Out of the mouth of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, birthed a harsh truth: our most heinous enemies are often our own minds. This adage was valid during the 6th century BCE on the Indian sub-continent – and it is still pertinent for most of us humans during the beginning years of the 21st century AD.
As I think back to my past days living in that west coast, hipster, capitalist-lite, urban cauldron in the United States, I often smile to myself about those times. I experienced some weird ‘street stuff’ during my ‘growing up,’ young adult period while living there.
I experienced some pretty pathetic and stupid actions during most of those political demonstrations, protests, marches and street manifestations, all supposedly against the State, fighting the system, in which I had often attended and participated. I thought that demos and manis sufficed in the struggle. I was wrong.
I distinctly recall Leftist lunatics with bullhorns screaming into them – even though a simple voice would have worked. They often yelled out the same noxious phrases, ‘who’s streets, our streets!’ and ‘the people united, will never be defeated!, and for those that wanted to show off their crap Spanish, ‘Sí, se puede…’ Meanwhile, the local donut brigade dressed up in military high-grade outfits, like ‘Robocops,’ and gazed ominously at us, the activist-coward losers.
We radical bums, many of us unemployed, underemployed, or simply traveling, just walked around the city blocks and shouted crap. Onlookers either looked with disinterest, or probably thought we were a bunch of weird hipsters trying to get on the local news.
The police seemed annoyed that they had to babysit us around the city blocks, and we only seemed to piss off the occasional right-wing, fascist asshole that spotted us in the distance. The local political hacks probably didn’t even know that a demo was in progress. The mood afterward was dispiriting. I wasted part of my day just walking around the city blocks while I almost risked a costly arrest for nothing.
I learned some important political lessons at least. The childish Leftist tactics of street protesting against injustice often did not work, still do not work – nor will they ever successfully work. As the nineteenth-century abolitionist, Frederick Douglas stated, ‘power concedes nothing without a struggle.’ Douglas might have meant petitioning the government at the next council meetings – but we are living in different and more troubling times than his own days.
All humans on the Earth are now living under the most heinous state-elite empire that human history has ever seen, witnessed and experienced. This empire, the Amerikan Empire, has murdered, maimed and destroyed more lives that the recent Nazi Empire in Europe and in North Africa.
The rulers of this evil state concoction have mixed Police State tactics and Mass Imprisonment against the general US population. This deadly concoction has included Classical Fascism with Fourth Generation warfare; Gladio style mercenary armies inclusive of Death Squad Counterinsurgency doctrines, blended with highly sophisticated media propaganda, also incorporating widespread brainwashing among most American social classes and ethnicities
Ultimately, this Amerikan Empire encourages eternal wars, both foreign and domestic, while utilizing the most sadistic methods of monopoly capitalism. We are not dealing with insidious Fascist parties of the 1930s European variety; instead, we face cabals of state sociopaths in deep love with their powers to commit legal mass murder. How could we even think to fight such monstrous Evil and atrocious Terror?
First, Planned Political Demonstrations often do not work, and they can even turn defeating for any revolutionary movement.
Nothing is worse than having police push and shove the marchers onto the sidewalks and then pick off the unlucky stragglers for detention and arrest. Street demonstrations work when the numbers are present, meaning hundreds of thousands of marchers.
The politicians take notice and often speak at those boring rallies. The end of any successful, massive political demonstration is not crowd satisfaction, but a political reform proposal that gives a little painkiller dope to the marchers from their same, worst enemies – the politicians.
Hundreds of people out in the streets, united in outrage against some recent State criminal injustice works splendidly. The shock, anger and courageous movement of regular people scares the State monsters. These types of movements are spontaneous, powerful and frighten State power. The police come out in force and the threat of state violence is very present. The rage of the oppressed is far more powerful than the paid thugs and mercenaries of the State. The State knows this truth.
Another good political method is the armed defense of the defenseless against state bullying and threats. The criminal state plans nefariously, and with absolute attention to detail, against all of its ‘principal and dangerous enemies.’
State agents have always wanted to make examples of certain people, which works well in cowering the rest of the population into cowardice. Those US government sociopaths used such tactics against the Black Panthers, the Drug Counterculture, and the Anti-War Movement in the seventies, against MOVE in the eighties, against the Branch Davidians in the nineties, and against the domestic Muslim population during the first decade of the 21st century.
