The CIA Document You Need To Know About.
The Simple Sabotage Field Manual.
There is an orange buffoon goose-stepping around the Oval Office. Drugged-up industrialists are paper-shredding your human rights. The rule of law is being undermined to punish an innocent “other”. Your leaders are not just supporting but actively encouraging and coordinating genocide and ethnic cleansing. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d think it was the 1940s all over again, except this time, the villains have zero fashion sense. Would you like to put a stop to this? Because you can. Back when America was busy kicking Nazis in the nuts instead of electing them as leaders, the CIA had a secret document detailing exactly how you could.
The Simple Sabotage Field Manual was provided by the CIA to OSS officers in foreign countries to train citizen saboteurs within Nazi-occupied Europe. It is, in effect, a guide on how to cripple any government using the “death by a thousand cuts” method. Thankfully, the CIA declassified it in 2008, and it is publicly available on their website. Now, the CIA knows a thing or two about toppling governments. In fact, they have probably destroyed more governments than any other organisation in history. So, we have the luxury of being privy to how the best of the best use ordinary people like you and me to topple empires.
And the advice is almost comedic. It boils down to “be the biggest nuisance you possibly can”.
The general instructions advise you to:
“Talk as frequently as possible and at great length.”
“Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”
“Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”
“Refer back to matters decided upon.”
“Be worried about the propriety of any decision.”
My nan has almost certainly read this field guide and taken these instructions to heart. Indeed, she manages to sabotage any family gathering with painstaking efficiency. But, rather than behaving like this towards our nearest and dearest, we should focus our attention towards the organisations that uphold the regime we want to tear down, regardless of whether they are part of the government. So, may I suggest ICE, any Trump-affiliated politicians, Meta and PayPal for starters?
But let’s not forget that the US is really a corporatocracy. The giant corporations hold the power, not the people, and most Americans are employed by and exploited by these corporations as a result. It’s a dehumanising state of affairs, and indeed, the collective anger at this maltreatment has been manipulated by Trump to gain power. But it also means that most of you have the ability to sabotage the people who helped place him in power in the first place.
If you are a manager at such a corporation, the guide instructs you to:
“Misunderstand orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders.”
“In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first.”
“Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products.”
“Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”
“Multiply the procedure and clearances involved in issuing instructions.”
Weirdly, this is exactly how my dad behaves at family gatherings. I wonder if he got his hands on the first edition. Either way, we have all had a boss like this at one point or another, so we all know just how damaging these actions can be.
If you are an employee, the instructions are to:
“Tell important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.”
“Spread disturbing rumours that sound like inside dope.”
“Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job.”
“Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can. When you go to the lavatory, spend longer time there than is necessary.”
“Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment.”
Again, we have all had colleagues who can take the most productive team in the world and grind them to a halt doing precisely this. Come to think of it, this is exactly how my brother acts… Am I the only one in my dysfunctional family not trying to sabotage it?
I would love to say there is no obligation to follow this guide — that you can just sit this one out, let other people fix things, and that it will all be okay in the end. But that isn’t the case. You dehumanise one; you dehumanise all. Sure, it might be the one trans person in your city or your migrant neighbour being oppressed, but there is no real difference between them and you. The elite don’t experience humanity, and they will abuse, pillage and exploit everyone, including you. We can only stop this if we all pull our weight. David can slay Goliath. We just need to do our part.
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This pamphlet became the blueprint for corporate America, used against the rest of us. Next time I’m on the phone with customer service, I’ll ask which chapter they’re currently working from.
Thanks, Will, I notice that a lot of these actions are similar to ones I used to convince the Army I would not be a good soldier when I was called in for my draft physical 2.14.68. I was classified 1-Y and never heard from them again.