In my last column I wrote about our need to revolt (“To dismantle the filthy game of imperialism, people will need to get dirty and play a game of risk,” RC, Oct. 8). The American way of life has become wholly unsustainable, and it’s only possible because of the extraordinary violence in its heart and soul. Indeed, our original sin, a sin we have neither atoned for nor repented of, was the genocide of the Native peoples living here. Our way of life has been a continual raping and pillaging crusade across the globe, while thinking of ourselves as benevolent, bringers of light.
Today, the American empire has reached a tipping point, and it is on a cascading descent into a future of endless war and perpetual boom-and-bust economic manipulations until the inevitable bloody, destructive collapse. It is against this empire, both in its military and market manifestations, that we must revolt.
But how can we revolt against the all-seeing Red Eye of Sauron, J.R.R Tolkein’s symbol of omniscient power? I think back to the examples of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, all of whom advocated a strategy of communal empowerment that withdrew from identification with and participation in the dominant culture. They tried to create a counter-culture economy with local roots, benefitting the commonwealth rather than private wealth. Alongside this vision was an ethic of self-defense, a willingness to lift the boot of domination off the throat of the victim through the strategic, protective use of violence. Those movements were betrayed, repressed and targeted for destruction. Leaders like Fred Hampton were murdered, groups were infiltrated and undermined, and others were brutally squashed. In the end, their revolt won some battles but not the war.
Similarly, MLK and the Civil Rights Movement, with their alternative practices of nonviolence and commitment to changing consciousness, had limited success.
On the one hand, racism is no longer justified. But on the other, as events in Ferguson, Mo., demonstrate — and prison cells full of black men and bulging unemployment rates within black neighborhoods prove — segregation still lives. America changed, but not enough. The empire outlasted the resistance.
Thinking backward we have learned that, if separated, neither nonviolence nor self-defense is a real threat to empire. This is part of the reason why marches and protests no longer matter. The empire doesn’t mind jailing us, fining us or pepper-spraying us. It has no conscience.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming military power and economic corruption of the corporate state has pacified the populace. We are too demoralized to embrace an alternative identity centered upon communal empowerment and too fatigued to train ourselves in the spiritual disciplines of nonviolent resistance.
My point is that to revolt against the American way of life is a messy business. We need to integrate our strategies using the strengths of both nonviolence and self-defense: Consciousness change and communal empowerment. To effectively confront the empire, we need to believe that in America, we can achieve these revolutionary goals.