April 5, 2019 • 58 mins
Love them or hate them, protests are as American as apple pie. Each year thousands of people exercise their right to free speech and assembly, often to publicly denounce a policy, project or phenomenon. This is entirely legal, so long as the protestors have the right permits and things don't turn violent. However, many veteran protestors will tell you there's more going on behind the scenes. Most protestors, they argue, don't want things to devolve into physical conflict. However, those people wearing facemasks, throwing bricks and antagonizing the police aren't part of the actual gathering... instead, they're agents of something much more sinister. Tune in to learn more about how protests get infiltrated and compromised.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt nol
Is on Adventures today. They call me Ben. We are
joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
my dear, dear friends. I think at the stage we
(00:45):
can call each other old friends. I was surprised that
I didn't know the answer to this question on your side,
I was. I was thinking about this off air. Have
you ever been to a protest? Two things. We've known
each other for over twelve years now, so we're definitely
old friends. And yes, I have attended a few protests
in my day, specifically here in Atlanta when the occupy
(01:07):
movement was gaining steam. They had one at a park
downtown that that I think did we both go to
down by g Su Wait? Yeah we did. Did we
go at the same time? I think we went separately? Okay, yeah,
because it was ongoing it was for multiple days. I
met up with some more radical people that I knew, uh,
(01:29):
just to see what was going on, and it was
it was an experience. Is the first time I ever
saw the megaphone speak that was popular, and that where
people like pick Up basically announced that they're going to speak,
and then they speak and everybody kind of repeats what
they're saying so everyone in the larger audience can hear.
It was fascinating. Yeah, it's something that that I think
(01:53):
a lot of mainstream America learned about with the occupy movement.
But there is an entire subculture of resources and techniques,
tools and tips used by the counter culture or used
by people protesting government's megaphone uh communication is one instance
(02:14):
of that. But you can find some great guides online
still I don't know how long they will be up
that will tell you about the you know, the best
way to avoid brutality by law enforcement or to survive
you know, tear gassing or other proud dispersal technologies yea,
even tips on what to wear, what your decore should
be like, be stylish and avoid tear gas right right right,
(02:39):
very much so. And recently you and I, who have
always been fascinated by counter culture and those things that
exist on the edges of American mainstream culture, the things
that you will never hear about on the evening news. Um.
You and I recently went to one of your favorite bookstores,
(03:00):
and in the basement, in a corner, in the basement
of this bookstore, we stumbled onto a counterculture node of
free zines, um books of works of philosophy, right, yeah, stuff,
stuff that I think I mentioned while we were down there,
Like I can, I can understand why he's down here
in this corner underneath the staircase essentially and not just
(03:23):
fully on display for everyone that walks in literally and
figuratively underground. Yeah, and it was cool, but also it
felt a little dangerous. Uh, But really, it's just good
to know that that type of free press can exist still,
even if it's slightly covered in darkness, even if it
(03:43):
puts you on a list. But we were on a
list a long time ago. That ship is sailed. So
I've been to protest as well. I've been to all
sorts of protests because it's a fascinating social phenomenon. That's
that's how I look at it, even protests that I
didn't believe in, you know, like I didn't agree with
(04:04):
the cause of a protest, but I was already on
the train, so I said, I'll swing by. And most
of the protests that I have attended have been in Atlanta.
I've been there as an observer occasionally participant, but I've
also been involved in protests in Central America. And that's
(04:26):
that's something that's a little bit sticky if you're not
native to a land, because one of the first things
that the state Department will tell you to do, and
a lot of government agencies will tell you to do
this is to avoid any public demonstrations if you were
in a foreign country. Really, and is that because of
surveillance of some kind, or when you're dealing with a
(04:49):
visa or a passport, or a reason that you're in
the country that's not a standard citizen. You don't want
to ever get put on a list. Basically, it's yeah,
it's first and foremost an issue of personal safety. Of imagine,
for instance, that you are in a part of the
world that maybe doesn't have the best rule of law.
(05:10):
People are panicked, people are unhappy, there's a powder keg situation,
and you appearing very different, maybe speaking different language, moving differently,
despite your best intentions, you may become the fuse for
that powder keg. There have been plenty of you know,
I study my study mass hysteria, uh, because I have
(05:34):
a heck of a social life, and one of the
things that happens this happened in Central America as well.
I was not involved. There were people who had been
murdered during protests because members of the public believe that
their children were being stolen by wealthy foreigners and that
(05:55):
their organs were being harvested. And so in one case,
a Japanese man and as driver, Japanese National ins driver
were pulled out their car and murdered because clearly, if
they're not from this country, they must be smuggling organs.
The point is the protest can quickly quickly turn into
something that is not peaceful. You know, they can turn
(06:17):
into a riot very very easily. Yeah, just from having
that number of people in one space, no matter how
open or large. It is that that mod mentality, right exactly.
In earlier episodes, you and I explored how various world governments,
including of course Uncle Sam, have a history of secretly
(06:38):
monitoring groups that may you know, organize the demonstration or protests,
and they monitor these groups if they consider them to
be a threat to domestic security or the status quo.
And one of the questions about that concerns this idea
of infiltration and monitoring is immediate. Just how far can
(06:59):
this monit ring go? To explore that, first, we have
to define what a protest actually is. And there's an
important distinction here. Yeah, Generally, when you think about protests,
you're thinking about dissent of some widely held opinion or
maybe a law or something that is considered status quo, right,
(07:22):
And it's a declaration of your opinion, a single person's opinion,
I disagree, right, dissent right. But it's important to note
the protest while it is, you know, an individual um action. Essentially,
a protest is an individual action when you have enough
people income together. Generally you're here, you're going to be
thinking about protests as a group activity or a thing
(07:45):
like a gathering as a protest. But really it's just
a bunch of people getting together and voicing their their
singular belief right, right, or their cluster of related beliefs. Yes,
which is what we the occupy movement right right. And
that's something that mainstream news, delighted in and what is
(08:06):
this about. It's not really about anything. Nobody's saying the
same thing. Everybody's angry, nobody seeing the same thing, or
ump for ump for um. Something must be done right.
Sometimes you can just feel it, so that that is
an important distinction if you're if you're speaking with a
technical definition and by the book definition, a protest is
(08:27):
something you do as an individual. But that word is
evolving in these our modern days because you're never going
to hear about a protest in a nonfictional world unless
it's describing what you said, Matt a group of people.
And here in the US, by no means a perfect country,
protests are still legal since the adoption of the First
(08:50):
Amendment in December of people in this country have the
right to, as symbol, in a peaceful manner, to make
our various opinion ends on one issue or another, known
to the public, to anyone who walks by, to anyone
who happens to cover it in the media. And important
to note these opinions do not have to be well informed. No,
(09:13):
there are a lot of protests that are, you know,
perhaps more emotionally driven than factually driven. And the tricky
thing about this is that people often don't agree on
an issue, and that's why a lot of times at
a protest that I think a good example would probably be, uh,
some of the I don't even know how to describe it,
some of the far right groups that will have a protest,
(09:36):
and then another group of people will have a counter
protest immediately adjacent to where the first group is having
a protest, and that and they were within their rights
to do that if they apply for the permits and
all the things you have to do nowadays. But that
that's where you get real problems, right, That's the that's
the powder keg thing. That's why, for example, you'll see
(09:58):
m like a very controversial issue in the US for
a long time, concerned women's rights and abortion, and you
would see people who were anti women's rights or um
pro life they would call it, or people who are
pro abortion or pro choice at the same events they
would yell chance. All of this is perfectly legal, but
(10:21):
as long as they don't physically hit each other or
try to get other people to attack people that they
disagree with. This this is just street rules, baby, speaking
of powder keg moments, because then you you know, if
you add law enforcement and end mass to this as
an equation, that's where big problems can can arise. And
(10:44):
I mean, this whole thing could be very, very controversial
because who who are they protecting? They're essentially protecting everyone
right in a protest like this, that's what it's supposed
to be, right, But how do you have the logistics
of doing that in a way it is non violent.
I'm glad I don't have that job, and it's still
(11:06):
it's still a job that's going to be around until
the laws change. Because freedom of assembly and freedom of
speech are on paper guaranteed, they're also closely related. But
the thing is that since their creation, these rights have
been more or less under some level of continual threat.
It turns out, folks, and I don't think there's a
(11:28):
surprise for any of us listening today, that the people
in power are very much pro protests. They're very in
favor of this right to assembly and freedom of speech
when they agree with the opinion or platform being presented.
So if you are if you are the governor of
(11:49):
a place, or you're the mayor of a town and
people are protesting, uh, something a little bit smaller in
scale like the construction of a Walmart, and you, you also,
as the mayor, have made your election bread and butter
off of supporting local businesses, then you'll say, yeah, the
people have a right to a symbol. They can say
(12:10):
what they want. I have no official statement on this,
but I do hope everyone turns out to vote yeah
or or I'm you can you know, they can sit
in their office and be glad that these people are
getting the steam like off of their or they're getting
these feelings off their chest in public. They're feeling like
they're doing something when in reality, you've already signed all
(12:32):
the checks. Right, right, because when these same people in
power disagree with a particular opinion, uh say there's a
group of folks protesting what they see as an unfair
tax scheme. Right for instance, that the Tea Party of
a few years back was huge, was very active in
that regard. Or let's say there's the opening of an
(12:54):
unpopular building the Walmart example, or a piece of infrastructure
people really don't want the inner dat or the train
coming through town, or don't build a prison in our neighborhood, Nimby,
not in my backyard, or a pipeline maybe or a
pipeline excellent example. Then people in power have several different
tools they can use to change the narrative and frame
(13:16):
this less as a protest, less as an exercise and
civil rights, and start start presenting it as something that
is violent, you know, that is threatening, that is going
to endanger families across the area. And the a c
l U has has a statement that that summarizes some
(13:38):
of the tools that those in power can use to neuter, discredit,
or cast dispersion on demonstrations. Yeah, and we'll read that,
and it's got one of one of my favorite quotations,
slash made up words phrases that's ever existed in the
(13:58):
history of since I've been alive, this phrase. Yeah, that's
gonna be here. In recent history, challenges to the right
to protest have come in many forms. In some cases,
police cracked down on demonstrations through mass arrests, illegal use
of force, or curfews. Elsewhere, law enforcement limits expression by
corralling protesters in so called free speech zones. And we've
(14:23):
heard of these, and you may have seen these. They've
been made fun of on places like Arrested or in
shows like Arrested. Development in other places where it's just
a cage essentially, where okay, everyone getting this cage. This
is the free speech zone, so alli and it's so
messed up. And the official reason for free speech zones,
by the way, being that they can guarantee the safety
(14:46):
of the protesters because they're in the cage. It's so
messed up. I just say that's that's the that is
the official guideline. But currently, love him or hate him,
protests are as American as apple pie, and they seem
hopefully here to stay. In fact, despite various quite valid
(15:09):
concerns about huge corporations taking power from the government or
the government going increasingly big brother on people who live here. Uh,
the fact of the matter is that protests are escalating,
not just in frequency but also in size. Each of
the top ten attended protests in American history occurred since
(15:33):
nineteen sixty three, and furthermore, each of the top four
occurred since the beginning of the current presidential administration. The
Trump admin that it's it's that's astounding, and let's go
to should we go to the number one? Yeah, let's
just go ahead and just hit the number one, just
because everyone's wondering what it is it was the seventeen
Women's March, and a lot of our co workers who
(15:56):
are here at now I heart media, how stuff works,
stuff media, whatever it was called. Um. A lot of
our coworkers were there, My wife was there, my sister,
a lot of our friends. It was January and there
were an estimated somewhere between three point three and four
point six million people assembled across the United States. Huge.
