Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes ‘Cognitive Infiltration’

Marc Estrin
The Rag Blog
Thursday, January 14, 2010

RELATED: Obama Information Czar Outlined Plan For Government To Infiltrate Conspiracy Groups

Cass Sunstein is President
Obama’s Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed
Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take
up the question of “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.”
(J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the
president’s ear. This is a man who would process information and
regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e
suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of
extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of
extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting
either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously)
will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting
doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such
groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the
language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

• It is “extremists” who “supply” “conspiracy theories.”
• Their “hard core” must be “broken up” with distinctive tactics. What tactics?
• “Infiltration” (”cognitive”) of groups with
  questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is
  to infiltrate?
• “Government agents or their allies,” virtually (i.e.
  on-line) or in “real-space” (as at meetings), and
  “either openly or anonymously,” though
  “infiltration” would imply the latter. What will these
  agents do?
• Undermine “crippled epistemology” — one’s theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?
• By “planting doubts” which will “circulate.” Will these doubts be beneficial?
• Certainly. Because they will introduce “cognitive diversity.”

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government
infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian
Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed?
Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It’s easy to destroy groups with “cognitive
diversity.” You just take up meeting time with arguments to the
point where people don’t come back. You make protest signs which
alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from
pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the
agents are called “provocateurs” — even if only
“cognitive.” One learns to smell or deal with them in a
group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial
exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial
groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and
among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization
and communication” — which Sunstein applauds as
“desirable.” “[N]ew recruits will be suspect and
participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each
other’s bona fides.” (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein’s article is available for download here.