The Things That Disturb Me Most

By Denis Rancourt, PhD


The things that disturb me most, in order of concern.

When government institutions and corporations attack me and my family to suppress my democratic participation and to gag me and deprive me of my societal position.

When my own society is occupied and degraded by foreign and special interest plutocrats, constantly engineering public institutions towards stupidity and manipulated fabricated conflicts.

The vicious occupation and dispossession that Israel practices in Palestine, because it is immoral and because an unduly influential Israel lobby in my own country manipulates Canada into co-criminality with Israel and intimidates and attacks public-intellectual opponents of Israel's criminality.

The vicious proxy, economic and military occupations and covert interferences of the USA against Latin America, Africa, the Middle East... because my own country has been made a subservient "partner" in this empire of exploitation.

The violence of the Western educational system in gutting individuals of independent thought and self-worth, and its successes in doing so.

The rampant self-interested use of sophistry by the Western professional classes, and the ease with which the sophistry is adopted at large.

The undue and harmful influence of establishment medicine in defining "health" and our fundamental personal values.

The ease with which the global-warming farce was made the paradigm of mass manipulation that it continues to threaten to be.

Etc.

A message to Naomi Klein

A message to Naomi Klein about her recent garbage for the progressive mind "No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need."

1. Casting the mass criminal actions of the USA Industrial-military-security-finance-congressional-lobby-media complex as exacerbated by Trump serves the said complex.


2. "Putting forward a credible alternate plan" is a (self-serving) recipe for ineffective civil engagement that neutralizes politicized individuals and serves the said complex.


3. Your promoter Democracy Now has been exposed as the foundation-funded instrument of the said complex that it is, and so have you Naomi. Whether you want to know it or not, Naomi, you work for the man.

See articles about Naomi Klein in Wrong Kind of Green.

‘Black Lives Matter has a plantation mentality’ --Elaine Brown

There was a time, just a few decades ago, when "organizing" meant actual self-generated community self-defence and reparation programs, headed by an independent political party, and the language was not in any way polluted by "critical race theory" mush.

I say do it or don't do it but stop asking the occupying government to do it, and stop "organizing" the asking of the master to be more kind.

--Black Panther Elaine Brown on the degradation of black liberation

(Note: Nonetheless, even the BPP was infiltrated at the highest level by the CIA. See Assata Shakur's autobiography.)

BRUCE CLARK fought the entire Canadian legal system for aboriginal sovereignty rights -- Extraordinary interview

Source: Ontario Civil Liberties Association

This interview is an important historic record in the story of Canada’s genocide of the aboriginal peoples.

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) interviewed Dr. Bruce Clark, the lawyer and jurisprudential scholar who describes what ails the Canadian justice system when it comes to dealing with Aboriginal sovereignty issues. Bruce Clark represented Gustafsen Lake Faith Keepers at the Gustafsen Lake Standoff in 1995 near Shuswap, BC. From defender of Aboriginal rights before Canadian and international courts to being jailed and disbarred, Dr. Clark’s struggle has led him to a fight against the justice system itself. 


Related links:

• “Contempt of Court” and “Conduct Unbecoming”: A lawyer’s behavior so bad it justifies imprisonment and disbarment, by Bruce Clark (Dec. 16, 2015, Dissident Voice)
• Occupiers’ Justice, Canada’s Broken Constitution, and Ongoing Genocide, by Bruce Clark (Nov. 8, 2015, Dissident Voice)
• Gustafsen Lake Standoff (Wikipedia)

Dr. Bruce Clark: Aboriginal rights lawyer
Denis Rancourt: Interviewer, for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)
Produced by the OCLA
Filmmaker: Peter Biesterfeld

Alwaght News interview with Denis Rancourt -- Every Day Must be Quds Day

Monday, July 6, 2015, 5:22 PM

Every Day Must Be Quds Day, We Must All Be Palestinians: Prof. Denis Rancourt

Alwaght - Professor Denis Rancourt, a Canadian scholar who was fired from the university where he was teaching under Israeli lobby pressures, is of the opinion that everyday should be marked as the International Quds Day, stressing that world’s nations ought to close ranks against the arrogant powers’ murder campaigns and support popular resistance movements.  
“Any country that serves US geopolitical machinations is protected by the US regime, and is thereby shielded from war crime prosecutions, no matter how horrendous and obvious its mass murders may be. The history of this pattern is unambiguous, and the protection typically extends to the economic, diplomatic, and military spheres. This is especially true for Israel which is in a symbiotic relation with powerful Israel lobbies in the US, France, Canada, Australia, … In the UK the domestic Israel lobby is somewhat kept in check by strong popular activism that impacts electoral politics,” Dr. Denis Rancourt said in an exclusive interview with Alwaght news website.
He also said that the Saudi regime, by its actions and alliances, is an integral part of the empire that is attempting to exterminate Gaza’s life and spirit, and the Saudi regime’s war crime of aggression against the people of Yemen is most despicable. Israel is not the only active war criminal aggressor in the region. All will enjoy immunity under the empire’s disproportionate influence on world institutions until the newly balanced emerging world has sufficiently matured. 

Alwaght: In August 1979, the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini declared the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as International Quds Day, calling on Muslims across the world to mark the annual occasion by holding street rallies. Millions of people around the world take to the streets on this day in a show of support for the people of Palestine, demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. What's your take on International Quds Day?

Rancourt: The International Quds Day is an important statement of recognition and of profound gratitude towards all occupied Palestinians who fight back and reject collaboration with the occupying force. We must honour and celebrate their inspiring, courageous and tenacious endurance, resistance, and dignified self-defence. Quds Day is a vital link to the extraordinary spirit and strength of occupied Palestinians, who are a world treasure in the global fight against organized oppression and evil. The world desperately needs Palestinians, and Palestinians need a conscious and moral world that respects itself enough to actually fight for justice. Every day must be Quds Day, and we must all be Palestinians. Our personal actions involving risk must oppose domination in every area of society, starting close to home in priority, and extending to all the peoples against which enslavements, genocides and wars have been and are being perpetrated.

We, free people of the world, owe much to Palestinians for their stellar and heroic resistance against a most brutal empire. That empire, which includes my country (Canada) as a participant in these global crimes, is vicious and immoral. It has enslaved and exterminated millions and millions of victims on all inhabited continents, in its insatiable quest for power and material gain. It strives for and imposes total and uncompromising dominance -- not just dominance over territory and national administrations, but over peoples and peoples’ minds and spirits also.

Quds Day is a statement that the dominant global empire will be stopped, and is being stopped, by the actuated will of people, who do not want to be dominated, by the actuated will of people who want freedom and influence over their own communities. Through widespread resistance, a new world is emerging as a mosaic of collaborating nations that control their own destinies and associations, and that do not want to be a plantation and killing field for a global empire. As this new reality is achieved, we must not allow Israel’s on-going genocide project to be continued any further, and we must not allow any more nations to be annihilated by total destruction. We must always stand against the empire’s brutal plans, most visibly, the on-going murder campaigns against Gaza, Palestine, Yemen, and Syria in the immediate, while continuing to support resistance in every region that it is manifested.

Alwaght: Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip, and are demanding that Israeli regime withdraw from the Palestinian territories occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War. Despite pressures by international rights bodies, it seems that Tel Aviv doesn't plan to put an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip and in fact is benefiting from the prolongation of the siege. Do you believe that Tel Aviv needs to keep the siege in place in order to safeguard its own existence and legitimacy?  

Rancourt: Israel’s blockade against the Gaza Strip, in combination with Israel’s periodic military massacres of Palestinians in Gaza and all-out destruction of public infrastructure, is an international crime of the highest order. There is no rational justification for the blockade against Gaza, unless the ultimate Israeli goal is progressive genocidal extermination and evacuation of Gaza. Israel’s policy and practice of periodic military slaughters and destruction of public and housing infrastructures, combined with an effectively permanent blockade, can only be objectively understood as a long-term Israeli goal to annihilate Palestinians. This is the on-going, systematic, and long-term Israel genocide that is clear for everyone to see, and that is explicitly managed by Israeli political and opinion leaders.

Israel’s mass crimes cannot be justified as part of any legitimate political or military tactic. There is no realistic existential threat to the Jewish State. Israel is the regional superpower, with one of the most powerful armies in the world. Israel’s fabricated myth of an existential threat is untenable in the face of its history and of the hard evidence. On the contrary, if anything it is Israel’s power, predatory designs, and influence and interference in the interest of empire that are a sustained threat to stability in the region.

There is no sign that enough will ever be enough. Israel could choose to respect human rights and the right of return, in negotiating reparations and resource sharing, or it can continue to practice its criminal campaigns. It has the power to make those decisions. There is every sign that Israel will never make just reparation decisions without sufficient global pressure.

