What Would Cointelpro Do?

If Cointelpro were still active today, what would the modern G-Men be doing?

I was a guest at a class at the University of Massachusetts in Boston recently.  When I'm trying to describe reality today, and particularly the media and social media landscape we're all confronted with, I often mention the 1999 film, the Matrix.  I tend to assume everyone has seen it, for some reason.  On this occasion I asked the class in front of me if they'd seen the movie, and only around 1/4 of them raised their hands.  So my basic framework for explaining how our means of communication have been taken over by this matrix of control, that being the movie, is a bit lost on a lot of folks, evidently.

Even less familiar than that movie to most people, I surmise, is the history of the FBI's Cointer-Intelligence Program, or Cointelpro.  You can look it up on Wikipedia.  Through a daring raid of an FBI office in 1971, activists unearthed this massive nationwide FBI campaign to disrupt the left that had been going on for decades.  Tactics were often so underhanded that a lot of folks would never have imagined they were being practiced, like writing fake love letters to create love triangles between leaders of organizations like the Black Panther Party, to divide the organization, or knowingly making all kinds of other false allegations in order to sow division.  Cointelpro tactics included lots of character assassination, along with far more violent forms of disruption, such as the other kind of assassination, as well.

Since the raid on the FBI offices in Pennsylvania in 1971, as far as I know there has never been such an exhaustive record of FBI misdeeds brought to light, though there have been many more isolated incidences when disruptive and divisive undercover police activity of various kinds has been exposed.

Of course, to have an agenda of disruption and division doesn't require you to be working for the FBI.  You could be working for another country's secret police.  You could be a corporation trying to break a union, or a corporation trying to undermine an activist group working to get it to stop fracking or clearcutting or whatever else.  You could be a brainwashed sectarian, a member of a cult, or a group with many cult characteristics.  You could be a deranged misanthrope who enjoys destroying things.

There are lots of possibilities, and in the end it doesn't matter as much which ones are the cops and which ones are volunteering for them.  What matters much more is identifying the kinds of patterns of communication and tactics of disruption that underly the left's floundering nature in the modern era, so we can be less likely to continually fall prey to these things.

People who don't want to be seen as wild-eyed tin hat-wearing types tend to avoid too much speculation, wanting instead to stick to accusations that they can substantiate with a Wikileaks expose.  Or if there's something going on that seems exactly like something that went on during Cointelpro, people might make an observation (which will then be taken as an accusation by some).

Rather than speculating about which movement trends or underhanded tactics that can be observed in play at any given time might be inspired by FBI disruptors or police provocateurs, I thought it would be interesting to just speculate on what kinds of strategies and tools are the sorts of things a modern team of secret police would want to be using, in the course of their work to divide, disrupt, and misdirect groups or movements that are becoming worrisome to them for one reason or another.  Bearing in mind that none of this is especially new thematically -- just new platforms and new participants.

If I were running Cointelpro today, what would my modern G-men be doing?  As undercover operatives online or off, what kinds of ideas would they be supporting?  What kinds of memes would they be spreading?  What kinds of tactics would they be promoting?  How would they be framing reality?  What strategies might be most successfully disruptive and divisive to any potentially threatening social movements?

So, if I were running Cointelpro for the past few decades, long after the program supposedly ended, what would I have done, and what kinds of instructions would my agents have now?  Here are the first 20 of them.

1)  Embrace anonymity in the name of safety and security.  Emphasize the importance of safety and security over effective communication or success.  Encourage everyone to use pseudonyms and wear masks.  This makes it much easier for us to pretend to be people who we're not and otherwise to more effectively plant ideas and steer the narrative.  It makes people generally seem less trustworthy and to communicate less effectively, which is good for defeating the movement we're trying to defeat.

2)  Embrace "diversity of tactics."  Reject the idea that having an agreed-upon tactic for an action is a good thing.  Paint this notion as an elitist sign of some kind of "privilege" instead.  Mass nonviolent civil disobedience is too effective and it must be stopped.  Support Black Bloc tactics.  Join the Black Bloc.  Always be the first one to light a dumpster on fire, since that generally makes half of the protesters leave the scene.

3)  Establish a narrative in the mainstream media and by posting on and participating in conversations on social media that anyone who claims to be a victim of someone else should be believed, and should not have to traumatize themselves by even telling the rest of us what happened.

