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Make America Ungovernable
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_america_ungovernable_20170205/
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Posted on Feb 5, 2017
By Chris Hedges
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Mr. Fish / Truthdig
Donald Trumps regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an
authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil
liberties will no longer exist. Corporate exploitation, through the
abolition of regulations and laws, will be unimpeded. Global warming will
accelerate. A repugnant nationalism, amplified by government propaganda,
will promote bigotry and racism. Hate crimes will explode. New wars will be
launched or expanded.
And, as this happens, those Americans who remain passive will be complicit.
We dont have much time, Kali Akuno, the co-director of Cooperation
Jackson <http://www.cooperationjackson.org/> and an organizer with the
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement <https://mxgm.org/> , told me when I reached
him by phone in Jackson, Miss. We are talking two to three months before
this whole [reactionary] initiative is firmly consolidated. And thats with
massive resistance.
Flurries of executive orders and memorandums are being issued to demolish
the anemic remnants of our bankrupt democracy. Those being placed in
powersuch as Betsy DeVos, who if confirmed as secretary of education will
defund our system of public education and expand schools run by the
Christian right, and Scott Pruitt, who if confirmed as head of the
Environmental Protection Agency will dismantle itare agents of destruction.
In the eyes of the Christian fascists, generals, billionaires and conspiracy
theorists around Trump, the laws, the courts and legislative bodies exist
only to silence opponents and swell corporate profits. It is impossible to
know how long this transformation will takeit may be longer than the two or
three months Akuno fearsbut unless we mobilize quickly to stop the Trump
regime the end result is certain.
The forces around Trump have a plan to roll this [attack on democracy]
out, said Akuno, who was the coordinator of special projects and external
funding for the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson. They have a strategy.
They have a timeline. They know whom they need to divide and whom they need
to recruit. They are consolidating their base. Those who try and chalk this
up to Trumps pathology miss the intentionality, the strategic aims and the
objectives. We will do ourselves a great disservice if we underestimate this
regime and where it is going.
Stephen Bannon, the presidents chief counselor, was behind the ban on
Muslims entering the United States from seven Muslim-majority countriesa
ban you can expect to see extended if the Trump administration is successful
in removing a stay issued by a district court. He was behind the order to
the Department of Homeland Security to draw up lists of Muslim organizations
and individuals
<http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512439121/trumps-executive-order-on-immigrati
on-annotated> in the United States that, in the language of the executive
action, have been radicalized and have provided material support to
terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the
United States. Such lists will be used to criminalize Muslim leaders and
the institutions and organizations they built. Then, once the Muslims are
dealt with domestically, there will be new Homeland Security lists that will
allow the government to target the press, activists, labor leaders,
dissident intellectuals and the left. It is the beginning of a fascist
version of Leon Trotsky
<http://www.biography.com/people/leon-trotsky-9510793> s permanent
revolution.
Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and thats my goal too, Bannon told
writer Ronald Radosh
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-g
uy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html> in 2013. I want to bring everything
crashing down, and destroy all of todays establishment.
The Trump regimes demented project of social engineering, which will come
wrapped in a Christianized fascism, can be implemented only if it quickly
seizes control of the bureaucratic mechanisms, an action that Max Weber
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Weber-German-sociologist> pointed
out is the prerequisite for exercising power in industrial and technocratic
societies. Once what the historian Guglielmo Ferrero calls the silken
threads of habit, tradition and legality are gone, the iron chains of
dictatorship will impose social cohesion.
This problem is not going to be solved in the 2018 elections, warned
Akuno, the author of the organizing handbook Let Your Motto Be Resistance
<https://mxgm.org/let-your-motto-be-resistance-a-handbook-on-organizing-new-
afrikan-and-oppressed-communities-for-self-defense/> and the former
executive director of the New Orleans-based Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund.
That hope is an illusion. The democratic apparatus will be completely
gutted by then. We have to look beyond Trump. We have to look at the
consolidation on the state level of these reactionary forces. They are near
the threshold of being able to call for a constitutional convention because
of the number of governorships and state legislatures where they hold both
chambers. They can totally reorder the Constitution, if they even continue
to abide by it, which they may not. We are facing a serious crisis. I dont
think people grasp the depth of this because they are focused on the
president and not the broader strategy of these reactionary forces.
We have to encourage a broad noncompliance strategy of ungovernablity,
Akuno said. Not complying. Not consenting. We have to struggle on every
front. We have to expect that the courts will not protect us. We are going
to get less and less protection from the police. The slightest act of civil
disobedience will mean jail. We have to mentally prepare for that. We have
to build serious organizations, drawing upon the examples of forces that
fought authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Europe. Either we submit
to not having any protection as workers, women, queers, blacks, Latinos or
indigenous or we fight back. These forces [arrayed against us] are not
willing to compromise. I hope it does not come to violence, but we know the
proclivities of the society and the forces that run it.
If nonviolent protest is met with violence, we must never respond with
violence. The use of violence, including property destruction, and taunting
the police are gifts to the security and surveillance state. It allows the
state to demonize and isolate a mass movement. It drives away the bulk of
the population. Violence against the state is used by the authorities to
justify greater forms of control and repression. The corporate state
understands and welcomes the language of force. This is a game the
government will always win and we will always lose. If we are perceived as a
flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob that embraces violence, we will be
easily crushed.
We can succeed only if we win the hearts and minds of the wider public and
ultimately many of those within the structures of power, including the
police. When violence is used against nonviolent protesters demanding basic
forms of justice it exposes the weakness of the state. It delegitimizes
those in power. It prompts a passive population to respond with active
support for the protesters. It creates internal divisions within the
structures of power that, as I witnessed during the revolutions in Eastern
Europe, paralyze and defeat those in authority. Martin Luther King Jr. held
marches in Birmingham, Ala., rather than Albany, Ga., because he knew
Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner
<http://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/11/archives/eugene-bull-connor-dies-at-75-po
lice-head-fought-integration-less.html?_r=0> Bull Connor would overreact
and discredit the citys racist structures.
