How To Manufacture A Sociopolitical Movement
Since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on February 14 that left 17 people dead and 17 more wounded, there has been a renewed push for tougher gun laws. In the weeks since, schools around the nation have had organized protests in which students walked out of class. Some students traveled to Washington, D.C., and a larger event occurred there on March 24.
There is some lovely beachfront property in Arizona for sale for anyone who believes that this is truly a grassroots movement in which students are expressing their own opinions and planning their own events. Like other forms of establishment-friendly activism, this movement is greatly assisted (if not entirely orchestrated) by agents of the Cathedral and follows several guidelines which are common to other such movements. Let us deconstruct this movement to see how the establishment can manufacture and sustain such movements step-by-step.
1. Never let a crisis go to waste. Though the establishment is not above manufacturing a problem itself in order to have a pretext to impose its desired solution, less effort is required on their part to take advantage of events that happen without their direct involvement. (One might call compulsory education laws and lack of involuntary commitment of the mentally ill a form of direct involvement, but let us take direct involvement to mean conspiring with the shooters.) A number of high-profile mass shootings have occurred in recent years, and almost everyone agrees that this is a problem. However, fervor for more gun restrictions quickly waned after each previous shooting when token legislation either failed to pass or caused very little meaningful change and other events took over the news cycle. The progressives have learned from this, which brings us to the remaining points.
2. Call in support from other establishment-friendly movements. In this case, major players in the Women’s March are now helping with March For Our Lives. The American Civil Liberties Union is advising students on legal matters concerning school systems that threaten punishment of students who walk out of class to protest. Leftist public figures are providing generous financial support and speaking out. Non-profits like Everytown for Gun Safety are pitching in. This is to be expected; leftist activist movements frequently share personnel, taking advantage of experience in fundraising and organization from fellow-traveling organizations.
3. Rely on feelings instead of facts. Most people are simply incapable of high rational discourse (partly because of government schools), and leftism usually stands athwart pure reason. On this issue, empirical evidence is also against the left; for instance, a March 20 shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland was quickly stopped by a police officer who shot and killed the shooter. The Florida shooting might have been stopped with a much lower body count as well had the school resource officer there not behaved in a cowardly fashion. In fact, it would not have occurred at all had myriad warning signs about the shooter not been ignored.
Furthermore, there have been at least 338,700 cases of guns being used defensively in America between 2007 and 2011. This is a low estimate because all relevant empirics are unable to count
a) the number of crimes which did not occur because a potential criminal chose not to offend due to seeing a gun or believing one was present, and
b) the number of crimes which did not occur because defensive uses of guns killed repeat offenders who would have committed more crimes had they lived.
Without guns, other weapons would be used to commit homicides and other crimes, such as knives, bombs, and vehicles, as occurs in countries where firearm ownership is rare and difficult. That there is a difference between a legally justifiable shooting and a morally justifiable shooting further complicates matters.
Gun control is and always has been an effort by the state to widen the power disparity between state and citizen, and any such laws will be enforced by gun violence or the threat thereof. Since the facts are not on the establishment’s side, it is necessary to appeal to the lowest common denominator by making emotional appeals when attempting to gain support for progressive political causes. This leads to results such as the new gun control legislation in Florida, which bans bump stocks despite the fact that they have not been used in a mass shooting there.
4. Use children as political props. Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, both survivors of the Parkland shooting, have become two of the most recognizable public faces of the movement, pushing for more gun control and boycotts of pro-gun organizations such as the National Rifle Association. Children have a peculiar station in political life. They have little or no money of their own, so they cannot bribe politicians to give them what they want. They are not allowed to vote, so they have no ability to punish politicians at the ballot box. However, they make up for this lack of formal power with a great amount of informal power. The adults of a society tend to care deeply about the well-being of children, as natural selection strongly favors this. A cry for help from children is thus an effective tactic for those who seek social change, and anyone who attacks these children in the same manner that politically active adults are attacked will be regarded as a complete jerk.
