Climbing Out Onto The Skinny Branches

Those who have read my blog over the years know that at present I "own" two cats, and that the reason why these cats live with me is that a neighbor foisted them off on me.  (However, I now wouldn't trade them for the world.)  When they were kittens, they frequently got themselves stuck in some of the trees in my backyard as they indulged their impulse to climb things without having learned how to get themselves back down to the ground.  Therefore, from time to time, I had to get a ladder and fetch my cats out of some of the sticky situations they got themselves into.  Eventually they figured out that what goes up must also learn to get down, and they learned to get down out of and off of various high things.  So an evening came in which, as I was leaving my house to go to the store, I looked behind me and saw two cat heads on the roof staring down on me in the moonlight.  Rather spooky it was, but by then I was confident that they'd find their way safely back to earth.

Now a competent cat weighing a handful of kilograms can climb trees and traverse branches that a human weighing several dozen kilos would (or at least should) fear to tread.  And there's a reason why the phrase "going out on a limb" has metaphorical punch even after decades of use.  So it surprised me (and the world) to hear that Vladimir Putin had gone out on a rather skinny limb a few weeks ago with the announcement that Russia had developed the first coronavirus vaccine approved for widespread use.  In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up around 2,000 points, and other stock exchanges rose significantly.

An effective vaccine would be welcomed in many corners, and if Russia were the nation to discover such a vaccine, it would certainly boost Russian prospects of being regarded as the most awesomely cool nation on earth.  It would also help Putin's image not only as a physically robust national leader who goes hunting bare-chested in Siberia in the winter, but as a chess master, judoka, expert strategist, and totally awesome dude without equal in the world.  ("Who is like the beast?  Who is able to make war with him?")  But almost immediately, the branch onto which Putin had climbed (bringing his nation with him) began to show some signs of cracking.  For starters,

• The development of this vaccine has been horribly (and irresponsibly) rushed.  
• A number of sources state that the vaccine developers would only have been able to complete Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials within their stated timeframe of development.
• Some sources (such as this and this) state that the reality is that the Russian vaccine has not even yet passed Phase 1 trials.

Add to this the lack of transparency to date in Russian data on the trials of their vaccine, combined with the unfortunate tendency for bad things (falls from windows, poisonings by tea, etc.) to happen to Russians who provide information or criticism damaging to their country's prestige, and one can see why prudent people don't want to climb out onto the branch Putin is occupying.  And even Putin's government has slightly, ever so slightly, walked back some of its rhetoric lately, saying now that the Russian vaccine is now "ready for mass trials."  Some of those trials will take place on people who are not Russian and who don't want to climb onto any skinny branches, but who may find that they have no choice.  For instance, autocrat Philippine president (and Putin groupie) Rodrigo Duterte has stated that large-scale inoculations of his nation's people will begin in October, although Duterte himself won't volunteer for a shot until he sees how well his countrymen respond.  My, what courage!

From these events, we can see the following things:

• First, we see what world leaders and economic ecosystems Putin now has in his pocket.  With a net worth of $200 billion, Putin might have a surprising number of people in that pocket.  Some of those people might be behind the most recent stock market rallies - rallies which are by now completely divorced from the actual on-the-ground economies of the nations these markets are supposed to represent.  Watch also for national leaders who rush to volunteer their populations as guinea pigs for the Russian vaccine.
• Second, we see the harm that the damaging and toxic mix of malignant narcissism and unethical competition can produce.  I am reminded of YouTube videos of Margaret Heffernan discussing the damaging effects of competition on the creation of things of genuine economic value.  One of the reasons for the damage is the intense pressure felt by people in highly competitive environments to overstate their accomplishments, to plagiarize the work of others, and to outright fake results.

As you can tell, I am skeptical about Russian claims of awesomeness in any domain just about now.  But I am going to provide a caveat and thus position myself on the lowest possible skinny branch in case I am proven wrong.  So here it is: I am not a doctor or biologist.  But I can be persuaded by verifiable results.  Let's see how the Russian vaccine developers do when they are judged by a jury of their peers.  As for now, I am still wearing a mask.

Report on CANVAS Summer Academy

I had the opportunity to attend a recent online Summer Academy in strategic nonviolent resistance hosted by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS.  This online academy featured speakers and leaders from several nonviolent liberation movements around the world, and showcased the large diversity of nonviolent tactics being employed by men and women waging struggles for liberation or democracy under difficult and hostile regimes.

