Harmful Idiocy Syndrome (definition)

Harmful idiocy syndrome is a widespread disease that affects many political commentators. There are several pathogenic and environmental causes. "Zero-tolerance" dogma is a main pathogen, whether applied to speech, social behaviour, political organizing, risk abatement, violence used in actual self-defence, or state violence in defending state sovereignty against a murderous attacker or invader. The pathogen is often spread by manipulative politicians and lobbies, and often incubates in institutional habitats, such as universities. The disease is part of the social engineering geography of Western states, and its many features have a variety of common names.

If Robert F. Williams could speak to BLM...

If Robert F. Williams could speak to Black Lives Matter militants, he might remind them of this central problem in any organized liberation struggle... the problem of the supported network of collaborators.

"I learned in Atlanta that Mr. Elijah Muhammed had made quite an impression and that many Afro-Americans are learning, to the consternation and embarrassment of the black respectable leadership, that he has more to offer than weak prayers of deliverance. A prominent minister in South Carolina said, "Our biggest stumbling block is the Uncle Tom minister--the people must stop paying these traitors." In Atlanta, a university professor, energetic about the new spirit on the part of the Negroes, was very hopeful that new militant leadership would replace the old Uncle Toms, whose days, he was confident, were numbered.

There are exceptions among us. The Uncle Toms, the Judases, and the Quislings of the black "elite" would deny this rising consciousness. They do everything possible to make white Americans think that it is not true, while apologizing to us for the very people who oppress us. Some of these "responsible" Negroes are afraid that militant action damages "amiable race relations." They complain that race relations may deteriorate to a point that many Negroes may lose jobs. What they mean is that they may lose their (ital.) jobs. For the black workers, who are the first to be fired, and last, if ever, to be hired, the situation is so bad it can't deteriorate.

We realize that there must be a struggle within our own ranks to take the leadership away from the black Quislings who betray us. Then the white liberals who are dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into our struggle in the South to convert us to pacifism will have to accept our (ital.) understanding of the situation or drop their liberal pretensions." [Bold-emphasis added.]

--Robert F. Williams, in Negroes with Guns, 1962 (Martino Publishing, CT, 2013), p. 112

"UNFREE in Palestine" -- A most important new book for all who study national liberations

UNFREE in Palestine
-- Registration, Documentation and Movement Restrictions
By Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay
PlutoPress, 2013, pp. 222

Book reviewed by Denis G. Rancourt, PhD


The new book by academics Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay is a brilliant achievement, and a landmark in the study of both the ongoing Israel genocide in Palestine [1], and national liberation struggles in general.

At first look the book is simply a well-researched academic treatise, with 693 endnotes, about administrative controls imposed on Palestinians by Israel. It is written in a sober style with great intellectual clarity.

As one enters its pages, however, UNFREE becomes a far reaching analysis of the mechanics of a colonial state's eradication and domination of an indigenous population, that has parallels in other modern states such as Canada [2]. And it becomes an incisive description of the psychological and cultural anatomy of the awe-inspiring Palestinian resistance.

The unstated lessons of this book are transportable to any colonial nation state, and the picture is one that exposes the vicious nature of colonialism in the institutional instruments that are used. Despite the balanced and academic approach of the authors, readers will be horrified to learn the minutia of  what Palestinian citizens continue to endure in "the only democracy in the Middle East", and to learn the history of Israel's colonialism through the lens of administrative controls.

How has and does Israel contravene international law? Let us count the ways...

... the Hague Regulations, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, various United Nations Resolutions, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These legal documents run parallel to another story – that of the largest denationalisation project in modern history. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes Palestine as “by far the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world today”.2 In Palestine, the tools of the census, the population registry, and residence permits effectively denationalised a nation. It is one of the greatest ironies that, as nationalism faded in Europe, it waxed in the Zionist movement to Palestine, and as international law opposed denationalisation, denationalisation in Palestine rose ever higher. [p. 20]

One of the most profound chapters in UNFREE is the one entitled "Coercion and Collaboration" (Chap. 4). The authors recognize that colonialists always depend on collaborators, and that any colonialist enterprise must implement a strategy for securing collaboration. Israel's methods to coerce Palestinians to become collaborators in its genocide are violations of the explicit language of international statutes, and are inhuman, as the facts presented demonstrate. The authors always summarize by understating, such as:

