I suspect that much of the networked self-organization will be, at least on the surface, apolitical. For example, rather than being aimed at influencing the school board to cease grooming kids, it will work to provide a superior educational system outside of the control of the state. Both can take place in parallel of course, but in the long run the latter is more effective - it gradually constructs a successor state inside the hollow shell of the dying one, providing a focus for people to redirect their loyalty. It also leverages the talents and skills of a broader cross-section of the population: those interested in political activity are and always will be a small minority, while frustrated professionals at their wits' end with institutional failure are already a substantial group.
As an aside, it's one of the more interesting contradictions of the contemporary right that, on the one hand, there's a deep and organic appreciation for the necessity of natural hierarchy; while on the other, it has been from the beginning an amorphous, decentralized, leaderless, self-organizing phenomenon. Meanwhile Antifa's AnComs nominally adhere to an anarchist doctrine, but in practice are a top-down, centrally controlled astroturf organization that would not exist absent state and corporate support.
I see it happening within the belly of the beast here on the Northeast corridor. I just met with a retired lawyer, disgusted by 12 years service on a local school board, determined to get a charter school based on the Hillsdale classical model established in the Philadelphia area. Just hearing about the concept was enough to motivate me and a friend, neither of us have school age children and both are past middle age, to commit to supporting this effort however we can. I was asking myself why I was getting into this and my answer was that it needed doing.
Let a thousand flowers bloom. Charter schools are certainly one solution. Only problem is that they're still subject to state regulation, and even getting the system in place requires pressuring the state to allow them, in the face of stiff opposition from the school boards. Homeschooling and podschooling are also good alternatives; although, again, the state will often try to regulate it, and in some countries it's simply prohibited.
Even in the most extreme situation, though, one can see ways around it. For example, say a state requires all students to attend government schools, where they spend all their time being indoctrinated rather than educated. They can't force students to actually pay attention and study, though. Underground academies could be set up to provide what the state schools don't; students would simply fail to turn in their homework at the state schools, fail their tests, and so on, as they put their efforts into studying the curriculum offered by the underground academy, perhaps even simply ignore their teachers as they studied the real stuff in class on their phones.
Ultimately that's what makes self-organization so powerful. It's fast, agile, and adaptable. It presses forward on all fronts, searching out weak points like a slime mold or an ant colony identifying sources of nutrients. By contrast, the centralized systems are slow, lumbering, and clumsy; they take a long time to change course, and any 'innovations' they implement are telegraphed well in advance.
The way ahead is to focus on teaching for mastery, for prowess, and to offer an alternative to credentialism, grade inflation etc. Product differentiation works. The beauty of homeschooling and podschooling is that people can prioritise and focus closely on what they value. No reason for at least some not to go seriously old school and elitist (maths and languages were just about it at Eton for yonks).
Spot on. There is an urgent need for quality vocational education of all kinds. There is an especially pressing need to develop knowledge and skill in STEM. The real world effect of current educational reforms to deprioritise mathematics is to suppress the formation of human capital, with results that we can all imagine. Any organisation that meets these needs (or at least support those involved in doing so) will do well. The woke aim to disrupt the transmission of knowledge and suppress the formation of human capital amongst disfavoured groups (us). We counteract the disruption or we lose.
He will never rock the boat with pet theories. (If it is a nationalist movement, he won't have the usual out-there theories: libertarianism, Marxism, religious fanaticism.)
He won't take a smaller faction's side, unless that faction is the dominant one where he resides. He'll stay in your movement's mainstream.
He will ask for people's contact information, their jobs and where they live.
He won't invite you home or show his girlfriend or other friends.
He'll always have a lot of time to spend on the movement, as he is paid by the authorities, and can therefore rise in the ranks. This is something the media can then use to ridicule the movement: "The infiltrator became the regional organizer!"
He'll listen attentively to whatever you have to say, a grateful audience, as if he could be a great friend. He does this with everyone in private, including those whose opinions contradict yours.
Revolver News just now has a story called "Meet Ray Epps," where he writes about how FBI agents and informants never work alone, something else to look for.
"This is how you end up with at least 12 FBI informants in a tiny 'right-wing' Michigan militia plot from October 2020 (that’s just informants, not even agents), 15 informants in the 'right-wing' 2016 Malheur plot, dozens in the 2014 Bundy Ranch affair — including six FBI undercover agents posing as fake documentarians shooting a fake documentary — and the list goes on."
If you are ever brought in for questioning, say nothing. Keep quiet until released, or if they're detaining you, get a lawyer. A public lawyer works. Many judges, lawyers and police officers have noted that no one is ever released because of what he has said during interrogation - but a lot of people are sent to prison because of what they've said.