The Trump regime is populated with blind fanatics. They believe in one
truth, which is whatever they proclaim at the moment (any such declaration
may contradict what they said a few hours before). They are possessed with
one ideaconflict. They venerate a demented hypermasculinity that includes a
sacralization of violence, misogyny, a disdain for empathy, and the
self-appointed right to engage in bouts of frenzied rage. These
characteristics, they believe, are a sign of masculinity. The highest
aesthetic is militarism, violence and war. Without conflict, without enemies
real or imagined, their ideological structures and racism collapse into a
heap of contradictions and absurdities. They will attempt to thwart
nonviolent, nationwide resistance with force. And they will attempt to stoke
counterviolence, including through the use of agents provocateurs, as a
response. If we speak back to them in the language of violence, we will
fail. We will be transformed into the monsters we seek to defeat.
Bannon and his followers on the
<https://www.google.com/#q=definition+of+alt-right> alt-right,
self-declared intellectuals, ferret out facts and formulas that buttress
their peculiar worldview and discard truths that contradict their messianic
delusions. They mouth a few clichés and quote a few philosophers to justify
bigotry, chauvinism and governmental repression. It is propaganda
masquerading as ideology. These pseudo-intellectuals are singularly
incurious. They are linguistically, culturally and historically illiterate
about the Muslim world, and about most other foreign cultures, yet blithely
write off one-fifth of the worlds populationMuslimsas irredeemable.
The inability of white supremacists like Trump and Bannon to recognize the
humanity of others springs from their spiritual impoverishment. They mistake
bigotry for honesty and ignorance for innocence. They cannot separate
fantasy from reality. Such people are, as author James Baldwin said, moral
monsters.
Evil, for them, is embodied in the dehumanized other. Once the human
personification of evil is eradicated, evil itself is supposed to disappear.
Except, of course, that as soon as one group of human beings is annihilated,
another human embodiment of evil rises to take its place. The Nazis began
with Jews. Our fanatics are beginning with Muslims. History has shown where
they will go from here.
The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus, the Yugoslav writer Danilo
Kis <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danilo_Ki%C5%A1> said. Nationalism is
the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled,
he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, thats to say
national, thats to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and
political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his,
hellits other people (other nations, another tribe). They dont even need
investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own imagesas
nationalists.
Like all utopian dreamers they believe their authoritarianism is being
implemented for our benefit. They are like Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who
oversaw the burning of Giordano Bruno
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno> at the stake and who
argued that eradicating heretics does them a favor because it saves them
from their own damnation. It is impossible to have a rational dialogue with
people who view reality through the binary lens of black and whiteus and
them. They do not recognize the right of dissent. Dissent is at best
obstruction and probably treason. Fanatics, in power, always become
inquisitors.
The acts of resistanceincluding the massive street protests the day after
the inauguration and later the demonstrations that grew out of the ban on
Muslims, the Department of Energys refusal to give the Trump administration
a list of employees that worked on climate change, acting Attorney General
Sally Yates refusal to enforce the travel ban and hundreds of State
Department staff members signing of a memo opposing the immigration
restrictionsterrify those around Trump. These reactionaries do not trust
the old elites and their bureaucrats and courtiers, including the press,
which Bannon has called the opposition party.
Akuno, who supports the appeal for nationwide general strikes, cautioned
that such a call might be premature because unions dont know if a general
strike is called how many members would comply, given how many voted for
Trump. He also noted that because the Trump regime is carrying out assaults
on so many fronts, resistance will tax the resources of the left.
This shotgun assault effectively divides the left, he said. Do I defend
Chicago if, as Trump says, he puts tanks in the streets or do I go to
Standing Rock if I am black? These are the kinds of choices we will be
forced to make.
We are going to have to bring this society to a standstill, he said. We
are going to have to disrupt the flow of commerce. We are going to have to
disrupt the nodal points of distribution. We will not only have to figure
out how to get on the highways, but disrupt Amazon.com and UPS. We have to
get workers there, even though they are not unionized, to see these acts as
in their long-term interests. And we have to build strong, fortified bases
locally and link them together.
Trump loyalists are counting on enough support from the police, the
military, private contractors and the organs of internal security such as
Homeland Security and the FBI, along with newly empowered white vigilante
groups, to physically crush those who defy them. They will attempt to use
fear and even terror to paralyze the population into acquiescence.
It is not accidental that the Trump regime immediately went after the water
protectors at Standing Rock
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests> , Akuno
said. Standing Rock forced the wider society to look at itself, its history
and its origins. It raised serious questions. Do we want human civilization
to survive? Are we willing to destroy ourselves for short-term profit?
Standing Rock exposed the U.S. colonial project and challenged capitalist
logic. It showed us that we have to make a choice between oil and water. It
asked us which will take priority for human beings.
We have the power to make the country ungovernable. But we do not have much
time. The regime will make it harder and harder to organize, get into the
streets and carry out the nationwide strikes, including within the federal
bureaucracy. Resistance alone, however, is not enough. It must be
accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist and anti-capitalist
society. It must reject the Democratic Partys attempt to ride anti-Trump
sentiment back into power. The enemy is, in the end, not Trump or Bannon,
but the corporate state. If we do not dismantle corporate power we will
never stop fascisms seduction of the white working class and unemployed.
The evil which you fear becomes a certainty by what you do, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in his play Egmont.
Now is the time not to cooperate. Now is the time to shut down the systems
of power. Now is the time to resist. It is our last chance. The fanatics are
moving with lightning speed. So should we.
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