“he’d already aroused suspicion by interrupting a meandering discussion of principles with a straightforward plan of action.”
I feel seen.
a) Organizations and Conferences
- Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
- Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
- When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.
- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
- Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
- Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
- Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
- Be worried about the propriety of any decision—raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.-
The best part is by publishing this far and wide, anybody pushing for “careful consideration” and actual reasoned planning is immediately suspect, which leads to less reasoned decisions, which usually means more mistakes. If a victory is somehow won through violence of action and not careful planning, the support structure isn’t there to maintain the victory, nor are the people who win that victory well-suited to careful planning before the next engagement. The boring stuff is often what wins wars, simple things like plenty of fuel, adequate hygiene facilities, and dry socks can literally mean the difference between a division surrendering or winning a battle.
TIL that the OSS completely undermined the global business culture.
Those bastards!!!
Maybe the OSS are the real socialism!
It’s a great read
Wow, that’s literally what Maxim Katz in Opposition Council did
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these people already all fucking hate each other. They spend all their time arguing about minutiae
Oh shit, The Onion has clearly infiltrated a few leftist groups in their time. That’s fucking hilarious.
This is too funny and hits the mark. Groups like ANTIFA and BLM during the protests don’t get to be traceable groups exactly because of alphabet agency interest. Behind the Bastards podcast talks about their opsec being deliberately lacking organization of a sort exactly because they knew getting a distributed and traceable hierarchy of leadership would get everyone arrested, the were actively being infiltrated by alphabet agency types. They went out of their way to operate in independent cells of which only a few members had a way to contact another member in a group, etc. so that there was no list of leaders and members to be found. Deliberate disorganization. The Onion nails it again.
The Harpers in the Forgotten Realms operate this way
It’s known as a (part of a?) security culture. The least amount of information is required to operate, the better.
And yeah, BtB are great.
Anti-antifa police branch when 😂
That’s just, like, a long long way to run, man.
Never listened to that podcast before. Any idea which episode that was?
No, sorry. It’s been a year or three since I heard it, and I don’t remember if it was one of the It Could Happen Here episodes or a regular BtB one. You might have better luck than me searching for it. He primarily focused on the Portland protests.
Shit, you just reminded me of it could happen here. lol.
I started listening to it a while after the 2020 protests, while living in Portland, and was super surprised realizing that it was from like a year or two before.
Man, that one was scary. By then we had those big fires where crazy fucks and their pig friends were blocking roads and stopping people to ask where they were going because they’d been told that antifa was starting the fires. That’s when I realized it would legit be impossible to try and escape back to CA in an emergency.
I said this recently, I’ll say it again here. I’ll never forget how Americans turned on protestors in Portland. This is America
/rant ✌🏽
Left-wing groups: disorganized
Right-wing groups: incredibly bad at opsec
Yet it still ends up as:
Left-wing groups: Beaten and arrested by police for peacefully protesting.
Right-wing groups: Attempt to overthrow democracy, get off scot-free.
get off scot-free
Given how they are being systematically hunted down and sentenced to long prison sentences one after the other and from the bottom up, I don’t think this is accurate.
Commission data show that the D.C. court’s sentences for Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police is below the national average.
Since Jan. 6 cases began, the average sentence imposed by D.C. federal judges in the Capitol attack under guidelines for serious assaults climbed to 46 months from 41 months but is still below the nationwide average of 51 months in 2022.
Even directly assaulting cops got these fuckers below average sentences, let alone the literal act of trying to overthrow democracy.
Just got to be on the white side of the aisle
When I was teenager, I got a speeding ticket in a different state and ignored it. Several months later, I got a notice that my home state was going to suspend my license over it unless I dealt with it within a month. Because I had skipped my court date, the only way I could do that was to drive 10 hours, show up early to court, and request that the DA and judge add my case to the docket.
So, I drove overnight, showed up early, and they agreed to hear my case. In the state I was in, at triffic court they have you stand in line and when you’re 3rd in line the ADA asks your name and pulls your file to the top and the DA then reads the charges out load when it’s your turn.
As I’m next in line, the DA starts reading the case of the person in front of me and it’s almost identical to mine. We were both clocked going significantly over the speed limit (I was actually going slightly faster), we were both from out of state, and we had both failed to appear to our scheduled court date. The judge hit him with a $200 fine and $150 court fee that would be reduced to $100 if it was paid on the spot in cash. I began to panic. I only had $250 until my next paycheck and my license was due to be suspended before then. I could barely hear the DA read off the details of my case over my pulse in my ears. The judge listened then announced my fine: $75 plus the court fee.
The only difference between myself and the person in front of me was our race. Yes, we were in a southern state and, yes, the judge was an old, white man.
Not to defend these guys, but be careful when using statistical averages and drawing conclusions from them when you dont have the other contextual data.
