Book number: ISBN 978-1-59184-183-8 Published in 2006.

Introduction.

I was alerted to the existence of this book by one of the commentators on a post at Peter North’s blog Northern Variant. The book came up in a discussion about the new types of protest groups that are emerging in Britain that have been set up in order to counter the UK Government’s policy of excessive migration and new tactics of protest and of protest organisation. New groups such as Patriot Platform are organising in ways, such as having a cellular structure similar in nature to late stage Irish Republicans such as the Provisional IRA, along with tactics new to Mainland Britain such as geographically agile roadblocks as part of protests.

In the discussion matters such as the vulnerability to disruption by the State of traditional political and protest groups came up, look how Reform and Mr Tommy Robinson’s groups have been treated for examples of that, were covered. It was in this context that this book ‘The Starfish and The Spider’ was mentioned. I knew then, with so many people who have difficult but intelligent things to say about Britain, mentioning this book that it was one that I thought was one that I had to read. I’m very glad I did read this book as it’s brilliant.

Because of what this book can tell the reader how some forms of politics might have to be conducted in future, a future that includes an oppressive state unwilling to tolerate opposing views, I have decided to divide this review into two parts. The first part will be my review and impressions of the book itself whilst part two will be some thoughts of how the ideas in this book might be being applied or could in future be applied by protest groups and in politics in particular by those groups and political currents that are specifically opposed to some current Government narratives.

Part One

The title of this book ‘The Starfish and the Spider’ is a reference to two different designs for living creatures both of which work and allow the animal to live and reproduce but gives one of the creatures an advantage over others in their ecosystem. As the book says if you are confronted with a spider and you want to kill that spider then lop off the spider’s head. The spider will then die. However chop off a leg from certain kinds of tropical Starfish and not only does the Starfish that was injured grow a new leg but a complete Starfish can regenerate from the severed limb.

The authors of his book spent a long time looking at different forms of organisation for tribes, companies, protest groups, aid organisations, software production houses and even terrorist groups. They came to the conclusion that organisations that are run along Starfish principles, in that they are highly decentralised, have advantages over more centralised entities.

This book opens with a description of the fight between those who wanted to pirate music and the record companies that happened in the late 1990s to early 2000s. As quickly as the record companies cracked down on one platform that was hosting pirated music another entity doing the same would pop up. The legal departments of record companies and bands like Metallica were set up and constructed as a weapon to fight hierarchical entities which had a head office and a CEO. That way of organisation was what allowed the file sharing platform Napster to be sued into oblivion in the early part of this century. However it didn’t destroy illegal file sharing, it just moved to decentralised platforms with no leader, no office and no server. Much file sharing now takes part on distributed systems where every user is part of ‘the server’. This has proven much more difficult if not impossible for record companies and other legacy media companies to shut down. The file sharers became too decentralised for traditional legal remedies to be used against them.

The authors also went into great detail about the conflict between the Spanish and the Apache Native Americans where decentralisation helped natives to fend off the Spanish. The authors noted the difference in approach to contact with Spanish Conquistadors by the Aztecs and the Apache Native American groups.

The Spanish recognised what they were dealing with when it came to the Aztecs and acted accordingly. This very hierarchical social structure that the Aztecs lived under had a leader who the Spanish could treat with or threaten. Looking back at the historical record it’s clear to see that the Spanish had a very easy time of beating the Aztecs and things were easier for them because all they had to do was cut off the head of the Aztec spider by way of killing or capturing their leaders.

The Native American Apache had a very different approach to the Spanish and a completely different social structure than had the Aztecs. Apache society was not at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the New World a centralised society. There was no King, no High Chief, no Parliament, no priestly class and no administrative system or critical infrastructure that the Spanish could kill, control, destroy or disrupt. It did have what were called ‘Nant’ans’ or individual spiritual and cultural leaders. People would follow a Nant’an if they felt favourable to what the Nant’an was saying but if they didn’t agree they would not follow that Nant’an but maybe follow another. A Nant’an did not command geographical areas or armies but had followers, some of them warriors, due to the respect of large groups of individuals for these Nant’ans.

The Apaches and their decentralised system with people choosing to follow particular Nant’ans was completely outside of what the Spanish Conquistadors expected. The Spanish could not crack it. If they killed or captured a Nant’an then another would rise and take their place. The Apache kept the Spanish at bay for nearly two centuries.

