Controlled Opposition - A must read for everyone in the liberty movement
Controlled Opposition
by Arthur R. Thompson, CEO, The John Birch Society
One of the oldest ruses regularly employed by conspirators is to assume control of your opposition, and where none exists, create it.
Over history there have been groundswells of opposition against conspiracies that, had the conspirators not gained control of them, would have led to the defeat of those conspiracies.
Any conspiracy fears that opponents will organize in an effective manner to oppose and expose it so decisively that its creators would have a hard time recovering. This is true if it is low-level criminal activity, or a large political conspiracy, a minor coup, or a Master Conspiracy of Insiders.
This is why the Insiders have long feared The John Birch Society. For the first time in history, their conspiracy was not able to forestall the formation and growth of real opposition. As a result, the conspirators resorted to another standard tactic they had used to eliminate past opposition: the smear. As our veteran members recall, the Insiders launched numerous smear attacks against us in our early years.
Yet because of the manner in which we are organized, they could not defeat us. They likewise could not destroy our Society by infiltration (certainly not nationally although they did hurt us in some places locally). Here again, the manner in which we were organized prevented large-scale destruction.
The main harm the smears accomplished was to drive a wedge between our members and our natural constituency in order to slow down our growth and get people to leave our ranks who could not stand “the heat in the kitchen.” Many good people decided not to join our ranks, not because they disagreed with us, but because they feared public opinion. And, regrettably, a few high profile members did leave our ranks for this reason.
The other method the Insiders have employed involved creation of new organizations, ostensibly to oppose Insider designs — to gather concerned Americans into ineffective groups and/or activity. One of the newest examples is the neoconservative movement that ignores the Constitution and always promotes new foreign entanglements as the solution to just about every problem from a slowed-down economy to terror attacks.
Since the election of Barack Obama, who has never shied away from close personal friendships with communists and terrorists, and who seems to be adopting their agenda, large numbers of Americans have become alarmed. Consequently, a number of new organizations have come on the scene to capture this wave of dissent and use it for enlisting people into ineffective activity.
In a few instances, these groups have leaders who come right out of the ranks of the Council on Foreign Relations. In the case of Newt Gingrich, one has to marvel that the man who took control of the conservative groundswell in the early 1990s and misdirected it into supporting big government and foreign entanglements such as NAFTA, is back once again, paddling in front of the wave to steer it as before. This time his reemergence seems to be part of a bid for the Presidency.
We are seeing again the problem we have always had with politicians. They always know their audience, saying whatever it takes to gain support, avoiding anything that would turn the audience off. I have always recommended that it is more important to note what a politician doesn’t say or avoids talking about. This will help in ascertaining the true philosophy of any person.
If a man makes some small statement that perks up our ears where we might have previously disagreed with him or his organization, we tend to forgive the past disagreement and throw them our support, later to be disappointed because we did not pay more attention to what wasn’t said.
This is true of a few of the new personalities and groups that have arisen recently.
We are very interested in witnessing the attempt of these few to steer grassroots efforts into promoting Newt Gingrich and a constitutional convention. Their main tactic for promoting change is a public demonstration.
Another reason the Insiders fear The John Birch Society is that with a sustainable opposition (now nearly 51 years old) the experience of our members presents a problem for them. Our seasoned veterans know the plays and the players.
The reason newly awakened patriots get thwarted at public meetings and conventions is that they do not know the players and their plans. I have seen large majorities of attendees and delegates go down in defeat time after time because they did not realize their own leaders sold them out.
Novices would not listen to their more experienced compatriots (Birchers) who tried to tell them what was going to happen if they placed their faith in false leadership. After all, these leaders were saying all the right things, thought the newer activists. Experience shows that actions speak louder than words. Inexperience tends to hear only the words.
One question that we need to ask is who are the new leaders who have placed themselves at the front of any movement? Are they individuals we have never heard from before and have not seen in the trenches all these decades? While some are sincere, others seem to drop out of the blue telling us that they are the leaders. And the media is quite happy to agree.
It was a disappointing experience for our veterans in past situations to live through and watch large-scale movements arise that owed their existence to the effective educational efforts of the Society, only to see them become co-opted by false leadership with the help of the media.
It has not been unusual that clergymen and others came out of nowhere with massive media attention to start organizations. Most of the national media gave these leaders coverage that rallied good people to support them. While giving the appearance of criticism, the media coverage played the recruiter for some Christian Right organizations, for instance.
