this is part three in a series of columns I wrote for Street Roots in ’99/2000
During the Cold War, when American military aid was used to overthrow democratically elected governments, anyone who opposed this “patriotic” nonsense – either in the foreign nations or here in the US – was labeled as a “communist.”
In the 1950s, this label was certain to carry with it social retribution. Peoples’ careers were destroyed, often forcing the targeted persons and their families to relocate to distant places and take up a new identity. Many, however, chose the suicide option. Most people these days are at least nominally familiar with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and its infamous leaders – Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, who would dominate American politics for much of the rest of the 20th Century.
Reagan, an untalented actor who sat out WWII due to his increasing admiration for fascism, strong-armed his way into the presidency of the Screen Actor’s Guild, then immediately set about attacking anyone who defied his leadership, and in the process was able to exert an incredible influence upon Hollywood. For instance, in the 1950s, portrayals of German soldiers and leaders in WWII movies usually focused on their gallantry and patriotism, and rarely showed them as anything other than vicious military opponents. This changed drastically toward the end of the ’60s, when both Nixon’s and Reagan’s influence briefly faded.
In mentioning the names of Reagan and Nixon, it should be understood by the reader that they were merely front men of a political movement. This political movement is today still a behind-the-scenes power and with a few exceptions, its power has largely gone unchallenged. Some of them – Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfled in particular – held various positions within the Nixon, Reagan, and Bushs’ administrations.
yup – this actor is the guy conservatives still masturbate over…not the chimpanzee…
In his farewell address as President, Dwight Eisenhower described this economic and political juggernaut as a “military/industrial complex (M/IC),” and warned of its threat to America’s so-called democratic society. It was already too late.
The M/IC’s frontman Nixon, who – despite being Eisenhower’s Vice-President – was reviled and marginalized by the administration. Still, he was next in line to become President after the Republican Party forced him onto the ticket. Eisenhower refused to endorse Nixon when his VP ran for President in 1960.
The Democrats, who in those days were an opposition party rather than mere competitors for control of theM/IC, nominated the youthful John Kennedy, who was seen as an outsider and a liberal (“liberal” societies allow things like free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to vote for a candidate of one’s choice, and worker’s rights – rightsreserved for the wealthy and privileged before the era of nation/states, and tightly controlled under fascist regimes and other dictatorships).
Kennedy was seen as someone who could heal the rifts which had opened a lot of people’s eyes about the oppression of the poor and minorities in this country, and lead America into a new era of prosperity and peace for all of its citizens.
The leaders of the M/IC found this unacceptable. American workers, they discovered, weren’t pacified by the high wages paid them in the hopes that they would become grateful, loyal employees. Instead, the working class developed a sense of rising expectations, and wanted more say in the conditions at their workplaces, increases in non-wage benefits, and more influence in politics. The US working class had to be taken down.
This fit in perfectly with the ruling class’s plans.
The high standard of living for the typical American worker served to create unrealistic expectations in the minds of workers in developing countries. Before long, factory workers all over the world would be demanding such luxuries as running water and electricity in their homes, and education for their children. In the political climate of the early ’60s, the rising expectations of the US working class was given voice on college campuses, as more families than ever could afford to send their children to college. Something had to be done to keep the militant forces of liberal Democracy in the US from taking control of the world’s dominant economy and interfering with the elite’s plans for the creation of a New World Order that would solidify and make permanent the grasp on power European/American ruling classes were afraid of losing.
This meant war.
The M/IC enlisted the aid of reactionary conservatives throughout the country, particularly in law enforcement agencies, in order to contain the Civil Rights and other liberal socialmovements. Not to mention the more militant, liberatory ones.
1964 – the Maryland national guard was called out against Black Civil Rights activists and protesters.
Between 1964 and 1968, there were at least 200 major violent confrontations between Black people in the inner cities of the U.S. and the forces of order and power. At least 1900 died in these clashes, and over 8000 were injured. Thousands more were put in prisons and jails. Add to this the growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, and the US seemed to be in danger of erupting into civil war. The situation was so grim that power-mad President Lyndon Johnson would not run for re-election, having been dismayed by the turmoil in American society he had done so much to create. During his tenure as Vice-President and President, the U.S. had experienced its greatest amount of assassinations of social and political leaders ever – including his predecessor President Kennedy, MLK Jr., Malcom X, Robert Kennedy – all seen as liberal reformers and civil rights champions, it’s worth noting.
Who would step up as the strong leader who would re-unite the U.S. and make it great again? The choice American voters faced in the ’68 election was between Hubert Humphrey (who defiantly defended the Chicago police’s ruthless attacks upon demonstrators and the media during the Democratic National Convention, where he was given the party’s Presidential nomination. This position was not shared by many of the convention’s delegates, who were beaten and tear-gassed as they attempted to enter the convention site), the alternative choice offered was Richard Nixon, the rabid anti-Communist thug from the ’50s, back from the political grave now that his main adversaries – the Kennedys – were at rest in their real, actual graves. Either way, the US would have the right man in office. Someone who would not only unleash a bloodbath abroad in order to protect M/IC and IMF/WB interests, but would also begin the process of taking down the American working class, along with the country’s industrial might. US citizens had proven too uncontrollable to trust with the highest level of industrialization on Earth. They had to be punished, as well as removed from direct access to the means of production, or the New World Order would never arise.
chicago police attacked anyone in their path during the 1968 democratic national convention; protesters, democratic party delegates, journalists, by-standers…
Nixon was the M/IC fascist dream-come-true. Under his administration, both covert and open warfare was carried out against just about everyone with liberal views. Not only in the US, but everywhere. Democratic, post-colonial governments in Africa, Latin America, and Asia were overthrown in bloody coups, their populations terrorized. All with American military aid and IMF/WB money. The US itself seemed to be preparing for revolution after President Nixon announced he had instigated the invasion of the S.E. Asian nation of Cambodia – a peaceful, prosperous U.S. ally – on April 30, 1970. Within days, hundreds of thousands of students on close to 80% of all American college campuses were launching anti-war protests against this highly illegal act of international aggression. During May, over 100 activists and protesters were killed by police or National Guard forces. All this in addition to the war against the Black Panther Party, which had seen over 100 of its members killed, and hundreds more arrested during Nixon’s first year in office. Many US inner cities and college campuses were under periodic military occupation.
Clearly, the forces of order and power were in danger of losing their control of America. Under Nixon’s reign, the consolidation of wealth, the unleashing of corporate political power and assets, the suppression of the free press and independent media, and the use of federal agencies and local sheriffs departments as secret political police had begun in earnest.
congressman gerald ford was called on twice to bail out the military/industrial complex – once to whitewash and cover up their assassination of president kennedy, later to replace nixon when he was forced to resign in disgrace.
Nixon, however, failed to achieve all he could have, and set back plans for America’s role in the NWO, due to his (as with the original fascist generation of leaders) over-zealousness. He was forced to resign in disgrace after he and the Republican party were discovered to have rigged the ’72 presidential election to ensure Nixon’s re-election.
The later administration of James Earl Carter is vilified by Republicans for “letting the cat out of the bag” by telling the public they could no longer expect their accustomed standard of living. This was true, and everyone with an understanding of economics and global politics knew it. It was easier for many Americans to believe the lie, though. The lie that America could return to its “golden age” of post-WWII prosperity, when it dominated the world’s economy and defined the world’s development for a generation. Carter’s realistic message had offended public sensibilities and frightened the ruling class, who feared the unruly American citizenry would wise up and seize control of their economy.
What was needed to get things back on-course was a complete puppet, someone not only ruthless in his exercise of authority, but also too dim-witted to be able to use the Presidency for his own advantage.
Once again digging into their past era of greatness, the forces of order and power dredged up the dottering remains of Ronald Reagan. Once again, the message was how the strong leader would make the nation great again – the ever-repeated fascist promise. This was served up to a public confused and frightened by a generation of political chaos and economic uncertainty.
With Reagan’s election, America’s fate was sealed.
Recommended reading for more background on this era:
Agents of Repression, by Jim Vanderwall and Ward Churchill
Year 501: the Conquest Continues, by Noam Chomsky
The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, also by Noam Chomsky
The Imagination of the New Left, by George Kastiaficas
When asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mohandas Gandhi replied “I think it would be a good idea.”
Western civilization is generally thought to be that of Europe and the British Empire. This is a fallacy which historians and other people of learning have perpetuated for many generations.
Europe once had a thriving civilization. There is evidence of sea-faring trade systems which transported goods from around the world. There is also abundant evidence of building techniques which created structures all but impossible to replicate with 21st century technology. Yet all that remains of this early European civilization are the ruins left behind. What happened? Why did it fail so completely that European people do not retain any knowledge of it?
Invaders from Southwest Asia (Asia Minor, the Middle East) methodically and thoroughly obliterated it, and replaced it with their own: a highly authoritarian, highly patriarchal civilization of plunder, rape, and slaughter.
For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church persecuted people of knowledge. Books not written by the hands of trusted clerics were banned. Book burnings were common spectacles, and anyone with knowledge of healing, or who was literate, or who did not willfully silence themselves, or put themselves into the service of Patriarchal authorities was burned alive or tortured to death, and their bodies put on display to terrify the general public into obedience.
This is the genesis of what is today called Western “civilization,” which produced a society that values ruthlessness over compassion, and ignorant servitude to brutal, heartless institutions over knowledge of, and harmony with, the world as it exists.
Plunder, rape, and slaughter are rewarded with wealth and power. Smarmy-mouthed imbeciles are elevated to positions of leadership. People of learning are tasked with developing technologies and techniques to further control or destroy anything which has lasting value to life on this planet, and to destroy any people standing in the way of this destruction.
The West’s current incarnation as Industrial Capitalism poses a severe and unprecedented threat to the health and wellbeing of the living planet in general and the human species in particular.
The very basis of this system is the so-called need for permanent “economic growth”, involving a theoretically endless increase in the exploitation of people and nature that, logically, can only end in disaster.
This system justifies and defends itself by means of a mesh of oppressive constructs such as “property”, “law” and “nation”, which today largely go unchallenged, even by critics of capitalism’s worse excesses.
General acceptance of these constructs serves to camouflage and legitimize the violence used by the system to impose its control. It thereby helps to criminalize any resistance to this oppressive violence.
