NEW YORK—Admitting that they had been working for several years without any discernible success, FBI agents confirmed Wednesday that a local left-wing political group was too disorganized to infiltrate. “We’ve had a few guys in there posing as members and trying to manipulate them into committing acts of violence we…
  • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
    2012·
    4 months ago

    “he’d already aroused suspicion by interrupting a meandering discussion of principles with a straightforward plan of action.”

    I feel seen.

    • underiskEnglish
      56·
      4 months ago

      a) Organizations and Conferences

      1. Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
      2. Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
      3. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.
      4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
      5. Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
      6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
      7. Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
      8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision—raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.-
      • Followupquestion@lemm.eeEnglish
        261·
        4 months ago

        The best part is by publishing this far and wide, anybody pushing for “careful consideration” and actual reasoned planning is immediately suspect, which leads to less reasoned decisions, which usually means more mistakes. If a victory is somehow won through violence of action and not careful planning, the support structure isn’t there to maintain the victory, nor are the people who win that victory well-suited to careful planning before the next engagement. The boring stuff is often what wins wars, simple things like plenty of fuel, adequate hygiene facilities, and dry socks can literally mean the difference between a division surrendering or winning a battle.

      • The_v@lemmy.worldEnglish
        71·
        4 months ago

        TIL that the OSS completely undermined the global business culture.

        Those bastards!!!

  • frickineh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    104·
    4 months ago

    these people already all fucking hate each other. They spend all their time arguing about minutiae

    Oh shit, The Onion has clearly infiltrated a few leftist groups in their time. That’s fucking hilarious.

        • Followupquestion@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          4 months ago

          It’s hard to justify infiltrating activist groups like Food Not Bombs if they never plan an attack on a federal building. For a fun listen, the second season of Bundyville talks about a small group with “anti-government” leanings and how the Feds tried to encourage them to act violently. My favorite part is when one Fed texted another Fed questioning their exact plan, because the cell of five members had multiple Feds! Multiple Feds to infiltrate and influence (what’s the exact line for entrapment I wonder) a small number of people and even then they were ineffective. I guess there weren’t enough lonely autistic teens in the group.

    • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Yet it still ends up as:

      Left-wing groups: Beaten and arrested by police for peacefully protesting.

      Right-wing groups: Attempt to overthrow democracy, get off scot-free.

      • DdCno1@kbin.social
        0·
        4 months ago

        get off scot-free

        Given how they are being systematically hunted down and sentenced to long prison sentences one after the other and from the bottom up, I don’t think this is accurate.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    873·
    4 months ago

    This is too funny and hits the mark. Groups like ANTIFA and BLM during the protests don’t get to be traceable groups exactly because of alphabet agency interest. Behind the Bastards podcast talks about their opsec being deliberately lacking organization of a sort exactly because they knew getting a distributed and traceable hierarchy of leadership would get everyone arrested, the were actively being infiltrated by alphabet agency types. They went out of their way to operate in independent cells of which only a few members had a way to contact another member in a group, etc. so that there was no list of leaders and members to be found. Deliberate disorganization. The Onion nails it again.

    • deft@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      131·
      4 months ago

      The Harpers in the Forgotten Realms operate this way

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        No, sorry. It’s been a year or three since I heard it, and I don’t remember if it was one of the It Could Happen Here episodes or a regular BtB one. You might have better luck than me searching for it. He primarily focused on the Portland protests.

        • Psychodelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          4 months ago

          Shit, you just reminded me of it could happen here. lol.

          I started listening to it a while after the 2020 protests, while living in Portland, and was super surprised realizing that it was from like a year or two before.

          Man, that one was scary. By then we had those big fires where crazy fucks and their pig friends were blocking roads and stopping people to ask where they were going because they’d been told that antifa was starting the fires. That’s when I realized it would legit be impossible to try and escape back to CA in an emergency.

          I said this recently, I’ll say it again here. I’ll never forget how Americans turned on protestors in Portland. This is America

          /rant ✌🏽

  • joelimgu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    33·
    4 months ago

    This has already happened with things like Tsunami in Catalonia. A totally decentralised movement that the police is still trying to understand 6y later and trying to find a nonexistant leadership. Incredible fun to watch them trying to understand how it worked

  • RealFknNito@lemmy.worldEnglish
    312·
    4 months ago

    “Antifa has no leadership so can’t be marked as a domestic terror group.”

    Oh. Okay.

    • Omega_HaxorsEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Believe me they tried, and every time they tried it failed miserably.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
    313·
    4 months ago

    I know this is the Onion but the left is inherently anti-authoritarian and advocate of horizontal structure of society with no top-down leadership. Of course we’d be disorganised 😂 Case in point, this and the hodge podge of left wingers in the Spanish Civil War ranging from communist, social democrats, democratic socialists to anarcho-syndicalists. Spanish leftists even attacked each other. The Democrats also don’t even get along and this is why Republicans under Trump is gaining more headway.

    I’m proud that we’re maverick, but this also leads to our characteristic factionalism and thus easier to be disrupted and destroy.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.worldEnglish
      145·
      4 months ago

      No, it isn’t, You’re describing some forms of social libertarianism or rational anarchism, and calling them left. The philosophy i hear out of left identifying people these days is people desperate for lack of responsibility and wanting to be controlled by some parental government takes care of everything.

        • John_McMurray@lemmy.worldEnglish
          210·
          4 months ago

          I quit respecting people who’s whole idea of political intellectualism iswhatever makes them feel good (usually couched in fancy talk and circular logic, with a side of disguising selfishness in false altruism) regardless of anything else, when i started to see the consequences of that philosophy. Anyways, for some reason he wanted to pretend things that fall right are left for some reason.

