HOW COLLECTIVISTS USE THE DIAMOND TACTIC TO SWAY PUBLIC MEETINGS AND HOW TO THWART THEM

In the 1960s, I came across a small training manual distributed by the Communist Party that showed how a small group of people – as few as four – could dominate a much larger group and sway the outcome of any action taken by that group. It was called the Diamond Technique. The principle is based on the fact that people in groups tend to be effected by mass psychology. They derive comfort and security from being aligned with the majority, especially if controversy or conflict is involved. Even if they do not like what the majority is doing, if they believe they are in the minority, they tend to remain silent and resigned to the fact that the majority should rule. This being the case, the Diamond Techniques is designed to convince the group that as few as four people represent the majority. Here is the strategy:

1. Plan ahead of time what action you want the group to take: nominate or oppose a candidate, support or oppose an issue, heckle a speaker, or whatever. Everyone on your team must know exactly what they are going to do, including contingency plans.

2. Team members should arrive at the meeting separately and never congregate together.

3. Team players should arrive early enough to take seats around the outside of the assembly area, roughly in the shape of a diamond. They must not sit together.

4. The object of the tactic is place your people around the perimeter of the audience so that, when they begin to take action, those in the center will have to do a lot of head turning to see them – to the right, then the left, then the rear of the room, then the front, etc. The more they turn their heads, the greater the illusion of being surrounded by people in agreement with each other, and the more they will be convinced that these people represent the majority opinion. I have seen this tactic used by collectivists at numerous public meetings over the years, and I have participated in it myself on several occasions when confronting collectivists in their own tightly held organizations. It works.

The only way to thwart the Diamond Tactic is to always be prepared to match it with your own team. Never take a meeting for granted, especially if something important is scheduled to transpire, such as nomination of officers. Even a simple gathering to hear an important speaker can turn into a nightmare if opponents send in hecklers. So, always plan for the worst and be prepared to spring into action with comments from the floor such as: “I want to make it clear that these people do not speak for me. I am in total opposition to what they stand for. In fact, I would like to ask them to identify themselves. Who are you? Why did you come to this meeting? What is your agenda?” If comments such as this are heard from three or four people around the outside of the room, the meeting will be very exciting, but the tactic will be defused.

How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle - the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to “oneness of mind” (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the holistic society, the holistic earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, “oneness of mind” will supposedly occur. In group settings, the Delphi Technique is an unethical method of achieving consensus on controversial topics. It requires well-trained professionals, known as “facilitators” or “change agents,” who deliberately escalate tension among group members, pitting one faction against another to make a preordained viewpoint appear “sensible,” while making opposing views appear ridiculous.

In her book Educating for the New World Order, author and educator Beverly Eakman makes numerous references to the need of those in power to preserve the illusion that there is “community participation in decision-making processes, while in fact lay citizens are being squeezed out.”

The setting or type of group is immaterial for the success of the technique. The point is that, when people are in groups that tend to share a particular knowledge base, they display certain identifiable characteristics, known as group dynamics, which allows the facilitator to apply the basic strategy.

The facilitators or change agents encourage each person in a group to express concerns about the programs, projects, or policies in question. They listen attentively, elicit input from group members, form “task forces,” urge participants to make lists, and in going through these motions, learn about each member of a group. They are trained to identify the “leaders,” the “loud mouths,” the “weak or non-committal members,” and those who are apt to change sides frequently during an argument.

Suddenly, the amiable facilitators become professional agitators and “devil’s advocates.” Using the “divide and conquer” principle, they manipulate one opinion against another, making those who are out of step appear “ridiculous, unknowledgeable, inarticulate, or dogmatic.” They attempt to anger certain participants, thereby accelerating tensions. The facilitators are well trained in psychological manipulation. They are able to predict the reactions of each member in a group. Individuals in opposition to the desired policy or program will be shut out.