The first lecture presented a troubling statistic - namely, the number of formerly democratic regimes which have slid toward authoritarianism in the last ten years.  (Yes, the United States is in that list!)  That fact motivated the following goals for the Summer Academy:

• Understanding the principles of successful nonviolent movements
• Learning lessons from those movements which fail

The first lecture's host, Srdja Popovic, made a statement that he repeated several times during the workshop:

"There are only two kinds of nonviolent movements: those that are spontaneous, and those that are successful."

This highlighted the need for careful planning and development of wise strategy as a prerequisite for success.  One of the readings that went along with that first lecture was "How Protests Become Successful Social Movements."  Here we could see how, although protest can be an important element of a social movement, it is not enough in itself to guarantee movement success.  (Read the article if you want to find the additional required ingredients!  Also, note that "leaderless movements" like the Occupy protests are not likely to achieve anything without a means of clearly deciding and stating what their goals are.)

During the first lecture, a movement leader from another country discussed how his organization was opposing his country's authoritarian leadership by highlighting the regime's corruption.  Corruption is almost always the soft underbelly of authoritarian regimes, since these regimes are created by strongmen in order that the strongmen may receive all the economic and political benefits of the societies they rule while giving nothing back in return.  The spokesman for this movement organization talked about how in many towns and villages in his country, it is hard to get clean water because of burst water delivery pipes which the government has refused to fix until recently.  This man's movement organization therefore started printing large, highly visible "burst certificates" (sort of like a "birth certificate" notifying the world of the birth of a water leak)  and posting them next to broken water mains in locations which motorists could see.  This motivated the government to start fixing their water mains!

The second lecture discussed how social movement organizers are adapting to organizing during the current COVID-19 pandemic.  One organizer from Latin America described how her movement organization has provided basic health care education and services like free masks to poor people - showing the role of parallel institutions in building a successful social movement.

The third lecture was focused on the anti-racism protests that have taken place since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.  We heard from two Black Lives Matter organizers, and we also heard from Will Dobson, fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy and author of The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy.  Mr. Dobson spoke first, and his assessment of the Black Lives Matter protests was highly positive.  He spoke of the large shifts in public awareness and opinion over the last two months as a result of the protests, and he also spoke of how Donald Trump's response to the protests has actually hurt Trump's reelection prospects.  However, when the BLM organizers spoke, some of us (myself included) questioned them about whether they had created effective structures for weeding out violent infiltrators from their protests, whether they had a training program for participants in strategic nonviolent struggle, and whether they had explored other methods of movement struggle besides mass protest rallies.  Their answer was that they have indeed begun to explore these things, and there is a Black minister in Los Angeles who has started doing nonviolent resistance trainings in the style of the Reverend James Lawson, who conducted similar trainings in the 1960's. (Note that I called them "nonviolent resistance" trainings - not just "nonviolence trainings".  The word resistance is always an essential part of the phrase "nonviolent resistance.")

The last lecture was the most unexpectedly interesting, in my opinion.  It was titled, "Creative Activism, Dilemma Actions, And The Use of Humor - Hilariously Groundbreaking Tactics."  Sophia McLennen of Penn State University was the guest speaker.  To provide a bit of background, the OTPOR! movement (of which Srdja Popovic was one of the leaders and original organizers) depended on the use of humor as a key tactical weapon to de-legitimize Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.  It turns out that Sophia and Srdja have done some original research that shows that the use of humor and other dilemma actions greatly boosts the success rate of resistance struggles.  Moreover, dilemma actions and "laughtivism" can be used to de-legitimize the corporate or State-owned media of the oppressor.  Laughtivism can be used successfully against Fox News, One America, and other far-Right or White supremacist media, for instance...

An example of a dilemma action: toys protest corruption in Minsk.

Did the cops arrest the toys?  How did that make them look?

Image from Radio Free Europe article dated 10 February 2012, 

retrieved from Radio Free Europe on 16 August 2020

I am planning to write a series of posts walking us through a key text on strategic nonviolent resistance.  The name of the text is From Dictatorship to Democracy, by Gene Sharp.  Those who want to read ahead can download the print copy of the book here, or they can download an audio recording of the book here.  Remember this quote from Srdja: "There are only two kinds of nonviolent movements: those that are spontaneous, and those that are successful."

