Term related to "race-baiting"

Question

I'm looking for a more general term to describe a bigoted action committed covertly by a member of a minority group against his/her own target group, in the hope that it will be assumed the act was committed by bigots of the dominant/majority group, enhancing visibility, escalating the perception of tensions, and stoking people's sympathies.

It needn't be exclusive to race; it might be an LGBT person leaving homophobic graffiti near an LGBT social centre, or Jews or Muslims defacing their cemeteries or places of worship, for example.

The closest word I can think of is self-sabotage, but this implies to me a set of largely subconscious and self-defeating attitudes, whereas I'm looking to describe something deliberate and overtly political.

Answer 1

I don't know that there exists a term for this activity that is limited to social movements or cultural identities, like the examples provided in the question, but it could be considered a type of the more general term false flag.

Wikipedia provides a decent definition:

The contemporary term false flag describes covert operations that are designed to deceive in such a way that activities appear as though they are being carried out by entities, groups, or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.

An example where this involved self-sabatoge to provoke an actual war is also provided in the Wikipedia article -- an act that would be analagous to the kind of subterfuge between cultural movements that is suggested in the question.

In 1788, the head tailor at the Royal Swedish Opera received an order to sew a number of Russian military uniforms. These were then used by the Swedes to stage an attack on Puumala, a Swedish outpost on the Russo-Swedish border, on 27 June 1788. This caused an outrage in Stockholm and impressed the Riksdag of the Estates, the Swedish national assembly, who until then had refused to agree to an offensive war against Russia.

Answer 2

Stir the pot

Not authoritative, but I like this take on it best -

Deliberately provocative, yes, but not necessarily maliciously. Picture a pot of soup. A lot of ingredients have settled to the bottom, out of sight, until stirred. Metaphorically, a lot of issues/resentments/obligations can drop out of sight when nobody mentions them. One can "stir the pot" to bring issues to the surface, sometimes with malice, but sometimes merely to create awareness and effect change.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/7/messages/204.html

Urban's top def -

Someone who loves to proliferate the tension and drama between 2 or more feuding people/groups in public to get a raise of people in hopes of starting a shitstorm of drama and uncomfortable conflict, sometimes for personal gain but oftentimes just for the thrill of confrontation.

Mike is always spreading rumors about "whats goin' on" between Josh and Emily but we know he just loves to stir the pot.

Shirley Phelps has traveled across the country picketing US soldier's funerals with signs reading "Thank God for IED's", she has stirred the pot enough to gain national attention and even runs a site www.godhatesamerica.com

Note: stirring the pot is not necessarily covert, but it frequently is. And it can definitely be combined with the sort of subterfuge you describe in your question.