The Jewel And The Dragon

I need to keep my promises, and one of those promises is to finish writing a concluding series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy, a book which deals with the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance.  But this past week I began to try to build new habits around time management, and the long-range goals I am trying to accomplish with my new time-management scheme include being in bed by 10 PM every night and getting really good on the guitar.  I have about an hour and a half of practice time scheduled for tonight...

Next week, God willing, I will have another post ready.  One thing I do want to mention in the meantime is that I have recently commented several times on this blog about how well the nations of the East (and I mean the Asian nations, not Russia!) have done in navigating global crises which have shown the weaknesses and fault lines of the nations of the West, including the United States.  One particular crisis which the Asian nations have navigated particularly well is the COVID-19 pandemic.

But now it seems that agents of the Global Far Right have infiltrated Asian societies in an attempt to sow division and discord.  This is especially true of the proponents of anti-vaxx (that is, anti-vaccine) propaganda who have made their voices heard in realspace and in cyberspace over the last few months.  One doofus who comes to mind is Brad Bowyer, who was born a British citizen but who managed to insinuate himself into a leadership role in a political party in Singapore - until he made a remark comparing Singapore's efforts to ensure vaccination compliance to the efforts of Hitler to round up Jews for extermination.  That remark has recently cost him his political position.  Let's see if he manages to bounce back.  And let's see if he is successful in his attempted cultural poisoning of Singapore.  Lee Kuan Yew would never have tolerated him.

Mr. Bowyer himself.  Image taken from the Straits Times

Singapore is not the only Asian nation suffering from the attack of the lunatic fringe, as seen in the following articles: "Anti-Vaxxer Propaganda Spreads in Asia, Endangering Millions," "Coronavirus vaccine: anti-vax movement threatens Asian recovery," and "The Inherent Racism of Anti-Vaxx Movements."  Note that last article, and note the murderously genocidal motives of the promoters of anti-vaxx propaganda.  Note also that one of the chief sources of this propaganda is Russia.  Perhaps the common people of Russia are distressed by the fact that Putin can't seem to organize a successful effort to put out the wildfires which are destroying their homeland.  They can take comfort in the fact that their taxes are being used instead to try to destabilize the rest of the world.

The Scorching of the 45th And Beyond

 This is another quick post.  In view of the record-breaking heat across much of the Global North this summer, I thought it might be instructive to document the effect which that heat has had in my particular locale.  So here are a few pictures from my garden and backyard, along with some comments.  These pictures were taken about ten days ago, and they document the damage which was caused by the Pacific Northwest heat wave of late June.

Heat stress suffered by a shade tree in the backyard.  Note the yellow, dead leaves.

Another view of the same tree.

Damaged leaves and fruit on the apple tree.

Heat damage suffered by a hazelnut tree.  Again, note the discolored leaves.

Heat injury to a conifer.  Note the dead branches and withered needles.

What the heat did to the kale.  The scorched leaves are discolored.

About two weeks before the heat wave of late June, I planted onion seeds.  The heat killed most of them.  Not all news is bad, however.  Some of the hardier and more well-established plants in the garden continue to produce, as seen below:

The artichoke plant turned into a space alien!

The summer squash did well.  The zucchini (not shown) - not so much.

Whoa!  Vashka!  How'd you get into this picture?!

And now for some comments.  I live just a bit north of the 45th parallel of latitude in the United States.  Temperatures this summer have been at least ten degrees above historical averages for much of the last two months.  This is true of nighttime temperatures as well.  The fact that nighttime temperatures have been so high is an undeniable proof of the effect of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since carbon dioxide blocks longwave infrared radiation (IR), but is transparent to shortwave IR.  This means that as the earth warms during the daytime because of absorbed shortwave IR, it is increasingly unable to release the heat thus stored when the sun goes down, because the heat released from the ground (and from hardscapes in urban heat islands) is radiated as longwave IR.  That is why such low-tech adaptations as opening windows at night are less effective now than they used to be.

The fact of anthropogenic - that is, manmade - climate change is undeniable.  However, as we have seen during the last year and a half, there are two potential responses to the undeniable.  The first response is to make peace with reality and to try under that peace to live gracefully with reality.  So we have nations such as China.  China is actively researching collective, intelligently-planned ways to adapt its society to mitigate the local effects of a warming climate.  The Chinese are especially interested in using natural, low-tech means of lowering ground-level temperatures in urban areas, as documented in a BBC report titled, "Can You Cool A House Without Air Conditioning?"  

