Security Culture: Counter-COINTELPRO

Security culture is a term used within far left movements to describe a systemic approach to OPSEC. Antifa and Black Bloc pride themselves on it. Here is a review of their published instructions in security culture.

A significant portion of security culture doctrine concerns itself with the planning of direct action. Direct action is criminal activity across the spectrum of vandalism, burglary, arson, and violence against persons. Agent provocateurs seek to entrap people in criminal conspiracies and that’s much easier when criminal conspiracies are the name of the game. When your organization doesn’t do direct action (crime) anyone who suggests a crime can be kicked out or even turned in to the police.

The next big weakness is that there is no growth strategy other than the Marxian presupposition that everyone will join in the fun of the “mass movement”. New members are not told what is done. There is no method of validating new members except vouching, which is a hair inconsistent in its results. Finally people are dissuaded from joining if they are unwilling to get fired, go to jail, or leave their families. The sort of people who get fired, go to jail, and leave their families are the only sort you’ll get with that strategy.

Perhaps the subtlest weakness is that this is a reactive strategy. If that weren’t bad enough it reacts to reactive strategies. It is counter-counterintelligence. It is counter-counterinsurgency. Counterintelligence and counterinsurgency can only be effective with massive resources that typically require state level actors because they are so inefficient. An insurgent movement that adopts these methods may as well stay home because it has the weaker position and acts like the stronger position. I speculate that the moral certainty of the activists gives them a conceit of strength deriving from the righteousness or inevitability of their cause.