The Delphi Technique works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school children, and community groups. The “targets” rarely, if ever, realize that they are being manipulated. If they do suspect what is happening, they do not know how to end the process. The facilitator seeks to polarize the group in order to become an accepted member of the group and of the process. The desired idea is then placed on the table and individual opinions are sought during discussion. Soon, associates from the divided group begin to adopt the idea as if it were their own, and they pressure the entire group to accept their proposition.

Consistent use of this technique to control public participation in our political system is causing alarm among people who cherish the form of government established by our Founding Fathers. Efforts in education and other areas have brought the emerging picture into focus.

In the not-too-distant past, the city of Spokane, in Washington state, hired a consultant to the tune of $47,000 to facilitate the direction of city government. This development brought a hue and cry from the local population. The ensuing course of action holds an eerie similarity to what is happening in education reform. A newspaper editorial described how groups of disenfranchised citizens were brought together to “discuss” what they felt needed to be changed at the local government level. A compilation of the outcomes of those “discussions” influenced the writing of the city/county charter.

That sounds innocuous. But what actually happened in Spokane is happening in communities and school districts all across the country. Let’s review the process that occurs in these meetings.

First, a facilitator is hired. While his job is supposedly neutral and non-judgmental, the opposite is actually true. The facilitator is there to direct the meeting to a preset conclusion.

The facilitator begins by working the crowd to establish a good-guy-bad-guy scenario. Anyone disagreeing with the facilitator must be made to appear as the bad guy, with the facilitator appearing as the good guy. To accomplish this, the facilitator seeks out those who disagree and makes them look foolish, inept, or aggressive, which sends a clear message to the rest of the audience that, if they don’t want the same treatment, they must keep quiet. When the opposition has been identified and alienated, the facilitator becomes the good guy - a friend - and the agenda and direction of the meeting are established without the audience ever realizing what has happened.

Next, the attendees are broken up into smaller groups of seven or eight people. Each group has its own facilitator. The group facilitators steer participants to discuss preset issues, employing the same tactics as the lead facilitator.

Participants are encouraged to put their ideas and disagreements on paper, with the results to be compiled later. Who does the compiling? If you ask participants, you typically hear: “Those running the meeting compiled the results.” Oh-h! The next question is: “How do you know that what you wrote on your sheet of paper was incorporated into the final outcome?” The typical answer is: “Well, I’ve wondered about that, because what I wrote doesn’t seem to be reflected. I guess my views were in the minority.”

That is the crux of the situation. If 50 people write down their ideas individually, to be compiled later into a final outcome, no one knows what anyone else has written. That the final outcome of such a meeting reflects anyone’s input at all is highly questionable, and the same holds true when the facilitator records the group’s comments on paper. But participants in these types of meetings usually don’t question the process.

Why hold such meetings at all if the outcomes are already established? The answer is because it is imperative for the acceptance of the School-to-Work agenda, or the environmental agenda, or whatever the agenda, that ordinary people assume ownership of the preset outcomes. If people believe an idea is theirs, they’ll support it. If they believe an idea is being forced on them, they’ll resist.

The Delphi Technique is being used very effectively to change our government from a representative form in which elected individuals represent the people, to a “participatory democracy” in which citizens selected at large are facilitated into ownership of preset outcomes. These citizens believe that their input is important to the result, whereas the reality is that the outcome was already established by people not apparent to the participants.

Three steps can diffuse the Delphi Technique as facilitators attempt to steer a meeting in a specific direction.

Always be charming, courteous, and pleasant. Smile. Moderate your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.

Stay focused. If possible, jot down your thoughts or questions. When facilitators are asked questions they don’t want to answer, they often digress from the issue that was raised and try instead to put the questioner on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic. Courteously bring the facilitator back to your original question. If he rephrases it so that it becomes an accusatory statement (a popular tactic), simply say, “That is not what I asked. What I asked was . . .” and repeat your question.

