Austin Left Discovers Spontaneous Protest Works Best When Scheduled in Advance

Socialist Groups Reportedly Coordinate “Spontaneous” Anti-ICE Demonstration, Finally Bringing Central Planning to Spontaneity

Political activists in Austin have reportedly achieved something economists once considered impossible: centrally planned spontaneity.

Fox News reported that organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization promoted protests following the September 20 shooting of Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garces Perez by an ICE officer. Fox characterized the mobilization as coordinated and highlighted an Austin DSA announcement describing an “Emergency Demonstration/Vigil” as a “spontaneous protest.”

The shooting itself is a serious matter whose circumstances remain under investigation. The Associated Press reported that Garces Perez was seriously wounded but stable, that ICE said he was under a final removal order, that his lawyer disputed aspects of the government account, and that local officials called for an independent investigation.

And now, back to the comedy provided free of charge by the English language.

Revolution Now Accepting Calendar Invitations

According to Fox, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s national account posted about the shooting during the afternoon and called for people to protest. The Austin chapter of DSA later advertised an emergency demonstration and vigil with specified hours and a specified location.

This creates a delightful linguistic problem.

If somebody tells you where spontaneity will occur, when spontaneity begins and when spontaneity concludes, we are no longer discussing spontaneity.

We are discussing dinner reservations.

Imagine receiving a message:

“URGENT: Please join our entirely unplanned dinner tonight from 6:30 to 8:15. Reservations under Thompson. Business casual. Valet available.”

Nobody arrives and says, “What an astonishing coincidence that all 46 of us spontaneously wanted salmon at the same restaurant.”

Yet politics possesses supernatural powers over vocabulary.

A demonstration can apparently be simultaneously organized and spontaneous.

That is useful.

Congress should try this.

“Ladies and gentlemen, today’s appropriations hearing erupted spontaneously at 10:00 a.m. in Committee Room 214, as advertised three weeks ago.”

Thinking How Dishonest is the Left

1. Nothing says “spontaneous” quite like publishing the address, starting time, ending time and approved graphics. Apparently spontaneity now requires Outlook Calendar.
2. Socialists have finally discovered a free market they like: the marketplace of protest attendance. Supply signs, stimulate demand, and subsidize transportation.
3. A spontaneous demonstration with organizers is basically a surprise birthday party where the birthday boy designed the invitation.
4. The revolution has an Instagram department. Marx had a beard. Lenin had a train. Modern activists have Canva Pro.
5. America spent decades worrying about centrally planned economies, only to discover central planning works beautifully for Thursday evening chanting.

Marx Finally Gets a Social-Media Manager

Karl Marx wrote thousands of pages about capital, labor, alienation and class struggle.

He never addressed the most important revolutionary question of the twenty-first century:

Who has the Instagram password?

This was shortsighted.

Fox reported that activist organizations amplified information through national and local social-media accounts, sharing graphics and protest information shortly after the shooting.

Which means modern revolutionaries are now performing tasks indistinguishable from regional marketing managers.

There are graphics.

There are engagement numbers.

There are collaborative posts.

There are branded messages.

Somewhere, surely, someone is saying:

“Comrades, the overthrow of capitalism performed poorly among women 18-34, but our carousel post about imperialism is absolutely crushing it.”

Lenin never had to worry about thumbnail optimization.

He merely had to overthrow a government.

Today he would spend three hours debating whether the hammer and sickle should be vertically centered.

Capitalism Quietly Wins the Revolution’s Office-Supply Contract

This is the wonderful irony of twenty-first-century anti-capitalist activism.

To organize effectively, activists frequently use products of the very commercial economy they criticize.

Smartphones. Social-media platforms. Cloud hosting. Graphic-design software. Ride-sharing. Coffee shops. Wireless networks. Portable batteries manufactured through sprawling international supply chains.

The revolution is increasingly dependent upon excellent consumer electronics.

If capitalism truly wanted to suppress communism, it would not need secret police.

It could simply make everyone use a printer from 1998.

The revolution would collapse by noon.

“Comrades! The bourgeoisie has defeated us!”

“How?”

“Paper jam. Tray two.”

The Grassroots Now Comes With Administrative Staff

“Grassroots” is one of those marvelous political words everybody wants.

Nobody forms an “Astroturf Citizens Committee.”

Nobody announces:

“Good evening. We represent wealthy donors pretending to be 11 plumbers from Waco.”

Everybody wants grass.

Grass suggests authenticity.

Grass grows naturally.

Grass does not ordinarily have a communications director.

Fox argues that the Austin protest demonstrates how established activist networks can rapidly transform an incident into broader political action. That characterization is Fox’s analysis, but the underlying fact that established political organizations promoted demonstrations is supported by the groups’ described public posts.

And there is nothing inherently mysterious about organizations organizing.

That is what organizations do.

Nobody exposes the Rotary Club by announcing:

“INVESTIGATION FINDS ROTARY CLUB MEETING ORGANIZED BY ROTARY CLUB.”

The comic problem arrives only when organized activity is marketed as spontaneous.

A bakery may bake bread.

But if the bakery claims the loaf spontaneously appeared through popular outrage, somebody should check the kitchen.

Revolutionary Central Planning Finds Its Niche

For more than a century, critics of socialism have complained about central planning.

Too rigid. Too bureaucratic. Too disconnected from local information.

Perhaps everyone misunderstood.

Maybe central planning was simply being applied to the wrong industry.

Forget steel production. Forget agriculture. Forget automobile manufacturing.

Central planning may be magnificent at protests.

