Pretty interesting. A lot of these points have become the norm for any discussion in leftist spheres. How do we combat this?
The only fed shit you should really worry about (aside from legally protecting yourself) is indistinguishable from bad organization and recruiting. Interpersonal toxicity, sexual harassment, a failure to be welcoming to new recruits, including educating the libs, not actually doing any praxis but just debating all the time...
I always dislike when things like this are posted because people read into them way too much and are just like "Wow, that person thinks BLM matters and isn't caring entirely about economy only, they're CIA!" is how you empower stupidpol types and the like too.
How do you decide what's irrelevant to leftist politics without basing it off of your own personal desires and saying other people need to follow yours?
You don't.
The CIA heavily recruits from elite schools, and they tend to recruit dorks and true believers because of the conduct standards and the necessity of believing in the mission. It's the same people who go into media or management consulting, but without the interesting kind.
You can spot Feds very easily because they're stupid Ivy League types spouting the same old shit and they're also not creative enough to give it a spin. The guy who sparked this entire thread is actually a great example of a suspected Fed (not Nick, the guy he was quoting who said some stupid shit). Edit: The guy being quote tweeted here https://twitter.com/SocialistMMA/status/1409553018513723393
You can spot Feds very easily because they’re stupid Ivy League types spouting the same old shit and they’re also not creative enough to give it a spin
:virgil-sad: :
The guy who sparked this entire thread is actually a great example of a suspected Fed (not Nick, the guy he was quoting who said some stupid shit).
I don't see which account you mean
Yeah there's nothing there but this guy being deliberately vague and trying to cause drama.
Why the fuck is everyone so certain they know what a fed is and isn't like lmao none of you have a clue and you certainly don't have enough collective experience to be able to really tell, or have your suspicions be confirmed/be proven wrong reliably.
This is a defeatist attitude that prevents anybody from learning or growing. This isn't shitkicker public Twitter, this is a somewhat curated forum full of people who presumably know something about something that we all can glean info from. "lol none of us know, it's soooo hard to tell" is Fed talk :)
No, y'all genuinely have no idea so instead of deluding yourself about your epic knowledge of CIA infiltrators and accidentally sowing paranoia and division, just skip this nonsense and try to just root out nasty and counterproductive behavior without making up infiltrator narratives, especially when you clearly don't have anywhere near the required experience to judge that. You have no clue, just accept that and move on.
Dude, no offense, but you're not even American. You shouldn't rain on people's parade when we're trying to help each other out and politic and such.
This doesn't help anyone. This genuinely hurts organizations more than the feds ever could, for now at least. It's genuinely really really bad when people are just conjecturing stuff about what an infiltrator would and wouldn't do based on no good knowledge. There's so many posts every now and then by people going like "oh, I want to get organized but I'm worried x and y and z are feds" and it's just so bad.
I think the points highlighted in the tweet are important because they show that if a person is only interested in sowing division, being overly cautious, re-litigating old arguments etc. then they might not have the best interests at heart.
Like, obviously there isn't a hard and fast rule or line that you have to cross - but I think in general you can figure if a person is being needlessly contrarian or frustrating.
Nick is a good dude, I've chatted with him a lot over the last few months, I watched him go from being a Bernie guy to more and more radical. I saw people on here yesterday calling him a grifter and that didn't sit well with me given my interactions with him.
Lmao he's using Fred Hampton's name for his social media branding. If that doesn't scream "grifter" to you...idk, man.
Step 1: log off Twitter where you're willingly subjecting yourself to all of these things
These aren't CIA instructions for infiltrating "leftist" orgs. Its actually old OSS instructions for engaging in soft industrial sabotage. They're actually fairly good instructions and doing some of them at work can get you promoted.
By rejecting ideological purity. organizing to fill the gaps the Dems left in inner city and poor areas by focusing on the suburbs and pushing for Big tent and united front thinking.
The more we organize and get leftists out there the more people realIze it’s not as bad as they are lied about.
The DSA is lib and electoralism is a fuck but without using it and the system in general to make a fucking ground work to create a class conscious movement nothing will get done and we will be picked off in our isolated groups during the inevitable right wing push.
