Hello. I have been coming across the claims about how secret services use ultra-left/anarchist tendencies and organising forms as a form of sabotage. Even though I am familiar with some alleged (and misinterpreted) sources and understand the nature of this position coming from worst of Marxist-Leninists, I was interested if there is any analyses and evaluation of such claims. Some kind of article or anything really. Thanks in advance.
I think the best place to…
I think the best place to start is probably to look at verified methods that have been used to destabilise progressive movements.
In the US this is probably COINTELPRO. In the UK this is probably the state sponsored Undercover Policing Inquiry and especially material put out by the activists affected by undercover police officers - i.e. groups like Undercover Research Group, Police Spies Out of Lives and others.
This cropped up recently in…
This cropped up recently in the UK with left commentator Owen Jones stating on twitter/X:
https://x.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1949090140363587954
This was in the context of the formation of the new left electoral party in the UK by former Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn (and others).
Several activitsts involved with the Undercover Police Inquiry stated that this was completely untrue and many spycops they had known had entirely innocuous politics and were in several cases not the sharpest poltical tools in the box who seemed more into the social side.
I remember reading some…
I remember reading some internal FBI document which had suggestions on how infiltrators could disrupt left-wing groups. And some of the advice in it was to basically adopt some Maoist (i.e., a strain of Marxism-Leninism) positions, because they were the most disruptive. However, that was years ago and I have been unable to find where I saw it. But it's worth pointing out still that much of the infiltration being done by the FBI then was to disrupt Marxist-Leninist and Maoist-influenced groups. So even if this were the case it isn't a negative for ML politics as such. The same would be the case for anarchist/ultraleft ones.
There is some information about some of this here, about the FBI basically creating a Maoist group, but also doing a lot of work to disrupt Maoist groups: https://jacobin.com/2018/08/fbi-infiltration-new-left-aoki-sds
In general, it should be on the people making those allegations to present evidence to support them, rather than vice versa.
There's an article on this…
There's an article on this site alleging that SLA were controlled by Counter intelligence agencies.
https://libcom.org/article/who-ran-sla-dick-russell
as for anarchists etc I remember reading a few years ago a leaked police report in the US complaining about how difficult it was to monitor (infiltrate) anarchist groups. The lack of clear leaders and there many debates made it hard to keep up and get anything useful to a conviction.
Reddebrek wrote: There's an…
One of the documents in the UK spy cops inquiry also spoke about how difficult it was to infiltrate anarchist groups because of the amount of reading necessary to fit in, ha ha
This is a bit conspiratorial…
This is a bit conspiratorial for me, I don’t believe there is any evidence of CIA infiltration. They did release a paper in 1985 where they concluded “the new left activism is likely to increase bickering”, “leftists have succumbed to a listlessness” and “this climate of intellectual opinion will almost certainly make it difficult for anyone to mobilise significant opposition among intellectual elites to (U.S) policies”. Guess that’s why they get paid the big bucks. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86S00588R000300380001-5.pdf