Hi. I'm a progressive thinker interested in ideas and methods of developing a world in which there is as little suffering as possible.
My thinking style is a little bit futurist, a little bit hippie, and very pragmatic. I'm not into pie-in-the-sky ideas. I want to talk about actions that can be implemented to make change happen in time to stop what's coming (a terrible eco-dystopia).
I'm 50. I find most of the internet to be a childish & boring place. Most memes aren't funny. Most people that think they're comedians aren't funny either. I'd rather have a serious conversation.
I'm a cis white male. I believe in dignity and respect for all people, except conservatives.
I also believe that we need to take more direct action to make change. I think the most important conversation we should be having is akin to the trolley dilemma, except one track has american conservatives on it, and the other track has the entirety of humanity and all the other forms of innocent plant and animal life on it.
I'm pretty big into military tactics because I think this is the most direct method for change.
Do I belong here?
Could you dm me resources on this comrade?
I'm afraid I don't really have any specific resources that I can point you to.
This stuff is what has coalesced in my brain from learning about history (COINTELPRO and similar efforts to infiltrate, subvert, and accelerate movements/orgs such as the Spycops scandal in the UK - there's lot of stuff covering this in podcast, books, and its actually really surprising just how much primary material has been released under freedom of information requests that you can access [although caveat so say that while they'll tell you the broad brushstrokes, they conceal the juicy stuff and there's zero guarantee that they aren't dropping limited hangout material, so a degeee of scepticism and interpretation/extrapolation is necessary when doing this]), from online antifascist efforts to infiltrate their spaces and carefully observing what they do when they try to pull similar shit to the feds as well as spending too much time learning what they say and how they say it, and general stuff from being a bit of a nerd for sociology and linguistics and similar shit.
I don't think that discursive analysis proves anything incontrovertibly but there are ways that people talk that indicate their positions, values, and beliefs and you can glean a lot about a person by how they talk about things.
"I'm a cis white male" is absolutely the reflection of a person who has (poorly) adopted the terminology and ideas that a place like Hexbear uses but it's extremely clunky and it is exactly the wording I'd expect to hear from an anti-woke warrior when they do their cheap attempt at parodying a blue-haired feminist at a college campus for their echo chamber buddies.
People in this space rarely identify as white except when they are in an earnest discussion (I'm very white so maybe I'm missing some context here...) or it's either done self-deprecatingly/in a semi-ironic way. But people here don't put their hand up and state "I'm white!!", and anyone who does that unprompted or in a way that over-identifies with whiteness is sus. A lot like how I'm skeptical about a person who over-identifies with the government they live under or their country - "my country", "our government" etc... it just smacks of either a baby leftist who hasn't fully internalised that it sure as hell ain't a government for them nor is it a government they should want to claim, or it gives the vibes of a person who legitimately does drink the liberal kool-aid and who does identify with and feel a sense of ownership in their government.
I am white. I acknowledge my whiteness when it's important to do so, like in discussions about race or privilege etc. But I only identify with it insofar as it being me recognising the fact that I'm person who was raised on the privileged side of a white supremacist system and not because it's something that is integral to my identity.
So, things to look out for:
People who speak too openly about sketchy things, whether sharing info or seeking it. They are either an OpSec liability to themselves and others around them or they are not who they present themselves to be.
People who seek to avoid openness and accountability. Not in the sense that they avoid giving out too much personally identifying info but people who want to create an environment away from the scrutiny of others, a space where "just the two of us/our little group can be safe and comfortable talking together".
People who try too hard to gain your trust in a way that isn't through committment to enacting their values but by directly trying to convince you that they're trustworthy somehow ("I'm 50" implies that they're mature and responsible, so in combination with other things it can form a pattern of attempts at impressing their trustworthiness on others). Talk is cheap.
People who ask too many questions or invite you to "level with them" sorta thing ("Be real with me, bro - if you had the chance to take out Hitler, you'd do it right?" Proceeds to steer the discussion towards getting you to talk about how Biden/Trump/whoever is just like Hitler)
People who avoid talking about theory, who discourage reading theory, or who actively have disdain for theory. (Reading and understanding theory is hard. It's even harder to do when you're a person who is opposed to radical politics. It's very hard to be motivated to read theory and to find time to do it when you're working your day job at Langley. Of course a fed is going to be uncomfortable with theory and they're going to try and pass off their lack of theory literacy as being about personal preference.)
People who don't read between the lines or who don't speak in such a way that they are communicating more than is being said explicitly when it's strategic. (Sorry fellow autistic folks, nothing personal!) There is plenty that I will imply but that I won't say explicitly because it may implicate me. The people who support this culture of being strategically vague where it counts make it harder for the feds. People who are the oppose or undermine this culture make it easier for the feds. That alone doesn't mean anything in particular but a person who lacks discretion or who asks you to clarify and be more explicit about certain things arouses a degree of suspicion in me. Historical references or in-jokes aren't going to hold up in a court of law or prove intent but there's a big difference between saying "Tito knew how to deal with fascists" and saying "What we need to do with fascists is we should get together and..."
