The Tearing Of The Fig Leaf Dress

I still have a lot of reading to do in order to prepare my next post in the series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  Today's post will therefore not be part of that series.  And it will be a short post.

But I do want to comment on the significance of some of the geopolitical events which have taken place during the last month or so.  In particular, I want to comment on a particular effect of the massive protests which have taken place in Russia against the regime of Vladimir Putin.  Those who have been paying attention to events during the last decade will appreciate the significance of this effect.  Note this: one thing that narcissists always target in their victims is the victims' memory - for it is the ability to remember that enables the victim to recognize patterns of abusive behavior, and to make connections between those patterns and the narcissists' current behavior.  (See this also.)  If pattern recognition can be sabotaged, the narcissist can prevent the victim from taking the steps needed to permanently remove himself or herself from the narcissist.  This is why remembering history - both personal and communal (including national and international) is such an important faculty.

Those therefore who remember much of the commentary in the blogosphere and on a lot of "alternative media" from 2007 to early 2017 will remember how much of that commentary attempted to paint Russia under Vladimir Putin as a Paradise in the making, a model to which other nations should aspire.  Putin was fond of comparing himself to Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister.  (See "Lee Kuan Yew and Russia: Role Model For Hire?", "Lee Kuan Yew Conferred Order Of Honour By Russia's Putin" and "How Lee Kuan Yew and Putin Exposed The Democracy Bogey" for instance.)  The comparison was a conveniently self-serving move for Putin, as Lee Kuan Yew had presided over the re-making of Singapore from a dirt-poor Third World ex-colony of Britain into an economic, scientific and technical powerhouse.  Putin sought similarly to paint himself as the re-making savior of Russia.

Putin's portrayal of himself as a savior was also central to his strategy of expanding Russian geopolitical influence during that time.  Other elements of that strategy included positioning Russia as a leader (perhaps the leader) of the white supremacist Global Far Right, and as a defender of traditional moral and religious values which were supposedly under severe threat due to the decadence of the West and the inevitable "excesses" that are supposedly associated with liberal democracy.  Saving the world from such "strong" threats required, of course, a "strong" leader.  And Putin was supposedly the man!  The project of expanding Russian geopolitical influence was also part of a larger narcissistic strategy of global empire which had first been developed by a rather slimy character named Aleksandr Dugin, and which I began to describe in a series of blog posts titled, "The Revanchism of the Third Rome."

For a while the strategy seemed to work.  This was especially true during the oil shock of the first decade of the 21st century, when oil prices briefly climbed above $140 a barrel on the world market and Russia made money hand over fist as a result.  But that oil shock produced economic effects which undermined the ability of the global economy to support such prices, and the cash boom which Russia enjoyed during that period began to dry up.  That boom is not returning.  Putin has been revealed to be a parasite, and his regime has been revealed to be parasitical.  And the nativist, populist leaders whom the Russian government helped to install in Britain, the U.S., Brazil, and other places have been revealed by the crises of the last two years to be parasites as well, parasites who are willfully, malignantly incompetent.  (To the Brexiteers: how does Brexit feel now?  Y'all happy?)

Now just as a smart wolf relies on sheep's clothing in order to optimize his catching of prey, so too do narcissistic beings (whether persons, families, or national governments) rely on the projection of an image of perfection.  But the underlying reality belies the image.  A wolf is not a sheep, no matter what kind of costume he puts on.  Putin is therefore no defender of traditional moral values if it is revealed that he is a divorced serial fornicator - even though his palace contains a church in addition to a pole dancing theater.  Nor has he turned Russia into a Paradise in the making.  Although he was able to recruit a rather large army of spin-doctors to project an image of perfection to the West, that image was like a dress made of fig leaves.  Perhaps the autumn of his regime has come, for it seems that the fig leaves have turned brown and brittle.  The protests during the first two months of this year have ripped that costume to shreds, revealing the raw flesh of life under Putin.  Eight months ago I suspected that something like this might happen - yet I am no prophet.  Rather, I say again now what I said back then: watch the weak signals.

P.S. Note that the most recent protests in Russia have been decentralized and performed in such a way that Putin's ПОЛИЦИЯ can't do a thing to stop them.  Nor can anyone inject violence into them.  The latest protests are an example of what the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance calls "tactics of dispersion."  These protests show strategic sophistication.  You BLM leaders: are you reading this?  Pay attention!  I'm telling you this as a brother.  How I wish we had done something like this after Stephon Clark was murdered by the Sacramento Police!

Further Developments On Strategy

I am in the process of developing the next posts in my commentary and study guide on Chapter 6 of Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy (From D to D).  Chapters 6 and 7 cover the topic of the role of strategy in strategic nonviolent struggle.  As part of this development I find myself faced with the unavoidable task of reading a large amount of rather complicated material from a number of sources, and I am by no means finished with this reading.  Therefore, my next post on the topic of strategy will be delayed until next week at least.  Future posts on strategy will cover the anatomy of strategic development, the people responsible for developing various levels of strategy, various models of command and control of movement strategy, and the role of training in development of strong movements.

