Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

Bob Lambert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police... was one of the people responsible for the 'McLibel' leaflet that turned into the UK's longest running libel case.

These days it looks to me like Extinction Rebellion (XR) are being run by spies, since all their activities are so counter-productive in terms of making people hate environmentalism.

> I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an informant, which seems wild to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger

The older you get, the more you've got to lose, and a lot of people become less radical with age.

At the same time you also tend to be a higher value target for external actors compared to young, new, members of an organisation. So in the young end of it you'd prefer infiltration to recruiting informants, in part because young informants also tend to be less reliable than old, for the reasons above. If it's your agent loyalty isn't as brittle as when you've convinced someone to become a traitor.

When news of government or other external actors having gained access breaks, you typically don't want your infiltrators to become known if you can avoid it. It's different in some settings, antifascists commonly do the opposite and try to protect their informants so they can keep working if they move on to another far right group, while their infiltrators sometimes go public with what they've done.

They are the highest value targets who coordinate the group's activities. Most will have done something at some point that could land them in prison for a long time; this is how they are typically turned. The ones that haven't done anything the feds can feasibly threaten them with often get bribed, which is where things can get really messy because you end up with policing organizations essentially permitting organized crime under a series of conditions (e.g. keep things quiet and we won't bother you). There are many documented instances of this happening on the street level, and some evidence to suggest it is occurring at the national level and the international level. It can be counter-intuitive to think of these organizations being so easily compromised, but a good rule of thumb is that no organization dedicated to criminal or subversive activity is going to evade the attention of the feds, and once that attention is there, they will almost never be able to outspend them. It's comparable to a small business trying to harden their systems against a state actor.

> I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an informant, which seems wild to me.

There's also "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno who turned FBI informant. In Ovid Demaris' book "The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno", he quotes Jimmy even laughs about being one, taking money from FBI and still running his rackets for a time.

If you get enough on them that you could probably prosecute them successfully, then you have enough on them to try to turn them. And if they're the only one at that level that you have enough on, rather than make one prosecution, it may be better to turn them.

And this led eventually to the Oklahoma City bombing as Timothy mcveigh said he was motivated by this and Waco.

I feel like it's worth noting that this is not a universal dynamic. Tim McVeigh didn't need a fed to turn into the kind of person who kills 168 people. I'm sure we're all aware of the way this occasional dynamic gets turned into an excuse for any radicial behavior: "must have been a false flag, must have been talked into it." Which, to be clear, you did not say -- but we see it often.

hence my confusion at the sudden "left" outcry over the attacks on the FBI and CIA, two organizations they have been bemoaning for my entire life, and with good reason! Those organizations are responsible for some of the absolute worst behavior associated with American history, the most shameful of shameful episodes throughout the Americas were started by the CIA and FBI.

I think the outcry is actually mostly media-oriented, because the media for the last generation has been filled with ex-Agents and funded by the Fed. The media is sad to see these organizations attacked, because the media is run by people with emotional bonds to those agencies.

Good riddance to all of them!

> The characterization of "informants" as being literal on the payroll feds is usually incorrect. They're usually genuine group members who are being manipulated by literal on the payroll feds.

I never implied that they were.

> a federal agency [...] influences them into becoming informants. It's quite common for the FBI to frame this as "helping to keep people safe"; leaders in groups like this are frequently easy to manipulate with flattery.

> And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution.

I missed no such thing. Did you even read my comment?

> compromised after a federal agency threatens the leadership with jail time

Since Chanology, it has been known by anybody paying attention and keeping score that taking 4chan into the real world is extremely cringe and must always be criticized. Whether it's organizing political protests on 4chan or anything else even remotely like that, its cringe and anybody suggesting it deserves to be flamed.

As I mentioned in another comment, one of the most amazing examples of this was the British Army/MI5 mole inside the IRA, Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Steaknife. He was a leading member of the IRA's internal security team.

It really feels counterintuitive that someone who has got to the top would be the one to turn, but it also makes sense that they would be the one's targetted.

I've often wondered if there is research on effective ways of preventing this - of compromise-proofing an institution.

The tactics are quite effective. If you put these rats in say the US Army and pursued such vigorous prosecution you could likely lock away the legit rank and file of both military and militias.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn850jj44mjo

!remindme 4 years

The problem is it's difficult to have one without the other. If the cost of reducing gun violence is that hobbyists can't collect guns... that's a cost I think society can stomach.

I'm not blaming hobbyists for gun violence or anything, obviously, but these ideas are not unconnected.

> the broader "I like guns because guns are fun" community

That's the community I'm speaking of - in fact, we'd call those people "Fudds", after Elmer Fudd.

It's definitely a political position. It's just one that's prone to violence. If anything, it's the opposite; the gun community does an excellent job of policing itself. I've personally seen people displaying violent tendencies get reported and ultimately charged and convicted within that particular community.

