Traditionally, an agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs, French for "inciting agent(s)") is an agent employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action.
As a known tool to prevent infiltration by agents provocateurs, the organizers of large or controversial assemblies may deploy and coordinate demonstration marshals, also called stewards.
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Famous quotes containing the word agent:
“... in doing our psychology, we want to attribute mental states fully opaquely because it’s the fully opaque reading which tells us what the agent has in mind, and it’s what the agent has in mind that causes his behavior.”
—Jerry Alan Fodor (b. 1935)