For those who want to follow along with me in my research, here is a partial list of sources which I am studying:

• The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chapter 2), Doug McAdam
• Guatemala Woke Up: A Study About The Social Protests In Guatemala City 2015, Isadora Bennett  (Note that these two works expand on the theme of cognitive liberation discussed in my most recent post in the From D to D series.)
• Corruption and Cognitive Liberation in Russian Environmentalism: A Political Process Approach to Social Movement Decline, Kate Pride Brown.  My, how things in Russia have changed between the time Ms. Brown wrote her thesis and today!
• The Strategy of Indirect Approach (Chapter 11), B.H. Liddell Hart
• The community organizing literature developed by Marshall Ganz
• And, of course, From D to D, How Nonviolent Struggle Works (HNVSW), and Part 3 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action.

As can be seen, that's a large amount of reading to do, which is why it can't all be done in a week.  (That is, unless I want my house to get filthy, my laundry to pile up, and the garden to be overrun with weeds instead of veggies.)  Because quality is more important than "fast-food" quantity, I feel the need to take the necessary time to turn out high-quality posts on this subject.  Those who are waiting for these new posts are welcome to check out my extensive back catalog, although I don't always agree with everything I say...

Navalny's Sentencing Speech

Those who have been following events in Russia know that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to a prison term in a Russian penal camp for his defiance of the regime of Vladimir Putin.  At his sentencing hearing, he gave a hard-hitting speech which summarized a great deal of the sad reality of life for ordinary Russians under the regime of Vladimir Putin.  (Hint: they're not living in Paradise.)  Business Insider has published a condensed translation of his speech, but there are also Russian media outlets which have published what appears to be a full transcript of the sentencing hearing, including Navalny's remarks.  I thought it good to reproduce the full Russian version of his speech here, in case anything happens to those other outlets.  Also, if you want to hear audio of the proceedings, please click here.

And now, Navalny's full remarks (taken from tjournal.ru):

Я хотел бы начать обсуждение с правового вопроса, который мне кажется главным и каким-то упущенным из этого обсуждения. Потому что выглядит все немножко странновато, знаете. Вот сидят двое. И один из них говорит: а давайте посадим Навального за то, что он являлся [в исполнительную инспекцию] не по понедельникам, а по четвергам. А второй говорит: а давайте посадим Навального за то, что он, выйдя из комы, немедленно не приехал к нам отмечаться.

Обсуждают понедельники и четверги, когда он должен был прислать какую-то бумажку. Но хочу сказать о небольшом слоне в этой комнате. Пусть все — и пресса, и люди, — обратят внимание на то, что суть дела в том, чтобы меня посадить по делу, по которому я был уже признан невиновным и оно уже признано сфабрикованным. Это не моё мнение.

Если мы откроем любой учебник уголовного права (надеюсь, ваша честь, вы это делали) мы увидим, что ЕСПЧ является частью судебной системы России. И эти решения обязательны, потому что ЕСПЧ является частью Совета Европы. Я прошел все необходимые стадии судебного процесса, и ЕСПЧ написал, что даже состава преступления в этом деле нет. Дело, по которому я почему-то нахожусь здесь, полностью сфабриковано. Мало того, Россия даже признала решение — половинчато, потому что мне даже выплатили компенсацию. Несмотря на это мой брат 3,5 года отсидел в тюрьме по этому делу, которое еще раз напоминаю, было призанно сфабрикованным. Я просидел год под домашним арестом. Когда мой испытательный срок заканчивался, меня за неделю арестовали, привезли в Симоновский суд, и без защиты продлили еще на год испытательный срок.

Немножко математики: в 2014-м году меня осудили, дали три с половиной года, дали испытательный срок, а сейчас 2021-й год. Но меня продолжают судить по этому делу. Меня уже и невиновным признали, и то что состава преступления там нет, но с упорством маньяков наше государство пытается посадить меня по этому делу. Почему же по этому делу? Уж чего-чего, а недостатка уголовных дел в отношении меня точно нет. Тем не менее, кому-то очень хочется, чтобы я ни одного шага не сделал на территории нашей страны, вернусь, как свободный человек. И чтобы с момента пересечения границы оказался арестантом. Мы знаем кому. Почему это случилось. Причина — ненависть и страх одного человека живущего в бункере. Я нанес ему смертельную обиду тем, что я просто выжил.

Я нанёс смертельную обиду тем, что я выжил. Благодаря хорошим людям — пилотам и врачам. Потом я еще сильнее его обидел — тем, что, выжив, я не спрятался, живя где-то под охраной в каком-то бункере поменьше, который я мог бы себе позволить. А потом случилось вообще страшное. Мало того что я выжил, мало того что я не испугался и не спрятался, я участвовал ещё и в расследовании своего собственного отравления.

