To paraphrase Emma Goldman: if it was “coordinated” and had a “war council”, it wouldn’t be my revolution.
I don’t even care for the word “movement”; it sounds like it should have the word “bowel” in front of it.
God save us from the border collies of political action, left and right, whose urge to “round up” everyone and keep us all tidy is exactly what we’re fighting.
It’s no accident that when I was on the Left, it was the Neither East Nor West anarchist Left, with its deeply felt suspicions about “leaders”. (“If God had meant us to vote, He would have given us candidates,” as an old black Wobblie used to say.) When the cops asked “Who’s in charge?” we shrugged; that wasn’t mischief — nobody was in charge; we were just being honest.
Yes, leaders emerge in any movement. But “emerge” is the key word. Bottom up organic growth improves the chances that such leaders are truly qualified and not appointed “top down” for political/personal reasons, like the way a no-talent guy gets to be in the band just because he’s the one with the expensive drum kit and the biggest garage.
Some folks will inevitably go “off the reservation” and do or say something that harms the movement — although sometimes even that “harm” turns out for the best in the end.
And being too laisse faire about a cause is just as dangerous – “do your own thing”/”whatever” is energizing at first, but the “high” is deceptive and shortlived; the inevitable hangover/crash kills the movement, as we saw as the 60s morphed into the 70s and 80s.
That said, over-planning leaves little room for Providence, and without the vastly superior power of Providence, we rely upon our puny human wits alone — with predictable results.
Ezra Levant doesn’t agree with Pundita this time either:
A centrally-planned, command-and-control “war council” doesn’t quite fit with our way of thinking. More to the point, it often doesn’t work. I think it’s a case where spontaneous order beats planned chaos. I think it’s the nature of the Internet, too, and the nature of free speech itself: a messy cacophony that just happens to work better than the alternative.
I like the “multi-polar” approach that free speechers have achieved in the past four months. It wasn’t too long ago that only a handful of voices were speaking out against HRCs. Now there are literally hundreds. There is a momentum, a synergy, that could not have been planned. From Binky and his excellent daily aggregation of news, to Old Jed’s great songs (and awful voice), to the comedy of The Nose on Your Face and Iowahawk to the deep research of John Pacheco and the “rantings” of Rick Mercer, this couldn’t be planned — to plan it would be to limit the fight to the imagination and experience of a few “experts”, rather than to invite the whole world to fight back in their own way.
It is exceedingly satisfying to me to behold the daily battle — uncoordinated, unplanned, but enormously effective — that is being fought by amateurs and volunteers. It truly has been a grassroots effort in every way — fighting against 14 well-funded HRCs and their retinue of high-priced help. We are winning, and winning more and faster than anyone could have predicted.
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