Secret police

{{Template:Law}}
'''Secret police''' is a term used to refer to [[police]] agencies which serve to protect typically [[authoritarian]] political regimes, often by means of abusing basic [[human rights]], such as [[freedom of speech]], [[freedom of religion|worship]], opinion, press, and the [[Habeus corpus|right to a fair trial]], as well as making heavy use of [[propaganda]].

Incidentally, two of the most frequently cited examples of secret police agencies were both from [[Germany]]: the ''Gestapo'' and the ''Stasi''. Maybe there's something in the water there? Actually, there are many other historical and contemporary examples elsewhere. Secret police have also appeared in fictional works.

==Examples==
===Airstrip One===
{{main|George Orwell}}
The [[Thought Police]] (also known as Thinkpol) are the government agents in charge of crushing freedom of 
speech
 ''thought'' in Airstrip One (what the island of [[Great Britain]] is called) in George Orwell's [[dystopia]]n novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. Like many aspects of the book, the Thought Police were inspired by life in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, specifically the actions of the NKVD, who killed and imprisoned millions of citizens. Also, the real Imperial-era Japanese Special Higher Police were known as Thought Police colloquially, existing from 1868 to 1947. They were political (secret) police who investigated Japanese people with ideologies the government opposed. Orwell may have taken the name from them.

===Europe===
====Tsarist Russia====
The [[Tsar|Russian Empire]] in the latter half of the 19th century developed a secret police force known as the '''''Okhrana'''.'' This secret police force tended to spend their days organizing [[pogrom]]s against the [[Judaism|Jewish]] population in the rural areas of [[Russia]] until the [[February Revolution of 1917]].<ref>''Reactions and Revolutions: Russia 1881 - 1924'', Michael Lynch, ISBN 0-340-53336-6</ref> They were responsible for creating the [[Protocols of the Elders of Zion]].

====Communist Russia and later====
[[File:Lavrenty Beria.jpg|thumb|right|165px|[[Lavrentiy Beria]], chief of the NKVD and MVD.]]
{{main|Soviet Union}}
[[Communist]] Russia and its later empire, the Soviet Union that we all knew and loved, had several incarnations of the secret police, taking over where the Tsars left off although with fewer Jew beatings. The first incarnation of 
the communist secret police
 the ''Russian law enforcement agencies under Soviet rule'' that emerged in 1917 after the [[October Revolution of 1917|October Revolution]] was known as the '''''Cheka''','' an abbreviation in the Russian language for the ''All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage''. The ''Cheka'' dealt primarily with purely Russian (RSFSR) affairs, as the Soviet Union itself was not formed until 1922. In 1922, the ''Cheka'' was transformed into the '''GPU''' - the ''State Political Directorate'', which fell under the control of the '''NKVD''', standing for the ''People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.'' Later secret police functions were transferred to the '''KGB''', the ''Committee for State Security''.

====Nazi Germany====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S72707, Heinrich Himmler.jpg|thumb|right|165px|[[Heinrich Himmler]], head of the Gestapo and [[Waffen-SS]].]] 
{{main|Nazi Germany}}
The '''''Gestapo''''' ('''''Ge'''heime '''Sta'''ats'''po'''lizei'' &mdash; "Secret State Police") was a secret-police force under Nazi Germany, and ''de facto'' under the control of the infamous SS (''Schutzstaffel'' - "Protection Force"). The ''Sicherheitsdienst'' or SD ("Security Service"), while founded as an internal Nazi-party [[Intelligence (government)| intelligence service]], served as a sister organization — both did arrests on their own and collected intelligence about dissidents and other people targeted by the [[state]]. They were also rivals. Unlike the Gestapo, the SD was an official division of the [[SS]]. A third agency, the ''Abwehr'' ("The Warder"), was a military-intelligence service which especially dealt with counterespionage. Led by an admiral, Wilhelm Canaris, it contained several anti-Nazi officers and became a locus of the attempted [[coup d'état]] against and [[Murder|assassination]] (had it succeeded, it would have been labelled an [[extrajudicial execution]]) of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] in the 1944 July Plot. Just like [[Erwin Rommel]], who was "suicided" (i.e. "allowed" to commit [[suicide]] to avoid [[Capital punishment|being executed]], which kept his family safe) after the failed coup, Canaris was also offed, but unlike the famous general, Canaris ended his days in a [[concentration camp]]. Even more insidious was the [[Big Brother|system of Nazi informants]] which in the cities included having a ''Blockwart'' ("block warden") supervising each block of flats and checking that you [[Propaganda|listened]] when [[Adolf Hitler|Uncle Adolf]] or [[Joseph Goebbels|Doctor Goebbels]] was on the [[Radio|''Volksempfänger'']].

