A catch-22 inherent in outsider politics is that movements outside the mainstream by definition attract misfits and oddballs. Those kinds of folks tend to suffer from a dearth of patience, invites lax vetting of new members. Instead of a big tent, the typical outsider movement often ends up as a circus tent.
We saw this dynamic on full display with the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of the Alt-right three years ago. They’d tapped into an energetic part of the zeitgeist and built a head of steam, only to lose it all in a series of unforced blunders. Their movement took its mortal blow when naiveté and poor planning led them into a purpose-built trap.
If you read this blog with any regularity, you know I urge dissidents against street action. If Charlottesville wasn’t enough of a cautionary tale, the BLM riots that overran major cities this past summer should have served ample notice that the Left controls the streets.
Folks in certain quarters of the Right like to flirt with genetic determinism. I’m no determinist, but the mounting evidence is making me wonder if an affinity for outsider politics might be genetic, and if it shares a gene with severe learning disabilities.
Now, I’m far from infallible. Frequent readers will recall my prediction that democrat officials in Virginia were setting up the Richmond gun rights rally to be C-Ville 2. That protest went off without a hitch, its success widely ascribed to the massive turnout.
My forecast may not have been totally wrong, just slightly premature. Here we are almost exactly one year later, and our rulers finally have the spectacular right-wing riot they’ve been salivating over for years.
Seething with anger, mostly unmasked, Donald Trump’s supporters stormed and breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, stoked by his defiant speech claiming the election had been stolen from him. Tens of thousands of supporters braved bone-chilling temperatures to hear him speak at the Ellipse below the White House, then many marched to Capitol Hill and up the steps, pushing their way past Capitol Police, as some of the lawmakers’ office buildings were evacuated, and Washington, DC’s mayor issued a city-wide curfew.
Of course, the piece reads like a Death Cult creedal statement. It’s yet another verse in a nonstop litany of imprecations against Orange Hitler. This time, the Cult’s priests in the media are rebuking their outgoing antichrist for ordering his warlocks to do violences in the holy temple of democracy because he’s a sore loser. That the most egregious act of violence was committed by capitol police who killed a female Trump supporter is usually glossed over.
Another blind spot besetting many dissidents is their contradictory mouthing of the fact that the other side controls the media while rushing to take public action they know the media will use to smear them. Yes, the dominant narrative about the Capitol debacle is unconscionably slanted, but the Left controls the news organs, so they get to set the narrative. Dissidents walk into the press’ line of fire at their own risk.
Yet a third handicap afflicting dissidents is a sort of transient amnesia. Some of the Trump supporters who’ve spent the last few years warning about the dangers of street protests are the same people calling the Capitol disaster a smashing success. They say it’s an inflection point against the corrupt system, akin to the Boston Tea Party.
When evaluating the success or failure of a tactic, it’s vital to look at outcomes, not abstract aspirations. Here are the results of the Capitol occupation so far:
- Multiple GOP legislators who’d announced that they’d object to electoral vote counts in the swing states withdrew their objections.
- As a direct result, Puppet Pal Joe is now officially President-Elect.
- Big Social dropped the ban hammer on Trump early.
- Our ruling class is now labeling all 70 million Trump supporters as terrorists.
- The establishment is wielding the riot as a cudgel to beat down all questioning of the election.
The MSM smear job is working, too. Most voters oppose the storming of the Capitol and blame Trump for it.
Some will retort, “The republicucks were always going to cave, the media were always going to lie about the rally, and the Harris-Biden Admin was going to crack down on dissenters anyway.”
Which raises the question, why did tens of thousands of Trump supporters protest at the Capitol? The event was part of the Stop the Steal rallies intended to overturn the rigged election. That’s why the MAGA crowd was protesting while Congress counted the electoral votes.
When a tactic achieves the exact opposite of its desired effect, you call it what it is: a failure.
And the current backlash is just the start. Big business and glow-in-the-dark agencies are already howling for protesters’ blood.
The aftershocks of this disaster will reverberate for years. The victorious elites will hound anyone identified as a Capitol protester with federal charges. Big Tech will sentence known participants, and many ordinary people who supported them, to internal economic exile.
And for what? A president who’s now conceded?
We’ll never know what exactly happened at the Capitol yesterday. With the lapdog press rushing to memory hole evidence of Antifa provocation, this mystery will go the way of Epstein and the Vegas shooting.
What is known beyond a doubt is that dissidents will have to start learning from their mistakes if they want to survive the incoming crackdown.
