Reflections on Controlled Opposition

Distinguishing between awareness and paranoia

By JOHN LEAKE

I just saw a reader comment on my post this morning in which I referenced the recently released film, Sound of Freedom. The commentator directed my attention to a couple of reports in which the author presents grounds for suspecting that the film was financed by people who are themselves suspected of being involved in child trafficking. The author reasons that, because the film does NOT mention the top offenders here in the United States, but instead focuses on the derring-do actions of the protagonist in Latin America, it is a means of distracting attention away from the real problem. In other words, the film is purportedly an artifact and device of controlled opposition.

This intriguing comment reminded me of the fact that the movement for medical freedom and Constitutional preservation has frequently been beset with concerns and accusations of “controlled opposition” —that is, there are purportedly traitors in our midst who pretend to be advocates of our dissident movement while secretly undermining it.

The expression controlled opposition was apparently coined by Lenin when he remarked: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." However, every dissident movement in history has had to reckon with the possibility of being infiltrated by agents of the reigning power. A brilliant example in modern history was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau, who initially seemed to be a bold leader of the French revolutionaries. It therefore came as a shock when, after his death, it was revealed that he was a paid agent of King Louis XVI.

My favorite literary depiction of controlled opposition is the John Le Carre novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, in which the British Secret Intelligence Service has been infiltrated at the highest level by a Soviet mole. The character of the mole, Bill Haydon, was modeled after the true double agent, Kim Philby. For those of us already familiar with Philby’s character, Haydon was easy to spot as the mole because he is (like Philby was) an inveterate skirt chaser.

Because the medical freedom movement is mostly engaged in the business of direct and electronic communication with the citizenry, is is not readily comparable to a band of revolutionaries meeting in secret houses in Paris or St. Petersburg, or to an intelligence agency.

It is a loosely organized group of men and women who are trying—by way of Substack and other independent media platforms—to investigate, discover, and report the reality of what is going on in a world increasingly controlled by an oligarchy of powerful financial and industrial interests that have captured U.S. government agencies.

People sometimes ask me, “Do you think so-and-so is controlled opposition?” My response is always the same: To make that assessment, I need to see EVIDENCE—i.e., authenticated documents and reliable witness testimony that he is indeed an agent of the corrupt oligarchy that he seems to be opposing.

Beyond the issue of evidence, I personally believe it is useful to ponder the question: How is this suspected controlled opposition serving the oligarchy if he has a large public following whom he is persuading to question and oppose the oligarchy?

The answer I sometimes hear in response to this question is something like, “Well, though it’s true he has a large following whom he is persuading to question and oppose the oligarchy, his following isn’t large enough to pose a real threat to the oligarchy.”

The problem with this line of reasoning is that—without hard evidence that someone is controlled opposition—it leads into a cognitive dead end in which the inquiring mind gets trapped in a hall of mirrors in which he feels that he can’t trust anyone, regardless of what anyone says or does.

Attempts at ratiocination about the suspected controlled opposition can also easily lapse into farce along the lines of:

Ah, you just punched that bully in the face because you WANT me to believe that you oppose him. However, judging from the fact that you only knocked out one of his front teeth, it is clear to me that you do NOT really oppose him. Indeed, I happen to know that you used to be friends with the bully until he purportedly seduced your wife, but in fact I happen to know that he didn’t really seduce your wife, but merely patted her bottom at a Christmas cocktail party at which you merely pretended to be furious at him by throwing eggnog on his ugly Christmas sweater that he didn’t like anyway. And I also know that his wife is a dentist who will easily reinsert his knocked out tooth without billing him.

It reminds me of this funny scene in the 1987 film The Princess Bride.

P.S.: As I just responded to a reader comment: In a world as demoralized as ours, we are often presented with grounds for suspicion that MANY people are acting in bad faith or out of expediency instead of principle. All the same, I believe it's important to recognize the difference between suspicion and evidence. The proper way to deal with suspicion is to perform a proper investigation and gather evidence BEFORE making the accusation