Thank you for mentioning the “Parallel Polis” movement of the Czechs and Slovaks in the 1980s. Under the yoke of the Soviet Union, they created and named the only modern example of how a people can defeat totalitarianism.
Sure, what we do matters. But in a totalitarian society, what we refuse to do also matters just as much. Your list is excellent.
We can abandon Google, Exxon, and Citibank, even the U.S. Empire, and we can build or use alternatives right now, today. All of us here who are supporting Substack writers are participating in the parallel polis by refusing the propaganda of the corporate/government media. Local farmers and their customers are defying corporate agriculture and the processed-food industry. Pay-as-you-go doctors are defying medical health insurance corporations and Big Pharma. People who simply pay with cash whenever possible are infuriating the bankers.
Many of us cannot travel to Washington, D.C. to protest, but, wherever we are, we can refuse to do some little thing today that our imperial rulers demand us to do.
Piss off your rulers. Refuse to do something today, no matter how small. Instead, use an alternative to central banks, big corporations, processed foods, Big Pharma. If an alternative does not exist, build one.
Really? "Parallel Polis" was just one of Gene Sharp's 198 strategies ("198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government"), and Gene Sharp is a complicated character. It remains to be seen whether any of his tricks work reliably without the invisible hand of CIA/NED guiding things along.
Well, it seems to have worked in Afghanistan or Vietnam, where the Taliban and NLF ran parallel governments which commanded the loyalty of more citizens than the "official" government structures.
I’m probably missing your point. Are you discounting the concept of Parallel Polis, or are you suggesting it is the same as the 198 Methods? (Or maybe you're discounting Gene Sharp, whom I know very little about.) There are many similarities with the Methods—perhaps the Parallel Polis is even directly derivative. There is nothing new under the sun. Passive resistance is age old. The main distinction of Parallel Polis with the Methods is that the Czechs and Slovaks actually employed the concept of the Parallel Polis to, at least in part, successfully bring down and emerge relatively peacefully from authoritarianism. The 198 Methods is a fine, important, and useful list for nonviolent resistance, and I am happy if any of its methods are employed for lasting change. But the Methods is ultimately just a list, not a specific instruction set for a particular resistance movement.
Regarding your point about the CIA/NED, I share your concern. There’s almost always a Ray Epps in any subversive group. Every movement of any import, no matter how spontaneous originally, eventually gets coopted into controlled opposition, especially those that rest on their laurels. I'm thinking the trick is to jump from one movement to the next to stay one step ahead of the FBI infiltrators and provocateurs--a kind of moveable movement that the FBI flat-foots can't keep up with.
Sharp's 198 methods do work tolerably often without the way being prepared by the international relations, financial and other external ruling class communities. But covert CIA/NED violence seems to complement successful pro-neoliberal non-violent movements, a trick they must have learned from the Civil Rights movement.
Hopping from org to org is a very interesting idea, one that anarchists and their pop-up committees for particular actions seem to apply to their benefit. But it seems a bit too easy to get entrapped by stepping into the wrong movement with the wrong tactic at the wrong time. I'll have to think about that one a bit more.
There's always debate about whether biography should matter when it comes to intellectual or artistic achievement. Heidegger and his involvement with the Nazi Party is probably the best example; he may have been the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century, but because of his Nazi affiliation, I’m not even sure if he is still taught in philosophy classes. (Of course, had Heidegger been an equally good rocket scientist, he would have become an American hero.) Sharp’s long-term affiliation with the CIA and his integral participation in the creation of neoliberalism, however, demand that his motivations and “achievements” must be questioned.
Your link is excellent—I’ve bookmarked NonSite.org—and the article seems pretty damning. Logically and historically, it does make sense that the best way to control political resistance is to create and manage it. I’m always especially skeptical about non-violence movements that arise within empires. There is an increasing amount of evidence that Christianity was a Roman invention to quell the Zealot rebellion and, essentially, create antisemitism to manage it. Why else would a Messiah, who every Jew assumed would be an archetypal rebel-warrior leader, arise during an actual and successful rebellion preaching non-violence and “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”? Later Roman rulers then realized the value of using monotheism to control the masses, and imperial intellectual loyalists wrote the Gospels. (See, for example, Joseph Atwill’s book, Caesar’s Messiah.) I would not be surprised if similar claims are made against Gandhi.
You're quite welcome, and thank you for pointing me in the direction of Atwill. How interesting to suspect that Jesus and Gandhi were intentionally fashioned products of an imperial administrative class. Allow me to add another Doe to the indictment.
A college psych 101 book I perused as a child presented Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and illustrated the sixth of six stages, the late post-conventional stage, as a status definitively achieved by only three idealized exemplars. Jesus and Gandhi were the first two on the list, and MLKJr completed the set. Such a selection leads one to a lot of pointed questions about the natures of morality, autonomy, and recuperation by distinction. We know that Gandhi's and MLKJr's use of violence was downplayed in the popular mythos, and it seems not unreasonable to imagine that Jesus might have, in fact, engaged in the same sort of direct action and been posthumously subjected to the same sort of mythological laundering as we have witnessed with the other two.
That's a lot of mind blowing for a Tuesday morning. Thanks again.
Thank you for mentioning the “Parallel Polis” movement of the Czechs and Slovaks in the 1980s. Under the yoke of the Soviet Union, they created and named the only modern example of how a people can defeat totalitarianism.