Be persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn’t work, facilitators often resort to long monologues that drag on for several minutes. During that time, the group usually forgets the question that was asked, which is the intent. Let the facilitator finish. Then with polite persistence state: “But you didn’t answer my question. My question was . . .” and repeat your question. Never become angry under any circumstances. Anger directed at the facilitator will immediately make the facilitator the victim. This defeats the purpose. The goal of facilitators is to make the majority of the group members like them, and to alienate anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda. People with firm, fixed beliefs, who are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, are obvious threats. If a participant becomes a victim, the facilitator loses face and favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of seven or eight, and why objections are written on paper rather than voiced aloud where they can be open to public discussion and debate. It’s called crowd control.

At a meeting, have two or three people who know the Delphi Technique dispersed through the crowd so that, when the facilitator digresses from a question, they can stand up and politely say: “But you didn’t answer that lady/gentleman’s question.” Even if the facilitator suspects certain group members are working together, he will not want to alienate the crowd by making accusations. Occasionally, it takes only one incident of this type for the crowd to figure out what’s going on.

Establish a plan of action before a meeting. Everyone on your team should know his part. Later, analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs to happen the next time. Never strategize during a meeting.

A popular tactic of facilitators, if a session is meeting with resistance, is to call a recess. During the recess, the facilitator and his spotters (people who observe the crowd during the course of a meeting) watch the crowd to see who congregates where, especially those who have offered resistance. If the resistors congregate in one place, a spotter will gravitate to that group and join in the conversation, reporting what was said to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator will steer clear of the resistors. Do not congregate. Instead gravitate to where the facilitators or spotters are. Stay away from your team members.

This strategy also works in a face-to-face, one-on-one meeting with anyone trained to use the Delphi Technique.

More and more, we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings, councils, or boards to “help determine” public policy in one field or another. They are supposedly being included to get “input” from the public to help officials make final decisions on taxes, education, community growth or whatever the particular subject matter might be. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, surface appearances are often deceiving.

You, Mr. or Mrs. Citizen, decide to take part in one of these meetings. Generally, you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting. Supposedly the job of the facilitator is to be a neutral, non-directing helper to see that the meeting flows smoothly. Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting.

The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the Delphi Technique. This Delphi Technique was developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Department of Defense back in the 1950s. It was originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war. However, it was soon recognized that the steps of Delphi could be very valuable in manipulating ANY meeting toward a pre-determined end.

How does the process take place? The techniques are well developed and well defined. First, the person who will be leading the meeting, the facilitator or Change Agent must be a likeable person with whom those participating in the meeting can agree or sympathize with. It is, therefore, the job of the facilitator to find a way to cause a split in the audience, to establish one or a few of the people as “bad guys” while the facilitator is perceived as the “good guy.” Facilitators are trained to recognize potential opponents and how to make such people appear aggressive, foolish, extremist, etc. Once this is done, the facilitator establishes himself or herself as the “friend” of the rest of the audience. The stage is now set for the rest of the agenda to take place.

At this point, the audience is generally broken up into “discussion groups” of seven or eight people each. Each of these groups is to be led by a subordinate facilitator. Within each group, discussion takes place of issues, already decided upon by the leadership of the meeting. Here, too, the facilitator manipulates the discussion in the desired direction, isolating and demeaning opposing viewpoints. Generally, participants are asked to write down their ideas and disagreements with the papers to be turned in and “compiled” for general discussion after the general meeting is re-convened.

THIS is the weak link in the chain which you are not supposed to recognize. WHO compiles the various notes into the final agenda for discussion? AHHHH! Well, it is those who are running the meeting. How do you know that the ideas on YOUR notes were included in the final result. You DON’T! You may realize that your idea was NOT included and come to the conclusion that you were probably in the minority. Recognize that every OTHER citizen member of this meeting has written his or her likes or dislikes on a similar sheet of paper and they, too, have no idea whether THEIR ideas were “compiled” into the final result! You don’t even know if ANYONE’S ideas are part of the final “conclusions” presented to the re-assembled group as the “consensus” of public opinion. Rarely, does anyone challenge the process since each concludes that he or she was in the minority and different from all the others. So, now, those who organized the meeting in the first place are able to tell the participants AND THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY that the conclusions, reached at the meeting, are the result of public participation. Actually, the desired conclusions had been established, in the back room, long before the meeting ever took place. There are variations in the technique to fit special situations but, in general, the procedure outlined above takes place.