In the Mexican revolution of the early part of the 20th century, the Zapatistas had a slogan: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
In the West, the pervasive attitude is currently one of ignorance, fear, and slothful privilege, wherein the suffering caused by Western institutions in far-off lands is not of consequence to the people who are causing it through an unquenchable lust for cheap consumer goods.
Few of the beneficiaries are even aware it is happening, and most wouldn’t care if they knew. If told that wireless technology is causing genocide in central Africa, most Western consumers would likely reply “I like my iphone.” Or their X-box, or their internet-connected refrigerator.
Western consumers have decided that it is – indeed! – much better to live in ignorance and servitude to corporatized, military police states, and to hell with the consequences, rather than do anything to stop campaigns of genocide beyond their field of vision. The products of privilege produced in the process are precious to them, not human lives, or a living planet.
If the society produced in Europe through centuries of bloody violence and subsequently unleashed to ravage the entire planet can be thought of as “civilization,” an intelligent human being can only conclude that this civilization is something which must be eradicated so thoroughly as to never again be obtainable.
If this does not happen, and soon, our planet will become uninhabitable, and life as we know it no longer possible. Something new will evolve in the toxic, ruined wastelands the West creates everywhere. It will not likely be compatible with living things that have been predominant for the past few million years.
To accept the notion that domination of the world by the West is the result of historic “Progress” is to validate genocide against indigenous Peoples.
To refer to this centuries-long, ongoing process of extermination as “progress” is racist. It is the fundamental foundation of White Supremacy. Acceptance of this ideology discards the notion that human beings belong to the Earth and must dwell here with respect, and to live in harmony with the bounty available in the places we dwell. To do so, the life and life-giving aspects of the land must not be over-exploited or destroyed in the process of resource extraction.
This is most evident in the fact that every nation-state where indigenous Peoples still retain traditions and knowledge of how to dwell in harmony with the Earth and the abundance which it provides, the indigenous Peoples are still being exterminated – to this day. Despite the many international laws designed to “protect” indigenous Peoples from settler violence, and to protect the Earth.
To live within the abundance the Earth has to offer, and not fuck it up so badly that future generations will not inherit it, requires something the West has no regard for: wisdom.
The idea of a humanity living largely in harmony with nature, in communities founded on mutual aid and co-operation, is not an idle daydream but a real possibility (a possibility that has been realized numerous times, across the world, by people who consider themselves to belong to the places where they dwell).
The industrial capitalist system depends for its survival on a complex web of often-unconscious personal attitudes which normalize and facilitate adaptation to its unhealthy structures of domination and exploitation – examples of these attitudes being sexism, racism, nationalism and the division of human beings into so-called social classes.
In view of all this, it is clear that no mere reform of this system, leaving intact the underlying basis, constructs and attitudes of the industrial capitalist system, will achieve the liberation we desire. A complete destruction, or dismantling, of the entire industrial capitalist system is therefore necessary.
Since no system of privilege and power destroys or dismantles itself voluntarily, a degree of confrontation will inevitably be involved in its removal.
It is important to remember, however, that this confrontation is not an end itself but merely a means to an end.
It is also important to remember that our desire for the destruction of the current system is not nihilistic in motivation, but is born of a yearning for another way of living.
This possible way of living has been denied us not only by the physical violence of the system, which has uprooted us from the soil, imprisoned and isolated us in its machineries of exploitation, but by its psychological violence.
This psychological violence involves the destruction of human dignity and freedom by a process of separation and disempowerment.
Human beings are taught that they are apart from the natural world, which is something to be feared, mastered or exploited. Individuals are further taught that they are apart from all other individuals and that there is no such thing as community and therefore no possibility of societies based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Disempowerment is amplified by the use of constructs of authority, whether in the form of a god, a king or a state and the idea of obtainable wealth for all. People are indoctrinated to believe that their lives depend on their obedience to these authoritarian ideals, that the authorities have everyone’s best interests at heart and that anyone who challenges the legitimacy of these ideals is therefore a threat to all, rather than to the authorities in question.
The first step in overcoming the power of these systems is to reverse the disempowerment and separation which disables any meaningful resistance.
A sense of belonging to community, to nature and to the cosmos was for many thousands of years the bedrock of human psychology and it still survives outside the concrete confines of modern industrial dogma.
In seeking a solid basis for resistance to industrial capitalism, we could look to indigenous cultures for inspiration, as well as to metaphysical currents and heresies that have kept this alternative vision flowing under the surface of Western society, to eco-feminist and deep green philosophy, and to anticapitalist romanticism.
At the heart of all these traditions is the rejection of external divinity or authority in favour of a self-empowerment which begins from within each individual to embrace a holistic sense of belonging to the social organism, the planetary organism and the cosmos.
This deep empowerment and connection combines perfectly with a radical rejection of all the constructs of power mentioned above – from the lies of “law” and “state” to the mental shackles imposed by patriarchal and racist assumptions.
It would strengthen our collective capacity to conduct a pro-active battle against the system and its physical and psychological infrastructures.
Furthermore, we welcome practical initiatives that reject continued existence within the toxicity of the industrial capitalist system in favour of the development of autonomous communities close to the land and informed by practices such as permaculture and simple living.
Our subsequent resistance to the system’s inevitable attempts to bring them back under its control would thus be firmly based on the defense of another way of living, on the defense of real space and real land, rather than on merely symbolic confrontation.
Justice would clearly be seen to be on our side and the resonance of our struggle would attract increasing numbers of people. If they, in turn, launched similar projects with the same underlying sense of empowerment, the system would be unable to cope and the cracks in its supremacy would start to spread.
It is not important that everyone in active resistance to the domination of the West and its civilization of mass destruction be in agreement in their critiques, in their approach to destroying the power Western institutions have over our lives, or in their end goals.
What is important is that the resistance dismantles the systems of oppression and domination used to keep us in servitude to them.
We have no crystal balls or other tools and methods to foresee the future. We do not know which tactics and methods will work best in which places. Therefore, a multitude of approaches will produce a multitude of results, some more effective, some less. The important aspect is that resistance is what we do with our lives, rather than replicating the domination of ourselves and our world through our daily activities: daily activities which are in place to keep us within the parameters set by oppressive institutions of wealth and power.
There will be vast campaigns of propaganda by the privileged elite. They own the mass media. They are over-represented on social media. Our families, friends, lovers, neighbors will often take the path of least resistance in order to live comfortably within the parameters set by the systems of wealth and privilege currently in power. In order to resist this, we must create a culture of resistance.
A culture of resistance would include feasts, dances, and celebrations, as well as on-going campaigns of counter-propaganda and sustained attacks against the institutions of privilege, power, and wealth.
Establishing a culture based on values in direct conflict with those of the West will take time, and will need to be created both underground and in plain sight. Guerrilla forces in past movements were invisible to the federal or colonial forces fighting them. In many instances, it took decades for them to realize that the guerrillas were everywhere, and damn near everyone.
Much of the structures needed to create such a movement in the West are already in place, but need to be pushed into more radical, more confrontational directions.
A culture of sharing should be the common denominator of all resistance movements. Starving people do not have the strength to fight.
We must expend great effort to see to the well-being of our comrades. Few people want to be either martyrs or live monastic lives of self-denial. In order to encourage people to overcome their ingrained alienation from each other and the world we inhabit, we need to embrace one another with new-found passion. We must revel in one another’s joy, and comfort those who are troubled.
The psychological and emotional damage done to most of us by the institutions of power and domination must be healed. Many healing methods will be required, and some amount of patience as well.
The earth has not been damaged beyond repair. We can help it to heal as well. Humans are clever and adaptable beings. Collectively, we can accomplish any task we set for ourselves.
It may take several generations for us to overcome the current systems of privilege, power, and domination afflicting us and destroying our homeworld. It took 1000 years for the systems of oppression to develop and spread throughout the world like a malignant cancer.
We can act to surgically remove the cancer and develop healthier lifestyles to make sure it doesn’t recur.
There is no reason to think that this has not happened before in the long history of human beings. Some indigenous peoples retain stories of such times in their oral histories. We should listen to them.
There is nothing to be gained by continuing to devote our lives to obtaining money through subservience to wealth and power.
The earth will survive and life will continue to evolve, with us or without us. Our mother earth is willing to embrace us, and teach us all we need to know in order to live here with love and respect for the life she provides.
It is up to us to return to her guidance and reciprocate her love.
This collaborative article was written with the desire of sparking a wider conversation. Please feel free to post comments here or via winteroak@greenmail.net
I’ve seen way too many discussions of shenanigans by the FBI in the 1960s and ’70s. Whether they intend to or not, the authors of these articles are implying that these tactics are old relics of a by-gone era. Which is certainly not true.
While methods and tactics used in the quashing of dissent may have evolved over time, much of the core principles remain unchanged. The nation’s intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies continue to be the executive office’s primary tool to discourage opposition to its policies through intimidation and legal harassment. From its beginning as the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Investigation until the present, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been directed by Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump to spy on peace activists, anti-war organizations, environmentalists, labor unions, and anyone else who might get in the way of US foreign and domestic policies, and interfere with corporate activity and earnings.
Since before it’s formal inception, the FBI has served as the US government’s political police and have engaged in campaigns of low-intensity, counter-insurgent warfare against dissidents, often with the help of irregular forces (such as the Proud Boys) – even operatives of foreign governments – and the backing of civilian financiers and their front organizations.
In addition, the FBI maintains a network of informants. Senate investigatory committees have previously found the number of paid informants had gone from roughly 1,500 in 1975, to 2,800 in 1980, to over 6,000 in 1986. A budget request presented in 2008 asked for $12.7 million to fund its informant network.
Today, years into an era of eroded civil and human rights in the name of a “war on terrorism,” it is even easier for the FBI and their allies in localized law enforcement to entrap unwitting citizens in fantasy plots they concoct, and convince juries that they have foiled a terrorist action. Unlike the 1970s, when many people understood that the government and police were not on their side, many people now seem to be incapable of seeing through such entrapment schemes, and it is only judges who challenge their narrative. If they choose to. Many judges are, of course, just there to send people to prison, for any or no reason. Especially people who are not white.
The American Protective League
When the US entered World War 1, concerned citizens were afraid the government was not up to the task of ferreting out German spies and sympathizers, hidden everywhere in the civilian population. To assist the government, numerous vigilante groups were financed by the likes of Henry Fricke, J.P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, and numerous others who were certain to earn fortunes off the war effort.
