By Jesse D. Palmer
We cannot keep carrying on with normal life amidst the rapid and concentrated slide into authoritarianism. I’m not saying that I know precisely what you should do or what I should do to respond. Far from it! But everyone can do something now to disobey, defy and refuse to recognize illegitimate authority, withdraw consent, and avoid complicity. Authoritarian power is partially an illusion based on passive consent and anticipatory obedience. There are ways to push back and slow down autocrats to change their trajectory. Nothing that is happening now is inevitable.
However, time is not on our side. Week by week it is getting harder to push back as people get used to each new normal, get more demoralized, and become more afraid to stick their necks out. That’s the idea — the masked snatch teams, lethal boat attacks, kooky criminal charges, and media censorship are intentionally outrageous. Each one is a test to see how much Dumbshit can get away with.
People are reacting to authoritarianism like they react to climate change — it’s so overwhelming, far away and hard to address that we get paralyzed, feel like we’re powerless and that it’s pointless to do anything. I keep talking to people who say they’ve stopped reading the news for mental self-preservation. Hiding out will not make this go away. There won’t be a red line when you know it’s time to do something.
I don’t want to write another doom bummer article — we’re already swimming in that shit. I’m writing because life feels wondrous, not because I’m depressed. I feel calm and determined, not scared (but I do feel scared sometimes.) Each of us decides how we’re going to spend our time. Wallowing in doom is the worst response. Not only will it become a self-fulfilling prophecy because it cedes agency to our oppressors, but because it will ruin your day with gloom and you’ll be unable to notice the awe inherent in life itself.
Being risk-averse in this context is the most hazardous option. The thugs are not just coming for immigrants and trans people — recent executive orders defined virtually everyone who isn’t a Christian nationalist as a domestic terrorist.1 No one escapes oligarchy. Let’s confront these jokers now while they are weaker and their power less consolidated.
While the authoritarians are cruel, vicious, and scary, they are also surprisingly stupid. They’ve come to believe their own lies.
We don’t have the luxury of un-strategic, feel-good actions or constant infighting — we need a united front that’s smart and focused.
Even more, we need a massive and broad-based response that goes far beyond the usual suspects. Let’s embrace pluralism and diversity for real, not just in theory, which means getting out of the radical gutter and engaging with people outside our circles. We need to give people credit for being caring, concerned and aware rather than always focusing on any point of disagreement. Everyone is a potential rebel. Let’s talk to strangers more.
A united front requires a diversity of tactics. If other people do stuff that you think is either too tame or too militant, we can still treat them like comrades if their heart is in the right place. The bullies are using violence to provoke us so they can justify even harsher repression. Sometimes the best response to riot cops is to make fun of them with silly costumes and have a dance party, not build a flaming barricade.
Autocrats inflame cultural and racial fears to stoke hate and justify repression. We shouldn’t fall for manufactured divisions that serve our oppressors by hating other regular working people who are being used as puppets. Let’s stay focused on uniting against the 1 percent.
Guerrillas avoid fighting on their opponents’ terms. Despots have troops, prisons, money and giant bureaucratic structures. We have mockery, culture, leaderless, decentralized community, and the ability to slow down and disrupt normal life in subtle and invisible ways like quiet quitting, working to rule and following orders in absurd ways. General strikes in which everyone ditches work or calls in sick are enormously disruptive. Economic boycotts can target complicit businesses. It’s easy for masses of people to overload administrative systems.
Street tactics don’t have to be high risk. Coincidental group bike rides or walking in crosswalks can tangle traffic. Banging pots and pans or playing loud music can annoy. Movements overseas have picked a color to widely display to signal dissent — what will our color be? Individuals and organizations don’t have tocomply with a depots’ priorities in advance without being required to do so. Many creative, simultaneous and diverse responses are more effective because they’re harder to crush than a single event, tactic or organization. Be water.
If the army occupies our cities, there’s more of us, we know the terrain and they can’t be everywhere at once. Pick lots of different gathering spots and then some folks can march towards troops while others go the other direction. There are many ways to confront lines of soldiers including with silence. Logistics and transportation won’t function if locals refuse to cooperate. No bathrooms or cafes for ICE is perfect — what else can we come up with?
Rebellion won’t work if it’s all drudgery and duty and risk. Nurturing kindness, human connections and communities counteracts loneliness, resists state power, and makes our lives more meaningful. The civil rights movement frequently sang together to overcome fear but also because singing with others is so joyful and nourishing.
If we keep discussion focused on what people actually want rather than just the outrages of our enemies — affordability, freedom, pleasure, clean air, fairness, healthcare, security — that’s a vision that’s ultimately more attractive and sustainable than constant cycles of tension, fear and anger.
Almost everyone wants to live their lives without having to constantly think about politics. There’s a basic humanity to everyone — even MAGA people who’ve been turned towards hate. If our response to hatred is to dehumanize and objectify the haters, we’re playing into the ruler’s hands. To build a world organized about voluntary mutual aid not coercion, we have to heal division rather than dig deeper. On purely strategic grounds, we need to turn towards love. Loving people you’ve defined as the enemy is the hardest kind of love but can be transformative.
These terrifying times may offer a springboard beyond the collapse of the american empire, capitalism and colonialism to something better. Preserving status quo institutions that concentrate wealth while reducing most of us to joyless cogs in a machine is a dead end.
This is a time to stay tender, sensitive and emotional, not become cold and robotic. We can still embrace all of life’s gray areas and remain open to dialogue, so we don’t end up like the totalitarians. We don’t have to live like this if we shake off the numbness and try together.
1 See September 22 and 25 executive orders whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions. “Common threads … include … anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; … extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”