not liking someone
doesn’'t mean
they're a cop

or a zionist, or a fed, or
a white parachuter
from montréal

alternatively:

on bad-jacketing
Since the commencement of Operation Al-Agsa Flood,
millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of
Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in
an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which
threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that
uphold it.

This text was written through the summer and early autumn of 2024
from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory (so-called Southern
Ontario, Canada), where people, many new to the left, have been facing
intensified violence and harassment from both police and Zionists.
Protests are regularly met with arrests and other attacks, which have
created a climate of fear among attendees and organisers.

At the same time, that fear, combined with a disconnect from
previous generations of struggle and an often-unchallenged fear of
militancy, has led to practices that end up putting our comrades in
more danger. This text hopes to address one such recurring issue.

what is bad-jacketing?

“Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing “fed-jacketing; or *snitch-
jacketing")is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant,
fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent
evidence.

The term has been used since at least the 19605, where it primarily
described COINTELPRO operations that bad-jacketed legitimate
members of the Black Panther Party and other organisations! It was,
ironically, rumours from infiltrators consolidating their own positions
that led to organisations not only isolating but, in some cases, severely
beating or executing innocent individuals.

1 Mentioned in Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther
Party and the American Indian Movement (1988) by Ward Churchil and Jim Vander
wall
TORONTO Il STAY HOME JUNE 6TH
There s a group of people planning a
iot downtown and they are NOT with
#blackiivesmatter ¥ |

Please help share this around!!

® suaycaoeveryons
moarecorinata

of otners

"SUNE GTAPIAS BEEN CANCELLED.

ived by I < thovusands

Some screenshots
of an Instagram post
screenshotting a tweet,
attached to a Facebook
post that circulated
Toronto networks in

June 2020.
e =z
—
Posts

il do our best to keep this list
[PORTANT: Remember to self-i
| your health is important!

PROTESTOR / ORGAN
RIGHTS

Thousands of people
believed that, according to
a*tip [that] came in from
Crime Stoppers; “BLACK
BLOC” (*NOT Black Lives
Matter”) was “coming from
Montréal for the sole purpose
of causing destruction””

: May 30, 2om [COMPLETED)

-CANCELLED
Folow (G: @

June 5, 12pm Walk @ Bloor-Yonge subwa|

ALERT EVENT PENDING.
Follow 1G: G

June 6, 2pm @ Trinity Bellwoods Park ALE

PENDING APPROVAL

oQv Al
e I s thousands

of otners

. 11 T0RONTO: BLMPROTEST ON
o0 G GEEN CANCELLED.
© n

N Q

why is bad-jacketing a problem?

A 2075 text titled “No badjacketing: the state wants to kill us; let's
not cooperate” by the Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, says:

1. At the least, it pushes away people who have, or are willing,
to do work and make sacrifices for the movements.

2. Worse, it silences entire groups by sowing mistrust within
them and making discussion of strategy and tactics difficult.

3. Very commonly, those accused of acting as informants
become so alienated from their accusers that they actually
become sitches.

4. Worst-case scenario, people die. That worst-case scenario
is all too common and real, and there is a famous regional
history to it as well, in the case of Anna Mae Aquash, a
Native American woman from Canada who had worked and

sacrificed tireless for the American Indian Movement, or
Almz

Southern Ontario in 2024 is, of course, not the US in the 19605 and
19705. Our contemporary movements do not act on false accusations
of snitching by killing the accused. And while we know that the police
are trying to infiltrate us and turn people into informants,* the vast
majority of these accusations are definitely not coming from people on
the state’s payroll.

The biggest threat that bad-jacketing poses to us, here and now, is
that it singles people out for state repression. Militants are more likely
to be on the receiving end of these accusations, but also, anecdotally,
people of colour, neurodivergent people, and anyone who “does not
belong” (and, of course, people who fall into all of those categories).
In doing so, the people who make these accusations in effect carry

2 Online at twincitiesgdc.org/badjacketing!.

3 As discussed in "Toronto Police Approaching People to be Confdential Informans”
(luly 12,2024) on North Shore Counter-1nfo,online at north-shore.info/2024/07/12/

4
out the work of the state. They reproduce the oppressive dynamics
of the outside world and push people out - often, the very people

our movements are supposed to be fighting for. By pushing them out,
bad-jacketing then denies support to people who are often already
at heightened risk of criminalisation. It makes people into easy
targets, signaling to the police that they can get away with brutalising,
arresting, and jailing someone without outcry from the community.

During the 2020 Black liberation uprisings in the US, posts flooded
our feeds, warning of “agents provocateur” Decontextualised videos of
police unloading bricks spread like wildfire among both far-right and
far-left social media networks. Fascist fear-mongering about out-of-
town “ANTIFA" inciting riots trickled down into leftist hyper-vigilance
against “white outside agitators.” These warnings often ventured

iinto the realm of conspiracy theories, where protests with unknown
organisers or cop cars on fire were signs of a police set-up.