Hey now, I love my 1911s!

I don't carry them much, for all the reasons you might imagine: they're big, heavy, and relatively low capacity. They feel great, though.

Realistically I almost always carry a Glock 43. If I were buying a carry pistol today, I'd consider a Sig P365 or a Canik. They're the right balance of capability and convenience.

... but yeah, that particular conclusion was foregone. If nothing else, it feeds the long-running meme of .45 ACP being "God's caliber".

Personally, I’m using my guns to teach my trans friends how to shoot. The government (and their supporters) are increasingly vocal in their dehumanization and threats against trans people, and many (of my friends at least) are looking for protection.

What else would you have me do with my guns? (I’m also helping my non-trans friends get into shooting too.)

>the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat and you're doing what exactly with these guns?

What do you suggest is done with the guns about that? You want us to kill over disagreement on economic policy?

>ain't no one showed up and killed 20 elementary kids with knitting needles.

Plainly false. Though people who advocate gun control never pay attention, there have been many high-profile mass murders/attacks where people did attack with knives/swords/machetes, and these have comparable body counts.

The UK is way ahead of you too, by the way. They've started to implement knife control, including orders for people to bring in kitchen knives to have the tips blunted.

>and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat a

And that government is perceived to be on the side of the gun rights proponents. The people complaining are largely those who have, in the past, eschewed gun ownership.

> and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat and you're doing what exactly with these guns?

It sounds like you're either advocating or wishing that gun owners "do something", something presumably violent. And that in a post ascribing desire for violence to [from context] militias and gun nuts. A bit strange, IMO.

> What kind of ridiculous copium is this?

> i'm sure the quilting community says all sorts of terrible things that could be taken out of context.

The things said there are different in perspective from some of the things said here, just from another direction.

To be more specific, most of the time when I see someone say something like "hang 'em from the lampposts", it's in reference to LEO attempting confiscation or something. It should not be reasonably construed as a legitimate threat and is not intended as such. It's hyperbole.

People who are actually a risk are obvious based on their overall pattern of behavior.

> the difference is they don't have a long history of gun violence. ain't no one showed up and killed 20 elementary kids with knitting needles. no one smuggled a crochet gear to a 17 year old and saw protesters crochet'd to death.

Neither does the gun community.

We do have dangerous items as the center of the whole idea, though, which means the hyperbole I mentioned above is looked at much more closely than if a textile artist made the same comment. That has resulted in significant internal policing.

> and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat and you're doing what exactly with these guns?

The vast majority of us don't see things that way at all - this is exactly what "we" (i.e., the gun community) voted for.

That said, I've been an advocate for LGBT, minorities, and others at risk acquiring arms and training for decades. I'll continue to do that.

If you don't know what's there you just start from the top I suppose. That's what happened with the Snowden leaks, they were picked apart over the span of months if not years by journalists, publishing what they found was interesting.

"Evil plans of new world order" obviously..

It seems you want a AI to analyze the data in general?

Otherwise you will have to do some work and read a little bit .. and then investigate to see if there is more. That is where the search tools are useful. Like in the example, finding out if that Scott guy changed his opinion on the 6. of january after Trump became president. (To see if the original statement was a lie. Not possible with ease so far)

People will speak in code, if they are planning crimes. Only some idiots speak openly of violent revolution in public messengers.

That wasn't my reading. My reading was that it was a natural question for someone to try and find in the dataset, so would serve well as a motivating example.

Yes it's politically sensitive, but it's going to be difficult to find motivating examples in this dataset that aren't.

No claim. Just a question that could not be answered yet, because the search tools are lacking. And this was about the search tools, not Scott.

I didn't even catch that on my first reading.

There is a solid tradition of new regimes killing off the rioters because they are unruly troublemakers. Not a guarantee, but certainly a tendency. Nobody likes rioters when you get down to brass tacks.

Not that it's a great method but just for fun I gave a large chunk of it to an LLM to process and then asked it for the 20 most disturbing or nefarious things in the chats and it was incredibly boring. Most interesting thing I learned from the files is how many gun toting americans also drive dodge chargers.

Depends. Most of Telegram is indeed shallow. But some of my groups are occupied by people with a competition of who can write the longest and convulted essays of deep philosophical and political issues.

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> It's quite rare for these groups to be truly "militarized." They often form violent mobs, but they rarely have any hierarchical structure beyond "leadership" (the organizers) and they don't generally make use of firearms. This has been changing in recent years; there have been a number of high-profile shootings involving Antifa-affiliated shooters.

Quite a long answer overall that boils down to "No, they don't exist" :)

Would make sense if our friends in the US would also arm themselves, similar to militias on the right, but I wonder why that isn't the case? Even the non-extremists seems to have (to me) extremist opinions about guns, so I guess I'm kind of surprised only the far-right side got militarized compared to the left. I guess it gets a lot easier when you have more friends in the right (no pun intended) places.