Once you are in the interrogation room, you are a target. The interrogator doesn't get points for anything other than making you incriminate yourself. They'll say things like, "We just want to know what happened," "Other people are talking and this is your chance to give your version," "Just tell us and then you can go home". They will use various tricks like staring unblinkingly at you for a long time. Push your chair with wheels up hard against the wall to rattle you. Or maybe give a sympathetic sigh. Shame you by talking about you to a colleague while you are in the room. They'll exploit the normal human wish to explain your actions, while they pretend to be sympathetic. Their sympathy means nothing. Everything you say is simply passed on to the prosecutor.
They'll threaten to keep you over night, or for several days. Ignore that. If they have any evidence that justifies detaining you, they'll do so, whether you talk or not. If they don't have the evidence they'll release you, whether you talk or not. They'll try to scare you by saying they might call your employer or school, or that they might knock on your neighbors' doors to hear if you went out that night. Ignore that too - they'll only do that if it's relevant for the investigation, which it practically never is. They don't have the time and energy for that anyway. They'll threaten to pile on more serious charges. Again, ignore it - if they have the evidence they will, otherwise not. None of these things are a reason for you to start talking.
If you talk, it is very easy to make a mistake. You think they already know. They might be pretty sure, but now you've confirmed it, for them and for the prosecutor. And they can use what you say to show your friends that "he's talking". They couldn't prove you took part in the fight, until you said you did and tried to explain why you had to help your friends, what bad things the other guys had done, how the fight was surely justified and you're not the ones who should be blamed. Now you've given them what they needed. Good job.
You'll trip over details. Even if it's a small thing that you got wrong, it can be used in court to show that you're a liar. You'll exaggerate - a common mistake. "I wasn't there that night. I have NEVER been to that part of town." If they can show that you've ever been there, at any point - that means you're a liar.
EVEN IF YOU'RE INNOCENT AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS TRUE, it can get you into trouble. Especially because witnesses are notoriously bad at remembering things, and they want to "help" the police. The police also help them go from "maybe he was" to "he definitely was". Being unsure is embarrassing. For example, you usually go to the coffee shop near the crime scene on Mondays, but you didn't go that Monday. You tell the interrogator. But the waitress says you were there that Monday - it was three weeks ago now, but she thinks she remembers. Yes, she definitely remembers, she decides after a while. The witness says one thing, you say another - now you're a proven liar, so that means you're guilty of the crime too.
I suspect that much of the networked self-organization will be, at least on the surface, apolitical. For example, rather than being aimed at influencing the school board to cease grooming kids, it will work to provide a superior educational system outside of the control of the state. Both can take place in parallel of course, but in the long run the latter is more effective - it gradually constructs a successor state inside the hollow shell of the dying one, providing a focus for people to redirect their loyalty. It also leverages the talents and skills of a broader cross-section of the population: those interested in political activity are and always will be a small minority, while frustrated professionals at their wits' end with institutional failure are already a substantial group.
As an aside, it's one of the more interesting contradictions of the contemporary right that, on the one hand, there's a deep and organic appreciation for the necessity of natural hierarchy; while on the other, it has been from the beginning an amorphous, decentralized, leaderless, self-organizing phenomenon. Meanwhile Antifa's AnComs nominally adhere to an anarchist doctrine, but in practice are a top-down, centrally controlled astroturf organization that would not exist absent state and corporate support.
I see it happening within the belly of the beast here on the Northeast corridor. I just met with a retired lawyer, disgusted by 12 years service on a local school board, determined to get a charter school based on the Hillsdale classical model established in the Philadelphia area. Just hearing about the concept was enough to motivate me and a friend, neither of us have school age children and both are past middle age, to commit to supporting this effort however we can. I was asking myself why I was getting into this and my answer was that it needed doing.
Let a thousand flowers bloom. Charter schools are certainly one solution. Only problem is that they're still subject to state regulation, and even getting the system in place requires pressuring the state to allow them, in the face of stiff opposition from the school boards. Homeschooling and podschooling are also good alternatives; although, again, the state will often try to regulate it, and in some countries it's simply prohibited.
Even in the most extreme situation, though, one can see ways around it. For example, say a state requires all students to attend government schools, where they spend all their time being indoctrinated rather than educated. They can't force students to actually pay attention and study, though. Underground academies could be set up to provide what the state schools don't; students would simply fail to turn in their homework at the state schools, fail their tests, and so on, as they put their efforts into studying the curriculum offered by the underground academy, perhaps even simply ignore their teachers as they studied the real stuff in class on their phones.
Ultimately that's what makes self-organization so powerful. It's fast, agile, and adaptable. It presses forward on all fronts, searching out weak points like a slime mold or an ant colony identifying sources of nutrients. By contrast, the centralized systems are slow, lumbering, and clumsy; they take a long time to change course, and any 'innovations' they implement are telegraphed well in advance.
