The Right Hand of Occupy Wall Street

Anti facists have been passing this article around that details elements of OWS and the mechanisms of "infiltration" from fringe right groups.  Except that it's less infiltration after the fact and more they had their people in the planning groups from day one.   It's not as blatent a scam as the truth movement, but the elements are there:  let's build an ostensible progressive grassroots movement, the liberals will come, and we'll promote our sleazy agenda under the cover they give. 

Not everyone was fooled, as one anarchist expounds, but enough people got caught up to make one cynical about the next allegedly leftist revolutionary movement.

One note of caution: the website Political Research, was a haunt of Chip Berlet, who was almost certainly in on the Kennebunkport Hoax.   Mr. Berlet was oddly defensive when asked any questions about how he even knew about the hoax, and one owner of the SLC blog with a record of dishonest conduct was rather quick to push Tarpley's frame, that people were getting money from Berlet and the Ford Foundation.   It seems Berlet's association with Political Research Associates has ended, so that's something.

Excerpts relevant to the "truth movement" fraud are quotes below.  Read the entire article at the following link:  http://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/02/23/the-right-hand-of-occupy-wall-street-from-libertarians-to-nazis-the-fact-and-fiction-of-right-wing-involvement/#

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The Right Hand of Occupy Wall Street: From Libertarians to Nazis, the Fact and Fiction of Right-Wing Involvement

By Spencer Sunshine, on February 23, 2014

Spencer Sunshine, Ph.D. (associate fellow) is a researcher and activist. His research interests include U.S. white nationalism, post-war fascism (particularly Third Position and European New Right politics), left/right crossover movements, and left-wing antisemitism. As an activist he has worked on issues regarding anti-fascism, police misconduct, prisoner rights, global trade agreements, environmental issues, and bisexual and queer politics. Follow him on Twitter at @transform6789.
The most successful mobilization on the Left in recent years—the Occupy movement—had ambiguously defined enemies and used an organizing model that was easily replicated. These strategies were key elements of its success, but they also enabled a significant level of participation by the Right. Though it is tempting to gloss over or deny that reality, the Left would benefit from beginning to grapple with it.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has often been portrayed as the Tea Party’s ideological mirror image: a left-wing response to the global economic crises that began in August 2007. Initiated with a tent city in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in mid-September 2011, spinoff “Occupations” soon spread across the United States and then to cities across the globe. These protests, which targeted the federal government’s cozy relationship with the banking interests that caused the economic collapse, channeled the mounting anger of those most devastated by the economic meltdown, especially debt-ridden students, the unemployed, and people who lost homes in the subprime mortgage crisis.

But this mainstream-media view tends to gloss over the involvement of right-wing and conspiracist groups in Occupy. In the perception of many participants, the Right’s presence was largely limited to a lone homeless man who paraded antisemitic signs around Zuccotti, which became the basis of a right-wing “smear” campaign. More recently, venture capitalists like Tom Perkins have slandered Occupy, absurdly comparing its attack on wealth inequality to the Nazi persecution of Jews.¹ Because of this, many progressives plug their ears when they hear about right-wing groups and Occupy. (In this essay, OWS refers to the New York City occupation, while Occupy refers to the movement in general.)
Certainly, Occupy was always a largely left-leaning event. But right-wing participation has been the norm rather than the exception within recent left-wing U.S. movements—including the antiglobalization, antiwar, environmental, and animal rights movements—and Occupy was no exception.² Right-wing groups inserted their narrative about the Federal Reserve into the movement’s visible politics; used Occupy’s open-ended structure to disseminate conspiracy theories (antisemitic and otherwise) and White nationalism; promoted unfettered capitalism; and gained experience, skills, and political confidence as organizers in a mass movement that, on the whole, allowed their participation.
Ideally, none of these things should have happened. Advocates for social justice need to assess the motivations, extent, and substance of right-wing participation in Occupy—just as has been done with past movements. Despite the painful feelings it might evoke, it is time for this process to start.

The problem of finance capital and ambiguous enemies

The original call for OWS from Adbusters magazine said the demonstrators themselves would decide on the “one demand” of the occupation, but this never materialized. Instead, the eminently populist slogan “We are the 99%” became their rallying cry. The one percent—often assumed to be those whose household incomes were over $500,000—was obviously associated with “Wall Street,” the focus of the demonstration.³ But many people with that kind of income were not associated with Wall Street at all. And, in any case, what exactly was Wall Street: the New York Stock Exchange? Banks? Bankers? Global corporations? The Federal Reserve? And who were the one percent: Crony capitalists specifically? Capitalists generally? The rich? Political elites? The Bilderberg Group? The Rothschild family? Jews? Or—as one popular conspiracy theorist had it—our reptilian overlords?