Allthis has had devastating consequences. The normalisation
of this paranoid urge to see false flags around every corner has

empowered people “on the left” to share images and openly work to
identify individuals carrying out llegal actions. Contrary to what they

ATTENTION |
YoursToRy: 11

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST ON

FORALL THE PEOPLE PROTESTING, DO NOT PICK UP.
THE BRICKS, THE GOVERNVENT 1S TRYNA SET
EVERYONE UP, THEY ARE LEAVING BRICKS ALL
AROUND CITIES SO THE CIVLIANS CAN PICK.

ideos continue to surface showing
tors stumbling upon palets of

truction taking place

Some tweets that circulated
online and reposted across
different platforms in June 2020,
may believe, these people’s efforts to “root out infiltrators” have in
many cases now become the actual basis for the state to arrest and jail
its opponents.

Beyond that, bad-jacketing leads to feelings of insecurity and
distrust that can tear apart a movement - even without any real
infiltrators being involved. Both online and o the ground, we can hear
breathless accusations that someone at a protest is an undercover
Zionist operative, often for no reason beyond that “they make us

Lok bad." Zionists, constantly on the lookout for ammunition against
us, gladly stoke the flames. Projects like the “Shirion Collective;’ a
Zionist doxing campaign that claimed on social media to be training
undercover operatives, see and celebrate when the left eats its own.
We must be equally vigilant against these psychological attacks,

which are more subtle and yet can do more damage than any one
undercover's testimony.

“professionally trained to make us look bad’
- Kristina Beverlin on Isaiah Willoughby

On October 5, 2021, Isaiah Willoughby, a Black man, was sentenced
to two years in prison for lighting a fire outside an abandoned police
precinct in Seattle in June 2020 Willoughby acted because of the

murders of Manuel Ellis, his former roommate, and George Floyd at the
hands of the police.

Listen to Isaiah Willoughby speak in his own words
on Kite Line Radio:

kitelineradio.org/tag/isaiah-willoughby/

When it happened, Kristina Beverlin, a white woman who now
wears a kufiya and a “free Palestine” hat in her profile picture,

4 “CHOP protester sentenced to 2 years in prison forlighting fre outside Seatle police
East Precinct” (October 5, 2021) by Daisy Zavala Magafa i The Seattle Times, onlne
at seattletimescom/seatle-news law-justice chop-protester-sentenced-2 years

immediately blasted out a photo of Willoughby. She tweeted that he
just tried to start a fire at the abandoned precinct” and called on
“everyone in Seattle to retweet the photo of this man."

In subsequent tweets, she stated her belief that:

And rumors during the first day of SPD vacating the East Precinct were
that SPD wanted the precinct to catch fire to make the peaceful
protesters look bad, after SPD had looked like monsters for days. After
what | witnessed tonight, this is what believe.

It was her initial tweet that appeared in a court affidavit against
Willoughby, and her photo that the police disseminated to identify
him.? In other words, it was this white woman's insistence that the
police wanted someone to set fire to the precinct, and that anyone who
did 50 could only have been directed by the police, that sent a Black
man to prison. Like any other white vigilante, the self-deputised liberal
peace police will discipline, with violence if necessary, Black or people
of colour who step out of line. Unlike any other, she does it in the
name of anti-racism, with an #ACAB hashtag in the same breath.

Similarly, social media users widely disseminated photos of a
white woman suspected to have carried out the arson of the Atlanta
Wendy's where police murdered Rayshard Brooks. That she was white
was proof to them that bad actors with no connection to the movement
were behind property destruction during the uprisings, and that
without those bad actors, the protests would have been peaceful. As it
turned out, the woman in question was Natalie White, who Brooks had
called his girlfriend on the night of his death.s Two Black men, Chisom

5 Sworn statement of Lexie Widmer, Special Agent, ATF, in the case of USA v Willoughby,
online at justice gov/usao-ycua press-release e 1294451/

6 “Woman accused of burning Wendy's after shooting granted bond” (june 24,
2020) by Kate Brumback in ityNews, online at oronto Ctyneus.ca 2020/06 24/

7
Kingston and John Wesley Wade, were later charged for the Wendy's
arson as well. As of December 2023, White and Kingston had accepted
plea deals for probation, a fine, and community service, while Wade
was scheduled to go to trial?

In both these examples, the people who sought to identify state
agents “instigating” at protests were ultimately the people who acted
as cops. The gravity of these actions cannot be overstated - they, and
we, already know that police kill and torture Black people on the
streets, and prison guards do the same against their captives on the
inside.

7“2 plead guilty i fire at Atlanta Wendy/s aftr Rayshard Brooks kiling” (December 5,
2023) by the Associated Press in theGrio, nline at thegrio.com /2023/12/05/2-plead:
‘suilty-in-fre-at-atlanta-wendys-after-rayshard-braoks-kiling!

C- The dcntifiction of Willsghby 2 he Arsonst
Shorty afethe rsn 1 the East Prscinc, winss posed on Twiter

5
| photographs s tok of the suspect who st the i
i
f

man. He just tred 10 start a fre at the abandone:

5 precinct (protesters put it out) in CHAZ right in front of
me and I folowed him and took this as

But there s NO W cing alone

1 the phoograp, the srsomsuspect s wesring yellow hooded ettt
23 [ wique, styizd ptcr on th back.