Quds Day is one manifestation of a desire of world citizens to pressure their governments to bring Israel in line with international norms of decency. Quds Day should not be solely an expression of “hope” or solely an occasion for spiritual reflection. In my view, Quds Day also needs to be an affirmation of a moral contract to act and speak-out to exert needed political influence for good. When I have been honoured to be a speaker at Quds Day celebrations, I have expressed this view.

Alwaght: Israeli regime warplanes pounded residential areas in the Gaza Strip during Tel Aviv's 51-day war, killing and injuring thousands of civilians, mostly women and children. International rights bodies and the so-called advocates of democracy and human rights such the US and some Western countries are privy to the fact that the massacre of innocent people is a crime under international law. What has turned Israel into an immune regime while it has repeatedly violated international law by its ongoing atrocities?  

Rancourt: Any country that serves US geopolitical machinations is protected by the US regime, and is thereby shielded from war crime prosecutions, no matter how horrendous and obvious its mass murders may be. The history of this pattern is unambiguous, and the protection typically extends to the economic, diplomatic, and military spheres. This is especially true for Israel which is in a symbiotic relation with powerful Israel lobbies in the US, France, Canada, Australia, … In the UK the domestic Israel lobby is somewhat kept in check by strong popular activism that impacts electoral politics.

The UK is an example where represented active citizens can moderate some of the attempted excesses of the US regime. In response to such a democratic threat, the US and Israel have been using regional tensions and hired-thugs such as ISIS to attempt nation annihilation and dismantling through proxy wars, in targeted countries where collaborating elites cannot easily be installed, such as in Iraq and Syria. These fuelled proxy wars are the most despicable mass crimes imaginable, without declarations of war, without UN approval, and without the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The Saudi regime, by its actions and alliances, is an integral part of the empire, the same empire that is attempting to exterminate Gaza’s life and spirit, and the Saudi regime’s war crime of aggression against the people of Yemen is most despicable. Israel is not the only active war criminal aggressor in the region. All will enjoy immunity under the empire’s disproportionate influence on world institutions until the newly balanced emerging world has sufficiently matured. 

A similar scenario of empire-supported fractioning and destruction was partly actuated in the Ukraine recently. The US regime is enthusiastic about fermenting war in such a way as to attempt to halt the inevitable global economic development of independent blocks, such as BRICS. Here and elsewhere, the empire’s now-common duplicitous use of economic “sanctions” is both morally criminal, in the potential harm caused to ordinary citizens, and geopolitically irresponsible, in the potential instability that is knowingly created. By any objective standard, the empire’s “sanctions” are mass criminal aggressions.

In view of the emerging world economic realities, the US regime is a failing empire with disproportionate military strength, which is a most dangerous situation. The best we can do in this transition period is to stop the ongoing nation destructions and genocides. And the best way to do that is to support the freedom fighters and resistors as much as we can by taking our governments out of the murderous US-led campaigns of destruction. We must impose domestic democracy as much as we can, in such a way as to protect Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and our own oppressed domestic populations that are needed in the unified struggle for actual democracy. This is why the present wave of US-empire campaigns of terror and proxy wars are currently accompanied by the most aggressive attacks against civil liberties in the US-aligned world seen in many decades, from criminalizing BDS and criticisms of Israel, to prosecuting thought crimes of every variety. Independent thought and democracy are the new undeclared enemies of satellite administrations such as France and Canada, and in the US itself. Even in Israel now, a world bastion of freedom of speech, Palestinian national politicians are being summarily imprisoned. These are all clear signs of a failing empire, and of an emerging generalized will to resist. More and more, every day is Quds Day.

Soon, I hope, in my naïve view, the Muslim world will find a way to unite and become the independent and powerful world leader that it deserves to be. It will further and effectively reject US regime interference, and any emerging interference, and it will negotiate and collaborate as an equal in the world, in the interest of its citizens and their diverse democratic ambitions. The fall of absolute US domination need not be a hell of destruction. It can be an occasion for unity and new possibilities. It can occur as an emergence of justice, with inspired and principled new and renewed leaders. This can even occur in the US and its satellite countries if we show these governments the way. Gaza is already eminently showing the way by its resourcefulness, determination, and pure courage; by its Sumud [Steadfastness]. Gaza calls for our involvement every day, which must be Quds Day.

Alwaght: Some certain Arab and Western countries have been always seeking to deflect world's attention away from the Palestinian Cause which tops the priorities of the Muslim world. What's your perspective on the issue of Cause of Palestine and the attempts to put it on the road of oblivion?

Rancourt: The Zionist project has shown itself to be an expansionist and genocidal project, rather than a benign national emancipation project. This has been more than clear to all observers for a long time. Israel is now seen for what it is: a criminal and rogue state deeply motivated by racist exceptionalism, with a majority population that apparently wants to exterminate Palestinians. Israel’s hate is the hate of a genocidal campaign. It can only be stopped by resisting the campaign and shunning the murderers. A sufficiently firm treatment of Israel can constrain it to follow international law, and to accept the needed reparations and equal-party justice-based negotiations regarding illegally occupied land and the right of return.

The US regime will continue to protect Israel’s immunity, even while the genocide is perpetrated, until the US itself sees Israel’s crimes as an intolerable liability. As the US Empire fails to maintain absolute dominance, even in its own backyard and over its own domestic population, it may come to see Israeli crimes as an intolerable liability. At that point, the US Israel lobby will also see the light. Therefore, this is a race for the survival of Palestine. Israel will do everything it can to steal and break Palestine before the circumstances of the faltering US and an awakening world put a definitive stop to the genocide. If Israel succeeds, the world will have lost Palestine, and we all will share responsibility for this greatest catastrophe. I just don’t know that Palestine can survive without our own real contributions to the global struggle, but I hope that Palestine can overcome even our cruel indifference if we cannot be moved beyond “remembering”.

Dr. Denis Rancourt was a professor for more than 20 years at the University of Ottawa, up to the highest rank of Full Professor, until 2009. In the fall of 2008, he was removed from all teaching duties under the pretext that he had granted A+ grades to 23 students in one course during the winter 2008 semester; however, it's quite clear to everybody that his outspoken criticism of Israel and his pro-Palestinian activism had triggered his dismissal from the university. Professor Rancourt's classes were always attended by tens of students and he was considered as one of the popular university professors at the Faculty of Science.

He has authored more than 100 articles published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, in the fields of physics, and environmental science. He is currently an independent social theorist and science critic, author of several social analysis articles posted on internet venues, and the author of the book “Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism” (Stairway Press, 2013). He is an active volunteer with the Ontario Civil Liberties Association, and an experienced self-represented litigant.
Interview by Javad Arab Shirazi

Adult students please get real

By Denis G. Rancourt


You have been had.

You can't see the obvious.

When the obvious is stated, you viscerally reject it, or fain being deaf.

Stated as plainly as I can manage:

You are workers in a controlled economy. The educational and service-professional sectors are integrated parts of the same system of extraction of your intellectual labour. If you withdraw your labour, the system grinds to a halt. This means you have real leverage to extract fair working conditions.

You should be salaried for your school work. The points of negotiation need to be the amount of salary, the working conditions, and your participation in governance of the institution.

Instead, you agree to sell yourselves into indebted servitude for the privilege of working. This is no different than a slave who works all his/her life in the hope of buying his/her freedom.

If you could please just see the obvious, then you could stop "demanding that the system not further increase tuition fees" and start organizing to take negotiated control of the workplace.

You also falsely believe:

1. That you are stupid to the point that you need to be trained in "how to learn" and even "how to think"
2. That the professor-handlers have real knowledge and that this knowledge will somehow rub-off on you if you download all the PowerPoint presentations and satisfy all the course requirements

P-l-e-a-s-e wake up and take your rightful place. You need only take it. It will not be a lost battle if you insist. You will learn more than is otherwise possible.

Do not let the masters divide and conquer you. You are all working adults, irrespective of your ages, because you decide to take your place as working adults who also partake in running the school. Do not let them infantilize you. Be a child only when you, as an adult, want to be a child.

In the 1960s, tuition was peanuts and outside labour was plentiful and well paid. Today, however, you must stop the exploiters in their tracks. They have gone much too far. It's time to roll it back. You are the most exploited professional workers, and your very humanity is denied every day of the academic year.

You are denied your agency in your own development. You are denied your identity and your influence. Identity, influence, struggle, and learning go together. Allow them to divide these parts of you and you are less than what you truly want to be, and you experience less than the full human experience.

Free humans are meant to make their lives, not have lives of enforced servitude.