И мы доказали, что именно Путин совершил это покушение на убийство. И вот это сводит с ума этого маленького вороватого человека в его бункере. Нет рейтингов — нет поддержки. Этого ничего нет. Выяснилось, что чтобы совладать с оппонентом, нужно просто пытаться убить его химоружием. Все убедились, что он просто чиновничек, которого случайным образом поставили на этот пост, который не участвовал ни в дебатах, ни в выборах. И это его единственный метод борьбы — убить людей. Сколько бы он ни изображал великого геополитика, мирового лидера, его обида главная заключается в том, что в историю он войдет как отравитель. Был Александр Освободитель, Ярослав Мудрый, и будет Владимир Отравитель трусов.

Я здесь стою на этом месте и меня охраняет полиция, Росгвардия, а половина Москвы оцеплена, потому что маленький человечек в бункере сходит с ума. Потому что мы показали, что он не геополитикой занимается, а проводит совещания, как бы намазать трусы химоружием. Главное в этом процессе даже не то, чем он закончится для меня — посадят или нет. Это не сложно. Главное, для чего это происходит — чтобы запугать огромное количество людей. Одного сажаем, чтобы испугать миллионы. У нас 20 миллионов человек за чертой бедности, у нас десятки миллионов людей относятся к тем, о ком говорим — «в Москве еще более-менее, а выйдете за сто километров — там полный швах». Вот у нас вся страна живет в этом полном швахе, не имея ни малейших перспектив. Получая 20 тысяч рублей. И они все молчат, и их пытаются заткнуть вот ровно такими показательными процессами. Посадить вот этого, чтобы запугать миллионы. Кто-то вышел на улицу — посадить еще пять человек, чтобы запугать 15 миллионов.

И главное, что я хочу сказать. Этот процесс, я очень надеюсь, не будет воспринят людьми как сигнал того, что они должны больше бояться. Это же не демонстрация силы — Росгвардия и вот это всё. Это же демонстрация слабости. Просто слабости. Миллионы и сотни тысяч посадить нельзя. И я очень надеюсь, что люди будут все больше и больше осознавать это. И когда они осознают — а такой момент придет, — все это рассыпется. Потому что вы не посадите всю страну. Потому что всех этих людей, которых лишили перспектив, лишили будущего, которые живут в богатейшей стране и получают ноль от национальных богатств… Ноль получают все остальные. Мы только по количеству миллиардеров в мире растем, все остальное падает, понимаете? Я сижу в своей камере и слышу репортажи о том, как подорожало масло, подорожали макароны, подорожали яйца. 2021 год! Страна — экспортер нефти и газа. У нас вся страна говорит о том, что макароны подорожали, мы жить больше не можем. И вот вы этих людей лишили перспектив и вы этих людей пытаетесь запугать. Я призываю всех не бояться.

Судья: вы ничего не сказали по поводу представления.

Ваша честь, вы говорите, что я ничего не сказал по поводу представления. Вот это все представление и есть. И все, что я говорю, — это моё отношение к представлению, которое вы устроили. Бывает такое, когда беззаконие и произвол являются сутью политической системы. И это ужасно. Но бывает еще хуже — когда беззаконие и произвол наряжают на себя мундир прокурора или судейскую мантию. И в этом случае долг каждого человека — не подчиняться тем законам, которые обряжены вот в эти мантии. За вами там, внутри вас — это и есть произвол и беззаконие. Долг каждого человека — не подчиняться вам, не подчиняться таким законам.

Судья: У нас не митинг.

У вас не митинг, у вас моё выступление. Ваша честь, вы не беспокойтесь. Все будет очень хорошо. Вы не перебивайте, пожалуйста, давайте по очереди, пожалуйста. Я высказываю свое мнение. У меня сложилось мнение относительно этого представления, я вам его высказываю. Другого мнения у меня нет, и будьте добры, меня выслушайте.

Ещё раз хочу сказать, что когда произвол и беззаконие оделись в ваши мундиры и изображают из себя закон, долг каждого честного человека — не подчиняться вам и бороться с вами всеми силами. И я, как могу, борюсь. И буду продолжать это делать, несмотря на то, что сейчас, с учетом того, что я оказался полностью под контролем людей, которые обожают все намазывать химическим оружием, наверное, за мою жизнь никто не даст и три копейки. Но тем не менее даже сейчас, даже со своего места, я говорю, что буду с вами бороться, и призываю всех остальных не бояться вас и делать все, чтобы закон, а не ряженые в мундирах и мантиях восторжествовали. Я приветствую всех тех, кто борется и кто не боится. Всех честных людей.

Я приветствую и благодарю сотрудников ФБК, которые сейчас сидят под арестом. Всех остальных по всей стране, кто не боится и выходит на улицы, потому что у них есть такие права, как у нас. Потому что наша страна принадлежит им в той же самой степени, как и вам, как и всем остальным. Мы такие же граждане. И мы требуем нормального правосудия, нормального отношения к нам, участия в выборах, участия в распределении национальных богатств. Да, мы всего этого требуем.

