The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.

Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).

Direct link to the book (without the backref):

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    2·
    29 minutes ago

    I’m pretty sure that the people at the companies I’ve worked at for the last 15 years have been following this playbook the whole time.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
    38·
    8 hours ago

    Milton was the best: playing music that distracts your coworkers and reduces productivity, engaging management and taking up their time about quibbles, muttering incoherently leading to lost time due to miscommunication, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and setting the fucking building on fire.

    Be like Milton.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
    63·
    10 hours ago
    • “Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.”
    • “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.”
    • “Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.” “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”
    • “‘Misunderstand’ orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.”
    • “In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.”
    • “To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.”
    • “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”
    • “Multiply paperwork in plausible ways.”
    • “Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.”
    • “Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job”
    • “Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.”
    • “Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.”

    But … but we’re already doing every single one of them 🥺

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      47·
      10 hours ago
      • “To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.”
      • “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”
      • “Multiply paperwork in plausible ways.”

      Holy shit, my workplace must be trying to sabotage fascism…

    • Zink@programming.dev
      31·
      5 hours ago

      I get how all parts of this are effective to sabotage an economy and hurt the ambitions of those at the top. But, as a regular person working within the system, I choose not to discriminate against or complain about other individual workers just trying to get through their day.

      That seems counter productive. The best way to resist the oligarchs can’t be to fuck with the other poor people we’re trying to help.

        • Zink@programming.dev
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Hey now I didn’t suggest not working against the system and the fascists. I pointed out that targeting the morale and well-being of individuals close to you might not be the best use of one’s energy, assuming underlying motivation is to make the world better for yourself and others.

          And you can sabotage the work without being hostile towards an individual. That individual is somebody you should be getting on your side.

          • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
            3·
            2 hours ago

            Youd be much better off trying to unionize your coworkers, that would be far more damaging to the fascist ubercapitalists, and much more beneficial for the workers morale.

          • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            3 hours ago

            Short term pain for long term freedom is needed. If people had your point of view during the American civil war, you’d be the Confederate states of the US.

            Every day people are the ones enabling and holding up fascism, not the uniforms, not the leadership, just people like you and your loved ones. Without you fascists have no power. Pressuring those around you, sabotaging their work if it’s helpful to the fascists, socially isolating those that refuse to help are the effective steps to take. If you don’t take them, you’re as bad as any fash with a gun or suit.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
      5·
      9 hours ago

      Please tell me that’s not actually what they tell you to do.

      Where’s the bombs and general strikes?

  • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
    5·
    10 hours ago

    This will be declared a terrorist document create by a evil government as soon as trump hears about it. Its not like he can read well enough understand it.

  • laranis@lemmy.zip
    125·
    21 hours ago

    I was expecting something subtle, some sort of resistance from within type stuff.

    Warehouses, barracks, offices, hotels, and factory buildings are outstanding targets for simple sabotage. They are extremely susceptible to damage, especially by fire.

    Not so much.

  • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
    264·
    24 hours ago

    I don’t spot the difference between this and how most modern day corporations are operated:

    • “To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.”
    • “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”
    • nifty@lemmy.world
      5116·
      22 hours ago

      “To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.”

      So is this why DEI exists?

      • A_Pile_of_Frog@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        13 hours ago

        Non-white, non-males must be less efficient. Surely thats why they have been paid less and gotten less promotions.

        Nice try, Mr. Cultural Marxism.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
        811·
        21 hours ago

        DEI exists because racists often have hiring power. It doesn’t force the hiring of the unqualified, it supports the qualified from not being discriminated against.

        Nice “centrism” btw.

          • in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            242·
            18 hours ago

            Because most supposed “centrists” don’t really have a balanced centrist opinion at all. Most “centrists” seem to believe that being politically and socially uninformed is the most reasonable and intelligent take, saying “I’m not taking sides because I’m better than that” in a literal holier-than-thou sense of superiority, basically proud of their ignorance, who ends up doing more to hate on protestors and bend over backwards for the status quo. They’re about as right-wing as it gets, just quieter and absolute absence of a spine.