(16:18):
It was a huge amount of people, and they had
managed to unite for a cause. A lot of our
coworkers who did go up there were there partially as participants,
but mainly as documentarians. They were interviewing people that were
filming stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, and the number two spot next
(16:39):
year's Women's March, right right. So we know that protests
are growing in frequency, we know that they're growing in size.
The question is how long can this situation last. It's
no secret that other countries have effectively removed the right
to assemble, at least for certain groups, and they're there
(17:03):
are numerous examples, but I want us to focus on
some of the examples that may be surprising. When we
think of protests or right to assembly being quashed, we
think of authoritarian regimes, right we think of the DPRK
probably wouldn't take kindly to protest or maybe uh, certain
(17:24):
countries maybe maybe like Sudan wouldn't take kindly to a
protest right or yeah, anyone that has a very rigid
structure within the government and how functions. And I think
I think about China just because of the People's Republican Uh.
And it's weird focusing on nations in Asia, but uh
(17:46):
interesting by the way, Matt, we called it on the
social credit thing, people are getting turned down for playing flights.
Everyone called us crazy, where we would be an alarmist,
but I thought, I thought we did a fairly even
handed look at Yeah, and very soon it's working, so
(18:07):
very soon it will be everywhere. We will all be
in that black mirror episode. I hope not. I hope not.
But if you want to learn what sesame credit or
social credit is, check out our earlier episode, which could
do with an update but still needs help. We did
it before it was implemented as an optional thing, when
(18:29):
it was just a twinkle and an authoritarian's eye, And
now it is happening and people are being severely punished
for disagreeing with the party line. With whom do you
associate ben negative points? Yeah, just on your friendship levels anyway.
So we wanted to look at countries that didn't fit
(18:51):
that bill, that didn't seem like authoritarian regimes, you know
what I mean, They didn't seem like East German Soviet
block type things. Spain has something called the Citizens Security Law.
The Citizens Security Law gives police the discretionary ability to
hand out fines of up to six hundred and fifty
(19:12):
thousand dollars US equivalent to unauthorized demonstrators if they protest
near a transport hub or a nuclear power plant. So
if you're by a train station or a bus station,
or a nuclear power plant or a nuclear power plant,
and police can also issue fines of up to thirty
dollars US for taking photographs of police during a protest,
(19:35):
failing to show police idea upon request, or gathering in
an unauthorized way near government buildings. Which can you imagine
how that how that would go down in the in
the United States. I mean at Pennsylvania Avenue, no matter
what day you go, no matter what the weather's like,
there's always a ton of people outside across the street
(19:58):
from the white Huh yeah, ton of people. Um, but again,
i'd love to see what, like how that breaks down
of unauthorized ways of gathering. Is it is it formations?
Is it levels? Like they don't like levels like from theater?
Right right? Right? Great? Yeah, they're not doing uh they're
(20:20):
not doing body pyramids. Yeah all right, but but I know,
all seriousness, Let's let's look at another country that you
wouldn't expect Canada, right, Quebec. Specifically, at the height of
a wave of student strikes, in the Quebec legislature passed
a thing called Bill seventy eight. This made pickets and
unauthorized gatherings of over fifty people illegal. It also punished
(20:44):
people with fines. So if you were in violation of
Bill seventy eight as an individual, you would have to
pay up to five five grands, and if you were
an organization, you have to pay a grands. Yikes. And
that's it's written in such a way that, uh, the
organization can get hit with that k fine and then
(21:05):
all the individuals can additionally get hit with that five
k fine. And we know it's possible for protests to
be legally blocked, and we have hard historical evidence of
operations like cointelpro and this. Things like this proved that
domestic monitoring of dissident groups has at the very least
occurred in the past. Let's pause for a word from
(21:31):
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(22:24):
we're constructing here, Sorry I didn't eat lunch, So you
think these are gonna be all food metaphors. Okay, I
hope that's all right with us listening, with everyone listening.
So in the pizza that we're building of explaining protests
and the people trying to stop or control them. Okay,
we've got I've got the people that the dome and sauce,
(22:44):
and then let's look at the counter protesting things as
as the toppings. Are the people trying to stop the
pizza from being made. There's a very very crucial ingredient
that we're missing here, and that is corporations, private entities
are not above suppressing news of a protest. So maybe
(23:05):
maybe let's say you're a big company like, oh, yeah,
you're Nestlee whatever, Yeah you're nestly. Let's say you're Nestly
and people are protesting your wildly profitable practice of exploiting
water use rights to take water from one place and
sell it as bottled water. And you don't, for some reason,
(23:27):
have the ability to make the local government change the
law so that people can no longer protest. But what
you can do is influence media coverage of this so
that the protest, while it may actually happen, doesn't get
covered on your local you know, CBS or Fox five
or whatever, and it doesn't maybe get on national coverage
(23:52):
even if people are getting shot, violence breaks out. Maybe
CNN just shows a video of a of a cute
dog learned to ride a bicycle on its own. They
do that all the time. Yeah, I think it was.
It tries to go to the question there I would
I wouldn't want to look at all that other stuff.
Just show the duck. Show the duck. No one mentioned
(24:13):
Syria if no one saw it. The reasoning goes, did
it happen? And this is um, this is this is
a powerful question. And I know that we all tend
to as human beings, think of ourselves as critical analysts
(24:34):
of the world in which we live, but we are
very easily fooled. The more the more I learned about
human psychology, We've been through a lot, Matt, the more
I learned about human psychology like the increasingly depressed, because yeah,
we we fool each other and ourselves a lot. And
(24:58):
speaking of fooling, we've got I know, we meandered a
little bit. I'm sorry for the tangents of a little punchy.
Speaking of fooling people, we're getting to one of the
most important, powerful and obscure tools used by the anti
protest crowd. It is something that does not get a
(25:18):
ton of airtime and never will, by the way, And
it's something that you won't hear governments or law enforcement outfits,
and certainly not corporations mentioned in public unless they are
denying its existence. What do the powerful do when legal
means of stifling descent don't cut the mustard? How far
would they go to discredit a movement and organization or
(25:42):
a cause. Enter the agent provocateur. Here's where it gets crazy.
Let's just call this section we've never seen this guy before.
I think that encapsulates it perfectly. So agent provocateurs. Who
are they? Aside from a really cool French name, what
(26:03):
are they there? An Asian provocateur is a catalyst that
exists within a group of people, A lot of times,
a somewhat like mind minded group of people who are
they're going to again, like like a catalyst entice somebody else,
maybe a group of people to do something that they
probably wouldn't do, like an illegal act. Let's say some
kind of rash decision, uh, something that will falsely implicate
(26:28):
the people around the agent provocateur of partaking in whatever
illegal act this Asian provocateur has done. Let's say something
like smashing a window, um uh, jump, sending fire to
a police vehicle, something like that. It's something to ruin
the reputation of all those surrounding the agent. Right, So
(26:49):
the agent provocateur may commit a crime, yeah, hoping to
be as you said, a catalyst may attempt to entice
other people civilians to commit a crime, or may falsely
implicate them in something if you want. This is just
a just right right say, there there's a protest, uh,
(27:11):
some provocateurs turn it into a riot and the police
swoop in. And while the police are swooping in, one
of these people sunglasses, bandana on the whole nine. They
bust open the front display of a pizzeria. And I'm
not lying, this is gonna keep happy unless let's shut
(27:31):
down by right to free pizza speech. I'm gonna get
you some cheese. It's I you know what, I am
so on board, but let's but seriously, this is an
okay example, They break into this thing and a civilian
protests are nearby, is standing there wondering what x going on.
But as the uniformed police are running by, the person
(27:52):
who has broken into the pizzeria like throws pizza at
this innocent person. So so they are falsely imp gated
in this crime. And sure that may not result in
a conviction, but it will probably result and then at
least being taken in for anywhere from a few hours
to a few days. Yeah. And and in a very
similar type of example, if that person, that agent provocateur
(28:16):
breaks into the front of the pizza joint, a group
of ten to a hundred people that are somewhat close
to him while he's doing that, feel that intensity in
the moment, are angry about whatever it is they're processing about,
and then they join in and start, you know, making
their own supremes like while while they're there. And it's
because of that mentality and that amped up adrenaline that
(28:39):
occurs in those situations that it only takes one person
to take that one further step that perhaps everyone else
will do it, which is a shame, you know, man,
because you should just support your local pizza joint. I
feel like I'm losing the thread of this, but but
it's true. You know, it's true. People are especially large
(29:00):
gatherings or in mobs in a place where there's not
a an asserted number of social Moray's right, Like, when
people are in those uncertain situations, they will follow the lead.
I say they, we will follow the lead because we're
no better, right, And it doesn't happen every time, but
it does happen, But it does happen the history of
(29:22):
secret police planting agent provocateurs in popular movements. It's an
ancient practice, but it goes back like the modern version
of it goes back at least a nineteenth century France
and twentieth century Russia. So in nineteen o five, the
priest who led the St. Petersburg Revolution, we know it
was some sort of double agent, and the man who
(29:44):
organized the assassination of the czar's uncle, the Grand Duke,
was also a double agent. We have a documented case
of this in the US. We have several, but here's one. Yeah,
one is of Tommy the Traveler. This guy was a
member of the Students for a Democratic Society. May have
heard them heard of him as the S D S.
