So You Say You Want A Revolution, Eh? by NC Scout

To borrow a line from John Lennon, we all want to change the world. Hopefully for the better, at least that’s the intention. For better or worse. That view stems from the desire to create a better world for what we leave behind. It is not enough to simply seek to carve out one’s mark, rather, it is more important to acknowledge the mark one leaves but also the impact. In times of great duress, that desire grows and manifests in a variety of ways. My work is one such example.

Simultaneously it is profoundly easy to give one’s thoughts to scenes of violence. Its easy; after all, in the face of hyper-polarization and the constant demonization of anyone not fitting into the purity tests of the Left on part of that same Power Elite are told they have no value. The Deplorable. The Unvaccinated. The Unwashed. Whatever the term, the message is the same, and a group finished with social castigation will eventually lash out. A people’s patience can only extend so far. It is a default reaction but simultaneously a reaction in one dimension only, likely achieving little when acted upon absent any consideration or appeal to the larger social conditions of revolution.

This naturally leads to a desire for organization. It follows a model, repeatable over time, to which sociologists and psychologists have sought to explore to better understand this concept of radicalization. The great irony of academia is that they, like everything else, seek to explain in ten thousand words or more what the lumpenproletariat already knows. When people are fed up, they meet up with other people also fed up, and a nucleus then slowly becomes a cell, then a network, then a broader entity. In layman’s terms we can understand it as a group of friends; in broad terms we call it populism and when taken to its logical extent, populist revolt.

The trouble starts somewhere around the nucleus for the working class in America. In the social distortion of the post-WWII era Americans found themselves ever more isolated from one another in suburban enclaves; slowly, mind you, but in terms of generational analysis the need for constant entertainment eroded the capacity to create social bonds. Fast forward to today, social media in all forms serves as little more than an opiate with most confusing its use with actual effective organization. It could easily be argued this is by design. One wonders exactly how far Tom Barry would have got should there have been a Gab in 1921.

To compound the situation, many of these, filled with much anger and little logic, let alone experience, take it upon themselves to lament the perceived ‘lack of organization’, ‘no action’, or my personal favorite, ‘hopeless indignation’. Life’s hard, you know. Those third people lack any value and require no examination. In the first two categories, however, those claiming such are always one of two categories; a social failure in the real world or a person incapable of building competent and trustworthy bonds due to dependence on the aforementioned conditions. Theirs is a product of a lack of interpersonal skills combined with unhealthy expectations, a lack of education in revolutionary movements, and normally a refusal to study any of these out of political galvanization.

Life is not an action movie and political movements, both revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, move much like a avalanche; years and years of patient buildup to one triggerpoint, then it all comes crashing with great drama, destroying everything in its path. This is why the Right gets accused of not reading Lefty books. And that accusation certainly bears merit.

However this should not be confused with frustration. We’re all frustrated. Downright angry. Angry enough to leave a well paying and comfortable job to commit to training that same lumpenproletariat in hopes of fomenting a counterrevolution. A lofty goal, certainly, but someone has to do it. The aforementioned category described above is a different animal altogether, and a people who only exist where there is no personal risk involved, usually always quick to offer their take on a solution, for all that its worth.

Going back to our example of the avalanche; all revolutions, and in turn counter-revolutions, are political. Warfare is an outgrowth of political struggle, and politics themselves a war of economics. In America it is rarely, and carefully, avoided to be framed in this manner. Sure, the suits may talk tough, but they vote for debt increases and pay raises to themselves each time. The political component of the Power Elite is nothing more than face, easily replaceable when the time is due. It matters not who counts the votes when you know not who picks the candidates. But this ironically brings us to the era of Trump.

Despite one’s reservations or vested trust, Trump’s candidacy and Presidency was far more important in representative value than one of actual substance. It was an indication that the same lumpenproletariat was angry, and explains the reactionary manner in which the institutional left and right, a false dichotomy representing alternating factions of that same Power Elite, could not tolerate. It was an awakening of populism, the kind that hit a fever pitch among Left-populist Labor movements in the first two decades of the 20th Century and marked by incidents like Haymarket Square, the Battle of Blair Mountain and the continuous labor strikes forcing the reigns of power in check leading to the greatest era of manufacturing prosperity in history. And for it, that same Elite shipped the jobs to their Chinese vassal state which they created for themselves. The irony is that the ‘activist’ Left of today is seeking to emulate those same previous movements, even labeling themselves in honor of such groups, while bearing no resemblance or commonality in any case. So you read Marx and have a Bernie sticker; how impressive. You also never labored a day in your life, listening to those ivory tower dwellers who hire the yardwork out, and are now a slave to a mountain of student debt to which you’ll never surmount. Congrats, comrade.

A reversion to the radical populism which we are currently observing is a scary prospect for those with a monopoly on control. And it is far easier to bankroll your own counter movement, in all its various forms, allowing it to run wild while dragging one’s feet on social control measures, much as one would do when seeking to control brushfires. Make another fire and you siphon off the fuel. This returns us to the abstract; the question of nucleus. How one reconciles the issue in achieving that nucleus is to understand the underlying conditions of revolution; that, there is mass civil dissatisfaction, there is mass distrust in conventional institutions and a strong desire to return to normalcy. Although the last bit is a lofty endeavor in my estimation – history is not socially regressive – normalcy is better understood as ‘when times were good’; the first two realizations are critical. We can no longer grant trust in those same institutions which have sold out the engine driving this Nation. And in turn, for anyone not falling into the trap of complaints of ‘lack of organization’ or ‘no action’, rather building those bonds in real time recognizing the underlying populism, the nucleus of local action is achieved.

A perfect example is the rejuvenated interest in school boards. The Power Elite achieved much in the shift towards educational domination in the late 1970s and into the 1990s. School board and county elections took a backseat to national politics in the wake of Reagan, presenting an advantage to seize control and thus finding a role for their activist throwbacks in need of a new mission. And the nucleus of local action in reaction is found in the labeling of concerned parents as domestic terrorists by the Department of Justice; they’re a threat, they’re hard to compromise, and worst of all, they’re not raving lunatics. They can easily attack the camo-clad group publicly posing in body armor. Not so easy to paint a latte-clutching mom in the same light. Effective Action is thus being achieved.

The question concerning ‘lack of organization’ must be addressed. Recognizing that all politics is warfare, the real threat lay with the very reigns of power in the politburo itself. That’s changing and rapidly. The era of Trump and a new counterculture among Generation Z – akin to Alex B. Keaton in the 80s but far more aware that theirs is a future it is up to them to make rather than the hell created by a rapidly fading generation that threw it away – is making the question of organization more a question of presentation. They’re there. What attempts are being made to train them? I would submit to you that most so-called efforts at organization failed (a strong case could be made that they were designed to do so) simply because they favored top-down rather than bottom-up, relying on the cohesion of a cult instead of a localist approach. Rapidly the wake of National populism is threatening the entire Superstructure.

You can say you want a Revolution, and I’d agree that the wheels of history are turning. But it cannot be denied that much is in fact occurring; those nuclei which have been created in recognition of the conditions of revolution building ever so slowly; is doing much to turn the tide. All warfare is political and in turn, politics are a reflection of economics. Stay the course, and be ready for when the avalanche breaks.