The pressure to collaborate is one of the most difficult demands on Palestinians who either need IDs or need to retrieve them. This pressure permeates and is instrumental to the perpetuation of the system of control. [p. 83]

At times, the explicit descriptions of documented Israeli war and occupation crimes overpowers any human reader, such as:

In the first decade after 1948, “curfews became the most common method of controlling Palestinians”.68 Perhaps the best-known incident in this period took place in 1956, in the village of Kafr Qassem. The Israeli army gave only a half hour’s notice to the village leader that a curfew would take effect at sunset. With no way of telling the villagers returning home at dusk, the villagers were surprised to be confronted by armed forces asking if they were from the village. When they said “yes”, 47 men, women, and children were shot dead, one by one, at close range, in the first hour of the curfew alone.69

Defending the premeditated massacre, Brigadier Shadmi had told his forces, “A dead man is better than the complications of detention”. Shadmi and his men eventually served short prison sentences, were formally pardoned, and then promoted to leading roles in Palestinian municipalities and the Dimona nuclear facilities.70 [p. 106]

There are descriptions of routine Israeli interferences with births, and with Palestinian health services in general:

Médecins du Monde reported in November 2003 that Israeli officials had been holding birth delivery kits at the airport for seven months (sent by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA). The Ministry of Health in Nablus had been waiting for these kits since February 2003. In 2002, when Palestinian needs were greatest after Israeli attacks, Israeli officials at the airport kept medicines for eight months – until one third of them had expired – that had been sent from Germany, the US, and Italy to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.23 [p. 129]

Some of the introductory summaries to chapters are among the most compelling academic statements on the treatment of Palestinians by Israel, such as:

In the spring of 2002, yellow and purple blossoms covered the fields and trees around Jenin, a Palestinian town named for the fertility of its earth, and known for the largest forested area in the West Bank. But that spring, the forest had a different use. Israeli army forces were sweeping through the West Bank, taking over 8,500 Palestinians from their homes and workplaces and holding them captive in makeshift camps. Around Jenin, the army separated the men aged between about 18 to 50 from the children, women, and older men; then they took the men to the forest: handcuffed, blindfolded, in their underwear; they were forced to kneel or squat in the cold mud, and denied blankets, food, and water.1

Soldiers had written the ID numbers on Palestinians’ wrists with blue ink.2 Then each man was photographed, interrogated with the use of a digital file containing details about his life, and had his ID number written on the back of the photo. Using plastic shackles – described by Amnesty International as a form of torture because they stop blood circulation and cut into the skin – to bind captives’ hands, they blindfolded them, and kept them, “squatting, sitting or kneeling, not allowed to go to the toilet, and deprived of food or blankets during at least the first 24 hours”.3
Majdi Shehadeh was one of over 600 Palestinians taken from Tulkarem refugee camp:

"We weren’t given any food, and when we asked for water they poured it over us. The handcuffs were tight and when the blindfolds were taken off on our arrival I saw some people with hands black and swollen.4"

By 3.30 a.m. they began to shake with cold. Elsewhere, in the Ramallah area, so many Palestinians were taken that the army forced them into a dried-up septic tank for lack of space in the prisons.5 After a day and a half, they were given their first food:

[F]or 10 people we got a tomato and an apple and we shared this. Every six people had a loaf of bread, but a very small one and 200 grams of yoghurt.6

From 1967 to 2006, Israel incarcerated almost 700,000 Palestinians, that is, nearly one-fifth of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.7

[...]

Harvard professor Sara Roy, whose father carried an identification number imprinted on his arm in the Second World War, was one of those who noticed the connections between these so-called bureaucratic elements during the 2002 mass arrests:

"[W]hat does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport; when some of the Palestinian dead must be buried in mass graves while the bodies of others are left in city streets and camp alleyways because the army will not allow proper burial; when certain Israeli officials and Jewish intellectuals publicly call for the destruction of Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings or for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza; when 46 per cent of the Israeli public favors such transfers and when transfer or expulsion becomes a legitimate part of popular discourse; when government officials speak of the “cleansing of the refugee camps”; and when a leading Israeli intellectual calls for hermetic separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the form of a Berlin Wall, caring not whether the Palestinians on the other side of the wall may starve to death as a result.10" [p. 160, 161]