Then there are nations such as the United States, in which a distressingly large percentage of the population have given themselves to national narcissism.  For the sake of their damnable goal of white supremacy they are willing to sacrifice reality on the altar of their narcissism.  Their last, best chance of achieving their goal of total domination of the world was embodied in the presidency of Donald Trump.  But Trump made a serious (even though willful) mistake in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, so we got a bunch of doofuses who refused to acknowledge the mistake and refused therefore to treat the coronavirus pandemic with the seriousness it deserved.  These doofuses showed up mask-less and armed to the teeth at the state capitols of states with Democratic governors in order to "liberate" their states from mask mandates and other public health directives which these governors put into place to attempt to deal with the pandemic.  These idiots have also by and large refused to get vaccinated in 2021, as documented by a news story titled, "No, We Didn't Get The Vaccine...We're Republicans" and another story titled, "GOP Legislators in Missouri Oppose Vaccine Efforts as State Becomes COVID Hotspot."  You see, to admit the reality and seriousness of COVID-19 would be to admit that their chosen hero majorly dropped the ball.  And as good, textbook cases of narcissism, they cannot admit any mistake whatsoever.

This is why I believe that it will be very difficult for the United States to mount a coordinated, collective, realistic response to the climate crisis which has now begun to severely bite us.  For the Republican/white supremacist/evangelical devotion to predatory capitalism and unrestrained economic growth at any cost represents a mistake of much longer standing than the mistake of backing a doofus who dropped the ball in dealing with a pandemic.  If the MAGA crowd were not willing to wear masks, they sure won't be willing to deal intelligently with a climate crisis which is beginning to destroy their livelihoods.  They are a textbook case not only of narcissism but of cultic thinking.

(One note: I am almost finished with my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  I want to do another series of posts which are coordinated around a central theme, but I can't decide which theme I want to tackle next.  One theme that appeals to me is the theme of how cults - both religious and secular - establish themselves in a society.  It seems to me that this would be especially applicable to the United States, which seems to form cults as easily as some bodies form tumors...)

Lastly, I want to talk a bit about the use of natural mitigation strategies for local climate change effects.  From the pictures above, one can clearly see that just planting trees may not be enough to guard against urban heat island effects.  Rather, the trees must be managed so that they themselves can survive heat stress.  And it may be that trees that are historical natives to many northern climates will have to be augmented with trees that are not natives to the far North, but are native to historically hot and dry climates, trees such as the fig tree, which is able to establish a deep root system and to mitigate heat islands by efficient evapotranspiration.  This will require further research.

P.S. Not only has much of the United States dropped the ball on climate change mitigation, but Russia has hugely dropped the ball.  The wildfires in Siberia are now bigger than all other wildfires on the earth combined.  Putin's flying monkeys tout his so-called intelligence and wisdom, but Putin's Russia isn't doing very well right now.

Competence Amidst An Age of Decline

Today's post will be short, as I've already spent more time than I'd like in the doing of necessary work.  But I'd like to briefly share something I've been thinking about during the last several weeks, namely the challenge of how one can demonstrate their competence during an age in which the value of most certificates of competence is tending toward zero.  This post can therefore be considered a sort of follow-up to the post I wrote a few weeks ago about the search for good work.  

Within the most recent decade of my existence as a working stiff, I have held a position as an adjunct instructor in a degreed technical education program at a university.  The experience has been eye-opening in many ways - rather like the opening of eyes one might experience if one had been raised in a household of strict parenting until one's fifteenth birthday, and then had been granted extremely grudging, reluctant permission to attend a sleepover at the house of a friend across town.  (Imagine a wide-eyed kid exclaiming, "They let you do that over here?!")  For when I was an undergraduate many years ago, I was regularly beaten up (metaphorically, of course!) by professors whenever my work did not meet minimum academic expectations.  I took a lot of lumps - especially because, at the time, I was also involved in an abusive evangelical fringe church which demanded of me a lot of good time that would have been better spent studying, so my grades suffered.  Yet I hardly remember complaining against the feedback I got from my professors, or believing that my university was treating me unfairly.

Fast forward to the present time, in which anyone who has had to deal with the current crop of college students has probably been motivated to Google the term "grade inflation".  Students have become conditioned to believing that all they have to do is "show effort" in order to receive a certificate of competence in a field of study.  Many of these have gone so far as to believe that guessing the answer or writing freshly-cooked gibberish in answer to a homework question is the same as "showing effort."  One dare not say anything accurately evaluative about their performance, lest one risk getting negative student evaluations from them.  (And no, the major culprits in declining academic performance are not students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds!)

This inflation of credentials of competence is particularly acute in many of the universities of the Global North.  But this inflation goes beyond colleges and universities.  For instance, this year I have chosen not to watch the Summer Olympics.  My reason is simple.  The Tokyo Summer Olympics include a number of athletes from a group of nations which regularly cheat by doping - that is, by using performance-enhancing drugs.  It should be obvious that what an athlete can do when juiced does not represent his actual talent and biological potential.  However, I am looking forward to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.  At least there, how far one can ski-jump and how long one can remain in the air while doing so are not dependent on anabolic steroids.