Under numerous front organizations like the National Security League, the American Defense Society, and National Civic Federation, they produced fliers and posters promoting “100 percent Americanism.” Their recruits would publicly shame anyone who spoke out against the war – and often beat them – with no interference from the police. They would often confront people in the streets and force them to sign “Loyalty Oaths.”
A group of war profiteers from Chicago foresaw America’s forthcoming involvement in the conflict and started the American Protective League, which quickly absorbed similar groups around the country and grew at such a rate that just months after the US entered the war, they were able to provide 250,000 people to the assist the BoI and US Department of War’s intelligence forces.
Their operatives opened people’s mail and illegally entered their homes to search for submissive literature and contraband. Many carried badges identifying themselves as “Secret Agents.”
In order to enforce compliance with draft registration laws, they would round up every male of age in entire neighborhoods and cities, then require them to provide proof of registration before releasing them. Often, family or friends would have to retrieve the documents, and men were held for days until such proof arrived.
In just one such roundup, 150,000 men were questioned in Chicago. They were taken from factories, public transit stations, public parks, saloons, baseball games, stores, and dragged out of vehicles. 20,000 were detained, pending proof of compliance. 1,400 were subsequently conscripted and released, while an unknown number went missing. Perhaps a few thousand. Over 10,000 German-Americans were detained during the war, as suspected traitors.
According to one APL spokesperson, Edward Hough, “It was fear that held our enemy population down. Fear and nothing else. It was the league’s silent and mysterious errand to pile up good reason for that fear” (emphasis from original quote).
Although their stated purpose was to enforce conscription laws and discover German sympathizers and spies, much of the APL’s activities centered around anarchists and syndicalists. The Espionage Act of April, 1917 criminalized “treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the U.S., or the obstruction of recruiting or enlistment.”
The federal statutes carried penalties of up to $10,000 and 20 years in prison. By 1921, 35 states had passed “Criminal Anarchy” laws, defined as “the doctrine that organized government be overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination, or by unlawful means.”
Over 25,000 agents of the APL kept files on anarchists and their activities, much of it obtained by opening mail and breaking into organizer’s, agitators, publisher’s and activist’s homes. To further intimidate dissidents, they would maintain obvious, heavy-handed surveillance on their targets, and interrogate anyone who approached or spoke with the targeted individual. They would visit their targets at their workplaces, which could lead to people losing their jobs.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before…
Our Nation is undergoing an era of disruption and violence caused to a large extent by various individuals generally connected with the New Left. Some of these activists urge revolution in America and call for the defeat of the United States in Vietnam. They continually and falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize unlawful acts to further their so-called causes. The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses. With this in mind, it is our recommendation that a new Counterintelligence Program be designed to neutralize the New Left and the Key Activists. “Subject: Counterintelligence Program Internal Security Disruption of the New Left.” FBI memo, May 9, 1968.
The US government was at war with Black nationalists, human rights groups, and churches in the 1960s. Just the suppression of the Black Panther Party resulted in over 2,500 deaths and more than 12,000 prison sentences. Some of these Panthers are still in prison.
In just three years – 1973-76 – the FBI and its allied henchmen were involved in the deaths of at least 70 Native American activists, and violent attacks against another 300 in the Pine Ridge and Rosebud communities.
In 1979, a “Death to the Klan” rally by the Communist Worker’s Party in Greensboro, NC, was attacked by Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party. The attackers had been encouraged by FBI and Greensboro police infiltrators. They brought guns to the CWP event, fired on the attendees, killed 5 protesters, injured another 10, and a bystander.
I won’t go into detail about the role of “secret agents” and the FBI from the ’30s through the 70s. That ground has been well-covered over the years. I hope the above examples are enough to convince you of what the government is capable of doing, when it has a mandate from the Executive Office. Instead of retelling these familiar shenanigans, I want to jump ahead to the 1980s, under the administration of Ronald Reagan.
“I have seen countless people hurt, jailed, even killed. What you’re up against when you take on the FBI, the CIA, the undercover informants who feed the governmental apparatus, is a self-selected group of people who have a messianic vision of themselves.” Chip Berlet, a political researcher who was involved in cases involving the FBI and the Chicago police in the 1980s.
Reagan was an old, hard-line anti-communist and shitty actor. As President and leader of the “Free” world, this Cold Warrior saw the Communist Menace lurking everywhere. When he intensified counter-insurgency efforts around the world, while cutting domestic spending and federal regulations at home, intense opposition arose in the population. This was, of course, all the proof the senile president – in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease – needed that Communists were hiding around every corner, spewing anti-American sentiment to a gullible public.
As it had in the earlier parts of the century, the FBI carried out a campaign of intimidation, harassment, and disruption against anyone in opposition to any policy put forth by the Reagan administration.
Reagan’s resolve to crush any who opposed him was displayed when he fired over 11,000 members of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, who were on strike for shorter hours and better working conditions. The demented President gave the strikers until sundown to get out of town…excuse me…gave them 2 days to return to work, and when they refused, he fired them en masse. This was just his first action against dissidents. He later unleashed the FBI to go after his political opponents, even going so far as to investigate elected officials who traveled abroad – including those who visited NATO allied countries.
Just as it had during the WW1 era, the FBI visited the homes and workplaces of anti-war, peace and justice, anti-apartheid, and solidarity activists to confront them with accusations of treason and subversion. Their employers were informed of their political activities. Their friends, lovers, relatives, and neighbors were questioned, and sometimes recruited to report on the activists actions.
This heightened state of repression was intensified after a bomb went off in the US capitol building on November 7, 1983. Although the FBI knew who did the bombing, and why, it used the attack as justification of expanded activity, especially in co-ordinating with the CIA, State Department, and Department of Defense. Which, basically meant the US government was at war with its own citizens.
Again, civic organizations like the World Anti-Communist League, and various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and other White Supremacist groups were given material support and encouragement to intimidate, harass, and physically assault dissidents. Foreign agents of countries experiencing insurgencies at home where given free reign to spy on American activists, and attack people from their homelands who had come to the US to seek refuge. Hundreds of refugees from Central America were deported, and many of them ended up disappeared, dead, or imprisoned. Terrorist attacks against Cubans friendly to Castro’s Cuba were tolerated.
Conservative church leaders were recruited to deliver sermons against “ungodly” communism, media pundits were recruited to write anti-communist columns. William Casey, Reagan’s first director of the CIA, is famously quoted as having said “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
During Reagan’s reign, there was very little mention in the mass media about dissent against his policies, and when there was the occasional story, it was usually highly slanted to present the dissenters as deluded, if not outright agents of communist governments. This tight control over the media lasted throughout the Reagan/Bush era.
The media willingly repeated highly exaggerated claims by the Bush regime in order to justify a war in Kuwait. There was immediate opposition by the general population, which quickly grew into the largest anti-war movement in US history. The movement self-destructed through in-fighting, backstabbing, and gossip. Having experienced first-hand the shenanigans the FBI used while involved with Committee In Solidarity With the People of El Salvador in Dallas, Texas, in the 1980s, I can say with confidence that I saw similar tactics used to split the anti-Gulf War coalition in Austin, just a few years later. “Respectable” activists accused more militant protesters of being provocateurs. I was “outed” by some such activists because I chose to use a pseudonym in public. Two self-anointed leaders of the coalition revealed my and a comrade’s names, while others accused another comrade, who had been beaten and jailed for anti-apartheid protests a few years earlier, of being an undercover cop.
Throughout the Reagan/Bush era, people who tried to talk about their harassment were often ridiculed and called paranoid. They lost friends, and often times relatives would distance themselves from activists, which left the activists isolated and vulnerable. They lost jobs, their careers were ruined. Professional journalists were blackballed by the media and could only have their investigative work published in the dissident press, which meant little or no pay. Many activists and journalists became addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many committed suicide, often in shady circumstances.
During the Clinton years, it was possible for the government to mass murder people without much public outcry, as he demonstrated with his siege and extermination of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas.
Again and again, no matter who was in office, the FBI kept up a campaign of harassment against dissenters. Yet, they seldom went after White Supremacist groups, who have carried out many of the most lethal terrorist attacks in the US.
This is likely because the irregular forces they regularly employ to target activists are often from fascist or racist organizations. After WW1, when much of the APL was absorbed into the newly-formed FBI, many of those left over joined the KKK.
All of this is relevant because these methods are all still used in the 21st century.
Combating property destruction by animal rights activists and environmentalists was identified by former FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2006 as one of the agency’s highest priorities. Despite the fact that not one person has been killed due to any of these activities.
But, since 9/12/01, more than 70 percent of the lethal attacks by terrorists in the US have been carried out by white supremacists or neo-nazi groups and individuals who hold sympathetic views. President Trump has gone so far as to direct the government to focus all of its counter-terrorist activities in America on Islamic extremists.
Under the Obama administrations, almost 100 percent of all so-called terrorist incidents were instigated by the FBI or other, local police agencies. This is particularly true of his administration’s record of entrapping Muslims in terrorist schemes.
The script in these cases follows a similar pattern. The FBI picks a target for recruitment into a terror plot. They use an informant or an undercover agent to contact the person, then begin the process of “radicalizing” the target into joining in on a plot to bomb something. Every person the targeted individual meets along the way – the instigator of the plot, the people providing explosives, even instructions on how to create and detonate the devices – are all FBI, police, or their lackeys. They will even come across with cash. Whatever it takes.
But, of course, when the appointed time for carrying out the action comes: “SURPRISE! You’re busted!”
Then, there are press conferences, where the FBI is praised to the heavens for stopping this horrible thing from happening. But, no matter how many times people – particularly defense attorneys – point out that the person involved was duped by the FBI to do something the targeted individuals were at times very unenthusiastic about, the media sensationalism steamrolls the truth of the matter, and the “terrorist” is sent off to prison.
“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square subway station. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”
Likewise, the government has been entrapping Anarchists involved in anti-war protests into “terror” plots. When it comes to snaring US citizens with their traps, the FBI uses undercover agents to insinuate themselves into a local scene, gain the locals’ trust, then start the plot a-rolling.
During G.W. Bush’s reign, an undercover agent seduced a forest defense activist into a long-term relationship, then encouraged and enabled him to form an underground cell to carry out bombings. She provided transportation, money, explosives, and isolated cabins in the mountains to build bombs. The cell considered her their leader. The cell was arrested, even though they never carried out any actions.