Finally, a most fascinating section of UNFREE explains the Palestinian spirit and culture of resistance that is termed "sumud". The following sequence of quotes from UNFREE constitutes a description of sumud:

"We Palestinians have learned to lose without being defeated.30" [p. 172]

Sumud is [...] described by Edward Said as “a way of turning presence into small-scale obduracy”,33 in which sheer presence constitutes resistance; it contradicts “the natural behavior expected ... exodus and leaving”.34 [p. 172]

The internationalisation of the term sumud is attributed to Shehadeh, who explains that, faced with the two options of “mute submission” or “blind hate”, he would choose the third: sumud.35 [p. 173]

People in difficult conditions like Hani Amer often refer to their children, their families, and all people suffering collectively, as reasons for staying in place. [p. 173]

[Quoting Anthropologist Rema Hammami:]

"In terms of the society’s self-image, this is a society that for more than fifty years has lived in a constant state of dispossession. [It is] an incremental dispossession: it goes on, and on, and on. And the society is extremely strong in terms of survival, in terms of survival strategies. It’s very proud of that as well.

I mean, I think the self-image that most Palestinians have – we all have of ourselves – is that, “We are constant losers. We’re just people, and we just lose all the time. And we lose, but you know what? At the end of the day, they are not going to win. Because we’re stubborn. We’re stubborn bastards, right. I got nowhere else to go. This is my home. They can do what the hell they want. But I’m staying”.41" [p. 174]

Thus, sumud is a powerful and foundational explanation of the phenomenal Palestinian resistance. Sumud is a psychological alternative to suicidal physical resistance against a vastly more powerful invader, and to fleeing or accepting death. This alternative is made possible by being culturally embedded, and the feasibility of sumud is consistent with the "self-image-incongruence model of individual health" that I have recently described, based on known socio-medical research [3].

There is one aspect of UNFREE with which I do not agree. In their final chapter, the authors cast sumud as a technique of non-violent resistance. I do not see why the cultural and psychological basis for sumud would have to be inconsistent with a resistance that includes armed self-defence.

In other words, there is no reason, in my view, that sumud is at odds with an armed intifada. Indeed, it seems to me that sumud and armed rebellion are natural partners and supporters of each other, and that neither can survive without the other.

This is important because it is becoming more-than-apparent that nothing short of physical force on the ground will stop Israel in its "cleansing" and "grass mowing" projects. Certainly sumud alone, no matter how noble and admirable, is no match for years and decades more of business as usual in Palestine. Applying the myth of pacifism as a realistic counter to a genocidal maniac nation such as Israel would only ensure the murder of Palestinian society.

Nonetheless, that is a minor interpretational aspect, and UNFREE, will be of great benefit to anyone interested in the truth about the so-called "Israel-Palestine conflict", or interested in resistance struggles in history and in colonized regions (everywhere).


Endnotes

This review was first published at Dissident Voice, HERE.

[1] Note: The authors of UNFREE do not qualify Israel colonialism as a "genocide". It is not their goal to establish any legal judgements, but rather solely to factually describe the historic realities on the ground.

[2] See: Rancourt, Denis G., Israel’s Attempted Genocide Must Fail -- Lessons from genocide in "Canada", Dissident Voice, August 2, 2014.

[3] See: Rancourt, Denis G., Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health, Dissident Voice, October 26, 2014.

Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.  

Student liberation as an intergral part of civil guerrilla warfare - audio lecture, in English and Spanish

.


February 15, 2011, opening lecture by Denis G. Rancourt (Ottawa, Canada) in the Estudis Crítics des de les Ciències Socials series - Barcelona, Spain.

The series was an academic squatting exercise at the University of Barcelona.

The lecture was given by skype (with large screen) and was translated on the fly into Spanish and sometimes Catalan. It is the first presentation of Rancourt's developing "civil (unarmed) guerrilla warefare" model of social change.

The web site of the project course is:
http://estudiscritics.wordpress.com/

Some essays by Denis Rancourt

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]

More echoes of pacifism as pathology… Dalai Lama on the CIA payroll…

(…with concluding remarks by Derek Jensen)

According to THIS ESSAY by leading US left intellectual and historian Michael Parenti, the West has made the Dalai Lama as both the figurehead of the “romanticized Shangri La” myth of pre-communist-invasion Tibet and a popular legitimizing agent of First World colonialism.

According to Parenti’s analysis old Tibet “was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty” with a feudal economy based on legalized slavery and enforced serfdom.

