I have been requested to send the following message from a veteran peace activist for 57 years: Thank you for reporting it because the media won’t report it here. We were 5000 strong, seniors, young people, and veterans from the 1960s anti war movement. This is only the beginning, because people were clear, conscious, and unified that the war is horrible. Billions for war in the Ukraine but nothing for the 1 million homeless people and the millions who are hungry throughout the United States. Thank you.”
Three thousand self-aware, empowered and conscious creative essences are more powerful than a million who are not. Every action has a ripple. Every quality act creates a tsunami. Thank you to everyone there and everyone who supports them.
Thanks Caitlin! I was at the rally today and was very encouraged. There was a lot of intellectual and emotional firepower built into the speeches. People are probably afraid to come out because of the legacy of violence the US has demonstrated against protesters, along with COVID concerns. I thought your article here was very well reasoned and hopeful. It's encouraging to consider that the state shifted to hybrid warfare in response to the Iraq antiwar movement. Hopefully we can keep building momentum and convince people it is worth it.to her out there and express yourself among others.
I was very active in the build up to our wars in the Middle East. Lots of people, even world wide, participated and one of the most disturbing things was there was not the kind of coverage people anticipated, and it just became less and less, and then it all kind of died. I watched it on You-tube today, and the only coverage it got in the States that I'm aware of. Maybe this will be different in that these conflicts have the potential to go nuclear that will affect everyone. I think a lot of people didn't care about our Middle Eastern wars since many just didn't give a sh*t because they were Muslims, being killed. The media not good in it's support 20 years ago is now even worse. People unfortunately make all manner of rationalizations for the killing machine we are, like an educated friend said all the Iraqi's that died, well, their deaths are on the hands of Saddam who didn't protect his people. Two people I knew at the time said they want to see every Muslim killed, and I asked if they were including children and babies and both said yes. One was a former nun, the other a clinical therapist.
Your right, so little challenge to what he did, and it continues to this day. Trump to many is the go to guy to explain everything bad. Still a scapegoat for many. They also will reference FOX and not MSNBC which is a show that spews nothing but propaganda and makes zero effort to pretend it doesn't.
I remember those days and I sorrow with you over these horrid mindsets and a captured corporatist media. And also this is today and we can ignite a new movement because apathy is not an option. Hopefully we, as a collaborative effort counter the propaganda machine and media powerfully. I feel strong today. Maybe we can both share from my cup of optimism today. Hopefully someone will share theirs with me one day when I feel down. Keep the faith
Beautiful article. I will side with anyone who promotes peace and freedom.
I think a lot about how Czechoslovakia overthrew its tyrants in 1989. In part, it was because the citizens stopped participating in:
* Their banks
* Their schools
* Complicit businesses
* Their propaganda media
* Their food systems
* Their whole society.
They created a parallel economy that had nothing to do with false narratives.
You may disagree with me as to which narratives are false, but I think the more local you can go, and the less a part of any gigantic government or business, the better. I don't buy any of the narratives I hear about Ukraine, China, the economy, or the environment. I am grateful I never got the clot shot. If you did, I hope you look up a protocol from Dr. Peter Kory or another as to how to clear the poison from your system and your mind. Also, I would never send my kids to a public school.
That's a step toward awareness. And awareness needs to lead to public action.
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.
We were there and what the gathering may have lacked in numbers was more than made up for in enthusiasm and determination. So often during Bernie's rallies I thought we needed to drop our differences because Trump supporters wanted the same jobs, education, health care, and housing that all people want. I saw the beginnings of that coming together today at the gathering itself and on the bus ride down and back. Thanks for writing about this.
Wipe the shoe polish off your tongue, Chris. It's so obvious you're paid to be here. Whether you're paid in gift cards or Internet points or not being dragged out into the street and shot by Azov thugs for not toeing the line is immaterial.
The ability to protest is a trait of human beings. Actually, all intelligent species protest. We just don't pay attention. It's not even essentially a question of efficacy: we must protest injustice and inhumanity to retain our humanity, or achieve it. The intricate web of lies and propaganda governments must resort to in response is itself a sign of stress: It's becoming laughable - as in the "balloon crisis". Keep up the pressure and they might crack and -become sane. We are the majority: we can. do it.
