Oof, the title of this argument has changed to “now Trump has won” 💀.
Trump is a fascist. “Good psychology is good social change. Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other, and exhaustion at the utter chaos.”
Oh damn. This article is really good. Oh, and instead of Trump we can read Farage, or Badenoch. ## 1. Trust Yourself Trump is arriving at a time of great distrust, which he fermented and which he will continue to take advantage of. He tells you to distrust everyone, and tells you to trust him. Trust in traditional institutions, our friends and family, wider communities, has been weakened by covid and the political upheaval. Trust in our surroundings has been damaged by climate change. Distrust makes it easier to divide.
So: trust yourself. Your eyes and your gut. Don’t internalise the crazy-making.
And be trustworthy, with information and your emotions. Trust your inner voice.
2. Find others who you trust
Loneliness and social isolation is a keep component of authoritarianism. They want us to lean away from each other, so we become a) isolated and less effective and b) more susceptible to simple stories that don’t survive contact with social reality.
Fear breeds distance. Find some people and regularly touch base with them about “what’s going on”. All of us will benefit from actively organised nodes to help stabilize us.
3. Grieve
Not grieving (ie, compartmentalising, rationalising, intellectualising, ignoring) damages your mind and your body.
Name what you’re missing/losing/lost.
Point of this is to engage/accept what has happened. Once you accept its real you can start planning/taking it apart and so on.
4. Release that which you cannot change
Under a Trump presidency, there will be so much bad news it is impossible to pay attention/react to it all. If you did, you would have no time to eat. Doing everything is not a healthy lifelong strategy, and the chaos plays into the authoritarians’ hands.
Two things that didn’t work last time: - Public angsting: did not inform the public, just demorarised us. - Symbolic actions: don’t actually do anything. Both of these will be part of the mix, and needed, but if they are the only thing then they will not help.
5. Find your path
There are lots of ways to resist a Trump presidency/authoritarian prime minister. Oh this is cool, the author of this piece has written a choose your own adventure book about a “possible” second Trump presidency to walk people through different scenarios and what actions they can do.
Key pathways: - Protecting people: the people who will be harmed; immigrants, Black people, the disabled , trans people combinations thereof - Defending civic institutions: the stronger civic institutions are the less control Trump will be able to exert on our lives. Insiders within these institutions will play a critical role in resisting terrible changes and creating friction. Create a culture of celebrating being fired for the right reasons. - Disrupt and Disobey: (ie, direct action). Should escalate from purely figurative: innocuous signs, student/pensioner strikes and protests to build mass participation. Then mass noncooperation: tax resistance, national strikes, work shut-downs and so on. - Building Alternatives: (relates to Maia Crimew’s Anarchism is in the Now piece).
Also! There will be many useful things that you can do that won’t be obvious now, or from the outset. If you spot one, do it! (related to Trust Yourself!).
6. Do not obey in advance, do not self-censor
DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. DO NOT SELF-CENSOR.
As the autocrats know: any political space you do not use, you lose.
Timothy Snyder in “On Tyranny”: most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching powery what it can do." (c/o Anarchist critiques of government and obeying in advance and so on which prefigure this by a long shot. I guess Anarchist Thought prefigures all of this bc from an anarchist point of view we are already in an authoritarian regime and resistance is already necessary).
7. Reorient your political map
Trump’s success relies on a broad coalition on the Right. One they broaded by radicalisation, but also one that’s tenuously held together. When cracks begin to show, we need to be able/willing to pull vast chunks of his base onto our side, against him. We need to be able to tell them a story about how we got here. Preaching to the choir won’t help, ideological purity will just make our side smaller.
Empathy will be useful here.
8. Get real about power
Last time, despite some successes, Trump was able to win huge tax cuts and appoint ring-wing Supreme Court judges. Also, the narrative lurched and large numbers of people now believe in the “Big Lie”. Elections ultimately stopped Trump.
Now, psychological exhaustion and despair is much higher.
Trump will bend and break all the norms and laws that stand in his way, and you can’t convince him not to do these things by applying pressure to republicans, or showing him that there’s a lot of us who oppose him.
The upside-down triangle simile: power is like an upside-down triangle. It will fall over without anything supporting it. These supports are ordinary people doing their jobs. Mass noncooperation topples power, every time. (okay yeah, anarchists have known this for over a century!). e.g., in 2019 when Trump shut down the government over his refusal to lift the borrowing ceiling, or something, flight attendants announced they were “mobilizing immediately” for a strike, and Trump capitulated immediately.
e.g#2, a small group repeatedly blockaded, via canoe, ships carrying arms to Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan. Eventually the Longshoremen’s union was persuaded to refuse to load the arms in the first place, and the national policy had to change.
Power will emergy from folks no longer obeying the current unjust system.The issue with mass noncooperation is that it exposes people to more risk, and more repression. It runs counter to the “protect people” impulse/pathway.
9. Handle fear, make violence rebound
Attitude/humour against violence/intimidation is very useful. Firstly, it weakens the fear the autocrats are trying to make you feel. You also need to be practical on the follow up. Example from the Otpor in Serbia who were youth activists who joked whilst being beaten, and then followed the arrested protestors to jails to make sure they were being treated well, and showed up outside the houses of the police officers who beat them up with photos, and said “you’ll have the chance to join us”.
Handling fear isn’t about supressing it, but redirecting. Political violence hasn’t grown that much, but threats of violence have. A key component of political violence is to intimidate and to tell a story that the people being violent are the true victims. Making it rebound involves refusing to be intimidated and resisting the threats so they can backfire.
e.g., during the 1950 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black leaders who had gone into hiding after police intimidation all went to the police station, including those who hadn’t been intimidated, and demanded to be arrested since they were leaders. There were crowds and cheers when they were. Fear was turned into valor. (okay, not quite sure what the point of this is. Being deliberately arrested seems very dangerous and ineffective and easy to go wrong. I guess if there’s a very big crowd with you…)
10. Envision a Positive Future
as well as imagining the worst-case scenarios, imagine the ways in which progress can be made, where we can win and so on. Lets you work out the steps to take, where to spend your resources and so on.
Focus on their political weaknesses: their reliance on sycophants, lack of civic support, distrust amongst businesses and so on.
my takeaways
- This was a FANTASTIC article, asside from occasional unclear bits and some arguments I thought were a bit dodgy, it was thougthful, well-reasoned and drawn from a wide range of examples and activist experience :)) and important article to remember and revisit!
- Part of why this article is so good is because the author is a seasoned and thoughtful activist.
- I don’t like the section titles lol, they’re very hippy.
- Fun ideas to agitate for effective NHS reform: waiting list strike; everyone on a waiting list for treatment goes on strike. That’s the mass non-cooperation. But you start with everyone waiting wearing a badge, or something, and build a movement. Talk about it, and so on.
- Wow I really need to be more politically active!!