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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31678 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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So I disagree with the implication that you need shadowy influencers teaching this behaviour.

What do you mean, those are the shadowy influencers teaching this behavior!

These guys weren't exactly ex-NKVD assets or anything. Just people who had been going to protests for 20 years and had an idea of how to disrupt police operations for these events.

a) Normal people don't have time to do this shit for 20 years. They are almost certainly sponsored by someone top-down.

b) If they were ex-NKVD, how would you know?

In Europe, normal people, almost all with low-income jobs or on welfare, have time to do this sort of shit every weekend for nine months of the year. They are setting out to commit more violent actions than American protestors, under much greater surveillance, and often dealing with police far more willing to use force than US cops. They aren't limited to one city, but travel around on their own expense committing violence all around the country and across the continent. They have no multi-million(/billion?)-dollar infrastructure behind them as American protestors have, no systematic legal support at all, and the media hates them rather than running cover.

Why do they do this? Because they want to beat up fans of other soccer teams.

The analogy isn't perfect, but what I want to say is that it's really not that hard for someone, even on a low income, to do this sort of thing if it's their main hobby. The full-spectrum infrastructural support from the leftist machine helps a lot, of course, and many of these people are given bullshit jobs by that machine in part so they can agitate, but it's not necessary for motivated people. This also probably goes some way to explaining why, in my experience, so much more of the resources of the leftist machine are dedicated to motivating people to become agitators compared to what's paid out to support actual agitators.

The analogy isn't perfect

I'll say. Unless something changed since I followed these fine folk, these fights are mutual combat. There's not much to coordinate when both sides just want to pommel each other for shits and giggles.

Soccer hooliganism is very illegal in Europe, actually, and these clubs are well coordinated. There’s a book about it, I can’t remember the name.

Mutual combat that is very much illegal, with additional penalties over 'standard' mutual combat, and often involves fighting cops! It was far more intense back in the day, but despite that, in the modern setup (where sometimes hooligan groups will even coordinate with each other where they'll meet to fight), there's still a fair amount of organization involved. The coordination involved is in avoiding getting identified/arrested by the cops in the process of doing that mutual combat, or in avoiding that while beating up random people, as also often happens.

Anyway, your point was about the time and expenses involved in being a protestor, and I submit that hooligans have more onerous financial investments required (tickets, beer, trains, flights, beer, hotels, beer), generally on lower incomes, and the time requirement is not terribly dissimilar (the main difference being protesting in the week during work hours, but that burden is spread across a lot of protestors and your typical US protestor probably doesn't need to take time off work - they're retired, or unemployed, or a student, or a bartender, or have shift work).

Normal people don't have time to do this shit for 20 years. They are almost certainly sponsored by someone top-down.

Political activists are not, by definition, "normal people". This activity is not extraordinary expensive, the "sponsorship" is coming from their moms (or, for the veterans, some low effort no show jobs).

If they were ex-NKVD

If they were ex-NKVD, it would mean that comrade Lysenko was right, that glorious Soviet biology really discovered secret of eternal youth. Awesome news!

Normal people don't have time to do this shit for 20 years.

There are tens of millions of adults in the United States who are either completely unemployed or work part-time, and are not students.

a) Normal people don't have time to do this shit for 20 years. They are almost certainly sponsored by someone top-down.

Not 'normal people', but I've met career protestors working line level paper pushing jobs in the local government. They just take sick days to go and protest. Plenty of retirees out and about on the streets at these things blowing rape ICE whistles.

These aren't organisers though. They're what Yuri Bezmenov would call 'useful idiots' and would be lined up and shot come the revolution.

Edit: Sorry I was meant to be replying to the poster above you. I need some rest.

The overwhelming majority most of them are that way due to some form of a dysfunction, or at best, because they have dependents to take care of. They're not going to be managing dispatches and databases.

What do you mean, those are the shadowy influencers teaching this behavior!

Lol true. I thought the WO was implying that an e.g. foreign expert in insurgencies was teaching them. Not the 55 year old grievance collector in this case.

a) Normal people don't have time to do this shit for 20 years. They are almost certainly sponsored by someone top-down.

The two people who were the defacto leaders have been doing these kinds of protests for decades while living on basically environmentally neutral hippie compounds out in rural australia. They're not normal, they're not "sponsored', they just do this kind of bullshit because they really like to.

b) If they were ex-NKVD, how would you know?

We checked and you'd need to take my word.

These groups do think of themselves as insurgents against authorities. But I'm just saying the temperature of the message should be read a lot cooler than "and this is now Fallujah".

They're still comprised mostly of cringe, unemployed, lefties.

We checked and you'd need to take my word.

Hold on there, just how many Australian state operatives are hanging out over here?

Just one, I believe Dean is a US operative, not Australian. I wouldn’t be shocked if we had one from another country but if so he hasn’t made it obvious.

Didn't Ashlel say he's one (though I suppose it's been a while since he posted here)? And I thought Dean wasn't one from any country.

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