How does a leader create a movement? An interesting video shows how a lone “dancing guy,” who initially comes across as weird or eccentric, is able to get everyone else to join in and thus normalize that weirdness until it is those who do not join in who become the “weird” ones.

When examining how the Progressive movement went from the musings of a few elitists into a leaderless movement, or even a Stand Alone Complex, the “dancing guy” video is illuminating, and serves as an example, albeit a silly example, of how such a movement as the Progressive movement went from “lone nut[s] to New Conventional Wisdom.”

The veritable Ace over at the Ace of Spades HQ, sums it up nicely by calling it “an analysis of the ideological capture of an institution, expressed through interpretive dance.”

As silly as it is, it is still quite illuminating as to how to explain whence a “leaderless” movement came, and how it is not just some spontaneous expression of the “volonté générale.”

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