Literally millions either joined in some capacity or were heavily influenced by these groups and their leaders. At times, they even sounded like Birchers, noting the dangers of the New World Order and related issues. In some instances they were initially financed by the very forces they claimed to oppose. What happened was that they got in front of the wave created by our influence and directed it into the arms of the promoters of the New World Order by backing the George Bushes and CFR members in Congress.
I know. I was there. I saw it. What was obvious to me at the time was not obvious to novices. I am afraid the same thing is happening again.
I know that I will trouble some readers by pointing this out and I ask that no one take it personally. Also, please do not attack the messenger. I mention all of this only to better prepare you for the future, so you can help educate others about the important work that needs to be done beyond public events. In order to do this you may have to get involved in a local non-Birch group to try to influence its members to be more aware than they would be without your advice and education.
The Insiders use public demonstrations to promote their agenda by pointing to the people they have turned out in picket lines or rallies, then broadcasting this nationally to convey the idea that there is a groundswell of support for or against a program the Insiders want or want to stop.
Many times, these demonstrations have been very small. But as one veteran JBS member once said, “Fifty people in a demonstration isn’t very many, but when you multiply it by 50 million TV sets, it amounts to a lot of people.” The controlled media have a knack for making what they support look big.
They also have a knack for making what they do not support look insignificant, or radical — if they report at all. Any public demonstration is nearly worthless without the approval of the controlled media. Demonstrations provide other residual benefits to the conspiracy as well.
If you are trying to radicalize many people, starting them out demonstrating will be step one. When nothing happens as a result of the demonstration, clever planners will resort to more unusual events to try to make things happen. In the case of the Left, this ultimately morphs into violence. Out of this comes more bizarre activity, and more extreme people, and a cadre of terrorists.
This is what occurred in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.
Out of the demonstrations in that time period came a substantial number of terrorists who claimed that the only way to change things was through violence. They knew full well that their activities could be used as an excuse by government to increase controls over the general population. They spawned searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment, stopped the right to freely assemble, and impacted other aspects of our Bill of Rights.
The same scenario works with some on the Right. And we do have examples of some on the Right who have become very radical. They too have been used by the Insiders to accomplish the same end result. They are also used to tar-brush people who are opposed to the Insiders’ New World Order. Timothy McVeigh, who was portrayed as “right wing,” comes to mind.
The bombing in Oklahoma City blew apart more than the Murrah Building. It almost halted the rising groundswell of opposition to the Clinton aministration. The anti-Clinton movement was as large, if not larger, than the current Tea Party movement, the End the Fed rallies, and other recent phenomena. The Oklahoma City bombing made opposition to Clinton and his policies seem like terrorism, deflating the average citizen’s desire to participate.
As veteran readers of The New American are aware, there is much evidence about the OKC bombing which points to elements within our own government being involved. Now with the recent Missouri and the Department of Homeland Security report detailing the dangers of right-wing terrorism, our American law enforcement community is being prepared for such an event. If the Insiders can pull it off, this could well burst the bubble of recent resistance to the march toward socialism.
I have had some experience in this arena as well.
In the 1960s, we had a very active JBS organization in Seattle. My chapter almost always recruited members by working with friends and family. On one occasion, we had a new member come into our ranks who was recruited at a public meeting — a stranger to us. We were happy for his membership and particularly his enthusiasm for our efforts. After a short time, however, it became obvious that he was a little too enthusiastic and wanted us to get involved in doing things that were unethical. We parted company.
One year later, we discovered what this man was up to when the headlines in the Seattle newspapers announced that a bank robbery team comprised of “patriots” had been foiled in its attempt to rob banks to finance the right-wing movement. The whole affair was a sting operation which set these men up for a fall by the fellow who had come to us to try, apparently, the same thing within my chapter. He turned out to be a government informant, working for the government the entire time. The anti-Birchers got their headlines, making it appear that patriots were the problem, not the radical socialists who were constantly stirring up trouble.
There is much occurring today that leads me to suspect that the same thing could be happening again. This time law enforcement is being encouraged to believe just about anything about good people who are standing up for the Constitution. We know that danger does not come from the right except when infiltrators can make it seem so.
Our members are not the kind of people who would listen to any agent provocateur let alone get involved with one. This is still the case — and we have to keep it that way by being careful about whom we involve in our local chapters.