The different experiences of the Aztecs and the Apaches highlighted, the authors of the book said, the benefits of an entity having a Starfish like organisational set up. With the Aztecs, all the Spanish had to do was cut off the head of the Spider in the form of decapitating the leadership of the Aztecs and they had control. This policy which although had worked elsewhere did not work on the Apache because their culture was more like that of certain Starfish.

As well as examining the file sharing and Apache examples of decentralisation the authors also looked at other organisations and causes that have chosen, for various reasons, to structure in a more flat decentralised way. The authors examine the workings of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous which was started out as a circle of those having issues with alcohol. One circle created another circle and so on and so on using the founder or rather the organisation’s catalyst as as guide. Each circle was unique and of itself and ran itself with no control imposed by any local, regional or national management structure. The circles themselves ran on trust between the members of the circle and those inspired by getting good results for themselves from Alcoholics Anonymous went on to create other circles. The precepts behind Alcoholics Anonymous have also been transplanted into other areas of addiction such as narcotics and gambling with circles made up of those with these addiction issues using the Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy in order to manage their conditions.

Would a group like Alcoholics Anonymous and its offshoots be as successful as they have been had the founder decided that he wanted to be the CEO of an organisation rather than give the precepts and philosophy away to the world? The authors don’t think so and after reading their reasons for their belief I tend to agree with them. Gifting the world the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous allowed the idea to spread much more quickly and more widely than if it had a traditional hierarchical structure with a CEO, a board of directors and the rest of the somewhat necessary organisational bureaucracy. It would have slowed growth tremendously in my view.

The authors also looked at entities like Craigslist which at the time of the book’s writing was extremely decentralised, software companies that loosened their grip on proprietary software, protest groups like animal rights campaigners and terrorist groups such as Al Qaida. What links all these disparate entities and causes is that they are decentralised to the extreme. There was little in the way of traditional business organisation at Craigslist, software companies realised that they could profit more off of providing services for their software instead of selling the software they’d written, animal rights groups have adopted a highly cellular structure for protection from the authorities and groups like Al Qaida don’t exist in any traditional form. Anyone could post nearly anything on Craigslist, software became more democratised, arrests didn’t destroy the animal rights groups and Al Qaida is just an idea that anyone who is minded to can attach to their own particular terror plot.

I must admit that I was very impressed by the detail in this book and the willingness of the authors to examine centralised and decentralised organisational structure and point out both the good and bad of each option. Big centralised companies or large organisations have the advantage of economy of scale and masses of expertise in its staff, but may not be as agile and as responsive to sudden market or political changes as a smaller more decentralised entity might be. Smaller decentralised entities might, despite their agility and potential to respond swiftly to changes in markets or politics, not be able to take advantage of opportunities because of resource constraints.

This book would be an interesting and informative read even if it just concentrated on descriptions of decentralised organisations and their advantages and disadvantages. However this book is much more than that. It’s also very much a ‘how to’ book on creating and sustaining decentralised entities whether that be for business or for political campaigning or economic and social development reasons.

The book lays out what is needed to create a decentralised group. The authors state that a decentralised organisation stands on five separate but vital legs.

1. There’s the circles of those with a particular interest in the subject at hand

2. A person or a group of people who can act as catalysts to get things going. The authors say that it’s important to decentralised organisational philosophy that the catalysts do not turn in to CEO’s and need to step back once the circle is up an running.

3. The group or circle needs a common ideology to work around. This could for example be a group of people who have independently come to the conclusion that there is a need for a community library. The perceived need for there to be a community library for example is the common ideology that the group coalesces around.

4. Any pre-existing network that members of a circle might have access to. The authors use the example of early anti-slavery campaigners in both the United Kingdom and later the United States of America where those affronted by the institution of slavery made use of Quaker contacts to expand their existing circles of common interest or concern.

5. Someone to champion the particular cause. These need not come from within the existing circles and in the case of anti-slavery campaigners were sometimes outside them. The authors use a good example of this in the form of a man who on a whim entered a slavery abolitionist essay competition. In the course of writing this essay he became increasingly angry at the practise of slavery and this led him to meet another man also affronted by slavery and they worked together with the essay writer being an implementer of ideas and his companion a champion and publiciser of the idea of emancipation of slaves. The idea of the ‘champion’ for a cause is considered necessary by the authors of The Starfish and the Spider in order to get the message of the other four legs of the decentralised organisation out into the world.