Я хочу сказать, что в России сейчас много хороших вещей, а самая хорошая вещь — это вот те самые люди, которые не боятся, которые не опускают глаза, которые не смотрят в стол и которые никогда не отдадут нашу страну кучке продажных чиновников, которые решили обменять нашу родину на свои дворцы, виноградники и аквадискотеки…

Моё мнение заключается в том, что я требую немедленной свободы для себя, для других арестованных. Я не признаю ваше представление, оно полностью лживо, оно не соответствует закону, и я требую своего немедленного освобождения.

From D to D, Chapter 6: The Need For Strategic Planning

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. These "chosen few" have been working to turn the entire world into a bit of Hell for the poor and afflicted of the earth.  One of these chosen few, a certain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, tried to turn the United States into a bit of Hell on earth for many of us who live here, in the role which his government played in installing a certain Donald John Trump into the office of the Presidency of the U.S.  Now Trump has been deposed - and it is looking increasingly like the same thing may be about to happen to Putin.

As long-time readers of this blog know, the book From D to D outlines how an oppressed people can use nonviolent, yet extremely coercive means to rid themselves of dictators, autocrats, and other oppressors.  From D to D is part of a much larger body of literature on the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance.  Among this literature is the excellent book titled, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, and the book Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic (who was one of the masterminds behind the nonviolent overthrow of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic) and Matthew Miller.  Srdja Popovic is the person I credit for teaching us that "there are only two kinds of nonviolent struggle: the spontaneous and the successful."  It should be obvious therefore that careful strategic planning and analysis is required of resisters who want their movement to be successful. 

So we consider the opening words of Chapter 6 of From D to D, where we read that "if one wishes to accomplish something, it is wise to plan how to do it.  The more important the goal, or the graver the consequences of failure, the more important planning becomes."  And yet Gene Sharp acknowledges that often resistance movements break out in a spontaneous or unplanned way, that resistance leaders "do not bring their full capacities to bear on the problem of how to achieve liberation."  He then asks why it is that people who struggle to free their people so rarely prepare a robust strategy to achieve that freedom.  It is that question which I want to address in today's post.  For Sharp mentions that among the reasons, it is just possible that "inside themselves, [the resisters] do not really believe that the dictatorship can be ended by their own efforts."

It is obvious that a person's estimate of the possibility of achieving a goal will influence his or her strategic approach to attempting to achieve it.  Things that influence that estimate of possibility include the difficulty of the goal, the cost (in money, resources, pain, suffering and other elements) of achieving the goal, and the consequences of attempts that end in failure instead of success.  Sometimes also the estimate of possibilities is influenced by the person's own ability to imagine himself or herself succeeding in achieving the goal.  This ability to imagine may be weak and undeveloped if the goal imagined lies far outside the person's everyday experience.  For instance, if I read that in order to prevent heart attacks, I need to get in 10,000 steps a day, that is something that I can easily imagine myself doing, because walking to get to places is part of my life history.  Therefore I know that I can take 10,000 steps a day (although that might take a while, since 10,000 steps is about five miles!).  But if I'm watching the Olympics on a screen and I see someone clean and jerk 230 kilograms (that's 506 pounds), or pole-vault 20 feet in the air, or ski jump over 400 feet, that is quite far outside of my personal experience.  If someone were to challenge me especially to learn long-distance ski jumping, I would know intellectually that such a thing might be possible - that is, that most humans can train their bodies and minds to acquire the needed skills - but my brain would have very little enthusiasm for the project, due to the likely consequences I'd suffer from making a mistake. 

So we see that one thing that de-motivates people in attempting hard things is the realistic assessment of the hardness of the hard thing.  And yet we do see people who both try and succeed in the hard thing - Olympians who do indeed win weightlifting records, or pole-vault almost 20 feet (6.03 meters if we want to keep things metric), or ski-jump 132.5 meters.  Some of these Olympians look very ordinary, even though they do extraordinary things.  We also see people whose performance in certain domains is very much below average, even though there is no mental or physical defect in these people when compared to the rest of humanity.  As I mentioned previously, one of the main things that differentiates people in these groups from each other is the ability to imagine succeeding in doing the hard thing.  What then influences this ability to imagine, to dream big?

Often the factor that influences this ability is nurture.  For instance, parents who show their kids that they don't really believe in them, who refuse to encourage them, who ridicule their failures and ignore their successes, will tend to produce young adults who struggle to dare big things.  Yet nurture extends beyond the family unit to encompass an entire society.  It is not only parents, but the masters of entire societies who shape the perceptions and imaginations of the people who live in these societies.  When a person belongs to a historically oppressed group within a society, or belongs to a historically oppressed society, that person's ability to imagine, to dream big, to visualize possibilities, will tend to be shaped by the dominant oppressive society.  This is the "third face (or, 'third dimension') of power" identified by Steven Lukes, the face that dictates what people can and cannot believe to be possible.  This face of power is worn by the dominant power-holders in an oppressive society, who train the oppressed to believe that their oppression is not really "oppression" but simply part of an inevitable and realistic order, and questioning that order is unrealistic, or inappropriate, or "just not done."

