shared from The Acorn , with thanks. illustrations added!
Another political fault line has been opened up by the rapidly spiralling events of 2020.
As we wrote yesterday, the Covid scare has found us sharing the anti-authoritarian analysis of people beyond the usual anarchic spheres, while many supposed comrades are bizarrely supportive of the official state narrative.
However, the current street uprisings across the USA, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, have revealed a peculiar limit to some people’s opposition to the nascent global police state.
Unlike us, they have not found hope in the sight of thousands upon thousands of people of all races reclaiming the streets of dozens of cities, overturning police cars, setting on fire the buildings used to oppress them.
They apparently don’t think that it is reasonable, or helpful, to come together and physically resist the state and its hired thugs!
In taking this stance, they reveal that they have understood nothing about the system which has controlled and exploited us for so long, and which is now dropping its liberal mask to reveal its true totalitarian nature.
They have not grasped that its so-called “democracy” is fake, that the “reforms” it sometimes offers us are illusory, that the avenues it provides for us to try and change things are all time-wasting dead-ends.
Most of all, they have failed to see that the whole of the system’s control of us is built on violence.
As this article explains: “The capitalist state was created by violence, is maintained by violence and is always prepared to resort to all the forms of violence at its disposal to resist challenges to its power.
“The ‘law’ itself, that foundation of its control over the population, is the flag of convenience under which this violence is carried out.
Police Flee from BLM Heroes
“Physically attacking someone is violence, even if you happen to be dressed up in some fancy clothes provided by the state.
“Physically confining someone in a locked space, with the constant use and threat of force, is also violence, even if you put on a stupid wig to announce what you are going to do to them.
“Bombing someone is violence, as is shooting them, torturing them, spraying them with chemicals.
“Wearing down someone’s resistance, forcing them to follow your rules, to live the way you tell them to, by means of a permanent, lifelong threat of violence if they step out of line is also, needless to say, violence”.
We cannot hope to win our freedom by obediently playing by the rules the system has written to protect itself from us.
We have to break through the barriers it has built to keep us in our place, not least the psychological ones.
One of these barriers is the idea that it is “wrong” to resist state oppression, that “the law” must be respected.
This deeply conditioned response even leads some to assume that breaking the law to fight the system must necessarily be some kind of cunning trap into which we must diligently refuse to fall!
The biggest barrier of all is the notion, implanted in our minds virtually from birth, that we can never defeat the system.
Resistance is futile, they tell us. There is no alternative, another world is completely impossible. There is nothing you can do about this. Stay home, shut up, submit.
But this is a complete lie! If it was true, why would they invest so much effort into policing us, surveilling us, imprisoning us, constantly devising new laws and techniques to chain us?
It is because the tiny ultrarich elite, who run the system for their own selfish benefit, are very aware that they are hopelessly unnumbered. They are scared of us!
They know full well that if ever we broke through the barriers of fear and disempowerment with which they surround us, if ever we overcame the divisions with which they separate us, we would be able to bring their capitalist prison-world crashing down.
We are many, they are few. We will be victorious!
Number 57
In this issue:
- Join the resistance!
- Imagine a world where we seek to destroy what destroys us
- Between life and death
- Humble but fiery reflections
- A sort of a warning…
- The rebels will return
- The Gates of hell
- Gustav Landauer: an orgrad inspiration
- Acorninfo
Look out for The Acorn 58..due out shortly
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