As despotism increases it is only right for the people to exercise the full capacity of their capability to oppose the abuses of the state.
Liberty, tyranny, compliance, rebellion. These are all things that have been at the forefront of American political discourse in recent days, while certainly gaining traction in recent years. Gone are the days when the extent of being considered a radical meant living off of the land and collecting rainwater without government permission when a federalized standing army now occupies and terrorizes American streets; when decades of uniparty expansion has culminated in the epitome of everything that the founding fathers warned about and the total antithesis of the principles which this nation was founded upon.
Now radicalization is simply being a person of good conscience, rebellion is asserting that others should be treated with basic human dignity. And in response, the regime will tell you to comply or die. They will shoot you dead like a dog in the street and then blatantly lie about your character and slander you as a domestic terrorist for your refusal to trade your humanity for “patriotism”.
The time has come for a frank conversation about American resistance and what the spirit of 1776 really means.
While “resisting tyranny” is often invoked as a great catch phrase by those who wish to appear righteous, very seldomly is it ever actually acted upon. More often than not those who preach it the loudest are compensating for their own cowardice. This is particularly observable among right-wing gun fetishists who cling to the Second Amendment like gospel if it means they get to hoard however many firearms they like but suddenly become constitutionally illiterate when the time comes to actually utilize the Second Amendment for its intended purpose, but we digress.
For a nation supposedly founded on the spirit of resistance such a spirit is strikingly scarce when it matters the most. Let’s call the facts what they are, the romanticization of the American Revolution is mostly a mythology. We are propagandized to believe that it was a crusade for liberty and justice championed by men of morals when the reality is, despite the idealism of some of these men of the enlightenment, it was still a conflict waged primarily for power and profit by genocidal slave holding aristocrats who saw themselves above the common folk.
And yet, it is precisely some of these ideals woven into American mythology that are still worth clinging to.
Liberty is not just an empty word. The phrase “All men are created equal” is not abstract.
And while we as a society must still reckon with the atrocities of the past that this mythology attempted to whitewash, it is still worth recognizing what these ideals can be, and how they should be applied in the modern day.
Advocating the cause of Liberty — for all peoples — is still the key principle for which we should contend.
For the apolitical lay person it first means recognizing and reconciling with the fact that everything is political, no matter how much they may not want it to be, and that being apolitical is tantamount to learned helplessness.
To have no concern for the political goings on of the day and the way in which one’s sociopolitical status has a direct impact on every facet of one’s life is to be a slave to the epitome of willful ignorance, completely at the mercy of those that would exercise their political will upon them.
That is not to say that such involvement should be limited to the ballot box, for at this point we know all too well voting has little to no real power to affect legitimate lasting change, unlike other forms of active rebellion, civil or otherwise.
What is typically overlooked when people say everything is rooted in politics is that all politics is rooted in Liberty; or more aptly the constant tug between Liberty and tyranny. People become so compelled by the horizontal axis of the political compass, i.e. left vs. right, that they will often times disregard the vertical axis, that is freedom versus authoritarianism, as if said axis doesn’t even exist. And thus so many people fall victim to ideological inconsistencies and logical fallacy, or outright apathy.
And this is an outcome that those of the ruling class, the predator class, the parasite class, desire to achieve. Through such efforts of propaganda and cultural divide manufactured by social engineering and the mechanisms of oppression the machinery of the state is utilized to ensure the masses remain either divided or complacent to ensure that there is no real challenge to the seats of power and that the status quo goes unchanged.
It is therefore necessary that true Liberty be the principal cornerstone built into the foundation of justice and egalitarianism for which all should contend. For when the restraints of the state are overthrown and the personal Liberty of all individuals is fully recognized is when power truly lies in the hands of the people, the power to be free.
It is easy for people to talk about being revolutionary, it is very much another thing to actually exercise such ideas. Liberty is not simply rested in the actualization of personal autonomy, self ownership, and voluntary exchange — though those concepts are certainly paramount. Liberty also demands liberation. Class liberation as well as social liberation and the recognition of the self-determination of people’s. This is where anti-imperialism, decolonialism, and opposition to the inherent systemic injustices of state institutions should be recognized, and solidarity with the efforts of marginalized communities to free themselves from such tools of oppression acknowledged as necessary.
Such forms of liberation are part and parcel to achieving the Liberty of the individual as well as the collective.
Some still scoff at liberation ideology as if it is not a integral component of the resistance of the human spirit. All people ought to be free and on equal footing, liberation ideology requires recognizing the historical fact of institutionalized oppression and systemic abuse inflicted upon marginalized groups, rooted in colonialism and oftentimes directly pursuant to institutionalized white supremacy.