According to the e-book Honouring Resistance: How Women Resist Abuse In Intimate Relationships, "Whenever people are badly treated, they always resist.  In our experience, people always resist violence and abuse in some way."  (Emphasis in original.)  Note that though this book was written for women in a specific context, the statement quoted above is true whenever people - male or female - are oppressed.  Yet the forms and outcomes of the resistance mentioned in this quote - the strategy or lack of strategy of this resistance - will be shaped by how deeply the oppressed or abused have internalized the "third face of power" of their oppressors.  Where this "third face" has been allowed to deeply infect the imaginations of the oppressed, their resistance will take on strange and dysfunctional forms.

I will now describe what I as an African-American man have seen of the dysfunctional responses of my own people to this oppression over the last five or so years.  To provide readers with my credentials, below is a picture of my desk.  The dark-skinned hand you see in that picture is my hand.  If you are an African-American and are reading this, watch yourself, because you're about to get some very tough love from one of your brothers.

First, the one-paragraph version of my "story of self."  I was born during some of the hottest action of the Civil Rights struggle in the United States.  My dad was a military officer, so I lived on military bases during much of my childhood.  Most of the time I was in environments which were very "white," and as a result, I took a lot of physical and verbal abuse from members of the "dominant culture" who questioned my right to share the same benefits they were enjoying.  My childhood was therefore rather hellish.  When I became an adult, that time coincided with a time in American history in which it seemed that the obvious racism had gone away and I could live in peace.  But my experience with white American evangelicalism showed me that the racism had not actually gone away - it had just gone underground.  And from 2013 onward - when first Trayvon Martin was shot, then Michael Brown, then John Crawford, then Tamir Rice - and so on! - I saw that the same narcissistic, damnable filthy pieces of garbage (Lord, help me to keep this clean!) who had made life miserable for me and my people were trying to bring back those days of Hell on earth.

There was no bloody way I was going to let that happen without a fight, so that's when I started reading literature on resistance, and that's when I began to discover the power and effectiveness of strategic nonviolent resistance.  But such resistance becomes truly effective not when performed by isolated individuals, but by a people collectively organized into an effective resistance movement.  So I tried to do my part to organize that kind of resistance among my people.  What I found in response to my efforts was not the beginnings of liberation, but something else, as described below:

• The Kvetchers' Club

These are the people I met who organized "listening sessions" so that we could spill our complaints about the increasingly racist and oppressive treatment our people were experiencing.  The goal of these sessions was merely emotional catharsis - so that the facilitator (or his or her bosses) could tick a box in answer to the question, "Do you feel heard today?"  Sometimes the catharsis was amplified by reading books about our mistreatment, books written by pessimists like Ta-Nehisi Coates.  One thing about some of these kvetchers was the way they tried to prove how "woke" they were by their profanity-laden, Ebonics-flavored complaints against their oppression.  Yet they never asked, "Ok then - this is unacceptable.  So what are we going to do about it?"  For the asking of such a question was deemed to be unacceptable by those who had been conditioned by the third face of power.

• Uncle Tom-ism

In my personal day-to-day life, this manifested itself as the attempt by some of my brothers and sisters to steer any collective activism of ours into directions that posed no threat to established systems of domination.  This steering also included sabotaging the efforts of anyone who was genuinely trying to build a disruptive, yet nonviolent resistance.  For instance, when Stephon Clark was shot in his grandmother's backyard, there were African-Americans who tried to organize creative forms of protest that would put police departments into a dilemma because these protests did not involve mass picketing, even though they would make the cops look very bad.  Yet there were Black employees of municipal bureaus and police departments who, when they learned of these efforts, tried to co-opt them in order to reduce their value as protest, and in order to instead portray these efforts as part of "a larger effort by people both in the police and in the community to solve our problems together!"  (The only reason why these municipal bureaus and police departments found out about these efforts is because some of these Uncle (and Auntie) Toms went and told them.)

But this Uncle Tom-ism had its manifestation in much larger circles, extending in some cases even to full-blown Stockholm Syndrome.   Cases in point among other members of other minority groups include U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.  But Black Americans are not to be outdone in this department, for we have U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (who is married to a doofus), and Herman Cain - a former Republican Presidential candidate, a former businessman and a former living human being whose true belief in Donald Trump cost him his life.  But the most egregious example of both Stockholm Syndrome and Uncle Tom-ism is Ben Carson, the former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary.  A more pathetic and ridiculous whipped yard-dog of a man would be hard to find.  Almost nothing he says makes sense.

