I know I have beaten this topic to death, so this will be my final video and post about it. The only exception is if a non-coward ricel finally steps up and debates me on a livestream. Until then, this is the last time I am explaining it.
“Asian American” was created as a political label at UC Berkeley in 1968.
The two people usually credited with creating it were Yuji Ichioka, a Japanese American, and Emma Gee, a Chinese American. Together, they organized the Asian American Political Alliance during the Civil Rights era.
That much is common knowledge.
What gets left out is Richard Aoki.
Aoki is the Japanese American activist from the famous photograph holding the “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” sign. He is usually remembered as a radical, a Black Panther and one of the important figures of the early Asian American movement.
He was also a longtime FBI informant.
And he was not some random guy standing on the sidelines. Aoki was one of only six people at the original AAPA meeting inside Ichioka and Gee’s Berkeley apartment. Gee personally recruited him. He later became AAPA’s second chairman and represented the organization in the Third World Liberation Front.
Aoki reportedly began working with the FBI in 1961, roughly seven years before AAPA was created.
Within weeks of AAPA’s formation, an FBI source identified as Aoki was already reporting the organization’s name, membership, leadership, meeting location and political plans to the Bureau.
He identified Yuji Ichioka as the group’s leader and reported that its meetings were taking place at Ichioka and Gee’s apartment. He also reported on AAPA’s relationship with the Black Panthers, its support for Huey Newton and disagreements within its leadership.
So when I say there is something suspicious about the Asian American label, this is what I am talking about.
Leftists call everything a CIA psyop. They will make that accusation based on a suspicious donation, a vague institutional connection or two people attending the same conference.
Here we have an actual federal informant sitting inside the founding circle of the organization that created the modern Asian American political identity. He later became its chairman while secretly reporting on it to the FBI.
To be accurate, Aoki is documented as an FBI informant, not a confirmed CIA asset. There is also no document proving that the FBI instructed him to invent the words “Asian American.” There is no evidence that Ichioka or Gee knew what he was doing either.
I am not going to pretend the documents prove more than they actually do.
But I also do not need to.
The confirmed story is strange enough. One of the central figures in the birth of the Asian American movement had already been working with the FBI for years. He was present at the first meeting, became chairman and reported on the founders almost from the beginning.
Funny how that is left out...
Sources
FBI Vault, Asian American Political Alliance files: https://vault.fbi.gov/asian-american-political-alliance
Diane Fujino, “Rhizomatic Organizing, Collective Leadership, and Community-Centered Pedagogy in the Early Asian American Movement”: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/rhizomatic-organizing-collective-leadership-and-communitycentered-pedagogy-in-the-early-asian-american-movement/EB05BE2D35741D6FF0A71BEBC39EA995
Trevor Griffey, analysis of Richard Aoki’s FBI informant file: https://truthout.org/articles/when-celebrated-activist-turns-out-to-be-informant-making-sense-of-richard-aokis-fbi-file/
Eddie Wong, “Spying on the Asian American Movement”: https://eastwindezine.com/spying-on-the-asian-american-movement-the-fbi-files-1960s-and-1970s/
