You're Not Paranoid: They're Just Better at Infiltration Than You Are at Discernment
Infiltration isn't about trench coats and spy tactics. It's about knowing where the levers are in you and your group.
“You’re being paranoid.”
I’ve heard that sentence or some variation of it many times over the last two decades, and it used to bother me. I didn’t want to be seen as some kind of crackpot who saw a boogeyman around every corner. There’s a type of fatigue that comes after months and years of assuming everyone is after you, and as the saying goes, if everything is critical, then nothing is.
The problem is, most of the groups and organizations that were around when I started…aren’t anymore. Or, they’re a mere shadow of what they were. Groups have come and gone, starting up in a fury and then either fizzling out quietly or burning in a wild arc across the public sky.
So for those of us paying so much attention to the landscape, are we paranoid? Or have we figured something out that’s critical to protecting groups?
Why it Hurts So Much When Groups Fall Apart
Leaving groups is hard, even if you’re absolutely certain that it needs to happen. it can feel like a really bad breakup. If your family was also in it with you, now you’re dealing with additional relationships for them that have been changed or severed too. What makes it all so awful is that you’ve been searching for more than a bunch of folks to go to rallies with. You’re looking for community. You’re seeking to belong, to be accepted. Camaraderie, brotherhood. So each time that you join a new group, you’re starting a relationship that requires a bit of emotional investment as well as time and potentially money. And when it goes wrong, you feel that in your soul.
In fact, depending on your own emotional health and makeup, you can eventually start wondering if any of this is even worth it. You become disillusioned and even depressed. After a few spectacular group flame-outs or a legal near-miss, you might sign out of the cause entirely.
You’d be surprised at how many infiltration operations are designed to have that exact effect. It’s not about arrests; it’s about stopping your movement from reaching your goals. If your group quits and goes away, that’s just as good.
Now let’s talk about exactly how they do it.
Infiltrators Don’t Need to Bring Problems. They Just Use the Ones We Already Have.
The reasons why activism groups fail can almost always be distilled to pretty much this list:
The leader got caught doing something that did not match his public persona or the group’s culture. This could be anything from stolen valor to sexual or financial misconduct. In this type of situation, he often gets exposed by his own members—some of whom have known about the problem for months but said nothing.
The leader was using the group for his own emotional validation through control and abuse of the members. This usually ends with members leaving, and sometimes that hurt spills into the public arena or perception.
The local org is made up of mostly groups of extended family, which splits loyalties and adds the complexities of their internal family dynamics to the overall group.
The weight of members’ emotional needs ended up crushing the group from the inside because it isn’t built to sustain that level of neediness. You see this in groups with weak leadership and high levels of needing to be seen being activists.
Members stopped feeling emotionally safe. This can be from one of the other points on this list, or there’s an infiltrator, or there’s simply a toxic dynamic. Whatever the cause, the members instinctively feel it in their gut and they withdraw.
The mission was never clear, measurable, or united. Groups that lack focus and clarity devolve into ideological camps and cliques, dominated by whoever is the loudest (who is also usually the one with the deepest unfulfilled need). Confusion and infighting end up becoming the standard.
Too much online, not enough real world. This goes back to a very basic principle that I’ve talked about over and over: If it is more important to be SEEN doing something than to be part of getting it actually done (even silently and with no appreciation) then your group is already in trouble.
You might be thinking that this list is missing a lot of things, such as that group you were in that faded due to people just getting busy and not putting the time in anymore. Or the one you heard about that failed because their rally went haywire and the public turned on them.
No, what you’re looking at is item 5 and item 2.
People make time for what’s important to them, but more to the point, they prioritize those important things based on the level of fulfillment those things give their emotional validation needs.
In short, if your group is making them feel more worthy than their marriage is, they’re going to put your group first. If there is another effort in their life that gives them more than your group, they’re suddenly going to be too busy.
“But wait,” you say. “You didn’t even put government infiltrators on the list!”
You’re right—because the infiltrator isn’t why the group failed. The reasons above are; the infiltrator just used what was already there. Even in cases where the infiltrator is pushing people toward illegal activity or foments disruption that implodes the group, he or she is simply using tools they are trained on to maximize the elements that are already present in the culture and individual members.
The Ugly Truth: You’re Not Paranoid. Infiltrators Are Just Trained to Find What You’re Emotionally Hiding.
There is an absolute rule about infiltration, and it’s this:
If you and your group are emotionally healthy, do not find your identity within the group and its cause, and are engaging in a proper balance of accountability, internal transparency, and vulnerability, there is nothing for an infiltrator to grab onto and leverage.
We don’t like to admit that, because it sounds like victim-blaming. It’s uncomfortable. But we either care about truth, or we don’t.
If you think of a group that you’ve watched implode or be torn apart by an infiltrator, work backwards and you’ll find the vector of emotional need that invited them in.
I’ll go one level deeper than that. If you were in the group, you knew something was off before it all came crashing down.
If you only take one thing from my books, articles, and classes, take this:
Your gut is never wrong.
Period. Full stop.
You might not be able to put your finger on exactly why your gut says something is wrong. (That’s where the training comes in.)
You might not be able to explain it to others yet. (That’s why your whole group should be trained too!)
It could be your brain recognizing an external threat (which is why you need to know what threats look like).
It could be you recognizing a pattern in your psyche that is leading you down a dangerous leverage path (which is why you need to understand yourself first).
Whatever is going on, you need to stop, sit with it, and figure it out. Because if your gut says something is wrong, that’s because something is.
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