Please stand and fight. Now is the time. You will have allies. Exclude your enemies and make them irrelevant. Join all those who dare. Respond to intimidation with increased dedication to the struggle. Always ramp it up when they want to confine you.


Link to author's other essays about students and education.
And this LIST.

Frederick Douglass explained the truth about social change

Frederick Douglass's "West India Emancipation" speech of 1857 is possibly the most incisive description of the true mechanism of social change ever written.

The speech is brilliant like only works resulting from liberation praxis can be.

LINK TO SPEECH

CODZ: Opposing the US Zionist state's intimidation of academics

COMMITTEE FOR OPEN DISCUSSION OF ZIONISM

Oh boy, can you hear the loud voices of protest from the ranks of tenured professors against the imposition of Zionism doctrine in US academia..., not! There are small seeds, which are reminders that sanity is still barely rooted on the sterile ground of the continent's intellectual farms. One such seed is CODZ.

CLASSE analysis of Quebec student movement tactics

The Coalition large de l'Association pour une solidarité syndicale étuduantes (CLASSE) is a vibrant and inspiring non-hierarchical student activist collective that, more than any other group, catalyzed and ran the revolutionary "Maple Spring" ("Printemps érable") which recently shook Québec society and its political elites. It is the largest student union in Québec. This year, it engineered the largest, longest, and arguably most effective student strike in Québec (and Canadian) history.

One must admire this organic, yet disciplined and thoughtful organization. It has shown North America how unity and persistence can halt a government agenda. Nonetheless, I wish to make a critique of its "working principles", which can be surmised from its 2012 Manifesto.

There is a major critical flaw in the CLASSE's analysis about education.

The CLASSE takes education to be a "service" and argues that the point of justice is accessibility of this essential service. Its struggle is thereby focused on securing equitable access to education as a vital societal service, by making an analogy with health services (see CLASSE Manifesto).

This is equivalent to arguing that justice is being exploited fairly.

The CLASSE is making a fatal flaw of paradigm assignment since its assignment prevents the student from correctly seeing herself/himself as a worker, through her/his work within and constrained by the educational complex. The student is not a patient accessing a service. The student is a citizen being forced by economic "reality" to be processed by an institution -- in the same way that a laborer is forced to sell her/his labour and be processed into a life of productivity, except that the laborer is paid rather than being extorted into paying.

If the student were simply a free paying client, then this student-client could choose to buy or not buy the service, and could determine the nature of the service through her/his buying power.

Such is not the case. Rather, the student is an unpaid and exploited worker, a slave that is forced to buy her/his own freedom. The chains are the debt load and the coercion is the real social/financial/class status that is sought through being processed by the educational system for further (higher level) service to the economy.

If the student were simply a free and paying purchaser of a service, then the problem of government impositions would be solved by simply withholding payment! If students could survive and/or thrive in the economic "reality" without education credentials, then mass non-payments of fees would solve any dispute between the purchaser and provider of the educational "service".

After all, it is the student that must write the cheque. Yet students absolutely do not have this option. They must instead use the less effective pressure tactic of a strike. The fact that the strike is the effective tactical option of the circumstances shows that the student is a worker and that the "education" is an intrinsic component of the economic structure and activity.

Why do students accept slavery, degrading and dehumanizing work conditions, no salary, and confinement via a debt load which persists into mid life? Paulo Freire would say "because the slave cannot see that he is a slave" [1].

Students should be striking for a fair salary and to define their working conditions. No fees. No students loans. And no need for another job. Period. There is a desperate need for student liberation [1]. Abolitionism or bust! And that would be an education.

Endnote

[1] See: "Need for and practice of student liberation" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher, June 2010.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and many social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009.

Twenty-five-year-old film maker takes on the life of David F. Noble

Jonathon Bullick is making this film and he wants your help if you knew David F. Noble.

First trailer:



Documentary callout:

Concrete Accomplishments of Student Activism of the 1960s

The system needs to erase and replace any memory of success of past social movements. The student activism of the 1960s is not so distant but the memory of its concrete political and socio-structural accomplishments and the memory of its effective methods of change have been wiped out.

It's quite remarkable.

I write this out of a crying societal need to remember.

Ever since I introduced academic squatting to my university courses in 2005 [1] and beyond my dismissal as a tenured professor in 2009 [2] I have been regularly invited to "intervene" in the classes of several of my colleagues on different campuses, to relate my observations and to catalyze examination of self in society.

On the question of "what can we do?" I have noticed an astonishing ignorance of recent student movement history. Even in the minds of activist students and students who academically study social change there is deep ignorance in the form of "replacement".

I am virtually never able to get students to name the concrete accomplishments of their peers from the 1960s, including students who have read on the topic. One of the only common responses, beyond the superficial observation of the occurrence of large protests, is the myth that 1960s students significantly contributed to ending the Vietnam war [3].

Fortunately, a vivid historical account of the 1960s student movements was recently penned by the late historian David F. Noble who was an avid contributor at the time [4]. In addition to following the paper trail, my research has also consisted in informal interviews with Noble and several other student activists from the 1960s -- ones that remained activists throughout their lives.

So, here, in point form, were the concrete achievements of the student movements of the 1960s that redefined the university institution on our planet:

(1) An end to in loco parentis for adult students, an end to the institution as parent. No more curfews or gender segregation or invasions of private lives, etc. No "codes of conduct" where academic sanctions can be leveled against students for legal or illegal behaviours deemed undesirable.

(2) Substantial presence in a new "collegial governance" model that included student representative members on every departmental council, faculty council, key selection committee, university senate and board of governors. The students acquired a legal front seat in the governance apparatus having statutory control of the institution.

(3) Freedom of expression. Students acquired the right to speak, poster, flyer, gather, radio-transmit, demonstrate, etc., ON CAMPUS without being censored, arrested for trespassing or disciplined in any way.

(4) Students won the right to own and manage their own real estate on campus. As a result, new "university centres" were student built, owned and operated, thereby guaranteeing a legally defined "territorial base". This was extended to such student organizations as the "Public Interest Research Groups" and so on.

Note that these victories directly addressed the student condition rather than being expressions of "solidarity" with distant causes, just as opposition to the Vietnam war was an immediate student concern via the draft.

The system makes every effort to mask the significant student power (institutional and legal) that the above victories represent, makes every effort to infantilize students and their representatives, and actively works to reverse the above gains.

Meanwhile, too many neutralized students concentrate their activist attentions on "safe space" pathology, behavioural and attitude propaganda, and organizing ineffective demonstrations without a clue about what would constitute an effective demonstration.

Endnotes

[1] http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/04/academic-squatting-democratic-method-of.html
[2] http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/25.html
[3] "Pacifism as Pathology" by Ward Churchill.
[4] "Beyond the Promised Land" by David F. Noble

List of background and related essays by Denis G. Rancourt HERE.

On the theory of a middle-class war for justice

By Denis G. Rancourt


Activists in the First World middle-class need to get real.

They are an avant-garde minority against a police state. Given their small number and given the relatively low degree of state violence directed at them, there is no point practicing armed urban guerrilla tactics unless the activists become targeted themselves by COINTELPRO-style executions.

Would the Black Panthers and their breakfast programs have survived if they had an organized covert counter assassination unit which killed cops in answer to every state assassination or abduction? There are way more black folks than cops in the US: Less than 2% (0.7M vs. 40M today) and the cops are busy with lots of stuff.

As long as the State refrains from summary executions of political dissidents there is no practical reason to practice armed guerrilla warfare; in view of the State’s predictable response which would be supported by a majority of the middle-class.

One can argue that the racist large scale prison attack against the lower economic class in the US is violent to the extent of justifying an armed guerrilla response but this response is primarily the self-defence responsibility of the targeted lower economic class and middle-class activists are not about to participate in large numbers.

Middle-class activists should concentrate on fighting their own oppressions using the methods to which they have access. These methods go far beyond petitions, letters to members of parliament, letters to the media, street protests, and one-day occupations of government facilities.

The State has assembled a large-scale anti-democracy apparatus which targets middle-class political dissidents. The State apparatus practices extensive surveillance and infiltration, pre-emptive arrests, intimidation of activists and their friends and family, police harassment, targeted and exaggerated or false criminal prosecutions, unconstitutional bail and undertaking conditions, and so on. [a]

Unfortunately, too many middle-class activists who fall prey to these state abuses of power are intimidated away from defending themselves and away from effective activism. Every such successful intimidation is a soul-breaker. The activist makes the demoralizing choice of accepting defeat and imposed conditions in exchange for a compromised political existence.

These humiliating defeats are not necessary. Rebel means rebel.

