Agents Provocateurs

There has been a lot of news recently about the U.S. Government and telecommunications businesses conspiring to violate citizens' rights under the fourth amendment to the Constitution. There is no urban area that is not under surveillance, as more police departments launch miniature unmanned gas powered remote controlled aircraft mounted with GPS and video camera to monitor "safely" people's activities not visible from the ground. One advocate of the technology insisted people should realize it is not the government spying on them, but other people. It may be "safe" for the operator of the equipment, remotely situated in a vehicle control station, but it creates an unsafe society in which suspicions fall on anyone. 

Think about the third amendment for a moment. It prohibits quartering troops in the homes of citizens. The British government in the eighteenth century made a practice of quartering troops in the homes of prominent patriots to monitor their conversations. Fancy technology can only go so far, and the police state still needs people on the ground, amongst the populace. Every corporate store carries a sticker on the door warning customers that a disguised police officer may be posing as employee or customer. Southwest Harbor allocated funding for an undercover officer who will be operating in that town. The dude who just hitched into town and wants to know where to score, hmm, don't know.. He SEEMS cool.. Has longish hair and scraggly beard. He parties hearty, always helps out, gets involved in the scene, wants to know everyone. He turns into a real friend, to one and all! Months or even years may pass, then he'll drop out of sight, and after a wave of arrests, will be seen again in a courtroom, shaved and suited, testifying against everyone. It turns out he works for the FBI.

In the seventies an FBI agent was identified in the Boston Food Co-op. He called himself Mule Mahoney. At first he seemed like the perfect co-op member. He showed up, pitched in, talked it up - he was eager. A little too eager. He always wanted the co-op to overreach its mission, overextend itself. There was something not quite right about him. He was adept at the rhetoric of revolution, but he was ignorant of the details of co-operative life, organic methodology and progressive dialectic. He did not seem to share beliefs co-opers hold as self evident. He didn't get it, making bold suggestions but not wanting to discuss them. The Boston Food Co-op suffered a rash of theft, vandalism and tenancy issues after the rumor about his identity spread and he vanished. Was he involved? 

A similar circumstance characterized the SLACK Factory in Belfast during the late nineties. A group of artists and activists grabbed a building in town on the cheap just before the real estate bubble. For seven years they struggled to operate as a business to the business world and as a co-op to the alternative community. There was never any extra money but plenty people helped, coolie method, to satisfy the town's newly invigorated code enforcement. Almost from the start there were police complaints, though no arrests were ever made nor charges filed, and official police records show SLACKers to have been co-operative with Belfast authorities. Vehicles were vandalized, arson was committed, thefts occurred, but again no arrests were made, no crimes investigated. As the need to refinance arose, it became apparent there was a leak on the board as every step taken to avert foreclosure was preempted. Rednecks took the property, lawyers and aristocrats took the money, and the freaks took a hike. Today it is a parking lot. The local press, in an exceedingly rare mention of the SLACK Factory reporting the public sale of the property described the inevitable destruction of the facility briefly as a "failed partnership". 

Was that all it would take? Could it really be that radicals, progressives, artists and activists are so incapable of regulating their affairs that they cannot operate a business successfully, or create a community together? Maybe adherence to low impact, non profit, co-operative ideals is unsuited for institutional survival in the dog eat dog world of corporate domination, and that egalitarian, democratic, horizontal structuring is equally unsuited for community survival in the eye for an eye realm of sectarian fascism. Maybe that's what the CONspiracy WANTS people to believe. Maybe movement tragedies like Rainbow Farm or the SLACK Factory, potent examples of the futility of progressive organizing, need prodding toward the precipice over which they finally plummet. It could still be true the many, many accounts of infiltration by enemies of civil rights, women's liberation, anti war, environmental protection, natural healing, co-operative economy into the movement are fictions. But even if they are ALL fictions, they still infuse the movement with divisiveness.

Every movement needs new supporters. How will they be vetted? Outlaw groups like Hell's Angels have a strict system of sponsorship, punishable by death if an enemy is introduced as a friend. That might limit membership, but it protects true believers. Progressives may consider themselves outlaws, but they are unwilling to put others to death, even enemies. Movement people generally are reluctant to even consider the possibility that freaky volunteers could be enemies, and there is little or no vetting. Not only does that mean the movement's numbers swell with membership who do not share ideals and methods, but also that agents of the military industrial complex are welcomed into inner circles from whence they can report to superiors and subvert from within to destabilize the movement, like the "pod people" in the 9/11 truth movement.

Warning! Police officers may be posing as organizers or members! They could be coordinators, directors, ombudspers, editors, collaters, staffers or volunteers. They might appear to be cool, natural, organic, hip, down dudes and dudettes. Nevertheless they are working to discredit the movement, dismantle progressive structuring, and destroy opposition to corporate fascism. Green Scare is appropriate as a redux of the Red Scare of the fifties and sixties - some Green Party stalwarts are really redyed Reds, and many others endorse communistic crowd control contrary to liberation ideology. "Greens" at the SLACK Factory relied on their party status to avoid helping out with projects or even cleaning up the coffee cups after their meetings there. They don't intend to eliminate power structures, but to usurp them. They are not comrades. 

The movement needs to reexamine its tenets and techniques continually to remain progressive. The movement also needs continually to reexamine its members, and their true motives to remain viable. It is all too easy to be swayed by loudmouths who demand to get something done, lulled by lazy freaks who suggest falling back on establishment procedure, seduced by obsequious groupies who don't get it, excited by agents provocateurs plotting entrapment. It is an open secret the Pentagon and other alphabet soup agencies operate a vast psy-ops campaign at home and abroad that not only publishes fake and misleading news stories, and commits false flag atrocities as misdirection for political purposes, but also inserts agents into structuring opposed to the global police state.

The dilemma is this: If someone is a nutty fruitloop on a weird trip, but essentially a fellow traveller, it is divisive, indeed suicidal to instigate a witchhunt based on fears and projections. On the other hand if the unkempt but intense newcomer is actually a mole, a traitor, a wolf in sheep's clothing he must be outed, or at least "turned". Without a technique for security clearance like the government or corporations, the movement relies on feelings. Often there is a feeling that someone is on a hidden agenda, not with the program, at odds with the group's intent. Generous, accepting, loving people deliberately repress those feelings of suspicion towards individuals, putting themselves at risk of betrayal. Even if they are not criminals and cannot be charged, they are nevertheless vulnerable to official harassment, loss of reputation and destabilization of hard-won alternative structuring.

How can you tell? To start with, anyone who wants to be in charge is not a revolutionary. Beware of pushy aggros who insist on delegation of authority, who demand curtailing consensus by putting proposals to the vote, who recommend seeking authorization for alternative projects, who aver propaganda is outreach, who rely on hierarchy rather than widespread support. Enemy agents are ignorant, deep down, of the spiritual connection of consciousness with the cosmos. They are assouls. That is, they have no souls. They cannot be reasoned with, swayed or threatened because they have the entire weight of the CONspiracy behind them. Their determined intention is to suborn all who seek to build a world of peace and justice. They won't stop until freedom is dead. 

Is there someone in your group who always gets confrontational, who employs pugnacious language, bulldozes objections, mocks dissenters? Does he always seem to be talking about or to police? Is she seen getting arrested but is conspicuously absent in detention? Does chaos ensue when his suggestions are put into effect? Does she stress earnings and legitimacy over service and integrity? Does he have to be reminded that democratic principles must be practiced as well as espoused? Does she propose risky clandestine actions rather than public non violence? You may have a rodent problem!

Reverend Doktor C. Sarian

Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia

Church of the SubGenius

042816