Agreed. This cowardly regime will collapse under less pressure than we think. See Vaclav Havel on the point. Thanks and gratitude to those that traveled to DC, now a dangerous city to those with a conscience; on Jan 6 and in its wake, the regime taught a lesson: do not bring protest to your capital, lest you be thrown in jail on petty charges, denied bail, refused access to evidence or speedy trial by imperious bureaucratized judges, condemned by a corrupt media and corporatocracy, and left to rot in the squalid basement of the DC gulag. And still thousands went: a solid start. World leaders will take notice even if the propaganda machine suppresses it.
No, they don't. Intelligent species would destroy the enemy's ability to make war against them. Begging the master is acknowledging, validating, and internalizing the master's perspective.
My Mom, who just turned 91, still drives, plays bridge (silver lifetime master), reads three books a week; told me years ago that people only do something when they go hungry.
As long as Americans have their TV, pizza, beer, and comfort; Biden can kill whomever he wishes.
Yes, it's a start and it's encouraging to see!! And, for some more good news, about 10,000 people attended the antiwar protest at the Munich security conference today /yesterday!
Your first sentence is fatuous and trivial. Your second sentence is your sad, pathetic attempt to create social capital for yourself as a whiny self-appointed middle-class hierophant and can be rejected out of hand with cruel, derisive laughter.
Even half a million or more people in New York in 2003 didn't slow down Bush's stupid war, which leads me to believe maybe we should begin discussing a diversity of methods besides the good ol' tried and true.
The alternative is armed insurrection. But seeing how you leftists are all for gun control. I somehow doubt things will work out for you in that scenario.
Unimaginative to assume the only way to resist one's own government is through guns. Lots of ways you can put monkey wrenches into the machine. Nationwide strikes comes to mind. But then, you "rightists" have been anti-union now for decades.
But they use the whole left-right propaganda to divide Americans. We also need to get beyond labeling someone a leftist or rightist. The common enemy of ordinary Americans are the Elite psychopathic assholes running this country right now into the ground. These same psychopaths are expecting violence, because that is all they understand. And violence will only play into their hands. Why general civil disobedience, such as what Thoreau wrote about is far more effective than guns.
A tad harsh but.......... we need harsh to wake us up : ) I do believe hearing the speeches Sun. people are starting to believe WE fight together , WE win together. Single issue division has worked so well for the 1% for centuries. I have more in common with a homeless, quadriplegic, female, heroin addicted, unemployed person than the 1% and when more of us discover that fact WE WIN : ) The Rail Workers were the opportunity for General Strike and I thought it could happen. Then the money flowed to the right pockets and crushed any benefits to workers. Kshama Sawant's Workers strike back .org is hope for me : ) Psychopathic Assholes sums it up for me : ) Much Love and Solidarity : )
The alternative is noncooperation with the corporate death cult. Protest builds awareness in the population, but the machine will run along just fine as long as the populace works its levers and greases its gears. The only thing our vampire class fears is economic warfare. A ten day general strike could win us concessions it would take our predators a hundred years to claw back.
Concessions are the problem. You really have to destroy their ability to have power over you, or they will work, in the typical style of problem-solving tool-using beings, toward undoing the conditions that make resistance possible. Caitlin's essays on psychology and philosophy provide these tools to readers, but their effectiveness as armor rests on broad distribution.
The utility of organized violence depends on the aims of the activists. I can't get what I want by participating in a military organization (the only truly effective social formation for violence) because of my hippie-anarcho-commie ideas, but an authoritarian nationalist certainly could, or maybe even a liberal under some circumstances. Notice, though, how the liberals defending "Western values" got on a slippery slope somewhere between World War 2 and the present.
You would probably call me a leftist, but I am well armed and proficient. Take it from an old man who has fallen for every trick in the book at one point or another: it is propaganda that teaches us to label each other instead of meeting man to man.
The problem is patriarchy that is aggressive, competitive and violent. Balance is needed. Time to meet woman to woman, woman to man... Enough of only man to man already!