Framed Black Panther activist Assata Shakur, defending herself from prison against fabricated bank robbery charges in 1976 in the US put it this way:

“The trial had a lighthearted feel to it. Everyone had kind of decided that we would enjoy the fight and fight as hard as we could, without worrying about whether we were gonna win or lose. … The atmosphere was electric. The kourtroom was packed every day with sisters and brothers who had come to watch the circus. ... One little girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, ‘Is that the fascist pig, Mommy?’ pointing up at the judge...”

Shakur was acquitted. After she was later found guilty in 1977 of the fabricated charge of killing a cop in an ambush of several colleagues in which she almost died, Shakur escaped to Cuba from a maximum security jail.

In 1953 Fidel Castro self-represented himself before a kangaroo court that sentenced him to life. In his famous and lengthy “History Will Absolve Me” closing arguments he uncompromisingly put it this way:

“As attorney [I have] not even been able to take a look at the indictment. As accused, for the past seventy-six days [I have] been locked away in solitary confinement, held totally and absolutely incommunicado, in violation of every human and legal right. ... only one who has been so deeply wounded, who has seen his country so forsaken and its justice trampled so, can speak at a moment like this with words that spring from the blood of his heart and the truth of his very gut. ... If all the weight of the law does not fall upon the guilty because of cowardice or because of domination of the courts, and if then all the judges do not resign, I pity your honor. And I regret the unprecedented shame that will fall upon the Judicial Power.

I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”

Castro spoke the truth as he saw it, irrespective of the consequences, without any illusion about the nature of the kourt.

I’m suggesting that First World activists should fully and without compromise engage society via the institutions that oppress them: the kourts, the skhools, the workplace, the prisons, the hospitals, the associations, the unions, the ministries, the societies, the departments, and so on.

These institutions are tied to middle-class and upper-class self-image and this cultural identity tie makes their rules less malleable than power would like, especially when the battle is done publicly – with the full transparency of internet accessibility. [b][c]

In addition, such battles against societal institutions are “news worthy” because power must pay attention to them. The same institutions that exercise oppressive controls over people can also be used to expose power and constrain it, thereby making space for increasing dissidence. Media coverage, in turn, whether good or bad, helps to raise public consciousness and contributes to changing the culture of passivity.

I’m suggesting that middle-class activists put their educations to work and defend themselves without compromise using their privileged ties to upper-class sensitivities by taking on the institutions precisely when and where the institutions are personally oppressive against the individual activists.

Each instance of oppression is an opportunity, an open door for one’s Trojan horse. They don’t expect you to be non-compromising, nor do they expect you to have your own voice, to represent yourself without the buffer of a trained (and therefore almost always compromised) lawyer. [d]

Welcome to praxis if you go there. Freire’s mantra is that you can only fight your own oppression. And this is what it means; from your position of power in society and to maximum impact. [1][2]

Learn the law and do it yourself. Use lawyers as consultants but stay in charge. You are not minimizing risk to the client; you are reshaping society to make space for more justice.

Make every battle a learning experience. Don’t repeat tactics that don’t work. Don’t evaluate “success” wearing fairytale glasses. Rampage as far as you can go. Fight to win irrespective of the odds and enjoy the fight!

You have to enjoy the fight because they can’t kill you. You are middle-class. Connect up and make it work. Experience liberation.

[This essay is dedicated to the memory of David F. Noble [3].]

On the hypocrisy of climate change threat advocates

By Denis G. Rancourt

Those who argue that climate change driven by fossil fuel burning is a dominant threat to the environment and to humankind should act according to their beliefs. With knowledge comes responsibility.

If it is true that scientific consensus leads one to the undeniable conclusion that unchecked global warming or climate change will likely lead to humankind’s greatest threat in its short history on Earth then two things follow:

(1) Powerful interests which oppose climate change mitigation or which do not sufficiently endeavour to mitigate climate change and which obviously have access to science experts and their published reports must knowingly desire the destruction of the biosphere as we know it, and

(2) Citizens who become aware of the scientific consensus have a moral responsibility to do everything they can in self-defence to avert the eminent destruction of the planet.

Each individual citizen who becomes informed that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration from the burning of fossil fuel will lead to world catastrophe on the scale of the planet has a duty to do everything he/she can to stop as much fossil fuel burning as possible.

The time for discussion, organizing and lobbying is over. The planet is on the edge.

Simply reducing one’s carbon footprint rather than actively participating to reduce fossil fuel burning by multiplicative actions is a cowardly escape from responsibility. By this false logic why not kill yourself and reduce your footprint to zero?

The slashing of automobile tires can no longer be seen as a crime but must be understood as a service to humanity.

Likewise water in gasoline tanks, derailing coal-bearing trains, bombing pipelines, forcibly shutting down extraction operations, and destroying home furnaces must all be understood as noble emergency service to humanity rather than seen as property and economic damage.

Poisonous CO2 must be brought under control without further delay. Those who cannot fight should stop breathing and kill themselves for the greater good.

Surely climate change threat advocates do not realistically expect the same technocratic government-NGO-corporate-finance enterprise that created the problem and that refuses to expediently fix it before it is too late to act as needed to avert the impending catastrophe?

That would be like asking investors to prevent stock value bubbles and market crashes because of the harm to ordinary people and the devastating impacts on communities.

No, responsible citizens must take immediate individual direct and effective action to stop as much fossil fuel burning as possible.

A single teenager slashing five or so tires per minute on a parking lot (church or Wal-Mart say), counting internal combustion engine down time, is equivalent to shutting down one coal-fired power plant every two years.

Live according to your beliefs.

Anything else is pure hypocrisy and selfish escapism.

RELATED POSTS:
Taking CO2 seriously
Global warming: Truth or dare?
Some big lies of science
The corporate climate coup
Richard S. Lindzen on the Corbett Report

Cutting through the shit::: Harsha Walia on the Black Block

Diversity of Tactics - 3 - Harsha Walia from working TV on Vimeo.

RELATED POSTS:
G20-Toronto - Property damage is a good thing

This is Canada::: Activist Alex Hundert jailed for speaking at a university

That's right.

Social justice organizer Alex Hundert was arrested at his home in the middle of the night by a SWAT team to prevent his participation at G20-Toronto.

Outrageous bail conditions were then imposed, including removal of his constitutional right to demonstrate.

He was invited by a professor at Ryerson University (Toronto) to participate in a panel discussion about social activism. He accepted and was arrested for breach of his conditions.

He's still in jail.

The judge ruled that the university presentation was a demonstration.

We shit you not.

This is Canada.

The level of corporate fascism is so advanced that this passes for normal around here with most folks.

See all the "This is Canada" posts

Against diversity of tactics, in support of direct action

by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.
(en francais ICI)


Here I argue that “diversity of tactics” in social justice activism is a misguided effort to unite incompatible sides and that the “diversity of tactics” stance harms the direct action anarchist side and helps the pacifists; where pacifists necessarily support the hierarchical oppressor. [1][2] “Diversity of tactics,” distinct from usual strategic and risk-benefit considerations, is a compromise position between activists that have not only different tactics (direct action versus non-violent) but also opposite views about society (anarchism versus socialism, in the broad sense). This compromise serves the hierarchical system which causes the social injustices being verbally denounced by both groups.


DIVERSITY OF TACTICS

Note that within groups having identified a common enemy or target and a sufficiently common unbearable injustice, determinations of varieties and combinations of tactics and of which individuals will do what are the usual strategic and risk-benefit considerations, distinct from the “diversity of tactics” defined and discussed in the present essay.

“Diversity of tactics” is the position or principle whereby activist groups preferring different tactics of resistance against systemic injustice agree to not get in each other’s way, agree to not interfere or sabotage each other’s different chosen tactics.

It could arguably be stated bluntly as: “Don’t trash me for doing what is needed that you don’t dare do,” addressed to those who don’t agree that it’s needed.

Rabble.ca diplomatically puts it this way [3]: “Generally, those who criticize a diversity of tactics believe that such a philosophy fails to provide a critical analysis of protest strategies that may in fact harm the broader cause. Conversely, those who support a diversity of tactics generally believe that criticism of others' type of protest harms the unity of the movement by undermining solidarity to the benefit of those whose policies and actions the movement resists.” (In the present essay, I argue that those who support it should stop supporting it…)

“Diversity of tactics” as an operational concept was developed as an attempt to resolve the tension between activists or demonstrators who employ non-violent methods (marching, slogans, theatre, sit-ins, etc.) and activists who employ so-called direct action (targeted property damage, taking down barricades, de-arresting co-activists, physically resisting police attacks, etc.).

