Edit: perhaps someone can explain to me the clear and present danger from the far left?
No, they aren't. It is virtually impossible for the far left to become as problematic as the far right, because the right wing in the US intersects with the vast cultural and financial power of the gun lobby and conservative Christianity, whereas the left is primarily composed of minority groups systemically oppressed and disenfranchised by the system. Unless you can drape your message in the iconography of the flag and the cross you can't have real power in American politics. That's baked in, down to the electoral college, which is designed to give rural American (more likely to be right-leaning) votes more power than urban (more likely to be left-leaning) votes so as to preserve the status quo, which is white, Conservative, capitalist and Christian.
Every left-wing movement in the US has been infiltrated, undermined and eventually crushed by the right. Occupy no longer exists. BLM no longer exists. Go back to the 60s - MLK, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Weather Underground. Bernie, the closest thing the US has to a mainstream socialist, was quickly swept aside by his own, supposedly "leftist" party, meanwhile Trump is still the frontrunner to win in 2024 and QAnon is still a viable political and cultural movement. Native Americans protesting pipelines get beaten, white Americans showing up to the White House with guns and Nazi flags get welcomed in. Show me an anti-war protest in the US that mattered. Vietnam, Iraq, Israel, Americans protesting in the millions, all definitionally "leftist." none of it mattered.
I mean, I wish the far left were just as problematic. At least then we would live in a somewhat equitable society where all political points of view had equal weight, an actual marketplace of ideas. But we don't, and really the only place the left is allowed to exist without facing the violence of the state is online, where it does far more harm to itself with endless infighting, purity spirals and factionism than to the system it opposes.
Are you implying those groups were infiltrated and sabotaged by the alt right baddies and that is why they failed?
Similar effort against right-wing groups is more limited and politically difficult because such groups would be considered militias protected by the Second Amendment. It's much easier to get away with suppressing left-wing speech than right-wing violence in the US.
- https://www.nlg.org/cointelpro-disrupting-resistance-movemen...
- https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/7/alphabet_boys_podcast_...
Fortunately, far too many people in “power” have ego problems for this to ever actually become a problem.
Until then, we will continue to get action/reaction like has happened in American politics for the past few cycles.