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People where there is dissonance between their (stated) politics, their words, and their actions. A trans ally doesn't identify as their biological sex except in rare cases, for example. A person like myself whose username implies that postcolonialism is very important to me isn't going to use a term like "gypsy" and you should expect them to pull people up when they are saying things that are unintentionally part of coloniser mentality (e.g. talking about how a perspective is orientalist or pulling someone up over the use of the term cakewalk for example). Always be weighing these things against one another. A person who claims to love the Bolsheviks and who knows a lot about Soviet history is almost certainly going to know about Suslov and they're probably going to lament what might have been if given the chance, but otherwise most people wouldn't. Be cautious about people who appear to be knowledgeable but who don't have their own angle though - reciting material from history books or Wikipedia articles is one thing but it's another thing to have a nuanced position ("I think Suslov, had he lived longer and become leader of the USSR, would have steered it on a very different path but he was also part of the clique of high level officials under Brezhnev that created a lot of bureaucratic inertia and that occupied roles which essentially prevented the new guard of would-be Soviet leaders from cutting tneir teeth and developing into higher leadership roles as they climbed the ranks, so while I think if he we steering the ship he would have done a significantly better job and avoided a lot of problems that emerged in the post-Stalin era, I also think that he was part of the structural problems in the USSR that are embodied by the gerontocracy that developed, willingly or unwillingly.") A more overt example of this is stating that you're a trans ally but using a word like "transgenders" or "transsexuals". To give another example of what I'm talking about with nuance above though, if you see me discussing Marsha Johnson and someone calls her trans then you're probably going to see me gently calling that person in and telling them that Johnson identified as a drag queen and a transvestite but not as trans and how I think it's important to affirm her identity to honour her memory so if we are going to use a term like trans it's important to use a disclaimer such as by saying "A person who would be considered as trans today, like Marsha P Johnson who used she/her pronouns and lived her life as a woman..." rather than unintentionally erasing her identity and proclaiming that she was trans.
People who encourage others to do more sketchy stuff, especially adventurist stuff, and especially to talk more about it. If you are about adventurism either you're going to do a heroic but ultimately adventurist solo action like Aaron Bushnell, which is going to be a very personal affair and which you're not likely to talk about very much if at all, or you're going to be involved in group adventurism but that's not something that you're going to be openly talking about with others not involved in the planning and execution. Either way, people shouldn't be talking about such things in this sort of place or encouraging others to do so here because it serves no good purpose. Past actions that might be considered adventurist or somehow implicating might be talked about in very vague terms here but anyone who wants to hear too much about it, especially if it personally links that individual to the action, is a serious concern.
Anyone who is looking for an "assistant" or a front-person to carry out a plan or some sort of action, especially where all the resources and tools necessary to achieve this are supplied by another person, should attract all of your skepticism. These actions may be irl or they may be online but whatever the case, in this sort of situation, the only difference between an assistant/front-person and a fall guy is whether someone has been drawn into an op.
People who are always on your side, people who mirror too much of what you say without contributing their own ideas/questions/disagreements, and people who encourage division and factionalism to create a small splinter group of the people who are the most disaffected or eager to see action are all extremely sketchy.
People who try to encourage too much action in a particular way are also very concerning. Telling someone to join a party or to get active in their community or to touch grass/read theory, fine whatever. But specific, detailed, actionable plans that establish intent - no bueno. "We need to do something about this right now, who's with me?" sorta stuff. A person who is active and involved does that work with comrades irl. They don't go to open public forums and start plotting what "we" should be doing about a particular situation.
People who use the wrong words. Liberals use particular terms. Fascists use particular terms. Radicals use particular terms. There's always a degree of blurring and ironic usage but someone who uses a term like "the day of the rope", except if they are a serious anti-fascist and they're subverting that term somehow or they are talking about internal discourse that fascists use, is a big red flag. We don't use that term - they do. Same goes for a term like "the white race" - it implies a degree of identification with race theory and white supremacy which should sound alarm bells. "Rules based order" should only ever be used in an ironic or derisive way. I'm not going to list them all because I couldn't even if I wanted to but also language and culture shifts. Just be on the lookout for people are too comfortable with using terms that indicate they are spend a lot of time in an opposing political discourse.
Somewhat ironically given my first comment in this thread, people who accuse others of being feds too quickly or without due cause should also be considered sus. Actual attempts at infiltration can be quite sophisticated and one of the best ways to build trust and to distract attention that would otherwise be turned on you is to accuse others of being feds or infiltrators. This also works well to sow distrust and to foment factionalism and the creation of splinter groups.
Idk what else to say tbh. Hopefully this gives you some pointers. Apologies again because I've mostly been vague and addressing the general vibe rather than getting into specific details but I don't want to go handing anyone the guidebook for how to infiltrate radical spaces undetected.
Stay safe out there and make sure that you're always prioritising your own security.