Following “diversity of tactics,” activists at anti-globalization events (and other demonstrations) accept even fundamentally different tactics arising from opposing views of society [1][2][4] and rationalize this acceptance by advancing that the degree of risk that an activist takes is a personal decision based on a personal evaluation. They do not try to coerce others to take higher risks. They try to not have behaviours which would put other activists at higher risk.

The latter point is not black and white in the discourse. For example, some would argue that showing up at a demonstration puts all the demonstrators at higher risk by increasing the size of the demonstration thereby “provoking a police response” while others would argue that showing up helps to give safety in numbers. In the end, it is most often the police and their bosses who decide if demonstrators will be safe, if demonstrators will be attacked or not and the degree of force. [5]

“Diversity of tactics” arose as a response to the tension between pacifists and direct action anarchists. The majority pacifists mostly see the anarchists as a negative force that draws unneeded violent police response and that hijacks media attention away from a positive public opinion of most demonstrators and their cause. “Diversity of tactics” is used as a rallying call for liberal activists to join in accepting more radical methods of protest and resistance as part of an overall strategy. [6]

NOT JUST A DIFFERENCE OF TACTICS

It is a common misconception among activists advancing “diversity of tactics” to consider all tactics as contributing to fighting injustice and only differentiated by level of risk. In fact, direct action and pacifist tactics are fundamentally different both in the underlying assumptions about how societal change occurs and in the underlying beliefs about society’s structure and about how society should be structured. [1][2][4][7][8][9][10]

The anarchists believe that hierarchy itself is the problem and that hierarchy allows concentrated power to generate and maintain social injustices including war, occupation, colonization, economic predation, wholesale exploitation and social engineering. The goal of the anarchists is to flatten the non-democratic hierarchical pyramid as much as possible to provide space for individual agency (participatory democracy, self-organization, decentralized and distributed control of resources and the economy, etc.). [11][12]

The pacifists or socialists (in the broad sense) or “progressives” or liberals believe that justice can be achieved and maintained by the present system of social organization which only needs to be fixed and improved but not by flattening the hierarchical pyramid.

They believe that the system is amenable to being adjusted and improved via opinion input from citizens. They believe that present First World governments can be directed by “critical masses” of citizens’ opinions. They therefore design their actions around “education” (read progressive propaganda), opinion forming, and mass expression via the corporate media, petitions, street demonstrations and so on. They also often have vested interests with workers unions, NGOs, and so on, that are very much tied to the system. Most of the “improvements” they seek involve strengthening the system’s hierarchical control and increasing the system’s legitimacy (e.g., progressive legislation with more control).

WHO’S THE CRIMINAL?

In fact, our First World “free and democratic” system is practicing horrendous crimes with virtual complete complicity of First World populations. Canadian crimes include, a continuing genocide against aboriginal peoples [13], a geopolitical war in Afghanistan, support for the US Empire, support for the genocidal and apartheid state policies of Israel, overturning the democratic popular government in Haiti, corporate and finance predation throughout the world, an immoral prison system used to maintain social inequities [14], vast structural social inequities with mass public health consequences, mass civil rights violations perpetrated at will and without consequences for the decision makers (e.g., G20-Toronto), mass indoctrination and pacification of the youth, continual social engineering manipulation, universal pharmaceutical and medical establishment predation … [15]

Since the system is doing this, the system should be stopped, or at least impeded. Since we condone the system by our compliance at school, at work and on the streets every day, we are responsible at least for our own oppressions (wage slavery, financial debt extortion, professional indoctrination, mental environment control, criminalized lifestyle behaviour, etc.). Every time we collaborate with the non-democratic economy and the illegitimate control structures in our lives we strengthen the system and enable its criminality.

Those who do not resist and impede collaborate.

The struggle between direct action and pacifism is a struggle between enemies, between resistors and collaborators. This needs to be clear. [16]

CONCLUSION

“Diversity of tactics” is an accommodation that saves pacifists from being exposed and perturbed in their collaboration with and support for a violently oppressive system. Anarchists using “diversity of tactics” seek protection from the majority pacifists or seek to at least not be attacked by the “pacifists”. But anarchists are looking in the wrong place for support. The enemy (the collaborator) cannot provide support. The enemy can only provide coercion, co-optation, and elimination.

Collaborators will break ranks with the enemy only to the extent that the heat is turned up. You can’t influence with words alone – the needed words acquire meaning through confrontation. You cannot make revolutionary changes by collaborating and accommodating.

We individually need to act everywhere we can, especially where it counts, including on pacifist collaborators, and not only at globalist propaganda events. There is no solidarity without individuals who resist and there can be solidarity only to the extent that there are individuals who resist. [4][8][9][16]


Endnotes

[1] “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill, 1986.

[2] “How non-violence protects the state” by Peter Gelderloos, 2007.

[3] “Panel Discussion: A Diversity of Tactics - A Diversity of Opinions”, rabble.ca, 2010.

[4] “The Activist Wars” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.

[5] “They’re not just pigs” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[6] "In defence of the diversity of tactics" by Alex Hundert, 2010.

[7] “Against Chomsky” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2008.

[8] “G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[9] “On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[10] “G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty - A critical examination of the role of the CCLA” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[11] “The Basic Bakunin – Writtings 1869-1871” by Mikhail Bakunin.

[12] “Anarchy” by Errico Malatesta, 1891. English translation by Vernon Richards, 1974, last revised 2001. (Richards’ translation essential.)

[13] “A little matter of genocide – Holocaust and denial in the Americas 1492 to the present” by Ward Churchill, 1997.
(Available at Google Books, http://books.google.ca/)

[14] “About the obscenity of the legal mind and its grotesque displays of arrogance” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[15] “Some big lies of science” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[16] “Roundabout as conflict-avoidance versus Malcolm X’s psychology of liberation” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.


Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See rancourt.academicfreedom.ca]

Roundabout as conflict-avoidance versus Malcolm X’s psychology of liberation

by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.

In the present essay I introduce the general notion of “roundabout” as a mechanism of conflict avoidance used by privileged social justice activists. I then contrast this pseudo-liberation activism with the needed true liberation activism of Malcolm X, which I argue to be consistent with the model of liberation of Freire.

INTRODUCTION

The now familiar concept of “pacifism as pathology” was introduced by Ward Churchill as the central characteristic of First-World middleclass so-called social justice activism. Churchill argued from history that all liberations were leveraged through violence and proposed that pacifism as cowardice was pathology. [1]

Gandhi stated that it was better to practice armed resistance than to use pacifism as an excuse for cowardice [2]. Both men (Churchill and Ghandi) saw acceptance of and self-justification for one’s (legal or circumstantial) slavery as pathology.

Paulo Freire’s work showed that all hierarchies, no matter how cushioned in comfort, are violent and oppressive and argued that we could only fight our own oppression – that “solidarity” meant standing side by side with those fighting our same oppression. Freire advanced that all liberations had to be rooted in and driven by the struggles of the oppressed themselves no matter how underprivileged and that inter-social-class “solidarity” was insignificant and limited to rare individuals who joined in battle on the front lines. [3]

Churchill concentrated on the use of pacifism as an excuse to avoid the needed direct confrontation with the oppressive system. He and others have deconstructed and exposed First World pacifism as avoidance; including mainstream life-style environmentalism, ecological or economic isolationism, love ideologies, and so on, when taken to be activisms in themselves. These authors did not explore the main creative active strategies whereby pacifism can be enacted.

I explore the latter strategies of evasive action (roundabout) used by the most activist-minded sector of concerned citizens.

My goal is to provide a radical self-criticism for dedicated anti-hierarchy (social justice) activists to help ensure that we are as effective as possible and are not simply fooling ourselves. I hope that my analysis will help us to more easily recognize when we are fooling ourselves and wasting our energies and will help us to identify optimally effective outlooks and strategies.

EXAMPLES OF ROUNDABOUT

Education and progressive legislation

Here is an example. A visible minority suffers racism. As a way of avoiding effective direct challenges to this racism, members of this visible minority ally themselves (in “solidarity”) with privileged social justice activist whites in order to train the majority societal group away from overt racist behaviour using social engineering managed by the establishment - using sponsored “education” and progressive legislation.

As a result, a privileged class of educated and integrated whites become self-conscious about racist behaviour and self-sensor their racist expression, the establishment strengthens its illusion of fairness, and the minority looses its ability and perceived legitimacy for effective direct daily confrontations against now-more-covert racism.

A victim in this particular roundabout is the collaborating visible minority because it puts its efforts in collaborating and its hopes in the social engineering rather than practice its liberation. It denies itself praxis (in the sense of Freire) and instead integrates itself more fully with the oppressive dominant hierarchy, thereby becoming more oppressed and more of an oppressor. Other victims are the lower social class individuals of the visible minority who loose actual solidarity with the now more integrated higher social class individuals of the visible minority and who are saddled with a stronger establishment more able to deflect their legitimate and persistent interests.