According to an FBI document entitled “Anarchist Extremist Overview,” Anarchists are “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities.” The document goes on to wail and moan about how Anarchists are devising new and more extreme weapons to pursue their criminal activity. Of course, they don’t mention that it is actually their own agents who are providing the materials and knowledge to make these weapons.
In a police raid on a Chicago house, 11 people were arrested. 2 of them were undercover FBI agents, who had shown up during Occupy Chicago and became part of the scene. After who’s-who got sorted out, it became known that law enforcement was working with a military and intelligence contractor with ties to the National Security Agency – Booz Hamilton (whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s former employer).
“Mo”and “Nadia,” undercover cops.
The fact that the government is outsourcing its repression of dissent is a harrowing turn of events. Though it does keep within the established practice of the FBI utilizing irregular forces, issues of accountability, oversight, mismanagement, and overly-zealous extremists are much more of a concern when secretive agencies – both public and private – are involved. In today’s current atmosphere of fake news, ass-kissing media, and lazy, celebrity-driven infotainment, if an actual terror attack were to happen, the truth about who was behind it might never be known, and intentionally covered-up in the interest of national security.
The legal harassment of Anarchists and Animal Liberation activists will force their comrades and supporters – who often eke out a subsistent life, near the bottom of the economy – to spend themselves into extreme poverty in order to defend themselves and their comrades in court. Having dozens, if not hundreds of comrades incarcerated can overwhelm an informal, voluntary collection of punks and activists, emotionally as well as financially.
It wasn’t only bullets and bludgeons that destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World. The Feds also tapped out their membership’s finances by forcing them to defend themselves in courts across the country. This left them blacklisted by employers and scarcely able to fend for themselves after the One Big Union was crushed, adrift and pauperized, just before the Great Depression.
And just to let us know what to expect in this new era of reality TVesque horrors, a church in Alabama has been authorized to form its own police forces.
This is in addition to the forces collected together by several regional Joint Task Forces of Terrorism, specially-created entities that co-ordinate municipal, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to carry out joint actions. Many, if not most, of the Bush II’s operations described above were projects of such JTFTs. And these law enforcement agencies – especially at the federal level – are also hiring mercenary forces to help out, and have demonstrated their willingness to utilize irregular forces to do their “dirty work” when they really want to stir things up.
Fighting Back
To look back at the well-documented era of COINTELPRO as something from a long-ago time is to ignore the challenges we all face if we choose to fight against the Corporate States of America, with it’s newly rediscovered confidence in White Supremacy, vast military, mercenary, and police forces, and a weird, religious fervor to excuse everything it wants to force on an unwilling world. America has never stopped its low-intensity war against dissent, and it won’t. It can’t – those currently in power know very well that their continued rule relies on silencing those who speak out against their inhuman agenda.
Under Barrack Obomber, US foreign policy revived slavery in Africa, and many Americans truly believe that the ones responsible for this are wonderful, almost god-like people. Do you think they will so much as notice when dissenters are rounded up into detention centers? Or gunned down in the streets by the police? There was scarcely a word of protest against the APL during WW1, when the world was much more aware of class conflict. They appeared as if out of nowhere, in large numbers, and terrorized the public into silent compliance nationwide.
So far, American radicals have refused to learn from the contemporary revolutionaries around the world, who are actively creating the communities they want to see, rather than engaging in pointless street protests. In many instances, activists in other countries are reviving older, indigenous cultures, and adapting them to accommodate current tech and social developments. This is the way to revolutionary change, and many of us trapped in the West have yet to undertake this task. Perhaps we consider ourselves too mired in capitalist muck to think we can escape from it. Or are so inherently racist, they think of Indigenous People’s cultures as “primitive.”
We face difficult circumstances, and it’s about time we faced up to the facts. Protesting will not create the world we carry in our hearts and minds. No matter how much we riot.
Certainly, circumstances vary from place to place, with different challenges to overcome, and we face an enemy who seems unstoppable. To many people before us, the divine authority of god-emperors was too terrifying to stand against. To many people before us, the authority and weapons of the king were not to be challenged. Those worlds do not exist anymore, and the only reason this one continues is because we continue to devote our energy to its perpetuation.
Historians and anthropologists tell us the human race was once a cave-dwelling, surly, filthy lot who eked out a miserable life for ourselves with crude tools made of wood, bone, and stone.
Here’s something they rarely mention – the caves where we dwelt. Let’s have a look…
Here’s a basic cave structure in Nepal. Undoubtedly very ancient, they have not remained intact over the centuries. There are such structures all over the world.Here’s a cave structure in India.And one in Kazakhstan……this one in Russia looks like Anasazi cliff dwellings in the US Southwest……and I don’t even know what to make of this one in China……these caves in Capadocia, Turkey are still being used by the locals. As storage areas, to keep livestock, and even to live in. Some have even been made into hostels and taverns. More are being discovered.
As mentioned above, there are also caves of this sort present in the western hemisphere, from Nevada in the US to Patagonia in South America. And people are finding more all the time.
At some point in the past, the human race decided that life on the surface of the planet was too dangerous, and they burrowed into cliffs and mountains all over the world.
What happened, and why aren’t we hearing more about this? Don’t you think our ancestors have something to say to us about climate change?
It seems like at least one of the authors of Black Flame is a white supremacist, and has been using his influence within the Syndicalist movement to keep Anarchism firmly rooted in an exclusively Euro-centric worldview.
“At five hundred pages, Black Flame is widely considered the first major (non-anthology) anarchist work in some time — perhaps ever — to provide a global historical account of anarchist movements. Many viewed the work as a kind of “Anarchist Bible,” or what Immanuel Ness, a professor at City University of New York and author of New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism(PM Press, 2014), had described as “perhaps the most important contribution [to] the global history of working class movements from an anarchist perspective.”
– About Schmidt: How a White Nationalist Seduced Anarchists Around the World (Chapter 1), by Alexander Reid Ross and Joshua Stephens
Black Flame‘s“core theses” include the propositions;
“the global anarchist movement emerged in the First International,
syndicalism is an integral part of the broad anarchist tradition,
this tradition centers on rationalism, socialism, and anti-authoritarianism,
the writings of Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin are representative of its core ideas,
and this ‘narrow’ definition is both empirically defensible and analytically useful.”
A striking feature of Black Flame is the argument that “‘class struggle’ anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism – it is the only anarchism,” and so it does not include ideas sometimes called individualist anarchist, identified with figures such as William Godwin and Max Stirner. Regarding the so-called “philosophical, individualist, spiritual and ‘lifestyle’ traditions,” the authors say “we do not regard these currents as part of the broad anarchist tradition.”
– from wikipedia’s glowing review of Black Flame, in the section on Platformism.
I can’t understand why anyone, much less anarchists, would want to keep their personal worldview so firmly rooted in the 19th century.
The huge trainwreckBlack Flame has caused in the anarchist movement proved to me that conservative, rightwing bigots are not the only white folks who yearn for a simpler time, when white people just WEREthe superior race, no questions asked, or they’d KILL your miserable, savage ass!
“Blacks incapable of other than the basest service to the Revolution.”
This is not surprising to me in the least. As I’ve written before, Syndicalism is only one very, very short step away from Fascism, and Fascism almost always includes racism. (see my review of The Friends of Durutti, from Anarchy; a Journal of Desire Armed, which i will post online, soon as i can acquire a copy. – rlr)
In the Mexican revolution of the early 20th century, Anarcho-Communists and Syndicalists were allowed to organize as labor unions and militias, so long as the militias were under command of Huerta’s junta, which was governing Mexico City at the time. These units were used as artillery forces against the advancing armies of Pancho Villa. Meanwhile, other unionistas were sent against Zapata’s forces, though I believe they were mostly held in reserve. In both cases, when the militias were no longer needed, they were disbanded, and many of the workers were eventually executed or imprisoned.
Too much of the leadership of Spain’s legendary anarchist unionists CNT urged the rank-and-file membership to disarm and support the republic. This was done in return for ministerial positions for the leadership, at the national and regional levels. The workers responded by collectivizing everything that was not nailed down, and by forming autonomous militias. These militias would later rescue Madrid from a fascist offensive.
Much of the same can be said for anarchists in Russia – though to be honest, the peasant militias and autonomous villages had mostly been annihilated by the Red army before many anarchists accepted favors from the vicious Soviet government.
In addition to the tendency of the leadership of Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists to sell out their own rank-and-file, and their militias to take up arms against genuine people’s movements, there is also a tradition within Anarcho-Syndicalism to gestate personality cults and go outright fascist. Mussolini and Mao are the two most famous examples, though there were many others.
I’ve never read a Syndicalist tract from the Anarchist canon which does not advocate for some type of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” What can be expected from a tradition that has as it’s stated end goal a dictatorship? Concentrate power into a single group or institution, and someone will take it over for their personal aggrandizement. Always and forever, this has been true. That’s why some anarchists do not wish to create more of the same, but would prefer to create societies very unlike the ones we’ve inherited. There is no need for such self-serving institutions.
I’m just saying, do what you want. But what DO you want? Do we want self determination? Or inclusion in the colonial system?
It also comes as no surprise that Black Flame’s authors were able to find people around the world, and from every race, who they could point to as examples of “diversity” for their unified, uncompromising, very limited, Eurocentric (of course) definition of what Anarchism is – and isn’t. Who among the people cited did not grow up in a Eurocentric, colonial society? Who did not have the option to support their families through any other means than wage labor? Who did not receive a Eurocentric education? Not one. None of the many people the authors cite from around the world ever advocated for the destruction of the Eurocentric social order and the creation of something more along the lines of how people lived who had never been conquered by white folks.
BF‘s authors also spend considerable time explaining why useless forms of protest and organizing are preferable to armed rebellion or insurrection. The authors advocate for a “gradualist” approach to achieving the goals of working class empowerment. Voting, participating in the political process, and possibly forming a party and running for office were presented as reasonable, rational approaches to social change. Led by white folks, for the most part.
Again, no surprise, since the authors are more interested in steering anarchists into inaction than they are in creating revolution. As white supremacists, they are more invested in the current social order that creates austerity for the North, and bombs for the rest of the world. And as infiltrators in the movement, I’m fairly sure part of the reason they wanted to keep Anarchists firmly tied to ineffectual Leftism was in part to make anarchists look like cowards, as opposed to the “bold street fighters” of the National Anarchist movement – a transeuropean Fascist organization which has openly advanced a racist agenda from its inception, and uses street violence to lure in bullies and other assholes who just want to knock heads.