There’s much in this book that is enlightening, some of it has dated badly such as the praise heaped on the Burning Man Festival that has, some might say due to necessity, departed from its ‘non-commodification’ roots and has suffered drops in ticket sales in 2024 and 2025. This drop in sales might in some part be due to changes in the ‘feel’ of the event, it’s no longer ,it appears, to be the ‘show up and help out’ thing that it once might have been and has been criticised for becoming much more ‘corporate’. Also some of the companies that incorporated some degree of user control and input and were to a certain extent ‘hybrid’ companies such as Google and Ebay are much more firmly in the corporate camp than they once were. However I do believe that Ebay ratings which are user generated have not been completely corrupted by bots and do still retain the user input that was once its backbone and which the authors praise in this book.

I’m extremely glad to have discovered this book. I’ve learned an incredible amount from it about how decentralised organisations whether they be profit oriented or have other goals work and what their strengths and weaknesses are. I would certainly recommend that anyone who is interested in the structure of organisations or politics gets hold of a copy of this book for themselves.

Part Two

I’ve learned much from this book about decentralised organisations both organisations that are completely decentralised and organisations that incorporate some degree of decentralisation. I was fascinated for example by the book’s description of the way that some companies have become partially a hybrid of centralised and decentralised organisation with the example being given of Toyota, who treat their assembly line workers as knowledgable essential staff, resulting in better quality products. It’s this amalgam entity idea of centralised and decentralised culture that has made me think of how this might apply or is being applied in British politics. In particular I’m going to look at how decentralisation could be or is being practised in British nationalist politics.

But first a brief history lesson. It’s fair to say that the British have been more than tolerant when it comes to immigration and in some cases have tolerated that which should be for any well functioning society stuff that could reasonably be called intolerable. I don’t think I need to go into detail here about what these intolerable things are, you either know already or can easily find that out.

Despite there being a culture of tolerance, an acceptance of a ‘you do you’ form of existence by Britons, it also cannot be denied that from the 1970’s onwards there has been a growing discomfort at immigration and the behavior of some immigrants and immigrant heritage groups. Since the late 1970’s Britons have more often than not voted for parties that promised to restrict immigration and remove from Britain those who have come here but have proven themselves to be not conducive to the public good. At every opportunity for mainstream political parties to implement what is clearly the public’s will and restrict immigration, these parties have ignored the public and further liberalised immigration policies and watered down policies that would see the removal of wrong’uns.

It is successive governments failure to deal with migration to the satisfaction of the indigenous Britons that has led it to become one of the three big political issues in Britain today along with the economy and energy affordability and availability. Immigration has in my view without a doubt not been an unalloyed boon for Britain.

Yes we have welcomed in some amazing migrants who have contributed greatly to the life of the country and sometimes as in the case of cancer specialist Sir Stamford Cade, contributed to the health of Britons. But there are many other migrants, you will well know who I’m talking about, who have not contributed either fiscally or otherwise and have helped to create the febrile, angry and low trust society that Britain has become. Personally I see no moral wrong in not wanting that second classification of migrant or migrant heritage people in society as to approve of such things goes against the Biblical command to ‘keep the peace of the city in which you live’. Inviting in and tolerating those who break the peace of the city or the nation is not in my view a morally or even a politically defensible cause especially not in a democracy.

Since the 1970’s there have been organised objections to excessive numbers and incompatible types of migration. Back in the late 1970’s that objection primarily came from neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups many of them made up of the reheated leftovers of Mosleyism. I’m referring here to groups like the National Front, the British Movement and latterly in the late 80’s to the early 2000’s the British National Party (BNP). The latter group managed to pick up protest votes from those angered by migration and gain some council seats and a couple of seats in the European Parliament.

But the number of people discomforted by migration was and is far far larger than would be the number who were willing to vote for or be associated with these genuine far right groups. It’s one thing to have valid and well thought out and considered objections to migration levels and types and quite another, more distasteful for many, to hang around with the sort of people who have too great a liking for the uni-testicled Austrian Corporal and his policies.

Therefore a lot of those Britons who had an animus against immigration voted instead for whatever mainstream party that promised reductions in migration, they even voted Labour when they promised that migration policies would be ‘tough but fair’. Sadly Labour’s policies have been more than fair for migrants both legal and illegal and tough on the indigenous population. The Tories were not that much better despite their promises to curtail what are looking like existentially dangerous levels of migration. The Tories remember are the party that has given us the ‘Boriswave’ of migration, tens, probably hundreds of thousands of people that are likely not going to benefit Britain or Britons in the long run.