20| Onune 13,2020, Detective Kawabas crestd Crimina Infortionsl Balletin
25 sing images from the Twte hotographs. The bulltnwas disemioated throughout
26 [SPD sking offcrs o ideniy the suspet. SPD s refssd the photographs o the
27 e, cocoursing members o th pbi o cal rime Soppers ol enforcemet
28| with any informationsbout te supect

8

Support defendants and prisoners from the George
Floyd Uprisings:
up! igsupport.org

Following the May 2022 leak of the US Supreme Court's decision
to overturn Roe v. Wade, Jane's Revenge' shared a communiqué about
the fire-bombing of a predatory anti-choice “pregnancy centre” in
Madison.* The action sparked the usual uproar among the right about
“woke ANTIFA terrorists” waging war against Christianity. But rather
than defend the action’s righteousness, much of the left instead
occupied itself with speculation about whether cursive graffiti and a
“too-neat” circle-A meant that it was a false flag. The underlying logic
here was that if something looked "too perfect; if it made the right too
angry, it couldn't possibly be real. We may talk of rioting against the
Supreme Court, but no one seriously means it.

In response to the right-wing outrage campaign about Jane's
Revenge, the FBI offered a bounty of up to $25,000 for information.®
Days later, in January 2023, the US Department of Justice indicted two
people for graffiti on anti-abortion centres i Florida, actions that
were also broadcast through Jane's Revenge. The Florida investigation
eventually produced in a total of four arrests, all but one of the
defendants being women of colour" Worse, the Florida 4 were
prosecuted under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion
access. Meanwhile, an investigation that involved 11 different state

8 Inthe post-Rae era, many peaple across the US have autonomously carried out
clandestine actions for abortion and reproductive justice in the name of “Jane’s
revenge? A NoBlogs platform under that name shares communiqués.

9 “Fist Communiqué” (May 8, 2022) on Jane's Revenge, onlne at janesrevenge.n0blogs.
0rg/2022(05/08/first-communiaue/

10 “Jane’s Revenge: Biderrs Justce Department Uses Abortion Access
Law to Indict Pro-Choice Vandals” January 29, 2023) by Tessa Stuart
in Rolling Stone, online at rollingstone.com politcs/politics-nows/

11 “Rbortion Rights Activists Face Attack From DeSantis and Conspiracy Lawsuit —
for Spray Painting’ (May 15, 2023) by Natasha Lemnard in The Intercept, nline at

9
agencies and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force culminated in the
March 2023 arrest of Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury for the Madison
fire-bombing Though the right jumped at the opportunity to gloat,
widely publicising the defendants’ photos and personal information,
charges against Roychowdhury and the Florida 4 received little
attention from the left. Roychowdhury pled guilty after being denied
pre-trial release and was sentenced to 90 months (7.5 years) in federal
prison on April 10, 2024 Three of the Florida 4, after taking felony
pleas that avoided convictions under the FACE Act, were also handed
down prison time on September 12 of this year, ranging from 30

days to 1year and 1 day* Popular support may not have prevented
those prosecutions, but the significance of solidarity shouldn't be
understated. Instead, much of the left's message to militants turns
out to have been: “we'll all you feds, and when it turns out we were
wrong, we'll abandon you anyways.

Contribute to the Florida 4's commissary and find
other ways to support through the Anti-Repression
Committee of South Florida:

linktr.ee/sfl_arc

Though we never had our own Third Precinct moment, left
networks in Ontario fell victim to many of the same conspiratorial
impulses. Reposted Instagram stories warned of “suspicious piles
of bricks” left as bait near march routes and even *black blocs from
Montréal” coming into town to start riots.

12 “Wisconsin an Charged with Firebombing Building’ (March 28, 2023) by the U
Department ofJustice’s Office of Public Affairs, online at justicé.gav/opalarl
wisconsin-man-charged-firebombing-building

13 “Jane's Revenge" Actvist Pleads Guilty i Firebombing of Anti-Abortion Group
“Wisconsin family Action” (December 29, 2023) by Ryan Fatica on Unicorn Rio, online
at unicornriotninja/2023/janes-revenge- activist-pleads-guilty-in-firebombing-

‘anti-aborton-group-wisconsin-family-action/

14 “Weaponizing The Legal System: The Case Against The Florida 4" (september 22,2024)
by Civl Liberties Defense Center on It Gaing Down, online at tsgoingdown.org]
ponizing-the-logal-system-the-case-against-the-flrida-

10

Just o0k my ik around some known
‘demonstrston routes i Toronto. A few ples of
ek icks tht were ot there on the some
ride yesterday Was agoressively approached
bya yclist with 3 conspicuous earpece whie
taking photos

These photos weretaken near Unversity nd
Queen

Be smar Toonto

EDIT: yoh these bicks are absoltely being
used or sl constrcton. The dody bit
i theconstructon stared atth same tme a
‘whole unch of usinesses i te area have
started boarcing up. whateve the reason s
hatthey e appeared now, m rying towam
peoplenot 1 pick them up. v added more
protos in thecomments orcontext

While, regrettably, no such riot
materialised here in 2020, the bad-
jacketing of the black bloc has a

long history in Southern Ontario,

as in other regions. A particularly
egregious example came in the wake
ofthe Toronto G20 in 2010, where
liberals convinced themselves that
the property damage was all an
inside job and set out looking for
proof They singled out a muscular
white man in combat boots and
“cop-like” black pants for looking
suspicious, digging up every image of
him they could find. Al of this crowd-
sourced evidence built a convenient
case for the police, who arrested and
jailed the target of their suspicions.

