Hey, comrades, burger here. As someone who has a lot of interest in advocating for socialism in my area in the near future (starting with just some close friends but hoping to expand it), how does one go about avoiding police and agent provocateurs? When I talk about advocacy I am referring to actual work, such as running for elected posts, knocking door to door, doing volunteer work within the community, etc – no LARPing, no Soviet flags, ushankas or edgy activities.
Certain types of infiltrators are easy to spot, such as those who push you into illegal activities (let's build a bomb / sell drugs / wage people's war with no mass support, etc), but what worries me more is the more covert agents. What are their tactics? Do they literally have people versed in socialist terminology who walk in pretending to be socialists or do they pose as newbies and seek to join that way? Any guides on this stuff?
Can't speak to how it is at the US, but my two experiences have been:
1) Guy at a student protest/occupation. This one was pretty easy to spot, given he was wearing shiny black police boots and was five years older than anyone else there. Pretty rowdy, but because sting operations are nominally illegal at the UK, couldn't break any laws, so asked him to buy some 17yo kid booze, and he fucked off.
2) Branch organiser of Trotskyist group. Never got arrested at protests, yet kept taking the lead at organising them. Also owned a van despite not having any source of income that anyone could point to, which was as a big tell. Actually quite a nice bloke, but it got ridiculous watching riot police kettle all the party members around him while he walked off whistling. Surprised he got the funding to do it frankly, given the branch imploded down to about 5 members from 100 after six months.
Thomas Morales
What do you mean, walked off whistling? Like he walk through a line of cops while they pushed everyone else away? That's pretty funny.
William Thomas
The only way to truly know is the n test
Daniel Cruz
Please tell me more wise sir.
Oliver Johnson
My experience with infiltrators is, they usually try to get "too close" to other activists to an uncomfortable degree, like they lovebomb you and try to get you to dish on the group's secrets and stuff like that.
Chase Davis
tell them to say the n word if they love it they are cops
Tyler Davis
I see…but tbh I would also be suspicious of someone who's never said and would get irrationally mad at you for even asking that (unless they're black lmao)
Camden Cook
They cannot be avoided. Their effects can be mitigated, the infiltrators dealt with but the threat of infiltration can never be removed. Discipline is key though, the party should never become a social club.
DEATH TO SPIES Or you could just exclude them, misinform them or throw em out
Why don't you do the whole Leaderless Resistance thing that Neo-Nazis do?
Noah Perez
More people need to understand this, because it is extremely important. The club mentality breeds all sorts of undesirable things from passivity, disconnection with the masses and, for lack of a better word, “bookclubism”. Serious groups are what is needed. Though I’m not black and live in a predominantly white area, I look to the Black Panthers as an example of effective praxis and community-building, not that I think hauling guns around in the open is going to address the people’s actual problems or win me any support. Internal party Cheka when?
It doesn’t work. Organization, centralization and solidarity among working people are the only way to challenge the power of the state and the capitalist class.
Angel Mitchell
Here’s the rules 1.If someone enjoys saying it but they don’t laugh they are a cop 2. If they will never say it under any circumstances they are also a cop
Josiah Wood
Put yourself in the shoes of an informant or agent provocauter and think about how you would be recruited and sent out to spy on local activists. Like, oh… you're in your early twenties and are studying criminal justice at at an area college, you're part of your local college's honor society for CJ majors or something like that too, and you score an internship with an agency office. Your assignment that semester then becomes to go out and research the local left, collect whatever information you can and write a paper on it, etc.
Feds inserted an informant into the FRSO for two years to try and uncover links between FRSO and sanctioned foreign orgs. Never found any ties and then raided a bunch of activists all at once and brought them up on charges which were dismissed. My guess is they had spent two years on this op and didn't uncover anything so the raids were a "hail mary" pass to try and come up with something before closing the op down. I'd also reckon that the CIA would use domestic orgs as a springboard for infiltrating foreign groups. Like, you're a spy and your mission is to infiltrate [insert targeted foreign org here] so you build cred for several years in a domestic org, and use that as your cover to eventually "defect" and make a big show of burning your passport. That's like classic Cold War stuff.
James Phillips
I mean what I'm really saying is that you're fucked and they have already got you locked down before you've even started. Check and mate. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 labor vouchers. I am also just about convinced there is a particularly ugly campaign being waged on activists in one city right now via targeted disruption / bullyciding of key activists using ultra-left proxies. Look up the "Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands" for a similar example and also how that was used for both disruptive purposes and to develop overseas contacts. They are very, very good at it – and most members of these groups constructed for such purposes are not necessarily aware of their group's true purpose.
Well tbh I think that's the correct path to take as well and better for you, personally. Basically I think the boomers are dying and our generation is facing a real hell of a challenge, and if we are serious about "taking power" it's going to look a lot different than in the 20th century. More about realigning American politics around something big and broad and inclusive that starts by building institutions now rooted in restructuring the economy to better serve human and social needs rather than that of greed.
There might be room for some guarded optimism here. Check out the book "Days of Rage" about the Weather Underground.
Reading the history, they reminded me a lot of the alt-right today, with a highly performative and symbolic kind of politics that degenerated into violence (a more extreme way of practicing "the politics of expression"). Sam Hyde may as well be a far-right copy of Jerry Rubin. But the conclusion I get from the book is that the New Left in the 60s was a reaction to the decline of traditional institutions on the left: the Communist Party and the labor unions, so you'd get Rubin or Abbie Hoffman out there going "heh yeah man we're waaay more radical than the Communist Party ever was oh man" so they could trigger the squares voting for Nixon. It didn't work. At the same time, the right was laying the groundwork for the institutions that would come to power with the Reagan "revolution." I think those institutions have been in the process of breaking down which is why the right has been acting so goddamn crazy lately. It's a regime long in the tooth and growing ripe for overthrow. But our own "revolution" might not be obvious or occur in the way we think until historians start to look at it 20 years after it happens.
Around the time of the UK student protests, before the SWP collapsed, so probably 2010-11 if memory serves correctly.
Julian Carter
this sounds like a great idea. If you are in a small town or neighbourhood, the first thing to do is have a vouch system in place, so you only get people someone knows, obviously you will have to expand beyond this at some point, and then it gets trickier. Look out for red flags like, 1) has transport and easy access to funds 2) builds a legend around themselves about all the activism theyve done 3) sob back story that means you wouldnt really ask about their past 4) hits on a lot of people 5) is best friends with everyone and often tries to influence group decisions outwith the group on an individual basis.
Apart from that, doesn't sound like you will be doing much larp level stuff. If you are going to commit crimes, make sure only people you absolutely trust are in the know.
If you are door knocking, volunteering etc there is really nothing they can get you on
Brandon Scott
are you actually worried about police infiltrating your bougie reformist org?
Daniel Gutierrez
My question for you is how do you expect one to act “revolutionary” in the context of a mid-sized midwestern American town? I hold no grandiose views of what I want to do, I’m not revolutionary, but neither do I wish to be an armchair Marxist. It would be worse, in my opinion, to display myself as a revolutionary socialist party (not that I’d be hiding affiliation with socialism) with national pretensions from the get-go.