Like for example sentencing guidelines give leniency to first time offenders, so If the sample of Jan 6 traitors has more first time offenders than the nationwide average, then we would expect them to have a shorter average sentences. I cant read the article you posted so I dont know if this is considered at all.
That’s a valid point and one I hadn’t considered. I’ll certainly keep that in mind for future, as I do like statistical data.
Although I do find it reasonable in this instance to debunk the claim they received long prison sentences, as a handful of years is pretty short considering the severity of their attempted action.
Not awesome. But at least somewhat better than not being tried at all. Which is kind of what I expected going in.
A few years for treason is not long.
No one has been charged for treason because guess what, it doesnt count as treason.
Your comment doesn’t count as a contribution to discussion.
Zing! (downvote me I’m not contributing)
Man, downvotes from people who don’t know the difference between sedition and treason.
TL;DR: it’s sedition when you’re domestic, treason when you’re foreign.
I r o n i c
In what prison Putin is now? Here’s the answer.
The US doesn’t have jurisdiction to enforce laws on Putin without an invasion
Buildings burn and people die when overthrow is attempted. Therefore that’s exaggeration.
People did die…
Your dictionary sucks lol
Look at those downvotes.
What did I say that was so bad?
What do you think is going on here?
You stated that “overthrow” is an exaggeration because buildings didn’t burn or whatever. That’s not the definition of overthrow.
The fact is, people tried to overturn the US Presidential Election by extralegal means including force, with the intent of putting in place an illegitimate leader. That meets the definition of overthrow and insurrection.
Of course, if you are operating on right wing propaganda instead of facts, you won’t agree.
And if your epistemology is clouded with superstitious thinking and unchecked cognitive biases, you won’t ever be able to see through the bullshit.
That seems rather simplistic and idealistic. Like a cartoon.
🤓
Can’t have bad opsec if you don’t have an op to sec.
Ineffectual versus incompetent.
Around here they are definitely the same picture
This has already happened with things like Tsunami in Catalonia. A totally decentralised movement that the police is still trying to understand 6y later and trying to find a nonexistant leadership. Incredible fun to watch them trying to understand how it worked
“Antifa has no leadership so can’t be marked as a domestic terror group.”
Oh. Okay.
Believe me they tried, and every time they tried it failed miserably.
I know this is the Onion but the left is inherently anti-authoritarian and advocate of horizontal structure of society with no top-down leadership. Of course we’d be disorganised 😂 Case in point, this and the hodge podge of left wingers in the Spanish Civil War ranging from communist, social democrats, democratic socialists to anarcho-syndicalists. Spanish leftists even attacked each other. The Democrats also don’t even get along and this is why Republicans under Trump is gaining more headway.
I’m proud that we’re maverick, but this also leads to our characteristic factionalism and thus easier to be disrupted and destroy.
No, it isn’t, You’re describing some forms of social libertarianism or rational anarchism, and calling them left. The philosophy i hear out of left identifying people these days is people desperate for lack of responsibility and wanting to be controlled by some parental government takes care of everything.
Oops your bias leaked a little
A little?
I quit respecting people who’s whole idea of political intellectualism iswhatever makes them feel good (usually couched in fancy talk and circular logic, with a side of disguising selfishness in false altruism) regardless of anything else, when i started to see the consequences of that philosophy. Anyways, for some reason he wanted to pretend things that fall right are left for some reason.
Self-aware much?
If you ever, ever want to have any rational discussions you have to understand the opposition. You can’t just base the opposite view in childish one sided ass demonisations
For American sensibilities born from classical liberal values, you’re correct.
The political “left” is a big umbrella term, like the “right” is. Generally speaking, the left broadly wants distribution of resources and management to be more horizontal. The debate is how to achieve that. Some want total worker control, others believe a democratically elected government should be empowered to distribute wealth equitably. The most extreme and dystopian form is a parental centralised authority enforcing equality should do it, as you mentioned.
On the right, they may believe in personal freedom but still uphold that human society still thrives in hierarchy. “You’re homeless? It is your fault and not my problem.” Many on the right believe you have to work hard to achieve your goals but through your own blood, sweat and tears. You have to keep up or you will be out competed. Some on the right still believe that government still has some role to help others, while some disagree. The most extreme form on the right is fascism, which advocates for total control of everything and order and hierarchy are utmost importance.
You never notice how the crazy old men hiding up alone in the mountains wanting to be left alone by the government and everyone are somehow always called right wing when the government comes for them, often in a very fascist manner?
You’re talking about a cult leader.
Sometimes. Sometimes not, Anyways, there’s something very fishy or inconsistent with all these definitions. Rational anarchism still falls right, not left tho
“Rational anarchism” isn’t the only type of anarchism.
Yes, not really the point though.
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Its funny bc you have no clue what you’re talking about.
Someone doesn’t.
Have you figured out who that was yet? It’s not hard
You, genius.
Yes, clearly everyone else here must be wrong. Thats the logical answer. Mighty parsimonious.
