Where there is injustice, I always believe in fighting.
Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
In the fight against fascism, we must face our fears and stand firm in our beliefs
It’s only a matter of time before a licensed gun owner shoots and kills a federal agent, doing so in clear self-defense, because the agent is not properly identified and the civilian credibly fears for their life. This will result in a crisis of its own making, as the authoritarian zeal of this administration is confronted by the fetishization of gun rights by American culture, particularly on the Right.
This was the thought I had the other day, with respect to the wanton violence surrounding ICE, Trump’s new secret police force. It’s going to be a stand-your-ground situation with a genuine patriot versus what can only be described as an unidentified, masked, armed lunatic who clearly means them harm. What else are they supposed to do, if not defend themselves? Is that not the entire purpose and stated ideology of the NRA and other Second Amendment rights groups? The right to defend yourself and your loved ones against the would-be agents of tyranny? Isn’t that precisely what they’ve been trying to sell us for decades?
I said as much on social media, and one response I got was that this was going to be the prelude for Trump to implement martial law. It was couched as something we should presumably avoid, as if we were going to forgo the pain of fascism simply by not poking the bear that is attacking us. While that does seem to be the administration’s plan, the incitement of violence to substantiate their oppression, that’s not a justification for a lack of reaction to their naked aggression. Doing nothing will not make it stop.
The opposition in this country has to quit operating out of a position of such fear. We will not acquiesce ourselves out of this situation. At some point, we’re going to have to join the fight, and if and when we do, we’re going to have to fight to win. Fecklessness in the face of aggression simply emboldens thugs and invites more violence. If you don’t punch a bully square in the face, they will keep taking your lunch money.
That’s the law of the jungle.
There’s a scene in the acclaimed HBO series “Band of Brothers,” where Capt. Spiers is talking to PFC Ronald Blythe in a foxhole deep in enemy territory. Blythe confesses to Spiers that when he first dropped into France, he hid in a ditch and then fell asleep from the air sickness pills. When he woke up, everyone was gone.
“You know why you hid in that ditch, Blythe?” Spiers asks.
“I was scared,” says Blythe.
“We’re all scared,” says Spiers, as he kneels. “You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. But Blythe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function. Without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.”
I am not a brave man. I like to think I am—we all do—but I have no interest in going to prison or losing my life over an ideological principle, and because of that, I tend to be cautious in the face of real danger. Ostensibly, for all practical purposes, I’m a coward. That’s my natural state. I hate that fact, and have to fight it with every part of my being, to push past my fear to live with myself. I have no fantasies of becoming a martyr, but I recognize that true courage is how we act in the face of that fear.
This is the foxhole moment we find ourselves in. A group of citizens, hopeful that this might all blow over somehow, that someone will save us, or at least do all the dirty work. We don’t want to believe we’re on the front lines, or that we will ever be asked to fight. Surely, that’s a job for someone more qualified than us, someone braver, someone else. Capt Spiers has just come along to tell us that we are the front line. We are the fight.
I do not think of myself as an idealist, but I am a romantic. I have strong feelings about how things should be, but otherwise tend to be quite practical and believe I see clearly what is a realistic expectation, versus what I think the ideal response should be. I see no upside to demanding that things should be just as I would have them. Compromise is the normal solution to a civil society, and I am often looking for a way for everyone to find a win. I don’t believe in a zero-sum game where someone has to lose for another to win. We can both win, but no one gets everything they want.
That said, I’m not a centrist, or even a moderate. I have strong ideological beliefs in the role and purpose of government, and they differ widely from those who believe that government should only exist to provide security or to serve its partisan supporters to the exclusion of everyone else. I believe that government exists to provide a better life for its citizens. All its citizens. I also recognize that there is no middle ground between fascism and liberty, no compromise that squares that circle. You can’t come to an agreement with someone who doesn’t believe you have the right to exist. You must force them to recognize the truth of this, and that’s not easy.
In the opening scene of the 1982 movie Gandhi, a white South African tells a young Indian lawyer that “there are no colored attorneys in South Africa.” To which Gandhi replies, “Sir, I was called to the bar in London, and enrolled in the High Court of Chancery. I am therefore an attorney. And since I am, in your eyes, ‘colored,’ I think we can deduce that there is at least one colored attorney in South Africa.”