Certainly concur about patriarchy and all its idiot insistence on female subjugation.
As for woman to woman and woman to man, thanks for the sensitivity training, but the sexual division is meaningless in this context. That's why I left it out.
I reckon the patriarchy done it, but it is not my fault that the word 'man' is not gender-trapped, or that the word 'woman' is. When I use the word brother or man, I refer to everyone of both sexes, every age, every gender, every creed, every heritage.
The word woman, whether we like it or not, is an explicitly sexual reference that defines a subset of mankind by its sex. When sexuality is not the subject, insisting that it must be introduced sexualizes women more, not less. In other words, separating us into sexes when chatting about non-sexual subjects is exquisitely, quintessentially, sexist. In one man's opinion.
My wife, with whom I've been in stupid ga ga love since 1975, is womanhood incarnate, and she (female, uterus-having she) is also the best man I've ever known. Everything I've ever looked up to in a man, she exemplifies. I'm not demeaning her or my other female brothers with that silly, awkward, foolish, and self-defeating sexist requirement: I don't, and I won't.
" The only reason Syria and Iran remain sovereign, unabsorbed governments, and the only reason the imperial body count isn't much higher today, is because enough people put their foot down and said "NO" to that kind of war."
The resilience of the Iranian and Syrian peoples had nothing to do with it at all?
Actually no slick. Syria and Iran had a far better trained and equipped military then the Taliban and Saddams gov. You give your military way to much credit when it comes to fighting a conventional war.
I think that if we look at the modest numbers participating in the demonstration (everything is difficult at the beginning), we can take into account that the old Roman tactic "Panem et circenses", i.e. Bread and circuses for the people, works very well in the USA and Western Europe. After all, the average person he is well fed, he owns a house or an apartment (which he bought with a loan) every adult member of the family has a good car (with a nice big engine with high consumption) they go out on the weekends, he has a credit card that can be used for shopping, absolutely unnecessary but expensive things, and when the head of the family goes home in the afternoon after work , not to the library he goes to study or buy a book, instead he sinks into the armchair, pulls the bucket of chips and half a dozen cans of beer close to him and with wide-open eyes absorbs the stupidity instead of knowledge ! Well, this man will not protest, it's clear to everyone, isn't it ! Because he believes in nonsense that this is the right of the exceptional Western specimen from God and it will be like this forever ! :) If this media-numbed man would raise his head and look around (and even if he could see), he would find that the industry that his grandfather and father built no longer exists, but that the owners, most of whom are the ruling elite, dismantled it and transferred it to other countries. now operates there very profitable ! So if you think about it soberly, he has become a citizen of a pirate republic, who has no value creation, except when he robs other countries and steals other people's natural treasures !
Well, as a sobering note, I am a citizen of a small country (10 million inhabitants) Hungary, and last year on March 15, 2022, nearly a million of us marched to support our patriotic government !
I was curious about the talk about a breed of liberals not supporting yesterday's event, so I cruised over to (commondreams.org) that I discovered right after 9/11 and lead-up to the Iraq war. There I discovered writers that I respected and they got me through some bad times with GW Bush & Co.. After a few years of change though, I'd stopped reading it because it (like a few others) evolved into what I thought was just another mouthpiece for the neoliberal/(warmonger)'Hillary order'. Sure enough I saw not one word about this event. Even this morning...zilch. Incredible. We'll never be the people of the 60's & 70's and we'll never-ever stop another war until we get mad enough to actually stop one, and don't even think of disassembling the MIC apparatus that drives it. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, and I'm thankful to those that went and supported it –and there were some incredibly good speeches. But, like yesterdays turnout, despite all the media communication ability we have at our disposal, despite millions of Americans and multiple reasons we should be angry enough to express it, when it comes to fulfilling our duties as citizens, we are just damn pitiful and the beatings will continue until it ends in a nuclear holocaust. I'm sick of it.
Wow, watched two posted comments disappear as I was replying to them. Either Johnstone’s hacked or her attitude has changed.
Protest must have as its purpose a) making it okay to be anti-war, b) reifying the threat of economic repercussion in the perception of the financial sector’s leadership.
