Climate Espionage
This story in the Guardian, which reports that UK energy companies have
been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists
is sure to make U.S. climate activists paranoid. Of course, corporate espionage, be it employed against competitors or perceived opponents, is nothing new. If I was the head of a major climate advocacy group, I’d just assume that I had agent provocateurs in the ranks.
And anyone familiar with the unsavory history of COINTELPRO knows that successful protest groups (here is the latest notorious case to emerge from the Civil Rights era) are often targeted by government agencies as “subversive.”
A recent lawsuit filed by Greenpeace suggests that corporate spying on green groups is nothing new, either.
If it’s so common and “nothing new,” why would activists be “paranoid” to think they’re being spied upon?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Revkin and keith kloor, Lynn Hasselberger. Lynn Hasselberger said: intriguing … RT @revkin: Climate Espionage http://t.co/fdlsltk via Collideascape […]
PDA
..why would activists be “paranoid” to think..
“Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are out to get you. ”
Or, to answer without using the well known phrase, the word paranoid is not always used to convey mental illness. It’s often used to merely mean “extremely fearful”. See Merriam-Webster and examples:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paranoid
Examples of PARANOID
I guess I was just being paranoid.
She’s a little paranoid about her job.
It’s nothing more than a paranoid fantasy.
Exactly, those examples all suggest unreasoning fear: “just being paranoid,” “nothing more than a paranoid fantasy.”
PDA–
I think the first one does communicate the speaker diagnosed their idea was unreasonable. I’m not sure about the latter two.
I don’t think the second one suggests unreasoning fear. The reason I’m not sure is I think the word gets used both to convey unreasoning fear and fear that might have some basis. So, of course those who think using that word automatically communicates unreasoning fear will interpret that differently from me. What I would feel certain of is that she thinks she might lose her job because they were out to get her and not because the factory was closing. But I’d await more info to figure out if the word paranoid was meant to suggest that it was unreasonable for her to think ‘they were out to get her’.
(Out of curiosity, do you know an adjective that communicates she was worried because she thought they were out to get her, but her suspicion was reasonable? If there is, I want to know that word. I like words!)
In the third one, I think the adjective paranoid distinguishes the fantasy from a wishful thinking (e.g. a fantasy about what to do with your future lottery winnings is not paranoid.) The way I would read either “paranoid fantasy” or “wishful fantasy” is that neither “paranoid” nor “wishful” are necessarily what communicate the notion that the idea is unreasonable– the word fantasy does that all by itself.
It is true that paranoia all by itself can imply the fear is unreasonable. It just seems to me that sometimes it does not. So, this might be one for the guys a Language Log!
<i>anyone familiar with the unsavory history of COINTELPRO knows that successful protest groups are often targeted by government agencies</i>
anyone familiar with the unsavory history of destabilization programs knows that successful protest groups are frequently funded by malign foreign interests.
Sometimes protests groups are completely organic and sometimes they are helped along by various foreign interests.
The prime role of any government is to maintain civil order.
Yeah, not trying to hijack the thread into semantics, but something like “everyone in her department was just laid off, so she’s paranoid about her job” wouldn’t make sense to me.
PDA irt#7, wait until your wife is nearly fully vested and she notices that only senior teachers are getting treated shabbily and pressured to quit. then I think you will have some insight on ‘everyone in her dept.’
Correction: “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are NOT out to get you. “
I discussed the word “paranoid” over at Lucia’s blog, and I thought it might be worth cross-posting. In case anyone is interested:
Paranoid first entered the English language about a hundred years ago. Another form of the word predated it by almost a century. These both stemmed from a Greek word which had no connotation of involving fear. Indeed, paranoid in English did not initially have any special association with fear. Instead, it referred to any sort of condition involving systematized delusions.
The term existed for decades before it became associated with fear. That association was popularized due to the term “paranoid schizophrenia.” Paranoid schizophrenia often (but not always) involves persecutory delusions. The nuances of this condition were generally lost on the general public so people came to believe paranoia inherently involved fear. However, the clinical meaning has never (significantly) changed. This means it still does not have an inherent association with fear.
Now, more than fifty years later, we have a strange situation. People are questioning whether “paranoia” inherently implies irrationality, but there seems to be no doubt paranoia involves feelings of persecution. Things are completely backwards.
You folks have, of course, been following the HBGary-Anonymous dust up where it has come to light that the Chamber of Commerce was pitched a plan to do all this stuff?
Google HBGary Anonymous for lots of details
Even paranoids have enemies.