The Tribes of the Agents Provocateurs

In a number of posts (here, here, and here for instance) I have asserted that the majority of violence which has taken place at Black Lives Matter protests in the United States over the last two months was caused by White infiltrators.  I have therefore argued that basing a nonviolent resistance struggle solely on the tactic of mass protest rallies and marches is a dangerously short-sighted strategic approach.

But some may wonder whether my assertion that mainly White actors have been responsible for the violence is accurate.  Therefore, I'd like to share the following news stories:

• "‘Umbrella Man’ went viral breaking windows at a protest. He was a white supremacist trying to spark violence, police say", Washington Post.  Note that the "Umbrella Man" made his appearance at one of the first Minneapolis protests against the murder of George Floyd.
• "White Women Tagging ‘Black Lives Matter’ On Starbucks Caught By Black Protestors", BET.
• "Nearly two dozen arrested in Richmond as weeks of peaceful protest turned violent over the weekend," Washington Post.  Note that the mayor of Richmond identified the violent instigators as White supremacists who were outsiders to the community.
• "Why are white supremacists protesting the deaths of black people?", The Conversation.
• "A white supremacist channel on Telegram encouraged followers to incite violence during police brutality protests by 'shooting in a crowd,' according to internal DHS memo," Business Insider.
• "Violence mars Portland protests, frustrates Black community," AP.  Note that the troublemakers are not content to limit themselves to causing trouble at protests, but are part of the White violence against minority businesses and neighborhoods in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests.
• "Finley: Violent white protesters hurt cause of racial justice," The Detroit News.
• "Meet the ‘Boogaloo boys,’ the violent extremists attracting members of the US military," Task and Purpose.
• "As Trump warns of leftist violence, a dangerous threat emerges from the right-wing boogaloo movement," Washington Post.  Note that members of the Boogaloo movement have been linked to the shootings of police and Federal security guards that took place after the murder of George Floyd.
• "Far-right groups like the “Boogaloo” and “O9A” continue to attract troops and veterans," Military Times.  Note that the senior officers of the U.S. military recognize the presence of a far-right element in the U.S. military as a serious problem.  Note also the link between these far-right elements and Satanism.
• "A woman accused of throwing Molotov cocktail at a police car suggests a protester gave her the device," CNN.  Note that although this woman claimed that Black protestors gave her the Molotov cocktail, the police who investigated her discovered that she was lying.  What gave her away was the presence of her fingerprints and the fingerprints of a friend of hers on a note about glass bottles...

A few comments.  First, I am extremely grateful for the many White people who have shown themselves to be both decent and moral in their support for communities of color during the evil reign of Donald Trump.  I am grateful not only for those White people who are sincerely standing for Black lives, but also for those White people who were sincerely revolted by the news that Donald Trump's goons were ripping Latino children from the arms of their parents at the southern border and putting these children into cages and detention centers.  I am a Christian, but I am grateful for those White people who sincerely opposed Donald Trump's attempts at a Muslim travel ban.  I am grateful for the Wall of Moms, the Wall of Dads, and the Wall of Vets.  When I think of the Wall of Vets, I am especially grateful for its founder, a White vet who allowed himself to be beaten by Trump's Homeland Security goons in order to stand against racism and fascism.  I am grateful for those members of the dominant culture who refuse to enjoy the passing pleasures of the sin of being made great at the expense of their fellow human beings on the earth.

However, it must also be noted that there is a deeply dysfunctional element in the American dominant culture.  This element consists of people who have based their entire lives and their entire identity on the power they have been able to exercise in order to dominate, bully and ruin the lives of their intended victims.  They are the forever "Cowboys" - unreconstructed, unreconstructable, and unrepentant - who demand that the rest of us play the role of the forever "Indians" or the forever "slaves".  A woman I recently heard in an online workshop said that bullies have thin skins.  I would also add that bullies are not really sure they exist in the world.  Being afraid of their own ghosthood, they can only reassure themselves of their existence by trashing someone else's life.  The Boogaloo movement, for instance, is one of those far right movements who are trying to push society into chaos so that they can build a fascist, White supremacist empire out of the ashes.  These are the Elliot Rodgers of the world, who seek to ruin in order that they may possess.  Rather like Satan, aren't they?  And if communities of color base their struggle solely on the tactic of mass protest, guess who will come in to hijack the protests!