The neo-fascist groups such as the BNP were and are highly centralised which is something that could be expected from organisations led by the idea of the ‘Fuhrerprinzip’ or ‘Fuhrer principle’ where the leadership says what does and what doesn’t go. Their highly centralised and hierarchical structure means that groups like these are incredibly vulnerable from attacks by the State and from the Left as well as cyber attacks. Just like the example of the Spanish and the Aztecs given in the book The Starfish and The Spider, it was relatively easy for the opponents of the BNP and similar groups to use the power of the state against them or infiltrate them and sow division among members and leaders.

Whilst it is clear that there is a strong counter migration current in Britain there is no future for groups similar to the BNP as an expression of that viewpoint. The BNP and organisations like them are a political, moral, ethical, organisational and practical dead end. They cannot gain the critical mass of support that would be needed to make governments do what they don’t want to do and curtail immigration and remove troublesome and burdensome migrants. Groups like this, as well as having all the problems with being ‘spiderlike’ and having heads that can be removed, also have a ‘yuck’ factor about them which is virtually indelible and those parties that have borrowed policies or outlooks from them such as Restore Britain have not really fared that well at all either at the ballot box or in general support (outside of a few loudmouths on social media).

There have been other groups that have attempted to express public dissatisfaction with matters pertaining to migration and in particular to the challenge of extremist or orthodox Islam and its sometimes negative affect on British society. They are completely outside of the old school neo-Nazi or neo-Fascist grouping. They are much more civic nationalist in outlook than those in the past and the present who are holding on to BNP style ethnonationalist views. Into this category of non-fascist, non-Nazi groups I would put those groups that are run by individuals such as Tommy Robinson and similar activists.

Tommy Robinson is clearly not a racialist, his public conduct, his public statements and much else has proven that fact to me and to many others. He’s a man who is concerned primarily with the danger posed by radical Islam but he doesn’t let that knowledge of an ideology taint his dealings with people as many may have seen with Mr Robinson’s interactions with Muslims who just want to peacefully ask him questions.

Mr Robinson’s organisations such as Pegida UK, the English Defence League and others have had a great deal of success in highlighting some of the Islamisation and migration problems that Britain suffers from. Mr Robinson I have to say has really walked his talk and has the scars to prove it. Also he’s never to my knowledge taken what might appear to have been an easier route to get support and signed up and fought alongside the sort of genuine far rightist who the likes of Peter North refer to as ‘grotbags’. He’s never joined forces with the ‘the Jews did it’ crowd and that earns my respect.

However Mr Robinson’s groups have all had one major weakness and that’s the sort of weakness as described in the book ‘The Starfish and the Spider’. That weakness is that the organisations he runs are run by him and a small circle. It has been relatively easy therefore for the State to shut down his groups and harass and oppress Mr Robinson himself and his associates thereby harming the effectiveness of his groups.

Mr Robinson’s strength which is that he is recognisable and trusted and therefore something and someone that propels people to align themselves with Mr Robinson’s groups and causes. However that is also a weakness in that in order to destroy or hamper the groups Mr Robinson is involved in the State only has to arrest Mr Robinson (again) or harass or arrest the group’s known leadership.

Rather than leading and setting up groups and running them Mr Robinson would in my view be more gainfully employed acting as a catalyst and a spokesman for a whole variety of counter migration and counter jihad circles. He could get a group working together and then step back letting the group or circle act independently and act as a cheerleader for these independent groups. Mr Robinson would still be targeted by the State and the Far Left of course but such targeting might not have the collateral damage on individual independent circles that a more hierarchical group might suffer from when targeted.

There are signs that some groups have learned from the experience of Mr Robinson and his groups and are taking a far more decentralised approach to both organising and protest. This is paying dividends in both organisational protection from outside assault and decapitation of leadership.

One of the groups that has seemingly taken a decentralised approach to protesting Britain’s Great Immigration Disaster is the Patriot Platform group. This group, founded by former Tommy Robinson associate Danny Tommo, has from what I can gather a distinctly cellular organisational structure. Rather than one big overarching national organisation this group is organised as local chapters all of which appear to be running as independent groups, the circles in the parlance of The Starfish and the Spider. This group has not just survived decapitation by the State with the gaoling of Mr Tommo but appears to be growing if sources such as Paz 49 are to be believed. Taking their founder out of circulation has not apparently hurt the ability of those who have chosen to associate themselves with Patriot Platform to engage in publicity events nor affect its ability to get hundreds of bodies out on the streets to protest.

Patriot Platform is achieving what other more hierarchical groups have found very difficult to achieve which is to survive leadership decapitation. They are apparently on a steady growth path and arrests of those associated with Patriot Platform cells has not compromised the entire organisation.

