Agent Provocateurs

An agent provocateur is a French word, which in English means “inciting agent” - A trope of a character who is a regular nuisance to AnonOps personnel and allies, both online and in the real world. The agent provocateur is a type of dishonest scoundrel, with a two-phase mode of attack:

Phase One: They first infiltrate a group (activists, labor union, infosec team, religious body, etc), putting on the guise of a supporter long enough to be able to move freely within the group. At a rally, this can be as simple as walking up to the frontline with a sign, and hanging around for 10 minutes. With other groups, it may take months of infiltration work to get into position.

Phase Two: Once inside enough to pass as a member of the group, the agent provocateur then attempts to bait the group into behaving counter to its interests. Going back to the rally example, the provocateur might start trying to bait the crowd into violent actions. In these cases, the provocateur is oftentimes a member of law enforcement, trying to create pretext to “lawfully retaliate” against the crowd. The provocateur, under the guise of a personal confidante, might try to trick you into implicating yourself and your comrades as part of an illegal conspiracy, as a form of lawfare. Or the provocateur, in a corporate setting, might try to encourage a sellout to their chief competitor.

There are many forms the provocateur can take, but their tactic is the same: To provoke you and those around you into doing things that are guaranteed to come back and bite you in the ass.

While agent provocateurs have existed in Anonymous since the very beginning, the collective's understanding of them has taken quite some time to catch up.

The collective was made aware to these tactics en masse in early 2008, during the Project Chanology. Those who were familiar with fighting the Scientologists before, warned Anonymous of OSA's tendency to use agent provocateurs during anti-Scientologist events.

Indeed, just about every major protest that happened outside a Scientology clinic that year, had at least one or two randos. These usually came in one of three forms:

1. The first form would be over the top, and usually have signs inciting violence, while sometimes even trying to incite actual violence directly.
2. The second form was far more subtle. This form wouldn't try to get Anon to do anything. They instead would just intentionally act really toxic/rude/abrasive (especially if news cameras or reporters were around) to make the whole collective look bad by association.
3. The third form was the most subtle of all. These ones went above and beyond to present Good Behavior, usually pretending to be a sympathetic citizen, a victim of the Church, and sometimes even impersonating other Anons. These agents played the long game, infiltrating deep into the /i/nsurgency to dox Anons, and to pit Anons against each other by orchestrating elaborate suicide trolling campaigns.