I have a leftist friend who's a historian writing a paper on how the right is so successful at organizing and why the left sucks at it. Trying to help them gather sources. The more scholary the better.
She's particularly looking at right wing paramilitary organizations (proud boys, 3%s ect) And why the left has trouble forming their own.
Edit: question might have been a bit ambiguous, we all know a lot of the basic reasons for this, what I need is the type of thing that can be used for an academic research paper. Interesting discussion is still good though so have at it.
The premise is wrong - the left is good at organizing, the issue is that the right doesn't have to fight the federal government.
:this:
The united states government has to spend billions of dollars to fund agencies and departments almost entirely focused on combating leftism in the imperial core.
had to at some point in time and probably started paying a little more attention now again but no way they spend a fraction of that for pretty much 40 years +
the records from a few decades ago are public now - they absolutely have as far as we know and there's no indication they let up in the more recent decades where we don't have data yet.
Which are the records that say tha the US has spend billions in let's say the 90s and 00s specifically for domestic radical left organizing supression
they weren't wrong that the Black Panthers represented an existential threat to the state.
Well, they had to in the beginning at least. Generations of USians are now indoctrinated so the momentum is on their side. But truly, the CIA and the right wing fund media outlets, artists, TV, political groups... It's honestly stunning how left idealogy has even survived in the diminished form that it is now...
Yeah - a good approach would be to focus on the times the Democrats and Republicans closed ranks to deny the left a victory. Like the way the Democrats killed the Populist Party in the 1890s, or the way the Democrats gave up and endorsed the Republican so as to not let Hunter S. Thompson become sheriff of Aspen. :hst-pissed:
Also the dirty tricks they used against Upton Sinclair, I think :matt: talked about it on one of his History is a Weapon pods
And of course, we cannot forget about :punished-bernie: and the bullshit they pulled on him
They did this against socialists in municipal Pennsylvania politics in early 20th century. Prob other places too: https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/23744/23513
When the Dems and repubs allied against the successful socialist government, they called them "fusionists"
the left also doesn't get millions of dollars in funding thrown their way. leftist operations are funded by mostly poor or middle-income workers directly.
Look up the jakarta method for an idea of the process/tactics abroad. Then skim over mkultra and then review cointel pro in more depth.
The left in the imperial core is at a severe disadvantage from the following:
Reason 1. outright active state oppression
Reason 2. decades of assassinations and sheepdogs
few elder leftists that haven’t been either murdered or co-opted into the system
3. Community devastation
the war on drugs, the AIDs epidemic, the mishandling of covid. All of these result in both loss of life and the ability to organize.
4. (almost) everyone in the imperial core benefits from imperialism
This creates a dynamic where dismantling the system would very likely worsen many’s immediate material conditions in the United States. As imperialism continues to “come home”, this force lessons in its influence on suppressing more coherent degrees of class consciousness.
5. Abysmal and broken education system + widespread propaganda through media manipulation
Americans are on the whole now some of the least educated and poorly trained populations of any imperial core country. This benefits the core so will only compound further.
6. Settler-colonialism + systemic racism
The class system in the United States is built upon the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, and the mass theft and privatization of all land in the United States.
This has created a dynamic where the white working class in the United States functions closer to a privileged labor aristocracy and is materially incentivized to lack proletarian consciousness.
On the whole, the white (and especially cishet) working class possesses a petit-bourgeois and reformist consciousness. The colonized peoples of the United States constitutes a more conventional proletariat. This can be seen in the success of black and indigenous liberation movements, and (to a lesser extent) queer liberation movements.
The Amerikan apartheid police state had to respond with overwhelming force to groups like the Black Panthers and even then, they barely managed to overcome them. This necessitated community devastation to heighten alienation and force individualism (see above)
The book Settlers in part outlines this, although it tends to upset white armchair leftists as it is not written in a “respectable” academic tone and it makes a clear case for why any coming revolutions will not be centered white men as the main heroes.
Dark Money by Jane Mayer (seriously, I've mentioned this book like 20 times in the past week. someone tell me to shut up) by Jane Mayer documents how Billionaires are spending millions, posssibly billions on propaganda networks, think tanks, activist groups, etc. We've got hexbear and gofundme.
