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Chris Hedges: Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless
from truthdig:
Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless
Posted on Feb 13, 2012
By Chris Hedges
There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizationsthe group Stand for Oakland seems to be one of these attemptsto discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous West Coast group known as OLAASMOccupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media. Provoke the movementor front groups acting in the name of the movementto carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this reformist to co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movements core aims through the electoral process.
Counterinsurgency campaigns, although they involve arms and weapons, are primarily about, in the old cliché, hearts and minds. And the tactics employed by our intelligence operatives abroad are not dissimilar to those employed by our intelligence operatives at home. These operatives are, in fact, often the same people. The state has expended external resources to break the movement. It is reasonable to assume it has expended internal resources to break the movement.
The security and surveillance state has a vast arsenal and array of tools at its disposal. It operates in secret. It dissembles and lies. It hides behind phony organizations and individuals who use false histories and false names. It has millions of dollars to spend, the capacity to deny not only its activities but also its existence. Its physical assets honeycomb the country. It can wiretap, eavesdrop and monitor every form of communication. It can hire informants, send in clandestine agents, recruit members within the movement by offering legal immunity, churn out a steady stream of divisive propaganda and amass huge databases and clandestine operations centers. And it is authorized to use deadly force.
How do we fight back? We do not have the tools or the wealth of the state. We cannot beat it at its own game. We cannot ferret out infiltrators. The legal system is almost always on the states side. If we attempt to replicate the elaborate security apparatus of our oppressors, even on a small scale, we will unleash widespread paranoia and fracture the movement. If we retreat into anonymity, hiding behind masks, then we provide an opening for agents provocateurs who deny their identities while disrupting the movement. If we fight pitched battles in the streets we give authorities an excuse to fire their weapons. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/occupy_draws_strength_from_the_powerless_20120213/
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Chris Hedges: Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless (Original Post)
marmar
Feb 2012
OP
Magoo48
(4,722 posts)1. We find ways, over time, to circumvent tptb, to render them much less relevant....
alternate economies, small self-reliant communities in urban areas and the like. This can be done on a parallel track to our struggle to Occupy the government we have.
Uncle Joe
(58,504 posts)2. This is an excellent column; well worth the read.
Thanks for the thread, marmar.