British activist exposed as undercover cop

[Konstantin]

He spent years actively ridiculing my veganism and that of vegan social centres, activist caterers etc. and kept trying to offer me non-vegan food

Wasn't he meant to be infiltrating animal rights and enviromental groups? Strange behaviour for someone in that position.

[JohnBarleycorn]

So he has gone 'native' perhaps, and will probably end up on this forum, having turned vegan !

If he goes vegan I'll eat my favourite hat.

He spent years actively ridiculing my veganism and that of vegan social centres, activist caterers etc. and kept trying to offer me non-vegan food (I'm used to not having to read labels with people in my circle, but I always had to with him; he never considered it rude or a breach of trust.)

I was shocked to see him at an animal rights event and wondered whether, at long last, he'd seen the light.

If he has gone vegan, it is due to some kind of ground-breaking, earth-shattering epiphany. I doubt it. I can't see him ever going vegan. Or truly giving a shit about anything other than sex, money and having a laugh.

But then, strange things happen...

Sounds like a complete shit !

But anyone who could do what he has done is never going to change. That level of falseness, betrayal and deception has to be natural. I don't think it can learnt.

Total bastard !

[Hiking Fox]

Wasn't he meant to be infiltrating animal rights and enviromental groups? Strange behaviour for someone in that position.

Like I've said before in a different thread, the radical environmental movement is dominated by ex-vegans (most are now freegan, cos it's cooler than being vegan) who are still mostly or completely vegetarian and who actively campaign to promote veganism, but who want to eat cheese and milk chocolate themselves. The catering at places like Climate Camp is totally vegan, partly cos that includes everybody, partly for hygiene reasons (you don't need fridges to store dried pulses, rice and veg) and partly because the majority of activists want to set a good vegan example "to the masses" even if they aren't totally vegan themselves.

Every now and then, there's a really outspoken activist who eats meat and goes on and on about "supporting local farmers" etc. They get argued with a lot, but any movement needs active members and has to be inclusive, so they are tolerated in the same way that people-haters like the ones banned from here a while back are tolerated in animal rights groups, even though their views are in the minority.

I lived with Mark for 18 months (though he was only around 1-2 days a week; he said he was working in London and we believed him cos he had plenty of money and I know for a fact that there's loads of rope access work going in London that's well-paid) and during that time I didn't get on with the guy a lot of the time. I had him down as a hanger-on who didn't really care about environmental issues, but wanted to be cool and edgy and have an instant circle of friends. people like that are not unusual in movements, though they don't usually stick around that long.

However, despite this, Mark was a good house mate; he paid his bills, he was tidy and considerate and he was always offering people lifts, salvaging furniture and things like that. basically, he was easy-going, and in a movement full of intense people, easy-going people who can drive are sought after, believe me.

I say "movement"; that implies one green movement with a fixed identity, which is misleading. There are loads of people with diverging views who come under the broad umbrella of "social justice movement" and they come together for events like the G8 camp in Gleneagles (5 years ago), anti-war protests, the Anarchist Bookfair etc. Social Centres like the Sumac Centre in Nottingham host a wide range of events by groups as diverse as home-educating parents and animal rights groups. All a police infiltrator has to do is hang out in a place like that, get to know the regulars and find out what is going on. People's tendency to splash everything over the internet makes it even easier. Lots of lessons needed to be learned, so plenty of good will come out of this in the long term.

Mark Stone never showed the slightest interest in animal rights during the time I knew him, which was why I was startled to see him giving climbing lessons at the Animal Rights Summer gathering last August. I wondered whether at long last, all his hob-nobbing with euro anarchists had caused him to make the connection between human and animal rights and that he was there to learn. I was pleased to see him and we sat and watched a film that he really enjoyed (or pretended to).

Lots of men disliked Mark because they thought he was macho, but that's hardly a reason to blank someone and try to throw them out of a movement. protest movements will always have this issue; how inclusive do you be with people who don't fit "the stereotype"?

[beforewisdom]

What a weird story !

So he has gone 'native' perhaps, and will probably end up on this forum, having turned vegan !