We’ve got hexbear and gofundme.
Oh shit, I’d never really considered how unique this site is, not surprised it got slammed with wreckers for over a year after it launched
There's other stuff out there; little social circles on social media, mutual aid groups, etc. But yeah, not a lot of active leftist spaces.
I’d recommend Democracy In Chains by Nancy MacLean as a companion piece.
I like it that Dark Money describes the funding apparatus (Koch and Scaife) for the ideology laundering and cadre formations that Democracy In Chains gets into (James Buchanan and the various think tanks).
Yeah, I read Democracy in Chains a few years after reading Dark Money, so it was a bit like reading a prequel.😂 Fascinating stuff, especially the background on using Chile as a testing ground. I usually recommend the two along with Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank as a kind of speedrun to understanding the current states of the two parties and why neither one gives a shit about us.
I feel like these 3 books taken together plus The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin probably lay out some of the best non-Marxist analyses of the material and ideological conditions of the modern US. I would probably add The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins for the international/imperialist criticism.
I've added The Reactionary Mind to my list, thanks. Already got Shock Doctrine on there.👍 The Jakarta Method, fuckin A!I just read that a few months ago and that's the book that really cemented in my head that Nazis vs Communists are the epitome of the class war; With Nazis fighting for the rich and Communists fighting for each other. Like I was aware of most of those "Operations" and whatnot, but Bevins did such an amazing job of laying out how actions in the US led to slaughter across the globe. Thanks to JM I've really made a lot of headway with people by explaining to them that, in our history books, "Anti-Communists" forces are code for Nazis (or local equivalents) and the scary "Communist Revolutionaries" are just uprising workers. It really connects with libs when they're seeing all this shit go down nowadays and realizing that the media and DC are fucking them over. Obviously not enough to radicalize them or anything, but it's gotten my foot in the door for attacking the the other US history myths.
The right isn't good at organizing, they're just in alignment with a wing of capital.
This. Organizing is hard for anyone, but you don't need to organize when capital, the law, and all the cops are on your side by default. Liberals and chuds can't organize either but they don't need to.
Souce: just trust me bro
Rightists are easier to organize because all you need to say is "I hate brown people and love my countey" and all the members will dismiss everything else they disagree with in order to work for a common goal
Leftists will say I dont particularly agree 100% with Zippidydoopy Slebernsitch, of 1932 in his book "The overall concentration of the philosophical and economic and poo poo pee pee of capitalhistorocalmarxicalanarchicalliberalism" which is 700 pages long with print size 9, and then the part splits into 79 different parties each with only 2 members
Speaking from a British perspective I see this among americans much more than our left. Over here we're nowhere near as childish about it because we're not under any illusions that we're remotely close to achieving anything worth fighting each other over. It seems like the American left, being even further away from any victories, fights itself more because victories against people in the left provides more immediate catharsis than the prospect of achieving anything.
Eh, I'm pretty sure "Exiting the Vampire Castle" was written about the British left, though it describes the American left perfectly.
Wasn't that more about identity and morals than sectarian thought?
We fight over that shit a lot, we do not much fight over red vs black, or red vs red. The american left sure does that a lot.
Yeah, fair. Although I feel like they're both cases of "easier to win a victory over your fellow leftists than over the fash" in action.
If you think non electoral revolutionary leftist organizing has been dead for half a century now in the imperial core primarily because of extremely meandering ideological sectarianism i have a bridge to sell you. Also even so the successful ones both in the west and everywhere werent "big tent" and had robust and concrete ideological stances and beliefs
Rightists are easier to organize
There may actually be something to this. Maybe OP’s friend would benefit from some literature on the authoritarian personality
cointelpro, the green scare, SHAC 7 prosecutions for speech, J20 prosecutions, etc etc
the govt disrupts and destroys left wing organizing while helping along the right.
There's a paper called Making Friends & Making Out about how Chile successfully organized. Maybe that'll help. It mentions how the communist party served a social function and wasn't annoying freaks saying you're not allowed to date anyone not on Tinder.
Inb4 the obvious "what about predators though" response this post will get.