• The Free Lunch-Eaters

 Those who read of Gene Sharp's 198 methods know that among the methods classified as "Nonviolent Intervention" are those methods which construct a self-sufficient parallel society among the oppressed so that they can meet their needs without relying on a dominant society that wants to exploit and oppress them.  This building of self-sufficiency is an essential component of a successful liberation struggle.  And organizing this kind of self-sufficiency is very similar to organizing a potluck picnic or lunch.  Yet one thing that ruins such efforts is people who show up looking for a free lunch instead of a potluck.  I think particularly of one lady whom I met at a time when I was trying to organize a math club for African-American youth, due to the institutional failure of our public schools to adequately teach African-American children.  I tried to make it clear that I was organizing this club as a means of building our capacity to liberate ourselves from a dominant system that was destroying us, and that for this club to work, it would require a collective effort from all involved.  She kept on calling what I was doing a "program" (or "pro-graham" as she used to pronounce it), and she kept on referring to me as a "service provider."  She would also always say, "Honey, organizing is not my gift.  But I support you in trying to help my kid!"  Thanks be to God that I haven't seen that woman in over a year.  But if I ever see her again, I'm going to challenge her.  I'm going to say to her, "Since you refuse to contribute to your own liberation - looking instead for 'service providers' to deliver 'programs' to you - why don't you try going to Winco or Food For Less and loading up a shopping cart full of groceries.  Then try walking out without paying for them, while loudly thanking the store for its 'program'!  But before you do, please call or text me so I can show up and watch what happens to you!"

An additional danger of "free lunch-ism" is that an oppressed people can be bought off by a dominant power willing to shell out a few bucks to create an actual "program".  For the kind of "program" thus created will almost certainly not be designed to correct an actual imbalance of power between the oppressed and the oppressor.  Rather, it will be designed to benefit a chosen few from among the oppressed in order to buy them off.  And frequently, the program will be run by members of the Uncle Tom group who fight for positions as managers of the "program."  Gene Sharp quotes Martin Luther King in calling this sort of thing "tokenism" in Part 3 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action. 

• The Fat, Dumb and Happy

These were the people who simply could not be bothered to become activized, even as they saw the atrocities being perpetrated against their people, for they were too submerged in their own lives and their own comforts.  To be fair to these people, being fat, dumb and happy is not exclusively an African-American weakness.  Rather, I believe it is the inevitable response by any people to having one's basic creature needs met without expecting or wanting anything more from life.  Indeed, the phrase "fat, dumb, and happy" was first used by Herman Wouk in The Caine Mutiny to describe the entire United States of America as it was during the 1940's.  I have a personal example of fat, dumb happiness in the person of one of my cats whose name is Vashka.  His is truly the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind - a mind unspotted by any intelligent thought.  There are only three things he lives for: sleeping, eating, and being petted.  He used to live for a fourth thing before I had him neutered...

But the problem with being fat, dumb and happy is that such an attitude precludes the exercise of active citizenship and makes people vulnerable to being oppressed in the first place.  You can bury your head in the sand only for so long.

As I said, these were the kinds of people and the kinds of responses I encountered in my attempts to organize my own people.  And although these responses were indeed very, very aggravating, I must also admit that they were a kind of resistance to oppression - even if the resistance degenerated into the escapism of the fat, dumb and happy.  It was a "resistance" in the sense that it was a reflexive personal response to an intolerable situation.  Yet it is obvious that this kind of "resistance" does not change anything in the long run.  In order to create the kind of resistance that brings permanent, serious change, there must therefore first be a liberation of the minds of the resisters.  They must free themselves from the third face of power of their oppressors.

I have some hard news for you.  There can be no liberation, no freedom without intentional suffering.  This is especially true in strategic nonviolent conflict.  Those who have experienced cognitive liberation are those who have come to a point in life where they choose to live in truth, no matter what it costs them.  As a Christian, I must say that if you are afraid of paying the price to live in truth, maybe it's because you have no knowledge of God or of the hereafter.  My source of strength and of cognitive liberation consists in this: "Since then the children [that is, human beings] share in blood and flesh, He Himself [that is, Jesus Christ] likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives." (Hebrews 2:14-15)  But whether you are a Christian or not, you must answer for yourself whether it is better to pay the price of living in truth as free people or to choose instead to be a pack of whipped yard-dogs so that you can persuade your masters to be a bit less cruel to you.  

I think again of the example of the Russians (including Alexei Navalny) who right now are resisting both a powerful oppressor and an all-consuming system of oppression.  These people are going for broke.  I also think of the African-Americans who bravely resisted oppression during the 1950's and 1960's, people whose stories are contained in books like Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights, and I've Got The Light Of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition And The Mississippi Freedom Struggle.  Those people went for broke.  We should too.  Only then will we be willing to craft an effective strategy of liberation.

The Shaking of Vladimir Putin?

I've been loosely following the events in Russia over the past week.  For those who don't know, Russia has been rocked by anti-Putin protests sparked by the arrest of Alexei Navalny upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for a poisoning attempt undertaken by Russian agents.  The resulting protests have been so widespread that Russian jails are now running short of space to contain newly arrested protestors.  

