During the J Edgar Hoover days of the FBI in the 1960s, they employed methods of intimidation, threats, and harassment towards people who could not be found liable in the court of law as commiting a crime, nevertheless certain people were deemed loathsome, commies, or anti-american and had to be ****ed with in order to get them to cease their activities or flee to another country. It was done towards anti-war hippies,...and also towards people deemed as becoming "Black Messiahs". Martin Luther King Jr was sent a letter from the FBI in 1964 telling Martin that they are following him around he can find peace by commiting suicide. The FBI also targeted Stokely Carmichael who fled the USA in 1969 and went back to Africa.
This methodology of behaviour to "disrupt" or attack people in mostly political matters without even the intentions of a law being broken or being brought before a judge, was vastly injured as a tool by the FBI during the church commission of 1975 which were a series of Congressional hearings that sought explanations into the JFK assassination and other nefarious activities by the FBI and CIA.
It was not until the creation of the homeland security under bush that a Goliath partnership between the FBI, CIA, and various minor intelligence agencies forming a multitude of acronyms to which the general public never heard of has re-imagined the concept to "disrupt" American citizens politically who have not committed a crime. Today, the FBI Baltimore office and many other FBI offices dedicate hundreds of personnel towards watching social media accounts of people who are against official international policies of the USA govt, ..anti war social media influencers are particularly visited by the FBI unannounced at their home to attempt to find a link of their opinions being "bought" by foreign adversaries....
It is assumed by the FBI if you are an American and have a different view of the world than the USA official foreign policy, then you must be paid from the Kremlin.
Hopefully the proposed FBI director Cash Patel can restore order to a degree to where it is okay to have an opinion without being harassed by the FBI or other various minor agencies of homeland security