It is reasonable to assume that an article about this topic will be at some point read by a member of the controlled opposition. If this is you, relax: your name will not be mentioned!

The spy and the snitch concentrate on collecting information, but the controlled opposition concentrates ón putting ideas in your head.

It’s a tale as old as history. If the New Testament is accurate, Judas did the job two thousand years ago. They appear many times in history before and since. In the 1920s, the Soviets celebrated Judas and set up their own fake opposition amongst emigrant Russian communities around the world, snaring many an unwary and unfortunate person.

George Orwell described the kind, elderly man, nostalgic for the good old days, who turned a blind eye to the opposition meeting in his spare room. Surprise, surprise, even back then, the spare room had a hidden recording device…

A group fighting a legal case against McDonalds in the 1990s found out later that the majority of people attending their support ,meetings were snitches of one sort or another.

It is reasonable to assume that today there is massive use of controlled opposition. It is quite possible to be at an anti government meeting and for a majority of those present to be snitches. Wherever you are in the world, no doubt you can think of some suspicious characters who claim to oppose the government.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is one of the most inspiring and optimistic scientific laws ever discovered. They use controlled opposition to control us, but it has the seeds of its own destruction.

An East German Stasi agent reported that the early demonstrations against the regime included huge numbers of Stasi agents. They had to attend the protests to keep their cover as anti-government activists, but their attendance increased the numbers and encouraged more people to come out and protest.

Controlled opposition is better than no opposition at all. An agent must do some activism to maintain his cover as an activist. Anyone suspected of being an agent should be encouraged to do as much activism as possible.

Here is a categorization of different types of controlled opposition and some hints on how to counteract it:

The Spy Hunter: This character accuses others of being controlled opposition, often accurately. This gives the accuser credibility and promotes division.

The Obvious Spy: Even the kind, trusting and naïve among us notice there is something odd about this character—like the character parading around with a swastika at the Charlottesvill demonstration. This means we waste time thinking about him, and we do not notice the more subtle spy in our midst.

The Distractor: sends us looking the wrong direction at the wrong time. They will shout loudly about some horrific State crime from ten years ago, while exactly the same crime is being committed now.

The Dodgy Hero: This character says all the right things, and even does some of the right things. But his personal and professional life show him to have been dishonest and untrustworthy. This taints what truth he tells. Has he really reformed?

The Downer: As an intelligent person, perhaps you are aware that Things Are Bad? Mass vaccination, mass immigration, mass dumbing down and heavy Zionist influence in your politics, wherever you live, not excluding Gaza, Iran, Russia or China. But spend half an hour with the Downer, and you will realise things are even worse than that…His job is to frighten you with sometimes truthful information and reduce your will to resist: What’s the point? They are too powerful.

Dr Feel Good DoNothing Dude: Three main variants: There is a 5D chess games going on, OR the Good Aliens are coming to rescue us, OR even Jesus Christ himself is working behind the scenes to fix everything. They offer a similar solution: do nothing to publicly challenge the system.

The Hater: various philosophers over the millennia have warned of the danger to ourselves of overindulgence in the emotions of hate and anger, no matter how justified. These emotions warp our personalities and cloud our judgement. They are no doubt useful — in small, brief amounts — in warfare, punishment beatings, and torture, but any long term indulgence in these emotions is dangerous to the indulger. The Hater encourages us to hate and feel anger. The sensible person transmutes these emotions into determination to take useful action.

The Exaggerator (or the Bad Data guy): This character makes a truthful statement, but uses bad data to back it up. An example is a report by a qualified academic critcising the Covid nonsense, with various citations and quotes. When researched, the quotes were wrong or even non-existent! Someone went to a lot of trouble to fake dozens of false quotations, presumably to discredit the main argument.

* * *

One way of dealing with controlled opposition is to laugh at it! It is worth mentioning at all meetings: Hey guys, there’s a possibility that there is someone in this gathering who is a snitch. Our aim is to live such exemplary lives, that the snitch will switch over to our side. We also have a budget for snitches. Whatever they’re paying you, we’ll pay you double. Triple your money and double your fun.

Spies who have told their story often mention how nervous they are when the conversation turns to the topic of spies. Not surprising. It’s worth doing often, in a joking way, obviously without naming or even hinting at anyone. Discretely note reactions of suspicious persons…

By attending Controlled Opposition events, an honest man can make contact with other honest people. Any such event will be designed to fail, and the honest man can point out the failures in a light hearted and helpful way, naming no names, making no allegations, of course. This might embarrass the Controlled Opposition to make their next event less obviously designed to fail.

It is sometimes possible to cajole, and embarrass and joke the Controlled Opposition into taking effective action.

It’s probably a good idea to be on good terms personally with your local Controlled Opposition. The jovial smile, the manly embrace, cheerful conversation about topics of mutual interest. “Chickenfeed” is a useful term from the spy world: truthful information which the other side already knows or which is irrelevant. Never even hint at your suspicions, but occasionally talk in general terms about snitches, no names of course.

Being friendly with your local snitch(es) has personal advantages: Perhaps the snitch will leave your name and activities out of some of his reports. Perhaps your name will be at the end of the activists arrest list, not at the top. Perhaps he might even warn you ten minutes before the cops are due to arrest you.

Sometimes, very, very rarely, the snitch will switch.  This happened in a protest against a Shell gas pipeline in County Mayo (Ireland) some years back. An Englishman had spent a decade as a deep cover snitch in various protest movements, even starting a family with one unsuspecting lady. But he snapped. The Government wanted to jail two of the protestors. The snitch realised that he liked the protestors more than his paymasters. He went to court, gave evidence that he was a snitch, and that the protestors were innocent. Case dismissed!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells us how he was able to spot snitches amongst his fellow prisoners: He could sense them.  If you get an odd feeling about someone, pay careful attention to that feeling.