Navalny has turned out to be an interesting character.  He and others like him are the inevitable grassroots response to a regime dominated and ruled by parasites.  As scholar Shaazka Beyerle has documented in her book Curtailing Corruption, it is the corruption practiced by the rulers of a crooked regime which frequently opens the door for the kind of effective nonviolent civil resistance that brings in much larger democratic social change.  Navalny has exploited that open door.  But it is important to note that Navalny does not represent a merely reactive response to social injustice.  Rather, he has been proactive - patiently building up organizational capacity over a period of many years in order to wield the organizational power that is now on display in Russia.  Remember that there are only two kinds of nonviolent resistance struggles: the spontaneous, and the successful.  Or, to quote an ancient Internet proverb, "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.  The second best time is today."  Waging a successful liberation struggle requires a willingness to play a long game.

So what shall we make of Navalny's struggle?  There are some encouraging signs.  A movement that can continue even when its leaders have been jailed is a movement that has built strategic depth.  That depth is on display now in Russia.  It should also be noted that the protest movement has achieved one of the hallmarks of backfire - namely, that increased repression by Putin's agents has led, not to a decrease, but to an increase of public expressions of outrage against the Putin regime.  There are, however, some areas for concern.  Navalny's movement will do well to emphasize the need to maintain nonviolent discipline in its protests.  Otherwise, Putin can use protest violence to bolster his claim to be the bulwark of law and order in the same way that Trump tried to make a similar claim during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.  Second, Navalny's movement will need to guard against infiltration by agents provocateurs.  The BLM protest organizers failed to adequately guard against such agents in 2020.  Third, Navalny's movement must stand for something more than just Navalny himself.  Rather, his movement must articulate a clear vision of the future that can survive and inspire even if Navalny himself does not survive.  Lastly, Navalny's movement can greatly amplify its power if it strategically adds methods of economic and political noncooperation to its primary methods of protest.  For those methods of noncooperation (especially economic noncooperation) are far more powerful than mere mass protest, even though mass protest is a flashy, attention-getting tactic.  My advice to movement participants would be to not rely on the West to apply this sort of economic pressure.  As Gene Sharp says in From Dictatorship to Democracy, "Usually no foreign saviors are coming."  A liberation struggle is a time for self-reliance.

This week, I have also done some further reading on Putin, especially as a rather large bit of his dirty laundry is being hung out on the washing line.  For instance, I learned that he (paragon of moral virtue!) has been divorced since 2013, and has had a few mistresses since then.  Makes the stories of Putin's palace more plausible...  (How's that for alliteration?)

From D to D, Chapter 5 (Continued): The 198 Methods

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. Blessedly, these exploiters have suffered a setback as a result of the beginning of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.  However, it would be a mistake for those who are members of historically oppressed groups in the United States to take the incoming Biden administration as a permanent state of affairs in the United States.  Nor should the incoming administration be regarded as permission for these groups to become lazy or complacent.  As the Good Book says, "Do not trust in princes, in a son of a man in whom there is no salvation."  A world free from the tyranny of the few, a world which is shared equally by all of its peoples - this world will not magically come into being by itself.  We who are among the oppressed must still organize or die.  

Recent posts of this series have focused on Chapter 5 of From D to D, titled, "Exercising Power."  This chapter describes some of the characteristics and features of nonviolent power when it is deployed by a group engaged in a liberation struggle.  One point which is mentioned in the chapter is that a nonviolent struggle works through various methods of struggle.  As Sharp says, "The use of a considerable number of these methods - carefully chosen, applied persistently and on a large scale, wielded in the context of a wise strategy and appropriate tactics, by trained civilians - is likely to cause any illegitimate regime severe problems.  This applies to all dictatorships."  This also applies to all other types of agents of oppression as well, including corporations and other holders of concentrated wealth and entrenched privilege.

A list of 198 identified methods of nonviolent struggle is provided in an appendix to From D to D.  Part 2 of Gene Sharp's three part work The Politics of Nonviolent Action elaborates on each of these methods and describes cases both of success and of failure in the uses of the various methods.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that I am still studying these cases, so I cannot provide a definitive analysis of the entire package of methods as described by Sharp.  However, I can draw a few lessons from the cases I have read.

The first observation is that those methods which are reactionary - that is, methods which arise spontaneously as a reaction to a sudden threat - often fail to immediately achieve any lasting change.  This applies especially to the methods which are categorized under "Protest and Persuasion."  Cases of such failures include the failures of spontaneous protest or of spontaneous organization of parallel institutions in Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the 1968 invasion by Russian troops.  Although the emergence of these protests and institutions temporarily (and significantly!) slowed the Soviet Russian consolidation of control, they ultimately collapsed.  However, these actions created a residue of "cause-consciousness" among people that could then be amplified by subsequent actions.  Those actions which are undertaken merely to register dissatisfaction or to blow off steam often fail to achieve anything.  A case in point is that of a farmer who lived near the Miramar Naval Air Station in the 1960's.  He was so angered by the constant jet noise from the base that he used a tractor to plow the word QUIET in large letters in his field.  The base did not become quieter, however.