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But in addition to this general, populist appeal for uniting the people against the elites, there was one specific piece of common ground. While few right-wing actors see capitalism as a system to be abolished, many are harsh critics of finance capital, especially in its international form. This critique unites antisemites, who believe that Jews run Wall Street; libertarian “free marketers,” who see the Federal Reserve as their enemy; and advocates of “producerist” narratives, who want “productive national capital” (such as manufacturing and agriculture) to be cleaved from “international finance capital” (the global banking system and free-trade agreements).

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In Occupy the most common demand of the various right-wing and conspiracy groups—especially those who openly called for Left-Right unity—was for the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Whether this is an issue actually shared by the Left, or just an attempt to get the Left to support right-wing policies, is another question.
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The initial controversy over antisemitism

The Right’s participation was far from limited to a handful of antisemites, but it is nonetheless true that Occupy’s attacks on finance capital attracted many of them, since such attacks were easily integrated into their fantasies of Jews controlling the banking industry. (Rather than explicitly naming Jews as the villain, antisemites often instead demonize a subgroup that they identify as Jewish, such as Zionists, international bankers, neoconservatives, “the Frankfurt School”—or Wall Street.)
Adbusters, the magazine that initially sparked OWS, has an especially troublesome past. Its editor and co-founder, Kalle Lasn, published an article in 2004 criticizing neoconservatives by invoking numerous antisemitic narratives. The article included a list of prominent neoconservatives with marks next to the Jewish names. Responding to widespread criticism, Lasn denied that he was antisemitic but showed no understanding of why the narrative of the article was offensive. More recently, the magazine has published articles by antisemitic writer and musician Gilad Atzmon.⁵ This certainly raises the question of whether Adbusters’s choice of Wall Street as a target may have been shaped by narratives influenced by antisemitism.
Some mainstream right-wing media attempted to discredit OWS as being primarily antisemitic from the outset.

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The result was that many Occupy protestors on the Left felt that they were being unfairly “smeared” as antisemites by the mainstream Right in an attempt to discredit the movement as a whole, and, furthermore, that these claims were without merit.⁹ This fear of subversion created an atmosphere of denial and a general consensus that there was no involvement in Occupy by those further to the Right than Ron Paul.
Right-wing and conspiracist participation in Occupy was nonetheless real, and it involved more than 20 groups, prominent figures, and media outlets. These included Ron Paul supporters, Alex Jones, Oath Keepers, David Icke, We Are Change, Tea Party members, National-Anarchists, Attack the System, the Pacifica Forum, American Free Press, LaRouchites, Counter-Currents, the American Freedom Party, American Front, David Duke, the American Nazi Party, White Revolution, and others. (A detailed account of their participation is available separately in my essay, “Twenty on the Right in Occupy.”)¹⁰ Their involvement included attending planning meetings, taking part in the encampments, making appeals directed to the Occupiers, and co-opting online resources. They fell into four overlapping categories: anti-Federal Reserve activists, conspiracy theorists, antisemites, and White nationalists/neo Nazis.

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The “End the Fed!” factor and the conspiracy theorists

As Occupy Wall Street burgeoned, Ron Paul was campaigning for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Although there was no obvious mechanism organizing their participation, Paulists were at the OWS planning meetings, and they remained a fixture in the movement and appeared at almost all Occupations, though they were usually a small but vocal minority.