====Fascist Italy====
During the time of [[Benito Mussolini]], the OVRA (Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo, "Organization for Vigilance and the Repression of Antifascism"), acted similarly to the Gestapo in Germany, spying on the [[Vatican]] as well as anyone who crossed the Fascist Party's radar, including playwright {{wpl|Luigi Pirandello}}. (See Wikipedia article on the {{wpl|OVRA}}.)

====East Germany====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0522-177, Erich Mielke.jpg|thumb|right|165px|{{wpl|Erich Mielke||,}} head of the Stasi from 1957-1989.]]
{{main|East Germany}}
The secret police service for Communist East Germany was the '''''Stasi''''' (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit — "Ministry for State Security"). The Stasi made the Gestapo look like amateurs — they were perhaps the most effective secret police force in world history, monitoring virtually every single aspect of East Germans' lives and recruiting as many as 1/7 of the entire population as informants. The Soviet Union even allowed them to monitor East German citizens inside the country, and the Soviet KGB actually took lessons from them.

====Belarus====
{{main|Belarus}}
The KGB has actually outlived the Soviet Union, remaining a force in Belarus used for the same function.

===Asia===
====Imperial Japan====
Imperial [[Japan]] also had several secret police organizations, the best known and most prevalent being the ''Kempeitai'' ("Military Police Corps"), originally a military police corps, but ending up as the Japanese Gestapo, or, given its military origins, a cross between the SD and Abwehr. A similar corps, the ''Tokubetsu-keibi-tai'' ("Corps of Special Police") was the Imperial Japanese Navy counterpart to the Army's Kempeitai, while the civilian secret police, the ''Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu'' ("Special Higher Police"), was the most direct parallel to the Gestapo and was even nicknamed the thought police.

====South Korea====
[[File:Kim Jong-pil 1999.png|thumb|right|165px|{{wpl|Kim Jong-pil||,}} founder of the KCIA.]]
{{main|South Korea}}
South Korea used to have one back when it was effectively a U.S. [[puppet state]]. It was called the K[[CIA]] (yup, very original) and its chief (like his U.S. counterpart styled Director of Central Intelligence) actually assassinated one of South Korea's Presidents, Park Chung Hee (one suspected motive was that the "USCIA" gave its nod, because Park thought it would be a great idea if South Korea got its own [[nuke]]s, which spooked the U.S. spooks, but various other motives and/or [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]] are floating around). When South Korea [[Democracy|democratized]] in the 1980s the KCIA was renamed and re-purposed into an actual intelligence agency, rather than a secret thought police spook squad.

====Uzbekistan====
{{main|Uzbekistan}}
There are reports of secret police in Uzbekistan.<ref>[http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64654 Uzbekistan: Student's Suicide Exposes Secret Police Surveillance] 7 December 2011</ref>

===Americas===
====Mississippi====
[[Federalism]] within the [[United States of America]] has allowed the states much leeway in law enforcement, at worst allowing state governments in the former [[Confederate States of America]] to use brutal means of law enforcement to enforce [[Jim Crow]] practices before the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. The State of [[Mississippi]] established the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to spy upon opponents of [[Apartheid|segregationism]] within and without Mississippi, often giving intelligence to [[Ku Klux Klan|unofficial enforcers]] that used it for targeting enemies of [[racism|White Power]].

This secret police was remarkable for not operating on a national level, but instead largely within a subdivision of such a national entity.