Parenti also describes documents showing the CIA’s direct support for the Dalai Lama and points out the Dalai Lama’s stated pro-colonization positions on such topics as the wealth-poverty divide, the illegal Iraq war, the US intervention in Yugoslavia, and the invasion of Afghanistan.

It turns out that on questions of specific US military interventions the Dalai Lama is no pacifist. This in no way diminishes his leadership status among his “principled pacifist” followers in the West. The CIA expects good behaviour from the Dalai Lama and First World “pacifists” need their guilt-alleviation fix. The two go hand in hand.

It is clear that the Dalai Lama’s pacifism, the pacifism of his Western followers, is a different species of pacifism than the pacifism of Mahatma Ghandi – see THIS ESSAY.

We end with these spirited words by author and activist Derek Jensen about the absurdity of the pacifist ideology of First World devotees:



RELATED LINKS
Criticism of the Dalai Lama: So positive it hurts
How CIA helped Dalai Lama to end up in exile
"Democratic Imperialism": Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy
Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi
A critical look at Mahatma Ghandi (audio)
On the need to embrace hatred

Criticism of the Dalai Lama – so positive and forgiving that it hurts!

This blog features several essays that attempt to explain the destructive nature of the “positive” and “progressive” and “educational” movements which are populated by the majority of First World “activists” and “aware” citizens:

Organizing, Coalition Building, Education… as Self-Cooptation?
The Activist Wars
Need To Embrace Hatred
Against Chomsky
More Against Chomsky
Global Warming: Truth or Dare?

These essays attempt to discover the mechanisms by which First World “responsible” lifestyle choices, consumer choices, educational efforts, dialogue initiatives, etc., are counter to authentic anti-oppression efforts.

But a poem can be worth a thousand essays…:


The Ocean of Wisdom *


Ignore the checkpoints and the chains
Sail the rivers of tears
Praise a dream that has given birth
to a million nightmares

We resist from our slums
You resist from the podium
Beloved of Hollywood,
Ocean of Wisdom:
Can liberated celebrities
bring freedom to a people?

David you embrace or Mao
The aboriginals were subjugated
In Hebrew or in Mandarin
The land was appropriated


They’ll hide the sun under your crimson robe
Drown the truth in your words of hope

Go!
Leave my aching land alone!
To Lhasa,
I support your right of return

--
Ehab Lotayef
Montreal, January 23, 2006

* Welcoming the Dalai Lama to the Holy Land. The Dalai Lama is planned to visit Israel in the middle of February to participate in the launch of ceremonies marking 100 years since David Ben Gurion immigrated to Israel.
** We thank poet and activist Ehab Lotayef for allowing the use of his poem.