The way ahead is to focus on teaching for mastery, for prowess, and to offer an alternative to credentialism, grade inflation etc. Product differentiation works. The beauty of homeschooling and podschooling is that people can prioritise and focus closely on what they value. No reason for at least some not to go seriously old school and elitist (maths and languages were just about it at Eton for yonks).
Spot on. There is an urgent need for quality vocational education of all kinds. There is an especially pressing need to develop knowledge and skill in STEM. The real world effect of current educational reforms to deprioritise mathematics is to suppress the formation of human capital, with results that we can all imagine. Any organisation that meets these needs (or at least support those involved in doing so) will do well. The woke aim to disrupt the transmission of knowledge and suppress the formation of human capital amongst disfavoured groups (us). We counteract the disruption or we lose.
How to recognize an infiltrator:
He will never rock the boat with pet theories. (If it is a nationalist movement, he won't have the usual out-there theories: libertarianism, Marxism, religious fanaticism.)
He won't take a smaller faction's side, unless that faction is the dominant one where he resides. He'll stay in your movement's mainstream.
He will ask for people's contact information, their jobs and where they live.
He won't invite you home or show his girlfriend or other friends.
He'll always have a lot of time to spend on the movement, as he is paid by the authorities, and can therefore rise in the ranks. This is something the media can then use to ridicule the movement: "The infiltrator became the regional organizer!"
He'll listen attentively to whatever you have to say, a grateful audience, as if he could be a great friend. He does this with everyone in private, including those whose opinions contradict yours.
Revolver News just now has a story called "Meet Ray Epps," where he writes about how FBI agents and informants never work alone, something else to look for.
"This is how you end up with at least 12 FBI informants in a tiny 'right-wing' Michigan militia plot from October 2020 (that’s just informants, not even agents), 15 informants in the 'right-wing' 2016 Malheur plot, dozens in the 2014 Bundy Ranch affair — including six FBI undercover agents posing as fake documentarians shooting a fake documentary — and the list goes on."
If you are ever brought in for questioning, say nothing. Keep quiet until released, or if they're detaining you, get a lawyer. A public lawyer works. Many judges, lawyers and police officers have noted that no one is ever released because of what he has said during interrogation - but a lot of people are sent to prison because of what they've said.
Once you are in the interrogation room, you are a target. The interrogator doesn't get points for anything other than making you incriminate yourself. They'll say things like, "We just want to know what happened," "Other people are talking and this is your chance to give your version," "Just tell us and then you can go home". They will use various tricks like staring unblinkingly at you for a long time. Push your chair with wheels up hard against the wall to rattle you. Or maybe give a sympathetic sigh. Shame you by talking about you to a colleague while you are in the room. They'll exploit the normal human wish to explain your actions, while they pretend to be sympathetic. Their sympathy means nothing. Everything you say is simply passed on to the prosecutor.
They'll threaten to keep you over night, or for several days. Ignore that. If they have any evidence that justifies detaining you, they'll do so, whether you talk or not. If they don't have the evidence they'll release you, whether you talk or not. They'll try to scare you by saying they might call your employer or school, or that they might knock on your neighbors' doors to hear if you went out that night. Ignore that too - they'll only do that if it's relevant for the investigation, which it practically never is. They don't have the time and energy for that anyway. They'll threaten to pile on more serious charges. Again, ignore it - if they have the evidence they will, otherwise not. None of these things are a reason for you to start talking.
If you talk, it is very easy to make a mistake. You think they already know. They might be pretty sure, but now you've confirmed it, for them and for the prosecutor. And they can use what you say to show your friends that "he's talking". They couldn't prove you took part in the fight, until you said you did and tried to explain why you had to help your friends, what bad things the other guys had done, how the fight was surely justified and you're not the ones who should be blamed. Now you've given them what they needed. Good job.
You'll trip over details. Even if it's a small thing that you got wrong, it can be used in court to show that you're a liar. You'll exaggerate - a common mistake. "I wasn't there that night. I have NEVER been to that part of town." If they can show that you've ever been there, at any point - that means you're a liar.
EVEN IF YOU'RE INNOCENT AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS TRUE, it can get you into trouble. Especially because witnesses are notoriously bad at remembering things, and they want to "help" the police. The police also help them go from "maybe he was" to "he definitely was". Being unsure is embarrassing. For example, you usually go to the coffee shop near the crime scene on Mondays, but you didn't go that Monday. You tell the interrogator. But the waitress says you were there that Monday - it was three weeks ago now, but she thinks she remembers. Yes, she definitely remembers, she decides after a while. The witness says one thing, you say another - now you're a proven liar, so that means you're guilty of the crime too.