====Union of Soviet Socialist… Americas?====
[[File:Mlk-suicide-letter.JPG|thumb|right|165px|Anonymous letter sent by the FBI to [[Martin Luther King]] urging the civil rights leader to commit [[suicide]].]]
{{main|United States}}
The [[FBI]] under [[J. Edgar Hoover]] was responsible for keeping tabs on large numbers of suspected subversives during the [[McCarthyism|McCarthy]] era, and later carried out the COINTELPRO program, an attempt to sow destruction within the 1960s [[New Left|domestic radical movement]]. This involved large-scale illegal surveillance, which is a good example of one of the secret police's specialties: attacking the [[United States Constitution|constitutional]] [[Civil rights|rights]] of citizens (yes, even [[Fun:Hippie|hippies]] are citizens and [[Bill of Rights|have rights]]). The 
No Such Agency
 [[National Security Agency]] has also been slipping in and out of this role of late, if these [[Big Brother|secret]] [[Crime|warrantless]] [[Information Awareness Office|wiretapping]] [[Edward Snowden|controversies]] are anything to go by. The U.S.-run [[School of the Americas]] was effectively a secret police/[[state terrorism]]/[[torture]] [[Education|academy]] for the henchmen of [[Latin America]]n [[dictator]]s and [[junta]]s (aka banana republics).<ref> Walton, C. (2021). Spying on Americans: US Intelligence, Race Protests, and Dissident Movements: An Applied History Analysis. Journal of Applied History, 3(1-2), 47-71. https://doi.org/10.1163/25895893-bja10016</ref><ref>Weeks, G. (2017). Fighting to close the School of the Americas: Unintended consequences of successful activism. Journal of Human Rights, 16(2), 178–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2015.1103167</ref>

[[U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]] has also been described as a secret police, owing to its role kidnapping, extrajudicially deporting, and murdering American citizens and non-citizens alike.<ref>
{{cite book |last= Navarro  |first= Armando|date= 2012|title=Global Capitalist Crisis and the Second Great Depression: Egalitarian Systemic Models for Change |url= https://www.google.com/books/edition/Global_Capitalist_Crisis_and_the_Second/5Od3EQAAQBAJ|page= esp. 367|quote= As a people, Mexicano and Latinos (particularly immigrants) suffer from the Palestinian/Jewish persecution syndrome. [...] Like the Palestinians, Mexicanos and Latinos are colonized, occupied, powerless, oppressed, and exploited. In a historical context, Mexicanos and Latinos are today like the Jews of Nazi Germany, subject to the Republicans' political war of scapegoating, ethnic cleansing, immigrant bashing, vitriolic attacks, persecution, and repression. Recall that the Jews were compelled to wear, for identification purposes, the Star of David on their lapels and that the Jews were subjected to the repression of Hitler's Brown Shirts. Today, the Mexicanos' and Latinos' brown skin, surname, where they live and work have become criteria for both state and federal persecution and repression. <u>This situation is illustrated throughout the country in the incessant police harassment and ICE's Gestapo-like raids. While Republicans may be at the avant-garde of these attacks, it should be noted that Democrats are complicit as well. Obama's Department of Home-land Security's Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2010 deported some 392,862 during their Gestapo-like raids at job sites.</u> This number is higher than that of the previous Bush administration, and this figure is expected to increase in 2011 to over 400,000,43|publisher= Bloomsbury Publishing|chapter=9 |isbn= 9798216346852|access-date=January 10, 2026}}</ref><ref>Arriaga, Felicia. Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America. University of North Carolina Press, 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469673257_arriaga.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last= Press|first= Bill|date=2018 |title= Trump Must Go: The Top 100 Reasons to Dump Trump (and One to Keep Him)|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trump_Must_Go/y5tKDwAAQBAJ |quote= 19. What do you think of when you hear the term fascism? A secret, unaccountable police force trampling on basic constitutional rights? People being asked for their papers and arrested without warrant or charges? Activists being jailed for their political views, and families forced to live every day in fear of being rounded up, broken up, and locked up or deported? <u>Welcome to Donald Trump's America. For him, that secret, unaccountable police force is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.</u> True, Barack Obama wasn't exactly known for being soft on those in this country illegally. He oversaw the deportation of so many more people than George W. Bush that he became known as the Deporter in Chief. But, at the same time, he was pushing Congress to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. When Congress refused, Obama limited ICE enforcement actions to those people with serious criminal violations. Just being in the United States illegally did not count. <u>All that's changed under Trump. All restrictions are off.</u> And, of course, the net effect of lowering the standards for roundup and arrest is that ICE cops go after the easiest targets. As one agent put it, the goal is no longer to catch the bad guys but simply to "fill the beds." Perhaps unwittingly, ICE deputy director Thomas D. Homan confirmed their new priority: "ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable." And the obvious results soon followed. <u>In Trump's first year, arrests by ICE went up 40 percent, especially among those with no criminal record.</u> In 2017 alone, ICE made 37,734 "noncriminal arrests," more than twice the number in 2016. As Brian Tashman of the ACLU noted in February 2018, "In the past year, ICE has gone after parents dropping off their children at school; primary caregivers to family members with disabilities; domestic abuse survivors seeking legal protections; religious minorities who fear persecution; political activists; community leaders; and people who work everywhere from convenience stores to dairy farms." <u>The results are thousands of modern-day gestapo arrests that are unworthy of a free society and amount to nothing less than clear and dangerous suppression at the hands of the federal government. </u>|publisher=  St. Martin's Publishing Group|page= |isbn=9781250306487 |access-date=January 10, 2026}}</ref>
{{clear}}