On the Need to Embrace Hatred

Emotions are the truest metabolic expressions of how we perceive our immediate circumstances.
..
There are no good and bad emotions since spontaneous emotion is simply what we feel in response to our perceived circumstances. Emotions are the most fundamental way, as human beings, that we can experience the outside world of relations, danger, safety, threats, solidarity…
..
The more a society suppresses or confines or directs emotion, the less individuals in the society have freedom of expression and self knowledge and knowledge of the world.
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So-called developed world societies, First World societies, are particularly messed up on the emotions front. In Canada, for example, hatred itself is illegal. What could be more pathological on the emotions front than to actually outlaw an emotion?
..
As another example, North American mainstream culture would have us accept that sadness is to be avoided and can be suppressed by “putting on a happy face”. With the help of scientific research, we are taught that “acting as if” can produce joy.
..
In addition, various North American formal and informal love cults would have us “love our enemies” and “project love into the world” as the ultimate response in the face of aggression and oppression. These cult movements promote a ninja emotional response whereby one replaces an instinctive and guttural and most fundamental emotional response to oppression with its opposite, in the belief that the emotional response will change the real outside circumstances. Whereas this may be superficially true in exploring and developing individual relations within a community of battered individuals wanting mutual support, it can only be understood as disconnected and pathological when applied to real concentrated-force power-imbalance oppression bent on exploitation and domination and steeped in class divisions. Putting the positive emotional cart before the oppression horse is a sick proposal for creating justice.
..
The First World mind-fuck regarding emotions is largely due to the institutional and corporate created mental environment that blurs the oppression, thereby making it appear normal to endure the obedience and indoctrination boot camps that are school, university, and salaried work. The emotion mind-fuck is most complete in the privileged classes which are most removed from physical pain (police brutality, environmental health risks, malnutrition, etc.) and are most indoctrinated to manage others.
..
This mind-fuck allows First World middle classes to participate in the military economy while sleep walking through the enforced pillaging of Third and Developing World continents, as they gobble up the manufactured narratives of “aid” and “development.” At least the right, when it is honestly expressed, more consciously chooses to pillage and dominate, with its “better them than us” ethos. The latter lower middle class ethos (used by power elites) is seated in a sense of danger that is more authentic than the middle middle class distant “let’s help them” expression of outreach (used by power elites) that translates into risk-free meaningless acts of guilt alleviation.
..
This is a call to basics.
..
A natural emotional response is to hate one’s oppressor. Let us respect nature at this level. We need to hate our oppressors.
..
In the face of aggression, the emotion choice is primarily binary, because the self must decide rather than simply be paralyzed: One either fears and adopts submission or one is angered, owns one’s hatred, and fights back.
..
It is a lie to believe that hatred of one’s oppressor, unlike the oppressor’s hatred of his victims, dehumanizes or removes one’s capacity for love. In fact the opposite is true. Hatred of the oppressor and liberation from the oppression through action generates self-respect and love for all those in solidarity against oppression.
..
I have met several ex-armed-combatants, liberation fighters, who expressed authentic love and untiring devotion for their liberated communities. Indeed, self-defence and defence of one’s community are themselves expressions of love.
..
It is a lie that fighting back only creates more oppression, that liberation can only install new dictators. This is not liberation. Liberation is liberation, a constant life struggle of varying intensity against all assaults to enslave, exploit, and control.
..
It is pathological to advance that one cannot use force or feel hatred in defending oneself. The latter pathology is an expression of the First World emotions mind-fuck. These ideas of pseudo-pacifism carry no credibility among resistors.
..
Ghandi himself wrote: “we are soldiers of nonviolence, who, if the occasion demands, will lay down their lives for it. Our nonviolence is not a mere policy of the coward. […] It is a thousand times better that we die trying to acquire the strength of arm[s]. Using physical force with courage is far superior to cowardice. At least we would have attempted to act like men.” [1]
..
..
REFERENCES
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[1] As quoted by Norman Finkelstein (and see his reference note (88)):
http://gandhifoundation.org/2009/01/16/resolving-the-israel-palestine-conflict-what-we-can-learn-from-gandhi-by-norman-g-finkelstein/
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RELATED POSTS
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Activism and Risk – Life beyond altruism
Anarchism as cooptation
Against Chomsky
Interpreting Means and Freire
The student as nigger
Survival 101

Activism and Risk - Life beyond altruism

At this rate, soon, on this planet, we will all have to be either activists or victims.[1]

Denis G. Rancourt
February 2007

University courses do not prompt students to consider their role in shaping the world. That is why I facilitate a course about activism at the University of Ottawa.

Registered students span the spectrum of engagement in society, from experienced campus activists to environmentally conscious community members to mainstream-misinformed clients picking up a free elective. The material presented by guest speakers is compelling enough that all students question their place in society and the nature of their agency.

There is relatively little polarization between the right and the left in the class. Representatives of both political tendencies are genuinely interested in hearing the other side and in re-considering their positions in the light of the challenges presented, or are happy to reaffirm their positions having heard the other side. Instead, the main axis of polarization tends to be between liberals and radicals. Here I consider the origin of this tension.

I argue that the heart of the tension lies in opposite fundamental beliefs about societal structures and corresponding opposite allegiances with power: The liberals are elitists who believe that the system works (because it works for them) and that one does best to preserve and enhance the system, whereas the radical activists are egalitarians who believe that societal structures need to be transformed through action and direct democracy. This brings me to elaborate on the definitions of both activism and radicalism. Militant activists are not necessarily radicals and radicals are not necessarily activists, in fact most are not. There emerges the notion that risk is a necessary component of activism, without which one can be certain that one is not changing anything. Regarding the false dichotomy of working from within versus working from without, I point out that activists from within can be effective agents for change through organizing as well as through sabotage and overt or covert mutiny.