It was not the silly longhairs throwing flowers at cops who brought the murder of Vietnam to an end. It was the dawning realization of the working class that the war was being fought for profit, and that the corpses were being pre-selected along class and race lines. The warmongers spent the 60s laughing at the students and their ‘leaders’, but shrank back in horror at the first grumbles from the working class. Yes, the protests were important. They were also reported by a competitive press composed of thousands of independent outlets. Today the media, all of it, is an outstanding example of the need for antitrust enforcement. Five enormously bloated mega-corporations control what 95% of Americans still think of as the news, and the interests of those five entities mostly overlap and intertwine.
Today dissent means economic noncooperation. Stop paying debt. Stop buying new if you can get it used. Stop hoarding. Start sharing. Start rebuilding the back door economy your grandparents took for granted, and save thousands of dollars a year.
You can’t sell out and go live in the woods, but you can find creative ways to bypass the system. The only protest that matters is the one that makes it harder for the system to wage its wars.
After the violence (caused by all sides apparently) of the Portland protests and the circus of 1/6 and all of the censorship and propaganda, and don't forget robbing supporters of the truckers, people are afraid to get on their lists already and self censor.
Occasionally people fail to read a comment in full, then go off half-cocked and post an inapposite response, only to delete it a few moments later. I've done this at least once in the past 24 hours.
We must build parallel systems to circumvent these corrupted ones.
Let’s create a new decentralized 4th branch of government that is 100% controlled by the people and is used to hold corruption accountable. No one else is coming to save us.
I have been requested to send the following message from a veteran peace activist for 57 years: Thank you for reporting it because the media won’t report it here. We were 5000 strong, seniors, young people, and veterans from the 1960s anti war movement. This is only the beginning, because people were clear, conscious, and unified that the war is horrible. Billions for war in the Ukraine but nothing for the 1 million homeless people and the millions who are hungry throughout the United States. Thank you.”
Thanks to all who have replied positively to my elder’s message! ✊🏽
Three thousand self-aware, empowered and conscious creative essences are more powerful than a million who are not. Every action has a ripple. Every quality act creates a tsunami. Thank you to everyone there and everyone who supports them.
Consider how many were there in spirit, too!
Thanks Caitlin! I was at the rally today and was very encouraged. There was a lot of intellectual and emotional firepower built into the speeches. People are probably afraid to come out because of the legacy of violence the US has demonstrated against protesters, along with COVID concerns. I thought your article here was very well reasoned and hopeful. It's encouraging to consider that the state shifted to hybrid warfare in response to the Iraq antiwar movement. Hopefully we can keep building momentum and convince people it is worth it.to her out there and express yourself among others.
I was very active in the build up to our wars in the Middle East. Lots of people, even world wide, participated and one of the most disturbing things was there was not the kind of coverage people anticipated, and it just became less and less, and then it all kind of died. I watched it on You-tube today, and the only coverage it got in the States that I'm aware of. Maybe this will be different in that these conflicts have the potential to go nuclear that will affect everyone. I think a lot of people didn't care about our Middle Eastern wars since many just didn't give a sh*t because they were Muslims, being killed. The media not good in it's support 20 years ago is now even worse. People unfortunately make all manner of rationalizations for the killing machine we are, like an educated friend said all the Iraqi's that died, well, their deaths are on the hands of Saddam who didn't protect his people. Two people I knew at the time said they want to see every Muslim killed, and I asked if they were including children and babies and both said yes. One was a former nun, the other a clinical therapist.
What happened was that Obama got elected, and after that, opposing war and imperialism was seen as a criticism of St. Barack.
Your right, so little challenge to what he did, and it continues to this day. Trump to many is the go to guy to explain everything bad. Still a scapegoat for many. They also will reference FOX and not MSNBC which is a show that spews nothing but propaganda and makes zero effort to pretend it doesn't.