The natural question to ask here is: If the outcome was preordained BEFORE the meeting took place, WHY have the meeting? Herein lies the genius of this Delphi Technique. It is imperative that the general public believe that this program is THEIRS! They thought it up! They took part in its development! Their input was recognized! If people believe that the program is theirs, they will support it. If they get the slightest hint that the program is being imposed upon them, they will resist.

This VERY effective technique is being used, over and over and over, to change our form of government from the representative republic, intended by the Founding Fathers, into a “participatory democracy.” Now, citizens chosen at large, are manipulated into accepting preset outcomes while they believe that the input they provided produced the outcomes which are now THEIRS! The reality is that the final outcome was already determined long before any public meetings took place, determined by individuals unknown to the public. Can you say “Conspiracy?”

These “Change Agents” or “Facilitators” CAN be beaten! They may be beaten using their own methods against them. Because it is SO important, I will repeat the suggestions I gave in the last previous column.

ONE: Never, NEVER lose your temper! Lose your temper and lose the battle, it is that simple! Smile, if it kills you to do so. Be courteous at all times. Speak in a normal tone of voice.

TWO: Stay focused! Always write your question or statement down in advance to help you remember the exact manner in which your question or statement was made. These agents are trained to twist things to make anyone not acceding to THEIR agenda look silly or aggressive. Smile, wait till the change agent gets done speaking and then bring them back to your question. If they distort what you said, simply remind those in the group that what he or she is saying is NOT what you asked or said and then repeat, verbatim, from your notes the original objection.

THREE: Be persistent! Wait through any harangues and then repeat the original question. (Go back and re-read the previous column.)

FOUR: (I wish to thank a reader of the previous column for some EXCELLENT suggestions.) DON’T go alone! Get as many friends or relatives who think as you do, to go along with you to the meeting. Have each person “armed” with questions or statements which all generally support your central viewpoint. DON’T sit together as a group! Spread out through the audience so that your group does not seem to be a group.

When the facilitator or change agent avoids answering YOUR question and insists that he must move on so everyone may have a chance to speak, your own agents in the audience can then ask questions, worded differently, but still with the same meaning as yours. They can bring the discussion back to your original point. They could even point out, in a friendly manner, that the agent did NOT really answer your question. The more the agent avoids your question, and the more your friends bring that to the attention of the group, the more the audience will shift in your favor.

To quote my informant: “Turn the technique back on them and isolate the change agent as the kook. I’ve done it and seen steam come out of the ears of those power brokers in the wings who are trying to shove something down the citizen’s throats. And it’s so much fun to watch the moderator squirm and lose his cool, all while trying to keep a smile on his face.”

Now that you understand how meetings are manipulated, let’s show them up for the charlatans which they are.

bttt

More:
Remember: any system, which uses consensus is a dog and pony show designed to brainwash the participants into going along with the pre-determined outcome, thinking they arrived at it themselves.

CONSENSUS IS KILLING US!
http://www.newswithviews.com/loeffler/loeffler7.htm
By John Loeffler July 30, 2002 NewsWithviews.com

Oh no! The government says your town is the critical habitat of the brown-backed slimy slug. The EPA forbids the townspeople to do anything – even belch - without first obtaining permits from the government. Half of the town will have to move so Slimy has more room to slither in pristine habitat lest he perish from the earth.
Public outrage follows. The EPA schedules a “visioning meeting” with local “stakeholders” so they can express their “concerns” and build a “consensus” on how to deal with Slimy.

