I've been thinking about agent provocateurs.
Our democracy is under imminent threat. Our only defense against the Trump/Republican/white-supremacist assault may come down to building an overwhelming mass peoples movement in the streets, as has been done in other countries. But to do that successfully, we need to address the danger that provocateurs pose — just as we did during the Civil Rights and other movements of the 1960s-1970s.
Agent provocateur:
Someone who commits illegal, rash, or alienating acts that provoke popular-revulsion, legal-action or police-repression against some target group such as a labor union, political organization, nonviolent protest, or reform movement. Or who entices others to commit such acts.
History is filled with instances were provocateurs were used to damage and destroy progressive movements for social justice. If you participated in nonviolent protests in the 60s and 70s — or in more recent times — you're probably familiar with the way that cops may taunt and provoke demonstrators in an effort to get someone to do something that they can use as a pretext for violent suppression, arrests, or so that that the news media story is about violent demonstrators rather than the issue they were protesting about.
But the term agent provocateur is usually reserved for those who have been placed, or placed themselves, within and among the protesters. Many of us have long suspected that at least a few of those who commit violent provocative acts from within the ranks of a nonviolent protest are consciously working for the police, corporations, or institutions we are protesting against.
Since the wealthy and powerful conceal their use of agents provocateurs, it's almost impossible to prove — though not always. See, for example: Todd Gitlin's 2013 article in the Nation or a more recent piece by Emile Schepers in the leftist People's World. Or references in popular culture such as, John Sayles' great film Matewan, about the sabotage of a West Virginia coal miners strike, or A Show of Force which is loosely based on the Cerro Maravilla plot where an undercover cop enticed two young Puerto Rican independence activists into a fatal police ambush which, when the cover-up failed and the facts became known, resulted in Governor Romero Barcels's party being voted out of office.
But, drama aside, very few provocateurs are police agents. Most provocateurs act on their own. But their self-motivation does not reduce the damage they do to popular movements or the political aid they provide to Trump, Republicans, cops, or other enemies of justice. And make no mistake, broken windows, burning police vehicles, building arson, and physical attacks on police or right-wingers will not prevent a Trump/Republican coup — just the opposite.
It is a truism of human behavior that what we fear we come to oppose — and then to hate. Those who act out their rage with provocative violence and misdirected property-damage frighten the very people whose support we need. A recent AP poll reported an across-the-board decline in support for protests against police violence, down overall from 54% in June to 39% in September. Support among Blacks fell even more, from 81% to 63%.
And it's not just a question of political support. If Trump and his Republican cultists reject the election results, it's going to take huge numbers of people in the streets to block their coup because the Trump-packed Supreme Court certainly won't. But a lot of people who may be willing to risk Covid won't join protests if they fear that provocateurs are going to involve them in violence or deliberately incite police attacks.
Provocateurs defend themselves with the catch-phrase "diversity of tactics" because, of course, we're trying to build a diverse, multicultural, America, and successful mass movements always use a wide variety of tactics. So the concept of "diversity of tactics," is a positive one — when it's real.
But "diversity of tactics" rests on two foundations. The first foundation is that the various tactics actually support the shared goals. A tactic that is destructive of those goals is not "diversity," it's sabotage. The second foundation is that everyone is really trying to achieve the same goal. When a thousand people are nonviolently marching to protest police racism and demand changes in the justice system, and 50 people in their midst are committing provocative violence because they want to overthrowing all government and institute some form of anarchy, those are not the same goals. What they're doing isn't "diversity of tactics," its hijacking a protest for their own competing-goals. Destructively so, because many people will not participate in a demonstration if they believe their message will be hijacked by a small number of provocateurs with whom they profoundly disagree.
The First Amendment guarantees us freedom of speech which is the right to say whatever we want to say. It also guarantees us the right not be forced to say something we don't want to say. A protest is a form of speech, it's a kind of living message, and the tactics and methods of the protest are integral components of the message. So those who call for a nonviolent protest have a legal and moral right to insist that their message not hijacked by provocateurs.
Let me be clear though, while I'm opposed to provocateurs, I'm not necessarily opposed to disciplined, well-organized, tactically-savvy armed deterrence against violent white-supremacist militias and terrorists. I'm a long-time advocate of tactical nonviolence and have posted a number of articles about nonviolence on this website. But I'm alive today to write those articles because men and women with rifles guarded me and other civil rights workers in the Deep South as we slept at night. And even Dr. King, who would not pick up a gun himself, acknowledged a community's right to defend itself against terrorism.
When we marched for 18 days through the heart of Mississippi's Klan territory in June of '66, we were protected from white terrorism by the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a Black organization formed to defend Afro-American communities and nonviolent protesters (both Black and white) from the Ku Klux Klan.
The Deacons were the very opposite of provocateurs. They didn't flaunt their weapons, speak bombastically, or engage in macho posturing. Nor did they engage in shouting-match confrontations with racists. The Deacons were both strategic and disciplined. Their purpose was to deter, and if necessary defend against, white-terrorism. They did not wage wars they could not possibly win against cops or government.
When a heavily-armed battalion of Mississippi Troopers savagely assaulted us in Canton Mississippi, the Deacons had the self-discipline to strategically withdraw. And though I was one of those beaten and gassed, I was thankful they did so because the Troopers were armed with rifles and machineguns that they were eager to use. Had a Deacon shot at one of them, there would have been a bloodbath. A massacre that the local movement would not have survived — and neither would a great number of marchers like me.
So in the movements of the '60s and '70s, we knew the danger that agent provocateurs posed. We planned, prepared, and trained to minimize their damage:
Of course, the methods noted above assume that protest organizers are willing to act in a leadership role, and that those joining the demonstration have the self-discipline to accept that leadership. Back in the day, that was not a big issue, but when protests are anonymously organized over social media it may be more difficult to achieve. Yet we see in Hong Kong and other places, well-led, tactically-sophisticated, mass actions that have been organized over social media and there's no reason that can't be done here.
Bottom line: Freedom ain't free, because sometimes we have to accept the self-discipline necessary to collectively defend it.
And "everyone do your own thing" is not the pinnacle of democracy because in real life that simply allows the loudest voices, the most charismatic, and the most threatening, to intimidate and dominate everyone else — with no accountability.
Copyright © Bruce Hartford, 2020
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