The inflation of credentials can become a national obsession, as is the case with the Russian "Sputnik" COVID-19 vaccine.  In order to boost its air of respectability, Russia had members of its Gamaleya Institute write a defense of the vaccine and of its efficacy for the British medical journal Lancet.  At the time the study was published, I am sure that there were many people like me whose doubts about Sputnik began to wane.  For we reasoned, "Hey - the Lancet is a very respectable peer-review jury.  If they were willing to publish an article backing the claims of over 90 percent efficacy, perhaps it's true..."  Except that an actual "jury-of-peers" from other nations showed up in the aftermath of the publication of that article, and has begun to ask extremely probing and inconvenient questions about its data and sources of data.  (See this, this and this for instance.)

A recently "defrocked" former contemporary Christian musician once wrote that "the lie is always cheaper than the truth."  The lie concerning competence sooner or later gets found out.  So why do we lie so often about what we're actually capable of?  Why do we tolerate those who lie about what they can actually do?  And how are our most long-lived measures and certifications of competence now being cheapened by false proclamations of competence?  Lastly, what new venues or means of certification or demonstration can those who are actually competent create so that they can be found by those who are desperate to find people who know how to do necessary things?  In other words, in an era in which an increasing number of things falsely glitter, how can searchers find the true gold?

The Poverty of Pivenism

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy (shortened in these posts to From D to D.)  Recent posts in this series have dealt with the important subject of the strategy of nonviolent struggle.  As I said in a recent post, strategic nonviolent resistance does not rely on the weapons and resources of the holders of oppressive power, and one big reason why is that those who are oppressed do not have access to the weapons and resources of the powerful.  This is why strategy and strategic thinking is so important.  If the strategy of a struggle group is solid, the struggle group can achieve great shifts in the balance of power between the powerful and those without power.  If the strategy of a struggle group is weak, foolish or nonexistent, then that group will lose.

The success rate of nonviolent liberation struggles from 1900 to 2006 was over 50 percent, according to the book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.  Indeed, during this period, "campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as successful as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals," according to the book's website.  Yet from 2010 onward the success rate of nonviolent struggle movements began to decline, as documented by articles such as "The Future of Nonviolent Resistance" by Erica Chenoweth, and "Nonviolent protest defined the decade. But is civil resistance losing its impact?" by Rupa Shenoy.  I would like to suggest that the decline continues to this day, in which the success rate has dropped to less than 34 percent - a distressing decline of 16 to 18 percent.  (Violent liberation struggles have shown an even worse decline in effectiveness, by the way.  Don't take out a loan to buy an assault rifle!)  The question then becomes, Why? What is causing the decline in the success rate of nonviolent resistance campaigns?

In her article "The Future of Nonviolent Resistance," Chenoweth posits a number of reasons for the decline in effectiveness of nonviolent resistance, including the following:

• Savvier responses by governments and other wealthy power-holders
• More entrenched oppressive power-holders who have proven to be resilient in the face of grassroots challenges to their power
• Increased use of brutal repression by these entrenched power-holders
• A change in the structure and capabilities of grassroots movements themselves (Emphasis added)

It is this last factor which I want to bring into sharper focus today, as I believe that it is the decisive factor in the decline of the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance movements.  What changes have taken place in grassroots movements over the last ten years?  According to Chenoweth, the first change is that these movements at their peaks tend actually to be smaller than the successful movements of decades past, both in total numbers and in percentage of the population which participates in them.  This is because the organizers of present-day movements tend to neglect the long-term relationship-building and building of organizational capacity required for a movement to achieve real staying power.  Instead, they do what comes easiest to them: putting together large mass demonstrations and protest marches which can easily be organized by digital social media and which throw a large number of total strangers together in the same place on short notice.  Because these total strangers have not had time to develop a shared story, much less a shared strategy, it is easy for governments and other wealthy power-holders to throw a few violent agents provocateurs into the mix.  And when protest organizers tolerate violent actors or at least are not willing to exercise the discipline needed to separate their movements from the violent actors, the likelihood of increased mass participation in the protests decreases.  (As I have said in recent posts, this comes down to the lack of education and training of the would-be leaders of protest movements.  They need to read some books!)

These weaknesses are characteristic of all the recent "leaderless", "structureless", supposedly "cutting-edge" protest movements of the last decade.  This is why I tend to gag and retch every time I read some article or opinion piece put forth by a media outlet which praises these "leaderless", "structureless" movements as some smart wave of the future.  They're not!  Their weaknesses have not only been abundantly documented by Erica Chenoweth, but also by Zeynep Tufekci, both in her book Twitter and Tear Gas and in a TED talk she gave a few years after the rise and fall of the Occupy protests.  Yet these sorts of leaderless, hastily thrown-together movements which focus almost exclusively on mass protest seem to be the darlings of many a wanna-be movement leader today - especially if that "leader" or those "leaders" identify as "Millennials" or younger who supposedly "don't like structure."

