracy theories.
So the FBI has been looking for cues from Alex Jones, the guy most famous for saying that the Sandy Hook shooting (along with every mass shooting) is a hoax committed by the U.S. government. But real evidence of "black identity extremists" is probably hard to come by. Despite the fact that police are more likely to shoot a black suspect than a white one, most of the violence against police in the U.S. is committed by white people.
But the federal government has a long history of targeting civil rights organizers. And today it boasts a bigger and more invasive surveillance network than ever before: so of course they're going to turn their new toys on old targets. Balogun may finally be free (after having his life completely upended), but the next person arrested on trumped up charges may not be so lucky.
