Penguin Cop

[sabotabby]

For reasons, I have been reading extensively about the Okhrana's surveillance and infiltration of Russian émigré communities from the 1880 to early 1900s lately. It's some pretty wild stuff. One of the things that strikes me is just how disorganized and weird a lot of these operations are, like, "I seduced this guy*, drugged him, kidnapped him, and got him on a boat to Russia, without making sure that the boat had enough fuel to get to Russia without stopping at one of the many countries where public sympathies are in his favour." Or the sheer number of high-profile assassins who were actually Okhrana agents but still assassinated Tsarist officials. And the sheer number of Okhrana officers who, when given the opportunity, went "fuck it, these guys are assholes" and told the revolutionaries everything they knew. Or the ones who went, "hey, let's get some occultists involved, for reasons."

You can't make this shit up.

You can justify it somewhat because people back then didn't have the intertubes or the countless books on espionage best practices that we all have access to now. They were just kinda making it up as they went along. Surely, sting operations against leftists are smarter now?

Enter the RCMP.

RCMP tracked Toronto activists with fake Facebook profile

Has a waddle of penguins ever “liked” your Facebook page? If so, your account may have been monitored by the RCMP.
...
“Will there be food and drinks?” an officer wrote on the Facebook page for an anti-Novotel union rally in 2012. “Cause I am on a fixed student income and will bring some buddies to add to the numbers if we can grab some free food.”
...
The social media account, which went by the name of Bebop Arooney and had a profile picture of three penguins frolicking on a beach, tracked the Facebook pages of more than two dozen organizations in Toronto, ranging from Black Lives Matter Toronto and Idle No More to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Six Jewish and Palestinian groups were also monitored.

WWF wrestler Mick Foley also attracted the Mounties’ attention. A second RCMP social media account — @angrycitizen123 — followed Foley on Twitter."

So, yeah. Don't friend penguins on FB, okay. Also, the RCMP is watching all of us, but kinda badly.

* Vladmir Burtsev. Obviously.

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Hopeyfully, you've got a very fair idea of just how much this made me movey my belly (smiling Tigresse icon). Hehe(he).

[sabotabby]

My local friends and I are killing ourselves laughing over this today.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

There are not enough heads and desks in the world.

[sabotabby]

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Penguins. Huh.

Do you suppose they've at least changed their profile picture by now?

It's really not all John le Carré, is it.

[sabotabby]

And John le Carré is all about demystifying and unglamourizing espionage. But at least his spies are competent.

I went looking to see if the profile was still there and nope, doesn't look like it.

[elsewhereangel.livejournal.com]

if getting I cultists involved is wrong, I don't want to be right!

[sabotabby]

Well, Madame Blavatsky was kind of cool, despite being essentially an old-timey version of a woo-woo anti-vaxxer, but Rachkovsky was cartoonishly evil in the way they don't even make anymore outside of North Korea and Republican National Conventions.

Unsurprised

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

A man I know very well (on account of him siring and sometimes raising me, not mention that we now work together on some projects and live only a few blocks apart) was the target of decades of harassment and psychological torture at the hands of the aforementioned spooks. This despite the fact that the CP (in the guise of Labour Progressive Party) judged him to have either "lumpenproletariat or petty bourgeois tendencies," followed shortly by the decision by the local Ottawa-Hull district committe that he was too much an individualist for them to take any more of his dues.

Anyway, what the Communist Party rejected, the RCMP tried to recruit and, when he refused to stooge, they set about putting pressure on employers and on him personally, practicing dirty tricks. Though they caused more than a little damage to his life and livelihood, he was always struck more than anything else by their gross stupidity and utter lack of imagination. "Malicious morons," was and is a common term he used. (Some of this is documented, by the way, in Len Scher's book on the subject of blacklisting in the last century, The Un-Canadians, if you ever have a hankering.

Re: Unsurprised

[sabotabby]

Hey, you don't need to be a good communist to be under surveillance! I still want to know why they were surveilling the wrestler.

Anyway, your dad sounds completely rad. As does the book.

Re: Unsurprised

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

...you don't need to be a good communist to be under surveillance!

That's for damned sure. I don't think I'd describe my dad as "rad" (of course, I wouldn't describe any thing or body as "rad" — a generational difference between us, no doubt), but he certainly helped make my childhood more interesting than it might have been.

Serge

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

Did your recent reading include read Victor Serge's What Everyone Should Know About State Repression? If not, you might want to check it out. It's short and right on topic.

Re: Serge

[sabotabby]

I have not! I'll add it to the list.

Also, hi!