Therefore, a key response of the historically marginalized, of the communities of color, of the communities which have not been historically dominant must be a response of collective self-organization.  By organizing ourselves to meet our collective needs, we build our social power - power which is to be used not to dominate others, but to help ourselves fulfill our own ontogeny, and to help other afflicted communities fulfill their ontogeny.  And it is collective and sustained self-organization that is the foundation of successful nonviolent resistance movements - not mere protest.  Study Gandhi for instance, and you will discover not only the acts of mass noncooperation against the British, but also his insistence on what he called the constructive program - a key part of an oppressed population liberating itself from oppression by learning to rule itself.

So this brings me to my last comment.  Given the weakness of struggles that rely solely on mass protest, and given the ease with which both State and non-State opponents can hijack such struggles, I once again urge the Black Lives Matter organizers and the organizers of the struggles of other communities of color to look beyond mass protest as your go-to tactic.  Broaden your knowledge of strategic nonviolent resistance.  Please read some good books on the subject.  (Maybe one of my future posts will be simply a list of recommended good books!)  And please learn the art of strategy!

I leave you with one comparison from military history.  World War 1 was almost lost by the British because of one man, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.  Haig assumed command of British troops in 1914, and proceeded to launch a number of offensives against the defensive German lines.  For over three years, his go-to strategy was to try to wear the Germans down by attrition, and to try to punch a hole in German defenses so that his horse-mounted cavalry could charge to victory.  Such a strategy might have worked in the 1800's...but by World War 1, there were these inconvenient little things called barbed wire, machine guns and heavy artillery.  The Germans also used a tactic known as defense-in-depth.  Haig became highly predictable in his tactics, in the same way that having mass protests day after day for over 60 days in the U.S. in 2020 has become highly predictable.  Therefore, the Germans played rope-a-dope with him, costing him several hundred thousand men.  Britain was saved from defeat by the entrance of the United States into the war.  But did Haig learn from his mistakes?  Not at all, according to a quote of his from 1926.

Basing a strategic nonviolent resistance or liberation struggle solely on spontaneous, poorly-planned mass protest rallies in these days should therefore seem about as stupid as relying on horse-mounted cavalry in modern warfare, shouldn't it?

2nd Repost: The Libertarian Lifeboat

COVID-19 continues to march through the "Land of the Free," leaving a trail of death, joblessness and bankruptcies of small and large businesses.  The United States of America is reaping the fruits of having allowed itself to become "Murdochified."  And in case you are one of those people now suffering hard times who thought a few months ago that it could never happen to you, I've got a story for you.  The story will help you to figure out what it is that you bought when you made a deal with the Devil - that is, the devil of libertarianism, greed, hatred of social safety nets, and selfishness.  This story will also be of benefit to those of us who have had to put up with a Murdochified country for the last three and a half years.

The version of the story which I am linking here is actually its second incarnation.  If you want to read the original version, click here.  And I will have a more research-heavy original post this weekend, God willing.

Repost: The Recovery of Subversive Virtue

I am running a bit ragged this weekend, so I won't have time for a research-heavy post.  However, if you want ideas for a low-risk way of resisting a dominant oppressive system, please check out my post from a few years ago titled, "The Recovery of Subversive Virtue."  See you next week, God willing.

An Open Letter to the Black Lives Matter Organizers

I am writing as an African-American who really wants us to win our struggle for liberation and who really wants us to succeed in removing Donald Trump from office.  But I am afraid that events that took place yesterday in Seattle may make it more likely that we will lose.  This is why I am writing today.

You know, I am sure, that the world is watching the ongoing protests against the murders of unarmed Black Americans in this country and in Portland.  These protests fall within a certain category of tactics of nonviolent resistance.  (By the way, when I talk about strategic nonviolent resistance, I am not talking about Martin Luther King!  Rather, I mean what Jamila Raqib of the Albert Einstein Institution is talking about in her TED video.)  In the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance, nonviolent resistance actions can take two forms: tactics of concentration and tactics of dispersion.  Tactics of concentration include mass rallies and street protests.  One problem with street rallies is that they can be hijacked by agents of the State who incite violence (including property destruction) in order to discredit the protesters by claiming that they are anarchists.  Thankfully, that narrative had begun to shift because of the Wall of Moms in Portland (joined lately by the Wall of Dads and the Wall of Vets).

But in Seattle yesterday, violent infiltrators disrupted what should have been a peaceful protest and instead provided the world with images that play right into the hands of Donald Trump.  Those images make us look like criminals and undermine our attempts to discredit the system that is oppressing us.  Note also that the NAACP has commented on how what started as a Black expression of struggle against White oppression has been dangerously hijacked.  The protests are no longer really about Black lives, but about attention-seeking White people.  As I said above, I support the Wall of Moms - especially because they have put themselves at the service of their Black and Brown neighbors.  But I agree 100 percent with the NAACP condemnation of the anarchists and other agitators.