Seeking to define activism, right and left

Many students in my class first strive to define activism. One dominant tendency is to want to be all inclusive and to suggest that activism is acting out of personal initiative to “contribute positively” to society – being personally motivated to do good. Here, volunteers who help out at the local soup kitchen and students helping others with their homework, for example, are activists, as are people who recycle and who are vegetarians, according to their beliefs of what is good.

The latter definition is not the one in common usage and is not specific enough to be useful. The latter behaviours by themselves should instead be referred to as: volunteering, altruism, responsible behaviour, community service, ethical consumerism, and so on. These behaviours are the result of natural individual impulses to cooperate and to contribute to community.

There are also natural impulses to compete and to be socially territorial. Each individual chooses to adopt either an altruistic or a defensive stance depending on her perception of the circumstances, depending on whether the human environment is perceived to be either safe or threatening, respectively. We all draw boundaries between what we do to contribute and what we do for ourselves. Few commit suicide to avoid consuming or to avoid emitting CO2 by breathing.

Activism is something else. Activism is political. In activism one acts directly to change circumstances, change power balances, or change hierarchical structures. One does this either to achieve greater justice by moving society toward equally distributed power (left-wing activism) or to advantage or protect oneself or one’s group (right-wing activism).

The left assumes a safe environment where all people can be trusted to share in power, whereas the right assumes an unsafe human environment where one must protect oneself. Both environments exist, but the left has a tendency to believe that a safe environment in which cooperation thrives does or could easily dominate whereas the right believes that there is an inescapable tendency towards aggression, oppression, and competition, and that, therefore, the best strategy is to fight others and win.

Too often the cooperation versus competition debate ignores the facts that humans respond in kind and that shared decision-making power is the greatest known catalyst for learning and personal development. This has been shown, for example, in the participatory democracy movement that has transformed Brazil.[2] The “masses” are ignorant only to the extent that they have no power.


Altruism is not activism

An animal rights activist may treat her pets humanely or may be a vegetarian but she is an activist only because she directly confronts the system that abuses animals. She may do so via intense discussions, petitions, lawsuits, lobbying, outreach events, demonstrations, challenging authority, denunciation, direct action, civil disobedience, or some such direct means. In activism one confronts in order to change the norm.

A vegetarian may practice vegetarianism in political silence and simply adapt to all eating circumstances by abstaining from eating meat, whereas another vegetarian may defend her choices and engage in every occasion to communicate her reasons and to advance her justice-based political motives. The first is a vegetarian while the latter is a vegetarian and an activist – someone whose discourse is more than a personal style.

The same is true of volunteer work, charity, and so on. These behaviours are not activism by themselves. On the contrary, they often help maintain an unjust status quo. It has been shown, for example, that the non-profit and NGO sectors taken as a whole do more harm than good.[3] Similarly, activists can be effective and dedicated agents without adopting any particular lifestyle practices that are advanced by others. An environmental activist can drive a car if she judges this to make her activism more effective overall or for whatever personal reasons. A public school activist can choose to send her children to a private school, given the family circumstances or for whatever personal reason. What matters is dedication to activism, not personal survival, convenience, and lifestyle choices.

Obedient workers contribute to maintaining existing structures whereas, for example, whistle-blowers and employee justice organizers make a difference.[4] In this world of continental-scale exploitation, it is superficially satisfying to have a job where one does seemingly useful work, but being a dedicated employee in any such job does not directly change power structures to maximize social justice. At work, you only make a difference if you work for change by going outside of what is expected and imposed.[4] This is necessarily in opposition to the established order and therefore involves personal risk.[5, 6]


Essence of activism

Two essential components, method and goal, define activism. The method involves confronting authority directly or through defiant or non-subordinate assertion. The goal is to redistribute power in the workplace and society. Left-wing activists want to democratize power whereas right-wing activists want to secure power. Risk is a hallmark of activism because activism seeks to redefine power structures.

At the heart of activism is a belief that things are wrong, a belief that injustices are institutionalized or socialized and are maintained by those who benefit from the established structures. The justice of left-wing activism is social justice, in which one shares rather than steals opportunity and resources; it is social justice in its broadest sense including animal justice and environmental justice.

Justice is synonymous with democracy: distributed power and horizontal structures rather than concentrated capital and lap dog elites. Anything that moves us towards more democracy and the associated greater individual responsibilities is a step in the right direction. Employees taking power from bosses, students and professors taking power from the university administration, students taking power from professors, board members taking power from the chair, community members taking power from the board of directors … by whatever effective means … all move us toward more democracy.

