Monday, July 6, 2020

Roots of the insurgency, part 1

It appears that the BLM/Antifa brigades are almost exactly following Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," which in itself followed Lenin's "Stages of a Revolution," which was also a modification of Mao's own theories on Communist revolutions. It’s all just a matter of conjuring up illusions and mass delusions, no matter the brand of totalitarianism. Lenin was a fiery orator of propaganda, as was Adolph Hitler.

Lenin created a class war, Hitler a race war. Either way, the divide-and-conquer of wannabe dictators is pretty much the same, no matter what differences each might claim about the other. The propaganda content varies, but not their divide-and-conquer methods. Attitudes of supremacy come in different flavors and colors, but all rest on the basic premise of "othering." human naturally are tribal, so using this basic feature of human psychology means that playing the "we" versus "they" plan is quite effective at setting oneself up to be the new leader.

As Saul Alinsky taught, the goal of all such radicals is to seize power by fueling resentment and hatred among people through various forms of “consciousness”—particularly class and race consciousness. That’s what identity politics is all about. Once their organizations breed enough ill will, the “masses”—made up of mostly individuals who feel slighted in some way—can be baited and mobilized to do the bidding of power elites, all while claiming to want justice and equality.

A communist insurgency requires a certain amount of groundwork before it can begin. Once the groundwork has been laid and propaganda absorbed by enough people, agitation can proliferate. As Lenin made clear, agitation and propaganda go together and are absolutely essential to communist revolutions. The laying of this groundwork of propaganda can take decades.

Agitation can involve protests, parades, marches, and demonstrations. It also involves organized shout-downs of legislators and a hundred other means of trying to affect public policy by influencing public opinion.

About 100 years ago, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci introduced his theory of “cultural hegemony,” which cast cultural institutions as the enemy, claiming they were used to maintain power: Some people aren't more successful because they work harder. No, they are more successful because the game is rigged against them. This was the basis behind Hitler's scapegoating of the Jews, the Communist blaming of the Bourgeois.

Radicals of the 1960s, such as Saul Alinsky, picked up on this theme, noting that “the system” (i.e., American freedom) could only be destroyed from within once radical operatives had control over society’s institutions. The deep state is one example that’s been building through decades of bureaucratic bloat, with operatives embedded throughout the government, including in the military and intelligence agencies.

The mediating institutions have been relentlessly attacked. Those are the institutions that protect the individual from encroachment by the state, particularly the family, the church, and all voluntary and civic associations. We can see and feel especially how the family has been eroded today. All of these institutions have been deeply affected by statist forces, rendering them more vulnerable than ever to total absorption by the mass state, a prerequisite for communism. Once everything is provided by the state, there is little opposition once the state is subverted. People would rather maintain their standard of living than oppose the state and risk losing that standard. This is one reason why police "follow" orders that are antithetical to freedom- they don't want to risk losing their pension.

Once the stage is set, the communists enforce conformity. This is the stage in which you are told to conform and convert—or else. We see small shop owners threatened with financial ruin if they don’t come out and support the communists. We see Maoist-style “struggle sessions”—otherwise known as sessions of criticism and self-criticism—as college students are forced to admit to white privilege simply because they had happy childhoods. Businesses must swear allegiance to BLM or be destroyed. Anyone who engages in even a hint of counter-revolutionary thought is destroyed.

Once this has all been accomplished, the stage has been set for the beginnings of armed revolution. The Insurgency begins.

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