RE-EDUCATION #4: How The Left Gains Power (It’s Not By Winning Elections)
RE-EDUCATION #4: How The Left Gains Power (It’s Not By Winning Elections)
Political power versus Institutional Power
The RE-EDUCATION series is part of Woke 101, which will get you up to speed on the basics they don't teach you when you become a soldier in the culture war. If you’re new to the RE-EDUCATION series, start here with the introduction.
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How The Left Gains Power (It’s Not By Winning Elections)
Ever wondered why the woke left always seems to win, even without the presidency or a majority in Congress?
Who gets elected President, who’s in Congress, who’s in the state house, who’s on the school board—all these positions are filled by people who win elections at federal, state, or local levels. But when we examine how the left gained so much power in this country, it was rarely through elected positions.
Political power—gained by winning elections to create laws and control resources—is only one type of power. It’s temporary and fleeting, lost as soon as an election is lost.
The left doesn’t rule through political power alone. They’ll take it if they can get it (like the elected members of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party), and they appreciate that political parties help them organize and raise money to spread their message.
But the revolutionary far-left doesn’t believe they will win through political means. Many far-left organizations explicitly state they won’t achieve their revolution by winning elections. For example, the radical revolutionary socialist organization The Tempest Collective.
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Instead, the left focuses on institutional power—positions within institutions not subject to elections, like faculty roles, CEOs, or heads of major non-profits. Institutional power lasts a long time and is tough to change. Tenured faculty members can’t be easily fired, and CEOs and organizational heads usually need to voluntarily relinquish their positions to be replaced.
This is what we mean by their "long, slow march through the institutions"—spending the last century getting into positions of institutional power to rule society and drive their cultural revolution.
After the 2020 election, Bloomberg News analyzed donations by profession. The TLDR? People in white-collar professions (with institutional power) were more likely to give to Democrats and Biden, while blue-collar workers (doing noble, important work but lacking institutional power) were more likely to support Republicans and Trump.
In the movie The Young Victoria, Queen Victoria walks with her aunt, dowager Queen Adelaide, who warns her niece not to trust politicians too much because politicians always resent the monarchy. Politicians pass through; the monarchy stays.
Here, the monarchy represents the institution. Although the institutions the left controls aren’t technically lifetime appointments, they might as well be. High-powered positions—where decisions impact policy—change hands less frequently than elected ones. And when they do, the new person often aligns ideologically with the previous one. On the left, everyone is a replaceable cog, easily swapped out within the collective.
Institutional power is far greater than political power because it provides longevity, giving more time to enact changes to meet goals. This power doesn’t change hands based on election outcomes.
The left wins because they rely on institutional power, not political power.
Don’t rely on a pendulum swing to save us. The winner of the next election does not matter when it comes to fixing this problem. It’s a generational problem.
The right plays the short game. The left plays for keeps.
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