Is Trevor Drown a Government Agent Provocateur?

Trevor Drown is running for U.S. Senate as an Independent. He has a facebook page which claims that he is "the only conservative in the race". By any reasonable definition of conservative, this is not true. But his devotees seem to afflict blogs like this one with an almost religious zeal.

I have only met Trevor Drown once. It was at an early attempt at forming a network of Tea Parties in Russellville. The meeting was an epic fail and I think it would have been even without Drown there, but he definitely helped. A few people were so rude that I could not even finish my little talk. But perhaps the rudest was Trevor Drown. He clearly did not want that meeting to go anywhere, and suggested that I was "like ACORN" for even considering that the handful of conservative groups there form a loose association.

So was it just that he did not want the staunch conservatives getting together under any banner but his, or was there something else at work? I wonder. Many have written about the large numbers of government agents that have infiltrated patriot groups (and groups that are just full of idiot racists). The government is worried whenever the peasants start taking that "rule by the people" stuff too seriously.

In addition, Obama information Czar Cass Sunstein "outlined a plan for the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings" according to a recently uncovered article Sunstein wrote for the Journal of Political Philosophy.

"In a 2008 article published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Obama information czar Cass Sunstein outlined a plan for the government to stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups.

“It’s easy to destroy groups with “cognitive diversity.” You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don’t come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.”

This is what Sunstein is advocating when he writes of the need to infiltrate conspiracy groups and sow seeds of distrust amongst members in order to stifle the number of new recruits. This is classic “provocateur” style infiltration that came to the fore during the Cointelpro years, an FBI program from 1956-1971 that was focused around disrupting, marginalizing and neutralizing political dissidents.

“Sunstein argued that “government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories.” He suggested that “government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action,” reports Raw Story."

Am I saying that I think Drown did not really grow up in Russellville? Not at all. Am I saying that I am sure he is working for the government to infiltrate and sow "cognitive dissonance" among conservative groups? No. I don't know that. I just know that if that was what he was going to do, then he would behave just like he and his inner circle of blog spammers do behave. Witness their behavior on this recent thread (if you can stand the tedium of their posting).

They work Drown into the thread when no one was talking about him. They refused to engage on facts, instead simply repeating talking points that don't answer the questions (for example on what ISSUES does Drown differ from, say a Jim Holt). Rather they cut and paste Drown's talking points, which are standard uninspired boiler-plate conservative stuff, then shift to personally attacking me for asking the question. Then they spam the thread with long posts about completely irrelevant stuff. By the way, at least one of the main Drown for senate advocates on that thread is from out of state. The people doing this don't even necessarily live here!


It sounds just like the tactics Obama information Czar Sunstein was describing. Simply vandalize the online spots where your political opposition hangs out. Make opposition blogs such unpleasant and irrelevant places to be that the average person does not go there anymore. I cannot dismiss the possibility that the Drown effort is a false flag operation designed to discover who the real conservative extremists are so that they can be safely watched and put on a government list. At the same time, they have the added plus (from the administration's perspective) of brewing dissatisfaction with any GOP opponent of Lincoln and possibly even drawing off enough votes to prompt her re-election.

On the thread I referenced, the Drowner quickly dismissed Instant Run-Off voting, a real cure to the real problem of vote splitting that would really allow independents fair access. It did not seem he was interested in advancing a real solution, just in pushing an agenda that he could not defend with facts or logic. Classic symptoms of a hired agent who simply spouts talking points but does not have any depth because it is not their true beliefs. It's a theory. Drowners want this blog to talk about Drown. Here it is, talk about this...