Patriot Platform and other counter migration and counter jihad groups are apparently learning the lesson given to them at great cost by groups such as the French Resistance or Maquis during the Nazi German occupation of France during World War II. Each group in Patriot Platform is united in ideology with other groups but that is about as far as it goes.

There is no national or regional or local management cadre for the authorities to sweep up. I would guess that this group has also learned one important lesson from the days of the French Resistance which is that no one person in any group knows what is going on in more than a couple of other groups.

As with the Apache fighting the Spanish, people decide as individuals who they will follow and where. Provided that they can keep their discussions covered by good Infosec (information security) practises and not gob off online or be too open when using public telecommunications facilities then this group is harder to hit or hit as hard as a more hierarchical group might be. Danny Tommo has acted with Patriot Platform in a similar manner to how the Apache Nant’an’s operated and his gaoling has so far not affected the operation of Patriot Platform too much. Danny Tommo might be in gaol but there are plenty more ‘Danny Tommo’s’ and plenty more equivalents of the Nant’ans ready to step up.

It is likely that with the increasing oppression by the State of ordinary indigenous Britons and those of migrant heritage who have thrown their lot in with us, that decentralised organisation of protest against migration is going to be, at least for the short and medium term, the way to go. The broad category of decent British nationalists, those that I class as outside of the Mosleyite / Jackboot licking axis, are not going to be able to organise in a hierarchical manner as organisations of the political Left are able to organise. This is because the Establishment gives these Leftist entities a free pass as their ideology has views in common with the views of the Establishment.

So where is all this going to lead? Well I’m no Mystic Meg so I can’t give definitive answers but I can say that with increasing oppression more people who are opposed to Government policies and narratives are probably going to be starting or getting involved with decentralised groups and joining with other groups to protest.

I think that in time we will start to see different groups emerging that have specialities and knowledge from these groups with specialities will move out by a form of osmosis to other groups without such specialist knowledge which will assist them. I foresee lots of independent anti-migration groups forming some of which, due to the nature of their membership, will have specialities. Some groups will concentrate on Infosec, others on intelligence gathering, yet more on vetting potential members and so on and so on. Because it is likely that specialist affinity groups will be duplicated it will then make it difficult for the authorities to destroy an entire organisation by arresting one group’s intelligence or Infosec people. Decentralisation of groups and campaigns means always having a back up plan for when disaster or State intervention strikes.

Not every group is going to be suitable for every individual. There may be some individuals who are of a more confrontational nature and they will find their peers, although they can count me out of such groupings, it’s not my ‘thing’ I’ve seen too much street violence to approve of it or take part in it. There will be yet more groups whose modus operandi is more Gandhian in nature and prefer non-violent protest and direct action and others who are made up of those who perform specific tasks such as the aforementioned Infosec and publicity tasks.

A decentralised approach to campaigning against unwanted immigration or jihadism might work but to be really successful and to change things for Britons for the better it will need to have some form of policy programme that they can use to explain themselves to the Normies and also use as an example of an alternative to current Government policies. Street politics, even the sort of non-violent street politics that I have some time for is at its most effective when it is coupled with a political arm. Sinn Fein in Ulster were successful because they had a dual track strategy encompassing both the ballot box and kinetic action. It was called ‘the Armalite and the Ballot Box’ strategy. Now of course I want to leave readers in no doubt whatsoever that I do not support violence or armed insurrection, that creates many problems of its own as well as being not to my own taste.

However the idea of linking street politics with a ballot box strategy has much to commend it but to be successful this new party has to be unencumbered with baggage which is why linking street politics with the Reform Party is as non-runner especially as long as Nigel Farage is the leader. Mr Farage will nearly always do what’s best for Mr Farage and not his party or any wider movement. No, Reform is not the answer and it’s quite possible that a new party will emerge or need to emerge from the street politics that will give those involved in street politics a Parliamentary voice. What form this will take is much much too early to say.

So to recap and conclude, there is much that different campaigning groups and especially groups that are opposed to immigration could learn from the book ‘The Starfish and the Spider’. Whether they apply the lessons from this book remains to be seen. However whether you are a campaigner, someone with a business idea or want to do something for your local community it’s fair to say that there is a lot to be learned from the stories of the decentralised and organisationally flat entities discussed in this book. If you are interested in politics or in organisation structure then there may be much to enlighten you in this book.

 

Links

Amazon page for Starfish and the Spider

https://www.amazon.com/The-Starfish-and-Spider-audiobook/dp/B000TK5BQY

Paz 49 on the growth of Patriot Platform

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4MlmctYVRQ

Peter North’s site ‘Northern Variant’

https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/