I remember those days and I sorrow with you over these horrid mindsets and a captured corporatist media. And also this is today and we can ignite a new movement because apathy is not an option. Hopefully we, as a collaborative effort counter the propaganda machine and media powerfully. I feel strong today. Maybe we can both share from my cup of optimism today. Hopefully someone will share theirs with me one day when I feel down. Keep the faith
Beautiful article. I will side with anyone who promotes peace and freedom.
I think a lot about how Czechoslovakia overthrew its tyrants in 1989. In part, it was because the citizens stopped participating in:
* Their banks
* Their schools
* Complicit businesses
* Their propaganda media
* Their food systems
* Their whole society.
They created a parallel economy that had nothing to do with false narratives.
You may disagree with me as to which narratives are false, but I think the more local you can go, and the less a part of any gigantic government or business, the better. I don't buy any of the narratives I hear about Ukraine, China, the economy, or the environment. I am grateful I never got the clot shot. If you did, I hope you look up a protocol from Dr. Peter Kory or another as to how to clear the poison from your system and your mind. Also, I would never send my kids to a public school.
That's a step toward awareness. And awareness needs to lead to public action.
God bless you.
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.
We were there and what the gathering may have lacked in numbers was more than made up for in enthusiasm and determination. So often during Bernie's rallies I thought we needed to drop our differences because Trump supporters wanted the same jobs, education, health care, and housing that all people want. I saw the beginnings of that coming together today at the gathering itself and on the bus ride down and back. Thanks for writing about this.
Bernie supports Ukraine actually.
Which is not relevant to the point.
Which is part of the reason I no longer support Senator Sanders.
Wipe the shoe polish off your tongue, Chris. It's so obvious you're paid to be here. Whether you're paid in gift cards or Internet points or not being dragged out into the street and shot by Azov thugs for not toeing the line is immaterial.
The ability to protest is a trait of human beings. Actually, all intelligent species protest. We just don't pay attention. It's not even essentially a question of efficacy: we must protest injustice and inhumanity to retain our humanity, or achieve it. The intricate web of lies and propaganda governments must resort to in response is itself a sign of stress: It's becoming laughable - as in the "balloon crisis". Keep up the pressure and they might crack and -become sane. We are the majority: we can. do it.
Agreed. This cowardly regime will collapse under less pressure than we think. See Vaclav Havel on the point. Thanks and gratitude to those that traveled to DC, now a dangerous city to those with a conscience; on Jan 6 and in its wake, the regime taught a lesson: do not bring protest to your capital, lest you be thrown in jail on petty charges, denied bail, refused access to evidence or speedy trial by imperious bureaucratized judges, condemned by a corrupt media and corporatocracy, and left to rot in the squalid basement of the DC gulag. And still thousands went: a solid start. World leaders will take notice even if the propaganda machine suppresses it.
We can but try, and we must try.
No, they don't. Intelligent species would destroy the enemy's ability to make war against them. Begging the master is acknowledging, validating, and internalizing the master's perspective.
My Mom, who just turned 91, still drives, plays bridge (silver lifetime master), reads three books a week; told me years ago that people only do something when they go hungry.
As long as Americans have their TV, pizza, beer, and comfort; Biden can kill whomever he wishes.
Yes, it's a start and it's encouraging to see!! And, for some more good news, about 10,000 people attended the antiwar protest at the Munich security conference today /yesterday!
Many were protesting against Russia. Something you fail mention.
Your first sentence is fatuous and trivial. Your second sentence is your sad, pathetic attempt to create social capital for yourself as a whiny self-appointed middle-class hierophant and can be rejected out of hand with cruel, derisive laughter.
Bring back conscription and then you will see an anti war movement. War mongers in power know this so they just use mercenaries.
Even half a million or more people in New York in 2003 didn't slow down Bush's stupid war, which leads me to believe maybe we should begin discussing a diversity of methods besides the good ol' tried and true.
The alternative is armed insurrection. But seeing how you leftists are all for gun control. I somehow doubt things will work out for you in that scenario.
Unimaginative to assume the only way to resist one's own government is through guns. Lots of ways you can put monkey wrenches into the machine. Nationwide strikes comes to mind. But then, you "rightists" have been anti-union now for decades.