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The ambiguity of Occupy attracted a substantial number of Paul’s supporters, who in turn attracted a fair amount of media coverage for themselves. They gained general traction within Occupy because of their objection to the Federal Reserve’s bailout of the major banks after the financial collapse, and sometimes focused on its role in the subprime mortgage crisis. Counterintuitively for many, the lesson of the crisis for Paulists was the need for less—not more—federal involvement in the banking system.
Many others who wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve also became involved in Occupy; most supported Paul’s candidacy. Alex Jones, one of the most popular U.S. conspiracy theorists (although not a consistent supporter of Occupy), attempted to crash the movement by calling for a national event on Oct. 6, 2011, to “Occupy the Fed.” Jones said that, contrary to media portrayals of Occupy as left-leaning, “The people on the ground … understand the Federal Reserve is the central organization empowering this world government system. This is a revolt against banker occupation.”¹²
At the same time, the Oath Keepers organization, in concert with Jones and others, concocted a national push to insert “End the Fed!” rhetoric into Occupy under a call to “Occupy the Occupation!” (Oath Keepers, which holds armed marches, recruits current and former military and law enforcement employees who swear to “uphold the Constitution,” and is driven by conspiracies about the coming One World Government.) It also helped establish an encampment in Occupy Los Angeles and attempted to recruit there.¹³
Another Fed critic was David Icke, known for his metaconspiracy theory that the global elite are descendants of reptilian aliens who seek to enslave humanity—a story that weaves in classic antisemitic narratives. His “Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor” video, which promotes anti-Federal Reserve and related economic conspiracies, has about 350,000 views. He also made an hour-long “ad-lib documentary” in Zuccotti Park just after the encampment was evicted by authorities.¹⁴ Icke’s followers were active in both U.S. and U.K. Occupations.
Other conspiracists who worked in Occupy include We Are Change (WAC), an international 9/11 “Truther” group. Luke Rudkowski, the group’s founder, is a prolific video blogger and is well-known for his paparazzi-style interviews. On site at OWS from the first day, he did extensive video coverage at Zuccotti Park and is also featured in David Icke’s videos.
Members of WAC New York City, a splinter faction, were also active in OWS, including Danny Panzella, a Tea Party activist who ran for state office in 2010. Even before OWS, Panzella organized demonstrations against the downtown Manhattan Federal Reserve, and he worked hard to refocus Occupy on an “End the Fed!” agenda. He appeared on the Fox News show Freedom Watch, in one of a number of the show’s broadcasts that encouraged libertarians to attend Occupy events.¹⁵ Other members of the group who worked with OWS included Craig FitzGerald, a “National-Anarchist” who promotes Holocaust denial and endorses White separatism.

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Online, antisemites have continued to be connected to Occupy projects. The most popular is an imposter Facebook page that mimics the “real” main one—and posts blatantly antisemitic content. It has attracted nearly 650,000 followers. (By contrast, the page affiliated with the organization that arose from the Zuccotti encampment has fewer than 500,000 followers.) It is unclear who the secretive administrators of the imposter site are, or why it became so popular. Attempts to remove it have so far been unsuccessful.¹⁷

One of the Far Right’s most enthusiastic Occupy champions was the American Free Press, an antisemitic weekly newspaper that is heir to Willis Carto’s media empire. It promoted Occupy even before the initial action, and for months it printed numerous articles supporting the movement, including firsthand reporting from various Occupations.¹⁸

Lyndon LaRouche’s Far Right sect was initially involved in OWS. It has long pushed for restoring Glass-Steagall, a New Deal-era act that limited the kinds of investments that banks could make, which was repealed in the late 1990s. Many believe that it would have prevented the housing crisis had it remained in effect. During Occupy, two bills were in Congressional committee that would have restored its provisions, and it was a priority for many Occupy protestors on the Left, as well. LaRouche’s followers were active in the OWS planning meetings, where Glass-Steagall’s restoration was one of six initial proposals for the never-realized “one demand.”¹⁹ LaRouche’s organization even claimed credit for making its reinstatement “a leading demand of the movement.”²⁰ Staff at Counter-Currents, a leading U.S. publisher of intellectual fascism and White nationalism, claimed to have attended the San Francisco and Oakland occupations, and they described the events as a valuable experience
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The most prominent figure on the Far Right to endorse Occupy was David Duke, a former Republican state representative from Louisiana and an elder statesman of the U.S. White nationalist movement. In a video from October 2011, “Occupy Zionist Wall Street,” Duke denounced the “Zionist thieves at the Federal Reserve” and “the most powerful criminal bank in the world, the Zionist Goldman Sachs, run by that vulture-nosed bottom feeder, Lloyd Blankfein.” The video has received more than 100,000 views to date. Duke later wrote on the White supremacist web forum Stormfront that “OWS is an opportunity. … Grab this opportunity!”²²
White nationalists also participated in some of the movement’s less high-profile iterations, such as Occupy Indianapolis (OI). Matt Parrott of Hoosier Nation—the local branch of the White nationalist American Third Position Party, now called the American Freedom Party—attended OI, and made a video interviewing participants. He wrote: “Our experience was peaceful and positive, affirming my suspicion that the majority of the Occupy Indianapolis attendees were fed up with the same corporate and federal abuses the majority of the Tea Party protesters are fed up with.”²³ His colleague “Tristania” [Nazi lover and Libertarian operative Jaenelle Antas] posted a comment on Stormfront saying that “it was a very good opportunity for outreach” and that “it’s about cherry picking people from those audiences and recruiting them to our side.”²⁴
  [That is a nutshell is what the "truth" movement con was for--recruiting people from the left to push a Nazi agenda]
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Why did they participate?

