"Orwell hit the nail on the head when he stated that language is the key to mind control. If you remove certain words or alter their meaning beyond recognition, the process of definition and questioning comes to a halt. When you can't describe your problem, you become less aware of it, less able to fight it. Eventually, the false meaning drowns its good twin, and you'll lost the battle of ideas. Meaning is power. Control the meaning of words, and you can isolate rogue elements until people abandon them; not because they oppose the concept but because they can no longer comprehend it." — Dr. Paul Chomsky /QC, Ret. Malady of the Masses (2021)
"What the hell are you doing with all that underwear1 on your head, kid? Didn't your momma tell you not to set fires on other people's property?" - senior officer A. Batulli, Portland Riot Response, about to fall into the generation gap
"It ain't underwear, you fuckin' gerrie2! Don't you know what this means, you spongy pensioner3?!?!" - John Lee-Prang, naive second-boomer4 student, about to be 'subdued while resisting arrest'5
Saboteurs
People who resist authority through logic, law and peaceful resistance are
called dissidents. People who attack authority through bombs and
massacres are called terrorists. Outlaws who bring information to the
public, sabotage government propaganda, destroy the levers of control
and disturb the functioning of lawful society are called Saboteurs.
These political fanatics ride the wave of discontent that sweeps through
the fringer communities and occasionally touches the chattering classes,
all the meantime promoting chaos and disparate (and desperate) utopian agendas.
The rocks of propaganda thrown into the datapools by saboteurs ripple
with disinformation and choke the datapathways of thought control.
Saboteurs resist all forms of authority and as such are the Lockes,
Thoreaus and Jeffersons of underground society.
Techniques
Saboteurs wage a daily guerrilla war with disinformation, corrosion programs,
spray-paint, class-action lawsuits, convoluted legal challenges, genetic
attack templates, booby-trapped military research contracts, and
- occasionally - bullets and explosives. Rarely organized, often arrested,
and mostly misunderstood even by the people they're supposed to be liberating,
saboteurs lead lives of frenetic obsession. Cryptnet is supposedly a
cool-headed offshoot of the original Sabotage Declaration, while XSABOTage
is the latest radical-youth movement to have embraced viral image ideas
[see VIIDs] as a means of coercive de-programming.
Deprogramming is itself the core of sabotage activities, being in essence
the liberation of one's mind from the imposed messages and prejudices of
others. Often this involves the rejection of society and moral values of
all kinds. Rather dangerous and perhaps the reason it so often fails to
impress the masses, or even fringers.
"Co-opt the message and the messenger will bring a new one, with a gun handy!" —
XSABOTage Graffiti
If the fight to liberate the mind and body cannot be won with persuasion
and the occasional injection of chaos into the webworks, then saboteurs
often resort to more...ummm...radical methods. These can include parasitic
attacks (see Gonder's excellent article on the Polystoizal Catharsis Gland
in the June 2035 issue of Übernether medzine) on people in positions of power,
inducing light-oscillation aphasia in politicians (especially cruel during
primaries), introducing paradox into Great Mind ecosystems, and disrupting
government services during peak hours. Fatalities are uncommon but can be
spectacular and/or gruesome if a shock reaction is necessary to open the
minds of people to a new idea.
Groups
The world is saturated by a vast number of organizations and societies with saboteur agendas, but North America and East Asia appear to be nova-hotbeds of activity. The vise-like grip of the Federal Bureau of Security makes 'sub-legal' operations very dangerous, but saboteur sentiment remains high, and the nominally-autonomous status of the Heartland States provides a perfect staging area for attacks on the east and west coasts.
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XSABOTage - a newcomer in the Great Lakes sector, this group of artistically-inclined saboteurs has made a great splash with their use of visually stunning steganographic viruses containing messages of "consumption fever focused towards consuming the government itself". Rumours of cannibalism among bureaucrats remain unconfirmed as of 06.22.38. Nasty, messy stuff.
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NEGATIFLAND is a major offshoot of the Neurand-based (see Europa section) organization dedicated to electronic warfare against the mediacorp and gov-sponsored netcast channels. Negatifland jams, distorts, redefines, and subverts public transmissions which they find offensive through a system called the Etherwave (see Skullish; Cranial Accelerant Logic).
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CHANNEL ZERO are a very secretive and subtle group who insinuate clever political dialogue into routine sanitized newscasts. Their method of operation and equipment are unknown.
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SOFTWATCH is an apocalyptic counter-sabotage group of saboteurs who constantly bombard other saboteurs with propaganda and wacky theories. The members are believed to be paranoid solipsists with a penchant for penance. Or so the headcasts say. Anyway, Softwatch does its best to confuse other saboteurs and to dismiss the "illusion of a firm reality". Motto: "Watch the world disappear!". Softwatch has tricked more than one dedicated saboteur into insanity, so watch their sleeves.
"Try to live the future today, get it all wrong..." — Fringer saying
