New Tactics, Old System

In the days of the Czars
and other absolute rulers
the state sought to control
the non-conformists and rebels
by paying fake rebels to flush out
the rebels who actually meant it.

This 'agent provocateur' activity
was rhetorically easy to justify,
even when the paid provocateurs
did actual damage to the rules
that their paymasters favoured.

Now most adults can vote
but the loss of choice
comes with the policies
we are offered to vote for,
dressed up by how the internet
presents them to us. 

The only sense of a national boundary
that the internet offers the public
is in the advertising they accept.

The new agent provocateurs
are the troll farms that spew out stories
ascribed to invented characters,
where what could be real
and what is knowingly false
is difficult to navigate.

On both the political 'right' and 'left'
nearly nobody knows what is real,
and what has been invented
to tickle their sense of outrage,
as invented by a foreign power.

With the reinvention
of the agent provocateur
we have reinvented the era
of autocrats and monsters.