without using it to make a fucking ground work to create a class conscious movement
why do you have to use it? just make an actual workers party dude lmao
If your org is sizable and you haven't had a discussion about what do to with potential police infiltrators than you've probably already been infiltrated. It's possible to sus them out, both through their disruptive tactics but also just by their more normal behavior. Many feds try to get into leadership positions before running ops, so you ought to vet all your leaders in some way. Feds usually the suspiciously well funded and highly motivated members of your org, so you are going to want to put them in leadership. Don't. Expel their asses. You won't have smoking gun evidence, no fed is letting their FBI badge fall out in the middle of a meeting. They're also going to try to ingratiate themselves with others and make friends, so that people won't be willing to confront them. You must discard these liberal ideals, this is class warfare and the feds are trying to DESTROY you and your org. You aren't in a court, you don't need hard evidence, but you need to be willing to force out undercover agents. Trust your gut if something smells. Literally put a tail on the guy and see where he lives, works, is he telling the truth? The fed in my org didn't know anyone else in the city except us and lived with another org member: so check for local connections and ties to the community. They are a favorite tool of the FBI and your kidding yourself if you think you won't be targeted after you have been causing enough trouble. It's the easiest way for the FBI to break up orgs and it's very easy for usually undisciplined leftists to fall right into their traps. Foster party discipline and a recognize the threat of undercovers so you can defend against them. Sooner rather than later before it's the fed making these rules.
They’re also going to try to ingratiate themselves with others and make friends, so that people won’t be willing to confront them.
You can see this tactic bearing fruit in this very thread.
If your org is sizable and you haven’t had a discussion about what do to with potential police infiltrators than you’ve probably already been infiltrated.
Okay, so now what?
Literally put a tail on the guy and see where he lives, works, is he telling the truth?
I don't doubt the methodology, but you're very quickly running into the Principle-Agent problem. Does every member need to stake out every other member to feel secure? Is treating every mushy liberal take from a new member like evidence of FBI infiltration productive towards growing membership or messaging?
There is, I think, a fundamental challenge in founding, operating, and growing an organization. Understanding that wreckers exist and addressing them when they appear is one thing. But it is hardly the only thing.
This rant seems to take the actual grassroots founding and organizing as a bygone conclusion and zips start to political intrigue.
If you go into an organization thinking "Who is the rat?!" then half the "turn members against each other" playbook is already executed.
That's why this is so effective. If you ignore the problem, they infiltrate and make the organization ineffective. If you go after the problem, you make your organization less effective, and spend a lot of time chasing your own tail. Even if you so get all the infiltrators, you can never be sure, and you spend a lot of time going after them.
Like nearly all things, you have to strike a balance. The right balance will have you spending a lot of time going after infiltrators imo.
I agree with what you're saying, but I think there is still value in the post. It just isn't that we should all be freaking out about fed infiltration.
Things on this list are things I think even genuine members of orgs do all the time. I think what the post shows is that we need to be aware than when we do things like talk way to long or haggle over word choice etc. that what we're doing is essentially exactly what a fed would be doing to fuck up the organization.
I don't think this is the norm because of the CIA. I think it's the norm because the left has no real strategy or goals outside of making more and more nonprofits and piggybacking off the dems. Ideally either the few radical unions would co-opt the nonprofit left and try to turn it into something useful or you'd get more situations like FTV, where there are enough people who are uninterested in leftism as a culture or career that they demand action and are willing to pull funding and support if it doesn't happen.
The left is very obviously infiltrated, but I don't think it is really defective. You had labor power collapse, the base of the left shift to the NGO sphere, and the NGO sphere increasingly turn into a career path for bougie college students. The result is a left that can only really act in terms of being the ones to try and influence those who might actually solve any given problem. The discourse accurately reflects that and looks like a church where the whole congregation is preachers from slightly different religions trying to gain new converts.
And really what else could happen when the left pipeline isn't designed to take you to a radical union, a militant group or even a left political party, it's designed to get you into the volunteer pool and fundraising base of a nonprofit. You become a "real leftist" and get to join the social engineering market.
FTV, where there are enough people who are uninterested in leftism as a culture or career that they demand action and are willing to pull funding and support if it doesn’t happen.
FTV was a scam put on by like three podcasters who are looking out for nothing more than their careers and bank accounts. They are not people "demanding action and willing to pull funding", they're liars who deliberately refuse to learn politics so they can punch left at people who have done ten times the work they've done. The guy who came up with it literally campaigned against M4A in 2020.
FTV is not "the people rising up and demanding action", it's a rejected episode of the West Wing.
nonprofit
The CIA uses those NGOs to train their baby glowies
Lol for fuckin real. Literally every single one of these describe the Dore/Ryan Knight/Medhurst contrarian left almost perfectly. All except the organizing related ones, because the aforementioned goobers do fuck all for organizing a working class movement.
Always organise teams in 3s or less wherever possible. Larger teams should only exist when they have a team leader to cut through the bullshit and keep a team on-task.
Basically none of these tactics work for very long without larger team sizes.
I dont interact with Nick enough, even though we’re twitter mutuals for some reason. I should, probably the only positive interactions I could have on hellsite