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
            11·
            4 months ago

            If you ever, ever want to have any rational discussions you have to understand the opposition. You can’t just base the opposite view in childish one sided ass demonisations

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        4 months ago

        For American sensibilities born from classical liberal values, you’re correct.

        The political “left” is a big umbrella term, like the “right” is. Generally speaking, the left broadly wants distribution of resources and management to be more horizontal. The debate is how to achieve that. Some want total worker control, others believe a democratically elected government should be empowered to distribute wealth equitably. The most extreme and dystopian form is a parental centralised authority enforcing equality should do it, as you mentioned.

        On the right, they may believe in personal freedom but still uphold that human society still thrives in hierarchy. “You’re homeless? It is your fault and not my problem.” Many on the right believe you have to work hard to achieve your goals but through your own blood, sweat and tears. You have to keep up or you will be out competed. Some on the right still believe that government still has some role to help others, while some disagree. The most extreme form on the right is fascism, which advocates for total control of everything and order and hierarchy are utmost importance.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      For real. It hits way too close to the truth. The thing is, they can use as much power and as many tools as they want to try and infiltrate/destroy dissent, but they can never actually change the basic nature/desires of the human animal, so even when they’ve crushed all organized efforts to oppose their rule, resistance will still arise more and more frequently the farther they go in their attempts to consolidate power. Ultimately you invariably get what exists today: an epic cluster fuck of splinter groups and causes across the political spectrum.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    232·
    4 months ago

    I’m a member of a smallish leftwing party in my own country and having over 20 years professional experience in various industries and several countries it really riles me just how damn incompetent and disorganised they are - I mean, most have their hearts in the right place (even if they easilly succumb to serve their own petty emotional needs, like ego, rather than principles), but damn even how they go about fighting the problems in the country (pretty much 100% reactive) and the organisation and quality of the material in their campaigns is really frustratingly “amateur hour, every hour of they day, every day of the year”.

    Funnilly enough a leftwing part I was a member of in another country I lived in was also a lot “good intentions but very naive and a bit lost”.

    PS: Note that all this might be just the bias from never having been a member of a rightwing party. Maybe they’re all just as bad and judging by professional standards the typical political party invariably leads to the conclusion they’re pretty inept.

    • Omega_HaxorsEnglish
      52·
      4 months ago

      Meeting a new leftist who shares your values, knows their stuff and has amazing potential

      two panels: spongebob normally then with small eyes

      Something sets them off and they start spouting neo-fascist propaganda about “tankies”

      True story.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    4 months ago

    IIRC this has actually happened. Cops got little more than a map of who’s blocking who, and gave up because there’s just… there’s just so much reading.

  • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
    172·
    4 months ago

    img

    To be fair, the journey of a thousand miles does - or at least should - not begin with a single step, but rather with figuring out which direction to go in.

    • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
      92·
      4 months ago

      I want to add much more detail to my own reply, so here goes:

      I recall a story that I read on the site-that-shall-not-be-named where this guy ran a business, and he tried to be part of the solution but after dealing with people’s dumb-shitty-STUPIDNESS he just gave up. The issue is that due to capitalism, many pricing structures in the USA are enormously opaque with tons of hidden fees (like internet service for “$5” - plus also $100 in fees that they don’t tell you about in advance). Rather than a price such as “$1.99 + tax”, which depending on area could be I dunno lets say $2.17, he instead sold his wares (whatever they were) for “$2 flat”. So not only did he single-handedly fix the opaqueness issue, at least in his own business, but he offered the item for LESS than the competition.

      But… - can you spot where this is going? - people chose the $1.99 + tax option, b/c when you sort online by “price”, 1.99 + tax shows up above the $2 flat price, even when the former is actually $2.17 after tax so the latter is significantly lower cost.

      i.e., There are REASONS for why things are the way they are. And we ignore these at our peril. Case in point: Trump did not “win” in 2016 so much as Hillary Clinton lost. And now we are going to try the same experiment again in 2024… Trump vs. democracy. All they have to do is keep playing the Russian Roulette game - the odds are, after all, in their favor.

      So back to this aforementioned business guy: he gave up. I think he went out of business entirely rather than just caving in to do the same pricing structures that everyone else did. He apparently could not both fight the system and win, so he lost both instead.

      But that begs the question: if he had just “advertised” his “prices” as $1.82 (or whatever price would, when combined with taxes, even out to $2 flat) online, but then when people walk in the door there are signs saying like “just pay $2 flat”, could he have succeeded? i.e., if he had flexed just a little, would it have saved his business? We will never know I suppose, nor am I advocating for caving in especially as it pertains to ethical matters - I have walked away from jobs rather than cave on such a line, so I mean it when I say that I am NOT suggesting to do so at all costs!!!

      It is not enough to have a desire to save the world, or even your own little corner of it. THEY won’t let you. I think that is why liberals fight amongst ourselves so much though: b/c while it is SO VERY EASY to fail, it is so very hard to get an answer correct. Like to the question of “what is 1+1=?”, there are so MANY wrong answers, but only one CORRECT one. And even fewer when you factor in economic and other business necessities.

      That is why I am super impressed with the job that Biden is doing. Walking that tightrope is HARD. But the media does not seem to report on half of the positive stuff that he does, so I fear that Trump will win this next election as a result. It is not enough to make the hard calls - you apparently also have to be the right kind of clown that drives clickbait engagement media stats that brings media corps higher profits too. All I know is that whatever comes next, we absolutely seem to deserve all of it, b/c we brought this on ourselves.