Children are also more easily controlled than adults; not only are they less willing to go off script for fear of punishment, but they are less able as well. The combination of years of indoctrination with statist propaganda, lack of counter-narrative information, and the aforementioned sympathetic image make them the ideal mouthpieces for establishment talking points. Though Gonzalez, Hogg, and other children who are advocating for gun control are simply reciting opinions that they have been taught to believe and viewing their traumatic experience through that lens, saying this publicly will get one shunned in ‘respectable‘ circles.
5. Fabricate authentic grassroots activism and the appearance of elite support for it. When students marched in Washington, D.C., Democratic legislators met them on the Capitol lawn. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Bernie Sanders all spoke to the demonstrators, while other Democrats mingled with the students. It is nearly impossible for an activist movement to bring about change by itself. Instead, it serves as a signal that elites may be able to make societal changes without eliciting too much negative blowback and a tool for claiming a popular mandate while sidestepping election results. This is yet another example of the high-low versus middle dynamic, as the elites and activists are united against the average law-abiding gun owner.
6. Minimize alternative courses of action. In the case of school shootings, an obvious solution (at least to libertarians) is to abolish government schools in favor of a free market in education services. After all, there can be no school shootings if there are no schools, and the students are ultimately there because of the threat of state violence against them and/or their legal guardians should they choose not to go. This coercive monopoly deprives the schools of market incentives to provide adequate security, while sovereign immunity protects school officials and police from civil and criminal liability. Other strategies include focusing on mental health, arming teachers, assigning more police officers to schools, and improving enforcement of existing laws.
The former will be dismissed as a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream, with supporters of educational alternatives characterized as wanting children to remain uneducated. The tone of these dismissals will be familiar to students of Frederic Bastiat:
“Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State—then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion—then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.”[1]
The latter options may be considered as part of a comprehensive plan, but that plan will be sure to include curtailment of gun rights.
7. Use the media to skew the debate in your favor. There are always a number of conspiracy theories that surround mass shootings, from notions of crisis actors to the idea that government agents were complicit in the attack. Unfortunately, this gives ammunition to progressive activists because they can lump legitimate criticism together with such nonsense to make it appear that there are no reasonable arguments against their position.
As per step 3, emotional outbursts will take the place of reasoned debate on the relevant issues. Anyone who dissents cannot simply have a policy disagreement with leftists. It must be that they want more children to die from gun violence. This explains the virulent hatred toward the NRA, which leftists have called a terrorist organization, accessories to murder, and other such epithets. The sad truth is that this manner of ridicule, polemics, and demagoguery is commonly used because it works. Following step 4, it is clear that the progressives are seeking to pontificate rather than have an honest conversation because they are putting forth advocates that they deem irreproachable.
Another tactic is to simply deny a platform to those who do not fit the narrative. Consider the case of Kyle Kashuv, another survivor of the Parkland shooting. Unlike Gonzalez and Hogg, he supports gun rights and several of the alternatives listed in step 6. He was scheduled to be interviewed by Brooke Baldwin of CNN, but she canceled the interview. He accused her of canceling because he linked on social media to an article that was critical of her, and CNN of avoiding an even-sided discussion of the issues. Kashuv was also excluded from of a Time Magazine cover that featured Gonzalez, Hogg, and three other anti-gun Parkland survivors.
8. Never accomplish all of your stated goals. A movement with no more objectives to complete is a movement with no more reason to exist. This is undesirable, as it means that the leaders of the movement have to be productive for a living and the politicians have to figure out a new campaign platform in order to get money and votes. As all competent consulting firms know, as long as one can appear to be working toward a solution, there is profit to be made in prolonging the problem. Meanwhile, the Congress critters have a wedge issue to get voters to the polls in the next election. This should make gun owners exceptionally cautious, as this movement cannot be satiated with a bump stock ban here and an age limit adjustment there. They will take whatever they can get, and ceding anything will only embolden them.
References:
- Bastiat, Frederic (1850). The Law. p. 22.
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