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A notable excerpt that I often see in quotation: (11) General Interference with Organizations and Production (a) Organizations and Conferences (1) Insist on
by dundarious 5y ago
A notable excerpt that I often see in quotation:
(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production
(a) Organizations and Conferences
(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
- mananaysiempre 5y agoThis resonates surprisingly well with the “Fuck nuance” paper in sociology[1], even if I can’t exactly pin down why. [1]: https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf
- tonypace 5y agoYou could readily add, "We need a more nuanced discussion of the situation," as another sabotage tactic.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoThis document makes plain that America's largest corporations and government have been thoroughly infiltrated by enemy saboteurs. What are we going to do about it?
- anamexis 5y agoLet's form a committee to decide on a plan.
- midasuni 5y agoI co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation is in. We kept it gray.
- phone8675309 5y agoSounds like it's time to start building guillotines, and if the the noblesse won't oblige then, by god, we make them.
- dang 5y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News? It leads to tedious internet threads and we're hoping for the opposite here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jazzyjackson 5y agothe french revolution wasn’t fun for anyone, and don’t be so confident on which side of the guillotine you’ll find yourself
- dundarious 5y agoIf you're referring to corporations like Google, where employees (until recently at least) were able to form groups and informal committees and have (sometimes) interminable debates, I think you're missing the important point that Google is not a democratic institution -- it has a strict hierarchy decided from the top, so it's pretty resistant to these tactics. It's the powerless, free-association, relatively democratic groups that are antagonistic to the hierarchy that are vulnerable to these tactics, and that are neutralized by them. I agree that representative democracies are definitely easy prey to these tactics though. I think this manual is most appropriately understood as an early reference for the operations of the FBI in COINTELPRO, etc. State employed agents-provocateur and saboteurs were some of the first to literally use these exact reference manuals domestically, and their targets were the various social and labor movements of the day.
- 34679 5y agoOthers are pointing out the similarities with corporate America, but I felt like I was reading the congressional playbook.
- xwolfi 5y agoMy God, it feels like work
- justinc8687 5y agoAm I the only one who thought this sounded exactly like local government?
- Natsu 5y agoThat's probably where they got these ideas from...
- mpyne 5y agoNope. I've had this exact page printed out an posted on my office cube at Navy military HR headquarters by 2018, and independently a separate Navy office had also been introducing this into innovation briefs they give. But complaining about this has not helped us fix things quite yet either :-/
- peteradio 5y agoWell what if all that we can do is run interference on entropy. By executing perfect uselessness at a higher order the local councilman fights against the gnawing maw of the HOA.
- egberts1 5y agoIt is what the US corporations should be looking out for when dealing with foreign nationals.
- Jerrrry 5y agoAccenture, is that you?
- dmix 5y ago> (1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. Channels, aka processes in the corporate world.
- notreallyserio 5y ago> (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. > (6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. Hey, this sounds like the sort of thing that goes on in everyday discussions on the Internet. And likely for the same ultimate purpose.
- unbanned 5y agoThis just seems like normal human behaviour...
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoWhoever wrote this travelled in time to observe one of my fraternity's meetings before writing the manual. Points 2, 4, are 5 particularly poignant.