(30:05):
He's an organizer who, after years of trying to arise
some kind of violent action, he uh, he convinced these
two other people, to nineteen year old students to actually
firebomb and r O TC headquarters at this college Hobart
College and Upstate New York. UM and r O t
C is the the it's training. It's training for like
future military essentially right right right, the Reserve Officers training corpses,
(30:30):
a lot of high school members, a lot of college members.
You've and you've probably heard S D S and r
O t C together when when learning about the UM
the violent or not the violent but the protests that
ended up turning violent um in the nineteen sixties, Yes,
a lot of those sts was a big group there.
(30:50):
And in our previous episodes on the FBI and They're
Handling of Informants, we look into some of some of
those actions as well as coins Helper. We've got some
listeners in the audience who lived through the sixties and
can tell you, especially a lot of us younger folks,
can tell you that this was an alarmingly fragile time
(31:12):
for the US. It was one of the first times
that people who were civilians could get unedited un propagandized
footage of American actions in Vietnam and learned that war
was not as noble perhaps as they have been led
to believe. But this still, this still continues. Agent provocateurs
(31:37):
are essentially double agents. How do they work? Let's let's
take a hypothetical example, and let's see, Paul, how long
you let us get away with this? All right? So Matt,
picture our good good friends Paul mission control decade cam
focusing on his mustache. Got it all right, He's got
(31:58):
a mustache. Now. He's active in the anti widget community.
He and his fellow activists, you see, hate the way
that widgets are destroying the environment, endangering children, pushing out
local businesses or what have you. Widgets are bad, they agree,
So Paul and his friends get together to publicly protest
(32:18):
widgets on the steps of the state capital. We are
pick a good one Illinois. Okay, we're in Illinois. So
Paul and his friends have done this before. They've protested
here at the Capitol um multiple times. They're very anti widget,
so they know all the legal ins and outs. They
(32:38):
have their permits secured, they have um you know, they've
reached out to local news organizations and so on, and
they're able to avoid law enforcements shutting down the protests. However,
the governor of Illinois, and this again hypothetical example, has
relied heavily upon big Widget for funding in her or
(33:01):
his last campaign, so it's in their best interest to
make sure that this protest, if it does have to happen,
somehow discredits the anti widget movement. So fast forward to
the day of the protest. All right, So we've got
a ton of anti widgets assembled in Springfield, Illinois, down
there by the capital. They're just signs everywhere with all
(33:22):
these really clever, and you know it's somewhat um snarky,
a little bit snarky. Signs that are anti widgets. They've
got slogans on them, they got memes. People brought their families.
They're banging pots. Representatives from other activist groups joined up
as well, like kind of closely related groups, but not
in the same exact thing. You got the food not
bombs thing. They're they're hanging out. A couple other environmental
(33:45):
groups and prison activists, couple of vegans showed up, some
anti fax some uh, some like trained kids, definitely trained
off the rails. And are you know, protesting in fay
or of general anarchy anyway. Yes, So at this point,
you know, Paul, the guy over here and his mustache,
(34:07):
they're like hanging out there, loving this. All his friends
are there. They're so ecstatic because so many people have
joined up for the cause, so many folks are there.
Power to the people, right. Of course, a lot of
these people are strangers, a lot of strangers completely new
to Paul and his friends. And you know, again, Paul
and his friends are happy because it means their campaign
(34:27):
is spreading across all these different groups, across all these
different people. The social media campaign that they were using.
It really paid off. Some of these protesters, however, look
like a tad disconcerting. They don't quite blend in with
the rest of the crowd. They seem, in fact, unusually aggressive,
(34:51):
despite the fact that everyone who has been at previous
anti widget meetings knows that the police are just there
to maintain peace, right to feature, there's not a new violence,
and that you are not supposed to antagonize the police.
They're probably friends of local law enforcement there amongst the
anti Widget Yeah right, they're not protesting the police. They're
(35:14):
protesting these uh insidious widgets. And these people who have
appeared are wearing outfits that are typically attributed to something
called the black block uh spectrum of violent protest tactics.
But the problem is that unlike legit black block members
(35:35):
or black black practitioners, these guys have clothes that look
like the right off the rack of a store, brand new,
and their boots seem to match the boots that that
the police are wearing very similar, so they appear to
be incredibly aggressive. They're taunting the cops were there the
(35:59):
monitor the pro tests. They're trying to turn the crowd
against the cops. Despite all the work that Paul and
the Anti Widget Collective have put into making this a
peaceful demonstration, it turns out in this example that widgets
are a very emotionally charged issue. Here in Springfield, Illinois,
the crowd is already angry. There's the slight, tangy scent
(36:20):
of blood in the air, right. A lot of people
have lost their livelihood due to widgets, and let's let's
up the stakes and say that some people have died
in some way related to widgets. The group is scheduled
a short list of speakers, and it is Paul. Mission control.
Decons turned to grab the microphone, so he steps up
on a makeshift podium. He greets the crowd to enthusiastic cheers,
(36:41):
and he begins to outline the evils of widgets and
more importantly, the solutions that he and his crew propose.
And someone yells burn it down, and someone else yells down.
Hold on, says Paul. But it's too late. People begin
chanting burn it down, burn it down, burning it down,
(37:05):
burn it down, burn it down. Hold on, says Paul.
But it's too late, guys, It's way too late, because
the chant is now it's too much. It overcomes everything else. Pause.
Zoom in as a person in the crowd you could miss.
(37:26):
It's a guy with a baseball cap, black hoodie, brand
new black jeans, brand new black boots, brand new gloves
on his hands. Let's zoom in enhanced computer. He has
donned a bandana over the lower half of his face.
He's sneaking in and around through the crowd. He doesn't
(37:49):
particularly seem to be shouting anymore. Everybody else is doing
that for him. Now, let's press play again and watch
as he picks up and throws a brick through a
nearby car window. Other people start attacking this car because yeah,
you hear the smash. You're everyone's in this fever pitch,
And now a moment of violence occurs and everyone starts
(38:09):
to join in. The police they see this happening, and
this is dangerous. They have to protect everyone who's in
this protest, including the people surrounding the violence, so they
just swoop in. But now that the crowd, at least
portions of the crowd, are becoming violent, so they attack
(38:29):
the police in return. And if the police respond to
these attacks, then the crowd easily interprets it as the
police just attacking people, and they panic. Pandemonium occurs. Some people, hey,
everybody runs. Some people run away from the violence. Some
people run toward it in hopes of, you know, likely
(38:50):
in hopes of rescuing their fellow protesters from the anti
widget collective. Paul Mission controlled Decond stands there for a
moment on this make shift platform, baffled, how did this
all go so wrong, so completely and so quickly? Gunshots
explode through the afternoon air, cutting his moment of reverie short.
(39:12):
He ducks to the ground, and he wonders what will
be on the news. Oh man, there's your control. I
feel like we gotta help him. Let's uh, let's get
some sponsors in here, and we are back again. This
(39:35):
is only a hypothetical example. Our good friends super producer
Paul is hail and hardy and is not has not
at this point become the victim of a violent protest.
But that does not make this story an implausible one.
The practice of sabotaging protests in this manner is ancient,
(39:57):
and it's varied, and it goes across political spectrums, it
goes across ideologies, and it goes across industry. Religion and
state labor spies infiltrated, disrupted, and subverted union activities all
the live long day. And they used agent provocateurs at protest.
Unfortunately doesn't get reported in a lot of uh and
(40:20):
a lot of history classes. But we still have unions today.
So man, what's an example of a union where this
could happen? I don't know, a lot of them have
some friends who are teamsters, which is kind of cool.
Think about Hollywood and now in Atlanta as the film
industry is going around, and I believe Gimblet Media the
(40:41):
staff there is attempting to unionize or they're planning on unionizing.
Um has something to do with Spotify. But anyway, who knows,
podcast unions maybe a thing of the future. Right there,
he goes, it's a podcast union protest, and the cops
want to come down hard. Sorry, probably don't for something.
And so all they have to do is have a
(41:02):
large enough group of people and then have someone just
push the needle, just nudge things in a less stable direction,
just be an agent of chaos. The activities of agent
provocate tours against revolutionaries and Imperial Russia were notorious and
infamous in the U s. As we know, the activities
(41:23):
of cointelpro included tasking FBI agents to pose as political
activists and participating meetings with groups like the Ku Klux Klan,
the American Indian Movement, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee.
We're including these three examples just to show that it
(41:45):
ran the gamut, you know what I mean. And then
especially when to Black Panthers movement, a lot of um
nationalist movements and community based organizations like that, like vegans. Yeah,
that's why we're joking talking about eagans being there, because
they did infiltrate vegan groups. Yeah, and even more, maybe
(42:06):
more fringe animal rights groups also get also get the
unblinking eye. There's another example we we mentioned Canada. In
in Quebec in two thousand seven, protesters accused police of
using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North
American Leaders summit in Montebello, Quebec. These accusations have been
(42:30):
made before, but this time these agent provocateurs were caught
on camera. Oh yeah, there was a video that you
can see of these demonstrations on YouTube. I remember watching
it back in the day and you may still be
able to find it. It It may not be the original videos,
but it's at least existing there as proxies um or
(42:53):
just duplicates their their faces. These young guys, three dudes,
they're they've got bandanas on their faces. They're mingling with
protesters in front of a line of police and riot
gear and at least one of these guys is holding
a rock in his hand. Okay, Then one of the organisms,
one of the organizers of the actual protesters, guy named
Dave Coles. He's the president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers
(43:17):
Union of Canada. Uh. This guy makes it clear to
the mass man. He's like talking to him. He's saying, guys,
it looks like you're I mean, this isn't verbatim, but
he's saying, it looks like you're trying to be violent,
and we know you're not a part of our group.
What are you doing here? He also Dave Coles is
my favorite line of this story. Dave Coles describes the
(43:38):
group of actual protesters as mainly grandparents. Well, yeah, if
you watched the video, and you don't wanna judge anyway,
but the ages of the people actually they're protesting in
their insular group are older, significantly older than these other guys.
