The Futility of Large Scale Protests

I wouldn't have known this if it wasn't for Zerohedge, but there were some large scale protests against lockdowns and mask wearing in Europe this Saturday. While encouraging to see, I can't help feeling its a lost cause to protest in this way. For starters, such protests take the power of the state as a given. They are petitions to the elite, and as such they legitimize them. Furthermore, they are inherently limited in scope. There is a specific problem that people rally around, but there's no coherent philosophy out of which we can build a movement. There's little real momentum. Large scale protests are largely feel good gatherings with little to no actual impact.

Another problem is the ease with which such protests can be controlled. If they are limited to one or two days, they can be ignored. All that's required is a police force that keeps the gathering from doing too much damage. If the protests persist, they can be infiltrated and subverted by the controlled opposition. What starts off as a protest against too much government control ends up as a petition for more government control, usually in the form of subsidies and taxation.

This is why we should seek other ways to change the world. First of all, we're better off not organizing into groups. Groups have leaders and hierarchical structures that are easily targeted by the state. They also demand conformity which goes against the principles of liberty. Much better then to be the change we want to see. That gives results of immediate benefit to us, even if rather limited to start with. It also has the benefit of influencing people through example rather than argument. As a private rather than public struggle, it can be sustained over time.

This makes the private approach superior to any large scale gathering. It also makes for a movement that is impossible to infiltrate and control by the state. The lack of any central organizing body means that there's only individuals in a network, not a hierarchy that can be neutralized. While hierarchies can be neutralized through isolation or replacement of top nodes, networks continue to function even when large swaths of them are taken out or replaced. Network structures self correct. If nodes are neutralized, corrupted or replaced, networks find ways around the bad nodes.

Furthermore, network movement seem trivial at first. There's no direct threats anywhere, only people minding their own business. There are no mass gatherings or rallies. But the network effect is such that the movement can go from a handful of people to millions in a very short time. Once its core ideas start gaining momentum there's very little that can be done to stop it. Suddenly, over a time span of a few weeks, everybody stops following certain rules. They start doing things differently, and the authorities are helpless to stop it.

Liberty