Sure, what we do matters. But in a totalitarian society, what we refuse to do also matters just as much. Your list is excellent.
We can abandon Google, Exxon, and Citibank, even the U.S. Empire, and we can build or use alternatives right now, today. All of us here who are supporting Substack writers are participating in the parallel polis by refusing the propaganda of the corporate/government media. Local farmers and their customers are defying corporate agriculture and the processed-food industry. Pay-as-you-go doctors are defying medical health insurance corporations and Big Pharma. People who simply pay with cash whenever possible are infuriating the bankers.
Many of us cannot travel to Washington, D.C. to protest, but, wherever we are, we can refuse to do some little thing today that our imperial rulers demand us to do.
Piss off your rulers. Refuse to do something today, no matter how small. Instead, use an alternative to central banks, big corporations, processed foods, Big Pharma. If an alternative does not exist, build one.
Defy your rulers today. Practice refusal.
Really? "Parallel Polis" was just one of Gene Sharp's 198 strategies ("198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government"), and Gene Sharp is a complicated character. It remains to be seen whether any of his tricks work reliably without the invisible hand of CIA/NED guiding things along.
Well, it seems to have worked in Afghanistan or Vietnam, where the Taliban and NLF ran parallel governments which commanded the loyalty of more citizens than the "official" government structures.
A very interesting piece:
https://annebonnypirate.org/2021/08/17/afghanistan-the-end-of-the-occupation/
Written from a feminist anthropology perspective, it talks about, among other things, the Taliban court system.
I’m probably missing your point. Are you discounting the concept of Parallel Polis, or are you suggesting it is the same as the 198 Methods? (Or maybe you're discounting Gene Sharp, whom I know very little about.) There are many similarities with the Methods—perhaps the Parallel Polis is even directly derivative. There is nothing new under the sun. Passive resistance is age old. The main distinction of Parallel Polis with the Methods is that the Czechs and Slovaks actually employed the concept of the Parallel Polis to, at least in part, successfully bring down and emerge relatively peacefully from authoritarianism. The 198 Methods is a fine, important, and useful list for nonviolent resistance, and I am happy if any of its methods are employed for lasting change. But the Methods is ultimately just a list, not a specific instruction set for a particular resistance movement.
Regarding your point about the CIA/NED, I share your concern. There’s almost always a Ray Epps in any subversive group. Every movement of any import, no matter how spontaneous originally, eventually gets coopted into controlled opposition, especially those that rest on their laurels. I'm thinking the trick is to jump from one movement to the next to stay one step ahead of the FBI infiltrators and provocateurs--a kind of moveable movement that the FBI flat-foots can't keep up with.
The third. Here's a little bit on Gene Sharp:
https://nonsite.org/change-agent-gene-sharps-neoliberal-nonviolence-part-one/
Sharp's 198 methods do work tolerably often without the way being prepared by the international relations, financial and other external ruling class communities. But covert CIA/NED violence seems to complement successful pro-neoliberal non-violent movements, a trick they must have learned from the Civil Rights movement.
Hopping from org to org is a very interesting idea, one that anarchists and their pop-up committees for particular actions seem to apply to their benefit. But it seems a bit too easy to get entrapped by stepping into the wrong movement with the wrong tactic at the wrong time. I'll have to think about that one a bit more.
There's always debate about whether biography should matter when it comes to intellectual or artistic achievement. Heidegger and his involvement with the Nazi Party is probably the best example; he may have been the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century, but because of his Nazi affiliation, I’m not even sure if he is still taught in philosophy classes. (Of course, had Heidegger been an equally good rocket scientist, he would have become an American hero.) Sharp’s long-term affiliation with the CIA and his integral participation in the creation of neoliberalism, however, demand that his motivations and “achievements” must be questioned.
Your link is excellent—I’ve bookmarked NonSite.org—and the article seems pretty damning. Logically and historically, it does make sense that the best way to control political resistance is to create and manage it. I’m always especially skeptical about non-violence movements that arise within empires. There is an increasing amount of evidence that Christianity was a Roman invention to quell the Zealot rebellion and, essentially, create antisemitism to manage it. Why else would a Messiah, who every Jew assumed would be an archetypal rebel-warrior leader, arise during an actual and successful rebellion preaching non-violence and “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”? Later Roman rulers then realized the value of using monotheism to control the masses, and imperial intellectual loyalists wrote the Gospels. (See, for example, Joseph Atwill’s book, Caesar’s Messiah.) I would not be surprised if similar claims are made against Gandhi.
So, point taken. Thanks.
You're quite welcome, and thank you for pointing me in the direction of Atwill. How interesting to suspect that Jesus and Gandhi were intentionally fashioned products of an imperial administrative class. Allow me to add another Doe to the indictment.
A college psych 101 book I perused as a child presented Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and illustrated the sixth of six stages, the late post-conventional stage, as a status definitively achieved by only three idealized exemplars. Jesus and Gandhi were the first two on the list, and MLKJr completed the set. Such a selection leads one to a lot of pointed questions about the natures of morality, autonomy, and recuperation by distinction. We know that Gandhi's and MLKJr's use of violence was downplayed in the popular mythos, and it seems not unreasonable to imagine that Jesus might have, in fact, engaged in the same sort of direct action and been posthumously subjected to the same sort of mythological laundering as we have witnessed with the other two.
That's a lot of mind blowing for a Tuesday morning. Thanks again.