You're right, there's this big age difference, and he urges
these three masked men to leave and go this is
(44:01):
our protest turf. Yeah, go go protest somewhere else with
your agro ways and your weird disguises. And it gets
even weirder from there. So Coles then demands that these
guys put down their rocks and stopping so you know,
at least looking like they're going to be violent. Other
protesters like start chiming in and they're saying, wait a second,
these guys, these guys are police officers, these are agents,
(44:24):
These are and they actually call them agent provocateur. I
believe in the video, Um, several of the people try
to actually take the bandanas off their faces so they
can get video evidence of their faces. And rather than leave,
these three men, rather than leave when confronted with a
group who are starting to you know, get upset at them, uh,
they actually start getting closer to the police, like backing
(44:44):
away into the police line, essentially for protection, perhaps um,
from from a bunch of grandparents. UM. Just leave that there, um,
And then they seem to start discussing or or talking
with the police, and the police talking to them as
a discussion and then eventually they pushed their way past
an officer and um other police then pushed them down
(45:05):
on the ground and they handcuffed these guys to take
them away. Essentially, Yeah, but the thought here is that
they actually got loaded up into a car and they're like, oh, man,
that didn't work out, all right, guys, let's a regroup
back at the HQ. And initially the police department denied
any knowledge of this or involvement. However, it was hard
to argue against video, and they did. They did. Uh,
(45:30):
they did admit that those three folks were undercover. However,
they said they were not there to incite violence. They
were there to make sure that things did not get violent.
Man that video and they were the ones holding the rocks.
So we know that the practice of using agent provocateurs
to infiltrate protest and the practice of using government money
(45:56):
your your tax dollars, by the way, if you if
you live in one of the countries we're talking about,
we know this practice has been escalating in step with
the growth of protests, and it makes sense. In the
United Kingdom alone, for example, undercover police officers have spied
on more than one thousand political groups since nineteen sixty eight.
(46:16):
But there's no official list of these groups. There's nothing
that's been published. This is piece together from leaked information
that comes out years or decades later. Additionally, corporate interests
never one to uh never want to miss a space
in the market, have continued to increase their involvement in
protest infiltration. And we found some some pretty fascinating documents
(46:40):
that were leaked to the Guardian and the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism. So we got a couple of companies here,
British Airways, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Portia, and
uh there are a whole bunch of other ones on
on a list that we found. But they have paid
for corporate intelligence firms to monitor political groups that challenged
their businesses. So they're looking at groups that may cause
(47:03):
a pr problem or worse for them, right right. And
one of these corporate intelligence firms is an outfit name
C two I International, although they believe they changed their
name afterwards. They were caught using two professional infiltrators to
get advanced warning of demonstrations against these firms you mentioned, Matt,
(47:24):
British Airways, Royal Bank, Portia all the hits, all the hits, uh,
and then notify those firms before the demonstrations occur, the
idea being that they could preemptively shut them down if possible,
or they could just infiltrate it. Or they could just
infiltrate I'm sure there's something like a menu, right. The
infiltrators would pretend to be activists sympathetic to the cause
(47:46):
of the campaigners, and they would get in during the
lead up to the demonstration. They would be showing up
at the meetings they would help organize, they would attend
the demonstrations. And we're making this sound serious, dystopian and
a little bit shadow running. But sometimes this included silly
protests too. One of the infiltrators had to dress up
(48:09):
as a pirate with a with a cutlast and an
eye patch. As part of the protests. They had to
wear costumes. I bet they were. They were against Porsche
right for some reason or another, just for the alliteration, yea,
So they they had to do some some silly things, right.
They also would try to do a little bit of espionage.
(48:33):
They would steal internal documents, they would try to get
their hands on digital accounts, of information, emails, meetings, attendance lists,
attendance list. That's big, that's always going to be big.
And then there's another example. There's a group called the
Inkerman Group that gathers information about protesters and they have
(48:53):
covertly deployed infiltrators on these demonstrations that are directed at
certain businesses. One of its confidential documents that was leaked
again to The Guardian warned of the threat presented by
protest groups that use direct action to disrupt the quote
economic welfare of companies. Well, they're messing with the money.
(49:15):
Don't don't mess with the money. Don't mess with the money.
Somebody said that one time, messing with the money. I
can't remember that, but but this is this is strange
because the we always get the question who is the they?
And stuff they don't want you to know, and it
changes every episode. There are multiple days in this situation.
(49:36):
Porstia Royal Bank, those folks obviously don't want you to
know that they spend part of their profits using these
very very very unethical things, these very unethical techniques, rather
to infiltrate and stymy protests and descent in general. Right
(49:57):
and the the US government regardless of who who is
in office, is not going to stop doing this. Why
would you stop doing this? This is a lot of
bang for your buck. All you have to do is
not get caught. Yeah, yeah, And again it's it's a
saturation issue because if you've got one, even ten agent
(50:18):
provocateurs working in a big enough protest, like you're probably
not going to get caught if you're good at it.
But here's the other big thing we know, ben Uh,
the same tools they're used to actually organize demonstrations, to
get to have people give their opinion in public and
share this kind of thing, these same things can be
(50:39):
used against the organizers themselves and against the protest movement. Absolutely.
It's it's strange because we when we're talking about these
new tools, we're talking about things like Twitter, right, We're
talking about various digital social media. We're also talking about
the enormous opportunities for organization that are posed by our
(51:02):
smartphones are little tracking devices that we keep in our pockets.
But the sword swings both ways, right and there. This
cannot be over emphasized. The conclusions for today's episode are
are tough. They're simple, but they're tough. What does this
all mean. First, it means that you cannot trust everyone
(51:24):
at a demonstration. So if you go to protests, as
is your right in a lot of countries, and I
believe it's a human I believe it should be a
human right. Overall, as you go, remember that no matter
what you personally believe in, no matter why you personally
are there or your friends, if you don't know someone,
(51:47):
you are not sure why they are actually there. And
there will be people in in our audience today who
have I know, I know some of us have been
to protest and I know you have seen something like
the So please right in if you have a personal
experience that you're comfortable with sharing. And next, this means
that we know this happens, but we have no idea.
(52:10):
There is not an official way to learn how many
people are doing this. Is it an occasional one time thing,
is it a booming shadow industry. There's not a record
to look at, so we can't make the call. Yeah,
at what scale is the counter intelligence at work in
whatever protests? Maybe it's zero percent. It is possible that
(52:32):
there is zero percent counter intelligence happening, or it could
be even the counter intelligence could be the thing that
started the protest to to try and counteract a group
that wasn't going to protest in the first place. But
there's no way to know how many demonstrations like are
just right now, there are demonstrators that are being poked
(52:52):
and prodded by some kind of undercover agent. It's possible
we don't know how many are happening right now. There's
no way to know. Right, it's more greater than zero. Yes, yes,
it's greater than zero. And that's a that's another crazy thing.
It's safe to assume the protest over any controversial issue, again,
(53:13):
regardless of how you feel about it, I will have
a pretty high likelihood of being infiltrated, either in the
planning process or especially if it's a large scale protests
infiltrated the day off. Right, And also, if we are
being fair, there is a valid, compelling reason for governments
to monitor certain dissident groups supremacist, racial supremacist, separatist, domestic
(53:38):
terrorists and so on. There are dangerous people and there
is a reason that these people should be monitored. That
The question is where does the line, Where does the
line exist? Right? Where can how can you legally say
we better keep an eye on these vegans. Well, yeah,
and it's generally a line, or it should be at
least a line between violence and non violence. Right, that's
(54:00):
where the line should be. But when you when you
add in this this catalyst, this agent provocateur thing, that's
when it doesn't matter what the protest is about, doesn't
matter what the group is, it can become violent when
you add that extra thing to it. So this is
where today's episode ends, at least our part of today's episode,
(54:23):
because we are looking forward to hearing from you and
your fellow listeners are looking forward to hearing your stories
as well. Let us know what your encounters with this
sort of phenomenon have been. Is it, Is it something again?
It's it's a bit of a black box because there
are no official records yet of how often or how
(54:45):
infrequently this occurs. Let us know if you think it's alarmist,
let us know if you think there's more to the story.
Let us know if you have any advice, uh for
people who are also listening to the show who might
be interested in or ization or activism. Should they just
not do it or they're safe ways to do it?
(55:05):
Because at the end of the day, we don't want
anyone to die, please absolutely well, And what do you
think about protests in general? Do you think any action
truly occurs when a protest happens, or do you think
it's a way to pacify the people by allowing protests.
That's such a great question, because that's something people talked about, right.
(55:27):
It worries me because it's that feeling. It's when you've
got a big projects coming up, or a big a
huge thing on the horizon in your life, and you
talk about it a lot, but you don't do much
about or you don't like make many plans or do
anything about it. You have that same feeling of um
almost euphoria, and in that the thing is actually happening
(55:48):
just by talking about it. Right. This is a phenomenon
we've discussed before, and when a protest occurs on a
wide enough scale, it makes you feel better, perhaps that
something's gonna change or something's gonna happen, when in reality
maybe status quo just remains and everybody goes home at
the end of the night. Right. That's that's a very
good point. And these are these are vital issues. Let
(56:09):
us know. You can find us on Instagram, you can
find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter. Uh,
we're conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter where conspiracy stuff show.
On Instagram, I'm Ben Bulling at Instagram and if you
would like to learn some daily pizza facts, you can
also follow me on Twitter. I've been doing this for
about a week now. It's uh at Ben bull in
(56:31):
hs W. Okay, where can people find you? Matt? You
can't really find me anywhere. You can. You can locate
me if you wish, but you're not gonna make it easy. No,
I'm trying to just hang out of social media if possible. Yeah,
what if someone can what if someone wants to call us? Okay,
well you can call me right now because I'm going
(56:53):
through the messages like today and this week I've been
doing it. You can call one eight three three std
W y t K just leave a message. Three minutes
is the cap, but you can leave multiples if you wish,
like some of our ore some of you have And
I've been loving every single message that's coming in and
I'm sending it to the guys, and uh, we're very
(57:14):
much enjoying it. So thank you keep sending them, Yeah,
because we do listen to them. It means a lot.
It really does. Thank you for taking the time out
of your day to bring some incredible stories to your
fellow listeners. But hey, guys, you may say, what if
I just I mean, I think I think social media
is like I'm with Matt, that's a that's a load
on malarkey. But I'm also with Ben. I hate phones.