They recently tried the same thing against America’s gun culture, outlaw ranchers and Southern culture during the second decade. This is what happened recently at the Bundy Ranch. When the armed regular citizens faced the goons of the state, the state hoods left the scene of the crime.
The government agents then prepare for their revenge – which is what they are doing as I write this essay. The freedom fighters with guns in Ferguson have just set them a little off course however.
Second, We must never offer apologies for speaking the truth to power against all injustice, state criminality, cowardice, and all forms of structural violence.
Recently, I have witnessed political blogs that have consistently documented Amerikan police violence against the general population, apologizing and backtracking on their websites. These Internet blogs actually believe that one article praising the ‘good cops’ will make the police forces respect them – or even keep them safe from police abuse. This is not the case, nor has it ever been true throughout history. Like all bullies, elites, slave masters and street thugs, those that hold power always hate and despise the weaker ones that do not hold power.
Third, We have to avoid, reject, ignore, not even browse, nor use any of the vocabulary from both the corporate ‘mainstream’ media and the corporate alternative, Leftist media. Every time we use their bogus terminologies and most importantly, echo chamber their issues and concerns, we become mental slaves to them and they, in turn, become our ideological masters. We willingly enter the worst type of mental slavery.
For example, if both the Corporate Mainstream Media and the Corporate Alternative-Leftist Media happen to trivialize and sensationalize police, cops and racism, then we ought to continue our focus on the nefarious history of all abuses of power: courts, prisons, police, plantations and the State, inclusive of US military policing during invasions of foreign countries.
If the police murder some regular civilian on our urban streets, then we need to use the right words for our outrage – the word of murder. The police are not killing our fellow our citizens, they are murdering them, and this is especially true during the arrests and murders of non-victim ‘crimes,’ such as taking ‘illegal drugs.’ or ‘selling ‘contraband’ on the city streets. The same is true of the US military overseas. If the US government bombs a village and murders a good amount of the local population, then this is also murder, and we ought to use the correct verb.
This method also works for the now stale terms of terrorism and terror. Terrorism is not just the desperate guy with the gun and hostages, it also represents the desperate villagers huddled under the cover of a shelter during a massive bombing raid. Invasion needs to replace war, collaborators need to replace interim governments, and mass murder needs to replace civilian casualties.
Instead of overusing the term, homeless and the poor, we could state, throw away populations. When we refer to the chronic underemployed, permanently unemployed and poverty, we could use the phrase, structural violence. The list goes even further with prisons as concentration-internment centers, elections as corporate controlled selections, schools as day jails for children and adolescents, universities as corporate loan education frauds, federal, state, local taxation-fines-fees, and without representation, as government extortion rackets. As the trite saying goes, honesty is the best policy.
We do not have to repeat the themes and sensationalized issues of our media enemies. We can speak and write about our own issues, create our own momentum and social concerns, and ultimately, use our own terms to describe the injustice that sucks the life out of the most unfortunate and the most sensitive within our society. We all know that there is a lot more going on underneath the mass propaganda techniques.
We can focus on what we want, and keep attacking the state criminals, meaning the political-economic elites. Yes, we lack their powers, but if we control our minds, then we are free from their manipulations. Our mind freedom is the most important card that we hold in the eventual defeat of such a vigorous enemy. When we free our minds first, then we will eventually ignore, reject and not cooperate with the State sociopaths. Through this method, we negate their cultural power over us.
As we learn to enjoy the parts of our lives that are free from such tyranny, other bystanders will take notice. They will see our power, dignity, honor and freedom, and later, they will adopt similar tactics versus the predator state.
When we reach around 20% of the population, which ominously looks upon the State as the enemy and begins to reject both their counsel and cultural power, then the Empire will fall – and it will fall brutally. Even the onlookers will get hurt.
No Empire falls graciously in history. Its collaborator empires will also fall, such as the Neo-British Empire, and its colonial-settler ‘white’ sublets, such as Anglo-Canada, White Australia and British New Zealand. Other nefarious states will also implode, such as the Colombian, Saudi, Indonesian and Mexican Fascist juntas, and the Zio-Nazi Crusader State.
This method of political sophistication and tactics seems easy, but it is incredibly hard to practice. We begin with the little steps in ignoring the State, while calling out their infernal methods with the truth to power. We could start with politely and courteously correcting an acquaintance repeating the State media propaganda during a friendly get together.
Courage and fortitude both conceive the first rites for emancipation.
Guns and Anarchy 