By David Reaboi and Kyle Shideler (title via Revolver)
When, in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer was lampooned at the Republican National Convention, few understood what the words meant. Most sympathetic voices in the media stressed “community,” evoking images of soup kitchens, clinics, and shelters. Republicans had every reason to look more darkly at what this kind of work meant and, probably due to Obama’s race, were inclined to associate the candidate’s time “organizing” in Chicago with New York racial demagogues and shakedown-artists like Al Sharpton.
That description was closer to the mark, but the full truth was deeper and considerably more sophisticated; left-wing organizing is a robust intellectual universe. Thanks largely to talk radio, conservatives soon learned the name Saul Alinsky and began to digest his now-infamous Rules for Radicals.
After several brilliant investigative pieces into Obama’s time among left-wing organizing meccas like the Northwest Academy, Stanley Kurtz wrote the valuable Radical-in-Chief. Unfortunately, for much of the public, the thread frayed shortly after the election that November; emboldened by Democratic control of both houses of Congress, the newly elected Obama would use what he’d learned from Chicago activism to instigate and win battles on more pressing political issues.
For those eight years, the organizing ecosystem that would eventually erupt into Antifa and Black Lives Matter street violence and direct-action grew in strength, sophistication, and funding. Obama’s own career in Chicago should’ve been a kind of clue: the former president served on the boards of Public Allies, the Woods Fund of Chicago, and the Joyce Foundation, which together distributed tens of millions of dollars to various local left-wing groups—some of which themselves were organizing for street-level direct action.
Antifa, of course, is far more than an “idea”—even as ideas, themselves, can be serious threats with which it is necessary to contend. But it is also far more than just an organization. Even as it traces its origins to pre-war Germany, one might think of “Antifa” as a relatively new product line from a larger industry that has existed for decades. That industry is the giant ecosystem of left-wing direct-action and organizing, with its own history, pedagogy, institutions, as well as tens of thousands of career professionals operating in the open, and funded every bit as well as the staid network of establishment conservative think tanks and magazines that tend to cluster along the Acela corridor.
Writing at the American Mind last month, Michael Anton, author of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, brought attention to a war game report issued by the Transition Integrity Project, an ad hoc group associated with the George Soros-funded Democracy Integrity Project. Anton’s widely read essay, “The Coming Coup?” was heavily discussed on social media and by conservative talk show hosts including Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck.
What conservatives found so alarming was that the Transition Integrity Project urged Trump’s opponents to wage a “street fight, not a legal one” in the near-certain event of a contested election. In other words, forces arrayed against the president’s reelection should abandon the American political system—and pin their hopes of election victory not on the Constitution-mandated quest for the most electoral votes, but upon the street mobilization and direct-action capabilities of Antifa and the Left’s other professionally-staffed organizing groups.
As a heavily contested Election Day approaches, it is crucial for both conservative activists and officials in law enforcement to understand that left-wing organizing for direct-action and “nonviolent” civil disobedience is being planned by career organizing professionals working within well-funded, interlocking organizations.
“Uprisings, Resistance, and Mass Direct Action”
Americans watching videos of Black Bloc activists tearing apart Portland, Seattle, or other cities are seeing the results of thousands of training sessions, budgets in the tens of millions, and a carefully mapped radicalization process as extensive as those used by Islamists or any other ideological on-ramp toward extremism.
For tactical reasons, much of the expected actions will take place in heavily Democratic cities—as well as in the nation’s capital. Breitbart’s Joel Pollack recently identified a document called “Stopping the Coup: The 2020 Guide,” distributed by one such group, Shutdown DC. As he notes, it is described as an organizing how-to guide by The Disruption Project, seeking to use, in its words, “uprisings, resistance and mass direct action” in order to prevent President Trump from “stealing” the election.
Shut Down DC was founded in 2019 as a coalition of DC-based direct-action groups, initially launched around the climate change agenda, and focused primarily on agitating for the Green New Deal. The group was sponsored by All Out DC, a local Antifa group with a professed objective of, according to its Twitter profile, “Burn Down the American Plantation.”
The group’s ambitions are greater than the November election, of course; its members are not simply Democratic partisans. The Disruption Project urges its supporters to “stand up and take action against the unjust systems of racial capitalism, the heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and settler colonialism.” Its more immediate goals include an effort to
2000: Dems claimed Bush cheated, Gore wouldn’t concede, delay of 5 weeks, eventually the liberal Miami Herald recounted every vote 6 months later and said the vote count was correct. Dems never accepted the outcome.
2004: Kerry’s campaign manager wrote a book claiming Bush stole the election.
2008: Obama won, no problem, concession that night.
2012: Obama won, no problems, concession that night.
2016: Trump won, Hillary refused to concede, the screaming began, Dems never accepted the outcome, impeached Trump for “offenses” that aren’t crimes after “Russia, Russia” claims fell apart.
2020: Riots before election, threats of riots after election. Dems already saying they won’t accept another loss.
Democrats and their candidate are a threat to National Security. Dems already claiming Trump will refuse to leave if he loses.
Democrats are no longer in an American party, they are insurgents in their own country trying to destroy the Constitution because they can’t win presidential elections under the rules.
Anytime you want something shut down, destroyed or delayed, call the leftists. If you want progress and improvement for citizens, they are the LAST people that should be relied on. When they tell us that unless Biden wins, the violence will continue, only an idiot cannot understand WHO is the source of all the divisiveness and terrorism.