Here's How The Corporations Defeat Political Movements

[Scuba]

http://www.popularresistance.org/heres-how-the-corporations-defeat-political-movements/#comment-9241

The Corporate Strategy to Win The War Against Grassroots Activists: Stratfor’s Strategies

Divide activists into four groups: Radicals, Idealists, Realists and Opportunists. The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.

Part 1 of this exclusive Mint Press News investigation examined the strategies employed by Stratfor precursor Pagan International. So named for its founder Rafael Pagan, corporate clients hired the company with the aim of defusing grassroots movements mobilized against them around the world.

Part 2 takes a closer look at how Pagan International’s successor, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD), revised and refined these strategies — and how what began as a corporate public-relations firm evolved into the private intelligence agency Stratfor, which wages information warfare against today’s activists and organizers.

...

Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry. “If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.

[liberal_at_heart]

1. We "radicals" get told all the time that transformative change is not possible but when you look at

history there are many examples of transformative change. This is what gives me hope that transformative change is not only possible. It is ineveitable. I don't know when it will happen, but if history teaches us anything it is that everything happens in cycles and history always repeats itself. We happen to be in the unfortunate part of the cycle where the wealthy have all the power. That sucks. But, it will come full circle again one day and history will repeat itself. Eventually, the people will take the power back.

[Larkspur]

3. If you study the Abolitionist Movement

they spent many decades making their case to ending slavery to the American People. They suffered many setbacks, including the odious Fugitive Slave Act, but they didn't give up. Oddly, their rhetoric triggered the South, not the North, to start the Civil War which ended up being a defeat for the South.

Progressive movements today, need to heed the lessons of the Abolitionist Movement. A persistent and creative information campaign is a must for these movements. Also the need to get involved, not boycott, the political process because short of war, that is the only means to enact change in our democracy.

My inspiration for these movements is to picture themselves as the old woman in Jesus's parable of the old woman nagging the corrupt judge for justice. She never gave up, never threaten physical violence upon the judge, but his wicked mind feared her persistence and the truth she bore to him and the public and he eventually caved to her just demands.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. Although I do believe in organizing I don't think the progressive movements need to heed anything.

The people always rise up. They don't need us to do anything. It will happen all on its own with or without organized progressive movements. The people are the movements.

[Larkspur]

12. That's a good description of a mob rising

Mobs rise and fall upon the whims of the majority of the group, but movements are orchestrated protests against the status quo and that have specific goals in mind. Achieving those goals usually requires changing the consciousness of the dominant group and that can take a long time, thus movements require leadership.

The women's movement began when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony joined forces to promote women's rights. Before that it was a hodge podge of individual women who were not connected to and not working with each other to promote their common cause.

Movements require leadership, else the energy of the large group of supporters pitters away into unproductive and sometimes destructive tendencies.

As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." That small group usually is the core leadership of a movement.

[liberal_at_heart]

14. I disagree and I don't mean to offend but I think that kind of thinking is elitist.

The women's movement didn't begin with Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It began with millions of women in this country deciding for themselves that there were no longer going to be property. Do you really think they needed Elizabeth Stanton or Susan B. Anthony to tell them they weren't property? Do you really think slaves who were torn away from family members and sold needed to be told that what was done to them was wrong?

[Larkspur]

15. But those women didn't have a plan on how to solve their problem

Without a plan, the status quo prevails. To succeed in giving women the right to vote, the women's movement needed leaders who could develop a plan. That's what Stanton and Anthony did for the women's movement. Without them and those that took up the cause after they died, women would still be denied the right to vote. It was Stanton, not a mob of women, who called the first women's conference in 1848 to start planning on how to improve women's lives, starting with the right to vote.

The slaves knew their situation was wretched, but to abolish slavery, they needed help and leaders who could develop plans to convince the public or at least a majority of the public that slavery, which existed for thousands of years, was morally abominable.

You should read Robert Greenleaf's writings on leadership. He developed the "Servant Leader" paradigm. Under his paradigm, leaders emerge from within the group and as long as they have the support of the group, they retain being leaders. In his view, leaders are those with a vision. Followers enable their leaders to lead and can also disable them when the cause ends or the leader's vision fails.

[Larkspur]

2. It's basically, the old "Divide and Conquer" strategy updated to the 20th Century

And it works for a long time until.... Just ask the old French Monarchs who lived prior to the French Revolution about the "until" part.

[Mojorabbit]

4. I had almost this exact conversation with someone today. nt

[cascadiance]

5. And by corporate control of the "liberal" media, stop us from realizing we are all "radicals"...

... in our heart if we were all to be adequately informed about what we are facing in terms of the slow motion corporate fascist coup that is going on around us.

THAT is why the NSA feels justified in spying on ALL of us, to stop each of us from getting that realization that the notion of "radicalism" is in fact the movement of the nation's populace becoming *informed* about what is really going on around us.

When we realize that the PTB is trying to isolate ALL of us as the "radical elements", that's when the movement will hopefully unite in getting this fascist coup attempt shut down.

[backscatter712]

7. This looks familiar... n/t

[Scuba]

8. You thought so too?

[Luminous Animal]

9. Kick.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Yup

using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.

I have not seen here at all

[felix_numinous]

11. Right, the RW are not radicals,

while people who want to hang onto civil and human rights and defend a clean Earth are RADICALS.

The corporations have to change the English language first--and second, people have to AGREE with them.

[PETRUS]

13. kick