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[wierd]

It's a manifestation of the backfire effect.

A thing that you disagree with, your brain wants to kill with fire.  It is hard to hide those visceral reactions to such concepts.

Imagine for instance, you infiltrated a group that eats babies alive or something, and they are discussing how they like to eat their fresh baby--- and you are supposed to meaningfully engage in the conversation.  You have to not give yourself away-- So no cringing or dry heaving allowed.


In this case though, it is an authoritarian mindset (police officer) engaging in a conversation that is anti-authoritarian (Anarchist), and having to engage in a way that does not have unconscious tells going off like crazy.

[Maximum Spin]

Imagine for instance, you infiltrated a group that eats babies alive or something, and they are discussing how they like to eat their fresh baby--- and you are supposed to meaningfully engage in the conversation.  You have to not give yourself away-- So no cringing or dry heaving allowed.

I dunno, I would have zero problems with that and I don't even eat other animals. I don't think that's a human universal.

[dragdeler]

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[wierd]

Western societies tend to have a strong cultural aversion to outright infanticide of that nature. It's why I picked it as a probable related extremum that would likely cause such a visceral response.

Backfire effect happens for any subject matter that you have some kind of strong attachment to, being challenged with contradictory data.  In the case of an authoritarian mindset, the notion that the world needs LESS authoritarianism is just hysterically not-gonna-stick, and so, discussions about it are not going to be remembered, and physical tells about how the listener is going "Yeah, and I have ocean front property in Arizona" are going to be happening even if the listener is trying to appear to be listening intently.

[MaxTheFox]

I consider myself a moderate authleft. When people hear the word they assume I'm a commie or at least a "pure" socialist. Or an outright Nazbol. But no. I'm past that. One-and-a-half year ago I used to be an unironic nazbol in all but name, but I have since mellowed out a lot. My current ideology is a bit hard to describe, it combines what I deem the best from authoritarian USSR socialism, "normal" liberal capitalism, and social democracy. The best I can describe it is "iron-fist social democracy". I don't believe a truly free, Western-style system can work in my country (not for decades, authoritarianism is far too well-entrenched) but at least we can stop rigging elections, harassing journalists, and making LGBT people's lives difficult. However corruption and the far-right (who would undoubtedly oppose my reforms and try to stage a coup) must be rooted out with force.

[Loud Whispers]

I once saw a twitter post which posted an excerpt from a cop manual basically saying that infiltrating anarchist groups long-term was impossible because none of the cops they sent could keep up with the theory or rhetoric enough to not obviously be cops.

Like sure, anarchism can get complicated but it's really not that complicated in terms of being able to talk to other anarchists. I really have to wonder what Absolutely No Good Very Bad I Want To Get Off COINTELPRO's Wild Ride experience happened to these cops that such a statement would end up in a training manual.

I can only imagine that they tried to propose doing a bit of the old ultraviolence in exactly the same way they'd propose it to their cop buddies but against different targets, in which case yeah that would hit the wall pretty quickly.

Maybe with police departments that have low manpower pools, low skilled manpower pools and a general lack of resources. However the more well-funded security bureaus with large pools of dedicated and young recruits can not only infiltrate a multitude of politically or religiously active groups, but they usually end up playing key roles in admin or leadership, leading to the rather ironic situation where the state security services are operating very efficient extremist groups - ones which probably would never have been a sizeable threat had they not given said groups a well-trained operative as a leader. I highly recommend giving the article a read, where it details how the UK police ended up infiltrating opposing far right and far left groups

Once inside the groups they were ordered to infiltrate, it was relatively easy for SDS officers to rise to the top because they were often prepared to work long hours on boring, administrative jobs. Often they tried to become membership secretaries or treasurers, where their position gave them access to the records and secret agendas that were so useful to the security services. Often more efficient than those around them, operatives had to strike a balance to ensure they did not end up running the organisations they were trying to destroy.

ayyy lmao

*EDIT
Reminds me of the time where US county sheriffs infiltrated a far right militia and plotted to blow up a federal court as a honeypot. Half the militia leaves when they keep pressing for this, but before they can arrest the remaining members they get arrested by FBI. After they're arrested by FBI they find out the head of the militia was ATF and every single one of them was an undercover fed of some sort

[Imic]

The American police force is pretty bad at adapting though, least of all to anti-authoritarian groups I’d think.

[Loud Whispers]

The American police force is pretty bad at adapting though, least of all to anti-authoritarian groups I’d think.

American police force isn't the only security force infiltrating these groups though, you guys got layers upon layers of spooks from CIA to FBI

[Egan_BW]

Did you know? 98% of americans are actually cops or spooks.

[Loud Whispers]

Did you know, 75% of your body is water, the rest is spooks

Also reading the history of agent provocateurs in USA are hilarious. Almost every case where their cover is blown is because the actual protestors or activists were suspicious of the immense swoleness of their newest member. Nothing screams dedicated policeman than bodacious biceps in a bandana

[Reelya]

When thinking of some of the more boneheaded members of socialist groups I've met who are the ultra-orthodox by-the-book types I have to wonder how many of them were legit and how many of them are actually informants or cops, and they're adhering to the strict dogma because that's their cover story and that's also how you advance in the ranks in those organizations (purity challenges).

I had someone I know approached by a person with tats and dreadlocks after some drugs, they said they might know someone and lined something up, only to get arrested: the tats person was an undercover cop. So they are around. Never line up drugs for a person you don't know, and never give money to someone you don't know to get drugs. Both often end badly.

[dragdeler]

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[Reelya]

I think Tom Sharpe had something like that in one of his novels about the South African police, there's some bomb plot but all the plotters are in fact special branch agents from different divisions who don't know about each other.

[Loud Whispers]

Or the time where NSA agents were infiltrating MMOs to set up extremist honeypots, but they only caught other agents so they had to set up an internal conflicts division

I'll also never forget that one anon who was freaking out because FBI kept coming to his house after he reported a bomb threat on the now dead 8chan. All the anons kept bullying him for his social ineptness as he filmed the whole thing, and didn't understand they were offering him a full time job to be an informant shitposter, and they all told him to accept the job before they lost interest in him

[Reelya]

They clearly messed up because as we all know the terrorists liked RuneScape.

It also wasn’t clear what spurred the security agencies to target the world of online gaming, other than its potential as a communications tool. This did not help prove that employees of the agencies did not simply want to play online games for work.

Quick, tell the boss that all the terrorists are playing CoD:MW now.

One such game, reportedly created by Hezbollah — Special Forces 2 — was said to be a tool to recruit suicide martyrs

Actually that article ties into the thing where the kid made a fan video of Battlefield, and it was presented to Congress as a working game released by Al Qaeda. There was a voice over on the video, it was from Team America. So in other words a number of these claims were complete fabrication on behalf of the intelligence agencies, taking actual fan creations off streaming sites, and passing it off as working 'Al Qaeda' games.

Here's an analysis of that event, but the video isn't available any more
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/video-game-jihad/9976000

Ironically given this discussion, the voice over in that "Al Qaeda" game was in fact the speech from Team America where he's going undercover as a terrorist and he's talking about how the blackhawk helicopters came and killed his goats, in order to ingratiate himself into the group and prove he's legit.

BTW the Pentagon contractors presented this to them as a modified anti-American "game" being used to train terrorists. However it wasn't a game, just a video of the game, and the makers of the game even came out and said there was no modified content in it