Those methods which are deployed under the guidance of a wise grand strategy of resistance or liberation (or which emerge as part of a larger struggle with a larger strategic goal) tend to be more successful.  Those people who are part of a liberation struggle that wants to accomplish more than just blowing off steam must therefore examine each method they choose to assess its total contribution to the liberation struggle and its total effect - both immediate and long-term - on the oppressor group.  It must be remembered that the existence of an oppressed group and of an oppressor group is due to a fundamental imbalance of power that exists between oppressor and oppressed.  A fundamental goal of a liberation struggle is therefore either to deliver the oppressed out of the power of the oppressor or to correct the imbalance of power so that the oppressor can no longer oppress.  Some questions to ask regarding methods are as follows:

• Does the method under consideration strengthen the oppressed group - either by communicating and spreading cause-consciousness, or by creating more cohesive bonds between members of the struggle group, or by meeting actual material or social needs of the struggle group?

• Does the method under consideration apply effective pressure to the oppressor?  Note that in democratic or semi-democratic societies, large protest marches and rallies may not pose the same degree of threat or challenge to existing authority as such rallies would pose in a more totalitarian society.  However, such rallies (and other acts of protest and persuasion such as sending symbolic objects to authorities) may sometimes indeed be perceived as a credible threat to established power even in "democratic" societies, as was seen in the heavy-handed police response to Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests which took place in the U.S. and elsewhere in 2020.  Note also that the protests now occurring in Russia against the arrest of Alexei Navalny are an example of the susceptibility of brittle authoritarian regimes to disruption by mass protest.  See this and this also.  It seems that Putin may be losing his grip!  Note, however, that a key to the success of the Russian protest movement will lie in whether or not the protestors are willing to maintain nonviolent discipline.  Violence by the protestors against police will only strengthen Putin's pillars of support and make it harder for the movement to achieve its goals.

• Does the oppressor possess methods or techniques which can neutralize the chosen methods of the nonviolent struggle group?  
• Remember that a major source of the strength of the nonviolent actionists is the contrast which they are able to present between themselves and their frequently violent oppressors.  If these oppressors can inject an element of violence into a nonviolent method used by the nonviolent struggle group, the oppressors can damage the credibility of the nonviolent group.  This happened with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.  Although 93 percent of the protests were completely nonviolent, white agents provocateurs were able to inject violence into the remaining protests, which drew disproportionate media coverage and enabled police to justify extremely heavy-handed action against protestors.  (See this and this, for instance.)  This violence also led over time to a decrease in support for the BLM protests.  Had the BLM protests shifted to methods and venues that precluded the injection of violence, things might have been different.  On the other hand, the protests for Navalny and against Putin are taking place in a context in which Putin's repertoire of countermeasures is becoming increasingly powerless.  Therefore the protests are having a significant impact.

• In addition to injecting violence into a method of nonviolent action, what else can an oppressor do to render the action ineffective?  Three cases come to mind.  Two of these cases were mentioned by Sharp in Part 2 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action.  In one case, during the Sino-Soviet conflict of the late 1960's, a platoon of Chines soldiers began to march to the Russian border every day in order to make a rude gesture toward the Russians.  This gesture involved, shall we say, "partial disrobing."  However, the Russians eventually stopped these gestures when one morning they set up large pictures of Chairman Mao facing the Chinese side of the border.  From that day on, the Chinese soldiers kept their clothes on.  In another case, when faced with hunger strikes by political prisoners, the British government would release these prisoners when they became weak from fasting, then re-arrest them once their strength had recovered.  This became an effective means of breaking hunger strikes.  In much more recent times, the government of Indian Hindu ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has neutralized the power of hunger strikes by untouchables in India.  His solution: simply to let people die; that is, to refuse to care whether they die or not.

• Is the method under consideration the only method which the nonviolent struggle group intends to use, or is it part of a larger suite of diverse methods?  As was written by a science fiction writer I read back when I was a kid, "a one trick fighter is easy to whip if you know two, and I know half a hundred."  Reliance on only one method of action was the great weakness of the BLM protests last year.  

• Does the chosen method contribute to the ultimate strategic goal of the struggle group?  If not, it may be a waste of time from a strategic standpoint.

• Lastly, is the chosen method within the ability of the struggle group at a particular point in time and a particular stage of the struggle?  For instance, if I send a thousand letters to various radio and TV stations, newspapers, and online media outlets announcing that on April 1, 2021, I will instigate a six-week total boycott of Hostess Twinkies as an act of protest against (write whatever grievance you want in this space: _____________________), I'd better have the organizational capacity to deliver on the threat if I don't want to look like a fool come April 2nd.  

As can be seen, the choice of appropriate methods for a nonviolent liberation struggle involves a careful assessment of the potential and drawbacks of each potential method under consideration, as well as a careful understanding of the history of the use of each of these potential methods.  The choice of the appropriate methods of struggle is therefore influenced by the development of an appropriate strategy of struggle.  The next post in this series will, God willing, therefore begin an exploration of Chapter 6 of From D to D, titled, "The Need For Strategic Planning."

A New Day, And A Blue Tie!

 

Public domain image taken from Wikimedia Commons

Public domain image taken from Wikimedia Commons

Welcome, President Biden and Vice-President Harris!  My prayers are with you!