(57:37):
I don't think I should have to talk on them. Well,
don't worry, dear friend, we have good news for you.
You can still communicate with us directly. You can send
us an old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt nol
Is on Adventures today. They call me Ben. We are
joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
my dear, dear friends. I think at the stage we
(00:45):
can call each other old friends. I was surprised that
I didn't know the answer to this question on your side,
I was. I was thinking about this off air. Have
you ever been to a protest? Two things. We've known
each other for over twelve years now, so we're definitely
old friends. And yes, I have attended a few protests
in my day, specifically here in Atlanta when the occupy
(01:07):
movement was gaining steam. They had one at a park
downtown that that I think did we both go to
down by g Su Wait? Yeah we did. Did we
go at the same time? I think we went separately? Okay, yeah,
because it was ongoing it was for multiple days. I
met up with some more radical people that I knew, uh,
(01:29):
just to see what was going on, and it was
it was an experience. Is the first time I ever
saw the megaphone speak that was popular, and that where
people like pick Up basically announced that they're going to speak,
and then they speak and everybody kind of repeats what
they're saying so everyone in the larger audience can hear.
It was fascinating. Yeah, it's something that that I think
(01:53):
a lot of mainstream America learned about with the occupy movement.
But there is an entire subculture of resources and techniques,
tools and tips used by the counter culture or used
by people protesting government's megaphone uh communication is one instance
(02:14):
of that. But you can find some great guides online
still I don't know how long they will be up
that will tell you about the you know, the best
way to avoid brutality by law enforcement or to survive
you know, tear gassing or other proud dispersal technologies yea,
even tips on what to wear, what your decore should
be like, be stylish and avoid tear gas right right right,
(02:39):
very much so. And recently you and I, who have
always been fascinated by counter culture and those things that
exist on the edges of American mainstream culture, the things
that you will never hear about on the evening news. Um.
You and I recently went to one of your favorite bookstores,
(03:00):
and in the basement, in a corner, in the basement
of this bookstore, we stumbled onto a counterculture node of
free zines, um books of works of philosophy, right, yeah, stuff,
stuff that I think I mentioned while we were down there,
Like I can, I can understand why he's down here
in this corner underneath the staircase essentially and not just
(03:23):
fully on display for everyone that walks in literally and
figuratively underground. Yeah, and it was cool, but also it
felt a little dangerous. Uh, But really, it's just good
to know that that type of free press can exist still,
even if it's slightly covered in darkness, even if it
(03:43):
puts you on a list. But we were on a
list a long time ago. That ship is sailed. So
I've been to protest as well. I've been to all
sorts of protests because it's a fascinating social phenomenon. That's
that's how I look at it, even protests that I
didn't believe in, you know, like I didn't agree with
(04:04):
the cause of a protest, but I was already on
the train, so I said, I'll swing by. And most
of the protests that I have attended have been in Atlanta.
I've been there as an observer occasionally participant, but I've
also been involved in protests in Central America. And that's
(04:26):
that's something that's a little bit sticky if you're not
native to a land, because one of the first things
that the state Department will tell you to do, and
a lot of government agencies will tell you to do
this is to avoid any public demonstrations if you were
in a foreign country. Really, and is that because of
surveillance of some kind, or when you're dealing with a
(04:49):
visa or a passport, or a reason that you're in
the country that's not a standard citizen. You don't want
to ever get put on a list. Basically, it's yeah,
it's first and foremost an issue of personal safety. Of imagine,
for instance, that you are in a part of the
world that maybe doesn't have the best rule of law.
(05:10):
People are panicked, people are unhappy, there's a powder keg situation,
and you appearing very different, maybe speaking different language, moving differently,
despite your best intentions, you may become the fuse for
that powder keg. There have been plenty of you know,
I study my study mass hysteria, uh, because I have
(05:34):
a heck of a social life, and one of the
things that happens this happened in Central America as well.
I was not involved. There were people who had been
murdered during protests because members of the public believe that
their children were being stolen by wealthy foreigners and that
(05:55):
their organs were being harvested. And so in one case,
a Japanese man and as driver, Japanese National ins driver
were pulled out their car and murdered because clearly, if
they're not from this country, they must be smuggling organs.
The point is the protest can quickly quickly turn into
something that is not peaceful. You know, they can turn
(06:17):
into a riot very very easily. Yeah, just from having
that number of people in one space, no matter how
open or large. It is that that mod mentality, right exactly.
In earlier episodes, you and I explored how various world governments,
including of course Uncle Sam, have a history of secretly
(06:38):
monitoring groups that may you know, organize the demonstration or protests,
and they monitor these groups if they consider them to
be a threat to domestic security or the status quo.
And one of the questions about that concerns this idea
of infiltration and monitoring is immediate. Just how far can
(06:59):
this monit ring go? To explore that, first, we have
to define what a protest actually is. And there's an
important distinction here. Yeah, Generally, when you think about protests,
you're thinking about dissent of some widely held opinion or
maybe a law or something that is considered status quo, right,
(07:22):
And it's a declaration of your opinion, a single person's opinion,
I disagree, right, dissent right. But it's important to note
the protest while it is, you know, an individual um action. Essentially,
a protest is an individual action when you have enough
people income together. Generally you're here, you're going to be
thinking about protests as a group activity or a thing
(07:45):
like a gathering as a protest. But really it's just
a bunch of people getting together and voicing their their
singular belief right, right, or their cluster of related beliefs. Yes,
which is what we the occupy movement right right. And
that's something that mainstream news, delighted in and what is
(08:06):
this about. It's not really about anything. Nobody's saying the
same thing. Everybody's angry, nobody seeing the same thing, or
ump for ump for um. Something must be done right.
Sometimes you can just feel it, so that that is
an important distinction if you're if you're speaking with a
technical definition and by the book definition, a protest is
(08:27):
something you do as an individual. But that word is
evolving in these our modern days because you're never going
to hear about a protest in a nonfictional world unless
it's describing what you said, Matt a group of people.
And here in the US, by no means a perfect country,
protests are still legal since the adoption of the First
(08:50):
Amendment in December of people in this country have the
right to, as symbol, in a peaceful manner, to make
our various opinion ends on one issue or another, known
to the public, to anyone who walks by, to anyone
who happens to cover it in the media. And important
to note these opinions do not have to be well informed. No,
(09:13):
there are a lot of protests that are, you know,
perhaps more emotionally driven than factually driven. And the tricky
thing about this is that people often don't agree on
an issue, and that's why a lot of times at
a protest that I think a good example would probably be, uh,
some of the I don't even know how to describe it,
some of the far right groups that will have a protest,
(09:36):
and then another group of people will have a counter
protest immediately adjacent to where the first group is having
a protest, and that and they were within their rights
to do that if they apply for the permits and
all the things you have to do nowadays. But that
that's where you get real problems, right, That's the that's
the powder keg thing. That's why, for example, you'll see
(09:58):
m like a very controversial issue in the US for
a long time, concerned women's rights and abortion, and you
would see people who were anti women's rights or um
pro life they would call it, or people who are
pro abortion or pro choice at the same events they
would yell chance. All of this is perfectly legal, but
(10:21):
as long as they don't physically hit each other or
try to get other people to attack people that they
disagree with. This this is just street rules, baby, speaking
of powder keg moments, because then you you know, if
you add law enforcement and end mass to this as
an equation, that's where big problems can can arise. And
(10:44):
I mean, this whole thing could be very, very controversial
because who who are they protecting? They're essentially protecting everyone
right in a protest like this, that's what it's supposed
to be, right, But how do you have the logistics
of doing that in a way it is non violent.
I'm glad I don't have that job, and it's still
(11:06):
it's still a job that's going to be around until
the laws change. Because freedom of assembly and freedom of
speech are on paper guaranteed, they're also closely related. But
the thing is that since their creation, these rights have
been more or less under some level of continual threat.
It turns out, folks, and I don't think there's a
(11:28):
surprise for any of us listening today, that the people
in power are very much pro protests. They're very in
favor of this right to assembly and freedom of speech
when they agree with the opinion or platform being presented.
So if you are if you are the governor of
(11:49):
a place, or you're the mayor of a town and
people are protesting, uh, something a little bit smaller in
scale like the construction of a Walmart, and you, you also,
as the mayor, have made your election bread and butter
off of supporting local businesses, then you'll say, yeah, the
people have a right to a symbol. They can say
(12:10):
what they want. I have no official statement on this,
but I do hope everyone turns out to vote yeah
or or I'm you can you know, they can sit
in their office and be glad that these people are
getting the steam like off of their or they're getting
these feelings off their chest in public. They're feeling like
they're doing something when in reality, you've already signed all
(12:32):
the checks. Right, right, because when these same people in
power disagree with a particular opinion, uh say there's a
group of folks protesting what they see as an unfair
tax scheme. Right for instance, that the Tea Party of
a few years back was huge, was very active in
that regard. Or let's say there's the opening of an
(12:54):
unpopular building the Walmart example, or a piece of infrastructure
people really don't want the inner dat or the train
coming through town, or don't build a prison in our neighborhood, Nimby,
not in my backyard, or a pipeline maybe or a
pipeline excellent example. Then people in power have several different
tools they can use to change the narrative and frame
(13:16):
this less as a protest, less as an exercise and
civil rights, and start start presenting it as something that
is violent, you know, that is threatening, that is going
to endanger families across the area. And the a c
l U has has a statement that that summarizes some
(13:38):
of the tools that those in power can use to neuter, discredit,
or cast dispersion on demonstrations. Yeah, and we'll read that,
and it's got one of one of my favorite quotations,
slash made up words phrases that's ever existed in the
(13:58):
history of since I've been alive, this phrase. Yeah, that's
gonna be here. In recent history, challenges to the right
to protest have come in many forms. In some cases,
police cracked down on demonstrations through mass arrests, illegal use
of force, or curfews. Elsewhere, law enforcement limits expression by
corralling protesters in so called free speech zones. And we've
(14:23):
heard of these, and you may have seen these. They've
been made fun of on places like Arrested or in
shows like Arrested. Development in other places where it's just
a cage essentially, where okay, everyone getting this cage. This
is the free speech zone, so alli and it's so
messed up. And the official reason for free speech zones,
by the way, being that they can guarantee the safety
(14:46):
of the protesters because they're in the cage. It's so
messed up. I just say that's that's the that is
the official guideline. But currently, love him or hate him,
protests are as American as apple pie, and they seem
hopefully here to stay. In fact, despite various quite valid
(15:09):
concerns about huge corporations taking power from the government or
the government going increasingly big brother on people who live here. Uh,
the fact of the matter is that protests are escalating,
not just in frequency but also in size. Each of
the top ten attended protests in American history occurred since
(15:33):
nineteen sixty three, and furthermore, each of the top four
occurred since the beginning of the current presidential administration. The
Trump admin that it's it's that's astounding, and let's go
to should we go to the number one? Yeah, let's
just go ahead and just hit the number one, just
because everyone's wondering what it is it was the seventeen
Women's March, and a lot of our co workers who
(15:56):
are here at now I heart media, how stuff works,
stuff media, whatever it was called. Um. A lot of
our coworkers were there, My wife was there, my sister,
a lot of our friends. It was January and there
were an estimated somewhere between three point three and four
point six million people assembled across the United States. Huge.
