What the Mafia Can Teach Us About Destroying MAGA

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that in The Sirens of Titan. The comparison identifies what actually makes organization work. Victory doesn't come from mission statements or nonprofit status or permits. Effective activism succeeds when every member knows their role, shows up without having to be called, acts without waiting for permission, and understands that their individual action connects to something larger. Organization lives in the daily practice of individuals who operate as part of a structure even when no one is watching.

The irony is not lost on anyone that the current threat to democracy has its own literal mob connections. Trump built his profile in 1980s New York construction, an industry controlled by the Five Families. His mentor Roy Cohn represented Tony Salerno and other organized crime figures. His business partner Felix Sater has documented ties to Russian organized crime. The people we are fighting already understand how the Mafia operates. Forget criminality. They act without asking permission or waiting for orders. So can we.

We can build this. We can become organized along the lines Vonnegut described. The method is simpler than decades of failed civic advice have made it seem.

One clarification before we properly begin. There’s a difference between resistance and opposition. Resistance is reactive. It responds to someone else’s agenda, plays defense, waits to see what the other side does and then scrambles to block it. Opposition sets its own agenda. Opposition decides what it wants and builds the power to take it. We are done reacting. We set the agenda now.

The cycle has four phases: Educate, Activate, Recruit, Repeat.

Educate means learning where power is actually vulnerable and what levers exist to pressure it. This does not mean consuming endless news or doom-scrolling through catastrophe. It means understanding which city or state officials and organizations control which mechanisms of opposition, what authority they already possess, and why pressuring them offers higher return than contacting federal representatives who cannot or will not help.

Activate means taking specific action against specific targets. A phone call, an email, a public comment, a letter to the editor, showing up at a town hall. Not symbolic action. Not sharing posts. Direct contact with the people who hold power we can actually influence, asking for something concrete they can actually do.

Recruit means bringing one other person into the same cycle. Not convincing someone to share your politics. Converting one sympathizer into one person who takes one action. The multiplication happens at this step. Without it, we remain individuals. With it, we become organized.

Repeat means doing this until it becomes automatic.

Not a burst of activity after each new outrage, but a practice woven into daily life. The goal is making activism something we are rather than something we do when we have energy.

The demands must be specific. We are not contacting officials to express general displeasure or ask them to “do something.” We are pushing for policies that create actual independence from fascist control.

First, state attorneys general must open criminal investigations and prosecutions of federal officials who violate state law. City and state representatives to pass aggressive and fast acting anti-corruption statutes. When someone commits assault, false imprisonment, or civil rights violations within state borders, state law applies. Federal employment provides no immunity from state criminal jurisdiction. State AGs possess this authority right now. They need to use it.

Second, states must build public revenue streams that create financial independence. Public banking, municipal broadband, public utilities. These generate revenue that funds state level social safety nets without relying on corrupted and weaponized federal systems. North Dakota has operated a public bank profitably since 1919. Chattanooga’s municipal broadband documented 2.69 billion dollars in economic benefits. This works.

Third, blue states must negotiate interstate compacts that let them act as a bloc. When twenty-three states coordinate tax policy, healthcare, voting rights, climate action, regulatory enforcement, and legal strategy, they possess leverage that isolated states lack. This is legal and has extensive precedent.

These are the demands. Every action pushes for one of these three things. The educational primer and framework behind these policies is Soft Secession and it's essentially the “Quiet Quitting” of response to a despotic federal government.

The principles that govern physical health also govern political change. No one expects to get fit by going to the gym once a month for an eight-hour session. No one expects to be healthy from eating one salad and then returning to fast food for the next thirty days. We understand intuitively that change requires consistency. Small actions repeated daily produce results that heroic occasional efforts never will.

Activism works the same way. A movement of people who each do a small thing every day will defeat a movement of people who do a large thing once and then disappear. The burst-and-burnout cycle that defines most political engagement produces exhaustion without results. The daily practice produces results without exhaustion.

Excellence is a habit. Aristotle knew this. We are what we repeatedly do. The person who takes one action every day for a year has made 365 contacts. The person who takes fifty actions after an outrage and then burns out has made fifty. The math favors consistency every time.

The Existentialist Republic is currently, as in literally every day, building tools to help people apply these principles. This will fit together as part of a “Distributed Activist Toolkit.” This is all possible thanks to our subscribers and the people who buy from the online store.

We’re trying to find the best ways to continue building this project.

The pace of this process depends partially on funding. Printing, production, and even keeping resources free can involve backend expenses. If you can help get this up and running, so we can build a machine that destroys fascists, check out buymeacoffee.com/TheER

Change is also a habit. We do not transform society through moments of peak intensity. We transform it through the accumulation of small pressures applied relentlessly over time. Water cuts through rock not through force but through persistence.

Do a tiny thing every day. Five minutes with your morning coffee checking which officials to contact. One email during lunch. A public comment after dinner. Variety keeps the practice sustainable and multiplies the pressure. This is effective micro activism, and it works because frequency matters more than intensity. Duration matters more than any single dramatic action.

You will miss days. You will have weeks where life overwhelms your practice. Do not punish yourself. Punishment destroys motivation. Just begin again when you can. The goal is building a practice that survives setbacks, not maintaining a perfect streak that collapses the first time you stumble.

Be public about what you are doing. Tell people you made the call. Share the email you sent. Post about showing up at the town hall. Have fun while you’re fighting against tyranny. Visibility recruits. When others see that this practice is real and achievable, they join. Your public action becomes part of someone else’s education.

Vonnegut understood that any fight is winnable. The good folks have too often waited for someone else to build the structure. Don't count on anyone else coming. We are the opposition and we can organize ourselves.

Educate, activate, recruit, repeat. A tiny thing daily. Frequency, duration, intensity.

Thanks for being here, together.