One thing to note is that almost all widely-held popular ideas have a history, a lineage of development.  That includes widely-held bad ideas.  So what is the history of this particularly bad idea, and of the ineffective and incompetent "movements" which have resulted from it?  To answer that question, I want to refer to a book that came out in 2016, and whose paperback edition came out in 2017.  (2017 seems to have been a good year to write books on resistance.  I wonder why...)  The book is This Is An Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler.  And in case the Englers are reading this post, let me warn you in advance that I'm going to throw a few (metaphorical) rocks at your book.  To quote Jimmy Wong, "Please do not find offensive!"

Chapter Two of their book is titled, "Structure and Movement," and its opening sentences read thus: "Two schools stand at opposite poles of thinking about how grassroots forces can promote social change.  Each has a champion."  The chapter then sets forth these two champions, namely Saul Alinsky versus Frances Fox Piven.  The chapter begins to describe Alinsky thus: "Alinsky was a guru in the art of the slow, incremental building of community groups.  Like organizers in the labor movement, his approach focused on person-by-person recruitment, careful leadership development, and the creation of stable institutional bodies that could leverage the power of their members over time...this approach can be described as one based on 'structure.'"  The chapter begins to describe Piven thus: "Piven, in contrast, has become a leading defender of unruly broad-based disobedience, undertaken outside the confines of any formal organization.  She emphasizes the disruptive power of mass mobilizations that coalesce quickly...In contrast to the structure-based approach of labor unions and Alinskyite groups, her tradition can be dubbed 'mass protest.'"

While Chapter Two does try to present a balanced comparison of the two approaches, it is guilty of a bit of distortion of the concept of a movement and of the role of a social movement organization as a catalyst for social movement.  (The social movement organization is a topic which I covered in this post.)  For it seems to paint those who follow the Alinskyite tradition as people who value organization over movement, and thus fails to recognize that it is organizations which give birth to movements.  Chapter Two quotes an Alinskyite organizer who accurately saw Martin Luther King as a "one-trick pony" who relied too much on dramatic mass marches and not on slow, patient capacity-building via sustained organization.

Chapter Two seems to treat Frances Fox Piven more favorably than Saul Alinsky, citing, for instance, a book titled Poor People's Movements by Piven and by Richard Cloward which analyzed some of the disruptive social movements of the 1930's, 1950's, and 1960's.  These movements are cited as proof that poor people who are willing to be disruptive can achieve far more in a short time than those who seek to build organizational structures among the poor.  It's time for a full disclosure statement: I must admit that I haven't yet read Piven's book.  However, what the Englers say about her matches what other sources have said about her teachings and writings.  And if she really holds such a position, I would like to gently suggest that she is glossing over the role that social movement organizations such as the CIO or SNCC had in the movements she cited.  

The "Pivenist" approach (at least, as I understand it) certainly has led to some impressive mobilizations, from the Gezi Park protests in Turkey to the Occupy protests and occupations in the United States to the mass protests of the Arab Spring.  Yet the failures of these mobilizations have also been impressive - perhaps even breathtaking.  One particularly poignant and tragic failure is the failure of the Egyptian revolution to bring about a democratic government, and the loss of all which that mobilization initially achieved.  A sign both ironic and hopeful is the fact that in the aftermath, movement organizers have begun to return to the need for sustained organizing as the means of building power for lasting change.  The Englers note that leaders of the original April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt have begun to focus on building alternative institutions, and that "the 2011 uprising has unleashed a spirit of communal self-determination that cannot easily be subdued."  A further irony is that in connection with the ultimate failure of the Egyptian revolution, the Englers first mention the term "alternative institutions" in their book.  Alternative institutions are one of the most disruptive long-term tools of an oppressed people in a nonviolent liberation struggle - yet the Englers mention them only once.  And their book never defines or discusses them further.  Alternative - or "parallel" institutions - are a pillar of the Gandhian strategy of swaraj, which is why they are a prominent part of his constructive program.  The fact that the Englers mention them only once without explaining their significance is a real shame.  

And so we come back to what I consider to be an accurate and viable roadmap of nonviolent revolution, namely the achievement of shifts in the power balance between the oppressor and the oppressed which come about by the oppressed building the sort of righteous society of self-government, communal self-determination and of communal self-reliance that displaces the society ruled by the oppressor.  To quote Gene Sharp, "Combined with political defiance during the phase of selective resistance, the growth of autonomous social, economic, cultural and political institutions progressively expands the 'democratic space' of the society and shrinks the control of the dictatorship.  As the civil institutions of the society become stronger vis-a-vis the dictatorship, then, whatever the dictators may wish, the population is incrementally building an independent society outside of their control..." - From D to D, Chapter 9.  Sounds a lot better than Pivenism to me - especially when I see the successful track record of the approach outlined by Sharp.  The approach of Sharp was the approach used by Gandhi and his associates in organizing a successful liberation struggle among dirt-poor Indians.  If they could liberate themselves, none of the rest of us have any excuses for our continued oppression.  This includes those of us in the African-American community!

