This YouTube vid is only a relatively small example of what’s avaliable if you’re interested in learning more about how US authorities targeted activist groups in the 1960’s. WTF has this got to do with anything you say? Plenty. CointelPro may not officially exist anymore, but similar social processes have a tendency to thrive in social environments where there is a relative vacuum of informed discussion, unquestioning obedience to authority figures, flawed value systems and closed review processes.

For example, some corporate environments, NGO’s, community organisations can descend darkly into toxic work environments. Most of these organisations do operate within adequate guidelines, although some individuals, who could have the very best of intentions, can wind up horribly compromised, pressured by work commitments, bullying and peer groups into dysfunctional behaviours that would normally be subjected to valid criticism and disapproval.

There’s numerous analogies I could draw, just by observing recent issues in the Australian media. But on a macro level there’s more to examine. Put simply, if you’ve been privy to apparent exclusive insights about somebody or something that doesn’t sound right, why not discreetly turn the tables on whoever could be repeating distortions as fact? Bullshit conspiracies and rumour-mongering, via the use of media misreporting, reducing facts to the point of caricatures, shills and internet sock puppets can only gain acceptance where people are too lazy to utilise their critical facilities to sieve facts from manufactured fiction.

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.” - Winston Churchill