The above described roundabout is common as a general model for any oppressed group in a “free and democratic” First World setting: women, queers, blacks, language or cultural minorities, working class, working poor, homeless, disabled, non-status, elderly, disease-infected, professional workers, students, migrant workers, colonized aboriginals, prisoners, consumers, wage earners, tenants, home owners, single fathers, single mothers, and so on.

The above example involves a social class divide of the oppressed group but the class divide is not an essential feature because the roundabout is equally effective when there is no underclass of the oppressed group.

The essential feature of this roundabout is that the collaboration with the establishment, with the hierarchical system of control, is a conscious or unconscious diversion (in terms of personal psychology and personal resource allocation) away from effective direct confrontations, away from the praxis of liberation and away from Freire’s needed revolt and authentic rebellion.

The dominant group partner in this roundabout also avoids its own immediate oppressions, instead of its members practicing their liberation. As a result of this dedicated exercise of avoidance, members of the dominant group partner in the roundabout are perpetually depressed, in search of “hope”, and routinely experience “burn out” despite self-identifying as privileged. This is because the authentically concerned dominant group partners (as opposed to the cynical higher-hierarchical-level dominant group partners such as law and policy makers) are attempting to removed themselves from their own pain and have denied themselves any possibility of directly and effectively addressing their own immediate oppression.

Organizing and politics

Another example of roundabout is when a concerned and sensitized individual, often burdened with survival guilt associated with his/her relative privilege and damaged by an institutionalization (school, work, etc.) against which he/she has no personal experience of effective resistance, identifies an injustice needing to be redressed and launches into “organizing” as a substitute for immediate and direct action, as a substitute for initiating a praxis of liberation focussed on one’s own oppression.

This type of organizing is based of recruiting membership, education regarding the issues, building a growing pool of progressive opinion, and so on, but it guards itself against “radical” actions that would scare off potential allies and clings instead to the mythology of a critical mass of opinion as a motor for societal change. [4][5]

In contrast, organizing that supports liberation is driven by the need for efficient learning, protection and power amplification in a group of individuals already joined in solidarity via their practices of liberation. It is an organizing that is an organic part of the praxis, not a holding pattern of risk and confrontation avoidance.

Deferring societal agency

In another roundabout the concerned and sensitized individual makes a conscious decision to temporarily sacrifice himself/herself to fully integrate the system and to seek advancement within the hierarchy with the rationalization that he/she will be more able to make positive change once a sufficient degree of power and influence is achieved.

The nature of a hierarchy is of course such that this is impossible. The rare individuals who break free from the top layers are expelled from the establishment. The other climbers serve the system astonishingly well or blame themselves for failure and drop out if they cannot.

The sacrifice of willing integration is a large price to pay if the individual does not discover rebellion and creative anti-hierarchical sabotage as methods to change the system from within. Workers and students play the system to survive and their suffering is evident in absenteeism (both physical and mental), indifference, detachment, cynicism, escapism, self-destruction, and so on.

This process and these difficulties are described by Schmidt for the case of professional workers [6]. Adapted to our schooling, this is the story of our institutionalization into the hierarchy, into an economy controlled by concentrated power. In this sense, student liberation during the developmental years would be a most fertile ground for societal transformation [7]. This is why schools are guarded from outside influence and from ideological divergence as rigorously or more than prisons. [8]

Anytime the individual substitutes direct self-defence using his/her body, language, personal influence in community and personal power at school or at work with some indirect or circuitous make-work near-zero-risk scheme that involves going along or convincing others to also not act, then the individual is practicing roundabout rather than liberation activism.

MALCOLM X ON LIBERATION SPYCHOLOGY

The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence) was founded in 1966, one year after the murder of Malcolm X. The spectre of such an organized and focussed resistance was the main concrete driving force which led to significant civil rights gains for blacks. The Black Panther Party was eliminated by the white state’s (FBI) political assassination unit known as COINTELPRO which was also involved in the Malcolm X assassination. Today US blacks disproportionately populate the lowest economic class and US prisons.

In the words of Rev. Albert Cleage [9]:

“Malcolm X was tremendously important, beyond our comprehension today … Malcolm laid down certain basic principles that we can never forget. He changed the whole course. The first basic principle that Malcolm laid down that we can’t forget is this: The white man is your enemy. That is a basic principle, we can’t forget it. I don’t care what else they drag in from wherever they drag it – remember one thing, Malcolm taught one truth: The white man is our enemy. We can’t get away from it, and if we accept and understand that one basic truth, his life was not lived in vain. Because upon that one basic truth we can build a total philosophy, a total course of action for struggle. Because that was the basic confusion which distorted the lives of black people, with corrupted the movements of black people.”

“He didn’t just say it … he went out and he lived it. He asked for moments of confrontation. He said we have got to break our identification, we can’t go through life identifying with the white man or his government. … We must break our identification with the enemy, we must confront him, and we must realize that conflict and violence are necessary parts of a struggle against an enemy – that is what he taught. Conflict, struggle, and violence are not to be avoided. Don’t be afraid of them…”

This foundational principle that in the hierarchical oppression of blacks your enemy is your enemy can be generalized to any particular hierarchical oppression and to all oppressions by hierarchies.

The oppressor by nature is your enemy. You cannot collaborate with your enemy devoted to your oppression and come out ahead. At best, you will be used and transformed into your enemy.

Malcolm X’s psychology of liberation is one where you recognize that the oppressor is an enemy that you cannot integrate, where you know that this enemy can only be deterred by your strength and your willingness to defend yourself.

In this psychology, like in Freire’s, you do not fight the enemy in order to replace him in a hierarchy. You fight for liberation, not for an opportunity to create your own system of oppression. But you fight. You understand that this is an enemy and that all hierarchies can only violently oppress.

If it’s not clear that you are oppressed or that your oppressor is your enemy, then not only are you trapped and confused but you also protect and serve the oppressor. And you act against all those who are oppressed by the oppressor. You collaborate.

One does not like to live during a time of war and one does not like to have enemies. But this is a time of war and you are harmed by the system, denied your full humanity, as surely as the million directly killed in Iraq and as surely as those held in the open air prison known as Gaza and illegally maintained by Israel.

By not fighting your own oppression directly as an individual person you protect the same system that practices these war crimes. By not understanding in your pores that this system and those who sustain, protect and project it are your enemy until they stop, by not understanding this, you are co-opted into collaborating and into denying yourself your own liberation.

You can’t even start a praxis of liberation until you start to recognize the enemy. And you can’t sustain the struggle without knowing who the enemy is and that he is the enemy.

There is an us and them. You are oppressed and you have an oppressor. Indeed, you are oppressed by an entire hierarchical system of oppression. You target where you can best defend yourself, where you will inflict the most punishment. Call it punitive justice.

As soon as you loose sight that you are dealing with an enemy, then you are part of the oppressor. All the internal and external forces will make every attempt to confuse you on this point and to buy or to force your cooperation. In particular, those who invest in roundabout will vehemently pressure and coerce you to follow them because you represent a threat to their psychological investment [4][5].

CONCLUSION

If I keep my individual personal agency, my direct ability to have influence, my direct bodily ability to defend myself against my oppressor understood to be my enemy, at the point of my strongest connection to my oppressor, then I will not partake in roundabout. I will have all my available resources for my praxis of liberation which will naturally include organizing and community.

Endnotes:

[1] “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill, 1986.

[2] "Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi" by Norman G. Finkelstein, 2009.

[3] “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire, 1970.

[4] “On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[5] “The Activist Wars” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.

[6] “Disciplined Minds” by Jeff Schmidt, 2000.

[7] “Need for and Practice of Student Liberation” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

[8] “The Student as Nigger” by Jerry Farber, 1969.

[9] "Myths about Malcolm X" by Rev. Albert Cleage, speech delivered in Detroit, February 24, 1967.

See many RELATED POSTS on the Activist Teacher blog

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See rancourt.academicfreedom.ca]

On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism

As opposed to what would be needed


by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog [1].
It was also posted on Dissident Voice where a vibrant comment discussion followed [LINK].


WHY SYSTEMS BECOME MURDEROUS EXPLOITATION MACHINES

Arguably the three most influential end-point models of political organization are best represented by Adam Smith (capitalism), Karl Marx (socialism/communism), and Mikhail Bakunin (anarchism).[2][3][4] These three men and many other persons who contributed to critiquing, perfecting and adapting or combining these end-point models were unquestionably brilliant, acute and incisive.