(16:18):
It was a huge amount of people, and they had
managed to unite for a cause. A lot of our
coworkers who did go up there were there partially as participants,
but mainly as documentarians. They were interviewing people that were
filming stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, and the number two spot next
(16:39):
year's Women's March, right right. So we know that protests
are growing in frequency, we know that they're growing in size.
The question is how long can this situation last. It's
no secret that other countries have effectively removed the right
to assemble, at least for certain groups, and they're there
(17:03):
are numerous examples, but I want us to focus on
some of the examples that may be surprising. When we
think of protests or right to assembly being quashed, we
think of authoritarian regimes, right we think of the DPRK
probably wouldn't take kindly to protest or maybe uh, certain
(17:24):
countries maybe maybe like Sudan wouldn't take kindly to a
protest right or yeah, anyone that has a very rigid
structure within the government and how functions. And I think
I think about China just because of the People's Republican Uh.
And it's weird focusing on nations in Asia, but uh
(17:46):
interesting by the way, Matt, we called it on the
social credit thing, people are getting turned down for playing flights.
Everyone called us crazy, where we would be an alarmist,
but I thought, I thought we did a fairly even
handed look at Yeah, and very soon it's working, so
(18:07):
very soon it will be everywhere. We will all be
in that black mirror episode. I hope not. I hope not.
But if you want to learn what sesame credit or
social credit is, check out our earlier episode, which could
do with an update but still needs help. We did
it before it was implemented as an optional thing, when
(18:29):
it was just a twinkle and an authoritarian's eye, And
now it is happening and people are being severely punished
for disagreeing with the party line. With whom do you
associate ben negative points? Yeah, just on your friendship levels anyway.
So we wanted to look at countries that didn't fit
(18:51):
that bill, that didn't seem like authoritarian regimes, you know
what I mean, They didn't seem like East German Soviet
block type things. Spain has something called the Citizens Security Law.
The Citizens Security Law gives police the discretionary ability to
hand out fines of up to six hundred and fifty
(19:12):
thousand dollars US equivalent to unauthorized demonstrators if they protest
near a transport hub or a nuclear power plant. So
if you're by a train station or a bus station,
or a nuclear power plant or a nuclear power plant,
and police can also issue fines of up to thirty
dollars US for taking photographs of police during a protest,
(19:35):
failing to show police idea upon request, or gathering in
an unauthorized way near government buildings. Which can you imagine
how that how that would go down in the in
the United States. I mean at Pennsylvania Avenue, no matter
what day you go, no matter what the weather's like,
there's always a ton of people outside across the street
(19:58):
from the white Huh yeah, ton of people. Um, but again,
i'd love to see what, like how that breaks down
of unauthorized ways of gathering. Is it is it formations?
Is it levels? Like they don't like levels like from theater?
Right right? Right? Great? Yeah, they're not doing uh they're
(20:20):
not doing body pyramids. Yeah all right, but but I know,
all seriousness, Let's let's look at another country that you
wouldn't expect Canada, right, Quebec. Specifically, at the height of
a wave of student strikes, in the Quebec legislature passed
a thing called Bill seventy eight. This made pickets and
unauthorized gatherings of over fifty people illegal. It also punished
(20:44):
people with fines. So if you were in violation of
Bill seventy eight as an individual, you would have to
pay up to five five grands, and if you were
an organization, you have to pay a grands. Yikes. And
that's it's written in such a way that, uh, the
organization can get hit with that k fine and then
(21:05):
all the individuals can additionally get hit with that five
k fine. And we know it's possible for protests to
be legally blocked, and we have hard historical evidence of
operations like cointelpro and this. Things like this proved that
domestic monitoring of dissident groups has at the very least
occurred in the past. Let's pause for a word from
(21:31):
our sponsor and continue unraveling this ball of increasingly terrifying string.
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but if he's down here, not blood but darkness, the
(21:55):
earth's black riches. No I could taste it on my lips. Today,
I want to talk to you about the science of transgenesis,
sis genesis show. So in the in the pizza that
(22:24):
we're constructing here, Sorry I didn't eat lunch, So you
think these are gonna be all food metaphors. Okay, I
hope that's all right with us listening, with everyone listening.
So in the pizza that we're building of explaining protests
and the people trying to stop or control them. Okay,
we've got I've got the people that the dome and sauce,
(22:44):
and then let's look at the counter protesting things as
as the toppings. Are the people trying to stop the
pizza from being made. There's a very very crucial ingredient
that we're missing here, and that is corporations, private entities
are not above suppressing news of a protest. So maybe
(23:05):
maybe let's say you're a big company like, oh, yeah,
you're Nestlee whatever, Yeah you're nestly. Let's say you're Nestly
and people are protesting your wildly profitable practice of exploiting
water use rights to take water from one place and
sell it as bottled water. And you don't, for some reason,
(23:27):
have the ability to make the local government change the
law so that people can no longer protest. But what
you can do is influence media coverage of this so
that the protest, while it may actually happen, doesn't get
covered on your local you know, CBS or Fox five
or whatever, and it doesn't maybe get on national coverage
(23:52):
even if people are getting shot, violence breaks out. Maybe
CNN just shows a video of a of a cute
dog learned to ride a bicycle on its own. They
do that all the time. Yeah, I think it was.
It tries to go to the question there I would
I wouldn't want to look at all that other stuff.
Just show the duck. Show the duck. No one mentioned
(24:13):
Syria if no one saw it. The reasoning goes, did
it happen? And this is um, this is this is
a powerful question. And I know that we all tend
to as human beings, think of ourselves as critical analysts
(24:34):
of the world in which we live, but we are
very easily fooled. The more the more I learned about
human psychology, We've been through a lot, Matt, the more
I learned about human psychology like the increasingly depressed, because yeah,
we we fool each other and ourselves a lot. And
(24:58):
speaking of fooling, we've got I know, we meandered a
little bit. I'm sorry for the tangents of a little punchy.
Speaking of fooling people, we're getting to one of the
most important, powerful and obscure tools used by the anti
protest crowd. It is something that does not get a
(25:18):
ton of airtime and never will, by the way, And
it's something that you won't hear governments or law enforcement outfits,
and certainly not corporations mentioned in public unless they are
denying its existence. What do the powerful do when legal
means of stifling descent don't cut the mustard? How far
would they go to discredit a movement and organization or
(25:42):
a cause. Enter the agent provocateur. Here's where it gets crazy.
Let's just call this section we've never seen this guy before.
I think that encapsulates it perfectly. So agent provocateurs. Who
are they? Aside from a really cool French name, what
(26:03):
are they there? An Asian provocateur is a catalyst that
exists within a group of people, A lot of times,
a somewhat like mind minded group of people who are
they're going to again, like like a catalyst entice somebody else,
maybe a group of people to do something that they
probably wouldn't do, like an illegal act. Let's say some
kind of rash decision, uh, something that will falsely implicate
(26:28):
the people around the agent provocateur of partaking in whatever
illegal act this Asian provocateur has done. Let's say something
like smashing a window, um uh, jump, sending fire to
a police vehicle, something like that. It's something to ruin
the reputation of all those surrounding the agent. Right, So
(26:49):
the agent provocateur may commit a crime, yeah, hoping to
be as you said, a catalyst may attempt to entice
other people civilians to commit a crime, or may falsely
implicate them in something if you want. This is just
a just right right say, there there's a protest, uh,
(27:11):
some provocateurs turn it into a riot and the police
swoop in. And while the police are swooping in, one
of these people sunglasses, bandana on the whole nine. They
bust open the front display of a pizzeria. And I'm
not lying, this is gonna keep happy unless let's shut
(27:31):
down by right to free pizza speech. I'm gonna get
you some cheese. It's I you know what, I am
so on board, but let's but seriously, this is an
okay example, They break into this thing and a civilian
protests are nearby, is standing there wondering what x going on.
But as the uniformed police are running by, the person
(27:52):
who has broken into the pizzeria like throws pizza at
this innocent person. So so they are falsely imp gated
in this crime. And sure that may not result in
a conviction, but it will probably result and then at
least being taken in for anywhere from a few hours
to a few days. Yeah. And and in a very
similar type of example, if that person, that agent provocateur
(28:16):
breaks into the front of the pizza joint, a group
of ten to a hundred people that are somewhat close
to him while he's doing that, feel that intensity in
the moment, are angry about whatever it is they're processing about,
and then they join in and start, you know, making
their own supremes like while while they're there. And it's
because of that mentality and that amped up adrenaline that
(28:39):
occurs in those situations that it only takes one person
to take that one further step that perhaps everyone else
will do it, which is a shame, you know, man,
because you should just support your local pizza joint. I
feel like I'm losing the thread of this, but but
it's true. You know, it's true. People are especially large
(29:00):
gatherings or in mobs in a place where there's not
a an asserted number of social Moray's right, Like, when
people are in those uncertain situations, they will follow the lead.
I say they, we will follow the lead because we're
no better, right, And it doesn't happen every time, but
it does happen, But it does happen the history of
(29:22):
secret police planting agent provocateurs in popular movements. It's an
ancient practice, but it goes back like the modern version
of it goes back at least a nineteenth century France
and twentieth century Russia. So in nineteen o five, the
priest who led the St. Petersburg Revolution, we know it
was some sort of double agent, and the man who
(29:44):
organized the assassination of the czar's uncle, the Grand Duke,
was also a double agent. We have a documented case
of this in the US. We have several, but here's one. Yeah,
one is of Tommy the Traveler. This guy was a
member of the Students for a Democratic Society. May have
heard them heard of him as the S D S.