Yet there are those who know the weaknesses and failures of Pivenism, but who still promote her approach as a valid strategy of collective nonviolent resistance.  I will examine who some of these people are and what I believe to be some of their motives in the next post in this series.

Connecting Moral Dots

I check my blog stats from time to time, and I noticed that there are people who are actively exploring my back catalog.  Thanks much for your readership!  One note: my favorite posts are the ones I have written over the last four years.  If you go really far back, you may stumble across posts which are a bit cringe-worthy, as my writing style was a bit more convoluted back then (I was trying to imitate a couple of bloggers whose writings I have since abandoned), and my worldview was not as fully developed.

I am happy to see that people are re-reading my post "Nihil Nixed".  That post is actually the first in a series of three connected posts, the other two being "The Go To Jail Truth" and "Whadja Do With The Money?!"  I am no prophet, yet note that I wrote "The Go to Jail Truth" about six months before the massive protests in Russia over the arrest of Alexei Navalny.  Anyway, if you have time and you have enjoyed "Nihil Nixed," feel free to check out the other two posts.  And as for this upcoming weekend, I will try to have a fresh post ready, a post that will continue to deal with the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance.

From D to D, Chapters 8 and 9: How The Straight Subverts The Crooked

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. Although these who wish to dominate suffered a serious electoral setback in the United States in 2020, they have not given up their dreams of supremacy.  Therefore we are still in a state of conflict, and those of us who are not rich and not white are still under threat.  The threat we face can be most effectively neutralized by strategic nonviolent resistance.  Because of the strategic element of strategic nonviolent resistance, the last several posts have focused on the need for struggle groups to understand and develop wise strategy.  Of those posts, the last few have discussed the consequences of bad strategy.  Today's post will attempt to explain what happens when strategy is done right.

So what should be the ultimate aim of an oppressed people?  Some would say that it is to convert oppressors so that the oppressed can live in peace within a society that is still owned by the oppressors.  But a much more radical goal is the creation of a society which is no longer under the control of oppressors at all.  This occurs through campaigns both of selective resistance and of collective self-reliance which create and progressively expand the social and political space within which oppressed people can manage their own affairs.  The staged, incremental expansion of this space shrinks the control of the oppressors.  To quote Gene Sharp, "As the civil institutions of the society become stronger vis-a-vis the dictatorship, then, whatever the dictators may wish, the population is incrementally building an independent society outside of their control...in time, this combination of resistance and institution building can lead to de facto freedom, making the collapse of the dictatorship and the formal installation of a democratic system undeniable because the power relationships within the society have been fundamentally altered."

To illustrate this process and its strategy, I'm going to quote a few verses from the Good Book.  In particular, 1 Peter 2:13 says the following: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent through him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right."  Now what is interesting is the word translated "institution."  In the original Greek, that word is κτίσις ("ktisis"), which literally means, "founding", "settling", "creation", "created thing", or "created authority."  Now here's the thing.  First, we are commanded to submit to every human created authority.  That includes the structures of authority which oppressed people create to govern themselves.   

Second, note the purpose of our submission, which is to do right, as noted in the next two verses: "For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.  Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but as bondslaves of God."  This brings up an interesting question, namely, how to respond when any one or more of the manmade structures of authority to which we are to submit commands us to do wrong.  The answer to that question is given in 1 Peter 2:18-20: "Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are crooked.  (Note that the original Greek word here is σκολιός, or "skolios", and it means curved, bent, or crooked.)  For this finds grace, if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.  For what credit is there if, when you sin and are slapped or punched, you endure it with patience?  But if when you do what is right and suffer you patiently endure it, this finds grace with God."

Two things should be mentioned about this passage: first, that those Bible translators who translate "skolios" merely as "unreasonable" or "harsh" or "cruel" are missing the point of this passage.  For it is entirely possible for employees, subjects, or servants to get along famously with a boss whom the Bible would describe as "crooked."  All they have to do is to twist their souls, their morals, and their ethics to conform to the boss's crookedness.  Those who have worked in abusive workplaces or who have served in abusive churches or who have been part of crooked governments know this well.  Just look at the staff (especially the senior, most highly-placed staff) of Enron, of Goldman Sachs, of British Petroleum, of Hillsong Church, of Mars Hill Church, of the Assemblies of George Geftakys, of the Honor Academy, of the Republican Party, of the administration of former President Trump, of the corrupt government of Vladimir Putin.  If the devil wears Prada, then the best way to avoid suffering is to make sure that you dress likewise!