Do we forgive him, and give him a second chance, or feel he is forever tainted and can never be trusted ?

The latter, I suspect............

I would say give him "door number 1". He gave up a career and risked jail. Others only gave up animal products.

[beforewisdom]

He spent years actively ridiculing my veganism and that of vegan social centres, activist caterers etc. and kept trying to offer me non-vegan food

Wasn't he meant to be infiltrating animal rights and enviromental groups? Strange behaviour for someone in that position.

Only in one sense.

An undercover cop trying to fit in would never act like that, so if he acted like that, nobody would think he was an undercover cop.

There is a guy in the US from South Carolina who the community thinks is either pulling that gimmick, is a stupid undercover cop or is a regular person acting in a foolish way to attract suspicion. He popped up out of nowhere at a convention several years ago, working the room and telling everyone how he wanted to get into AR. He had a memo pad out and was writing down everyone's names and asking people for as many names of people they knew for AR connections. As soon as you told him all of the names or that you didn't have any he lost interest in you. A year later pictures of him with a very short haircut, on knee by a flag pole show up. During the whole time he claimed to be unemployed with no visible means of support

Like I wrote, really unique vegan or really stupid undercover cop.

[beforewisdom]

Like I've said before in a different thread, the radical environmental movement is dominated by ex-vegans (most are now freegan, cos it's cooler than being vegan) who are still mostly or completely vegetarian and who actively campaign to promote veganism, but who want to eat cheese and milk chocolate themselves.

Here in the U.S. a number of still vegan, ex-AR activists go to work for the environmental movement. The AR groups here tend to be run by eccentric monarch founders that pay extremely little, but supply a lot of needless workplace drama. A number of activists take the same journey through a core number of groups, eventually reaching the last of them, deciding that they still want to spend their waking hours making the world a better place and conclude they can do that by working for another movement.

However, despite this, Mark was a good house mate; he paid his bills, he was tidy and considerate and he was always offering people lifts, salvaging furniture and things like that. basically, he was easy-going, and in a movement full of intense people, easy-going people who can drive are sought after, believe me.

That kind of thing has always been a source of discomfort to me. I first noticed it when I worked in a food collective during college. People who came from a mainstream background, who held the shortest list of the "group's values" tended to be the most easy going and the easiest to get along with. Noticing that happen a few times in a row made me start noticing that the cause is not the only reason why people get involved with a cause.

On the upside, I love to talk and talk to everyone. I've heard stories from right wing Christians that they have similar drama in their own groups as the left does. So, I think the "drama" is what you get in any group of people who are willing to leave the mainstream. Going from there, maybe right wing groups have drama and individuals, who being more mainstream, don't quite fit in but are much more easily gotten along with than the "faithful".

Lots of men disliked Mark because they thought he was macho, but that's hardly a reason to blank someone and try to throw them out of a movement. protest movements will always have this issue; how inclusive do you be with people who don't fit "the stereotype"?

An interesting comment. A few years back I had some vegan women friends tell me that they thought I was attractive because my personality was more masculine than many vegan men they had met. This surprised me because usually I go around wondering if I am being enough of a go-getter. I have met a number of passive-aggressive, approval junkie vegan "nice guys", but I never saw things the way my women friends did.

[beforewisdom]

Here is an interesting video about the exposed undercover cop. The man is Will Potter, vegan, journalist and author of ( book and web site of the same name ) "Green Is The New Red". He writes about the persecution of environmental and animal rights terrorists.

The Aloyna Show belongs to "Russian Television" (rt.com) network. An online Russian news network. The Aloyna Show has an office in Washington D.C.. It is a good show, but I gave up watching it after I found out their affiliations. However, I live in Will Potter's area, have met him a number of times and I believe he speaks the truth.

What really got me and I'm surprised nobody made the point was that this cop was deep undercover for 7 years. That would have sounded extreme even during the Cold War. How can they justify those extremes when their are international mafias, terrorists and right wing hate groups committing violence running around?

[xrodolfox]

I lived with Mark for 18 months (though he was only around 1-2 days a week.

That is so crazy.