Problem is none of these models has ever been put into practice in a sustainable way. This is because none of these models or their adaptations and combinations can successfully be put into practice by engineering a system for people to inhabit.

For these ideal models to work they must arise from a self-organization in which every individual has both the capacity to recognize when a foundational element of the model is being corrupted by a particular practice and the capacity to intervene to prevent or correct the corruption. With capacity to intervene comes capacity to recognize.

The American libertarians understood this and inspired a revolutionary constitution that guaranteed the individual the right to intervene (bear arms, free speech, etc.). This libertarianism also nurtured a deep and healthy cultural distrust of governments, institutions, banks and corporations.

To be sustainable, the above-mentioned socio-politico-economic models and their combinations cannot be imposed and managed from the top but instead must be driven from the base; must be discovered and developed by the individual connected to his/her community and must be controlled by the individual via personal agency. As soon as the individual has little or no influence to correct the system then there is runaway hierarchical command and control and all the nasty oppressions that this necessarily implies.

For example, all three men mentioned above knew (expressly believed) that capitalism would lead to capital monopoly and the associated predation of the top corporatists and financiers. Smith wanted to prevent this by government and international regulations – although he underestimated the now obvious reality that capital would always evolve to own government. Marx saw world economic monopoly (globalization) as an inevitable consequence of capitalism and he elevated globalization to the status of a natural law. Bakunin saw that Marx’s model could not be applied without leading to the same kind of irreversible hierarchical predation as with capitalism.

Instead of being based on the power of individuals to monitor and correct, applied “capitalism” and “socialism” have been organized from the top, put in place via elite-run social engineering, and have used theoretical concepts of capitalism and socialism to rationalize and justify unrestrained hierarchical control by a dominant elite which has graciously provided illusions of democratic participation via workers councils, unions owned by the bosses, and fixed elections of elite-selected candidates. [5]

ACTIVISM TO STOP THE EXPLOITATION MACHINE

This brings us to the question of First-World activism. How can individuals best obtain enough power to correct the most destructive aberrations of the present runaway command and control hierarchy of exploitation and oppression?

Here, in my view, two of the most important critics and theorists of First-World activism are Herbert Marcuse (One Dimensional Man) and Ward Churchill (Pacifism as Pathology).[6][7] Their work on the psycho-sociology of First-Wold activism is as acute and incisive as the works of Smith-Marx-Bakunin on socio-politico-economic models. I must add the canonical work of Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) geared towards liberation of the most wrenched but, in my opinion, universal and applicable to First-World activism.[8][9]

Marcuse explains in detail the fundamental challenge of activism seated in the relative comfort and relative personal freedom of the modern middleclass. Churchill focuses on the main psychological defence reaction of First-World activists challenged by their consciousness of the broad murderous underbelly of the system. Freire simply lays out the universal essence of liberation from a necessarily-oppressive hierarchy, like few others have.

The goal of activism within capitalist and socialist hierarchies is for the individuals (ordinary citizens and mid-level managers) to find ways to effectively challenge and correct the system, thereby flattening the hierarchical pyramid rather than allowing or enabling its otherwise incessant sharpening. The goal of the activist is to increase democratic participation (i.e., direct influence) in all areas of activity and to reverse or impede the otherwise increasing concentration of power.

Optimally, the activist practices direct influence at the point of his/her strongest connection to the economy; at work for the worker, at school for the student, on the street for the homeless person, etc. This is the point at which the system has the strongest grip on the individual but it is also the point where the individual has the most power against the system’s authoritarian oppression. Expressed as the Freirian mantra – in activism, in the struggle for liberation, “one can only fight one’s own oppression.” Our oppression primarily results from the undemocratic hierarchy that controls our lives.[10]

As middleclass citizens of an empire, if we create an increase in democracy and a reduction of authoritarianism, then those exploited by the empire in the underclasses and abroad immediately benefit from a loosening of the system’s grip.

Of course one also supports the struggles across social classes and across national borders and one derives knowledge and inspiration from the struggles of others but the murderous killing machine will only become more powerful and more ferocious if we do not practice anti-hierarchy activism at the point of our strongest contact with the hierarchy.[3][4][7][8][11]

Of course this true activism against our own oppression and against hierarchical domination, like any true activism, is an activism that carries the highest potential risk for the individual. One cannot fight an oppressor without exposing oneself to backlash.[12] And the best safety net against this consequence of the battle is organization and community.

AND NOW THE PATHOLOGY

And this is where the pathology starts. Why lose a good thing? Why risk job loss? Why create tension at work? Why not just get the degree and climb the hierarchy from which one can act? Cannot more be achieved by cooperation? Isn’t confrontation what oppressors do? Won’t we just become oppressors? Etc.

There are a million elaborate and slogan-supported rationalizations to not be an activist and most involve re-definitions of activism in terms of actions that present no significant risk to one’s socio-economic status.

For example, several players pick up the above need in activism to “organize” and substitute the organizing itself for the activism. The latter organizing is not one rooted in necessity for safety and in self-defence but instead takes on the characteristics of a membership drive and an educational program to build shared opinions.

This avoidance often involves the mystical notion of the “critical mass” whereby if enough citizens acquire the same opinion then this opinion is magically implemented by the system, by some unspecified mechanism never before observed in history. Critical mass is a concept of physics and involves a nuclear chain reaction but it is only relevant if one has a critical mass of radioactive nuclei – determined individuals prepared to react and create an explosion. It doesn’t work for opinions acquired mainly by reading flyers and watching documentary films.

Following this mythology of critical mass of opinion, organizers note that the 1960s brought out 10s and 100s of thousands of protesters into the streets and falsely conclude that we therefore need only bring out large numbers of protesters to accomplish societal change. They fail to realize that the protesters of the 1960s were protesting as an external demonstration and extension of their real activism at work and in community and that their mass movements included riots that were a serious concern for power that was already overstretched in Vietnam.[7][13]

In the present context of relatively advanced corporate fascism and socially engineered compliance [14][15], power knows that even large numbers of peaceful demonstrators will obediently go back to work on Monday morning and will not spontaneously and physically unseat their elected “representatives” or bosses.

Pacifism is the main pathology identified by Churchill. Not the true combatant-pacifism of Gandhi who said that it was better to take up arms than to practice a false pacifism of cowardice [16], but the pacifism of dogmatic non-violence as a substitute for direct anti-hierarchical activism. This pacifism is often accompanied by pathological conflict avoidance and by escapism into religion or ecological sectarianism and by the privileged practice of isolated alternative community building as an escape from the hierarchy of the dominant system. All these reactions were explained by Marcuse.

Other diversions include the amplification of valid but secondary and privileged preoccupations to be oppressed fairly within one’s class. Here I tentatively include: gay marriage, pay equity for women, affirmative action, political correctness activism, co-optation unionism, health care protection activism, ethical investment activism, and so on.

I mean that these struggles are generally rigorously confined by their practitioners in such a way as to protect and reinforce the overarching (workplace) economic hierarchical domination which in turn continues to increase its violent oppression of the included groups and to increase its exploitation of the excluded groups.

Gay marriage activism is a move towards equal treatment for all but is practiced in such a way to increase the state’s hierarchical control of relationships by strengthening rather than reforming the intrusive institution of state marriage; and the married gay couples continue to be oppressed by work and their children by school.

Pay equity activism is equal treatment by the oppressor in the wage slavery enterprise but is generally practiced in such a way as to bring women into the fold without necessarily making the workplace more democratic.

Affirmative action corrects a wrong but maintains the oppressive workplace unless individual employees directly fight against both racism and undemocratic authoritarianism.

Political correctness is an offshoot of pathological conflict avoidance, a desire to isolate oneself from any risk of (verbal) conflict via mental environment oversight rather than a commitment to participatory cultural transformation.

Co-optation unionism, the dominant form of unionism in North America, is a cancerous affliction in which workplace democracy and individual responsibility (e.g., professional or tradesperson independence) are horse traded away for salaries and benefits, under the threat of global economic “restructuring.” It works hand in hand with power to drive the system towards increased central command and control, towards corporate fascism. It dehumanizes the worker. Instead, unionism could be practiced as an arm in the struggle to democratize the workplace but it almost never is.

Universal health care coverage activism is practiced in a way which further locks us into the insane Big Pharma and technological medicine trap that the medical establishment has driven us into and further moves us away from public health and towards an ignorant dependence on a corrupt profession; whereas it could be an occasion for citizen involvement and for a broad participatory and empowered debate. Instead, it does nothing to put individuals responsibly in charge of health priorities.[17]

Let me not even address the absurdity of “ethical investment activism”, an oxymoron if ever there was one. It’s up there with the insanity of the corporate plan to make ethanol from food as a substitute for oil which some green anti-CO2 sectarians have supported. (If you don’t want to produce CO2, kill yourself.[18])

And so on. Equal treatment activism should be an occasion for anti-hierarchical activism not a substitute for it. That is not what one observes.

