Agent Provacateur?

Posted on August 7, 2002 in IRC/Chat

We had a guy come into the #politics channel today, fishing for support for the idea of violent revolution and secession. I spoke with him for a moment, just to judge where he was coming from. Why is it, he asked, that we can never effect change without revolution? I replied that I felt that we didn’t need violence to effect change. Change usually occured after economic disaster. He kept pressing. But you need to take action, right? I said that I put my trust in the nonviolent civil wars that we schedule every two years in this country. They’re called elections.

I set him to /ignore. In this day when the Attorney General raises the most corrupt of snitches to an honored place at the table of citizens — over those who work for peace and justice — one can’t be too careful. Past “law and order” administrations have pulled the very stunt. One friend of mine, who was active during the sixties, responded to my warning that there might be such a person coming onto our channel thusly:

[22:19] EmperorNorton, yeah, we noticed that back in the 60s. We used to lock arms, surround him, and march him over to the cops. Funny, no arrest record for any of them was ever found

My position had always been this: I don’t organize or train to kill or maim or destroy for anyone.