(30:05):
He's an organizer who, after years of trying to arise
some kind of violent action, he uh, he convinced these
two other people, to nineteen year old students to actually
firebomb and r O TC headquarters at this college Hobart
College and Upstate New York. UM and r O t
C is the the it's training. It's training for like
future military essentially right right right, the Reserve Officers training corpses,
(30:30):
a lot of high school members, a lot of college members.
You've and you've probably heard S D S and r
O t C together when when learning about the UM
the violent or not the violent but the protests that
ended up turning violent um in the nineteen sixties, Yes,
a lot of those sts was a big group there.
(30:50):
And in our previous episodes on the FBI and They're
Handling of Informants, we look into some of some of
those actions as well as coins Helper. We've got some
listeners in the audience who lived through the sixties and
can tell you, especially a lot of us younger folks,
can tell you that this was an alarmingly fragile time
(31:12):
for the US. It was one of the first times
that people who were civilians could get unedited un propagandized
footage of American actions in Vietnam and learned that war
was not as noble perhaps as they have been led
to believe. But this still, this still continues. Agent provocateurs
(31:37):
are essentially double agents. How do they work? Let's let's
take a hypothetical example, and let's see, Paul, how long
you let us get away with this? All right? So Matt,
picture our good good friends Paul mission control decade cam
focusing on his mustache. Got it all right, He's got
(31:58):
a mustache. Now. He's active in the anti widget community.
He and his fellow activists, you see, hate the way
that widgets are destroying the environment, endangering children, pushing out
local businesses or what have you. Widgets are bad, they agree,
So Paul and his friends get together to publicly protest
(32:18):
widgets on the steps of the state capital. We are
pick a good one Illinois. Okay, we're in Illinois. So
Paul and his friends have done this before. They've protested
here at the Capitol um multiple times. They're very anti widget,
so they know all the legal ins and outs. They
(32:38):
have their permits secured, they have um you know, they've
reached out to local news organizations and so on, and
they're able to avoid law enforcements shutting down the protests. However,
the governor of Illinois, and this again hypothetical example, has
relied heavily upon big Widget for funding in her or
(33:01):
his last campaign, so it's in their best interest to
make sure that this protest, if it does have to happen,
somehow discredits the anti widget movement. So fast forward to
the day of the protest. All right, So we've got
a ton of anti widgets assembled in Springfield, Illinois, down
there by the capital. They're just signs everywhere with all
(33:22):
these really clever, and you know it's somewhat um snarky,
a little bit snarky. Signs that are anti widgets. They've
got slogans on them, they got memes. People brought their families.
They're banging pots. Representatives from other activist groups joined up
as well, like kind of closely related groups, but not
in the same exact thing. You got the food not
bombs thing. They're they're hanging out. A couple other environmental
(33:45):
groups and prison activists, couple of vegans showed up, some
anti fax some uh, some like trained kids, definitely trained
off the rails. And are you know, protesting in fay
or of general anarchy anyway. Yes, So at this point,
you know, Paul, the guy over here and his mustache,
(34:07):
they're like hanging out there, loving this. All his friends
are there. They're so ecstatic because so many people have
joined up for the cause, so many folks are there.
Power to the people, right. Of course, a lot of
these people are strangers, a lot of strangers completely new
to Paul and his friends. And you know, again, Paul
and his friends are happy because it means their campaign
(34:27):
is spreading across all these different groups, across all these
different people. The social media campaign that they were using.
It really paid off. Some of these protesters, however, look
like a tad disconcerting. They don't quite blend in with
the rest of the crowd. They seem, in fact, unusually aggressive,
(34:51):
despite the fact that everyone who has been at previous
anti widget meetings knows that the police are just there
to maintain peace, right to feature, there's not a new violence,
and that you are not supposed to antagonize the police.
They're probably friends of local law enforcement there amongst the
anti Widget Yeah right, they're not protesting the police. They're
(35:14):
protesting these uh insidious widgets. And these people who have
appeared are wearing outfits that are typically attributed to something
called the black block uh spectrum of violent protest tactics.
But the problem is that unlike legit black block members
(35:35):
or black black practitioners, these guys have clothes that look
like the right off the rack of a store, brand new,
and their boots seem to match the boots that that
the police are wearing very similar, so they appear to
be incredibly aggressive. They're taunting the cops were there the
(35:59):
monitor the pro tests. They're trying to turn the crowd
against the cops. Despite all the work that Paul and
the Anti Widget Collective have put into making this a
peaceful demonstration, it turns out in this example that widgets
are a very emotionally charged issue. Here in Springfield, Illinois,
the crowd is already angry. There's the slight, tangy scent
(36:20):
of blood in the air, right. A lot of people
have lost their livelihood due to widgets, and let's let's
up the stakes and say that some people have died
in some way related to widgets. The group is scheduled
a short list of speakers, and it is Paul. Mission control.
Decons turned to grab the microphone, so he steps up
on a makeshift podium. He greets the crowd to enthusiastic cheers,
(36:41):
and he begins to outline the evils of widgets and
more importantly, the solutions that he and his crew propose.
And someone yells burn it down, and someone else yells down.
Hold on, says Paul. But it's too late. People begin
chanting burn it down, burn it down, burning it down,
(37:05):
burn it down, burn it down. Hold on, says Paul.
But it's too late, guys, It's way too late, because
the chant is now it's too much. It overcomes everything else. Pause.
Zoom in as a person in the crowd you could miss.
(37:26):
It's a guy with a baseball cap, black hoodie, brand
new black jeans, brand new black boots, brand new gloves
on his hands. Let's zoom in enhanced computer. He has
donned a bandana over the lower half of his face.
He's sneaking in and around through the crowd. He doesn't
(37:49):
particularly seem to be shouting anymore. Everybody else is doing
that for him. Now, let's press play again and watch
as he picks up and throws a brick through a
nearby car window. Other people start attacking this car because yeah,
you hear the smash. You're everyone's in this fever pitch,
And now a moment of violence occurs and everyone starts
(38:09):
to join in. The police they see this happening, and
this is dangerous. They have to protect everyone who's in
this protest, including the people surrounding the violence, so they
just swoop in. But now that the crowd, at least
portions of the crowd, are becoming violent, so they attack
(38:29):
the police in return. And if the police respond to
these attacks, then the crowd easily interprets it as the
police just attacking people, and they panic. Pandemonium occurs. Some people, hey,
everybody runs. Some people run away from the violence. Some
people run toward it in hopes of, you know, likely
(38:50):
in hopes of rescuing their fellow protesters from the anti
widget collective. Paul Mission controlled Decond stands there for a
moment on this make shift platform, baffled, how did this
all go so wrong, so completely and so quickly? Gunshots
explode through the afternoon air, cutting his moment of reverie short.
(39:12):
He ducks to the ground, and he wonders what will
be on the news. Oh man, there's your control. I
feel like we gotta help him. Let's uh, let's get
some sponsors in here, and we are back again. This
(39:35):
is only a hypothetical example. Our good friends super producer
Paul is hail and hardy and is not has not
at this point become the victim of a violent protest.
But that does not make this story an implausible one.
The practice of sabotaging protests in this manner is ancient,
(39:57):
and it's varied, and it goes across political spectrums, it
goes across ideologies, and it goes across industry. Religion and
state labor spies infiltrated, disrupted, and subverted union activities all
the live long day. And they used agent provocateurs at protest.
Unfortunately doesn't get reported in a lot of uh and
(40:20):
a lot of history classes. But we still have unions today.
So man, what's an example of a union where this
could happen? I don't know, a lot of them have
some friends who are teamsters, which is kind of cool.
Think about Hollywood and now in Atlanta as the film
industry is going around, and I believe Gimblet Media the
(40:41):
staff there is attempting to unionize or they're planning on unionizing.
Um has something to do with Spotify. But anyway, who knows,
podcast unions maybe a thing of the future. Right there,
he goes, it's a podcast union protest, and the cops
want to come down hard. Sorry, probably don't for something.
And so all they have to do is have a
(41:02):
large enough group of people and then have someone just
push the needle, just nudge things in a less stable direction,
just be an agent of chaos. The activities of agent
provocate tours against revolutionaries and Imperial Russia were notorious and
infamous in the U s. As we know, the activities
(41:23):
of cointelpro included tasking FBI agents to pose as political
activists and participating meetings with groups like the Ku Klux Klan,
the American Indian Movement, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee.
We're including these three examples just to show that it
(41:45):
ran the gamut, you know what I mean. And then
especially when to Black Panthers movement, a lot of um
nationalist movements and community based organizations like that, like vegans. Yeah,
that's why we're joking talking about eagans being there, because
they did infiltrate vegan groups. Yeah, and even more, maybe
(42:06):
more fringe animal rights groups also get also get the
unblinking eye. There's another example we we mentioned Canada. In
in Quebec in two thousand seven, protesters accused police of
using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North
American Leaders summit in Montebello, Quebec. These accusations have been
(42:30):
made before, but this time these agent provocateurs were caught
on camera. Oh yeah, there was a video that you
can see of these demonstrations on YouTube. I remember watching
it back in the day and you may still be
able to find it. It It may not be the original videos,
but it's at least existing there as proxies um or
(42:53):
just duplicates their their faces. These young guys, three dudes,
they're they've got bandanas on their faces. They're mingling with
protesters in front of a line of police and riot
gear and at least one of these guys is holding
a rock in his hand. Okay, Then one of the organisms,
one of the organizers of the actual protesters, guy named
Dave Coles. He's the president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers
(43:17):
Union of Canada. Uh. This guy makes it clear to
the mass man. He's like talking to him. He's saying, guys,
it looks like you're I mean, this isn't verbatim, but
he's saying, it looks like you're trying to be violent,
and we know you're not a part of our group.
What are you doing here? He also Dave Coles is
my favorite line of this story. Dave Coles describes the
(43:38):
group of actual protesters as mainly grandparents. Well, yeah, if
you watched the video, and you don't wanna judge anyway,
but the ages of the people actually they're protesting in
their insular group are older, significantly older than these other guys.