It is a mistake to view these right-wing groups and people as “infiltrating” Occupy, since in some cases they supported and helped organize it even before it started. Others were simply participating in a demonstration that loudly proclaimed that it was open to everyone and refused to define even its most basic concepts or demands.
Yet some on the Right did view their work as intentional co-optation. This is an intrinsic problem with the “franchise activism” model, or the practice of setting up a name and format that anyone can adopt and act under. While it allows for ease of replication and flexibility in action—one of Occupy’s great strengths—it also allows a variety of political visions to be pursued under its banner. For example, almost no mechanisms are available to deem the “imposter” Facebook page as illegitimate in relation to the “real” one.

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 The point it is not so much that the Left was significantly damaged by the Right’s presence in Occupy—though its presence did open the movement up to attacks in the mainstream media, which wasted the time and effort of organizers while turning off potential supporters. The deeper problem is that right-wing groups benefited from the Left’s willingness to give them a stage to speak from and an audience to recruit from.
[The problem with any "big tent" strategy in a nutshell]

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 As a result, the involvement of right-wing groups in Occupy raises questions about the dilemma of creating a movement that is open to “everyone” but must exclude certain elements if it is to avoid becoming a forum for right-wing populist protest. The basic format of the demonstrations—a populist attack on finance capital with ambiguous formulations—harmonized quite well with the political vocabulary and framework of the Right and conspiracy theorists.

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Are there any practical steps, then, that activists on the Left can take to minimize participation by the Right?
The administrators at the OccupyWallSt.org forum, the main online location of internal discussions, took one small step after they were deluged by conspiracy theorists and Far Right propagandists. In October 2011, they banned anyone who posted about Icke, LaRouche, Duke, or Jones.³¹
A more proactive first step would be to endorse an anti-oppression platform at the very start, such as the one created at Occupy Boston. Unlike the relatively vague statement from Zuccotti, Boston’s statement explicitly named the types of oppression that it opposed, including White supremacy, patriarchy, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Arab sentiment, Islamophobia, and anti-Jewish sentiment.³²
A member of the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement pointed out that if such a platform had been in place in Occupy Indianapolis, when racist sentiments were expressed towards people of color, there would have been an existing agreement to point to—and a basis for asking the larger group to intervene—rather than relying on nonexistent cooperation from the majority of the largely White participants. The HARM member also said that if racists had been confronted and expelled from the physical occupation, they likely would not have posted a positive video of their experience, felt welcome to continue to participate in the group’s social media, or written about their warm reception.³³ Not taking a proactive stance against antisemitism at Zuccotti led to significant bad press and much time and energy invested—often by Jewish participants—in putting out fires.

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[From the DUH files.   Let's see if the next mass left movement learns from Occupy's mistakes.]

Occupy Retospective at Lady Liberty Lamp, Ron Paul and General Lunacy

With a couple amusing jabs at the Ron Paul political machine.

A couple of friends of mine got heavy into Occupy, one with an unfortunate fixation on Ron Paul, no matter how much evidence of Paul's racist associations leaked out.    It was like a perverse version of voting for the lesser evil strategy, except that Ron Paul was actually the greater evil. 

Occupy itself was fraught with issues before the scammers and loons Lady Liberty analyses jumped on the bandwagon, but this doesn't take away from LLL excellent points.  

One observation from the getgo is most of the infiltration is by political groups, conartists, or corporate opportunists from both camps.  Very little directly by the "gubmint", though of course this is happening, but in a much more subtle way. 

Infiltrators of the Occupy Movement.


