Friday, April 28, 2017

Making Antifa Irrelevant




There is a lot of chatter on the interwebz these days about the alt-right ratcheting up the resistance to the Radical Left as embodied in the communist Antifa these days. [NOTE: some folks say that "antifa" stands for Anti-First Amendment. Historically, the name comes from a communist political group in post-WWI Germany.] Indeed, organizations, such as Proud Boys and the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK) are springing up. But Antifa is well funded and apparently has both a public network for activating flunkies, and a private network for strategic messaging between puppet masters. The alt-right, by comparison, is not nearly so organized.

This blog entry, then, is directed at getting the alt-right to think about organization, which it must have in order to be effective.

There are several required dimensions to this organization of the alt-right that must happen if Antifa is to be made irrelevant.

  1. The different alt-right groups need to coalesce into the Alt-Right. Such an action infers that there is some strategic thought at the national level going on. Tactical decisions can and should be made at the local level, but in order to be successful, the tactical activities need to be aligned with a strategy.
  2. The Alt-Right needs a charismatic leader. All successful revolutions have had charismatic leaders. Think of Fidel Castro or Ayatollah Khomeini. A charismatic leader is an attraction feature of any movement. Unless there is a leader to keep people on target, the movement will flail without direction and eventually fall apart. Antifa does not have this, and eventually, it will bite them in the ass. There are already some good candidates. A couple that come to mind are Kyle "Based Stick Man" Chapman and Ivan "Dark Triad Man" Throne. Some of you may be tempted to ask me, "Why not Vox Day?"  Good question, but if you know anything about Theodore "Vox Day" Beale, you would understand that his value is in providing thought leadership rather than people leadership. He will still be a valuable resource for the Alt Right.
  3. The Alt-Right needs ideological appeal. It has a good start on this as its name implies. This appeal is codified in the 16 Points of the Alt Right, which has been provided by that great thought leader, Vox Day. They resonate with a tremendous amount of people. Unfortunately, the 16 Points is not widely distributed. Every time the opposition tries to cast the Alt Right as something it is not, these points need to be made.
  4. The Alt-Right needs to place emphasis on valid grievances. Free speech is a good start. Unrestricted immigration is another issue which qualifies. Grievances such as these need to be collected into a coherent message which is explained in a rhetorical way that appeals to the average citizen, and the message needs to be hammered at every opportunity.
  5. The Alt-Right needs to demonstrate the weakness of Antifa. It has already done this at the physical confrontation at Berkeley, and it needs to maintain this superiority. But that engagement is only important in the context of Berkeley. What the Alt-Right needs to do is combine physical superiority with intellectual superiority. The latter should be relatively easy, as Antifa has only shown the ability to provide emotional appeals on the level of toddlers.
  6. The Alt-Right needs to learn how to induce Antifa into over-reactions. A steady diet of over-reactions on the part of Antifa will alienate a substantial portion of the citizenry.
  7. The Alt-Right should also engage in activities that appeal to local communities. The best activities would be high visibility responses to problems that the news media happens to be covering. For instance, if the Alt-Right had shown up after the D.C. Antifa riots to help with the cleanup, it would have been pure PR gold.
  8. The Alt-Right needs to get behind political candidates that are sympathetic to the cause. The profile of such candidates would include a recognition that Antifa is dyscivic and dyscivilizational. Support for these candidates would mean volunteering to canvass and other campaign activities.
  9. The Alt-Right should never, ever throw an ally under the bus. Organizations are made up of people and all people have flaws. We don't have to agree with each other on everything. But we do need to agree on the basics. Take a lesson from the Left. When one of their allies is remarked as being over the top, their reply is always, "He may be a little extreme in that area, but he is right on the issue at hand."  Once the Alt-Right starts being judgmental on its allies and sympathizers, all is lost. Don't do it.
  10. The Alt-Right needs to engage in sloganeering. I am talking about bumper-sticker rhetoric. We are pretty good at internet memes, and we need to keep that up. We also need t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters. This gets the message out and keeps hammering the message. In addition to be pro-Alt-Right, the slogans also need to be anti-Antifa.

Well, those are my thoughts on what the Alt-Right needs to do to make Antifa irrelevant. I base this on the study of successful insurgencies in the 20th century and what I have read recently about asymetrical warfare, sometimes called fourth generation warefare. We are in a low intensity war right now. If we don't want it to become a high intensity war, we need to take action now.