Let's not pretend that things are materially worse than they were back then. We certainly aren't blackmailing civil rights leaders into suicide anymore within the FBI.
That's actually not true, and that's a really big assumption to make without evidence or direct experience.
Radical activists today still face state suppression. I know of a communist in Austin who had an FBI file because he led lots of actions, which (I think) he discovered through FOIA requests. In 2018, the Austin PD colluded with two people who claimed this guy assaulted them while he was armed, which was completely false. He's in prison now.
Seriously. The FBI was watching Black Lives Matter activists for a while as “black identity extremists.” For merely saying “black lives matter” in the street.
During the Civil Rights era things were pretty terrible.
I don't know how you measure the two but I think your vague implication here is pretty wrong / represents a real misunderstanding of what the government was up to in the civil rights era...
Let's not pretend that things are materially worse than they were back then. We certainly aren't blackmailing civil rights leaders into suicide anymore within the FBI.