Democratic influence derived from activism is both empowering and educational. It may be the most powerful form of education ever practiced. How better to learn what the system is really like and your place in it? How better to increase your knowledge and your influence? All progress of civil society has been catalyzed by and based in activism. Only strong popular movements have ever wrestled concessions from the ruling class.[7, 8, 9] Service intellectuals by comparison to activists are spineless and serve only to placate and deceive in order to strengthen the power structure and erode past gains.[5]


Resolving methods and motives

With the above definition of activism, we must make the important distinction between methods and motives. Both activists and hippies want a just society. The latter actors look for it by attempting to create ideal but somewhat isolated communities. They are morally supportive of activists, may show up at rallies, and often contribute to a community that activists need, but they are not activists except when they act to transform the broader society in order to defend their ideals.

Likewise, the extreme right wing and fascists use direct action to transform power structures toward aims that are the opposite of egalitarian. They are right-wing activists. But they are at least often honest and transparent in their goals.

Liberals are elitists. They believe that the system should be moulded by an enlightened elite, is primarily just, and needs only to be adjusted by following the guidelines for change that have already been established. They believe that the best method to obtain positive change is to negotiate and cooperate with power. They are allergic to direct action. The more the direct action is likely to be effective, the more allergic they are to it. They are a major force for maintaining present power structures and they go into overdrive when activists appear to be making gains.[5]

What emerges is a two-dimensional map. On one axis, from left to right, we have the justice and equality variable, going from distributed power and complete democracy (that is, the anarchist ideal [9, 10]) to plutocracy, fascism, and hierarchy. On the vertical axis, from bottom to top, we have the methods variable, going from direct action by whatever effective means to non-confrontation and cooperation. Activists are in the bottom left, hippies in the top left, fascists in the bottom right, and liberals in the top right. True conservatives are in the middle.

Too many observers confuse method and motives: There are four poles and a middle in the action-justice plane. What liberals offer amounts to cooptation, not genuine negotiation, which can occur only between power equals.

Too many observers confuse choice of methods (collaboration versus confrontation) with choice of focus (working from within versus working from without). One can be an activist either from within or from without or both; but one can only be a true liberal from within and only be a true hippie from without.


Liberal-radical antagonism

This brings us to an analysis of the liberal-radical polarization introduced in the first paragraphs. Liberals believe that the system is fundamentally sane and needs only to be improved using methods approved by the ruling elites who are needed to protect us from the ignorant masses, whereas anarchists or socialists (radicals for short) believe that the present system and society that hosts it are deeply flawed and must be changed in their structural roots, at the level of their dominant underlying assumptions or myths, and that people are capable of great collective wisdom and growth. Given these opposed perceptions of society’s architecture and fabric, it follows that liberals would insist on cooperation and “gradual change” [5] whereas radicals would insist (at least intellectually) on challenging the structures and rules themselves.

Radicals, by definition, go to the root of phenomena. In a capitalist society, in a plutocracy, anarchists and socialists are radicals. However, radicals are not necessarily activists. Indeed, most radicals are not activists. Many academics, for example, are left intellectuals well versed in alternative power structures, but they are not engaged in activism. They do not risk their privileged positions by taking action, nor are they defiant on campus [11], which is not a niche of participatory democracy.

The liberal-radical antagonism, therefore, is not between passivity and activism or fundamentally between cooperation and actual resistance. Instead, it highlights two opposing world views that include beliefs about the associated methods that follow from these views. One can get rather overheated about protecting one’s world view (and consequently one’s view of oneself in the world) even if one is not about to risk action that would change the world toward one’s ideal. Conversely, those already engaged in activism often don’t loose much time with this debate.[12]

When liberals say “we should work from within,” they mean we should work in such a way as to preserve and ameliorate the present structure rather than question it deeply. They also incorrectly imply that working from within necessarily means working with and in support of the system rather than against it: They do not recognise the legitimacy of sabotage as a method of fighting unjust rule in society, because they do not see present rule as mostly unjust.

Liberals believe that their methods lead to the most and best results, whereas radicals believe that the methods promoted by liberals cannot possibly increase justice overall because they legitimise and strengthen a system that is overwhelmingly unjust. Liberals tend to be insiders who have had many “productive” exchanges with other insiders. Liberals are leaders and enjoy joining the elite agents for “good”… whereas radical activists tend to be outsiders who are compelled to confront and to challenge. Rather than take power, left-wing activists make power via solidarity and creative contribution.