But they use the whole left-right propaganda to divide Americans. We also need to get beyond labeling someone a leftist or rightist. The common enemy of ordinary Americans are the Elite psychopathic assholes running this country right now into the ground. These same psychopaths are expecting violence, because that is all they understand. And violence will only play into their hands. Why general civil disobedience, such as what Thoreau wrote about is far more effective than guns.
A tad harsh but.......... we need harsh to wake us up : ) I do believe hearing the speeches Sun. people are starting to believe WE fight together , WE win together. Single issue division has worked so well for the 1% for centuries. I have more in common with a homeless, quadriplegic, female, heroin addicted, unemployed person than the 1% and when more of us discover that fact WE WIN : ) The Rail Workers were the opportunity for General Strike and I thought it could happen. Then the money flowed to the right pockets and crushed any benefits to workers. Kshama Sawant's Workers strike back .org is hope for me : ) Psychopathic Assholes sums it up for me : ) Much Love and Solidarity : )
The alternative is noncooperation with the corporate death cult. Protest builds awareness in the population, but the machine will run along just fine as long as the populace works its levers and greases its gears. The only thing our vampire class fears is economic warfare. A ten day general strike could win us concessions it would take our predators a hundred years to claw back.
Concessions are the problem. You really have to destroy their ability to have power over you, or they will work, in the typical style of problem-solving tool-using beings, toward undoing the conditions that make resistance possible. Caitlin's essays on psychology and philosophy provide these tools to readers, but their effectiveness as armor rests on broad distribution.
The utility of organized violence depends on the aims of the activists. I can't get what I want by participating in a military organization (the only truly effective social formation for violence) because of my hippie-anarcho-commie ideas, but an authoritarian nationalist certainly could, or maybe even a liberal under some circumstances. Notice, though, how the liberals defending "Western values" got on a slippery slope somewhere between World War 2 and the present.
Not the only alternative. However, you are right there are fewer than I think.
You would probably call me a leftist, but I am well armed and proficient. Take it from an old man who has fallen for every trick in the book at one point or another: it is propaganda that teaches us to label each other instead of meeting man to man.
The problem is patriarchy that is aggressive, competitive and violent. Balance is needed. Time to meet woman to woman, woman to man... Enough of only man to man already!
Certainly concur about patriarchy and all its idiot insistence on female subjugation.
As for woman to woman and woman to man, thanks for the sensitivity training, but the sexual division is meaningless in this context. That's why I left it out.
I reckon the patriarchy done it, but it is not my fault that the word 'man' is not gender-trapped, or that the word 'woman' is. When I use the word brother or man, I refer to everyone of both sexes, every age, every gender, every creed, every heritage.
The word woman, whether we like it or not, is an explicitly sexual reference that defines a subset of mankind by its sex. When sexuality is not the subject, insisting that it must be introduced sexualizes women more, not less. In other words, separating us into sexes when chatting about non-sexual subjects is exquisitely, quintessentially, sexist. In one man's opinion.
My wife, with whom I've been in stupid ga ga love since 1975, is womanhood incarnate, and she (female, uterus-having she) is also the best man I've ever known. Everything I've ever looked up to in a man, she exemplifies. I'm not demeaning her or my other female brothers with that silly, awkward, foolish, and self-defeating sexist requirement: I don't, and I won't.
I agree that Roman culture has bequeathed to us some quite harmful ideas, including among others the notion of the family as a toy sovereign monarchy.
I don't see that as particularly Roman.
" The only reason Syria and Iran remain sovereign, unabsorbed governments, and the only reason the imperial body count isn't much higher today, is because enough people put their foot down and said "NO" to that kind of war."
The resilience of the Iranian and Syrian peoples had nothing to do with it at all?
Actually no slick. Syria and Iran had a far better trained and equipped military then the Taliban and Saddams gov. You give your military way to much credit when it comes to fighting a conventional war.
I agree. One of many reasons why Caitlin's statement that it was purely because of the Amerikan anti-war movement has no basis in material reality.
How dare she try to encourage anti-war protesters
Biden is checking his bank account in Ukraine today.