Therefore, I am begging you as a fellow African-American to shift your resistance to tactics of dispersion.  I'd also like to ask that you please stop holding mass rallies and protests unless you create a system to make sure that everyone who shows up will remain nonviolent.  This applies especially to White people who show up at a protest, because most of the violence (including property destruction!) that has been perpetrated at protests over the last two months was done by White people.  If you want to see why nonviolent discipline is so important, please watch this video by Professor Erica Chenoweth (and this one also).

I would also ask that you all study not only the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance, but that you also study the literature on effective community organizing.  This falls right in line with what the family of George Floyd asked of us all in the aftermath of his murder by the police.  Note that George Floyd's brother condemned the violence that had erupted even in the early days of the protests over George Floyd's murder, and he demanded that those who want to see changes happen work in a positive manner to make those changes happen. 

I have not suffered like George Floyd's family (or Tamir Rice's family, or Michael Brown's family, or Stephon Clark's family, or Breonna Taylor's family).  But as a kid I was exposed to a lot of intense racist physical bullying.  I went to White churches where the racism was more subtle, yet just as damaging.  I've been followed by police and even stopped by police simply because I am Black.  I've suffered workplace harassment.  To me, it seems that Donald Trump wants to bring back an America in which it's okay for white supremacy to treat us all like trash.  Trump has been losing this year because of his incompetence.  But if he wants to try to rescue his reelection by picturing himself as a law-and-order president protecting the world from chaos, why do you want to hand him situations where he can "prove" his claims?  I don't want to suffer another four years of his garbage.  Do you?

And if you are White and you are reading this, please stop showing up to BLM protests unless you know that you can control yourself and not vandalize property or provoke law enforcement officers by stupid stunts like throwing firecrackers or other objects at police.  You're not the heroes you seem to think you are when you pull such stunts.

Thanks to all who take the time to read this.

A Teaching Moment: What Is Backfire?

If you've been following Donald Trump's attempts to quell peaceful protests against police killings of African-Americans, and if you are wondering how to make sense of it all, I'd like to offer a bit of assistance in explaining the dynamics of nonviolent civil resistance.  By the way, I am in no way an expert.  I've just read a lot of books over the last three and a half years ;)

So from time to time over the next three months, I'll be pointing out certain elements of what's going on in the United States right now, and I will be using and explaining terms from the literature on civil resistance.  Today's term is backfire.

What is backfire?  It is the phenomenon that occurs when an oppressor tries to crush a nonviolent movement by means of violent State repression only to find that the violence perpetrated by the State makes the citizens of the country even more disgusted with the oppressing government.  When an oppressor's repression backfires, three things happen:

• The oppressor's legitimacy in the eyes of the country's citizens decreases
• The nonviolent movement actually becomes stronger and bigger as people formerly on the margins join the movement as an expression of their disgust with the oppressive regime
• And the oppressor's pillars of support are further weakened.

Backfire works best when the civil resistance movement maintains strict nonviolent discipline, including abstaining from property destruction. Moreover, skillful nonviolent resisters are able to amplify backfire through a wise selection of tactics.

The backfire dynamic is strongly at work in the confrontations between Trump's Federal storm troopers and unarmed citizens in the Black Lives Matter protests.  Before Trump sent Federal agents to Portland, the BLM protests had been declining.  But Trump's move not only highlighted the brutality of the Federal thugs, but it also provoked a "Wall of Moms" who came out to protect their children from attack by forming a human shield.  That "Wall of Moms" has now been joined by a "Wall of Dads" armed with leaf blowers to combat tear gas fired by the Feds.  And there will soon be a "Wall of Vets".  Far from crushing the BLM protests, Trump has only made them grow bigger and more energized.  Moreover, these "Walls of Parents" are spreading rapidly to other cities.  And a Republican former Homeland Security director has openly criticized Trump for sending Federal troops uninvited to American cities that did not ask for these troops.  These developments show that Trump does not understand backfire.  They also show that neither he nor his current DHS secretary are exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Want to learn more about backfire?  Read Making Oppression Backfire by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies.  You can download it for free.

By the way, please also read my two previous posts.  They contain some necessary criticism of the ICNC.