Social Movement Rumours

Everyone who is involved in social movement activity, or grassroots social change activity however defined, should read this. It is an article by Justin Podur from The Killing Train called "Stop the deadly rumours: False accusations against activists are corrosive, and have gone on long enough."

Podur writes:

An important tactic in the COINTELPRO arsenal was the spreading of rumors. False accusations about trusted activists and important organizers broke the bonds of friendship and trust that people needed in order to challenge authority, challenge themselves, and maintain their courage in the face of repression. Once those bonds of trust and friendship were broken, the organizations themselves were easy prey.

The power of such operations is that they can be used to undermine a movement while retaining plausible deniability. And the sad truth is that it is often hard to tell if our organizations have been infiltrated because all too often we don’t need to be infiltrated to implode, because of our own political errors, personal insecurities, and mistakes.

He goes on to talk about the case of Manuel Rozenthal, who has been involved in social movement work in Canada and in Colombia, and the ways in which a whisper campaign against him -- whether state-run sabotage or peresonal spite has never been clear -- put his life at risk and ruined a politically important and effective social movement organization in Canada.

Most importantly, Podur outlines four simple principles that can help keep our groups from self-destructing and can make it harder for the state to take us out using such tactics:

1. Unless I have seen credible and convincing evidence that an individual working in the progressive movement is a CIA agent or a paramilitary agent, that he has personally enriched himself from his political work, or that he has denounced other activists, I will not make claims or rumors to that effect.

2. If I do have credible and convincing evidence of any of these things, I will make my accusations in public immediately, providing the evidence, and standing behind it personally.

3. I recognize that making unsubstantiated accusations is an unethical practice, and takes on a particularly unethical dimension in contexts where such accusations can be fatal.

4. If I have political disagreements with any activist, I will raise them in an appropriate way, publicly, according to the norms of public debate and discourse. The usual rules of evidence, the presumption of innocence, and the right to face one’s accuser, should all apply.

Kind of sounds like guidelines for basic "good relationship process," eh?

I don't think any group I've been a part of has fallen apart/been destroyed in quite this way. But I know I have felt the tides of rumour and innuendo and, often enough, sectarian spite swirl around movement spaces I have been a part of, and even though the touch has been light, in my experience, it has felt unclean and dangerous.

Read the article. Adhere to the principles.