We’re all gobsmacked by the Republican Party’s transformation into the Revolutionary Party of the Orange Fearless Leader. Interestingly, their political agitation looks like it’s straight from Russian Marxism.
Thus, the task of the Social Democrats is to conduct constant agitation among the factory workers on the basis of existing petty needs and demands.
Ob Agitatsii (On Agitation) by Arkadi Kremer and Julius Martov, 1893.
Agitation is an excellent technique for manufacturing instability. Sometimes that’s good; sometimes not. But notice the part about “…Existing petty needs and demands.”? Agitation isn’t the means to something; it’s the point.
For Marxists and Socialists, agitation is a means to their end. Marxists wanted to overturn capitalism; Republicans want… well, that’s the question. Republicans since Reagan have been recreating a Gilded Age of widespread poverty, corruption, and limited, oligarch-level wealth. Is that the revolution you want to die for?
Anger Alone is Enough
Here’s some local news for an example. The suspiciously well-funded “Truckers’ Convoy” (or “People’s Convoy”) is still driving around Washington, DC roads. It’s been two weeks now. (Aren’t these ‘working people’ supposed to have jobs?) Anyway, they’re slow-walking traffic, leaning on their horns, and assaulting random people. For Freedom!
They’re protesting… um. Wait, I have this. These protesters hate the COVID mandates that the CDC just withdrew. Oh. No, wait. It’s the mask requirements that jurisdictions are dropping! Ugh. Maybe they’re pissed at how embarrassed we made them feel?
No, no, no. The Convoy demands investigations into… other stuff? Tyranny! Freedom! Trump! JFK, Jr.! Honestly, it depends on who you ask. They fly their American flags – look, honey, Patriots! – along with Trump hats, Confederate flags, and Gadsden flags. They talk about how good it feels to have people tell them they’re righteous rebels (emphasis on the Rebel part.)
Whatever. I expect the Astroturf Convoy that’s been here for weeks will continue. Their supporters will wave at them from overpasses as the ‘truckers’ protest… stuff they support emphatically. Or oppose with their lives. (They’re all a bit unclear.)
It’s like watching a Roadrunner cartoon where the coyote doesn’t notice he just ran off the cliff. I mean, it’s kind of funny to watch. Should I hold out an alarm clock on a stick? Naa.
It’s funny, but it’s also tragic. The CDC met the Convoy demands before they even started, but MAGA loyalists keep demonstrating.
Agitation
Talk about a singularly powerful tool. Fun, entertaining, and it gives your people something to do. Abhor your government! Jam up the Bad Guys. Prove you aren’t powerless! Show how Monkeywrenching isn’t just for ecodefense anymore. Make the system fail!
If you’re a leader, fire off as much agitprop as you can make up! Break everything you can and blame Democrats for the mess!
Sorry, revolutionary rhetoric just shouts for exclamation points. Anyway, there are a few steps to follow.
First, make your pitch simple; nobody cares about your deep thoughts or complex ideas. If you can’t fit it on a bumper sticker, or at most, a pamphlet, it’s too subtle. Think ‘dumb,’ and then go dumber. “We support our troops!”
Make it personal: find people’s most profound miseries and discontent. Remind them how much it hurts. Do not make their lives better! Misery isn’t something to fix; it’s a resource you bank for later. You need an unhappy proletariat.
Credit where credit’s due: Republicans one-upped Marxism: they make people’s problems worse. Beat that! Where Kremer and Martov saw a Russian population stretched to breaking, Republicans created their own. (“I know! Cancel Medicaid!”) And their people never remember who caused their grief. I’m still stunned by that.
Barriers to Absolute Power
Look at it from another angle. It’ll be fun. Imagine you’re a rich and powerful person. You entertain dreams of impossible wealth, but rules and laws hold you back. So you’re overthrowing the government. (Hypothetically, I mean.) Now, being rich as shit, assume you already bought a fuck-ton of political power. If you really want to push aside all that pesky democratic checks-and-balances stuff, make the poor people unhappy. Let them eat hate and intolerance. Screw up everything you can reach, then support anti-government protests about those poor services. Block justice so you can scream about the unfairness of the system! You know what I mean: lie! (The truth is overrated.) Deny every positive achievement and scream about any possible failure, true or not.
Agitate, agitate, agitate. You want wreckage and debris. Pry out as much insecurity and uncertainty as you can break free. The more you frustrate people, the more they’ll get behind your kitchen revolution.