Mike Schmidt, “Politico-Cultural Dynamics of the South African Anarchist Movement”
“…platformism is too advanced for the black working class and poor…”
The doctrine of discovery; establishment of the rule of law in the land of liberty.
ROMANUS PONTIFEX, JANUARY 8, 1455 – the doctrine of discovery
“[W]e bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes…intrepid champions of the Christian faith…to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and…to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate…possessions, and goods, and to convert them to…their use and profit…“
There you have it, spelt out in fairly clear language – His Excellency, Pope Babyraper the Umpteenth, authorized his co-conspirators to go out and rob, murder, rape, and plunder in every land which had not been “saved” by J-Zeus, the dying/resurrecting sun deity. At the time of the edict, that was around 80 percent of the inhabited world.
It’s easy enough to dismiss this document as an out-dated relic of a long-gone era.
The problem with that is, this is the SINGLE, LEGAL DOCUMENT that created the court systems of the US, Canada, Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Philippines, most of Africa, swaths of Asia…
This single document is cited by the US Supreme Court when considering matters of copyright, property, regulation of corporations, and trade agreements – including the current bankster wetdream, the TPP. Yeah, all that bullshit about separation of Church and State…just window dressing. Without this Roman Catholic doctrine, the foundation for rule of law by the court systems in just about every nation on earth goes straight out the window.
Ever heard of a place called Latin America? No one spoke fucking Latin in the god-damn 14th century. Except for the Catholic Church clergy and Lawyers, who established the court systems that preside over these places to this day. And that’s why it’s referred to as Latin America, because of their Latin legal systems.
Think this is a ridiculous over-simplification (I get that a lot)? Ever read a US law book? See all the Latin phrases? When exactly was it that Latin-speaking people inhabited the US? Isn’t US law supposed to be based on English court systems? And just what is the foundation of English law? Again, written in Latin. (Little known fact – “Empress of the Holy Roman Empire” is one of Queen Lizzie the 2nd’s titles.)
INTER CAETERA, MAY 3, 1493
“…in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread…and that barbarous nations be overthrown…”
This Papal decree is so much a part of the Great American Mythology that it was referenced by US Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1823 decision, JOHNSON v. MCINTOSH, 21 US 543 to assert American authority over indigenous Peoples. His decision legalized exploitation, theft, and genocide by establishing that indigenous Peoples were indeed not quite people, not being Christians and all, so anything done to or against them is all good and well, and the Good Lord’s work to boot – hallelujah!
And why should it be overturned? It’s necessary to dehumanize indigenous Peoples in order to rob, rape, and murder them wholesale, even over the objections of the more squeamish members of the invading societies.
This notion that indigenous Peoples must be “saved” from their ignorant, savage existence by having the gifts of religion and poverty bestowed upon them fuels wars even in the 21st century. This idea has been enacted through many expressions over the years: saving souls, bringing them civilization, educating them, making them into citizens of the state. This is the doctrine of Manifest Destiny – that god almighty has given Europeans superior weapons in order to subjugate other Peoples. Most of whom were not warlike, and almost none of whom had standing armies.
This is the notion of Progress. Lands previously untouched by the foul hand of the West had to be incorporated into European legal systems in order to rule over them, for the benefit of the Europeans. It is solidly, irrefutably white supremacist to the core, an excuse to commit genocide and feel good, even proud, for doing it. There sure is a long list of names – venerated in every nation overrun by Europeans – of murdering, ignorant scum who slaughtered indigenous Peoples and later became well-respected members of the communities where they dwelt. Some of these genocidal pieces of shit are Saints in the Catholic church.
This Progressive ideology has never been refuted by anyone with a Eurocentric worldview. It enables people who depend on markets for everything they need for personal survival – but who must first find a master to serve in order to access markets – to think of indigenous Peoples as poor, filthy, ignorant savages. Even though the indigenous Peoples are able to hand craft everything they need. Food, clothing, shelter – what they can’t do for themselves, was often available from others, as sharing is much more widespread in Peoples who do not have the notion of “poverty” in their lives. They mostly live in abundance.
Hell – right now, pharmaceutical corporations are falling all over themselves to get at indigenous healers in the field. They are making billions of dollars off of the knowledge and experience of indigenous Peoples, then they have the audacity to cry about “intellectual property rights.”
And to FINALLY arrive at the main point I want to make here – Socialism and Marxism are not in any way different from any of the other ideologies of Progress. Indeed, Marx himself stated that indigenous Peoples must submit to proletarianization or disappear from the world. Anyone who did not slave for a master for monetary gain was a lumpen, and Marx saw them – always the majority of the population in industrialized nations – as reactionary and enemies of the working class. He used much the same rationale we hear today from the far-right. Lumpen want to take our jobs (scabs). They are criminals. They are no-good layabout alcoholics and drug addicts. They are ignorant. As someone who has spent much of his adult life either homeless or in prison, but always struggling against the coercive forces of elite rule, I gotta say a big, ol’ “Fuck you!” to orthodox Marxists.
There are Marxists I have some respect for, though – libertarian and autonomous Marxists are at least breaking from the orthodoxy of building a Party in order to centralize power. Some groups that started out as Marxists have evolved to the point that they no longer spout fiery working-class rhetoric. Instead, they humbly ask the communities they rely on for support what their group can do to help the community. The trend in anarchy in the 21st century is for revolutionaries to focus on building autonomous communities, instead of taking over industry. Except, of course, in the industrialized West.
In Europe and North America, the white working classes are terrified of losing the few precious scraps of privilege they’ve been allowed until now. Still clinging to their notion of Progress, orthodox Marxists, Anarcho-Communists, and Syndicalists refuse to let go of racist, outdated 19th century ideas that see them – the true and only revolutionaries – as the saviors of the world. Anyone who dares to challenge them to join the rest of humanity in the 21st century is silenced as “ignorant” or “reactionary” or “fascist.”
I’ve written before that Marxism’s main failure was that the working class never seized control of anything. I’m more of the opinion these days that their greatest failure was in only offering substitutions for the social order they were allegedly opposing. Substitute the Party for the working class. Substitute a Chairman for an emperor. Substitute expansion of the revolution for economic expansion. Substitute “safeguarding the revolution” for “protecting investments.” In short, Marxism has never offered anything but more of the same horrors, with just slightly different jargon. In function, the fascist state is little different than a communist one, and neither system is much different than Western-style democracies or republics. They all seek to divvy up the world’s resources for the enrichment of very few people, with treats for their lackeys, jails for the complainers, and bludgeons for the impoverished.
A few notes about this alleged “progress” of his(story)
It took the old European colonial powers centuries to overrun the entire planet and install court systems acceptable to their aristocracies. But it pretty much took until the 20th century for whities to look around at the places they had conquered and think “hmmm – wonder what all that stuff is?”
Naturally, being the superior civilization and all, they had no need for anything the vanquished heathens had. Not their medicinal herbcrafting. Not their stories and legends about geological events. Not their ambitions, thoughts, and dreams. Not their extensive written histories which receded far, far past the time when the Christian book of lies was written. And especially not for their heathen technology, which was the work of demons, after all – amen.
Many of the civilizations annihilated by the invading hordes were far superior in every way to what existed in Europe at that time. There are irrigation systems in Peru that are thousands of years older than many historians are willing to admit there have been people in the Americas. Megalithic ruins all over the world suggest there was a one-world culture of sea-faring people who built magnificent cities globally, until just after the end of the last ice age, when climatic chaos destroyed many coastal areas. Thus, the universal flood myths in people’s written and oral histories. I can write this with confidence because much of this is readily (even scientifically, if that’s your religion) verifiable now. As a matter of fact, it’s getting to be common knowledge. This may well be one reason why education systems are being undermined. There will be no way to keep this knowledge out of textbooks unless there is such tight control of publishing and educational institutions that traditional narratives remain unchallenged. Religious institutions worldwide depend on this forgetting of the human saga.
Almost all the great dietary “breakthroughs” constantly in vogue in the US have come about as American consumers somehow found out about Ayruvedic and Naturalpathic medicinal traditions in Asia. As mentioned before, pharmaceutical corporations are scouring Amazonia and Africa, looking for new drugs and other biological knowledge from shamans and traditional healers. That’s not Progress, that’s just more plunder. We could accumulate this knowledge ourselves by TALKING TO PEOPLE and LISTENING WITH RESPECT TO WHAT PEOPLE FROM OTHER CULTURES HAVE TO SAY! Fucksake…
I’m gonna go ahead and put this out there; some people suspect that a one-world, seafaring culture still existed, here and there, until fairly recently. Until the era of conquest. Their civilization had collapsed, for the most part, and they had to rebuild. I’ll write a lot more about this in the future. The points I want to make here are:
Polynesian Peoples sailed thousands and thousands of miles of open, uninterrupted seas at times.
The Hopi and some Australian aboriginal Peoples claim to have sailed to their continents around 30,000 years ago.
Most of the older ruins in the Americas are along the Pacific rim.
Mayan civilization had a written history that covered 30,000 years, including daily records.
Tenochtitlan, the capitol city of the Mexica, was an engineering marvel unmatched by the West: huge stone plazas and gigantic, megalithic pyramids built on a swamp.
There are irrigation systems so old, there are no records of their construction, nor memories; in SE Asia, Russia, Australia, South America…
Many of the Peoples mentioned above kept detailed records of astrological events, and were aware of the various phases of the moon, seasons, and years.
And even the approved annuls of history tell of the constant attack on knowledge. Libraries burned by invading forces, almost always from the Eurasian steppe and Levant; in Alexandria, Heliopolis, Persepolis, Babylon, Athens…We will never know how much was destroyed in the era of conquest. How far back did that put the human race, as far as accumulated knowledge? So much for “progress.” Most of this knowledge was lost forever to us, some of it we are actually rediscovering.
One civilization succeeded in preserving some of this ancient knowledge in Buddhist temples, written in archaic forms of Sanskrit. If it isn’t being destroyed by some goddam government or another, that’s where we could find a lot of details about the things i’ve mentioned above.
The history we’ve been force-fed is so much just a load of bullshit, i’m not sure if we should believe anything written up until the end of the last century. EVERYTHING the education system has indoctrinated us into accepting is wrong. Fucking goddam Everything. I hope I can convince enough people in the anarchist movement of this that we can actually band together and use the new knowledge – the stuff being rediscovered – to our advantage.