Popular activist movements attract all manner of scavengers and hangers-on, most of which seek to capitalize on the success of the more popular group to compensate for the fact that the majority of society regards them as a bunch of babbling kooks. The Occupy Movement is no different, with everyone from The American Spectator to Zeitgeist seeing the mass throng of people as easy pickings by which to enlarge their subscriber base and coffers. Some of these groups, however, see the Occupy Movement as a means to seek legitimacy for their own morally reprehensible causes, whether that takes the form of racism, fraud or selling out activists to the feds.
Here then, is a list of some of the most odious and dangerous groups and individuals currently sucking off the teat of the Occupy Movement. These people shouldn’t be considered part of the broader Occupy Movement, no matter what sort of “authority” they claim.

A list follows heavily represented by"Patriot" pro militia groups, including our "friend" Dr. Paul:

-The Ron Paul Movement

Ron Paul cult of wackos

Personality cult built around a racist old coot. Why they’re involved with this is puzzling, because the overall thrust of the movement has been agitating for increased government oversight on Wall Street and banks and increased taxes on millionaires, which is something Ron Paul categorically opposes as being “un constitutional.” They want your money and your vote.

 Underline mine.

As the savvy are aware, the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty was never far from the 9/11 "truth" conspiracy franchise, what with Ron Paul's wingman Lew Rockwell up to his eyeballs in Craig "killtown" Lazo's 911 movement forum. 

Zeitgeist deserves mention since it was pushed aggressively in "truther" circles at one time as a new "paradigm" or some-such.

911blogger.com/topics/zeitgeist

-Zeitgeist
UFO cult associated with something called The Venus Project, which is debunked in a very thorough manner here. The long and short of it is that they want your money.

One blog promoting Zeitgeist was frank about the vague mysteriousness or the promotional literature, often a "tell" of cult bait/switch:

 http://911blogger.com/news/2007-07-05/zeitgeist-movie-dvd-downloading-0

 Poor blogging
And poor website. After reading this blog, I know absolutely nothing about the film.
So I took the time to go to the website, and after looking at it, I know absolutely nothing about the film.
I don't even know why it would be a good reason and worth my time to go to the website, or watch the film.

 It's supposed to be a bit of a mystery
Therefore you don't get a long synopsis, only the Q: "What does Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve have in common?"
But in the blog, just look at the pictures here, the pictures.
Come on now, dear doughnut, just click the play button, you will not be wasting your time. Then tell us what you thought of it.

Seriously?   He needs to waste 2 hours of his life before he has any idea if it's worth it?

Another charming thread about Zeitgeist, with links to the Cassiopeia cult, and David Cole boosters like this guy:

Sorry pal, but after the monstrous 9/11 lie, why should anyone be shocked that 9/11 was not the first time history has been embellished and/or just plain made up? I would be surprised if 9/11 was the only or the biggest historical distortion of our ruling classes! War is always a tragedy for civilians, just ask the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oh it was a "just war" alright! It was very just the way everyone except the wealthy backers of both sides (the same people of course) got to suffer equally. 6 million is a symbolic number that has been used even after the official mainstream accepted number killed at Auschwitz was reduced from 4 million to 1 million. Everything you want people to think about those who question the official holocaust narrative is in fact true of those who helped to cause and have since manipulated, misrepresented, and profited from genuine suffering of Jewish people during WW2. The lies and gross exaggerations of Zionists were just atrocity propaganda sanctioned by the victors of the war and used to justify the theft of Palestinian land conveniently near the world's oil fields so that european imperialists could hide behind the seemingly noble cause of restitution to Jewish victims of German war crimes.
For those shocked to read such things, be sure to look up the work of Jewish holocaust revisionist David Cole, and see what ended up happening to him for daring to question the official history. 9/11 Truthers should learn from his experience trying to bring the truth to people who don't want to hear it!
____
♠
Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero
WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force
NEW---> check out our revamped site!

Real Truther on Tue, 06/12/2007 - 3:13pm.

 And this guy:

When you look at what was done to David Cole...

Historian David Irving and many others who only search for truth you will know that the we're in the "violently opposed" stage of Holocaust discussion. Prof. Tony Martin is another example of someone, who merely questioned the Jewish role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade (and no more so than any other European race), and was attacked & threatened mercilessly.
It's the information age folks, put it to use.

Big_D on Tue, 06/12/2007 - 10:10pm.

