"Idavox has learned investigative reporter, author, and activist Chip Berlet has died at 76. Long before Trump, Berlet was one of only a handful of figures who consistently tracked and organized against right-wing extremism from the 1970s and into the ‘10s. He was also a journalist, scholar, activist, photographer, mentor, and co-founder of the think tank Political Research Associates.
Although universally known simply as “Chip,” he was born John Foster Berlet in November 1949 in Hackensack, New Jersey. He attended the University of Denver, where he helped organize anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and worked with the underground press, but dropped out in 1971 before completing his degree. He later moved to Chicago’s Marquette Park to work against neo-Nazis who were leading the neighborhood’s resistance to desegregation. He first infiltrated their group, and then openly counter-organized against them. After talking to local ministers, he saw a need to change tactics in order to protect Black families from being firebombed out of their homes and protect them. Eventually, the White supremacists were driven out of Marquette Park, and today it is a predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood.
In 1976, Berlet was a paralegal at the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), where he and other staffers revealed a network of right-wing groups collecting information about liberal movements and organizations. The following year, the NLG sued the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI, and the U.S. military, resulting in the release of 300,000 pages of documents chronicling fifteen years of COINTELPRO, which focused on disrupting left-wing movements.
His writings on the militia movement influenced the Clinton administration’s response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—and that same year he spoke at the Anti-Racist Action (ARA) national gathering."
https://idavox.com/index.php/2026/02/05/chip-berlet-1949-2026/