Liberation ideology is tantamount to decolonialism and as such achieving the cause of liberty for all people. For instance, supporting the cause of black liberation is not a radical leftist ideology — it is a human ideology that acknowledges the historical truths of the exploitation and mistreatment of the black community, who, beyond 400 years of slavery and cultural erasure, still had inflicted upon them the indignities of Jim crow, segregation, ghettoization and systemic disenfranchisement; the coordinated subversion of black lead groups such as the Black Panthers, and orchestrated assassination of black leaders the likes of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Fred Hampton; State subterfuge including plots by intelligence agencies to flood black communities with cocaine and heroin; and the racially motivated destruction of communities of black empowerment such as Seneca Village in New York, Black Wall Street in Oklahoma, Richmond Virginia’s Jackson Ward – once known as “The Harlem of the South”, – and significant racial massacres like those carried out in Rosewood, Florida; Wilmington, North Carolina; Elaine, Arkansas, and many more.
The liberty of a people cannot be achieved until these wrongs are rectified and liberation realized in the form of genuine opportunity for self-determination. This concept ought to apply to every marginalized community that has suffered similar repression; indigenous Americans, the Latin community, and so forth.
Of course the intention is for liberation to stretch to all communities, regardless of race, gender, or other distinguishing factors — for it is the reality that all people feel the weight of government tyranny when basic human dignity is denied by the state. As Dr. King once emphasized: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And so with all of this talk of liberation and liberty, in what ways can these concepts actually be applied? What strategies can be utilized in mass to actuate such radical anti authoritarianism?
In light of recent events and unparalleled excesses of despotism unleashed upon the American people it seems to go without saying that organized direct action is required, and the ineffectiveness of casual protest must be addressed.
It should be clear for all to see at this juncture that marches in mass have little to no effect in swaying the machinations of the powerful. The point of a protest is to affect change via assembly and the expression of grievances. What good is it then when such assemblies are so callously disregarded? When the predatory and corrupt see the people march and express their discontent and carry on with their abuses anyway, what good is it to continue to politely ask tyrants to stop being tyrants? When the enshrined systems of checks and balances are no longer capable of raining in abuse, when the supposed protections of law are weaponized in favor of the establishment and completely fail to enact the slightest bit of accountability, when gangs of violent thugs acting in their capacity as agents of the state terrorize the citizenry with impunity, what other option is there for the people but to rise up?
The language of the Declaration of Independence itself makes very clear —
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
…..
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
While it is my responsibility to exercise prudence and pause, stopping short of advocating armed insurrection, and as such should be noted that our words here are not intended to be interpreted as an endorsement of such drastic measures — as we should all hope that an insurgency on American soil should never come to pass — it is still worth reiterating that such actions are indeed a right reserved by the people preserved in the founding spirit of our nation.
Rather, it should be that the people demonstrate their willingness to assert such rights. When peaceful protest is met with violent repression, the use of chemical agents, physical assault, and at times outright murder it should be understood that a new approach is required for a message to be heard.
It is well within the rights of the people to assemble and protest while armed. It goes without saying that anyone who does so should fully comprehend the weight of responsibility that comes with such a task, understand the need for restraint and discipline, be prepared to act only in self-defense, and know that resorting to violence too hastily can be counterproductive and oftentimes unnecessary when the implied threat of violence and the reality of immediate consequences are recognized by the aggressor. Such a sobering realization is more often than not enough to make the aggressor reconsider their actions.
Such a civil exercise of our constitutional rights would be more effective than most people realize without resorting to armed conflict too quickly.
That being said, such measures are not the only viable solution to have a meaningful impact to force real change. The power of numbers shouldn’t go underestimated, and in a system that views the people as little more than tax cattle and consumers for the corporate factory farm it is exactly that position which the people can exploit for their own benefit with enough effective organization.
When a rigged economy for the predator class is what powers the machinery of the state it is the participation of the people in said economy that enables their own oppression. That is to say, an organized subversion to the corporate state presents itself as one of the most effective tools of resisting tyranny. If participation feeds the machine and the goal is to break the machine, the obvious answer is to stop participating. Turn the states own tactics against them and make the economy scream. Labor organizing and general strikes, blackout boycotts, and mass refusal to pay taxes, effectively holding the economy hostage until demands are met would yield immediate results. All that is required is for the people to organize such efforts mass scale and be determined to withstand whatever temporary resistance the state may put up. Their greed can be turned into one of our most effective weapons.
Finally, perhaps the most effective solution is a mass exodus from state systems all together. For some time now we at The Free Thought Project, as well as our colleagues at The Conscious Resistance and elsewhere have promoted the concept of Exit And Build. We view this as one of the most practical methods for abolishing state tyranny, advocating for the creation of stateless parallel societies, as the name suggests exiting the current system and building a new one.
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, exit and build, much like The Freedom Cell Network, is intended to suggest realistic alternatives and strategies that both individuals and groups can utilize to build sustainability and community outside of the state and encroaching technocracy. Promoting ideas such as community cooperatives, mutual aid networking, counter economics, food independence, decentralized technology, and more, this strategy is meant to empower the people to take their Liberty back into their own hands and step away from the tyranny of the state, actively engaging in steps to help build a better world.
Ultimately, it appears, such tactics are the only real ways to affect lasting change. Rather than being stuck in the cyclical nature of revolution, hence the etymology of the word: to revolve, people must evolve their mindsets and methods of resistance and overall existence away from the archaic concepts of hierarchy and coercion to a more holistic egalitarian approach in which common dignity is recognized, self-determination is realized, and Liberty is actualized.