Let's stop mis-diagnosing radicals
or COINTELPRO 2.0
Story Time
(this is a fictional story)
An old man lives alone on his farm. One night, he sees some strange bright lights over his back field. He goes outside, and to his surprise, he sees a strange craft coming in to land.
The old man has been around for a long time, and has never seen such a craft before in his life. Lights and gears are strewn about in odd places, and it maintains near silence even as the craft descends in the cowfield.
Two beings step out of the craft. The farmer takes off towards them, rifle slung across his back. As he gets closer, he sees that the figures are unnaturally tall and lanky, and that they are scanning his cows with some sort of device. He hurries along, but before he can get through the fence, the beings turn to him, wave, step back inside the craft, and take off once more.
The craft ascends straight up, then takes off at impossible speeds just as the farmer reaches the landing spot. He sees the grooves where the craft tore up the land. The cows who had been inspected by the creatures have some sort of green slimy residue on their sides.
If the old man believes his farm was just visited by aliens, would he be delusional?
All the next week, the old man tries to get the town to listen to him. From the police, to the mayor, to the pastor, they all brush him off and suggest he seek some help. Even the town bartender thinks he’s just pulling his leg, or maybe has finally broke from living on the isolated farm. He faces so much pushback, he even begins to question what he saw. Maybe, he thinks, I was just having a very weird and vivid dream.
If no one believes what he experienced what he really experienced, does this make the old man delusional?
A few weeks later, the old man has stopped telling people about his visitors. It still bops around in the back of his head, so he begins buying the local paper more regularly to check for any more signs of the craft.
Does this change of behavior mean that the old man is acting on delusions?
One Sunday morning, he sees it! The exact craft, those strange beings, all the weird technology they had on them was right there on the front page of the paper! All of it under the headline:
“Genius robotics team pranksters pull off UFO hoax.”
All at once, he feels both vindicated and a bit embarrassed. Vindicated in that he saw what he saw, and embarrassed that he’d been fooled by some robotics nerds. He understands now that him believing in the UFO and aliens was the goal, and is still able to chuckle at the humor of the situation.
Does this new information change anything about the old man’s mental capacity? Is he suddenly retroactively delusional now that the truth is out?
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In Indigenous ways of learning, Stories are powerful teachers. They can convey meaning without triggering defenses and cut through bias and judgment to reach walled-off hearts. I have had to retell the above story to myself and others many times over this past year and a half of resisting fascism and authoritarianism. It is so essential that communities aligned against this oppression develop methods and spaces for understanding the difference between genuine mental illness and the unfortunate possibility of falling for a psychological operation (PsyOp). And it is also essential that we develop strategies for supporting comrades struggling with mental illness without delivering them straight into the custody and monitoring of the state.
The old man in the story was a target of a PsyOp. It was a relatively harmless one, just some kids who wanted people to believe in aliens for their own amusement. But in this current COINTELPRO 2.0 era, there are many more nefarious and damaging PsyOps to get caught up in.
COINTELPRO 2.0
Higher focus on three prong strategy instead of overt violence- Disturb Discredit Disrupt
State allied with psychiatric industry
Exploits disabled, mentally ill, and developmentally disabled people
Assassinations → targeted raids & arrests
Higher focus on three prong strategy instead of overt violence- Disturb Discredit Disrupt
Disturb
online and phone harassment
threats, implicit or explicit
false accusations, triangulation, gaslighting
cyberstalking
hacking accounts and devices
Discredit
identity fraud & incrimination
disinformation
rumors & false allegations
Frame jobs, entrapment, self incrimination
Rage-baiting
Disrupt
Frame jobs, entrapment, self incrimination
Rage-baiting
Raids, swatting, and targeted arrests
planting operatives in crucial roles within organizations
neutralization through PsyOps
State Alignment with Psychiatric Industry
In 2003, HIPAA increased monitoring of individuals through psychiatric records for national security. This gives law enforcement access to medical records, sometimes without a warrant. More recently, in 2025, ICE/DHS gained access to Medicaid data. This data is accessed through an app. Address, providers, ethnicity, diagnoses, medication, appointments, past & nearby residents, etc. show up as points on a map with a “deportation” score attached. This exposes the data of many disabled people to ICE/DHS.
Also in 2025, NYS budget changed the standards for involuntary psychiatric commitment in NY after Gov. Hochul insisted on these provisions.
outdated- a person can be involuntarily committed if they pose an immediate danger to themselves or others
new- a person can be involuntarily committed if they pose a substantial risk to themselves or others, or due to an inability or refusal as a result of their mental illness, to provide for their own essential needs such as food, clothing, necessary medical care, personal safety, or shelter.
