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Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. A universal problem with "leaderless

Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist" and it's inevitable that some dim person will come along and try to make a name for themselves by taking things farther. Put that person into a crisis situation with quickly gathering flash mobs, and what should we expect? Then, on top of that, add on extremist opportunists who decide to exploit the situation, with the goal of destabilizing social order. A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters. in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system. No. Outside of a protest, the worst actions we've seen would be crimes and qualify the perpetrator as a bad person. Just because they're in a protest doesn't change that. Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Evil is evil. Violence is violence. Another's evil is no excuse to perpetrate your own. Especially if it falls on innocent bystanders.

kevingadd 6y ago
> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yeah. My house and business would be insured. No amount of insurance can revive a man, woman or child murdered by police. I'm OK with personal sacrifices in service of justice. I would happily burn all of my earthly possessions if it meant babies like Bou Bou Phonesavanh were no longer at risk of being critically injured by flashbangs or murdered by stray gunfire.
CM30 6y ago
The tradeoffs between traditional and leaderless movements are a lot like the tradeoffs between centralised and decentralised systems in tech to be honest. On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target. And that's useful for both software and protest movements, since it leave a single target for the opposition to go after, whether that's through legal threats, harassment, arrest or assault/murder. At the same time, it also makes the system prone to abuse by bad actors, since there's no one able to either get rid of them or distance the group from them in general. Hence the extremists taking over political movements and protests, and the trolls/extremists/criminals becoming an increasingly prominent part of any decentralised community or social network setup online. This in turn leaves both open to attack from their opponents and the media, who can point at the worst elements and say "See? These people are all evil/sociopathic/crazy/whatever' based on it. It's like to some degree, avoiding bad actors and running a robust and uncensorable system are fundamentally incompatible with one another, in the same way as usability and security are.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target. In situations where mob mentality can take over and chaos can create a "fog of war" this is not true! Even though most of the protesters want to remain peaceful, the amplitude of sowing chaos, and its potential to spark additional chaos within mass rally situations, are providing extremists that "single point of weakness." Basically, against an organized opponent that wants to create chaos, mass rallies are kind of like packing together certain isotopes of uranium atoms. Even if most of the units are "inert" (in that most of the people want peace,) if enough individuals with activation potential are densely packed enough, you can still get the chain reaction.
twic 6y ago
> A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. The police have loads of leaders, and they've devolved pretty fast too. I'm not sure if leadership is really a decisive factor.
komali2 6y ago
> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard. You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
- scruple 6y ago
  Your motorcycle isn't your shelter and vandalism isn't typically complete destruction.
  - komali2 6y ago
    > Your motorcycle isn't your shelter Not seen news come out of people's homes destroyed. If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that - the cops shot out a couple people's eyeballs, but only after of course kicking off this whole thing by murdering black people with no consequences. There, that settles that.
    - scruple 6y ago
      No it doesn't... https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/31/its-unacceptable-richmond-police-chief-gets-emotional-while-talking-about-protests/ https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/31/its-unacceptable-richmond-p... https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1267120254104330242/pu/vid/1264x720/0Rs_g68T9NLyAaDv.mp4 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1267120254104330242/pu/...
    - stcredzero 6y ago
      If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that No. The Gandhi movie termed that, "An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind." How about we condemn evil, and try to make sure there's less evil in the world? Just because you say you're fighting evil, that doesn't nominate you to commit evil, especially if it's in the name of others without their consent. Especially if it's so you can coerce others into seeing things your particular way. Isn't that what sparked the protests in the first place? Someone who committed evil, in the name of fighting evil?
jimkleiber 6y ago
> A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist"... I appreciate this part a lot. It helps me realize that movements also have brands they need to manage and have similar struggles to companies that are trying to manage brands at various levels of centralization—e.g., the challenge of maintaining brand alignment among distributed franchisees. > A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters. I wonder how well leaderless movements can create things. It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them. Any thoughts on this?
- fttx_ 6y ago
  This is definitely a known problem, and one which lots of people have spent lots of time thinking about. As you say, social change movements face many of the same struggles as companies, including maintaining brand alignment and quality control across a network of distributed actors. For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations. But there is a bunch of literature about managing these challenges specifically for social change movements. One reasonably concise and approachable example is: https://www.citizenshandbook.org/network-campaigns.pdf https://www.citizenshandbook.org/network-campaigns.pdf >It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them. I'm not sure this is true. Leaderless movements can be well coordinated and structured (it's just hard). And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations. Going by the praise he had for his organization and the people helping him, MLK had something like this. And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas. When exploited by organized outside forces, they do one thing really well: Create disorder, chaos, and disdain. I believe it was Thomas Carlysle who said something like, "Revolutions are started by idealists, prosecuted by fanatics, and co-opted by scoundrels." Tim Pool recently quipped in one of his videos that some copies of the Antifa handbook have explicit instructions to "pretend to be BLM" for cover.

kevingadd 6y ago

> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yeah. My house and business would be insured. No amount of insurance can revive a man, woman or child murdered by police. I'm OK with personal sacrifices in service of justice. I would happily burn all of my earthly possessions if it meant babies like Bou Bou Phonesavanh were no longer at risk of being critically injured by flashbangs or murdered by stray gunfire.

