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Saturday 7th September saw two significant protests in totally different parts of the country, but broadly with the same messaging. The first was a ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in Portsmouth, which I engaged with elements of due to being in Portsmouth to meet local Party members anyway, and the second was a much larger rally in Glasgow endorsed by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson). Both of these rallies generally focussed on discussing the issues of immigration, opposition to the government and two-tier policing. Both of them also attracted significant (and much larger) counter-protests from the organised left, which included trade unions, ‘anti-fascists’, and the (unregistered) Socialist Workers Party.

 

The purpose of my commentary here is not to talk about the ideologies involved, which we are already generally aware of, but to talk about the difference in organisation between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, in these scenarios, and what we need to learn from it.

 

Real-world infrastructure vs Social Media

Mobilising large numbers of people is not an easy task, and in order to be done with any reliability it requires junior leaders, officials and people who can act as communicators and sub-organisers. In order to accomplish this, it means that you need multiple competent people, who are empowered to act autonomously. The organised left accomplishes this through the real-world infrastructure of trade unions, and through protest and campaign groups in which people are encouraged to pro-actively lead and organise. They utilise social media to raise awareness of their existence and activities, but most of their organisation of people for activity is done through direct communication rather than simply ‘putting out the call’ on social media pages.

 

The right, on the other hand, relies overwhelmingly on social media promotion of a single event or cause in order to mobilise people. Most of the individuals involved have very little communication with each other, in fact many have no means of talking to each other, and instead the single person (or small group of people) leading an event/protest/cause put out the advertising and largely co-ordinate all attendance or involvement personally. There are typically very few middlemen or empowered junior organisers who organise sub-groups and detachments. In other words, the right overwhelmingly relies on ‘virtual’ infrastructure.

 

The outcome of this is that the left is much more able to mobilise larger numbers of people, much more quickly. An area where this is very obvious is with the concept of ‘bussing people in’. The reality is that both the left and the right transport people ‘in’ to a protest rather than just rely on local support, the difference is that the left is far better at doing it. The reason why is because they have much more real-world infrastructure to organise the large-scale movement of people, and many of their people devote much more time to doing it and getting it right. The right, on the other hand, tends to either expect people to self-organise or it relies almost entirely on a tiny number of individuals to do everything, which quickly overwhelms those individuals and cripples their ability to function.

 

This disparity in organisational power can only be resolved through a concerted effort to move the nationalist sphere OFF of social media and into the real world, even if it means sacrificing some of the reach that social media can give. Too many competent people on the right are consumed in repetitive activity of questionable value, through no fault of their own, and these people if given the ability to act as junior officers, leaders and co-ordinators could easily mobilise effective numbers of people in real-life. The ability of the right to organise logistics would quickly overtake the left, because the right actually has more popular support, just far less ability to actually organise it.

 

Financing

The other major disparity between the left and the right is in financing. In order to carry out its logistical planning, the organised left routinely has access to pools of money, mainly filled by the coffers of trade unions, political organisations and wealthy backers. The right lacks the former two of these, and any significant funds either come from collections off individuals, or from the occasional wealthy donor. Though financing on the right also has a relatively unique problem – the resistance to fundraising.

 

There are many factions on the right which actually resent handling or soliciting money, due to an ingrained belief that doing so immediately marks the person as a fraudster or thief. The consequences of this for those factions are terrible. They become crippled by cost burdens very quickly, and any venture they engage in is permanently limited to the ability of the one or two key organisers to pay for everything themselves. Nothing is sustainable in any way, and nothing is ever achieved either as a consequence.

 

The issue of financing and infrastructure goes hand in hand, because without serious organisation and infrastructure the right will struggle to process money, even when it is offered, and will be restricted to online fundraisers or in person donations of tiny amounts. It has to be pointed out that in order to be able to handle financing properly, the people doing it must simultaneously be seen to be honest, but also be prepared to be dismissive of political enemies who will intentionally make accusations of dishonesty for no other reason than as an act of sabotage.

 

What Can Be Learned

The two reasons highlighted in this article are the primary ones as to why the right constantly fights a losing battle with the left when it comes to resources and sustainability. It is a solvable problem. It also highlights precisely why there is a need for the nationalist sphere to shift away from loosely organised pressure-group style politics in favour of serious political organising, and to shift away from social media influence and discourse in favour of real-world meeting and activity.

 

It is not a source of demoralisation to recognise that the issues within the movement are, for at least half the part, self-inflicted, because what that also means is that the issues are solvable, on our own, without any outside influence. And the first step to advancing the position of the movement within our country, is to remedy those problems with a constructive approach.