This is, to me, an example of forcing someone to recognize that some things exist, whether they like it or not, and simply denying that existence is futile. Our Declaration of Independence begins by outlining the basics of this new framework, stating unequivocally that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The first thing you must do is recognize that we all exist, whether you like it or not, and that even though we are not all the same, we are all deserving of the same. This was a pretty radical concept in the late 18th century, and apparently, it still is.
Too often, we confuse the concepts of peacefulness with passivity, as in peaceful protests or passive resistance. For one, there is no such thing as passive resistance. All resistance is active, or it is meaningless. An afternoon nap might be considered passive resistance, but it will not get anyone’s attention, except maybe your cat. Still, you can be peaceful without ever being passive.
To resist without violence is to invite violence without resorting to retaliation, which is the inherent power of civil resistance. The willingness to take a blow, several blows, and not fight back, but also refusing to back down, to stand your ground. Nothing frightens fascists more than quiet discipline. Peaceful protests must be active and provocative, designed to elicit a response from the oppressor, one way or another. There is nothing passive about them, however peaceful they might be. Which begs the question:
Can you fight a war without resorting to violence?
The short answer is undeniably, yes, but it comes with conditions, none of which will make you comfortable. It’s not safer for you personally to fight a war without resorting to violence; in fact, it’s less so. You are only removing the threat of violence from your side, not from the other. You are walking into battle armed only with an ideal, while they are coming at you with guns, batons, tear gas, water cannons, dogs, grenades, and less-lethal projectiles designed to maim, but not kill.
You have no greater or lesser chance of being killed or captured than you would in a traditional war; you have simply promised not to resort to violence to achieve your stated goals of freedom and liberty. Agreeing to go to war comes with the possibility of death, but it doesn’t have to come with the complicity of killing. You can fight a bloody war without getting any of it on your hands, but it might end up being your blood.
If this madness continues, there will, at some point, be an inflection of cognitive dissonance, where American citizens can no longer square the actions of the government with the cultural identity of what it means to be an American. Already, we’re seeing signs of this in the response from gun rights activists to the extrajudicial murder of Alex Pretti and the explanation from the administration that he was killed for legally carrying a licensed gun. This was apparently a bridge too far. It won’t be the only one.
If we are to be triumphant in this fight, we have to move from a position of passive resistance and non-confrontational protest to one of active insurgency. I do not mean violence or vandalism, but I do encourage impoliteness. We must be disruptive and provocative. We must be a constant thorn in the side of our oppressors.
Economic pain is the quickest and easiest means to achieve our ends, not filling the streets with protestors. If we can organize a spending freeze for a prolonged period of time, we can cut off their financial support and take them down. Coming together as a community is more powerful than anything we can do on our own. Trade and barter rather than buying from soulless corporations. Establish co-ops and markets, neighborhood watch parties, and support groups. The protestors in Minneapolis didn’t spring up out of thin air; they were organized and went through extensive training. They were prepared.
There can be no justice if the agents of chaos are empowered by the government and allowed to remain anonymous. We must demand accountability. Furthermore, we must reestablish States’ Rights against the abuses of Federal overreach, something I never thought I would hear myself say. We must adopt the language of American patriotism to fight back against the efforts of would-be kings, tyrants, and fascists.
I do not yet know what the next steps should be. It’s a big country, and there will be more than one idea of what to do, many of them effective and valuable. I think the important thing is to begin to change our mindsets and evolve our thinking into something more combative than we’ve ever had to consider. We must prepare for the possibility that we will be called upon to stand our ground and not be moved. Should we choose to accept this fate, we must also accept that with it comes a risk of injury, prosecution, or even death. We aren’t going to get there overnight, so we’d better start preparing our minds.
Gandhi said, “Where there is injustice, I always believe in fighting. The question is, do you fight to change things or do you fight to punish?”
As much as we might like to see justice in the form of retribution and comeuppance for the evil grifters who perpetrated a fraud on the American people, our ultimate goal should be to change things, not to punish. Vengeance is an empty goal with no upside. We must envision a better world and do everything in our power to create it here and now. We need not be pacifists in order to believe in the power of non-violence.
We must stand our ground.