To make things very clear;
The idea of “progressive” history is racist to it’s very core. Not to mention complete Bullshit. Anything coming from that tradition is nothing more or less than white supremacist propaganda. Not just including Marxism, but ESPECIALLY Marxism because of its failure to understand that industrial society is not the Ultimate Achievement of humankind. Free living people do not need to be enslaved through employment in order to find their way to liberation.
As for myself, i want no part of this wretched deathculture. It’s built on lies, fraud, genocide, rape, and plunder. We are capable of creating something so much better. We should get on with building it. Now.
via the subversion of the early Christian Church, by Roman emperors.
This is the oldest symbol for the Christian faith. It may also be the oldest symbol of divine authority in what passes as “western” civilization. There’s a lot more to say about this particular symbol, but for now let’s focus on it’s elegant simplicity.
Because it was an upstart religion and illegal in the Roman empire, Christians needed a secretive way to identify one another. So, when wanting to inquire about someone’s belief, a Christian could draw half the symbol in the dirt with a finger. If the other party involved finished it, they recognized one another as part of the Church. If not, no harm done, the image quickly erased, easy-peasy.
After the Church was decriminalized, a new symbol was bestowed upon the Romanized religion, the cross.
Constantine and Christ’s Holy Terror
The ruler of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, Constantine, supposedly had a vision as he tossed and turned in his sleep, worried about an upcoming battle. Either that, or he was given a sign from heaven on his way there. More likely he just made that story up.
Regardless of the inspiration, Constantine was given a sign from some god or another – i’m not sure they ever specify – which he regarded as a license to kill. Two symbols combined in his new banner to allegedly signify “by this sign, conquer.”
From this moment on, Christianity was not a religion of love, tolerance, sharing, and community. From this point on, Christianity was some unseen god’s holy scourge, come to rid the world of sinful non-believers with sword and fire. Ever notice how much Catholics have enjoyed burning people alive over the centuries?
The symbol of the cross eventually morphed into the more recognizable “+” form, then further transformed into…something awful.
This is the image of Jesus the ancient Churches like. It’s traumatizing. It’s meant to be.
The message sent by the authorities:
“See that? There’s your god of love for you! He’s DEAD!
If we killed your god, do you think we’ll have any mercy on YOU?”
Christians ever since have been very enthusiastic in slaughter, genocide, rape, and plunder. They are, after all, forgiven. For anything. For everything. By the way, rape is not prohibited in the holey bible. There are a number of responsibilities spelt out for rapists in the old testament, including an obligation to marry the victim. I do not believe the victim is given a say in the matter. And in the new testament, women are encouraged to be submissive to men.
War on knowledge
Constantine undertook a war to eliminate the Zoroastrian religion. Their priests were known as Magi, and were mentioned with quite a lot of respect in the telling of Jesus’ birth.
The Romans killed every living Magi, and burned or otherwise destroyed their teachings.
I can’t help but think this was done because what the Magi taught was self-directed enlightenment and inner growth. What the Christian Church had decided on as it’s doctrine – in the council of Nicea Constantine sponsored ten years prior – was batshit crazy by comparison. Constantine was eliminating the competition. He had to, because no one was going to believe the stupid shit his new Church was passing off as “religion.”
He never made Christianity the official state religion (that would come later), even after his own “conversion.” As mentioned above, this conversion affected the Church more than vice-versa. The emperor had remade it in his own image.
Constantine’s end goal was likely to proclaim himself as the sun god, sol invictus, and Roman coinage, as well as works of art and architecture, portrayed him as Sol’s companion. He never did get around to announcing his own divinity. He did, however, make Sun day the official Christian day of rest and adulation.
this roman coin depicts emperor constantine, standing alongside – and eclipsing – a sun god.
Subsequent emperors burned the library of Antioch, and later banned teaching of science in the entire empire. People of other faiths were prohibited from being officers in the army, and a heretical Christian sect – the Manicheans – were exterminated for providing a sane, believable doctrine for Christians.
And just to rub a little salt in the wounds of a bleeding populace, pope Dumbass I outlawed public baths across the empire. Less than a century later, unhygienic conditions contributed to a severe outbreak of bubonic plague.
The Church outlawed all forms of date-keeping, navigational charts and equipment, and any reference to the world as being spherical. No one believed the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. People started pretending to believe it when anyone saying otherwise was burned alive in public squares.
The Church also outlawed all non-Christian schools and ordered the obliteration of all knowledge kept at the great library of Alexadria – perhaps the greatest repository of human knowledge ever assembled in one place. Not only did they destroy ancient scrolls, books, and other writings, they massacred everyone who had learned to read. Millions of tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen were slaughtered. Egyptian civilization has never recovered from this atrocity.
A holocaust (burnt offering) of millions of people practicing another “heretical” form of Christianity, the Donatists in North Africa, was ordered. An entire region depopulated. Every man, woman, and child murdered.
The Oronteus Finaeus map,
showing Antarctica with ice-free coasts, mountains and rivers. It was based on older maps, lost to His-story
The church decreed that every book not written by Christian hands be destroyed.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
–Augustine (354 C.E.- 430 C.E.)
Europe becomes Christian
War was declared against the cultures of Egypt and Greece. The ancient library of Athens was torn down, all the scribes and priests burned alive. Roman facades were put on ancient temples. Others were torn down and replaced with Christian churches.
Ireland was likewise invaded, but the mercenary Patrick was not up to the task and relented after merely massacring half-a-million people. He reported to Rome that the “serpents have been eliminated,” but he was really giving the Celts some time to hide their knowledge.
Just around 200 years from the time Constantine remade Christianity for his own bloody purposes, the population of the ancient European world had plummeted drastically, and human civilization set back thousands of years. Some estimates claim over 110,000,000 people had died due to conflict, sacrifice, disease, and hunger.
AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WAS LOST AS A RESULT. We can only guess, based on physical evidence left behind.
most of the court systems on this planet are based upon the religious delusions of megalomaniacal european aristocracies. how humiliating is it to be kept in servitude by figments of other people’s imaginations?
-ROMANUS PONTIFEX, JANUARY 8, 1455 - the doctrine of discovery
“[W]e bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes…intrepid champions of the Christian faith…to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and…to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate…possessions, and goods, and to convert them to…their use and profit…“
There you have it, spelt out in fairly clear language – His Excellency, Pope Babyraper the Umpteenth, authorized his co-conspirators to go out and rob, murder, rape, and plunder in every land which had not been “saved” by J-Zeus, the dying/resurrecting sun deity. At the time of the edict, that was around 85 percent of the inhabited world.
It’s easy enough to dismiss this document as an out-dated relic of a long-gone era.
The problem with that is, this is the SINGLE, LEGAL DOCUMENT that created the court systems of the US, Canada, Australia, much of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Philippines, most of Africa, swaths of Asia…
This single document is the foundation for laws before the US Supreme Court when considering matters of copyright, property, regulation of corporations, and trade agreements. Yeah, all that bullshit about separation of Church and State…just window dressing. Without this Roman Catholic doctrine, the foundation for rule of law by the court systems in just about every nation on earth goes straight out the window.
Ever heard of a place called Latin America? No one spoke fucking Latin in the god-damn 15th century. Except for the Catholic Church clergy and lawyers – who established the court systems that preside over these places to this day! And that’s why it’s refereed to as Latin America, because of their Latin legal systems.
Think this is a ridiculous over-simplification (I get that a lot)? Ever read a US law book? See all the Latin phrases? When exactly was it that Latin-speaking people inhabited the US? Isn’t US law supposed to be based on English court systems? And just what is the foundation of English law? Again, written in Latin. Little known fact: “Empress of the Holy Roman Empire” is one of Queen Lizzie the 2nd’s titles.
INTER CAETERA, MAY 3, 1493
“…in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread…and that barbarous nations be overthrown…”
This Papal decree is so much a part of the Great American Mythology that it was referenced by none less than US Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1823 decision, JOHNSON v. MCINTOSH, 21 US 543 to assert American authority over indigenous Peoples. His decision legalized exploitation, theft, and genocide by establishing that indigenous Peoples were indeed not quite people, not being Christians and all, so anything done to or against them is all good and well, and the Good Lord’s work as well, hallelujah!
And why should it be overturned? It’s necessary to dehumanize indigenous Peoples in order to rob, rape, and murder them wholesale, even over the objections of the more squeamish members of the invading society.
This notion that indigenous Peoples must be “saved” from their ignorant, savage existence by having the gifts of religion and poverty bestowed upon them fuels wars even in the 21st century. This idea has been enacted through many expressions over the years: saving souls, bringing them civilization, educating them, making them into citizens of the state, development. This is the doctrine of Manifest Destiny – that god almighty has given Europeans superior weapons in order to subjugate other Peoples. Most of whom were not warlike, and almost none of whom had standing armies.
This is the notion of Progress. Lands previously untouched by the foul hand of the West had to be incorporated into the European legal systems in order for European aristocracies to rule over them, for the benefit of the Europeans. It is solidly, irrefutably white supremacist to the core, an excuse to commit genocide and feel good, even proud, for doing it. There sure are long lists of names – venerated in every nation overrun by Europeans – of murdering, ignorant scum who slaughtered indigenous Peoples and later became well-respected members of the communities where they dwelt. Some of these genocidal pieces of shit are Saints in the Catholic church.
This Progressive ideology has never been refuted by anyone with a Eurocentric worldview. It enables people who depend on markets for everything they need for personal survival – but who must first find a master to serve in order to access markets – to think of indigenous Peoples as poor, filthy, ignorant savages. Even though the indigenous Peoples are able to hand craft everything they need. Food, clothing, shelter – what they can’t do for themselves, is often available from others, as sharing is much more widespread in Peoples who do not have the concept of “poverty” in their lives. They mostly live in abundance.
Hell – right now, pharmaceutical corporations are falling all over themselves to get at indigenous healers in the field. They are making billions of dollars off of the knowledge and experience of indigenous Peoples, then they have the audacity to cry about “intellectual property rights.”
And to FINALLY arrive at the main point I want to make here – Socialism and Marxism are not in any way different from any of the other ideologies of Progress. Indeed, Marx himself stated that indigenous Peoples must submit to proletarianization or disappear from the world. Anyone who did not slave for a master for monetary gain was a lumpen, and Marx saw them – always the majority of the population in industrialized nations – as reactionary, enemies of the working class. He used much the same rationale we hear today from far-right racists: Lumpen want to take our jobs (scabs). They are criminals. They are no-good layabout alcoholics and drug addicts. They are whores. They are ignorant. As someone who has spent much of his adult life either homeless or in prison, but always struggling against the coercive forces of elite rule, I gotta say a big, ol’ “Fuck you!” to orthodox Marxists.