Yes, poor, poor, poor David Cole-Stein the Con Man:

 http://jennyquarx.blogspot.com/2014/01/holocaust-denier-cole-infiltrates.html

Turns out he was less "oppressed" than just wanted to reinvent himself after deep professional embarrassment.  It's notable none of Cole super fans have flocked back to him after his outing.

But I digress.    Or perhaps when loons infiltrate a popular movement, the lunacy is doomed to propagate.

Viva La Madness.

Let's end on a hilarious exchange from the comments:

M. Kaney

October 29, 2011 at 10:34 pm

By the way, I will be straight up and not try to dance around it. It is your classic portrayal of Ron as a crazy racist old coot.. that classic talking point that requires no independent thought or acknowledgement of a brilliant man is what gives you away as an infiltrator yourself. Like him or hate him, most of the people in the movement have been open enough to have intelligent and sincere conversations about the man and the ideas he champions. That’s what gave you away, your lack of intellectual humility.

Thelibertylamp

October 30, 2011 at 12:00 am

What ideas are those? That 95% of all black males in DC are criminals? That global warming is a myth? That evolution doesn’t exist? That the economy needs to be placed squarely in the hands of precious metals speculators? That labor unions have no right to exist? That abortion should be criminalized? That governmental regulation of private industry is a flawed idea? That banks and capitalism need to exist in an environment unhindered and unfettered by pesky regulations? Ron Paul’s only contribution is that his rhetoric variously demands either the auditing or abolition of the federal reserve– but there is no plan after that. We’ve always had a sincere position on Ron Paul: he’s a racist, theocratic old man who– apart from being profoundly anti-labor– is an advocate of the highest degree for the privileges of the ultra-rich to live without having to contribute anything to the communities in which they live.
And what about this term you threw in at the end– “intellectual humility?” Are you using this term because you mean to imply we are violating Mill’s credo that we are not humble about what we don’t know– that we are arrogant and close-minded? Or instead do you mean that we should humble ourselves before your sacred cows because we might offend you? Instead of readily dismissing criticisms of Paul for whatever reason, perhaps the entire Ron Paul movement needs to practice some intellectual humility of its own. I am sick and tired of seeing reams of denials and apologetics about Ron Paul’s racism in his own paper from members of his movement– when people are presented with incontrovertible statements (and even video footage, with regards to the evolution statement) from people about their political opinions, they generally understand those statements are those of the person making them. The overwhelming, rote, scripted chorus from the Ron Paul movement is “he didn’t really say that” or “he didn’t really mean that.” Who’s practicing “intellectual humility” now?

And for anyone in doubt about the source of Paul's opinion on Blacks, the environment, etc, look no further than Ron Paul's own new letters, written by Paul himself.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters
 http://wrongpaul.tumblr.com/post/16331619798/http-ronpaulnewsletters-blogspot-com

Ba-DUM.

Revleft: Occupy and the Tides Foundation

Insightful comment on Occupy.  The relevance of the Tides Foundation to the "Truth" movement will be the subject of a coming blog.
For clairty, while I agree with many of the author's points, I don't share their aversion to all foundation funding on principle. As long as the connections and goals are not fraudulent think tanks and foundations can have a place in a democratic socio-political system.

In comparison, Vis Mises and Campaign for Liberty are frauds: they pretend to be for everyone's freedoms, but actually are working to roll back civil rights.
 
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http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2269900&postcount=13

21st October 2011, 06:47

by  Prairie Fire 

 Regarding the "occupy" movement...

You need to consider that Adbusters itself is funded by the Tides foundation, who's contributors include prominent capitalists (Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, Heinz, Mellon, Gates, Hewlett, Packard, Johnson, Soros,etc).

So, Adbusters itself is co-opted from the beginning ( as are other moderate "left" Tides recipients: ACORN, Amnesty, Democracy Now, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, League of Women Voters, MoveOn.org, NAACP, PETA, Ploughshares, a bunch of anti-Tar Sands "environmentalist" organizations in Canada,etc), so it is fair to say, I think, that by following the money trail one can see whom the initiators of the "occupy" movement are taking marching orders from.

In my city with the "occupy" movement that sprang up, we noticed a marked disparity between the way that the city municipal government was actually quite accommodating to the "occupy" protesters, as opposed to how they handled large-scale demonstrations in previous years (i.e. G8, etc).

