I’ve read many discussions in which certain ideas are denounced as CIA sabotage. I find myself torn between the two camps that form whenever this happens, usually because I have no idea what a CIA psyop actually looks like and have no reference for what a Marxist solution to, say, the question of what anti-colonial society actually looks like. It’s not an easy question, and it’s made all the more murky with the knowledge that plants and saboteurs absolutely exist.
Is there an ascribed methodology to identifying CIA propaganda?
What is this?
CIA guide to industrial sabotage. Not sure what it has to do with the question in the post.
If some of these actions (or inactions!) are evident, the subject group may be the victim of a psyop…
Mine question?
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So basically wasting time causing the biggest possible delay to meaningful change
But what if OP’s post is a psyop 😳
One of the easiest ways to sabotage any org for sure, as well as grinding the gears to a halt by hanging on procedure. I practiced a lot of these at most of my jobs to avoid work, without realizing that the CIA did it better.
CIA’s 40s-50s internal sabotage script…Useful read.
Oh look! Literally how the US government currently operates in every single facet!
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(12) Multiply paper work In plausible ways. Start duplicate fles. (13) MultIply the procedares and clearances Involved In Isswing InstructIons, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do… (14) Apply all regulations to the last letter. © Office Workers (1) Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copylng orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses. (2) Prolong correspondence with govern- ment bureaus. (3) Misfie essential documents. (4) In making carbon copies, make one too. few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done. (5) Tell Important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone. (0) Koid up mail until the next collection. (7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound Ilke Inside dope. (d) Employees (1) Work slowly. Think out ways to In- crease the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where consider able force Is needed, and so on. (2) Contrive as many Interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lathe or punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting, shaping or doing other meas ured work, measure dimensions •twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them. 30 (3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand Instructlons in a foreign tongue. (4) Pretend that Instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxlous to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions. (5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right. (6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker. (7) Snarl up administration In every pos- sible way. Fill out forms Illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms. (8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the man- agement. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, Involving the presence of a large number of employees at cach presentation, entalling more than one meeting for each grlevance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so On. (9) Misroute materials. (10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts. (12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creat- ing Confusion (a) Give Iengthy and incomprehensible expla nations when questioned. (b) .Report Imaginary spies or danger to the/ Gestapo or police. © Act stupid. (d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
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© Act stupid
The auto switch from a lettered section to a copyright made me laugh more than it should. lol
The “American Council of Bolsheviks” lmao I joke but in the west they are two type of intelligence tactics I have noted, I call them ridiculousness and covert.
Ridiculousness is a common tactic used through intelligence history even in non-western countries, you make the opposition look ridiculous, extreme and outlandish, cooky, like nut jobs, you see a lot of this in the US and the UK in particular, you get weird conspiratorial groups with cringy messages and outfits and stupid songs and it makes people run away fast I’m the opposite direction (Check out the Million Mask March events post Occupy in the US for some funny shit.)
Covert, covert is meticulous and professional incursions into organization to slowly shift or dismantle operational capacity, sow discord and division and render ineffective an organization against the ideal or narrative the operation has. This one is basically impossible to discover, these are professionals who are trained for years in clandestine shit. Really the only way to fight this is a strong centralised method of leadership and strict codes and rules. But even then, it’s always going to be a risk in any organization or movement opposing capitalism. The more experience you get, the easier it gets to spot, but even the best orgs have been infiltrated and turned into ops.
I don’t envy western comrades at all when it comes to organizing serious Marxist politics. That’s why I’d suggest focusing on labour organising and stay away from red flags and hammer/sickle stuff in real organizing. You’ll still be infiltrated, but not as much.
Ridiculousness is particuarly devious I feel because it makes it impossible to have serious conversations about something in a public space.
Look at whether or not left-wing liberal imperial succdems are suddenly spending all their energy talking about it
https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
Also search for cointelpro techniques and read up on them.
Also read up on things that the CIA actually did and draw parallels to what you see around you. For example, we know the CIA promoted modern art and postmodern philosophy. We have evidence from former agents, leaks, etc. These sources provide us a glimpse into the motives. Analyze the motives, use them as a lens to interrogate behaviors you observe.
The person you see posting a thing may not be an agent but still propagating an operation without knowing it.
Also, in case it’s not clear, a psyop is literally anything where the mission objectives are confined primarily to the mental battlefield and not the physical one. Getting people to believe something is a psyop. Getting people to doubt something is a psyop. Get people angry, or sad, or excited is a psyop. The term differentiates operations based on their battlefield. A nonpsyop is a physical change in the world, whether it’s building or destroying a structure or object, killing or saving some humans, acquiring information, turning off or on technology systems, etc, etc. So, getting a group of people to argue about something is a psyop, getting people to make a decision to fire or hire someone is a psyop, and on and on.
Does that just mean that any attempt to change the superstructure at all is a psyop?
That’s an interesting question. Is changing a law a psyop? The law exists outside of the mind, so to speak, but also it doesn’t create a physical battlefield change, so it could be.
I don’t have much to answer your question but i do have an example of one
My dad on his final years in El Salvador, hired a Nicaraguan singer for his band. When they arrived for one of their first shows to the club, the wall of the outside of the club has been painted with these words in Spanish
“The FMLN welcomes (woman’s names) to El Salvador”
Now as i grew older and talked to retired FMLN members, i found that all of them agreed that it is NOT something they would have ever done during that time of war. They all agreed its something the Reagan backed military definitely would have done to invoke fear into everyone around the area and mark the individual with marx-jacket (instead of a snitch jacket).
This is a psy-op tactic
If I’m wrong on my example please feel free to correct me
One can study the methodology the CIA has demonstrated throughout it’s various documented “ops”. The general rule of thumb is an idea and/or argument which not only benefits the bourgeois state, but as well is expressed in the same formatting of the CIA’s notorious faux leftist tendencies (Trotsky, Goebbels, Gene Sharp, the New Left, etc…) as well as displays a methodical participation in bad faith. The last point is because leftism is very broad and even those whose theories are most in line with Marxist thought still have spots of neoliberal faux leftism throughout. We have all been deeply liberalized since birth and purging these tendencies is a process.
A psyop would be an action aimed at a theoretical deviation which benefits the current neoliberal bourgeois state and follows the line of thought of faux leftism.
The reason why we are seeing such topics arise is the collapse of neoliberalism in the core as well as the separation and ‘coming of age’ (independent development) of the conscious proletarian class within it. We are defining what we stand for, and with all of the culture talk going on I for one am excited for us to have a pivot to introduce into that currently pointless conversation. It could inspire a culture to economics pipeline for the unconscious in our class; to really separate ourselves from the bourgeoisie in that discussion of which the bourgeois insist on echoing throughout the streets of the nation.
I’ll be honest, I just read most posts and think “how does this read to a normal human being?” If it comes off as really antagonistic, divisive, or otherwise unhinged, I usually put that person on my sus list. Doesn’t always mean I think they are feds outright, but there’s some people here that have made some really, out of the blue, crazy comments from a seemingly innocent question or discussion and I immediately put that person on the sus list. A few of them I just don’t respond to any of their posts simply because they seem like bait to try and garner personal information. I don’t want to call out posts or names though.
This probably isn’t super helpful and I’m sorry if that’s the case it’s just, you kind of develop an eye for it. Like between the legit leftists I listen to podcasts of and the real communists I talk to regularly, they are almost all just very normal, logically minded humans, with normal everyday thoughts, desires, etc. So when I see stuff posted and thing “if my buddy Joe read this he’d think I was fucking crazy for coming here” then that person probably needs to touch grass or glows in the dark.
