Stonewalling

Stonewalling is a defensive tactic, wherein one refuses to communicate or cooperate during an interaction. It is a form of deflection that can take many forms, such as giving vague responses, responding to questions with additional questions, or even refusing to talk at all.

Stonewalling is oftentimes enough to make many basic threats give up and go away. However, it can be used to stall confrontation with more persistent enemies as well. During field operations, you will likely encounter stonewall tactics - especially from astroturf groups, agent provocateurs, shills and cults.

If stonewalling had a metaphorical face, it would look like this.

The art of stonewalling is akin to the art of lying, in that you are putting up a duplicitous cover to divert, confuse or frustrate your enemy. Start off by playing dumb. You have no idea what they're talking about. This will generally provoke them into asking more questions, which in turn will start revealing any hidden intentions on their part. The more you can discern about what is driving them to ask you these questions in the first place (as well as who else the inquisitor works with - very important), the more you can tailor the stone wall to the inquisitor and their allies.

Once you know their intentions (and it is essential you do not jump to conclusions about their intentions, or your stone wall may be riddled with weak spots) you can deploy other simple stonewalling tactics. Give them vague explanations. Present your answers in the form of questions of your own. Change the subject to something tangentially related, or even outright irrelevant. Maybe even send them off on a wild goose chase to get them to leave you alone for awhile and waste their time.

If the conversation is in-person, mumble a lot so to make them ask you to repeat yourself over and over. If it is online, use a lot of typos to make yourself harder to read. Worst case scenario, you can even just stop responding (which is especially effective in chat applications if you have read receipts disabled).

Many simple-minded enemies you can make go away with those tricks. However, with more determined foes (such as investigative journalists and law enforcement) they will eventually realize you are just stonewalling them. In those cases, you can just outright refuse to comment, or tell them to go fuck themselves.

Stone walls are incredibly versatile structures that can be used for more than simply evading questions or avoiding direct confrontation. For example, it can take the form of filibustering to stall the passage of bills in congressional or parliamentary settings. It can also be used in corporate meetings or town halls to waste the minutes away, in order to shut down dissenting opinions.

In legal settings, a group of witnesses may agree in advance to stonewall prosecutors or detectives, in order to protect themselves or their friends from prosecution. Politicians may engage in stonewalling during television interviews or debates, which is extremely effective due to limited airtime and the notoriously short attention spans of the average person.

Stonewalling may also be used as a form of social rejection, in which a dominant party works together to keep a weaker party ostracized or excommunicated. This is a common demoralization tactic used by gatekeepers, since simply telling the ostracized they are not allowed to participate will immediately clue dedicated intruders into finding alternative modes of entry. By stonewalling perceived “undesirables”, gatekeepers can effectively neutralize threats and stall any direct confrontations to the status quo.

Have you ever heard of Vietnam?

Overcoming a stone wall is a two-step process, and it is not always straightforward. However, it can be done:

1. Step One: Recognize - First, you have to recognize that the party you are interacting with is stonewalling you. In some cases, it will be very easy to tell. In other cases, they may be convincingly clueless. If you are unsure, test their alibi in a non-combative manner, with further questions. If you are dealing with a group, question people individually in private and look for inconsistencies in their stories. You can also test alibis by offering positive incentives. For example: Are you dealing with a potential stone wall from a short-staffed activist group? Offer them a free activist training platform that can help solve their labor shortfalls. If they still keep you at the doors, it is likely you are dealing with gatekeepers for an astroturf group, instead of authentic activists.
2. Step Two: Push Through - Once you have confirmed you are being stonewalled, you can look for weaknesses around (or through) the stone wall. If you know for a fact someone is lying to you, you can safely discard anything they say, so to save yourself boatloads of time and shore up your opsec. To get around a group of witnesses who are stonewalling detectives, prosecutors may begin to offer incentives such as immunity to the one who talks first. Or, in the aforementioned activist training platform example, offer the training platform to their biggest rival so to crush the astroturf threat.

Stonewalling as a field tactic is not to be confused with stonewalling in abusive/unhealthy relationships (though the two forms are very similar). In a toxic relationship, stonewalling generally occurs after the conflict has already started, when one (or both) of the parties withdraws from the interaction by going nonverbal, or by employing any of the tactics described above. Not only can the abuser employ stonewalling as a form of control, but the victim may also start stonewalling as a type of involuntary Fight-or-flight response, or deliberately employing it as voluntary defense.

If the relationship has entered the phase where stonewalling becomes a repeat event, that is generally a sign to seek therapy, or break the relationship off entirely.