One of the first mentions if the Hegelian Dialectic I ever came across spoke about techniques. One technique was to infiltrate town halls, city council, and school board meetings. They would use 3 or 4 people, who would enter the meeting separately, blend in, and spread out among the seating. As the meeting progressed, the infiltrators would submit questions and comments, remaining calm and well-spoken, while putting forth the ideas (socialist, communist) the Dialectic wished to promote. The result was a “quelling” impact on the crowd. Since public speaking is fraught with anxiety for most people anyway, they don’t want to speak up when there is a slight possibility they might be in the minority. By sprinkling the activists throughout the crowd, they give the impression there are more people with this mindset when really, there are only 3 or 4 who were sent prepared and with a purpose. It has the effect of shutting other potential objectors down. So if you are an activist city council member who wants to put a data warehouse in the middle of a nice neighborhood (because you’re going to get a nice fat donation check to your campaign fund) and know that the neighbors are going to oppose it, you send people to infiltrate the crowd and ask questions about how safe this will make the neighborhood…questions which the council members are already prepared to answer. Any objectors will be shrugged off or passed over and not even allowed to speak. (Seen this first hand, if you couldn’t tell.)
But if you are aware of the technique, you can easily spot these people within the crowd and watch how they utilize this form of crowd control. Then, of course, you can reverse the technique and use it against them at THEIR meetings, as I suspect was done here.