Contrary to all the claims that there is a media black out on the occupy movement, it seems to get front-page coverage in every publication and news outlet that I come across. Sure, some of the coverage is a bit displeased about what is taking place (of course the bourgeoisie have different factions with their own agendas, so some of the more die-hard rightist factions are going to gripe a bit), but ultimately the "occupy" coverage in the bourgeois press has translated into publicity and promotion for a movement that otherwise never would have went global.

While I'm told that some sectors of organized labour are starting to get involved in these things from city to city(i.e. some of the Postal Workers Shop stewards in my city), ultimately what stuck out to me most like a sore thumb was the total absence of the working class in the "occupy" movement, and that in and of itself was enough to get me to take a closer look at it.

While the anarcho-syndicalists that I know have been crowing at how it is a "movement without leaders!", it is also a movement without objectives. It is a movement without a program, a movement without tactics, and in the face of the very real attacks on labour across North America (in my country, the government is again passing back-to work legislation against the Air Canada workers, as they did previously this year against the Postal Workers), it is fulfilling a diversionary role and is undermining the fighting forces of the working class that were already in place, rather than strengthening them.

I know that many in my city were excited to run out into the milieu of the local "occupy" movement that sprang up, start disseminating literature, and bring some level of political coherence to the forces gathered.

Me, I avoided this movement like the plague for a few reasons:

1. What (class) forces where behind this endeavour

2. the working class, by and large, was not participating (let alone in a leadership role)

3. Marxist-Leninists organize on a definite basis (i.e. a given workplace, a community/town, an educational institution, etc), because this is the way to build concrete political forms and organizations, and these are the precondition to actually having some real socio-economic power and overthrowing the existing relations of things.

Best case scenario, the occupy movement is going to be like the Battle of Seattle, or similar movements. If I had to make a clairvoyant prediction, I would guess that:

* Frustrated petty-bourgeoisie students will hang out in the park at the centre of my city for a few days, their numbers constantly declining,

*The revisionists, anarchists and other "usual suspects" of the activist "scene" will come out of the wood-work and hand out conflicting literature and pamphlets to these people. Over-all, they will descend on the "occupy" movement like carrion birds on a rotting corpse, all the while declaring that this is the revolution (or at least a preliminary stage,), because they are too fucking lazy and incompetent to organize anything themselves, so they attach themselves to any mass-movement like a leech attaches itself to a swimmers leg, tailing the liberals and social-dems (again). It also doesn't help that they have no understanding what-so-ever of the class forces at work here.

* A few token reps from this or that Union will show up for a day or so, but ultimately the composition of those gathered will be Students and the usual suspects from activist circles.

* There will be some interesting experiments with forms of mass participatory democracy, but ultimately it will be self defeating because they are chasing an idealized conception of "consensus", rather than (perish the thought) Democratic Centralism, or any other majority decision making method that involves a majority decision and responsibility to commit to decisions that have been taken (even if you voted against them).

* This movement without a program will run out of steam within the month, and that everything will return to how it was.

* Several forces will be derailed from ongoing work that was already in progress and was not initiated by a post-modern bourgeois magazine.

This is the situation as I see it. While all of these hipsters keep trying to re-invent the wheel every decade, the tactics and game plan for a revolution are more or less unchanged for over century now.

What works: Organize the working class, Organize on a definite basis so that you actually have real power (i.e. if you organize in a work place, you can call a strike), have defined objectives, and by doing ongoing work among the people you will develop the subjective conditions for revolution because the more you lead the people into even the most minor confrontations with the status quo (i.e. wage and benefit disputes, etc), the more they learn first hand about the nature of the bourgeois state and stratified class society, and all reformist options are revealed as ineffective and are exhausted. Solidify these organizations into the party, and seize power as an organized class force from another organized class force (the bourgeois state).

What doesn't work: Gathering a bunch of students and random individuals downtown when a call is issued by a capitalist-backed "left" magazine, no agenda, no program, no participation of the working class, no real power or clout (because the random individuals gathered don't represent collectives with the power to disrupt production, etc), no organizational forms, no game plan, and waiting with signs in a given area until people get bored/see how ineffective it is and go home. 

That last paragraph 100% applies to people conned into the "Truth" movement:  leaders claiming to be experienced organizers just calling for random gatherings "in the streets"(or wherever).   And when it did "work", it was because is wasn't really random; it was the Alex Jones patriot base being rallied under the pretence of grass roots.  

It won't end well.