A pattern emerges: subsequent
repression draws only a fraction
ofthe concern that the broad left
had earlier put into interrogating
the legitimacy of an action. This is
one of the most insidious functions
of badjacketing and disavowal - it

aids the state project of disappearing people. Speculation about false
flags, made exponentially worse by social media and algorithms that
egg on endless engagement, steals away energy that could be spent
preparing for the repression to come. It turns actions into abstractions
ipe for every person to project their own arguments, That abstraction
removes militants’ humanity from the picture, enjoining us to forget
that real people, putting their lives on the line for the movement,
must have lit the match or thrown the brick. The collective failure to
adequately show up for each defendant and prisoner in this section -

15 A conveyed through oral memory.

n
and many more not named - goes beyond a culture of disposability. It
is amass forgetting that makes each of us who partakes in it complicit
iin the work of the police, prisons, and the carceral state to not only
extinguish our resistance but also erase our memory of its very
possibility - and our memory and connection to the people wha've
sacrificed to keep that possibility alive.

when people are occupied, resistance is justified

The movement for Palestine has long been one of the most hyper-
surveiled and attacked.* Only when it comes to the Palestinian struggle
will even the most mild, pacifist expressions of support land someone
on McCarthyist blacklists like Canary Mission, extensive repositories
of personal information stretching back years. It is no wonder, then,
that people are - correctly - concerned about being targeted by our
enemies, which include not just the settler colonial state itself but also
Zionists who self-organise outside of it.

Unfortunately, this has once again meant a dangerous resurgence
of bad-jacketing. In February 2024, social media posts from the “Shirion
Collective” sparked mass outrage and panic among supporters of
Palestine. Announcing an “Operation Global Insight,” the posts claimed
to be launching an “undercover operation” in key locations such as
Toronto. “Volunteers willing to wear keffiyehs and walk [masked]
iin these demonstrations” would "be provided an hour long basic
training by one of [their] ex-Mossad team leads? Further, “individuals
with Arabic-sounding names and Middle Eastern appearance may
be uniquely positioned for deeper infiltration and will receive cash
compensation for their vital role in [the] operation”

Though the collective is, without a question, real, there s plenty
of reason to believe that the reaction to the post was disproportionate
to their actual abilities. Sensationalist claims of Mossad ties in an
emoji-studded public tweet do not paint a picture of a sophisticated

16 “Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of US. Antiterrrism
Law” (February 2024) by DarrylLi and others through Palestine Legal and the Center
for Consttutional Rights, online at palestinelegalorglresources.

12
intelligence operation. Neither
do their existing “exposés” on
social media, which, despite
techno-babble buzzwords about
Al are largely limited to reposting
other people’s footage and open-
source information” that anyone
with access to Google could

easily retrieve. The description

of walking around at protests

and “law enforcement presence”
suggests no actual knowledge of
how Palestine solidarity groups
organise or bring in new members.
Afew people with bad intentions
joining a march of hundreds or
thousands, where every angle is
already recorded and streamed
live on Instagram, can hardly be
characterised as “infiltration.”

If that were not enough on its
own, the White Rose Society, an
anti-fascist research group, shared
internal screenshots from Shirion's
Telegram channel that confirmed
the post's real purpose was to
sow fear and distrust. One Shirion
volunteer is quoted as saying

17 Open-source inteligence (OSINT)
is: term that originates with law
enforcement, eferring o the use of
publicly available information to gather
intelligence on adversaries. Social
meda is e of the biggest sources
of OSINT nowadays. Within the left,
some anti-fascist researchers are also
proficient at using OSINT to manitor
reactionaries.

3
We won't need to do anything. They will:
1. Tone down
2. Police their own

3. Maybe even beat up their own just because they think those
are us®

That summary of their goals succinctly re-states the risks that bad-
jacketing poses to our movements.

Even before the Shirion scare, claims that someone was secretly

a Zionist or cop were already commonplace. People who wear the
symbols or fly the flags of the Palestinian resistance have been accused
of being "agitators,” sent by Zionist organisations like B'nai Brith to
make protestors look bad. Over-the-shoulder glimpses of someone’s
phone or poor fashion choices have been presented as evidence

that a protestor is actually an undercover. Online, Palestinians have
been accused of being Zionist sockpuppets off of lttle more than bad
feelings. And, naturally, even minor disagreements or political critiques
will end in allegations that s0-and-so is a fed. While, thankfully,
conspiratorial crowds here have ot at least yet handed over one of
our own to the cops, these accusations are sometimes accompanied

by calls to act against someone. In one case recently, a queer person
of colour known to other attendees was followed, harassed, and filmed
aggressively at a protest because someone had decided for no clear
reason that they were a Zionist in disguise.