What I think is worst is that it makes trusting activists that much harder. For a real community and movement to work, we need real solidarity. That breach of trust is almost as bad as the legal activities posed by police itself. Horrible.

I don't ever consider people as evil or good. Mark Stone, however, did a terribly unethical thing. I care less how he deals with his own demons. What is important is that the community use this experience to heal, and consider how to keep itself safe, yet have an open solidarity which can allow real change to blossom.

[beforewisdom]

There is the trust issue you mention.

There are other things. In the video above Potter mentioned that some undercover agents posing as activists encourage gossip within the community to promote division. That made me think. I used to belong to a semi-secret email list for AR activists in my city. The list was one big divisive bicker fest. People learned to hate and not work with people they didn't even meet in person. These days there is an entire vegan web board like that and at least a dozen blogs that are about nothing other than vegans back biting vegans. The sad thing is I don't think any of that is the result of undercover agents, but it is worse. It is what the community chooses to do to itself, something an enemy would encourage us to do.

[Gelert]

Mark Stone, however, did a terribly unethical thing

.

Mark Kennedy apparently did some unethical things along the way of doing his job which was to be Mark Stone, but the notion of "changing sides" or "going native" is curious seeing as the recent headlines stem from the evidence he planned to give under oath. Arguably he decided to do something terribly ethical and tell the truth as he saw it. In a country of smooth justice that should not be a case of changing sides.

What really got me and I'm surprised nobody made the point was that this cop was deep undercover for 7 years. That would have sounded extreme even during the Cold War. How can they justify those extremes when their are international mafias, terrorists and right wing hate groups committing violence running around?

Oh, there were people under for a lot longer than seven years in the Cold war, and even its post-USSR sequel. Some of them on their side only came to light when their equivalent of Julian Assange filled up his car with files and drove it to one of our embassies in Eastern Europe. Historical penetrations decades-to-half-century old including some still in place came to light. You're talking about an era when one of our best/only early warning systems of an imminent nuclear strike was someone breathing heavily down a phone to the embassy in Moscow, so you can only presume the reciprocal is true.

I think the answer to your question is posed in the question itself. Intensive penetration of target groups by human assets has worked exceptionally well for some of the agencies involved. To take right wingers first, in the nineties groups such as combat 18 were so successfully infiltrated it eventually became a strategy to use it as a magnet for nutjobs. As for terrorism, looking at Northern Ireland, there are apocryphal tales of meetings within the provisional IRA to decide if someone was a tout (informant) where the quorum consisted solely of touts themselves, all working in a compartmentalized fashion for different handlers and therefore unaware of each other's roles with the net result that the tout-in-question got kneecapped or worse as nobody in the meeting broke cover. The extent of penetration went to very senior levels within the republican terrorist movement. It's a standing joke that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are both on the payroll. The sentiment underneath both the joke and story is true though, and it's acknowledged that these tactics played a major role in achieving a vague semblance of peace over the water.

Now on the basis of those experiences if you subscribe to the worldview that large-scale, long-term penetration is not only an useful tool but a prerequsite for quelling your enemies and dissidents, the extent of investment in this strategy is a no-brainer for the agencies involved. Spy fiction presents us with a much truncated version of how these things work ("Now pay attention, 007, here is a passport in the name of Jones. Your Aunt Kitty lives at 42 Green Street and you went to school at Dover Comprehensive; the school records were lost in a fire in 1992. Walk in the front door, tell them the nightingale sings in Berkeley square and ask for Mr. Big") whereas building a legend, let alone trust and accessing the target groups can take substantial amounts of time and money.

So given all of this, the only surprise is that he (and others) appear to be warrant card carrying members of the constabulary and not touts. Perhaps it has to do with reliablity of evidence or something political, but the investment to return ratio of saturation with touts is much higher since they are already in place and can only be paid (if at all) with sums that could naturally accrued in their normal lives and not the largesse claimed here. I would find it highly unlikely that there is a paucity of individuals with the right characteristics to be approached if not turned. Maybe that's tomorrow's news?

[Clem Snide]

Hey HF, that's interesting stuff, thanks. I find this whole story fascinating, nice to get some inside info.