        • nifty@lemmy.world
          172·
          21 hours ago

          So riddle me this, why is it hard to believe that DEI type policies could be plot by some organization or country against the U.S. when there’s literally a field manual which says that such policies should be used against “fascists”. People on Lemmy call the U.S. imperialist all the time.

          • Banana@sh.itjust.works
            56·
            20 hours ago

            The flaw in your argument is the false equivalency between minorities (people the DEI programs are there to support) and “inefficient workers”.

            Are straight white dudes exempt from ever being considered inefficient? That’s silly.

            • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
              19·
              19 hours ago

              DEI goes beyond hiring. If you have a sizeable office but no comfortable and private area for new mothers to pump breast milk that’s being inequitable to them. Same for maternity and paternity leave policies. These are not about giving advantage to minorities.

              • Banana@sh.itjust.works
                21·
                5 hours ago

                That’s fair, but those don’t decrease efficiency consistently enough to be a viable method for simple sabotage. There are better ways to decrease efficiency in ways people won’t notice. Everyone notices DEI because it’s so divisive.

                Additionally, pointing out a semantic issue with my statement doesn’t change the fact that the people the DEI practices help are not “inefficient workers” anymore than any other group of workers.

            • nifty@lemmy.world
              137·
              20 hours ago

              No, I didn’t say minorities, you’re assuming that. I was pointing out the part in the text which says, “fight fascists by creating bureaucracy”. There are lots of articles already which point out that DEI is for all identities, not just POC.

              • Tidesphere@lemmy.world
                4·
                11 hours ago

                The plain and simple truth is that DEI often increases, not decreases, efficiency and productivity. It does this by creating accommodations for efficient workers who would, without them, not be able to work, such as in the new mothers example. It also increases efficiency by combating existing institutional racism and allowing for good, efficient workers who would otherwise be hedged out of the system, to have a chance to participate. A good friend of mine has pointed out that their company is not, under any circumstances, going to let go of their DEI policies because it’s lead the best and most efficient departments they’ve ever had.

              • Banana@sh.itjust.works
                301·
                20 hours ago

                I didn’t say POC anywhere in my comment.

                These identities are minority identities. Women, POC, LGBT+ communities are all considered minorities. There are legitimate reasons for DEI, including increasing efficiency in workplaces, which doesn’t line up here, because in this doc the increase in bureaucracy is for the purpose of decreasing efficiency.

                Some studies I’d like to cite regarding my claim on Diversity practices increasing efficiency:

                https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/

                Results: Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change.

                https://dinastipub.org/DIJDBM/article/download/2986/1924/12080 (This one is a PDF) CONCLUSION This study shows that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have a significant positive impact on employee performance.

                I also found this article from Harvard that explored practices that don’t increase efficiency, however, when they don’t work, the reason is usually unconscious bias and racism:

                https://hbr.org/2024/06/research-the-most-common-dei-practices-actually-undermine-diversity “These methods often exacerbate existing biases and fail to address systemic barriers, perpetuating organizational inequities. For example, diversity and harassment training programs frequently focus on blame, legal consequences, and unconscious bias. Employees are often told they are biased, and managers are informed that they will be held accountable if employees are accused of discrimination. This is counterproductive because employees tend to react with resistance and anger to these messages, inadvertently increasing discriminatory behavior.”

                The reason I am including this is that even if the end goal was to decrease efficiency, it would have to be the goal of management, not the regulatory bodies, because management are the ones choosing these methods, and if it were management’s goal to decrease efficiency, they would be able to do this without DEI requirements.

                My overarching point here is, while I understand your skepticism on DEI practices, there are much simpler and cheaper ways to perform the methods in the original post, making DEI an extremely unlikely culprit.

          • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
            18·
            21 hours ago

            There is more merit to people in a meritocracy than grades alone.

            Do you not believe in getting opportunity? Can you recall a few times people took a chance on you? What if nobody ever did?