There are Marxists I have some respect for – libertarian and autonomous Marxists are at least breaking from the orthodoxy of building a Party to centralize power. Some groups that started out as Marxists have evolved to the point that they no longer spout fiery working-class rhetoric. Instead, they humbly ask the communities they rely on for support what their group can do to help them. Likewise, the trend in anarchy so far in the 21st century is for revolutionaries to focus on building autonomous communities instead of taking over industry. Except – of course! – in the industrialized West.
In Europe and North America, the white working classes are terrified of losing the few precious scraps of privilege they’ve been allowed until now. Still clinging to their notion of Progress, orthodox Marxists, Anarcho-Communists, and Syndicalists refuse to let go of racist, outdated 19th century ideas that see them – the true and only revolutionaries – as the saviors of the world. Anyone who dares to challenge them and join the rest of humanity in the 21st century is silenced as “ignorant” or “reactionary” or “fascist.”
I’ve written before that Marxism’s main failure was that the working class never seized control of anything. I’m more of the opinion these days that their greatest failure was in only offering substitutions for the social order they were allegedly opposing. Substitute the Party for the working class. Substitute a Chairman for an emperor. Substitute expansion of the revolution for economic expansion. Substitute “safeguarding the revolution” for “protecting investments.” In short, Marxism has never offered anything but more of the same horrors, with just slightly different jargon. In function, the fascist state is little different than a communist one, and neither system is much different than democracies or republics. They all seek to divvy up the world’s resources for the enrichment of very few people, with treats for their lackeys, jails for the complainers, and bludgeons for those who get in the way. Absolutely nothing has changed in the pyramidal structure of civilized societies throughout history. They are slave systems.
A few notes about this alleged “progress” of his-story
It took the old European colonial powers centuries to overrun the entire planet and install court systems acceptable to their aristocracies. But it pretty much took until the 20th century for whities to look around at the places they had conquered and think “hmmm – wonder what all that stuff is?”
Naturally, being the superior civilization and all, they had no need for anything the heathens had. Not their medicinal herbcrafting. Not their stories and legends about geological events. Not their ambitions, thoughts, and dreams. Not their extensive written histories which receded far, far past the time when the Christian book of bullshit was written. And especially not for their heathen technology, which was the work of demons, after all – amen.
Many of the civilizations annihilated by the invading savages (the conquistador’s forces were at least 95 percent illiterate, and were either kidnapped from slums or taken from prisons) were far superior in every way to what existed in Europe at that time. Some Europeans even marveled at the lack of poverty, the cleanliness and orderliness of city streets, the lack of crime, in peru, mexico, india…
There are irrigation systems in Peru that are thousands of years older than historians are willing to admit there have been people in the Americas. Megalithic ruins all over the world suggest that there was a one-world culture of sea-faring people who built magnificent cities globally, until just after the end of the last ice age, when climatic chaos destroyed many coastal areas. Thus, the universal flood myths in people’s written and oral histories.
I can write this with confidence because much of it is readily – even scientifically, if that’s your religion – verifiable now. As a matter of fact, it’s getting to be common knowledge. This may well be one reason why education systems are being undermined. There will be no way to keep this knowledge out of textbooks in the future, unless there is such tight control of publishing and education institutions that “traditional” narratives remain unchallenged. Religious institutions worldwide depend on this forgetting of the human saga.
Almost all the great dietary “breakthroughs” constantly in vogue in the US have come about as American consumers somehow found out about Ayurvedic and Naturalpathic medicinal traditions in Asia. As mentioned before, pharmaceutical corporations are scouring Amazonia and Africa, looking for new drugs and other biological knowledge from shamans and traditional healers. That’s not Progress, that’s just more plunder. We could accumulate this knowledge ourselves by TALKING TO PEOPLE and LISTENING WITH RESPECT TO WHAT OTHER CULTURES HAVE TO SAY! Fucksake…
I’m gonna go ahead and put this out there; some people suspect that a “lost,” one-world, seafaring culture still existed, here and there, until fairly recently. Until the era of conquest. Their civilization had collapsed, for the most part, and they had to rebuild. I’ll write a lot more about this in the future.
The point I want to make here is; Polynesian Peoples sailed thousands of miles of open, uninterrupted seas at times. It would be more than a thousand years before Western civilization accomplished the same. Some American and Australian indigenous Peoples claim to have sailed to their continents around 30,000 years ago. Most of the older ruins in the Americas are along the Pacific rim. Mayan civilization had a written history that covered 30,000 years, including daily records. Tenochtitlan, the capitol city of the Mexica, was an engineering marvel unmatched by the West: huge stone plazas and gigantic, megalithic pyramids built on a swamp. There are irrigation systems so old, there are no records of their construction, nor memories; in SE Asia, Russia, Australia, South America…noneof this points to savage, primitive people, as Catholic scribes and other racist apologists have told us throughout history.
And even the approved annuls of history tell of the constant attack on knowledge. Libraries burned by invading forces, in Alexandria, Heliopolis, Persepolis, Babylon, Palmyra…We will never know how much was destroyed in the era of conquest, which I suspect has been going on a little longer than we’ve been told.
How far back did all this pointless destruction put the human race, as far as accumulated knowledge? So much for “progress.” Most of this knowledge was lost forever to us, some of it we are actually rediscovering.
One civilization succeeded in preserving some of this ancient knowledge in Buddhist temples, written in archaic forms of Sanskrit. If it isn’t being destroyed by some goddam government or another, that’s where we could find a lot of details about cultures and events mentioned above.
The history we’ve been force-fed is so much just a load of bullshit, i’m not sure if we should believe anything written up until the end of the last century. EVERYTHING the education system has indoctrinated us into accepting is wrong. Fucking goddam Everything. I hope I can convince enough people in the anarchist movement of this that we can actually band together and use the new knowledge – the stuff being rediscovered – to our advantage.
to make things very clear;
the idea of “progressive” history is racist to it’s very core. not to mention complete Bullshit. anything coming from that tradition is nothing more or less than white supremacist propaganda. not just including Marxism, but ESPECIALLY Marxism because of its failure to understand that industrial society is not the Ultimate Achievement of humankind. Free living people do not need to be enslaved through employment in order to find liberation.
As for myself, i want no part of this wretched deathculture. it’s built on lies, fraud, genocide, rape, and plunder. we are capable of creating something so much better. we should get on with building it. now.
The Revolution continues not to happen, despite the presence of many revolutionary organizations in this country. Or is the presence of these groups actually inhibiting revolutionary activity here in the US? I don’t want to examine this point too deeply now, but I do wish to address the first point above, and that is the failure of allegedly revolutionary organizations to gain any following amongst the masses they always discuss at their meetings and in their literature.
The main activity of most revolutionary groups is to educate people about the need to rise up and overthrow the capitalist system which oppresses them. No doubt, they are sincere in this desire to reach out and organize the masses.
Despite appearances to the contrary, most people are too cynical to blindly follow self-appointed leaders — unless they see there is something immediately rewarding to them, personally, in doing so. The difficult part for the revolutionaries is not the actual educational aspects of this form of organizing, but is to be found in the challenge of educating people while not awakening in them a sense of empowerment.
Sure, every revolutionary group would like to see people arise and set alight the Powers That Be – but only if the resulting revolution would result in the rise to power of their revolutionary organization. To this regard, they are not to be seen as enemies of the system, but as yet another faction in contention for State power. The revolutionaries don’t want to smash the State; they want to be the State. This is why so few people – college students, mostly – fall for their schemes.
It’s all but impossible for people to live in this era and not have an opinion about the legitimacy of authority. Almost everyone has run afoul of some code of conduct, law or regulation at some point in their lives, and almost every one of these instances very likely convinced the transgressors of the unfairness of the enforcing authority’s power, or the idiocy of the rule/law/code transgressed. With few exceptions, authoritative power is seen as something rather arbitrary by most people.
This distrust of authority can become a knee-jerk reaction that is difficult to unlearn, as it tends to burn itself deeply into the psyche of the person who it has transgressed. Why do you think we have to attend school for so long? Definitely, it is because we must be trained in obedience. This is why so many kids detest school. They do not desire to submit to an authority that is pre-existent, which they were given no voice in establishing.
Sometime in a person’s life, she must learn to handle the fact that she must recognize some entity’s power over her, whether that power emanates from a religion, school, family, or workplace. This generally does not make the person happy. To most people, it is humiliating.
Looking for a job, for instance, is possibly the least favorite activity most people experience during their lifetimes. Since almost all of us are forced to work by the economic structure society imposes upon us, we manage to struggle through the pain and humiliation as best we can, often with some combination of booze, drugs, pharmaceuticals, religion and sex.
And when we hear someone speak about the need for revolution in our country, even when sympathetic to the message, folks generally tend to hope that someone else will take up the challenge, seeing as how they don’t have the time or energy, or think they don’t have the strength and courage needed to fight against the authorities. This is the weakness the revolutionary groups seek out in their intended victims. If there is a general feeling of something being very wrong in our society, but people feel helpless in the face of the overwhelming task of overthrowing the social order, the revolutionary group has at least a slight chance to convert some of the population into followers.
But, here lies the trick: how does one awaken another person’s sense of indignation at the ills of society, while maintaining that person’s willingness to submit to the group’s purpose? lt would be so much easier for the revolutionaries if they could hypnotize their intended followers into accepting the group’s leadership. This is, of course, precisely what the revolutionaries attempt to do.
By ceaselessly bleating the same slogans, the group can entrap their intended victims into believing that their group is much different than the many other tiny revolutionary groups. Some gullible people will accept the group’s message and begin to adopt that party’s doctrine. If the hypnosis doesn’t take effect, the revolutionaries can always try to use guilt, try to shame people into submission. This works particularly well on people who were raised as Catholics, by the way.
It’s quite a difficult trick, trying to move people to action, while keeping them docile enough to be herded around by the leadership of the revolutionaries. No wonder revolutionaries find so little success in these endeavors. Most revolutionary literature is more boring than can be tolerated. And it is often written in some obscure idiom that is only decipherable to the initiated, much like the Bible. Indeed, the revolutionaries often offer the same thing as the bible-thumpers: salvation!