Chaos as Opportunity
As you spin people up, point them at your political target of opportunity. They’re the ones who caused everything awful, ever. By all means, overplay your hand. “Democrats caused COVID!” “Pregnancy is God’s punishment for promiscuity.” Dehumanize them all. “Bloodless Bureaucrats.” “Rapists and murderers.” “They aren’t like you and me!” Don’t be reasonable, practical, or truthful; mercy and honor are for suckers. Revolutionaries measure success in disrupted loyalty, disenchantment, and directed rage.
If you already hold some power, so much the better. It gives your message more volume when you light torches.
It was not difficult to convince the people that the cause of all their misfortunes resided in political restrictions, and it was all the more easy to do this when the class that was standing over it sang in unison with the revolutionary agitators, although in truth, an octave lower.
Ob Agitatsii (On Agitation) by Arkadi Kremer and Julius Martov, 1893.
Agitation and chaos work. Let me count the ways:
- Voter dissatisfaction gives your out-of-power candidates a boost in the next election.
- Misery makes people angry and easier to manipulate.
- Chaos undermines the currently elected government.
- Deep and systemic dysfunction make the entire concept of democracy look bad. (Argue that Fascism is much more productive without using that word.)
- Spread the blame: Democrats, incumbents, the educated, Swiss Jewish Bankers, Brown people, whoever.
- Build a solid base of unquestioning ideologues. (You’ll want cannon fodder.)
Again, don’t fix anything. The idea is cohesion. You want your followers to think of themselves as a specific, separate, and persecuted group. (Oppression is essential; make it up if you have to.) Make them part of your pretend oppression, and they’ll be loyal to you forever. Better, persecution inoculates them to anything outside your propaganda.
Having been prepared in this way for the more serious struggle, the working class proceeds to the resolution of these vital questions, and agitation on the basis of these questions must have as its aim the formation of class self-consciousness. The class struggle in this more conscious form establishes the basis for political agitation, the aim of which will be to alter existing political conditions in favor of the working class. The subsequent program of the [revolutionary party] is self-evident.
Ob Agitatsii (On Agitation) by Arkadi Kremer and Julius Martov, 1893.
In other words, show people just enough petty victories that they’re on your team and primed for the more “vital questions.”
This is important: Republicans carefully talk up guns and armed insurrection. There’s a whole subculture about ‘using your guns against tyranny’ (i.e., please shoot people in authority). Why would law-and-order Republicans want heavily armed civilians to kill local police, state officers, federal officials, or even their elected government?
Yeah. Talk about a bloodless coup all you want, but acclimate your people to an armed and bloody insurrection.
Truth Doesn’t Matter
I am exhausted listening to talking heads pretending to be shocked by each week’s new Republican hypocrisy. Yes, GOP leaders are lying again. They’ve been solidly bad-faith partners for decades. We knew that part before you spoke up. Can we just assume that part and keep moving?
I also hate watching Republican politics. a gaggle of right-wing idiots happily repeating stuff they already know is false. I understand the dynamic. The pleasure they feel (and the political benefit they receive) is strong enough to overpower people’s desire not to look like drooling fools. But they still look like mouth-breathing gits.
One last time: if the right wanted the truth, Republican derp would die on the vine. Republican loyalists might still make excuses for their grimy representatives, but they’d at least grimace at their mistakes. Instead, they gleefully repeat all the disproved misinformation – laughable nonsense – that thrives in Right-wing circles. For them, it’s fun! We keep missing that part. The lies work every time because they offer emotional satisfaction and an endocrine rush of self-righteousness. The truth of it doesn’t matter and hasn’t been driving Republican politics in decades.
If the truth mattered, we’d act differently.
Revolution!
Revolutionary approaches from 1900s Russia are shockingly successful in twenty-first-century America. Who knew? And Democrats remain reliably hapless in front of GOP agitation. The Progressive wing is better at workable solutions than the party core, but they all assume that the truth matters. Faced with pernicious, misogynist, racist derp, they offer smug rational counterarguments. And we all watch our stuttering democracy slip a little lower in the water.
Republicans have built a generation of loyalists who believe that armed insurrection is not just acceptable; it’s their patriotic duty. They call themselves Patriots! Does anyone miss what that means? “When do we bring out the guns?” was not a rhetorical question.
This isn’t Politics, it’s Revolution
Democrats keep offering policy solutions. They want to govern, so governance should be the critical skill.
On the other side, I see a Republican Party that demands power as their right but remains indifferent – or hostile – to our democracy. Along the way, the GOP discarded all their old policies or principles. The last time they held power, they were crappy at governing the nation. And they’re following the Russian Marxist revolutionary playbook.
Me, I’d be asking a few questions. If they’re pulling down democracy, shouldn’t we stop them? And is it too late to pull people back into this American experiment?