4)  Establish a narrative that anyone claiming to be a victim who is also perceived to be from a marginalized group of any kind should be believed even more readily than other sorts of victims, and questioning their claim to having been victimized by someone is even more egregious, and in fact a terrible transgression in itself.

5)  When anyone becomes prominent and influential on the left, get the rumor mill churning about those people.  Plant suggestions about their improprieties or transgressions, real or imagined.  Accuse them of making you unsafe.  Get their public appearances canceled by spreading this kind of messaging.  Prevent leadership from developing.

6)  Establish as much control as possible over the social media corporations through which most of our communications now happens.  Get your agents on the boards that control the algorithms and everything else.

7)  Make sure the algorithms on the dominant platforms of communication suppress the truth and promote the lies.  Make sure they promote controversy and polarization, and keep people arguing ineffectually.

8)  Make sure the social media platforms' algorithms and other aspects of the way they function continue to make it really easy for any troll to plant a rumor, but really difficult for most people to ever see the explanation for why the rumor is false.

9)  Whenever a movement of solidarity is developing and new allies of the cause are coming on board, make sure to highlight the perception that they are joining the cause for opportunistic, selfish reasons, and that they have all kinds of problems which they need to overcome before they can be good allies.  Make them disappear this way, to prevent the movement from growing.

10)  Whenever there is discussion about the programming for a rally, discourage having music or other forms of artistic expression.  Emphasize the supposed frivolity of music and art, how it undermines the message.  Make sure the program at the rally consists of only speakers, preferably all sectarian ideologues who will alienate as many people as possible and make sure the next rally is smaller than this one.

11)  Whenever possible, promote the notion that what's most important is one's identity, and only people who claim a certain identity have a right to an opinion about that identity.  In the context of the war on Gaza, make it clear that only Jews and Muslims have a right to an opinion on this matter, and anyone else with an opinion on it is probably either antisemitic or Islamophobic, and should ideally just keep quiet.

12)  Always methodically work to undermine solidarity by highlighting the relative perceived "privilege" of any advocate for a cause, with the message being that they should shut up and allow the "centering" of other voices.

13)  If anyone is advocating for a certain cause, circulate suggestions that by doing so, they are dismissing other causes.  Such as if you oppose the genocide of Palestinians it may be because you are a racist who doesn't care about what's happening in Sudan.  Always seek to undermine solidarity, rather than building bridges or making connections.

14)  Whatever positions you're advocating, maintain an atmosphere of toxicity on social media platforms, to discourage participation in political or activist discourse.

15)  Make sure to take every opportunity to undermine solidarity between generations by insulting and dismissing the knowledge and experience of the older generations.  Make sure to destroy any potential for intergenerational passing on of knowledge and strategies by creating an atmosphere of contempt towards older people.

16)  Further emphasize the generational divide by introducing new concepts and new vocabulary along with the notion that anyone who doesn't change their way of speaking and their use of the English language is now a problem.

17)  Push divisive concepts in every arena, and undermine solidaristic notions.  With concern to sexual orientation and identity, emphasize the apparently irreconcilable differences between "the trans agenda" vs. "the TERFs" at every opportunity.

18)  When anyone is trying to make connections and build bridges between groups with common interests but big differences, emphasize the differences.  If anyone on the left is trying to make an alliance with a group of anti-imperialist Republican dissidents, make it clear that by associating with any kind of Republicans, they are themselves now basically fascists, and part of a "red-brown coalition."

19)  When people are trying to organize coalitions to accomplish a commonly-held goal, emphasize how by entering into a coalition we are undermining one cause in order to support another.  Emphasize the problematic nature of this coalition, and how it is somehow implicitly sexist, racist, transphobic, antisemitic, or has some other kind of major problem.  Can you be in the same union with or engage in public discourse with a fascist?  Make it abundantly clear that this is unthinkable.  Maintain the polarity and make it clear that fascists must all be beaten up instead, on sight.  Argue that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fascist, or fascist-adjacent.

20)  When people are advocating for free speech or open discourse, emphasize how hate speech makes people unsafe, and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary.  Accuse advocates for free speech of being privileged, racist, transphobic, etc.  Always undermine the possibility of communication or mutual understanding.

We could easily make this list much longer, and in fact, that could be a nice collective endeavor.  Additions welcome.  Let's understand what's happening, so we can change it.