Real mutual threat

This is how I understand the visceral confrontations that I have observed between liberals and radicals (or between different left factions), as arising from the above fundamental differences in beliefs and perceptions, coupled with a correct mutual sense that the other side represents a significant threat to both position and goals.

It’s easy for radicals and egalitarians to understand the fascist position and to find effective ways to combat the fascist drive, but the liberal threat is more insidious. Conversely, radicals are the greatest threat to the ruling liberals of present First World so-called free democracies, because liberals can cooperate with the right to the degree that serves and preserves them, but radicals present a refractory opposition.


Left-wing radical activism is beyond good – risk is life

In conclusion, left-wing activism is what effective anarchists, socialists, progressives, and egalitarians do. These agents are radical in that they go to the root and identify the underlying basis of injustice. They are activists because they understand that standing up in defiance is the only way to exert influence in the direction of greater democracy. Personal risk is necessarily a consequence.

Finally, because defiance and confrontation are characteristics of activism, and because such action is limited by the risk involved, it is often the case that more risk equals more effect. This leads to the conclusion that we should take as much risk as will maximize the effectiveness of our activism. Whereas Third World activists often don’t need to consider how much risk they should be taking, because they often don’t have a choice if they are to survive, First World left-wing activists who want to be worthy of the title probably should consider actions that will involve more risk. Having survived and learned from the backlash, experienced activists live a life of action, anchored in community and solidarity, and instinctively know how far to push it. Proportionate rewards are guaranteed. Risk is life.[6]


References

[1] Jeff Schmidt as cited by the author. The present essay is partially based on a lecture given in the activism course, 2006: http://www.yayacanada.com/rancourt_lecture_11-10-06.html . Course material is posted at http://www.alternativevoices.ca/ .

[2] Rebick, Judy, 2000, Imagine Democracy. Stoddart, Toronto.

[3] del Moral, Andrea, 2002, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featdelmoral_nonprofit_p.htm

[4] Schmidt, Jeff, 2000, Disciplined Minds. Rowman & Littlefield.
http://disciplinedminds.com/

[5] Rancourt, Denis G., 2006, Gradual Change Is Not Progress. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=RAN20060503&articleId=2377

[6] Murphy, Brian K., 1999, Transforming Ourselves Transforming the World. Fernwood.

[7] Zinn, Howard, 2001, A People’s History of the United States. Perennial Classics.

[8] Mitchell, Peter R. and Schoeffel, John, 2002, Understanding Power, the Indispensable Chomsky. The New Press, NY.

[9] Noble, David F., 2005, Beyond the Promised Land, The Movement and the Myth. Between the Lines, Toronto.

[10] Malatesta, Errico, 1891, Anarchy. New translation from the Italian by Vernon Richards, Freedom Press, 1974, 1994.

[11] Said, Edward W., 1994, Representations of the Intellectual. Vintage Books, NY.

[12] Rancourt, Denis G., 2006, Malalai Joya Breaks the Fear Barrier in Ottawa.
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2006/09/15/660/


Epilogue: Alternative definition of activism, and a parallel goal

I am grateful to Jeff Schmidt who provided critical comments on this essay. Jeff also pointed out that another goal of left-wing activists is to make more activists: This automatically creates more democracy, as more people exert influence.

In defining activism, I struggled with the enticing alternative choice that activism would be restricted to left-wing activism whereas ring-wing activists would be termed militant right-wingers. This would be consistent with most of mediascape usage of the term activism, including the term activist judge. In the mainstream media, the term activist has a negative connotation and is usually reserved for left-wing activists. Right-wing activism is downplayed or is termed extremism rather than activism. The implication is that it is an extreme of legitimate aspirations whereas activism, like radicalism and anarchism, are incorrectly equated with chaos and destruction. Most activists are left-wing activists because present social structures are more in line with right-wing ideology and because ring-wingers are more easily controlled by fear and can more easily be made to fight other groups rather than the power structure. Fear and perceived danger cause one to want to be protected and this often overrides democratic aspirations. Perceived safety breeds cooperation. Perceived danger breeds tribalism. We need to actuate that cooperation breeds safety and distributed power breeds education and responsibility.