CM30 6y ago

The tradeoffs between traditional and leaderless movements are a lot like the tradeoffs between centralised and decentralised systems in tech to be honest. On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target. And that's useful for both software and protest movements, since it leave a single target for the opposition to go after, whether that's through legal threats, harassment, arrest or assault/murder. At the same time, it also makes the system prone to abuse by bad actors, since there's no one able to either get rid of them or distance the group from them in general. Hence the extremists taking over political movements and protests, and the trolls/extremists/criminals becoming an increasingly prominent part of any decentralised community or social network setup online. This in turn leaves both open to attack from their opponents and the media, who can point at the worst elements and say "See? These people are all evil/sociopathic/crazy/whatever' based on it. It's like to some degree, avoiding bad actors and running a robust and uncensorable system are fundamentally incompatible with one another, in the same way as usability and security are.

stcredzero 6y ago
On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target. In situations where mob mentality can take over and chaos can create a "fog of war" this is not true! Even though most of the protesters want to remain peaceful, the amplitude of sowing chaos, and its potential to spark additional chaos within mass rally situations, are providing extremists that "single point of weakness." Basically, against an organized opponent that wants to create chaos, mass rallies are kind of like packing together certain isotopes of uranium atoms. Even if most of the units are "inert" (in that most of the people want peace,) if enough individuals with activation potential are densely packed enough, you can still get the chain reaction.

twic 6y ago

> A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. The police have loads of leaders, and they've devolved pretty fast too. I'm not sure if leadership is really a decisive factor.

komali2 6y ago

> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard. You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.

scruple 6y ago
Your motorcycle isn't your shelter and vandalism isn't typically complete destruction.
- komali2 6y ago
  > Your motorcycle isn't your shelter Not seen news come out of people's homes destroyed. If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that - the cops shot out a couple people's eyeballs, but only after of course kicking off this whole thing by murdering black people with no consequences. There, that settles that.
  - scruple 6y ago
    No it doesn't... https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/31/its-unacceptable-richmond-police-chief-gets-emotional-while-talking-about-protests/ https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/31/its-unacceptable-richmond-p... https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1267120254104330242/pu/vid/1264x720/0Rs_g68T9NLyAaDv.mp4 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1267120254104330242/pu/...
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that No. The Gandhi movie termed that, "An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind." How about we condemn evil, and try to make sure there's less evil in the world? Just because you say you're fighting evil, that doesn't nominate you to commit evil, especially if it's in the name of others without their consent. Especially if it's so you can coerce others into seeing things your particular way. Isn't that what sparked the protests in the first place? Someone who committed evil, in the name of fighting evil?

jimkleiber 6y ago

> A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist"... I appreciate this part a lot. It helps me realize that movements also have brands they need to manage and have similar struggles to companies that are trying to manage brands at various levels of centralization—e.g., the challenge of maintaining brand alignment among distributed franchisees. > A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters. I wonder how well leaderless movements can create things. It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them. Any thoughts on this?

fttx_ 6y ago
This is definitely a known problem, and one which lots of people have spent lots of time thinking about. As you say, social change movements face many of the same struggles as companies, including maintaining brand alignment and quality control across a network of distributed actors. For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations. But there is a bunch of literature about managing these challenges specifically for social change movements. One reasonably concise and approachable example is: https://www.citizenshandbook.org/network-campaigns.pdf https://www.citizenshandbook.org/network-campaigns.pdf >It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them. I'm not sure this is true. Leaderless movements can be well coordinated and structured (it's just hard). And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations. Going by the praise he had for his organization and the people helping him, MLK had something like this. And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas. When exploited by organized outside forces, they do one thing really well: Create disorder, chaos, and disdain. I believe it was Thomas Carlysle who said something like, "Revolutions are started by idealists, prosecuted by fanatics, and co-opted by scoundrels." Tim Pool recently quipped in one of his videos that some copies of the Antifa handbook have explicit instructions to "pretend to be BLM" for cover.