Five o’clock: outrage. Five-fifteen: chants. Five-thirty: banner deployment. Six: traffic disruption. Six-fifteen: livestream. Six-thirty: revolutionary committee realizes nobody brought water. Six-forty-five: DoorDash arrives.

Suddenly capitalism returns to save the revolution from dehydration.

The People Demand Justice, Wi-Fi and a Charging Station

There is another important distinction.

People can sincerely become angry about an event even when established political organizations help mobilize them.

Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.

AP reported significant public concern following the ICE shooting, with Austin officials demanding transparency and investigation.

The existence of organizational involvement does not prove every attendee was recruited, insincere or secretly directed.

Politics is usually messier than that.

Some people arrive because organizations contacted them. Some arrive because friends contacted them. Some see social media. Some live nearby. Some are already angry.

And at least three people in every American demonstration appear to be there because they saw helicopters and figured something interesting was happening.

Political movements contain genuine emotion and organization simultaneously.

The satire lies in pretending those things are opposites.

A Brief Dictionary for Modern Political Journalism

Spontaneous: Organized quickly.

Grassroots: Includes humans.

Emergency demonstration: Rally whose graphic designer worked extremely fast.

Movement: More than six people with matching terminology.

Coalition: Three organizations using the same Google Doc.

Revolution: Protest with better merchandise.

People’s uprising: Revolution whose merchandise sold out.

Organic movement: Nobody located the invoice yet.

This dictionary will be updated whenever language suffers additional injuries.

Austin Achieves Peak Austin

Of course this happened in Austin.

Austin is the rare city where you can encounter a socialist protest, a venture-capital pitch meeting, a Tesla, an artisanal dog bakery and a man charging $14 for a taco while explaining capitalism has failed.

That is not hypocrisy.

That is zoning.

Austin is where political contradictions go to obtain tattoos.

A revolutionary can spend the afternoon condemning multinational corporations, then open a multinational corporation’s phone to order almond milk from another corporation while sending the transaction through a third corporation.

And the phone responds:

Would you like to round up 83 cents for social justice?

History has become extremely efficient.

The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed, Monetized and Algorithmically Recommended

The great twentieth-century fear was that communism might conquer America.

Nobody predicted the actual outcome:

Communism would open social-media accounts.

Now ideologies once associated with underground pamphlets must compete with cat videos, football highlights, dermatologists removing blackheads and a 19-year-old explaining passive income from Dubai.

That may be the most brutal marketplace ever created.

Imagine being the communications director of the revolution.

Yesterday’s post:

ABOLISH CAPITALISM NOW

Views: 11,400.

Next video:

Golden retriever frightened by cucumber.

Views: 83 million.

At some point even Marx begins questioning the historical inevitability of communism.

Spontaneity Will Begin Promptly at Five

The most useful conclusion is not that protesters lacked sincere concerns, nor that every claim about the ICE shooting has already been resolved. It has not. Federal and local scrutiny of the incident continues, and competing factual claims deserve investigation rather than slogans.

The irresistible comic fact is simpler.

Modern political activism has become extraordinarily professional while retaining the romantic vocabulary of accidental uprising.

The revolution has scheduling software.

The rebellion has administrators.

The spontaneous demonstration has an address.

The anti-capitalists have engagement analytics.

The grassroots have social-media managers.

And somewhere in Austin, a revolutionary is presumably typing:

“URGENT COMRADES: Tomorrow’s spontaneous uprising has been moved to 6:30 due to weather. Please RSVP so we know how much pizza to order.”

Naturally, the pizza will arrive from a private business.

Some contradictions are too beautiful to nationalize.

Helpful Advice for Future Spontaneous Revolutionaries

If you want your protest called spontaneous, do not publish the closing time.

Lightning is spontaneous. Sneezing is spontaneous. Your uncle bringing up immigration during Thanksgiving dinner is spontaneous.

A political demonstration announced with branded artwork, organizational sponsorship, social-media distribution, an address and operating hours may still be energetic, legitimate, sincere, peaceful, angry, important, misguided or persuasive depending on one’s viewpoint.

But linguistically?

That thing has a reservation.

10 Humorous Observations From the People’s Department of Spontaneous Scheduling

1. You know capitalism has won when even the communists need social-media analytics. Nothing destroys private enterprise faster than checking engagement every seven minutes.
2. The phrase “grassroots organization” used to mean neighbors discovering one another. Now apparently the grass comes preassembled from IKEA.
3. The modern revolutionary does not seize the means of production. He seizes the means of notification.
4. The Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace. Americans receive a push notification saying the revolution has moved three blocks because parking is unavailable.
5. Every successful uprising now needs the one thing Marx neglected: a communications intern named Madison.
6. If a protest has five sponsoring organizations, branded artwork and repost statistics, calling it spontaneous is like calling Walmart a yard sale.
7. The ideological war between capitalism and socialism has apparently been settled by whoever understands Instagram better.
8. Nothing demonstrates rebellion against corporate America like measuring success in likes, reposts and shares.
9. The modern barricade is constructed from traffic cones, smartphones and people asking whether anybody brought a portable charger.
10. America may never achieve socialism, but Austin has apparently achieved something more ambitious: bureaucratically administered spontaneity.

Disclaimer

This satire jokes about political organizing, ideological branding and the glorious abuse of the word “spontaneous.” It does not presume that every protester belongs to any sponsoring organization, and it does not resolve disputed facts surrounding the ICE shooting, which authorities continue to investigate.

This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer.

One understands political organization.

The other understands what happens when everybody follows the herd.

Neither has successfully milked a revolutionary committee.

Source reporting: Fox’s organizing investigation is available here. For the underlying shooting and ongoing investigation, the Associated Press provides independent coverage.