Controlled opposition
Creating, capturing, or funding a group that appears to oppose you, so that dissent flows into a channel you control and the real opposition is displaced or discredited.
Opposition is going to exist; the device decides where. A regime that founds its own trade unions, a company that funds its own critics, a movement that quietly runs the group claiming to expose it: each gets to choose what the opposition demands, how far it goes, and when it stops. The audience sees dissent and concludes that dissent is possible; the dissent it sees is the permitted kind. Genuine critics, meanwhile, are made to look extreme by comparison with the tame ones, or are simply outnumbered.
The often-quoted line that the best way to control the opposition is to lead it is attributed to Lenin without evidence, but the practice it describes was documented in the tsarist secret police's "police socialism" of 1901 and the Soviet "Trust" operation of the 1920s. Exploits Availability Heuristic and False Consensus Effect.
Historical examples
Sergei Zubatov, head of the Moscow Okhrana, organized legal workers' associations under police supervision, "police socialism," to channel labor discontent into economic demands and away from revolutionary politics. The unions grew, struck against the government's wishes, and were dissolved; but the model, opposition run by the state, was set.
Schneiderman, Jeremiah. Sergei Zubatov and Revolutionary Marxism: The Struggle for the Working Class in Tsarist Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976.
Operation Trust was a fake anti-Bolshevik organization run by the Soviet secret police to attract, monitor, and neutralize émigré and foreign opposition. It lured the counter-revolutionary Boris Savinkov back to Russia, where he was arrested, and the British agent Sidney Reilly, who was executed. For five years the most active "opposition" the regime faced was its own.
Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
In advertising and commerce
Industries facing regulation have funded "consumer" and "science" groups that criticize the industry's critics more than the industry, and self-regulatory bodies whose findings against members are mild and rare. Rampton and Stauber documented the pattern across tobacco, chemicals, and food, and the funding trails that identify it.
Rampton, Sheldon, and John Stauber. Trust Us, We're Experts! New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001.
Find an organization that describes itself as a critic or watchdog of an industry. Who funds it? What is the strongest thing it has ever said against that industry?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
The "independent" ethics review board has found in the company's favor in every one of forty cases; the company appoints and pays its members.
What to notice. Oversight that exists to be seen to exist; the criticized party controls the critic.
The protest movement's most prominent group attacks other activists as extremists and asks only for a review the ministry had already announced.
What to notice. Dissent channeled into demands that cost nothing, while genuine critics are marginalized.
The regime permits one opposition party, whose leader is a former minister and whose platform matches the government's on every contested point.
What to notice. An opposition that exists to demonstrate that opposition is allowed.
Sources
- Schneiderman, Jeremiah. Sergei Zubatov and Revolutionary Marxism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. ISBN 978-0801409776
- Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield. New York: Basic Books, 1999. ISBN 978-0465003105
- Rampton, Sheldon, and John Stauber. Trust Us, We're Experts! New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. ISBN 978-1585421398