The characterization of "informants" as being literal on the payroll feds is usually incorrect. They're usually genuine group members who are being manipulated by literal on the payroll feds.
And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution. This informant then has a huge f-ing reason to radicalize the group and see to it that they do or attempt to do something worthy of prosecution so that they can make good on their promise to the feds.
So otherwise potentially benign groups wind up getting turned into hotbeds of extremism basically because the feds demand extremists to prosecute.
This is a workflow that dates back at least as far as the war on drugs where you'd have small time traffickers would get turned into informants and then work tirelessly to push their boss's or suppliers business to the next level while collecting evidince for their handlers. It was used on racist and religious extremist groups in the 80s and 90s and then on muslim religious groups in the 00s and now you're seeing it again with right wing groups.
I feel like it's worth noting that this is not a universal dynamic. Tim McVeigh didn't need a fed to turn into the kind of person who kills 168 people. I'm sure we're all aware of the way this occasional dynamic gets turned into an excuse for any radicial behavior: "must have been a false flag, must have been talked into it." Which, to be clear, you did not say -- but we see it often.
I think he did need a fed. Watching children burned alive at Waco (he was there), after which the seiging feds proudly posed for photos on their charred ruble, really got the ball rolling on his motivation. I'm not saying the feds told him to do it, but Ruby Ridge, Waco, and feds like Lon Horiuchi getting off scott free after sniping an innocent woman holding a child really radicalized him.
I think that's an eternal mystery, if there was in fact an unidentified co-conspirator. Elohim City is a convenient place for conspiracies to coalesce, but there's a lack of hard evidence as opposed to "well, it would make sense."
hence my confusion at the sudden "left" outcry over the attacks on the FBI and CIA, two organizations they have been bemoaning for my entire life, and with good reason! Those organizations are responsible for some of the absolute worst behavior associated with American history, the most shameful of shameful episodes throughout the Americas were started by the CIA and FBI.
I think the outcry is actually mostly media-oriented, because the media for the last generation has been filled with ex-Agents and funded by the Fed. The media is sad to see these organizations attacked, because the media is run by people with emotional bonds to those agencies.
The fundamental confusion here may be the misconception that pro-people pro-liberty or pro-progress means anti-state. Or that the new people are anti-state in any way that means well for most people.
It seems entirely consistent that the people most alarmed about law enforcement and intelligence being handed over figures who are indicating they don’t intend to use it in a principled manner are critics who’ve seen how even less extreme more accountable people have used these roles poorly. The new team seems headed in a direction that might make poor past iterations look principled.
“Burn it all down” is good cover for people who want to selectively burn things down for their benefit (but not their things).
> It seems entirely consistent that the people most alarmed ... are critics who’ve seen how even less extreme more accountable people have used these roles poorly.
That would make sense if... there had been accountability in the past for the law enforcement and intel folks who abused their power. So far there's been no accountability ever for any of them no matter what they've done. If that continues and the only change is the targets then that will be very bad indeed, but that's not what Trump and friends are saying, and they seem to want to reduce the size of the agencies in question, which will necessarily reduce the number of targets they can acquire, or the extent to which they can persecute them -- unless of course AI makes them much more efficient in the future, say. Not that there's any guarantee that these agencies will ultimately be reduced in size. But if I take what they're saying at face value and they deliver on it, then I think we're looking at an overall improvement.
> hence my confusion at the sudden "left" outcry over the attacks on the FBI and CIA,
The attacks are premised on them being too leftist and needing to be replaced in their function by new/rebuilt organizations that are more friendly to the Right, which is the source of the center to center-left opposition to them (the Left itself is more focussed on criticizing the tactics of the center-to-center-left opposition than the regime.)
>hence my confusion at the sudden "left" outcry over the attacks on the FBI and CIA, two organizations they have been bemoaning for my entire life
I have been saying it for over a decade, the western world is having a crisis of principals, not a crisis of policy. The inability to implement good policy (both public and private) is a symptom.
I'd like to hear more about this "crisis of principals, not a crisis of policy". What do you mean? Do you mean that there's a turf war between "principals"? How and maybe why is that different than 50 years ago, say, or 70, or any post-war period?
Nobody on the left disputes the fucked up history of the FBI or CIA -- but they're not being dismantled, they're being explicitly weaponized against the Left again. If Trump had said, "The FBI has a racist an unamerican history, we need to shut it down", he might find some common ground, but instead he's pointing at the occasional investigation of someone in his party or social class as evidence of their "wokeness" and firing anyone who dared participate in those investigations while directing them to investigate his political opponents. If you wanted honest FBI reform, you wouldn't let Kash or Dan Bongino within 1,000 yards of the building.
If they are trying to close in on the intelligence and police state because it's not vicious enough against folks they don't like (which includes me and a lot of folks I care about) then a "new and improved" CIA / FBI isn't a "good" thing.
I generally hate the US gov for it's history of doing objectively evil things (I pass by a former "residential school" every time I drive into town), but replacing it with something even more vicious and authoritarian doesn't improve the situation.
This whole neofascist movement is fueled by a mistaken belief that dismantling existing power structures will create a stable situation with more freedom, as opposed to the reality that different power structures will eagerly step into the vacuum.
I think that most of the smarter folks I know on the farther and farther left realize that a lot of what we see are "structural" issues, so voting (for establishment folks) stops being a real strategy at some point. In some sense, that philosophically materialist/idealist seems to be one tool for discerning the ideological differences between liberal capitalists and left anti-capitalists.
By contrast it's not surprising to me that as we go the other direction, the far right is less able to understand that these situations are structurally necessary for the operation of the systems that they support. Convincing those folks that it's not simply who is in charge is likely impossible. It will sound stupid, perhaps, but I have heard convincing arguments that the idea that systems are defined by "who is in charge of them" is fundamentally why "antisemitism" ends up being central to both the conspiracy folks and the fascists.
> The characterization of "informants" as being literal on the payroll feds is usually incorrect. They're usually genuine group members who are being manipulated by literal on the payroll feds.
I never implied that they were.
> a federal agency [...] influences them into becoming informants. It's quite common for the FBI to frame this as "helping to keep people safe"; leaders in groups like this are frequently easy to manipulate with flattery.
> And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution.
I missed no such thing. Did you even read my comment?
> compromised after a federal agency threatens the leadership with jail time
Turning leadership of an already radicalized organization is not what he means. New converts to a group who are actually informants will provoke an organization to radicalism.
When I wrote my original comment I did end up removing that as an option because I couldn't think of any instances where I had reason to believe that it had happened. I'm not saying it doesn't, but I don't see any evidence in that article to support that it does.
And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution. This informant then has a huge f-ing reason to radicalize the group and see to it that they do or attempt to do something worthy of prosecution so that they can make good on their promise to the feds.
So otherwise potentially benign groups wind up getting turned into hotbeds of extremism basically because the feds demand extremists to prosecute.
This is a workflow that dates back at least as far as the war on drugs where you'd have small time traffickers would get turned into informants and then work tirelessly to push their boss's or suppliers business to the next level while collecting evidince for their handlers. It was used on racist and religious extremist groups in the 80s and 90s and then on muslim religious groups in the 00s and now you're seeing it again with right wing groups.