You're right, there's this big age difference, and he urges
these three masked men to leave and go this is
(44:01):
our protest turf. Yeah, go go protest somewhere else with
your agro ways and your weird disguises. And it gets
even weirder from there. So Coles then demands that these
guys put down their rocks and stopping so you know,
at least looking like they're going to be violent. Other
protesters like start chiming in and they're saying, wait a second,
these guys, these guys are police officers, these are agents,
(44:24):
These are and they actually call them agent provocateur. I
believe in the video, Um, several of the people try
to actually take the bandanas off their faces so they
can get video evidence of their faces. And rather than leave,
these three men, rather than leave when confronted with a
group who are starting to you know, get upset at them, uh,
they actually start getting closer to the police, like backing
(44:44):
away into the police line, essentially for protection, perhaps um,
from from a bunch of grandparents. UM. Just leave that there, um,
And then they seem to start discussing or or talking
with the police, and the police talking to them as
a discussion and then eventually they pushed their way past
an officer and um other police then pushed them down
(45:05):
on the ground and they handcuffed these guys to take
them away. Essentially, Yeah, but the thought here is that
they actually got loaded up into a car and they're like, oh, man,
that didn't work out, all right, guys, let's a regroup
back at the HQ. And initially the police department denied
any knowledge of this or involvement. However, it was hard
to argue against video, and they did. They did. Uh,
(45:30):
they did admit that those three folks were undercover. However,
they said they were not there to incite violence. They
were there to make sure that things did not get violent.
Man that video and they were the ones holding the rocks.
So we know that the practice of using agent provocateurs
to infiltrate protest and the practice of using government money
(45:56):
your your tax dollars, by the way, if you if
you live in one of the countries we're talking about,
we know this practice has been escalating in step with
the growth of protests, and it makes sense. In the
United Kingdom alone, for example, undercover police officers have spied
on more than one thousand political groups since nineteen sixty eight.
(46:16):
But there's no official list of these groups. There's nothing
that's been published. This is piece together from leaked information
that comes out years or decades later. Additionally, corporate interests
never one to uh never want to miss a space
in the market, have continued to increase their involvement in
protest infiltration. And we found some some pretty fascinating documents
(46:40):
that were leaked to the Guardian and the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism. So we got a couple of companies here,
British Airways, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Portia, and
uh there are a whole bunch of other ones on
on a list that we found. But they have paid
for corporate intelligence firms to monitor political groups that challenged
their businesses. So they're looking at groups that may cause
(47:03):
a pr problem or worse for them, right right. And
one of these corporate intelligence firms is an outfit name
C two I International, although they believe they changed their
name afterwards. They were caught using two professional infiltrators to
get advanced warning of demonstrations against these firms you mentioned, Matt,
(47:24):
British Airways, Royal Bank, Portia all the hits, all the hits, uh,
and then notify those firms before the demonstrations occur, the
idea being that they could preemptively shut them down if possible,
or they could just infiltrate it. Or they could just
infiltrate I'm sure there's something like a menu, right. The
infiltrators would pretend to be activists sympathetic to the cause
(47:46):
of the campaigners, and they would get in during the
lead up to the demonstration. They would be showing up
at the meetings they would help organize, they would attend
the demonstrations. And we're making this sound serious, dystopian and
a little bit shadow running. But sometimes this included silly
protests too. One of the infiltrators had to dress up
(48:09):
as a pirate with a with a cutlast and an
eye patch. As part of the protests. They had to
wear costumes. I bet they were. They were against Porsche
right for some reason or another, just for the alliteration, yea,
So they they had to do some some silly things, right.
They also would try to do a little bit of espionage.
(48:33):
They would steal internal documents, they would try to get
their hands on digital accounts, of information, emails, meetings, attendance lists,
attendance list. That's big, that's always going to be big.
And then there's another example. There's a group called the
Inkerman Group that gathers information about protesters and they have
(48:53):
covertly deployed infiltrators on these demonstrations that are directed at
certain businesses. One of its confidential documents that was leaked
again to The Guardian warned of the threat presented by
protest groups that use direct action to disrupt the quote
economic welfare of companies. Well, they're messing with the money.
(49:15):
Don't don't mess with the money. Don't mess with the money.
Somebody said that one time, messing with the money. I
can't remember that, but but this is this is strange
because the we always get the question who is the they?
And stuff they don't want you to know, and it
changes every episode. There are multiple days in this situation.
(49:36):
Porstia Royal Bank, those folks obviously don't want you to
know that they spend part of their profits using these
very very very unethical things, these very unethical techniques, rather
to infiltrate and stymy protests and descent in general. Right
(49:57):
and the the US government regardless of who who is
in office, is not going to stop doing this. Why
would you stop doing this? This is a lot of
bang for your buck. All you have to do is
not get caught. Yeah, yeah, And again it's it's a
saturation issue because if you've got one, even ten agent
(50:18):
provocateurs working in a big enough protest, like you're probably
not going to get caught if you're good at it.
But here's the other big thing we know, ben Uh,
the same tools they're used to actually organize demonstrations, to
get to have people give their opinion in public and
share this kind of thing, these same things can be
(50:39):
used against the organizers themselves and against the protest movement. Absolutely.
It's it's strange because we when we're talking about these
new tools, we're talking about things like Twitter, right, We're
talking about various digital social media. We're also talking about
the enormous opportunities for organization that are posed by our
(51:02):
smartphones are little tracking devices that we keep in our pockets.
But the sword swings both ways, right and there. This
cannot be over emphasized. The conclusions for today's episode are
are tough. They're simple, but they're tough. What does this
all mean. First, it means that you cannot trust everyone
(51:24):
at a demonstration. So if you go to protests, as
is your right in a lot of countries, and I
believe it's a human I believe it should be a
human right. Overall, as you go, remember that no matter
what you personally believe in, no matter why you personally
are there or your friends, if you don't know someone,
(51:47):
you are not sure why they are actually there. And
there will be people in in our audience today who
have I know, I know some of us have been
to protest and I know you have seen something like
the So please right in if you have a personal
experience that you're comfortable with sharing. And next, this means
that we know this happens, but we have no idea.
(52:10):
There is not an official way to learn how many
people are doing this. Is it an occasional one time thing,
is it a booming shadow industry. There's not a record
to look at, so we can't make the call. Yeah,
at what scale is the counter intelligence at work in
whatever protests? Maybe it's zero percent. It is possible that
(52:32):
there is zero percent counter intelligence happening, or it could
be even the counter intelligence could be the thing that
started the protest to to try and counteract a group
that wasn't going to protest in the first place. But
there's no way to know how many demonstrations like are
just right now, there are demonstrators that are being poked
(52:52):
and prodded by some kind of undercover agent. It's possible
we don't know how many are happening right now. There's
no way to know. Right, it's more greater than zero. Yes, yes,
it's greater than zero. And that's a that's another crazy thing.
It's safe to assume the protest over any controversial issue, again,
(53:13):
regardless of how you feel about it, I will have
a pretty high likelihood of being infiltrated, either in the
planning process or especially if it's a large scale protests
infiltrated the day off. Right, And also, if we are
being fair, there is a valid, compelling reason for governments
to monitor certain dissident groups supremacist, racial supremacist, separatist, domestic
(53:38):
terrorists and so on. There are dangerous people and there
is a reason that these people should be monitored. That
The question is where does the line, Where does the
line exist? Right? Where can how can you legally say
we better keep an eye on these vegans. Well, yeah,
and it's generally a line, or it should be at
least a line between violence and non violence. Right, that's
(54:00):
where the line should be. But when you when you
add in this this catalyst, this agent provocateur thing, that's
when it doesn't matter what the protest is about, doesn't
matter what the group is, it can become violent when
you add that extra thing to it. So this is
where today's episode ends, at least our part of today's episode,
(54:23):
because we are looking forward to hearing from you and
your fellow listeners are looking forward to hearing your stories
as well. Let us know what your encounters with this
sort of phenomenon have been. Is it, Is it something again?
It's it's a bit of a black box because there
are no official records yet of how often or how
(54:45):
infrequently this occurs. Let us know if you think it's alarmist,
let us know if you think there's more to the story.
Let us know if you have any advice, uh for
people who are also listening to the show who might
be interested in or ization or activism. Should they just
not do it or they're safe ways to do it?
(55:05):
Because at the end of the day, we don't want
anyone to die, please absolutely well, And what do you
think about protests in general? Do you think any action
truly occurs when a protest happens, or do you think
it's a way to pacify the people by allowing protests.
That's such a great question, because that's something people talked about, right.
(55:27):
It worries me because it's that feeling. It's when you've
got a big projects coming up, or a big a
huge thing on the horizon in your life, and you
talk about it a lot, but you don't do much
about or you don't like make many plans or do
anything about it. You have that same feeling of um
almost euphoria, and in that the thing is actually happening
(55:48):
just by talking about it. Right. This is a phenomenon
we've discussed before, and when a protest occurs on a
wide enough scale, it makes you feel better, perhaps that
something's gonna change or something's gonna happen, when in reality
maybe status quo just remains and everybody goes home at
the end of the night. Right. That's that's a very
good point. And these are these are vital issues. Let
(56:09):
us know. You can find us on Instagram, you can
find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter. Uh,
we're conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter where conspiracy stuff show.
On Instagram, I'm Ben Bulling at Instagram and if you
would like to learn some daily pizza facts, you can
also follow me on Twitter. I've been doing this for
about a week now. It's uh at Ben bull in
(56:31):
hs W. Okay, where can people find you? Matt? You
can't really find me anywhere. You can. You can locate
me if you wish, but you're not gonna make it easy. No,
I'm trying to just hang out of social media if possible. Yeah,
what if someone can what if someone wants to call us? Okay,
well you can call me right now because I'm going
(56:53):
through the messages like today and this week I've been
doing it. You can call one eight three three std
W y t K just leave a message. Three minutes
is the cap, but you can leave multiples if you wish,
like some of our ore some of you have And
I've been loving every single message that's coming in and
I'm sending it to the guys, and uh, we're very
(57:14):
much enjoying it. So thank you keep sending them, Yeah,
because we do listen to them. It means a lot.
It really does. Thank you for taking the time out
of your day to bring some incredible stories to your
fellow listeners. But hey, guys, you may say, what if
I just I mean, I think I think social media
is like I'm with Matt, that's a that's a load
on malarkey. But I'm also with Ben. I hate phones.
(57:37):
I don't think I should have to talk on them. Well,
don't worry, dear friend, we have good news for you.
You can still communicate with us directly. You can send
us an old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
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