A friend suggests a “three strikes” approach. Notice one suspicious thing? Ok, keep observing. Three suspicious things, and you’ve got a definite!

As the Welsh say: Hwyl!

(translates as: Have Fun or Go Sailing.)

From The Guardian.

… Chikli assured the lawmakers that there was new money in the budget for a pushback campaign, which was separate from more traditional public relations and paid advertising content produced by the government. It included 80 programs already under way for advocacy efforts “to be done in the ‘Concert’ way”, he said.

The “Concert” remark referred to a sprawling relaunch of a controversial Israeli government program initially known as Kela Shlomo, designed to carry out what Israel called “mass consciousness activities” targeted largely at the US and Europe. Concert, now known as Voices of Israel, previously worked with groups spearheading a campaign to pass so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that penalize Americans for engaging in boycotts or other non-violent protests of Israel.

Its latest incarnation is part of a hardline and sometimes covert operation by the Israeli government to strike back at student protests, human rights organizations and other voices of dissent.

Voices’ latest activities were conducted through non-profits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, Chikli has overseen at least 32m shekels, or about $8.6m, spent on government advocacy to reframe the public debate.

It didn’t take long for one of the American advocacy groups closely coordinating with Chikli’s ministry, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, or ISGAP, to score a powerful victory.

In a widely viewed December congressional hearing on alleged antisemitism among student anti-war protesters, several House GOP lawmakers explicitly cited ISGAP research in their interrogations of university presidents. The hearing concluded with Representative Elise Stefanik’s viral confrontation with the then president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, who later retired from her role after a wave of negative news coverage.

The ISGAP, which reportedly received the majority of its funding in 2018 from the Israeli agency that was running Concert, touted its congressional public relations coup at a 7 April event at the Palm Beach Country Club.

“All these hearings were the result of our report that all these universities, beginning from Harvard, are taking a lot of money from Qatar,” bragged Natan Sharansky, a former Israeli Knesset member (MK) who previously held Chikli’s role and now chairs the ISGAP. Sharansky told the assembled supporters that Stefanik’s remarks had been viewed by 1 billion people.

The ISGAP has continued to shape congressional investigations of universities over claims that protests over Israel’s human rights record are motivated by antisemitism, and the organization has been deeply involved in the campaign to enshrine new laws that redefine antisemitism to include certain forms of speech critical of the nation of Israel. [TOO Emphasis]

Other American groups tied to Voices have pursued a range of initiatives to bolster support for the state of Israel. One such group listed publicly as a partner, the National Black Empowerment Council (NBEC), published an open letter from Black Democratic politicians pledging solidarity with Israel. Another group, CyberWell, a pro-Israel anti-disinformation group led by former Israeli military intelligence and Voices officials, has established itself as an official “trusted partner” to TikTok and Meta, helping both social platforms screen and edit content. A recent CyberWell report called for Meta to suppress the popular slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The dawn of the Gaza war after the 7 October 2023 terror attacks by Hamas sparked the third reboot for the government-backed company, which was originally chartered through the now-downgraded ministry of strategic affairs. The revamp was first disclosed through a little-noticed budget document posted by the Israeli government on 1 November, which noted that Voices would be freezing all prior campaigns to support activities related to “winning the war over Israel’s story”.

The organization is now under the administration of Chikli, the Israeli minister for diaspora affairs.

Haaretz and the New York Times recently revealed that Chikli’s ministry had tapped a public relations firm to secretly pressure American lawmakers. The firm used hundreds of fake accounts posting pro-Israel or anti-Muslim content on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. (The diaspora affairs ministry denied involvement in the campaign, which reportedly provided about $2m to an Israeli firm for the social media posts.)

But that effort is only one of many such campaigns coordinated by the ministry, which has received limited news coverage. The ministry of diaspora affairs and its partners compile weekly reports based on tips from pro-Israel US student groups, some of which receive funding from Israeli government sources.

For example, Hillel International, a co-founder of the Israel on Campus Coalition network and one of the largest Jewish campus groups in the world, has reported financial and strategic support from Mosaic United, a public benefit corporation backed by Chikli’s ministry. The longstanding partnership is now being utilized to shape the political debate over Israel’s war. In February, Hillel’s chief executive, Adam Lehman, appeared before the Knesset to discuss the strategic partnership with Mosaic and the ministry of diaspora affairs, which he said had already produced results.

“We are changing administrations. Just last week, MIT, the same president who was lambasted in front of Congress, took the step of fully suspending her Students for Justice in Palestine chapter for crossing lines, and for creating an unwelcoming environment for Jewish students,” said Lehman, referencing the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sally Kornbluth.

Hillel International, CyberWell, the NBEC, the Israeli ministry of diaspora affairs and Voices of Israel/Concert did not respond to a request for comment.

This investigative report reviewed recent government hearings, Israeli corporate filings, procurement documents and other public records. While private individuals and foundations primarily fund many of the organizations devoted to pro-Israel advocacy, most likely without foreign direction, the records point to substantial Israeli government involvement in American politics about the Gaza war, free speech on college campuses and Israel-Palestine policy.

“There’s a fixation on policing American discourse on the US-Israel relationship, even college campus discourse, from Israel, going all the way up to Prime Minister Netanyahu,” said Eli Clifton, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “One struggles to find a parallel in terms of a foreign country’s influence over American political debate.”

None of the groups identified in this story’s reporting have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara). This law requires groups receiving funds or direction from foreign countries to provide public disclosures to the US Department of Justice.

“There’s a built-in assumption that there’s nothing at all weird about viewing the US as sort of an open field for Israel to operate in, that there are no limitations,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. …