We have opened up our organization to try to grow rapidly because time is of the essence given what we see happening in government every day. There have been some people recently who have come into our Internet system where we simply could not abide their language or behavior and have had to eliminate their access to us. We thank those who point these people out to us.
The agent provocateur will not always be obvious. Not until he does his work to try and destroy the group he has ingratiated himself into will he become apparent — and perhaps not even then.
I tell you this so you will understand what we may be in store for and to help you steel yourself for the long haul. Our growing influence today is such that the Insiders will not be able to ignore us for long.
It will not come as any surprise to us if we see some major violent event staged with the blame placed on people who stand up for the Constitution. This could happen in order to take the air out of the current rise of indignation by good Americans to what is happening.
Regarding demonstrations by good people, let’s realize that they tend to neutralize the participants. If the outcome is that nothing happens, there are usually one of two results: the participants become radicalized, or they go home and never get involved again. For they become convinced that nothing they do will work.
The liberal media has influenced many to believe that the demonstrations themselves affect change. They have not seen the Insider organization behind all of it and the fact that the street activity is simply show business, the excuse used by the Insiders to gain what they want. In addition, the American people believe that there is public support for the Insider agenda and many accept it.
People who object to any Insiders’ agendum allow it to continue because they don’t know they have to get involved in an effective organization to stop it. They have to engage in effective pursuits, like educating and meeting with the opinion molders in their communities. And they have to align themselves with an organization that has a proven track record of not only telling the truth, but piling up successes.
Many successes can be credited to The John Birch Society, even when the media make it appear that some other group caused it.
There have been many Society initiatives over the years that have been successful to one degree or another without the American people understanding that there was an issue in the first place and that the Society had successfully dealt with it. Veteran members know that we have won battles that never appeared on the radar of the American public. Two examples would be the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) fight where we were essentially alone in stopping this merger in the Western Hemisphere, and the placing of brakes on the constitutional convention (con-con) process. In the latter case, we have recently seen that our work in this area and in the number of states where we worked to rescind their con-con calls were completely off the radar of even our closest allies. This was due to the fact that some of our most effective work is not done in the public eye, but in the quiet offices of our state representatives and other local officials.
In other cases, we started movements that became so noticeable because of the heavy activity of our members, that the Insiders could no longer ignore our efforts and, instead, tried to shut down our campaigns by denigrating them in the media.
Examples would be the impeachment of President Clinton, the blocking of the North American Union, and the swing of the opinion of the American people against the United Nations. In none of these victories did demonstrations play a role. Demonstrations polarize; they do not educate. They tend to be confrontational, not lending themselves to an atmosphere of friendly intercourse and exchange.
Only by a concerted action program that gets you in front of opinion molders with educational material on whatever issue can now be successful. You must follow this course because you don’t have effective control of the education process, the media, and most of the government.
We have none of these advantages, so we have to do it the hard way. Let’s face it. Most people do not like work, let alone hard work. Except for the organizing effort, demonstrations for most people amount to simply showing up and going home. The end.
Demonstrations are also open invitations for the strangest individuals to show up with signs, costumes, and extreme literature to make the crowd look less than normal. These are the folks that the media gravitates to, trying to show their audiences that our side is kooky. They do not show mom and dad with the kids at the demonstration on TV; they show the oddballs. Then the other moms and dads at home, even if they agree with the sentiment of the demonstrators, do not associate with them in any way.
Often, the signs that we smile at and appreciate are the very ones that repulse those who do not understand enough. They are, therefore, counterproductive.
Opinion molders, especially, are very sensitive about the way a message is put across. Many times one will agree with the cause but disagree with how the message is presented.
With demonstrations, there is the possibility of violence. This can either be planned by certain provocateurs among the demonstrators or caused by counter-demonstrators. This is also welcome fodder for the media.
The usual result is that without corresponding media publicity and educational efforts aimed at opinion molders, demonstrations will, after an initial seeming success, become smaller and smaller because people get tired of participating — especially if they see no change.
Finally, what if all this time and effort were channeled instead into going door to door with educational materials; contacting the local opinion molders; or working within community and civic organizations? This increases a person’s influence beyond friends and family. In the long run, this is more productive in effecting change.
Will demonstrations continue? Absolutely, because of the world we live in. Should we shun them? No. But let us understand that they can be both destructive and productive. If they are arranged by good people, then let us use them to educate and build permanent, effective organization. For organization is what is needed to combat the highly organized conspiracy we must expose and rout.
John Birch Society
http://www.jbs.org/
