How To Tell If Someone Is Controlled Opposition

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

This Australian independent analyst of social/political issues seemingly treats a major issue of activists who pretend to serve social values but are actually working at the direction of powerful figures in subversive organizations of capitalist ruling classes to counter any opposition from ordinary people. Such subversive organizations are always active in controlling any significant organization that opposes capitalist interests of power and profit. The Deep State, or the board of directors of capitalist ruling classes, have many decades of experience in doing this. They have also used such strategies, often referred to in recent decades as "color revolutions", using NGOs to overthrow entire governments such as in Ukraine and have been trying to do so for many years in Venezuela. I have posted many articles which provides the details of such efforts all over the world in order to reveal their insidious methods. 

Any effective revolutionary effort must deal with such subversive adversaries if they are going to succeed. I know from first-hand experience in anti-war organizations during the Vietnam War that such agents will always be present to disrupt, sow chaos, and render such movements ineffective.

Johnstone really doesn't offer insights on "how to tell if someone is controlled opposition". Instead she offers reasons why she posts articles using such sources if they offer anything constructive. She writes:

So since I know that infiltration and manipulation happens, but I don’t find other people’s whisperings about “controlled opposition” useful, how do I figure out who’s trustworthy and who isn’t? How do I figure out who it’s safe to cite in my work and who to avoid? How do I separate the fool’s gold from the genuine article? The shit from the Shinola?

Here is my answer: I don’t.

I spend no mental energy whatsoever concerning myself with who may or may not be a secret pro-establishment influencer, and for good reason. There’s no way to know for sure if an individual is secretly scheming to sheep dog the populace into support for the status quo, and as long as government agencies remain opaque and unaccountable there will never be a way to know who might be secretly working for them. What I can know is (A) what I’ve learned about the world, (B) the ways the political/media class is lying about what I know about the world, and (C) when someone says something which highlights those lies. I therefore pay attention solely to the message, and no attention to what may or may not be the hidden underlying agenda of the messenger.

I, too, will post articles by sources which shed light on the nefarious activities of the ruling classes (Eric Zuesse is one example) that I have fundamental differences with, but to a point. When such figures demonstrate that their actions don't match with their words, I ignore them. One such figure is Bernie Sanders. But there is one thing to be a "useful idiot" and another thing to be a subversive agent. Sanders I believe is the former, but a figure like Sibel Edmonds I believe is an example of the latter.

Although I never saw Edmonds as an anti-capitalist, I posted many articles from her websites on Boiling Frogs Post and later on Newsbud because she offered many revealing articles about the subversive activities of the CIA in Europe following WWII (Operation Gladio). However, after reading a post last year by James Corbett, a former associate of hers, in which he severely criticized her attack on independent journalists like Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, I was convinced that she was a subversive FBI agent who had been ordered by her handlers to discredit these independent journalists. Corbett writes in the preceding post:

To launch her career as a fake dissident blogger, I think that her handlers promoted her as a whistle-blower victim of the FBI. I, myself, contributed to her website when it was "Boiling Frogs Post" after it ran a series on the Gladio operations following WWII. The series accurately revealed all the efforts by the CIA to crush unions and leftists in general and promote right-wing governments in Europe. This effort was designed to attract leftists and dissidents to the website while others, especially young people, didn't especially care much about what they considered as ancient history. 

I also think that the timing of this [her] attack was not accidental. I think that it was in preparation for the launching of another false-flag event (and who knows what else?) that we have just witnessed and spread by the Empire's media corporations as a chemical attack on Syrians by their own President Assad. Hence, I think that Edmond's handlers ordered her to engage in this attack on the two journalists (and probably helped her produce the video) as a way to influence all her followers to go along with this theme. I have little doubt in my mind that both Boiling Frogs Post and Newsbud are fake websites that were set up by the secret services to lure in leftists and dissidents and to gradually steer them away from opposition to the Empire's policies and actions. ....

Any organization that strives to be an agent of radical change must develop guidelines to determine who among them are acting as agents for the ruling class because the latter will always attempt to disrupt their activities should they become significant. Otherwise the agents will cause much paranoia and chaos to render the organization ineffective (as they did to the Black Panthers in the 1970s). I also think that a significant organization must use similar tactics against their enemy by infiltrating ruling class organizations. After all, revolutionary people must eventually recognize that they are engaged in a serious war against the ruling class.