As the police continue to crack down on us, it s all the more crucial
that we learn from the mistakes of the recent past. We cannot let our
rightful vigilance lead us to attack our own comrades. Nor should we
water down our political lines, our demands, or our tactics for fear that
the media and the right will smear us - they do that regardless. It may
not be possible to eliminate some, faint chance that an infiltrator is
behind a resistance flag, a punch thrown at a Zionist, a brick through

18 Pro-srael Group Is Trying to Intimidate Palestine Protesters With Claims of
“Infiltration” (March 1, 2024) by Clare Hymer in Novara Media, oline at noaramedia.
€Om/2024/03/01a-pro-racl-group-is-trying-to-intimidate-palestine-protesters-
with-clains-ot-nfltration/

i
awindow, but far more likely is that some brave person, who has
chosen to more boldly and unabashedly confront this genocidal system
and its supporters, is responsible. For that, they deserve our support
and our solidarity against whatever repression may come, not our
condemnation.

knowing our enemies

An over-emphasis on undercovers may lead to an under-emphasis
on other security vulnerabilities. Rather than acting according to a
one-size-fits-all checklist or, worse, reacting to threats only as they.
appear, it's important to proactively identify and individually study
threats in order to understand how to address them. That is to say,
what - specifically - is your enemy trying to do? How do they do it? The
process of answering these questions is known as threat modeling.

Accounts like Shirion, Leviathan, or StopAntisemitism” are real
threats, as any of their victims know all too well. But OSINT, as well
as everyday acquaintances, are much likelier to be the source of their
information.

Your personal Instagram or TikTok page might already give away
your identity, the protests you attend, your work or school, and the
identities of your friends and family members. Your employer might
publicly share profiles, including photos, of all of their staff on their
website. Tools like PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID allow anyone willing
to pay for them to run facial recognition technology and search the
Internet for a given face.

If you're a student, a Zionist classmate could easily recognise you
from criticising racism in class and look up your personal information
ina school database. A right-wing former colleague could remember
you for being politically outspoken at your shared workplace. Knowing
the true identities of everyone at a march will do nothing to prevent
doxing i, for example, that march is being streamed online, your face is
exposed, and your social media is public.

19 Other Zionist doxing accounts

15
what about the real infiltrators and provocateurs?

Infiltration - actual infiltration, where someone comes into our
organisations and our lives, pretending to be our friend, only to hand
information over to the state - should not be taken lightly. But our
baseline understanding of it often takes the form of a few convenient
tropes, reinforcing existing biases against militancy and justifying
dismissiveness towards criticism. These tropes prevent us from truly
knowing our enemies.

The late Matt Cicero wrote that:

[there is a] misconception that all infltrators act as agents
provocateurs who try to manipulate activists into taking illegal,
violent, unpopular, and ineffective actions. But as Gary T.

Marx points out in his theory of social movement infiltration,
social movements are damaged by “opposing organizational,
tactical, and resource mobilization tasks." In other words,
infiltrators suppress social movements by fomenting divisions
and internal conflicts, diverting energies toward defending the
movement rather than pursuing broader social goals, sowing
misinformation or damaging reputations, obstructing the
supply of resources (money, transport, meeting spaces), or
sabotaging planned actions. Many infiltrators are thus better
described as agents suppressants, who are there to gather
intelligence and channel groups away from militant action.

J

Incidents of provocation can be high-profile and sensational,
such as undercover police posing as members of the black
bloc at Montebello. This can lead activists to paint all militant
action as the work of agents provocateurs, even if there is

no evidence that this is true. Conversely, because of the
low-profile of most agents suppressants, activists are often
unaware of their role and impact in pacifying and controlling
social movements.

20 “Infitrated! How to prevent political police rom undermining grassroots solidarity”
(May 1, 2017) by Matt Cicero in Briarpatch Magazine, online at briarpatchmagazine,
com/articles/view/influated

16
The spectre of the provocateur itself, then, carries out the

suppressant role of “putlting] a damper on evolving movement
militancy

The single-minded focus on the agent provocateur often goes
hand-in-hand with a short-term view of state repression as having only
two main goals:

1. Criminalising individuals in order to take them off the board while
making an example out of them; and

2. Smearing the movement in the media, stigmatising it to the
public, by associating it with criminality.

But as Cicero describes, the state is additionally engaged in a long-
term project of suppression and counter-insurgency. The police cannot
arrest every dissident - but they don't need to jail us all to successfully
maintain the colonial order. The central goal of counter-insurgency is
to preserve legitimacy and control

To that end, some further goals of state repression include, but are
not limited to:

3. Exploiting existing tensions in the movement in order to sow
discord and distrust;

4. Defanging the movement by discouraging forms of action that
exceed accepted norms of protest; and

5. Collecting intelligence to inform repressive operations, for the
purposes of criminalisation and suppression.

We should examine the issue of infiltration with all of these
goals in mind. David Gilbert says, “[tlhere is no simple litmus test to
differentiate sincere militancy from provocation or honest caution
from suppression.’s The same extends to the search for infiltrators

21 Cicero, quoting Love and Strugle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and
Beyond (202) by David Gilbert

22 FM 324 /MCWP 3:335, Insurgencies and Countering insurgencies (May 2014) by the
Department of the Army.

2 Love and Struggle.

7
more broadly. Most of the time,* the only truly conclusive proof that
someone is a police infiltrator comes from seeing the evidence against
you that they've handed over to the state after you've been charged.
That isn't of much help - by the time you have those court documents
in your possession, the damage will already have been done. That is.
assuming that the information they collect ever goes to court at all.
RCMP documents from the G20 suggest that there may have been as
many as 12 undercover officers.” Far fewer than that were ever exposed
by name, and the remainders' identities may never be known.

