Summary: The Ferguson protests lacked leadership, and so quickly devolved into counter-productive riots. It’s a common problem. Will future protests nurture a new generation of leaders for the Left?
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Peasants’ protests are a commonplace in history, such as The Great Rising of 1381. The lack of competent leadership distinguishes peasants’ protests from effective means of social change.
Some peasants’ protests are just mobs. Emergent leadership is a rare gift.
Some peasants’ protests have leaders, but not competent ones. Wat Tyler led The Great Rising, bringing his horde to London. King Richard met with Tyler, courteously listened to the peasants’ complaints, thanked him for coming, and killed him. Competent emergent leadership is an extraordinarily rare gift.
And some have great leaders. The Civil Rights movements accomplished great things, steered by its strong leaders (headed by Martin Luther King). The Tea Party was an effective tool for social changed, organized and wielded by a conservative faction of our ruling elites. Five years later it’s still going strong.
The 1992 LA Riots were peasants’ protests, violent but ineffectual. The Occupy Movement was a series of classic peasants’ protests — celebratory venting of social tension, ending with violent suppression, leaving little behind. The Fergruson protests (ending in a riot) were peasants’ protests.
Will the gross overreaction of the police to the Ferguson protests have political repercussions? Perhaps. I suspect the odds are low. The police created an opportunity which an organization (or coalition) could exploit, if one existed.
African-American leaders
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The Right has been winning on most issues for a decade. Their superiority results from greater resources and better planning. For example, consider how many of America’s leading Black political leaders are on the Right. Herman Cain, entrepreneur and 2012 GOP Presidential Candidate. Theodore Sowell, intellectual. Supreme Court Justice Thomas. GOP National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Leaders are a crop that can be produced with well-funded effort.
The Left has made no comparable effort, and hence the thin ranks of high-profile leaders on the Left, especially African-American leaders. Even Obama rules as a center-right leader. And too many are like Al Sharpton.
Protests might spread from Ferguson, fueled by continued shootings of young Black men for frivolous reasons — usually without consequences for the shooters (whether police or civilian). If so, they will be futile unless leadership emerges.
There is leadership and organization on the Right
Such as among these people: “Oath Keepers is Going ‘Operational’ by Forming Special ‘Civilization Preservation’ Teams” posted at their website, 1 October 2013 — Opening:
Oath Keepers is instructing its 30,000 members nation-wide to form up special teams and sub-teams in each Oath Keepers chapter, at the town and county level, modeled loosely on the Special Forces “A Team” (Operational Detachment A ) model, and for a similar purpose:
- community security and support during crisis,
- to be both a potential operational unit for community security and support during crisis, but also,
- as mission #1, to serve as training and leadership cadre, to assist in organizing neighborhood watches, organizing veterans halls to provide community civil defense, forming County Sheriff Posses, strengthening existing CERT, volunteer fire, search-and-rescue, reserve deputy systems, etc., and eventually
- to assist in forming and training town and county militias (established by official act of town and county elected representatives).
There are many police among their members. Don’t expect them to help in any protests against police violence.
For More Information
(a) Posts about the events in Ferguson, MO:
- Our elites smile at events in Ferguson, MO. They’ll cry if it pushes Blacks to try 4GW., 14 August 2014
- Will the Ferguson protest force development of African-American leaders?, 15 August 2014
- Why America has militarized its police and crushes protests, 16 August 2014
- The protesters at Ferguson might have won, but choose to lose, 18 August 2014
- Events from Ferguson explain why we are weak, 19 August 2014
(b) About the Oath Keepers: