Roundup 3/5/2021
Real Talk about Mutual Aid: How They Do It, Why We Need It
Mutual Aid: What It Is, Why We Need It, How To Build It
If you’ve been following me for any length of time you’ve seen me state at least once some variation of “The ironic thing about individual rights is that effectively protecting them requires a sustained, collaborative effort by a likeminded group of people.” It may have been in a podcast, an interview, a speech, or various written content, the point is I bring it up so often because it’s absolutely critical; yet it seems to be the most glaring deficiency on the grassroots right.
The most common pushback I get to this point is almost always some variation on the claim the right doesn’t work well together because we’re individualists and the left is collectivists, which quite frankly is a bullshit excuse. Firstly, anyone that’s spent time around lefties knows they’re just as susceptible to infighting and conflict as righties. Secondly, this doesn’t explain why the military or law enforcement skew conservative, since those are both career paths that value individual sacrifice and conformity in service of a greater cause. Do you really believe swearing an oath to protect and defend the nation, the people, and the Constitution is inherently communist, or that both jobs actually disproportionately attract leftists and everyone just missed it until now?
It's completely possible to be a right-leaning person and understand that teamwork is different from collectivism, or that individual rights don’t necessarily preclude a healthy, high-trust community. Heck righties love to do things like stop and help stranded people change tires all the time without dismissing it as socialism, and I would even argue that sort of basic consideration is absolutely critical for allowing a climate of freedom to flourish.
Lefties formalize this process of helping each other out at the community level and call it “mutual aid,” and you would think righties - oftentimes the same people claiming the government can’t be depended on to help you when it counts- would be even more into this sort of thing. Unfortunately we aren’t, and as David Hines pointed out last week in The American Conservative, this ended up biting Ted Cruz in the ass while giving AOC and her fellow lefties an opening for a PR victory:
It didn’t occur to Ted Cruz to organize a mutual aid drive because he couldn’t. The reason donations could be sent to food banks and radical mutual aid groups in the wake of the storm in Texas was that those groups already existed (in the case of the mutual aid groups, usually as offspring projects of existing radical organizations). Mutual aid work isn’t something you announce and build when in a crisis; you have to have existing relationships with organizations that are already on the ground and doing the work.
Cruz doesn’t have those relationships. He could reach out to prominent donors, but they don’t have organizations on tap either. If he wanted to build relationships with conservative-leaning organizations, he wouldn’t have a lot of options. Conservatives don’t build organizations as a matter of course, and don’t think much about repurposing the ones we have.
I touched on this stuff last week in a previous roundup that dealt with more of the ‘direct action’ variation of mutual aid, but it’s important to understand that Direct Action in general (and the hotel occupation work specifically) would never happen without the logistical/fundraising portion underpinning the entire operation and making things possible. If you don’t believe me, just dress in black and show up at a lefty action and pay attention to the food, supplies, and shields that gets handed out; all of the money and materials for that were raised through mutual aid campaigns.
Would you like to help keep Texas Red? Well, for starters don’t give DSA lackeys an opening like this:
This is more than just building goodwill, it’s also the building blocks for a new government:
The organizers in AOC’s mentions take a different approach. They build organizations for what leftists call dual power, summed up pretty neatly by the DSA’s libertarian socialist caucus: “1) building counter-institutions that serve as alternatives to the institutions currently governing production, investment, and social life under capitalism, and 2) organizing through and confederating these institutions to build up a base of grassroots counter-power which can eventually challenge the existing power of capitalists and the State head-on.”
They’re not subtle about it. It’s not a reformist movement; it’s a slow revolutionary one, essentially creating the various departments that can be repurposed to become, in effect, a new state…
…The effort is prefigurative. That is, it offers a vision of the socialist future, while at the same time building capacity for socialist groups on the ground and giving normal people an immediate material reason to think well of socialists. Or, as the Libertarian Socialist Caucus puts it, “building collective power with immediate material demands as well as providing our vision for the revolutionary overthrow of capital and all its associated oppressions.” In other words, well before you can have a revolution, you have to build elements with the potential to coalesce into a new government.
Remember when I talked about the same stuff in my Center For Security Policy piece a few weeks ago?
The hotel room occupations in particular are a subset of direct action known as prefigurative intervention. Prefigurative actions are ones where a policy choice is directed and visibly enacted, forcing officials to first witness the desired reality, then un-make the change if they wish to return to the status quo.
A commonly cited -and unobjectionable- historical example is the lunch counter sit-in integration campaign during the civil rights era, where blacks and whites sat alongside each other in violation of segregation laws, presaging a future where such laws did not exist…
…However, as previously covered in the discussion about antifa dilemma actions in Portland, one of the primary objectives is the undermining of the existing government and institutional legitimacy. Like an insurgency, they seek to build a cartelized de facto shadow government which provides for their supporters while eroding the authority of the existing government and its monopoly on violence, with the goal to eventually replace it.
The radical left spent most of 2020 on the offense, 2021 for them appears to be a time for consolidating gains and leaning into defensive strategies while building mutual aid communities.
The strategic logic is: Instead of attacking police stations, why not fortify a neighborhood and force the police to come to you while simultaneously building up credit with community members by providing resources? If the police come and win, at least you built up credibility within the community. If the police fail, you’ve legitimized yourself as an authority figure while carving out a small piece of the world to use as a base for your radical ideology.
I know this sounds like a lot, but you’re probably already doing at least some mutual aid. You may be part of the “Cajun Navy” that deploys with small boats for search and rescue during natural disasters, or volunteer with Operation Blazing Sword. You’ve probably chipped in a time or two for a fundraiser for someone dealing with some kind of personal emergency (these are particularly not uncommon at internet forums that have built a long-lasting, persistent user base). The trick is really recognizing that you’re doing it, and figuring out how to leverage it into something bigger. David ends with some good advice:
Hard Lefty mutual aid groups tend to get started as an offshoot project of an ideologically friendly group that already exists. They don’t start in crisis mode; they pick a sustainable, ongoing task that relates to their ideology but serves as outreach to people who aren’t ideologically onboard. Food service is a classic one: Food Not Bombs feeds the homeless, and they’re also an onramp for radical leftist action for a lot of people.
Your conservative church could do that. Maybe they already do. That’s a network you can activate in times of crisis. Or say you’re a member of a local pro-life group. What if you put together regular formula-and-diaper drives to help out families of young children? That’s serving a purpose; it’s outreach. And it’s related to your core mission. Maybe you’re a member of a local gun range and you’re among the crew who do Wednesday bowling pin shoots or benchresting or what have you. You could put together a local group to help volunteer at food banks, and maybe investigate the possibility of meat donation come hunting season. Odds are there’s already some kind of community-helping activity you can join. Look for a way you can already do something to safely help your neighbors.
And once you’re doing it, let other people on your ideological team know you’re there.
Look I know this sounds like a lot, but it has to be done. If you have any doubt just listen again to my Tribebuilding 101 podcast episode, then scroll to the top and review Rules #1, #2, and #5:
1: NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU
2: EVERYTHING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
5: ALWAYS BE WORKING
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