People who've experienced the profound betrayal of finding out
that someone they knew was an undercover or informant often end up
drawing conclusions that are diametrically opposed from one another.
But a common thread persists through most of their takeaways: there
are few ways to prove for certain that someone is a cop, and many
ways that the hunt for infiltrators itself instead undermines our work
and furthers the state's goals.

Accordingly, we should turn our energies to proactively building
a security culture that protects us from both infiltration and other
security threats. Much has been written on this subject already. In
short: solid security practices should mean that an undercover cop is
prevented from gathering meaningful information even if we do not
know who they are, and that security risks are dealt with regardless of
whether an individual is specifically acting on behalf of the state. If you
do everything right, a plainclothes still won't know who among the bloc
smashed that ATM, even if they saw it happen with their own eyes.

24 When Shane, an undercover offcer in Hamilton, Ontario, was exposed, anarchists
turned up an old video anline after the act of him in unform. The community
found out about him when he gave evidence against people charged for an anti-
‘gentrication action. It conceivable that in asimilar situation, someone could have,
come across a video like that and recognised another Shane preemptively, but its not
very likely:
“Shane: an undercover cop in Hamilion, ON” (September 6, 2018) on
North Shore Counter-Info, anline at north-shore.info/2018/09/06/

shane-an-undercover-cop-in-hamittan-on/

25 “Living among us: Activists speak out on police infitration” (uly , 201) by Tim
Groves, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/artcles view] ving-among-us

26 "Living Among Us”

18
As the ever-green “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants"”
reminds us, many of the greatest threats to our movements may
not officially collaborate wiith the police either. In the Toronto anti-
fascist scene alone, multiple people accused of misogyny and sexual
violence/gender-based violence later went on to renounce the left,
consort with their former opponents, and attack (verbally, physically,
and with legal threats) their former comrades. None of those people,
to our knowledge, were undercover cops, nor were they secretly
fascists all along. Looking for a non-existent smoking gun to show that
someone was lying about their identity would - and did - only delay
people from taking necessary action against them when the myriad of
other red flags should have been more than enough.

naming our enemies

The epidemic of bad-jacketing is inseparable from the problem of
peace policing. Many organisers advocate for a policy of de-escalation
atall costs, even in the face of potentially deadly violence from police
and zionists. They speak of “agitators” who disrupt and "escalate”
“peaceful protests” - a nebulous euphemism that they apply to both
the Zionist who shows up with a knife and the militant who comes
prepared to fight back.

We should be clear: our enemies are not “agitators."

Our enemies are the police, who brutalise us and lock us away
to enforce settler colonial order. Our enemies are Zionists and other
white supremacists, who assault and harass us in the streets, and stalk
and threaten us in our everyday lives. Our enemies are politicians and
other establishment liberals, who carry out colonial and imperialist
genocides, here, in Palestine, and around the world, all the while crying
crocodile tears about a so-called humanitarian crisis that they created.
Our enemies are legacy media institutions, who smear resistance as

27 “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants" (spring/Summer 2010) by Courtney Desiree
Morris on Incite! National, online at incite-naticnal org/2010/07/15 why-misogynisis-
make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-lef-enables-state-violence-in-

radical-movements/.

19
terrorism and mobilise support for each of these attacks.

We must take care to differentiate between antagonistic and non-
antagonistic contradictions, and to distinguish between enemies and
potential friends.™ Too often, we see organisers reject co-strugglers in
order to appeal to liberal institutions that will never be on our side.
They may frame the conservative path as the only strategic option,
rejecting open support for armed struggle, militant direct action, and
anything else that would create "bad optics”” Disagreements from co-
strugglers are treated as threats worse than that of liberal media, who,
we must appeal to for sympathy, o Zionists and cops, who we must
appease for our safety.

When our enemies attack us anyways, these organisers pin the
blame not on the perpetrators but on the co-strugglers who deviate
from their line. They forget that to be attacked by the enemy is not a
bad thing but a good thing.# Our enemies do not strive for unity with
us, knowing that ours is an antagonistic contradiction, knowing that
our collective liberation requires their annihilation. It is better that we,
t00, abandon any notions of conciliation and recognise our enemies as
enemies.

For all these reasons, we urge people to draw a clear line of
demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. Abandon the
euphemisms and name our enemies. When we struggle through our
differences, let us do so with a shared understanding of what we are
for and what we are against.

28 “n Contradiction” (August 1937) and “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Amang the People” (February 27, 1957) by Mao Tse-tung on the Marxiss Internet
Archive,online at manists.org/reference /archive/maoselected-works volume-1
mswy1_172.tm and marxists.org/reference archive mao/selected-works volumer5|

msws_se.htm

29 “To Be Attacked By the Enemy is Not.a Bad Thing But a Good Thing (May 26, 1939)
by Mao Tse-tung on the Marits Internet Archive, online at manxists.org/reference/

archive/mao/selected-uorks volume-5/msw_T2 him
20

by every means necessary

Not only is bad-jacketing dangerous, it is disempowering and
demobilising. It forecloses entire realms of possibility, insisting that we
limit ourselves to the same set of legal, non-violent tactics. It threatens
state violence against people who do not comply with those limitations
being imposed upon their actions. Many people cannot take the risk

of arrest. But something being risky does not make it impossible. Just
because some of us cannot act does not mean that no one should.

While its meaning is sometimes lost, respecting a “diversity of
tactics” means refusing to impose non-violence upon our co-strugglers
and declining to condemn those that destroy property or take up
arms.* As a group of autonomous UCLA students writes in the wake of
vicious assaults on their encampment:

We have noticed a trend of the desire to appear peaceful for
the media taking precedent over the right of protestors to
self defense, mirroring the world's response to Palestinians’
right to self defense in the face of blatant fascist attacks and
eliminationist violence.

We cannot allow our resistance movement to demand
obedience over safety in the same way as western imperialist
forces against the colonized."

Without drawing false equivalence with a people living under
active bombardment and military invasion, the liberal urge that leads

30 Liberal texts from the 20005 often ral against respect for a diversity of tactcs as
being an ‘ideology” that "repressles] debate” about their view that the left should
disavow anarchists and other black bloc partcipants for “provoking repression” Two,
decades late,the liberals among us no longer express open opposition to a “diversity
of tactics - they simply co-0pt and distort ts meaning instead.

“ciilResistance and the Diversity of Tactics i the AntiGlobalization Movemen
Problems of iolence, Silence, and Solidarityin Actvst Poltis” (summer/fall 2003)

by Janet Conuay in Osgoode Hall Law journal, online at digitalcommons.osgoode.
vorku.cajcgilviewcontent.cgi?htpsredir=Taarticle=1:248contextzohi]

31 “Communique From Autonomovs UCLA Students After Zionist Attacks on Night Six
of Palestinian Solidarity Encampment” (May 1, 2024) on Abolition Media, online at
abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/p0st/202405/01 /communique- from-autoriomous-ucla-
students-after-zionist-attacks-an-night-six-of-palestinian-salidarity-encampment/

2
people to denounce burning precincts or fake clinics as “giving police
an excuse to crack down” is the same that denounces the Palestinian
resistance for "giving Israel an excuse to destroy Gaza." We must
refuse any invitation to distance ourselves as the “good;” “peaceful,’
“innocent” ones. Instead, we affirm the right of Palestinians and all
people to resist colonial domination by any means necessary.

We would remind our co-strugglers, too, that our enemies do not
care about the truth, and they have no conscience.” We see this in the
viciousness with which the police enforce an unprecedented ban on
overpass protests in Toronto, where people rallied on the sidewalk to
wave flags and chant. We see it in the eagerness with which a long list
of electeds, including the Prime Minister himself, leapt to denounce

a protest of a Jewish hospital that never happened. We see it in the
adamance with which Zionists call the very existence of Palestinians

a terrorist threat against them, no matter how young, no matter how
innocent, no matter how non-violent." Right-wing propagandists

will fabricate scandals out of thin air, and the establishment will
happily take up their version of the story. Even if each and every one
of us swears to turn the other cheek to our assailants, as long as we
challenge the colonial status quo, in our enemies’ eyes, we will never
be peaceful.

Another path is possible, and the movement to Stop Cop City sets
a powerful example. In February, a journalist asked spokesperson Mary
Hooks of Vote to Stop Cop City whether organisers condemned arsons
of police vehicles. She answered:

Hell no. No. Not at all, And to be honest wiith you, Atlanta
deserves more than that. Real talk, they're lucky, this city is
lucky, this country is lucky. Atlanta has its hands in literally
murdering Palestinians right now. You think we give a damn
about some equipment? Not at all. Not at all.

32 Paraphrasing Kwame Ture, appearing in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)

33 "Against Innocence: Race, Gender, and the politcs of Safety” (2012) by Jackie Wang
A Journal of Materialist Feminist, online at isjournatnet volume-1o-

againstinnacence html

2
But some of us, we cannot take that risk. And those who can,
bless them. Bless them. | cannot take that risk. But Lord knows,
Vit with my lighter and be like, damn.

.1

We need every, every means necessary to deal in the police
state we are dealing with. So | don't care, no, and | would
imagine my comrades would say the same. No, not gonna
condemn nobody for doing righteously what they need to

do when our city has silenced every quote-unquote proper,
democratic process.

The movement's aboveground and clandestine elements are two
parts of a whole. Both are necessary for our victory.

more on peace policing

"ACAB Includes Peace Police: Three Report Backs from Palestinian
Solidarity Actions” (November 2023) on Archive.org, online at

page/2/mode/2up

“Peace Police are Police: How Protest Marshals Sabotage Liberation and
Protect the State” (December 2023) on North Shore Counter-Info,

more on security

“Confidence. Courage. Connect. Trust. A proposal for security culture”
(November 5, 2019) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-

shore.info/2019/11/05/confidence-courage-connection-trust-a-

proposal-for-security-culture/

“Doxcare: Prevention and Aftercare for Those Targeted by Doxxing and
Political Harassment” (August 26, 2020) on Crimethinc, online at

34 Tweet by the Atlanta Community Prss Collectve, online at ittercom/atlanta_press/

SMalUS TSEIT0BITIITI0S
23
crimething.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for-

The Threat Library by the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how;
threat-library,

“Threat Modeling Fundamentals” by Hakan Geijer on Riot Medicine,
online at opsec riotmedicine.net

more on infiltration
Fuck the (Hamilton) Police, online at fuckhips.noblogs.org

“Infiltrated! How to prevent political police from undermining
grassroots solidarity” (May 1, 2017) in Briarpatch Magazine, online at

briarpatchmagazine.com /articles/view/infiltrated
“Living among us: Activists speak out on police infiltration” (july 1, 2011)

by Tim Groves, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/
living-among-us

“Stop Hunting Sheep: A Guide to Creating Safer Networks” (2011) on

Sprout Distro, online at sproutdistro.com/catalog zines/security/
stop-hunting-sheep

“The 620 Main Conspiracy Group: The Charges and How They Came
t0 Be” (2012) on the No Trace Project, online at natrace.how/
resources/toronto-g20-main-conspiracy-group.

“Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” (Spring/Summer 2010)
by Courtney Desiree Morris on Incite! National, online at incite-
national.org/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-

radical-movements/

2%
e e s o o o,
o u on w
st i iz
e e o T ot
e o et i g g
e s iy

o

ot v € s 1 2, 3020
T b oy s s i e
Sty g o ey e
e e s

o wm os w

et v s 3020
ymachpn s oenalan ol ote

appendix a:
tweets by
@krisbeverlin

et vt ¥z 1,220
R e o ot i o ot o
e
i

o w

I

e s e i

it vt s .2020
st st oty
i e s e ot o

@ soukexttsion 22020
g nss s v

S as ooradmomatnconong:

°

Leega o ot et ot
S s s vy ey Ans e
T e aved of oy

o

st e iz i 650
Nl s ety et s
e g e o et e

vt e o 0 et ot

os

ekt Sevet €4 12,2670
ot e gt it s sngo st
ol aick i 5a1 ko b
e o bty e

o u o0 u

25

i ko e Y3
St s

o

st vt s 2020
pror
ST e S
e or o v cowt e .
oot ot e e s
e

o w o w a
ot vt s 22020
£ oot e ot st ey st
st ey e e
e e s o et
sy o, O vt s
Ry e g

o

v o w @
et v s 3020
S s o et
et on s ooy .
e P bt o sy
e o et

o u

o w as
et vt s 2. 020
b 50 sl i s o
et

@ st € o 5 020
T 000, oy e ware e f
P oyt s St R ora e
ot oo Pl i
i o e
ik s s o gt

o w o w
et v s i . 3020
umare g vty of 67 g
et e s e s

Pt b o 0 o e
oo s
o u on u

a

Somtmeon
T o Ty

o w on w aa
et vt s 22020
ot -
e e by v Aoy
o Tody e 0 i et
o apates e i e
it e e e e e
fremartetia

o w o w @a
st v s 5020
oy s st g

S i ke a3

e ot gocrat v o
oo Ty s ot s e

o w on w aa
et vt s 2. 2020
i, an e i oot b
e ng i St o kg ey
S Andbe et ool e a5y
e et
e i e ot

° uw o©o w aa
st et s 2 020
e ———

e o sttt coss s
i o g oy o e
bl f b sy

o v o w Aaa
et [ N

SPDisgong ook obed f they haveto e 20%
ofthlfeceand 1 this prcict gt med o
Communiy et

Theyeging o do s sos o sy ings vy 10
Hoep o fomhappening.

26

@ s s o
nan s e o g
e g o

°: w o w A

hat s balievs aobeing caused by poice or
done ateast n prt b olic. Theywanted this
informaton out. ncuing my photo. The odds of
imboing copseam decenty high o me.

[ p——————

Soinotrwors, o wart pcpe o poice”

e
o v o w As

No.Ithinkhe i cop. Tring o burn thins o
makathe aea ok b,

As of September 202, Beverlin
has deleted the initial photo of
Willoughby, but most of her tweets
afterwards remain available online.
The July 2020 tweet was deleted
but retrieved from the Wayback
Machine.

Kristina Bevertin

B oucoemic

°: uw o

Kristina Beverlin 2w
kishevertn

founder CassefreDemocrats -
UncommittedWh-scrappyaf arathon Crew
ofParty Hackers - precision wecking bol.
NOTLEY velanche stator - strategstriter
© Biack wommen saved Amrica

8 Joined aruary 200

1802 Folowing 1248 Folowers

You didn't see the other videos. He had
poured lighter fluid on the scene before | was
even there. It was on other videos. Him
walking back and forth. In front of me all he
did was toss a match on concrete. And it
went whoosh. He was professionally trained
to make US look bad.

BRICHS HAVE BEEN PLANTED
AROUND THE CITY IN HOPES OF
LOOTING, PLEASE STAY SAFE.

THESE ARE SET UPS. TORONTO INTEL:
TRICK BRICKS

ronowromraL PLACED AT

Tk Bk OSSINGTON AND

ossimaronano St
‘ot DONOT THROW

Be smart this
weekend, don’t take _
any bait

appendix

Omm: o

WELL HOWDY'

I'm just a mysterious pile o’ bricks

I've been seen at many of (y =
the recent BLM protests
sitting around areas of :

no construction or
carefully removed from
things like streets or
sidewalks and placed in
neat, easy-to-grab piles!

DO NOT REACH FOR ME!
|AM INTENTIONALLY PLACED

HERE TO CREATE VIOLENCE!

0o ot sharethis post
discty! Copy and paste
thephotoo your own.
me that| am 3 rap, and document me with photo and pasoracnele
video evidence using FBATTBRICKS targoted!

kick the bucket distro
kickthebucketdistro@riseup.net