But if you're not a sycophant and you don't want to wear hellish clothing, then you will suffer - that is, you will get into trouble for doing the right thing - and you need to prepare yourself for it.  For the Good Book commands us to continue to go straight even when those in authority over us tell us to go crooked.  This means that our commitment to the straight will lead to civil disobedience.  Note that Simon Peter, the author of the passages I've been quoting in this post, was himself a jailbird on a number of occasions - as seen in Acts 4 and 5, (where he was beaten for his civil disobedience) as well as 2 Peter 1:13-14 in which Peter wrote of his impending martyrdom.  And civil disobedience for the sake of doing right becomes disruptively powerful when it is done collectively.  

The key then to creating a collective movement of civil disobedience is for the oppressed to create for themselves structures of authority, of collective self-reliance, and of collective expressions of the common good which are more righteous than those of the oppressor.  By doing so, those who are part of such collectives will be pledging themselves to go straight in ways that run completely counter to the crookedness of the oppressor's society.  And in a contest between the crookedness of the oppressor and the straightness to which the collective of the oppressed aspires, the winner of our submission will then be our collective straightness.  It is this creation and progressive expansion of these "spheres of straightness" which leads to long-term shifts in the balance of power in a society.  And when the oppressor reacts to this society-building with violent oppression, the oppressed are to deprive that oppression of its power by a response of nonviolence and non-retaliation (1 Peter 2:18-25).  It is this non-retaliation which aids the process of backfire or political jiu-jitsu.  

This sort of institution-building - this creation of a righteous parallel society - is much more effective than merely getting a bunch of people together to do a mass protest march.  And it is much harder to hijack.  Moreover, it can start very small.  A completely secular example of this is the permaculture movement, especially as articulated by David Holmgren.  I am thinking especially of an interview Holmgren granted to Scott Mann of the Permaculture Podcast in 2013, in which he stated his view that the best way to start a revolution (in a positive sense!) is to create working, replicable small-scale models of the attractiveness, viability and success of a revolutionary lifestyle.  However, he believed it is a waste of time simply to get a large group of people together to "shout more loudly" at the holders of power in order to pressure them to pull the levers of power in the ways demanded by the shouters.  In other words, it is a better use of our time to build local expressions of the world we do want than to agitate in mass protest to try to stop the world we don't want.  This mindset can also be seen in the insistence by Mohandas Gandhi on the importance of the "constructive program" and the development of swaraj (that is, "self-rule") as an essential part of strategic nonviolent resistance.  And this mindset was a prominent part of the Polish nonviolent resistance against the Russian-backed Jaruselski dictatorship in the 1980's.

Let's conclude by mentioning some possible hindrances to the creation of this kind of liberated space.  First, there is the hindrance of ignorance.  This is why it is essential for those in a struggle group to read books!  Read the history, theory and practice of strategic nonviolent resistance!  Second, there is the hindrance of passivity - a passivity of victims who refuse to acknowledge that the continuance of their victimhood is their own fault, and who therefore refuse to take it upon themselves to begin their liberation.  An outgrowth of this passivity is "Uncle Tom-ism," the motive behind the continued selling out of struggle leaders by members of oppressed groups who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives and who look to their masters for a little extra spending money.  (Do thirty pieces of silver sound about right?)  Remember that the Good Book commands us to come out of Babylon, not to sell ourselves or each other to Babylon or to "try to get ahead in an oppressive system" as someone said to me a few years back.  Those who continue to lean on Babylon for support can best be described as "shiftless", a word which Charles Payne used in his book I've Got The Light of Freedom to describe the Uncle Toms and Aunt Tammys whose actions threatened to undermine the work of SNCC in the Mississippi voter registration struggles of the late 1950's and early 1960's.

But some would say, "Well, our people have been oppressed so long that we can't create spaces of self-determination for ourselves!"  As an African-American, I am mindful of African-Americans who say this about our people.  My answer is this: the Indians prior to Gandhi were at least as bad off as many of us, and yet under Gandhi's leadership, they won the freedom to rule themselves.  Let us not be shiftless.

The Tactical and Strategic Failures of Summer 2020

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy (shortened in these posts to From D to D.)  Those who have read previous posts on this subject know that the most recent posts discussed Chapters 6 and 7 of the book.  Those chapters deal with the important subject of the strategy of a nonviolent liberation struggle.  Strategic nonviolent resistance does not rely on the weapons and resources of the holders of oppressive power, and one big reason why is that those who are oppressed do not have access to the weapons and resources of the powerful.  This is why strategy and strategic thinking is so important.  If the strategy of a struggle group is solid, the struggle group can achieve great shifts in the balance of power between the powerful and those without power.  If the strategy of a struggle group is weak, foolish or nonexistent, then that group will lose.