“We can get access to only so many parents’ basements via the courts,” the FBI lamented on Tuesday.
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Which is basically irl news at this point, or at least less biased than mainstream media.
And if it isn’t, it will be irl news within a decade.
I swear I thought this was a NotTheOnion post. They are no longer more absurd than real news.
Same here. Sad but true.
For real. It hits way too close to the truth. The thing is, they can use as much power and as many tools as they want to try and infiltrate/destroy dissent, but they can never actually change the basic nature/desires of the human animal, so even when they’ve crushed all organized efforts to oppose their rule, resistance will still arise more and more frequently the farther they go in their attempts to consolidate power. Ultimately you invariably get what exists today: an epic cluster fuck of splinter groups and causes across the political spectrum.
They just need the right leader:
https://www.theonion.com/man-finally-put-in-charge-of-struggling-feminist-moveme-1819569515
I’m a member of a smallish leftwing party in my own country and having over 20 years professional experience in various industries and several countries it really riles me just how damn incompetent and disorganised they are - I mean, most have their hearts in the right place (even if they easilly succumb to serve their own petty emotional needs, like ego, rather than principles), but damn even how they go about fighting the problems in the country (pretty much 100% reactive) and the organisation and quality of the material in their campaigns is really frustratingly “amateur hour, every hour of they day, every day of the year”.
Funnilly enough a leftwing part I was a member of in another country I lived in was also a lot “good intentions but very naive and a bit lost”.
PS: Note that all this might be just the bias from never having been a member of a rightwing party. Maybe they’re all just as bad and judging by professional standards the typical political party invariably leads to the conclusion they’re pretty inept.
Meeting a new leftist who shares your values, knows their stuff and has amazing potential
Something sets them off and they start spouting neo-fascist propaganda about “tankies”
True story.
IIRC this has actually happened. Cops got little more than a map of who’s blocking who, and gave up because there’s just… there’s just so much reading.
To be fair, the journey of a thousand miles does - or at least should - not begin with a single step, but rather with figuring out which direction to go in.
We all know the direction is left! No, no my left, not your left.
Make sure to turn left at the… um… well you know the thing.
I want to add much more detail to my own reply, so here goes:
I recall a story that I read on the site-that-shall-not-be-named where this guy ran a business, and he tried to be part of the solution but after dealing with people’s dumb-shitty-STUPIDNESS he just gave up. The issue is that due to capitalism, many pricing structures in the USA are enormously opaque with tons of hidden fees (like internet service for “$5” - plus also $100 in fees that they don’t tell you about in advance). Rather than a price such as “$1.99 + tax”, which depending on area could be I dunno lets say $2.17, he instead sold his wares (whatever they were) for “$2 flat”. So not only did he single-handedly fix the opaqueness issue, at least in his own business, but he offered the item for LESS than the competition.
But… - can you spot where this is going? - people chose the $1.99 + tax option, b/c when you sort online by “price”, 1.99 + tax shows up above the $2 flat price, even when the former is actually $2.17 after tax so the latter is significantly lower cost.
i.e., There are REASONS for why things are the way they are. And we ignore these at our peril. Case in point: Trump did not “win” in 2016 so much as Hillary Clinton lost. And now we are going to try the same experiment again in 2024… Trump vs. democracy. All they have to do is keep playing the Russian Roulette game - the odds are, after all, in their favor.
So back to this aforementioned business guy: he gave up. I think he went out of business entirely rather than just caving in to do the same pricing structures that everyone else did. He apparently could not both fight the system and win, so he lost both instead.
But that begs the question: if he had just “advertised” his “prices” as $1.82 (or whatever price would, when combined with taxes, even out to $2 flat) online, but then when people walk in the door there are signs saying like “just pay $2 flat”, could he have succeeded? i.e., if he had flexed just a little, would it have saved his business? We will never know I suppose, nor am I advocating for caving in especially as it pertains to ethical matters - I have walked away from jobs rather than cave on such a line, so I mean it when I say that I am NOT suggesting to do so at all costs!!!
It is not enough to have a desire to save the world, or even your own little corner of it. THEY won’t let you. I think that is why liberals fight amongst ourselves so much though: b/c while it is SO VERY EASY to fail, it is so very hard to get an answer correct. Like to the question of “what is 1+1=?”, there are so MANY wrong answers, but only one CORRECT one. And even fewer when you factor in economic and other business necessities.
That is why I am super impressed with the job that Biden is doing. Walking that tightrope is HARD. But the media does not seem to report on half of the positive stuff that he does, so I fear that Trump will win this next election as a result. It is not enough to make the hard calls - you apparently also have to be the right kind of clown that drives clickbait engagement media stats that brings media corps higher profits too. All I know is that whatever comes next, we absolutely seem to deserve all of it, b/c we brought this on ourselves.
Security through obscurity!
