(2) Learn from everywhere. Learn from those who have been sucessful, even if they are evil. Learn from the enemy.
We’ve got to ‘read their books’.
Among the most successful political organizations in the West – given the sort of political change they were trying to effect – were the Communist Parties.
After WWII, they got about 40% of the vote in France and Italy. But the lessons for us are from those countries were they remained, numerically, a small minority, yet were able to extend their influence throughout society. The USA is a case in point.
In the first few years of the 1930s, all the Communists parties in the world, following Stalin’s dictum that we were living in the final crisis of capitalism, were very hardline and sectarian. They openly called for their countries to be transformed into imitations of the Soviet Union. They attacked – sometimes physically – their nearest rivals, the Socialist Parties. In Germany, they were partially – but significantly – responsible for Hitler’s accession to power.
When Hitler did come to power, this woke Stalin up, and he ordered a major ‘turn’ on the Communist parties: from now on their main task was to defeat fascism, by allying with other anti- or non-fascists. This turn was called ‘the Popular Front’ … and it was wildly successful, even in such deeply conservative countries as the US.
[For a detailed history of the CPUSA up to 1957, when it pretty much collapsed (after Krushchev’s “Secret Speech” denouncing Stalin, plus the Hungarian Revolution, in 1956), see here:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Communist-Party-Critical-History/product-reviews/B000KUAQ6S/
]
What the Party did was basically to become the champion of liberal causes that liberals were too disorganized or otherwise too passive to actively fight for. It formed ‘mass organizations’ whose ostensible goal was not communism but Civil Rights for Blacks, or welfare state measures, or pro-trade union laws. While retaining the effective leadership of these organizations, the Party was able to draw in large numbers of well-meaning, if somewhat naive, people, who agreed with those aims. After working with the Communists – who were the most dedicated activists in these groups – some of these people then joined the Party. Many others remained outside it, but were sympathetic to it. (This was the factual basis of Joe McCarthy’s claim that liberals were pro-Communist.)
Communists helped build the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and became the leadership of 11 national unions – about one-third of the CIO membership. They expanded their own membership from a few thousands, to close to one hundred thousand, with perhaps ten times that many people who sympathyzed with them to one degree or another. (And this was when America had less than half as many people in it as it does today.)
(And, yes, they were also conduits for Soviet espionage actions against the US, described in detail in this book: [ Amazon.com ]
We can learn from this.
One organization did. Unfortunately, the brilliant man who founded it was also a paranoid, who believed that President Eisenhower was a conscious member of the Communist Party. But except for that insanity, and perhaps too much sympathy for the old Republican stance of isolationism, the John Birch Society put into practice methods of reaching large numbers of people beyond their own ranks. I still remember a popular bumper sticker they circulated in the 1960s: “Don’t like cops? The next time you’re in trouble, call a hippie.”
The Wikipedia entry, despite having lots of material obviously added by Leftists, is worth reading (especially Ayn Rand’s criticism of it): John Birch Society - Wikipedia
We need something like the Birch Society today, minus its conspiracy-theory bent. That is, we need a national organization built around local groups of activists which can wage co ordinated campaigns against the Left.