[P2P-F] Fwd: Resistance

Wed Mar 15 09:02:08 CET 2017

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Micah White <magus at activist.boutique>
Date: Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: Resistance
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

We must seize patriotism from those who are destroying our democracies.
please read & share
<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/share?app_id=180444840287&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2017%2Fmar%2F14%2Fprogressive-patriotism-rebels-revolution-micah-white%3FCMP%3Dshare_btn_fb>
this strategy briefing before it is too late!

direct link:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/14/progressive-
patriotism-rebels-revolution-micah-white

[image: The Resistance Now]
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/14/progressive-patriotism-rebels-revolution-micah-white>
'Real Americans' have always been rebels: a guide for progressive patriotism

After the collapse of Occupy Wall Street, my wife and I fled the
progressive groupthink of Berkeley, California and resettled out here in
Nehalem, in rural Oregon, close to unpoliced forests and far from the
nearest university, airport or anarchist infoshop.

All was reasonably well until I ran for mayor
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/activism-rural-america-occupy-movement>
of
my tiny town, provoking a backlash. When I received a racist death threat
<https://www.keepnehalemnehalem.org/> shortly after Donald Trump was
elected president, I was forced to see my rural community and my diverse
country in a newly sinister light.

The ugly truth is that many, if not most, of my neighbors voted for Trump’s
authoritarian bigotry. And then – like the Brits upset by Brexit, the
French disturbed by Marine Le Pen, and Filipinos furious about Rodrigo
Duterte – I found myself torn by a civil war fought between the side of me
that hates what my country has become, and the patriotic part of my spirit
that loves what my country could be.

After weeks of inner struggle, the patriotic side has won and I glimpse the
path upward: we must seize patriotism from those who are destroying our
democracies.
We must reclaim patriotism

Oftentimes, progressives are all too quick to abandon patriotism when their
country strays dangerously from its ideals. The tenor of this
anti-patriotism was most eloquently captured by Frederick Douglass, the
escaped slave who Donald Trump recently praised
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/frederick-douglass-trump/515292/>
for
doing an “amazing job”.

Shortly before the Europe-wide revolution of 1848
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848> that violently
dethroned France’s King Louis Philippe, Douglass returned to the US from
Britain where he had fled to escape the slave-catchers sent by his former
master. In a powerful speech delivered in New York, Douglass called for a
revolution
<http://frederickdouglass.infoset.io/islandora/object/islandora:856%23page/4/mode/1up/search/patriot>,
declaring:

I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism … I desire to see
[America] overthrown as speedily as possible and its Constitution shivered
in a thousand fragments, rather than that this foul curse should continue
to remain as now.

His words presaged the coming American civil war, a notoriously bloody
conflict that revised the constitution
<https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/how-the-civil-war-changed-the-constitution/>
to
include the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to overturn slavery.

Douglass rejected patriotism – narrowly defined as love of one’s country –
in favor of a greater, universalist sentiment. “I love Humanity all over
the globe. I am anxious to see Righteousness prevail in all directions,” he
said in the same speech.

While noble, this now common conceptual move of pitting love of country
against love of humanity is a strategic revolutionary blunder. If the
people wish to attain sovereignty, we must merge the particular love of our
country with the universal love of humanity. This means celebrating what is
best and eradicating what is worst in each nation until all people are free.

It is not difficult to understand Douglass’s deep antipathy for America: a
white supremacist nation where slavery was legal and socially acceptable
while he was considered to be both chattel and a traitor. Similarly, it is
perfectly understandable why cosmopolitan Americans today might see Trump’s
travel ban against six Muslim countries, and the populace who support it,
as justification for openly hating their American homeland.

But in these dark times, when the ideals of democracy are being tested
globally like never before, let us remember that the true patriots
throughout history have traditionally been the rebels, insurrectionaries
and revolutionaries who forcefully overturned the status quo in favor of a
higher vision.
Are you a loyalist or a patriot?

There is perhaps no better example of this fact than the 18th century
American revolution – the successful armed rebellion against the British
monarchy and Parliament that led to the founding of the United States of
America.

During this people’s struggle for sovereignty, a very large number of
Americans favored keeping the government the same. They loved their colony
as it was and actively fought against change. These reactionary Americans
were known as loyalists and they reasonably believed, as historian Sheila
Skemp puts it <https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/viewFile/25468/25237>:
“King and Parliament had made some mistakes but that surely it was possible
to work things out, to reach an amicable compromise.”