The night of the meeting, citizens arrive at the town hall in expectation filling the EPA’s ear with unpleasantries, after which they hope the EPA will lamely retreat and find some other place for Slimy to slither. The meeting is chaired by a “facilitator” supplied by the government, who seems friendly enough and seems to care about the town. He encourages everyone to express how they “feel” so they can achieve a “community consensus” about Slimy. But everyone is only allowed three minutes to speak and no direct issues seem to come into question. Debate is not tolerated because that would be “intolerant” of others and there are no “right or wrong” answers.
At one point the meeting breaks up into small groups so everyone can better express their feelings. These are chaired by sub-facilitators.
By the end of the meeting everyone has blown off steam and the facilitator pronounces that they have a marvelous consensus, which will form the basis of the EPA’s new policy for their town. Everyone goes home. Some are happy since their concerns will now be included in public policy. True, a couple of people got angry at the meeting but they did seem a bit “extreme” and really did look stupid. Besides they were quickly silenced because they didn’t share the “common good.”
But surprise, surprise! In very short order, the so-called “stakeholders” discover nothing has changed. They still have to get permits to belch and half the town still has to move but now the townspeople are told this is their plan! This town has been consensed!
COMMUNISM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CONSENSUS!
Today we hear about “achieving consensus” in all issues of public life; in government, the workplace, schools and even churches. To the western ear, consensus has the sound of representative government in action, a group of people debating their issues and coming to some form of workable solution. But it operates on a totally different agenda.
The consensus process (sometimes called the “Delphi Technique”) is a psychological method used to steer the participants to a pre-determined outcome, while eliminating opposition by causing the majority of people to view dissenters as angry, out-of-touch extremists not concerned with the public good or holding the public’s values. The community must believe it has arrived at these positions themselves without realizing they have been manipulated into them.

Today’s consensus is the very same “collective” process used in the Soviet Union to make political decisions at all levels. The word “soviet” means collective. Modern consensus was the brainchild of transformational Marxists from the Frankfurt School, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at leading colleges in the United States from whence they proceeded to spread their version of Marxism, called “transformational Marxism,” although they weren’t able to call it that publicly at the time. It was repackaged under non-threatening names.

Whereas Leninist Marxism believed communism could only be spread by violence and revolution, transformational Marxism believed it could be more effectively spread by gradually changing a society’s attitudes, values and beliefs and ultimately its public institutions. To do this, the public would have to be unaware that a major change was underway.
TAKING LEAVE OF YOUR SENSES
For consensus to work, one must be conned into taking leave of one’s senses; thus con-sensus.
A more technical definition would be a diverse group of people, dialoging to a consensus over a social issue in a facilitated setting to a predetermine outcome.

The phrase “predetermined outcome” is the key item. What will be decided at a meeting is decided by government long before the meeting ever starts. The only purpose of the meeting is to con the citizenry by making them think it was their idea.
When citizens arrive at a meeting driven by consensus, the facilitator does not simply chair the meeting. He has been well trained in psychological manipulation and plays on the audience’s feelings (a dialectical process) rather than on their critical thought (a didactic process). Consensus-building does not actually involve convincing anyone to alter his or her views. It causes them to accept new views without realizing they are in conflict with their old ones by use of a technique known as semantic deception; using words which have double meanings, making it possible for people in conflict with each other to appear to agree even though they disagree.