So we come to the events of the late spring and summer of 2020, those events connected with the police murder of George Floyd.  As an African-American, I stand with my brothers and sisters who are involved in the Black Lives Matter organizations, yet I feel the duty to point out some of the serious ways in which they dropped the ball last summer, as well as pointing out some of the political consequences of their failure.  (One consequence of that failure: their mistakes helped re-elect a certain two-faced gentrifying mayor of a supposedly progressive city on the West Coast.)  So here goes.  And I'm going to tell the story from the point of view of an observer who was only rarely near the center of any action.  If any readers have more expert knowledge or analysis, feel free to chime in with corrections as appropriate.

First, let's begin with the immediate consequences of the murder.  The first response seen by myself and most observers was the almost immediate arising of a wave of spontaneous mass protest, both in Minnesota (where George Floyd used to live) and elsewhere.  I would like to suggest that much of that protest originated outside of the Black community and outside any other communities of color in the United States.  I would also like to suggest, based on what I saw in the Pacific Northwest, that much of that protest originated outside of any Black Lives Matter (abbreviated in this post to BLM) organization.  However, the emergence of this protest thrust BLM movement organizations into the limelight, as many protestors who were not officially part of BLM chose to identify their actions as taken in support of BLM.  Thus BLM was offered a unique moment in which to take a leadership role, and BLM organizers initiated their own protests as a result.

But at almost the same time as the emergence of spontaneous mass protest came the almost immediate emergence of "spontaneous" violence.  I know of one white blogger who characterized it as "the emergence of the worst race riots this country has seen in decades."  However, he is exaggerating greatly what actually happened, and his reasons are dishonest.  For he does not want to face the fact that the incidents of violence were perpetrated almost entirely by white people.  (See this  and this also.)  An early case in point is the "Umbrella Man."  There is also Matthew Lee Rupert, as well as members of the Boogaloo Boys and other white groups who vandalized and looted minority businesses and attacked CNN journalism crews.  Moreover, this violence spread in ways that seemed designed to provoke outrage and strengthen the societal "pillars of support" of the police and of the regime of Donald Trump.  For the vandals and the violent targeted iconic statues and other monuments to the cultural heritage of the United States.  (See this, this, and this for instance.)  And in attacking minority businesses, the vandals sought to send a clear message that this is what happens whenever there is mass protest against established authority.

Other ways in which violent infiltrators sought to convey images of dis-order included the setting up of so-called "temporary autonomous zones" in city capitals by people who did not own property or have jobs in these so-called zones.  In essence, the people who set up these zones became squatters of the same sort that emerged in city parks throughout the United States during the "Occupy" protests.  And those who occupied these zones in 2020 were mostly white, just as those who "occupied" various public spaces in 2011.  The 2020 occupations ended just as badly as those in 2011 had, for the occupiers were rightfully seen as squatters.  But these squatters, along with the looters and the vandals of businesses and statues, served a useful purpose for the right-wing fascists running the Federal Government during Trump's last year - namely, that they gave him a convenient platform to portray himself as the sole upholder and defender of "law and order" against a crazed opposition movement who simply wanted to plunge American society into "chaos" and "anarchy."  In other words, they were the convenient foil in the continued re-telling of the myth of redemptive violence - the favorite myth of fascists and oppressors, by the way, and a myth that became part of Donald Trump's re-election campaign strategy.

I would like to suggest that in the violence, vandalism and squatting that took place, people who had no sympathy for the Black struggle in America managed to hijack the protests over the murder of George Floyd and to twist the message of these protests in a direction which has nothing at all to do with the Black struggle.  (As Marshall Ganz has repeatedly said, if you don't intentionally tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you - in ways that you won't like.)  That this could happen is due to the following failures of many in the Black community:

• A failure by the Black community to appropriately define our collective identity and the strategy of our struggle.  For at least four decades, we have been unconsciously following a rather limited "strategy" of the sort first articulated by Martin Luther King, namely, the strategy of trying to build a supposedly colorblind society in which our individual or historical identities are all dissolved in a "melting pot" to produce a so-called all-American alloy.  Thus we have tried to build "beloved communities" with people who ought not to be trusted because they have no good intentions, people who refuse to give up their dreams of total domination.  It is way past time for us to come together as Black people (NOT as part of some "rainbow coalition" alloy!) to decide who we are as a people and how we will struggle as a people.  In other words, it is way past time for us to self-consciously organize ourselves.  When white people who supposedly stand for "diversity" try to bring us as individuals into their "coalition", we need to say, "Not so fast.  We will decide as a group what we choose to support.  We will NOT allow ourselves to be turned into the foot soldiers of someone else's agenda!  Maybe we're not better together!"  Of course, to say such things might provoke the sort of reaction from certain white supposed "allies" that would show their true colors.

