David Hines is a rightie who studies the left in detail, looks at how the left organizes, ponders how leftie tactics can be used by the right too. He doesn’t mock the left. He reads their books about organizing and tries to learn from them. He probably knows more about leftie organizing than many lefties.
He thinks the right is losing the organizing battle, and explains why.
To flip this, perhaps the left can learn some things from the right. The right is way better at bot swarm attacks on social media and organized attacks against mainstream media, because the right inherently is more centralized – and focused on elections, not the streets.
You can find Hines on Twitter at @hradzka, where he welcomes all, just play nice, ok.
The Left is skilled at building protests and movements that start in the streets. This is in the DNA of the hard left. By contrast, the Right is almost comically inept at putting on street protests. Like calling a one million person rally in support of Trump in DC, getting 500, and being blown off the media stage by the Juggalos rally on the same day in DC.
That’s what movements are about: gaining power. Movements don’t just happen. And they’re not the product of orders from on high, or rent-a-protesters paid out of somebody’s checkbook. They’re the product of a lot of people doing a lot of hard work over a very long time.
Righties don’t want to believe that. Thus, the same old horseshit: “oh it’s all George Soros.” “Oh we don’t get turnout for protests because we all have jobs.” “Oh we’d win a Second Civil War in five minutes anyway because the Lefties are wusses and we’ve got all the guns.”
It can’t possibly be that there’s work we need to do, work that we’ve been neglecting because we don’t understand how it works and we’re lazy. That’s unthinkable.
Well, think it. Because it’s true.
A fascinating point. The left often wins the culture while the right wins elections.
Briefly put, the organized Left has power because it has lots of organized groups that
employ different approaches
communicate, negotiate, and cooperate
serve their side’s goals
show value
provide service to their community
The Right has groups focused on electoral power and getting out the vote, mainly.This divergence has led us to the position we’re in: the Lefties are better at winning the culture, the Righties are better at winning elections, and neither political party is what you’d call responsive to its base.
Guns are an issue where the Right organizes locally and in general, is winning.
The only area where grassroots Righties have had actual measurable success in the last couple of decades is gun rights. And there’s a reason for that: literally everything about guns mandates local activism and involvement.