I think that if we look at the modest numbers participating in the demonstration (everything is difficult at the beginning), we can take into account that the old Roman tactic "Panem et circenses", i.e. Bread and circuses for the people, works very well in the USA and Western Europe. After all, the average person he is well fed, he owns a house or an apartment (which he bought with a loan) every adult member of the family has a good car (with a nice big engine with high consumption) they go out on the weekends, he has a credit card that can be used for shopping, absolutely unnecessary but expensive things, and when the head of the family goes home in the afternoon after work , not to the library he goes to study or buy a book, instead he sinks into the armchair, pulls the bucket of chips and half a dozen cans of beer close to him and with wide-open eyes absorbs the stupidity instead of knowledge ! Well, this man will not protest, it's clear to everyone, isn't it ! Because he believes in nonsense that this is the right of the exceptional Western specimen from God and it will be like this forever ! :) If this media-numbed man would raise his head and look around (and even if he could see), he would find that the industry that his grandfather and father built no longer exists, but that the owners, most of whom are the ruling elite, dismantled it and transferred it to other countries. now operates there very profitable ! So if you think about it soberly, he has become a citizen of a pirate republic, who has no value creation, except when he robs other countries and steals other people's natural treasures !
Well, as a sobering note, I am a citizen of a small country (10 million inhabitants) Hungary, and last year on March 15, 2022, nearly a million of us marched to support our patriotic government !
Wake up American people!
I was curious about the talk about a breed of liberals not supporting yesterday's event, so I cruised over to (commondreams.org) that I discovered right after 9/11 and lead-up to the Iraq war. There I discovered writers that I respected and they got me through some bad times with GW Bush & Co.. After a few years of change though, I'd stopped reading it because it (like a few others) evolved into what I thought was just another mouthpiece for the neoliberal/(warmonger)'Hillary order'. Sure enough I saw not one word about this event. Even this morning...zilch. Incredible. We'll never be the people of the 60's & 70's and we'll never-ever stop another war until we get mad enough to actually stop one, and don't even think of disassembling the MIC apparatus that drives it. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, and I'm thankful to those that went and supported it –and there were some incredibly good speeches. But, like yesterdays turnout, despite all the media communication ability we have at our disposal, despite millions of Americans and multiple reasons we should be angry enough to express it, when it comes to fulfilling our duties as citizens, we are just damn pitiful and the beatings will continue until it ends in a nuclear holocaust. I'm sick of it.
Wow, watched two posted comments disappear as I was replying to them. Either Johnstone’s hacked or her attitude has changed.
Protest must have as its purpose a) making it okay to be anti-war, b) reifying the threat of economic repercussion in the perception of the financial sector’s leadership.
It was not the silly longhairs throwing flowers at cops who brought the murder of Vietnam to an end. It was the dawning realization of the working class that the war was being fought for profit, and that the corpses were being pre-selected along class and race lines. The warmongers spent the 60s laughing at the students and their ‘leaders’, but shrank back in horror at the first grumbles from the working class. Yes, the protests were important. They were also reported by a competitive press composed of thousands of independent outlets. Today the media, all of it, is an outstanding example of the need for antitrust enforcement. Five enormously bloated mega-corporations control what 95% of Americans still think of as the news, and the interests of those five entities mostly overlap and intertwine.
Today dissent means economic noncooperation. Stop paying debt. Stop buying new if you can get it used. Stop hoarding. Start sharing. Start rebuilding the back door economy your grandparents took for granted, and save thousands of dollars a year.
You can’t sell out and go live in the woods, but you can find creative ways to bypass the system. The only protest that matters is the one that makes it harder for the system to wage its wars.
After the violence (caused by all sides apparently) of the Portland protests and the circus of 1/6 and all of the censorship and propaganda, and don't forget robbing supporters of the truckers, people are afraid to get on their lists already and self censor.
Occasionally people fail to read a comment in full, then go off half-cocked and post an inapposite response, only to delete it a few moments later. I've done this at least once in the past 24 hours.
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.
We must build parallel systems to circumvent these corrupted ones.
Let’s create a new decentralized 4th branch of government that is 100% controlled by the people and is used to hold corruption accountable. No one else is coming to save us.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post