• A failure by the Black community to understand the methods by which unarmed people shift the balance of power between the powerful and the powerless.  In short, this is a failure to understand the methods of strategic nonviolent resistance, which has also become known as people power.  We have for too long allowed ourselves stupidly to believe that strategic nonviolent resistance consists of trying to love your enemy or to "rise above" the oppression dealt to you by your enemy (that is, to smile when your enemy serves you a sandwich made of excrement!), or to show how "spiritual" you are in the face of oppression.  Therefore, too many of us have understandably written off strategic nonviolent resistance.  It's time for some of us to start reading some books.

• This ignorance played out in 2020 in a failure to understand the impact of violence on a protest movement.  When violence began to erupt during the protests, I saw it as a clear indication of a lack of organization on our part, as well as a lack of training.  I saw it moreover as a clear sign of tactical and strategic misunderstanding and failure.  But in conversations I had with BLM organizers, both during the 2020 CANVAS Summer Academy and in 2021 with BLM organizers who were part of the Leading Change Network, whenever I pointed out these failures, the BLM organizers got really defensive.  Their response to my criticism was, "We were not the violent ones!  And you can't believe everything the media tells you!  Most of the protests were peaceful!"  In making such criticisms, they missed the point altogether.  That point being this: that if you engage in mass protests, and violent things happen during your protests, your protest movement will suffer, no matter who started the violence.  Erica Chenoweth explains this beautifully as follows: When a mass protest is peaceful, everyone who is an ally or potential ally is likely to show up.  This includes young families with small children and elderly grandmas with nothing better to do.  In such circumstances, it is very hard for the government to justify using violence to shut down your protest.  But as soon as the government is able to provoke or inject violence into the protests, the vulnerable - young families with small children and elderly grandmas - start to disappear until you are left only with athletic young men facing heavily armed cops.  In those circumstances it becomes very easy for the government to justify the use of violent oppression to shut down the protest!

• Having said that, I wonder why the BLM organizers did not shift from tactics of concentration to tactics of dispersion as soon as the violence began to appear!    (Pardon me - I shouldn't wonder.  It's because these fools did not read any books!)  For instance, why didn't one or more leaders immediately issue a statement saying, "We see that evil actors have shown up to inject violence and vandalism into our protests.  Therefore, we are switching to protest tactics that don't involve large groups of people coming together in the streets.  These new tactics will be legal, and will not be able to be hijacked by those who want to cause violence or to paint us as criminals." It shows a fatal lack of brains that not one of these leaders took such a step.  I remember reading the news reports of protest after protest in which a small group of agents provocateurs broke away from a protest march to go off and vandalize while the police "declared a riot", and I was shouting in my living room, "Please, wake up and shift tactics!"  (It felt to me very much like my experience as a kid watching Saturday Night wrestling and screaming at the TV whenever the "hero" made an obvious mistake.  Lot of good that did.)  I agree with BLM that there should have been protests.  Yet there are both smart and stupid tactics of protest, and BLM failed to understand the difference.  (Oh, look!  It's happening again.)

• A failure to see the limitations of mass protest.  Protest is not a viable single strategy of liberation.  At best, it's a single tactic.  A tactic is not a strategy.  And as we have considered strategy in the context of strategic nonviolent resistance, we have learned that the best strategy is a strategy which your opponent is not ready to meet, and for which he has no defenses.  Chapters 6 and 7 of From D to D have drawn heavily from the writings of a British man named Basil Henry Liddell-Hart, who in the aftermath of World War 1 advocated heavily that armies should adopt a strategy of indirect approach as the best means of meeting one's enemy in a place where he is not prepared to meet you.  I suggest that among the tactics of nonviolent action, mass street protest is now the tactic which most governments are most prepared to meet, and that these governments can short-circuit mass protest most effectively simply by injecting violence into the protests.  Once they do that, they can justify raising the cost which ordinary people must pay to participate in protest by using tactics of violent police repression of protest.  Mass protest is therefore not an example of the strategy of indirect approach.  And mass protest carries certain unavoidable costs even when the protestors do not have to face police repression.  I think of some of the BLM websites I saw last year in which organizers vowed to protest every day until their demands were met.  I guess they never heard of "protest fatigue"!  Moreover, as pointed out by Jamila Raqib, protest by itself does not alter the balance of power between the powerful and the powerless.

In their insistence on the same tactic of mass protest day after day, the BLM protest organizers reminded me very much of a Briton who never considered the strategy of indirect approach, namely Sir Douglas Haig.  I hope the man has no partisans, fans, or groupies who are still alive - otherwise, they might come to the USA to hunt me down and slash my tires - er, I mean, "tyres" - or threaten to give me "a bunch of fives."  But Haig is a man worthy of much criticism.  I think of his insistence on costly daily frontal assaults for three months during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and how the Germans played rope-a-dope with him there.  I fear that here in the USA, should another outrage against African-Americans be perpetrated, and should that outrage spark mass protest, our enemies may play rope-a-dope again with us as they did in 2020.