It sounds a lot like how many Republican and Democratic Americans,
masquerading as patriots, say to appease Trump today.

Loyalists were fiercely opposed by revolutionary Americans known as
patriots. These patriotic rebels dreamed of a fundamental reorientation of
political power in America. They demanded sovereignty and were adherents to
an as-yet unrealized ideal of democracy – not the colony as-it-was.

It is easy to assume that your friends and neighbors today would have been
patriots during the American revolution, but the truth is far more nuanced.
Instead, the conflict between patriots and loyalists was a civil war that
divided families, friends and communities. For example, Benjamin Franklin,
a founding father and leading patriot, never forgave his son, William
Franklin, for being a loyalist.

Again I’m reminded of the way Trump’s election has divided fathers against
daughters
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/28/conversation-father-trump-supporter>
 and neighbor against neighbor
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/07/california-donald-trump-jobs-immigration-lgbt-rights>
.

Here we begin to see the paradox at the heart of authentic patriotism: true
patriots are the people who reboot their country’s operating system in
order to upgrade to a better, more democratic, version. Today’s jingoistic
nationalists are truly false patriots: loyalists hiding behind patriotic
rhetoric.
‘A little rebellion now and then is a good thing’

Despite the contemporary misconception that patriotism is inherently
reactionary, the essential connection between patriotism and revolutionism
has been vocally celebrated by American presidents since the founding of
our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence, once wrote
in a letter to James Madison
<http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl53.php>,
architect of the US constitution and bill of rights, that “a little
rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political
world as storms in the physical”.

Jefferson also advocated only mild punishment for rebellions so as to avoid
discouraging them too much. And, in a wakeup call to today’s Americans,
Jefferson famously advocated revolutions every two decades, writing in 1787
<http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl64.php>:
“God forbid we should be 20 years without a rebellion … What country can
preserve its liberties if the rulers are not warned from time to time that
their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

Abraham Lincoln echoed Jefferson during his inaugural address in 1861
<http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:388.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext>
when
he said: “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they
can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.”

And so too did Ulysses S Grant in 1885 when he declared
<http://www.bartleby.com/1011/16.html>: “The right of revolution is an
inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a
natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression if they
are strong enough, either by withdrawing from it, or by overthrowing it and
substituting a government more acceptable.”
The path upwards

Concretely speaking, rebellious social movements are created from a
contagious mood, a new tactic and a willing historical moment. The first
two ingredients are within the control of social activists while the third,
the right time for a spark to catch flame, is impossible to know for
certain.

The most effective patriotic mood has repeatedly proven to a contagious
loss of fear: a sudden spirit of fearlessness that sweeps the people into a
wave. People rush to join a social movement because of how it makes them
feel to participate. The job of the social activist is to catalyze a
fearless mood, combined with the communal faith that this time around the
people’s protest will succeed.

New tactics embolden the people and give them faith. The new tactic can be
a novel gesture or collective behavior, such as Occupy’s consensus-based
encampments, the anti-coup Rabia sign
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabia_sign> or the three-finger salute from
The Hunger Games that was banned in Thailand
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/hunger-games-salute-banned-thailand>;
an in-group color, such as blaze pink
<http://www.wsaw.com/content/news/Blaze-Pink-An-E-402309465.html>; or a
unique garment, like pussy hats
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/15/casting-off-trump-the-women-who-cant-stop-knitting-pussy-hats>
or
the Phrygian cap <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap>. Ultimately,
all that matters is that the participants believe the tactic will bring
about social change. That is enough for it to be perceived as a form of
protest and become a challenge to the regime.

Nowadays, the right of revolution is as inalienable as ever, yet it is
rarely acknowledged by those in power. Unlike presidents Jefferson, Lincoln
and Grant today’s leaders are loathe to concede that if their government is
oppressive, then the people have a duty to revolt. Notice how Barack Obama
is fond of praising protesters’s right of assembly
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/30/barack-obama-travel-ban-statement-protests-trump>
but
stops far short of celebrating the right of revolution.

All this leads to the final epiphany that we, the people, have a patriotic
duty to defend our country whenever our governments conflicts with a
higher, democratic ideal.
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c/o Micah White and Chiara Ricciardone
PO Box 71
Nehalem, Oregon 97131
USA

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