Citizens are encouraged to express their concerns. This isn’t because the facilitator cares about them but rather provides a method of polling the crowd to determine where everyone stands so “resistors” can be readily identified and the facilitator knows what he has to do to manipulate everyone to the pre-determined outcome. In large meetings, auxiliary facilitators – spies – are situated in the crowd, unknown to the citizenry. These people identify resistors and report back to the facilitator at various points. They can also be used to counter dissenters should the meeting get out of hand by posing as citizens who oppose the dissenters.
Once key resistors are identified, the facilitator’s job is to make sacrificial lambs of them. He must make the crowd believe they are angry extremists, who don’t care about the issue in question and that they do not share the common interest or good. Making examples of dissenters is designed to elicit silence from all others present, who don’t want to appear extreme in front of their friends. This technique plays on the psychological principle that most people fear what their peers think of them. A well-trained facilitator is capable of forcing a dissenter’s friends to be very angry with him for being such a “jerk” as they themselves fall prey to the deceptive manipulation the facilitator is employing.
A lone dissenter can expect to be barraged by a series of slogans, aggressive responses and counter-allegations, to the effect that the dissenter is engaged in “type-casting” or “fingerpointing.”

INCOMING
It is only when dissenters themselves become trained and come in groups to such meetings that the tables can be turned on the facilitators. One thing a facilitator must avoid doing is being forced into a position of defining his double-speak terms. Otherwise the deception becomes immediately apparent to everyone and the crowd will have lots of things to object to. Exposing his duplicity short-circuits the process.
In rare cases, a brave and intelligent dissenter succeeds in getting the upper hand, forcing the facilitator into the position of defining what he means and what his agenda is. The facilitator is now in an embarrassing position. He is prepared for this. One technique is to immediately break the meeting into group sessions to avoid answering the hardball questions. Another is to have the spies become “outraged” or “offended” by the dissenters’ position as if they were fellow citizens. This outrage appears to come from the public and puts the dissenters’ objections at odds with the apparent public position.
The facilitator can also engage in long-winded answers that lead nowhere and which numb everyone’s minds so they forget what the issue in question is and don’t care if it gets answered. If things get a bit rough, the facilitator – while continuing to smile and play the good guy — barrages dissenters with a torrent of ad hominem invective for having the audacity to challenge the common good. The facilitator always tries to make his position look like the “reasonable” or “moderate” one commonly accepted by the public.
If the dissenter successfully withstands the onslaught, the facilitator’s last trick is to shut the meeting down. Nevertheless, the public will frequently read in the local paper the next day that a consensus was reached at the meeting. Strange, were they at the same meeting?

Remember: any system, which uses consensus is a dog and pony show designed to brainwash the participants into going along with the pre-determined outcome, thinking they arrived at it themselves.

DEATH TO DEMOCRACY
It is 70 years since Wilhelm Wundt and others of the Frankfurt School began spreading transformational Marxism in America. Today the consensus process is the backbone of decision-making in government, big business and even church growth programs, which seek to eject church members who don’t go along with the new “vision” for church growth. It was a Marxist revolution that happened without a shot being fired.

Consensus is killing representative government in the West because it systematically eliminates input from the electorate and allows government to proceed with its agendas unabated and unaccountably. More and more decisions that were supposed to be made by legislatures or county and city boards are being made by facilitator “change agents,” who are unelected and unaccountable, using this facilitated consensus process.
A growing number of concerned Americans has begun to realize that something is radically wrong; that the representative process we used to enjoy is being subverted by something but they don’t know quite what. Consensus can be dealt with at any level but Americans must understand the process. Anyone involved in a consensus-driven event not understanding the deceptive principles on which it functions, will be taken in by it and the process will roll forward unabated as thousands of Americans wonder why their government officials aren’t responsive to them and why actions they strongly oppose continue to be implemented unabated.

Remember, consensus means you have been conned into taking leave of your senses. We must understand we’re being had. Breaking consensus relies on forcing a facilitator and his supporters to expose their actual agendas by defining what their words mean. They will avoid doing that at all cost but trained dissenters can force the issue and make the crowd realize it has been the victim of a deliberately-planned hoax.
(Important reading: “The Cloning of the American Mind” by Beverly Eakman, available through Walter Publishing 1-800-955-0116. Also important is Dean Gotcher’s, MA, taped conference series on the Diaprax consensus process available from (303) 548-3204.)

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