            • nifty@lemmy.world
              148·
              21 hours ago

              Please stop. I literally made this thread a while back

              https://lemmy.world/post/15392191

              I believe in people getting opportunities. What I don’t like are thought police, or thought correction officers.

              Left authoritarianism is still authoritarianism.

              I also don’t take it for granted that someone talking about “empathy” or “compassion” necessarily doesn’t have ulterior motives.

                • nifty@lemmy.world
                  131·
                  20 hours ago

                  DEI is for all identities, not just POC. Creating more process is part of the the CIA field manual for fighting fascists, hence the question, are more bureaucratic jobs being created in some misguided attempt to “fight US imperialism”?

              • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
                20·
                21 hours ago

                No, I won’t. Considering what you wrote in your linked post, why are you asking such strange questions?

                Thought police? Yet you’re ok with being told not to touch/compliment women’s butts at work??

                I won’t stop because you’re hilariously inept 🤣

                • nifty@lemmy.world
                  227·
                  20 hours ago

                  I am asking these questions because we already have EO laws and ADA policies. We also have anti-harassment policies. What does DEI add that’s new other than create more bureaucratic jobs?

                  From my perspective, DEI just creates divisions between groups by splitting people into distinct identities.

  • krolden
    1·
    9 hours ago

    Bring moths to the movies that will stop Hitler!

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    532·
    20 hours ago

    I wonder what the purge at our intelligence agencies will be like. They were never good agencies, they did a lot of shitty stuff, but they did it because “America”. Now that the Chief Cheeto is in charge, who has insulted the USIC on many occasions, and cozies up to dictators and Nazis, there have to be a not insignificant number of USIC people that want nothing to with Combover in Chief, so they’ll get the boot to be replaced with some jackbooted NKVD Commissariat trump sycophants.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
      5·
      12 hours ago

      It’s relatively easy to envision.

      Assume each agency (not just the 3-letter ones, any) had X% of fascists and fascist-friendly people. The other 100%-X% will be fired. So just the X% remain.

      On the one hand, the agency is now severly crippled as it lacks key personell, and probably the firings aren’t evenly spread through departments and key positions, meaning some aspects don’t work at all any more (separating air traffic is one, for a simple example), while others still mostly work. On the other hand, all remaining aspects are now 100% fascist in their nature, and will always take the fascist option if one presents itself as anyone who would not do so has been removed.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    141·
    24 hours ago

    Remember when reading this that it was written for a time long past. There are cameras and other electronic tracking everywhere now. Even if you can avoid detection, much of the methodology described here just doesn’t apply to modern machines, telecommunications, and other systems.

    But read it all anyway. (It’s not that long.) The mindset you will need to employ is plainly communicated and remains valid today. Be observant, be creative, be careful, and !resist@fedia.io.

      • superkret@feddit.org
        101·
        15 hours ago

        Crimp (damage by bending) the Ethernet cables.

        I’m siding with the fascists on this one.

    • superkret@feddit.org
      791·
      24 hours ago

      The modern approach for grinding everything to a halt is to push for migration to M365 in your workplace.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
        371·
        23 hours ago

        You jest, but you’re not wrong.

        Pushing to “improve processes and efficiency” for as many people as possible, where that requires changes to what people do - and especially changes to the applications they use - means a whole lot of retraining and mistakes. Office workers are hardly different than factory line workers. They do the same thing over and over every day, and if anything changes, they’re flummoxed.

        This also serves to reveal more clearly which workers are more and less adaptable, so that you can focus any of your efforts. Either get more in the way of the more productive people, or take advantage of less productive people to effect a larger error.

        Edit: And if your “improved processes” are complicated enough, this gives other people who want to resist more opportunities to employ malicious compliance.

  • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyzEnglish
    110·
    1 day ago

    Hell yeah! This is great! I’m glad I’m not the only one sharing it around to friends and neighbors. True resistance is not the flashy stuff; it’s a whole of society approach to stop fascists in their tracks. True resistance is the sum total of small acts to inconvenience and impede a fascist.