===The Middle East=== 
Every [[Middle East]]ern [[Dictator|leader]] has at least one secret police corps and typically several competing ones (divide and conquer, and a good way to guard against your secret police replacing you). [[Torture]] is pretty standard (which is why the [[CIA]] [[Extraordinary rendition|outsourced some of its 
victims
 prisoners to them]]). Several of them are called something including ''Mukhabarat'' ("Intelligence"), e.g. the ''Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma'' ("General Directorate of Intelligence") of [[Saddam Hussein]].

====Iran====
[[File:Temyourbachtiar.jpg|thumb|right|165px|{{wpl|Teymur Bakhtiar||,}} SAVAK director from 1957-1961.]]
{{main|Iran}}
Back when Iran was still known as Persia and [[Monarchy|ruled]] by the [[Autocracy|autocratic]] [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi|Shah]] it had a rather notorious secret police known by its acronym SAVAK (the ''Sāzemān-e Ettelā'āt va Amniyat-e Keshvar'' or the "Organization of Intelligence and National Security") which was infamous for its torture of dissidents. When the Shah was toppled by [[Ruhollah Khomeini|some bearded preacher]] (no, not [[Jesus Christ|''that'' preacher]], the other one, the one with the turban and the bigger beard), SAVAK was out and SAVAMA was in (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). The difference being that the secret police of the [[ayatollah]]s are [[Shi'a Islam|Shi'a Muslim]] [[fundamentalists]], rather than quasi-[[fascist]] monarchists - big whoop when they pull out your fingernails… Oh yes, and you risk getting stoned (and we're not talking about the [[Marijuana|wackybaccy]] kind, but instead the one [[Gary North]] is [[Horseshoe theory|also a fan of]]) rather than whatever [[Guillotine|newfangled]] and/or inventive type of execution the SAVAK dreamed up.

====Saudi Arabia====
{{main|Saudi Arabia}}
The secret police in Saudi Arabia is known as the {{wpl|Mabahith}} (المباحث العامة‎). The Mabahith routinely engages in a wide range of human rights abuses, including torture. When [[Mohammad bin Salman]] took power in 2017, he had the Mabahith engage in imprisonment, torture and murder of a large group of Saudi leadership who posed possible threats to his leadership. A 2021 Canadian court received an affidavit documenting the torture of a former Saudi official, Salem Almuzaini, by the Mabahith inside Riyadh Ritz-Carlton hotel where many of the detainees were held in 2017.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/28/salem-almuzaini-torture-saudi-arabia-mbs/ A Saudi official’s harrowing account of torture reveals the regime’s brutality] by David Ignatius (July 28, 2021 at 2:29 p.m. EDT) ''The Washington Post''.</ref><ref>[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XX_wzP_DLzspPreAnb29gOvo2n69R481/view Court File No. CV-21-00655418-00CL] (June 30<sup>th</sup>, 2021) ''Ontario Suprio Court of Justice''.</ref>

==See also==
*[[Extrajudicial punishment]]
*[[Law enforcement]]
*[[Morality police]]
*[[Police state]]
*[[Secret society]]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Political action groups]]
[[Category:Political terms]]
[[Category:Authoritarianism]]
[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Fascism]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:Government surveillance]]
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]
[[Category:Socialism]]

Categories: Political action groups, Political terms, Authoritarianism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Government surveillance, Totalitarianism, Socialism