By joining their movement, people are told, together they can save the Nation, the Earth, the Blue Footed Booby – depending on the focus of the group. Still, there’s that knee-jerk reaction to authority that most Americans never seem to fully outgrow.
Why awaken to one scam, just to be lulled to sleep again by a different one? Why choose Boss 13 over Boss A? This changing-of-the-guard has happened so often that its futility is glaringly obvious, even though this is not bluntly stated in textbooks. The combination of boring obscurity and the spectre of yet another authoritarian regime the wannabe revolutionary groups represent is not a winner in many people’s hearts and souls. In a nation obsessed by the mythology of self-reliance, it’s difficult to sell doctrines which require blind obedience. Not to the people most likely to arise with the rage needed to achieve any drastic changes in the systems that oppress us. In the marketplace of ideas, then – although the System gets much of the blame for what is going wrong – the revolutionary’s attempt to take over State power, rather than overthrow the System and disperse power into the population, does not gain a wide following. The revolutionaries are content to sit on the sidelines of history, and only make a fuss when some weakness in the System presents itself — like the current economic depression.
Inevitably, they will attract a number of people with their own ideas about what should be done about the situation at hand, and the revolutionaries will patiently explain that only their leadership can provide the proper solutions. Maybe not in this lifetime, though.
During the Bush II regime, Junta leaders demanded that leftists, environmentalists, and scientists never condemn the American Way of Life. That is to say, they were willing to go to war in order to secure oil and gas for Americans to use for whatever purpose they desired. As long as American citizens are willing to send their children to war in distant lands to ensure the flow of petrochemicals to the Fatherland, we can rest assured in knowing that there will be plenty of gas for our commutes to work, trips to the mall, and riding lawnmower races. Rather than criticizing consumers about the incredible amount of damage their lifestyles are inflicting upon the biosphere — as the revolutionaries often do — the Bush Junta insisted that it was inexcusable to suggest that the American Way of “Life” was in any way wrong. Which message do you think most people wanted to hear? That their over-consumption of the world’s resources must end before we destroy our planet’s ability to support life, or that everything’s just fine the way it is? Yes, Americans, like most people, are guided more by immediate self-interest than they are by wisdom gained by introspection and observation. This is what the revolutionary groups recognize as well. They do not call for a drastic change in the way we live our lives, they just want the ability to collect and spend the tax money we pay to the government in order to do so. It would be wonderful to think that the emergence of radical environmentalism would have produced some sort of alternative vision for our collective future at this point in the (end)game, but it hasn’t – and perhaps can’t.
Here we are, 30-odd years after the first Earth Day, and the most extreme change most people can envision in their lives is to drive hybrid cars to their wretched, demeaning jobs.
Youth are at least acknowledging the horrors they will have to face during their lifetimes, but even though they are questioning the consumerist lifestyle, what they generally come up with is more of the same – like riding bikes to their wretched, demeaning, collectively-owned-and-managed jobs, with some recycling thrown in along the way.
It’s clear to me that what we are suffering from is a failure of imagination. We cannot envision a world, or a way of life, that is vastly different (personally rewarding, nurturing, co-operative, gentle on our planet) because it is beyond the reach of our imagination.
At least part of the blame for this is the prevalence of Pragmatism in most educated people’s minds. Pragmatism is a way of thinking that is meant to defeat imaginative thinking and stifle creativity. We are told to be “practical” or “realistic.” This is a way of thinking that is inherently submissive. It is how a slave justifies her continued obsequience to her master, or a person trapped in an abusive relationship rationalizes her consent to remain in the relationship. Pragmatism discards the immense possibilities for the future in favor of those more immediately obtainable.
In this era of dwindling resources, Pragmatism is the logic of gradual, mass suicide, which rejects life and its infinite potential. Few of us find any meaning, comfort, or reward in our present lives, yet we cling to them. It’s all we know. Pragmatically thinking, there are powerful forces in place — economics, religion, police, and military, to name a few — which enforce consumerism, to ensure we do not wander astray of the Ruling Powers’ plans for our lives. This is a philosophy of fear. We are afraid of what will happen to us if we turn away from economics as our source of survival. We are afraid of how the police will treat us. We are afraid of the concentration camps and prisons our government is busy building to contend with the future unrest which will arise as the economy continues to take more from the majority of the population and hands it over to those already massively wealthy. But, by abandoning the workers here in favor of cheaper labor overseas, the Ruling Powers have left us little choice but to look for answers elsewhere, often in black markets. Their economic models just do not work, and require government intervention every now and then in order to continue to exist.
While preaching to American voters that it is tragically inappropriate – even evil – to suggest the government provide healthcare to its people (the way almost every nation on Earth already does), the public mouthpieces of the monied elite demand taxpayer money to protect their investment swindles. When the current economic meltdown began to spiral out of control, the voting public expressed their disapproval for any sort of bailout for the embezzlers and con-men responsible for the mess. Most public officials acknowledged that their constituents were voicing their opposition to such subsidies by a margin of 10-1. Yet there was never even a hint of doubt that the swindlers would get the funds they demanded. The needs and opinions of the general public mean nothing to the people in power in this country. Money — huge, mountainous piles of money, inaccessible to the vast majority of the population – is what this economy is all about.
And where is the outrage over this debacle — the greatest single instance of theft in recorded history? The public has moved on to other issues, mostly because they have to work so much harder in order to maintain their standard of living. Also, many of them were suckered into believing that a changing of the guard in the White House could potentially lead to a re-assessment of priorities by the government. What most people desire is a fix to the economic ills the nation is experiencing. They want what they see on TV. They desire to purchase the good things in life — a home and everything that makes a home life comfortable and desirable. They want social change without having to sacrifice their privileged positions as first world consumers in order to achieve it. If we are not capable of envisioning a lifestyle vastly different from the one handed down to us, or the one depicted in advertisements and sitcoms, it’s because any sort of alternative vision of how to organize our lives has not been presented to us.
The one model we have now (Work or Starve!) was originally forced on people through overwhelming military force. Where people did not acquiesce to such a lifestyle, campaigns of genocide were – and still are to this day – conducted until the resisters are unable to continue with their ways of providing for themselves outside of Western economies. Instead of radically transforming our lives so that we can meet our needs without over-taxing what our environment can provide for us, even the Visionaries among us can only seem to envision more of the same — only “New and Improved,” or “Sustainable!” This society is horribly sick and twisted.
Even now, as our elected (or self-appointed) leaders demand human sacrifice (the war in Iraq, the War on Drugs, etc.) to the god of the marketplace, many people refuse to question the values that shape our society. And how can we, when so many of us require pharmaceuticals, booze or other coping mechanisms in order to function in our day-to-day roles?
Our consumer-driven way of life is destroying us as human beings as well as our planet’s ability to support life, yet we still reproduce our places within it, day after wretched day. What the fuck is wrong with us?
This may sound silly, but it’s something that bothered me as a child and pisses me off to this day: Some of the iconic cartoons I grew up watching on Saturday morning served to re-enforce consumerism in the viewers by presenting it as both natural and never-changing. From the Flintstone’s Stone-Age to the futuristic lifestyle of the Jetsons, the lives depicted were little different from the lives being lived by the viewers. The level of technology may have changed from one show to the next, but the consumerist lifestyle was never any different: Work, buy, try to get ahead, buy some more! How can we break out of this cycle, when every element of society forces us to accept it as some sort of natural occurrence?
It’s not enough that some of us attempt to think outside of the proverbial box. We have to think beyond the means used to produce boxes.
The imperative we face now – those of us who can see beyond the mechanisms of the Ruling Powers – is to enact our visions of very different ways of relating to the places where we dwell. In order to do so, we must band together with strong-willed and like-minded people in order to produce working models of how we think life could be, were there not coercive forces severely limiting our options. It’s also important that more than one model of a different society be created. There should be as many as there are people committed to making their visions manifest in reality. There are, after all, many different ecosystems here on Earth, and each provides different challenges for the people who desire to live within them, based on their unique attributes, as well as the amount of damage industrialism has inflicted upon them.
It is not difficult to live on this planet. It has nurtured an astonishing variety of such ecosystems capable of providing for every imaginable need a human population requires in order to thrive. Everything we need is available almost everywhere, if we only know where (and how) to look for it. The greatest danger and difficulty will be found in the struggle to rid ourselves of the control the Ruling Powers possess in enforcing their lifestyle upon the rest of us.
They will use every method of coercion and violence available to them to either force us back into the vast herd of their docile servants, or kill us if we will not be enslaved. As it stands now, they seem to be poised to jettison the bulk of humanity, as tremendous numbers of us are no longer required to fulfill their needs. To use the U.S. as just the most glaring example: Our standard of living has (just in my lifetime) gone from being equal to or above that of any nation on Earth to being “better than Somalia.” The U.S. ceased being a First World nation when it was crushed under the heel of the Reagan regime. And the bottom of this downward trend is nowhere to be seen. Food prices continue to rise, while people’s ability to purchase food continues to erode, even among those still legally employed.
What we truly require in these times are courage and resolve.
We must turn away from slavish obsequience to this dead-end society. Since we are all but blind to any other vision of a society, there is no blueprint or pathway prepared for us to follow in order to establish a radically different method of conducting our lives. But we must turn away from the one we are trapped in now. In doing so, we will suffer – and not a little. But not to do so is suicide.
We can create options for ourselves and our offspring— human beings are clever and adaptable creatures – and we need to do it immediately!
The one issue that continually comes to my mind is the abolition of economics. At the very least, the use of money as a means of exchange and accumulation should be abandoned. There is absolutely no sane argument for continuing along that path. It has only brought about severe limitations in the way most people conduct their lives, while rewarding thieves, thugs, warlords and swindlers. If that is not readily apparent to you, you should remind yourself every day that during this economic debacle, where over one-third of America’s accumulated wealth has evaporated in less than one year, the oil corporations and their subsidiaries are recording unprecedented profits. Then, ask yourself a question: Is this something worth the sacrifice of our children?
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The colonies are self-destructing – it's a scorched earth policy, a war of attrition, so the survivors are left with NOTHING!
racists: Lumpen want to take our jobs (scabs). They are criminals. They are no-good layabout alcoholics and drug addicts. They are whores. They are ignorant. As someone who has spent much of his adult life either homeless or in prison, but always struggling against the coercive forces of elite rule, I gotta say a big, ol’ “Fuck you!” to orthodox Marxists.