Subjective and vague- gives mental health professionals a lot of power over interpretation, ex- unhoused people can be held indefinitely
Many medical and mental health providers are also mandated reporters, meaning they have to report suspicions of the following to police: (this list is not exhaustive)
abuse/neglect
mental health crises
acts or threats of violence
illegal drug use and evidence of substance abuse
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Assertive Outpatient Teams can be used against those thought to have a severe mental illness who are unwilling or unable to accept treatment on their own. Often used against those who struggle with schizophrenia and delusional disorders.
coercive forms of treatments, can push into individual’s home and community
regulated by NYS Office of Mental Health
has strict standards they must follow in order to maintain accreditation; if an ACT or AOT has been weaponized or operating in ways that are more damaging to the individual, there is a legal avenue to fight back
Crisis Intervention Training teams
partners police officer with mental health professionals
Crisis intervention, mental health evaluations, wellness checks
Exploitation of disabled and mentally ill people
Increased monitoring of individuals through psychiatric records (2003 HIPAA)
why? Elite aligned goal to attribute violence with mental illness, esp in NY, CA (see NY push to attribute school shootings to depression and Prozac)
In reality: people w/ mental illness are 10x more likely to victims of a crime than commit one
Entrapment and Self-incrimination schemes rely on naivety, ignorance, or lapse of judgment
more likely to be successful with those with disabilities, or those who are unguarded
SoL(Sons of Liberty) PsyOp – named after the first group to display these tactics across time and location during the current movement
Infiltration- one or more agents/informants enter a group, often bring in allies or create backdoor for allies to enter
Assessment- over time, an escalating amount of gaslighting, triangulation, and violation of boundaries occurs. Agents/informants take note of group member responses to incidents, while also power mapping the overt and covert power within a group.
Target Acquisition- agents/informants select a target, typically someone “easy” to scare, upset, or anger, with a role or responsibilities agents wish to co-opt.
Intelligence Acquisition- agents/informants gathering information on target’s support systems, location, movements, vulnerabilities, etc. The goal is to craft a strategy that is as psychologically damaging to the target as possible
PsyOp- agents/informants use their network to harass, stalk, scam, and otherwise disturb the target and their support system. The goal is to strain the target’s relationships, destroy their support system, keep their nervous system dysregulated, and make them and their community believe that the target is mentally unsound and needs psychiatric attention.
Discrediting- agents/informants and unwitting state accomplices spread gossip about the target’s mental health and force them to address the matter publicly. Target’s actions and words are further misrepresented to be “evidence” of mental instability.
Disruption- agents/informants coerce target through their community to leave organizing and seek mental health treatment. Disrupts organizing by neutralizing radical and observant thinkers, sowing doubt and discord, and installing aligned operatives in desired roles.
Assassinations → targeted raids & arrests
In order to control pushback to the NatSec program, current strategies involve intrusive monitoring, aggressive policing, and performative arrests of organizers and movement leaders rather than overt violence and assassinations. For example:
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Over the past year, I’ve found myself a target of this exact PsyOp, likely because my history of surviving trauma and abuse makes me seem like I’d be easy to disturb, discredit, and disrupt. I know for a fact that there’s at least one Behavior Technician (reg. Midland, MI) who keeps up with my posts religiously. And that’s okay. You’re still welcome here.
I grew up with a mother who read my diary and punished me if I made her look bad in my private writing. I grew up with a father who tracked my internet activity. I grew up in an environment in which I was continually rage-baited, and sent to be mentally assessed at the hospital every time I fell for it and reacted. I grew up without belonging and without acceptance in most of my environments. I grew up being told that I deserved nothing should I protest, not even the clothes on my back.
And where has that upbringing left me, emotionally and psychologically? That’s what y’all want to know, whether its out of curiosity, concern, or opportunistic greed.
Well, for one, I compartmentalize my life as a default. My public and private personas don’t mix. And I don’t tolerate the normalization of abusive ideology around me. Most importantly, it means the state can’t win against my psyche. I have no desire to experience belonging and acceptance within flawed systems. I cannot be coerced into groupthink for very long before my need for autonomy becomes undeniable. Abandonment, rejection, violation of autonomy, and all of those injustices can’t hurt me anymore. Once you’ve survived the rejection of your entire family, all other rejection and abandonment seems trivial and pathetic in turn. You just have a cry, eat some sweets, and start listing your gratitudes for the new absence.
I’m not a self sustaining person; no one is. But what I have learned in this life is that anyone who is not God will eventually leave. Whether it’s my fault or no one’s. Whether they want to or not. The nature of our physical world is imperfect, so expecting the perfection of having relationships forever is delusional. I am content playing the roles I play in others’ lives and enjoying and learning from them as they are in mine. God will not, has not left me, and one day I will be with God again fully. That day will be the end of all earthly delusions such as separateness and unworthiness. But until then, I have work to do.
This, I am saying directly to those monitoring me, God included. I promise; I swear on my soul, that I will not leave this world by my own hand. Running PsyOps, discrediting, and disrupting my work will only harden my resolve and conviction. If someone wants me out, we’re going to have to go the old-fashioned route.
My drug of choice is spite.