Salgado, A. (2019). Making Friends and Making Out: The Social and Romantic Lives of Young Communists in Chile (1958–1973). The Americas, 76(2), 299–326.
The paper is on Sci-Hub for those interested.
I think the premise is flawed, the left has absolutely organized successful violent opposition to fascists. Read No Fascist USA to learn the story of the ARA kids in California in the 80s and 90s. They went to war with the fash and won. Left wing militants just don't go around battering random black people and trans people, so there's really no incentive from a sensationalism perspective to report on them.
She's particularly looking at right wing paramilitary organizations (proud boys, 3%s ect) And why the left has trouble forming them) I'll edit my post to add that.
Oh. That’s entirely COINTELPRO shit. Those groups just get murdered, eradicated, and infiltrated.
The federal government waged a two decades long war against groups like the blank panther party. In many ways, the mechanisms of that program remain today in the ongoing “war on drugs” and mass carceral system
I know the FBI has a website somewhere where you can search every document they've released due to FOIA, just plug in "Black Panthers" and see what comes out :fred-hampton:
I think it's important to note that the FBI loves infiltrating and propagating these groups, getting them large enough to 'bag' for political points with liberals. It's a very different strategy than with the left, where they generally tend to seek to cause division and uncertainty. I think it is easier for them to cause division because leftists are already wary of cops, so it is easy to sow mistrust, whereas it is alot easier to do big 'bag and tag' operations with right wing groups, because they trust so easily. I mean, multiple leaders of the Proud Boys have been found to be FBI informants. The issue now is that it has started to get out of hand and past where they have control over it, imo. Or it could be them pushing for more radicalization among the right-wing, or they could be becoming radicalized themselves. There are lots of options going on here, and it is likely a mix of everything.
The issue now is that it has started to get out of hand and past where they have control over it
Well shit does that sound familiar
If she’s looking for structural differences between the orgs, that document where the FBI stated they had trouble infiltrating decentralized organizations might be worth a read. My guess is it’s less about the structure of the group and more about external suppression, but there might be something to be said about the idea that right-wing groups are pathologically hierarchical. You can infiltrate a group of 7 guys and they’ll all have ranks
Leftist infighting is a psyop and that gets in the way.
Then when leftist organize the cops tend to break it up. Like picture a world where the black panthers and the elves and who ever else just kept operating at full power. Just having strong working class institutions would allow for so much more effective organization
In regards to right wing militias, they firstly have time and money because they're all petty bourgeois white people. How does the average worker have time to go on week long training retreats? How is the average worker to buy $1000+ guns and thousands of dollars of ammo and other equipment?
Secondly, leftist ideology has always understood self defense (or violence in general) in terms of numbers and organization, not skill and equipment. The average worker can be turned into a soldier by handing him a cheap rifle and some bullets and training him to shoot. Thus he doesn't need to be apart of some fraternal organization. Trotsky urges the workers to fight fascism with pistols and knives. There's that Malcolm X speech where he says the guerilla soldier has nothing but a rifle.
Finally there's the feds. They'll keep a right wing group around as long as they don't get too bloodthirsty but they won't let a left wing one exist because if the left wing group gains momentum and turns the populace towards a revolution it might be too late for the feds to step in. A right wing group will never turn the populace to a revolt because their ideas are fundamentally chauvinist.
Edit: Simply put, the organizations your friend is looking at it consist of "operators". We cannot afford "operators", we do not need "operators". and the FBI would never let us have "operators".
self defense (or violence in general) in terms of numbers and organization, not skill and equipment
Ten people with one rifle beat one person with ten rifles every time
E: except Rambo I guess :shrug-outta-hecks:
You still need to organize, but you honestly don't need to be an operator. Join/create a community organization. Learn first aid/CPR Help others prepare for the times ahead with food/water/medicine, etc. And for pete's sake, if you are able and willing to bear the idea of owning a firearm, at least build/buy an AR lower and begin assembling one.
An Anderson stripped lower is like $30-$40. You can buy the pieces a little at a time if you don't have a huge amount of money. You don't even need to put the upper on, but the cool zone is inching closer and closer..
Powerful few trying to maintain their absolute power, with all the resources and institutions at disposition, vs powerless many trying to have some with no resources and no institutions in their favor.