Let us not forget lifestyle and consumer choice false activisms, the less extreme versions of isolated alternative community life. I vote with my consumer choices? If we all just consumed responsibly and reduced our carbon footprints the world could be saved? In fact all societal efficiency gains are always made up for by increased global consumption. If cars can be made to consume less energy then there will be more cars… This false activism is a classic guilt alleviation strategy that does nothing to confront the oppressive hierarchy. Instead, it protects the system by diverting individual attention towards inconsequential pursuits.

There are as many creative psychological devices to rationalize and internalize one’s subservience to the oppressor as there are individuals that support the killing machine. Since the killing machine most brutally targets brown people, Churchill proposes that this pathology of pacifism (which enables the killing machine) is a supreme racism, no matter how politically correct one’s language and consumer choices are.

RESILIENCE OF THE PATHOLOGY

The first problem is one of perception.

The single largest barrier to human perception in a hierarchy is the individual’s desire to maintain his/her status within the hierarchy, as measured by economic and class status.

This barrier to perception is so strong that it may as well be physiological. In most circumstances it is just as difficult for a slave to perceive that he/she is a slave as it would be for the slave to see in the ultraviolet segment of the light spectrum. “I need the master because he protects us and organizes the work…” Indeed, the largest practical challenge in Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed is to create circumstances and occasions in the hope that self-awareness of the subject’s oppression will be catalyzed and nurtured.

Similarly, it is virtually impossible for members of the First-World middleclass to perceive the depth of their own oppression and exploitation. They reason that they are relatively privileged and therefore cannot be oppressed and they adopt the oppressions of others; or they blame themselves for all “failures” and difficulties and practice self-destruction; or they displace their need for meaningful work and societal agency with any number of transfers and escapes; etc.

The second problem is one of perception.

Most of all, it is impossible for institutionalized individuals in the First-World middleclass to perceive solutions that involve risk, the possibility of losing economic and social status. We have no experience of defending ourselves against our oppression. We only have the experience of an institutionalized existence of compliance where our lives are laid out in stages: school, graduations, diplomas, career development, student debt management, mortgage payments, retirement savings…

In addition to this, individuals subjected to a hierarchy of domination are trained to seek approval and to fit in. They lose the natural tendency to seek truth and instead accept and feed upon the “tapestry of lies” (both right and left) provided and maintained by power and its army of service intellectuals (see [5][19]). Information that is contrary to the approved mental environment is considered threatening and is either vehemently rejected or ridiculed. A good example of this response is the vicious cynicism of so-called-progressive left citizens and “activists” that is reserved for “conspiracy nuts” such as the proponents (truthers) of the 911-truth movement.

Information that would cause the First World middleclass activist to question his/her no-risk-to-status response to perceived (and transferred/displaced) injustices or to question the value of his/her longstanding investment in the particular adopted no-risk-to-status response to the perceived injustices is denied entry and attacked [20]. It cannot be perceived as something that is potentially true. The truthers themselves, for example, can delve into off-the-charts considerations only because this information is not threatening to them: They have adopted the belief that simply uncovering the truth and exposing it and explaining it can produce the needed change, if only a critical mass of informed citizens can be achieved via cyber space and public event or media activism.

All in all, truth is not compatible with approval and individuals subjected to a hierarchy of domination have little regard for truth. The substitute of choice is “like-mindedness”. This is why so-called-progressives hold “education” in such high regard. They intuitively understand that flyering and documentary films (etc.) are effective ways to sway institutionalized citizens into a given variety of like-mindedness.

There is almost no realization among First World activists of Freire’s praxis of liberation via fighting one’s own oppression as the only way to uncover the truth about one’s life.

CONCLUSION AND THE VITALITY OF THE RIGHT

We should despise both the authoritarian right which leads to corporate fascism and the paternalistic left of socialism and communism which leads to communal castration and death of the individual. Both right authoritarianism and left paternalism depend on and produce control hierarchies. All hierarchies are violently oppressive by nature. [8]

First World citizens cannot significantly contribute to the needed anti-hierarchy activism and will only accommodate power and protect the killing machine as long as they are unable to authentically perceive their own oppression by the same hierarchy that is violently oppressing us all – because the obedience training of school, the indoctrination of graduate and professional schools, and the complete control of the worker by the finance-corporate economy are unmistakably violent processes that deprive us of our humanity.

In this regard, the right is more effective than the left. Left progressives mistakenly see their privilege as proof that they are not oppressed. In fact, their “privilege” is only the reward for accepting to be violated in making them into gatekeepers and supporters of the hierarchy. Intuitively they know that effective activism could compromise their “privilege”.

The right activists, on the other hand, root their politics in individual rights and see themselves as threatened by structures and changes that would remove their individual rights. In this way, they are closer to the true impulse of the anti-hierarchy activist and therefore represent a formidable instrument of power when they are manipulated.

Leaving aside the religious fanatics on the right that would impose their beliefs on us all and the political correctness fanatics on the left that would impose their beliefs on us all, American libertarianism has deep roots and is a powerful potential ally of anarchy-inspired anti-hierarchy (pro-democracy!) activism.

To my reading, American libertarianism is not an insignificant fringe movement and probably has not been co-opted to the same degree as fringe left anarchism. Dedicated anti-hierarchy activists, the only hope for significant First World contributions to liberation, would do well to ally themselves with libertarians and to participate in the societal discourse about the place of libertarianism in society.

Damn yes, own guns, no required schooling, no bank bail outs, no head office corporate decisions, voluntary taxation, accountable politicians, no insurance company controls, accessible cost-recovery-interest community-bank loans to individuals, coops and small businesses, no party-selected candidates, no wars abroad, no surveillance or personal information gathering, complete transparency in public and corporate affairs, no prohibition of any substances, no personal lifestyle and work choice criminalization, voluntary personal safety decisions, no restrictions on growing your own food, decriminalized assisted (or not) suicides, no legal or government bankruptcy protections for creditors (people first), health freedom, no barriers to work, no corporate or government controlled media, only community-controlled corporations…

A consistent application of libertarian principles anchored in individual freedom could go a long way to dismantling oppressive structures.


Endnotes

[1] essay URL on Activist Teacher blog
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-racism-and-pathology-of-left.html
And see "RELATED WEB POSTS" below.

[2] “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, 1776.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

[3] “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto

[4] “The Basic Bakunin – Writtings 1869-1871” by Mikhail Bakunin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin

[5] For a discussion of the illusions provided and maintained by power see the essay “Some big lies of science” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-big-lies-of-science.html

[6] “One Dimensional Man” by Herbert Marcuse, 1964.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man

[7] “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill, 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism_as_Pathology:_Notes_on_an_American_Pseudopraxis

[8] “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire, 1970.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

[9] “Need for and Practice of Student Liberation” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/need-for-and-practice-of-student.html

[10] For an explanation applicable to the professional work environment see “Disciplined Minds” by Jeff Schmidt, 2000.
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

[11] “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, 1980.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States

[12] “Activism and Risk - Life beyond altruism” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2007.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/02/activism-and-risk-life-beyond-altruism.html

[13] For example, see “Understanding Power – The indispensable Chomsky” by Noam Chomsky, 2002.

[14] “Canadian Education as an Impetus towards Fascism” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/01/canadian-education-as-impetus-towards.html

[15] “G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty - A critical examination of the role of the CCLA” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/07/g20-toronto-and-lost-sovereignty.html

[16] "Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi" by Norman G. Finkelstein, 2009.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/resolving-the-israel-palestine-conflict-what-we-can-learn-from-gandhi/

[17] See note-[5], “Some Big Lies of Science”, for a discussion of the “medicine is health” lie.

[18] “Taking CO2 Seriously” (essay) by David F. Noble and Denis G. Rancourt, 2007.
http://climateguy.blogspot.com/2007/05/taking-co2-seriously.html

[19] “Against Chomsky” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2008.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2008/07/against-chomsky.html

[20] “The Activist Wars” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2009/08/activist-wars.html

RELATED WEB POSTS:

Put your body on the gears… Mario Savio – youTube videos
Pacifying Resistance – youTube video
MALCOLM X: The Bloodless Revolution – youTube video
“The Ballot or the Bullet” (speech) by Malcolm X
"In Defence of the Diversity of Tactics" by Alex Hundert, 2010
More echoes of pacifism as pathology… Dalai Lama on the CIA payroll…
Criticism of the Dalai Lama – so positive and forgiving that it hurts!
On the Need to Embrace Hatred