The Ten Commandments for Resisting Fascism in America

1. Gandhi and Non-Violence
   1. The Problem of Empathy
2. The World War II Danish Playbook
   1. The Ten Commandments for Resisting Fascism in America
      1. General Strike
      2. No Kings
      3. We Hold These Truths
      4. Indivisible
3. Image Attribution

Fascism is upon us. The #GOPDystopia is being set up. MAGA and the indifferent voters have surrendered our democracy to Christian nationalist totalitarianism. It is true. As Ye Olde Blogge has remarked many times, we are so fucked.

There is no undoing this. If the Felonious Traitor were to drop dead tonight — Melania still hasn’t pulled a Florence Harding nor has god yet to give him the Lot’s wife treatment — we’d still be fucked. The entire Republican Party that has gone full fascist. It stretches from SCOTUS across Congress and the Cabinet, down to school boards nationwide. We would just be fucked by some small-minded heavily guy-linered technobro, Jamoke Dumbass, as he bickers with the Republican Congress. In other words, we would be just as fucked, but with a smaller dick.

But, it doesn’t mean all is lost. If we are to wrench our democracy from the jaws of the ravening hounds of racism, misogyny, and hate, we have some examples to follow.

Gandhi and Non-Violence

Our first example is the venerable old pacifist, Gandhi. You remember Gandhi, right? The odd little Indian man who handed Great Britain their ass without ever having built a warship or pressed an oppressed indigenous person into an army.

Gandhi’s approach to revolution was famously non-violent. It worked in part because it took advantage of the humanity and empathy of the oppressors. In the film Gandhi, there’s a scene where the satyagrahis (non-violent protesters) confronted the police during the salt march. The satyagrahis lined up before a police officer, who obligingly and viciously beat each one over the head. If the protester could, they would stagger to the back of the line and prepare for the next beating. If they couldn’t, comrades would drag them away for some kind of medical treatment.

Eventually, the police were physically, emotionally, and spiritually worn down. They couldn’t keep beating people who would’t fight back — who didn’t return hate and anger to their violence.

Similar things happened during Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights marches and  Lech Walesa‘s Solidarity protests. What if everyone confronting ICE agents simply sat down, linked arms, and sang All We’re Saying is Give Peace a Chance until they left? One effective de-escalation technique is to sit down because it is very difficult to attack someone who is sitting. Would it be any worse than what we’re doing now — not that anyone has been particularly violent with those assholes?

The Problem of Empathy

One challenge we face is that the Republican Party has learned from our multitude of white Christian fascist mass shooters trying in vain to ignite a race war by mass murdering the Blacks. They’ve inured themselves to empathy and harden their hearts to sympathy. It is the role of white grievance in their culture. Would it actually penetrate the hatred that the ICE officers have steeped themselves in or the smug self-righteousness of the white Christian nationalist, if they watched ICE “officers” mercilessly beat protesters or to gun them down like they were common Kent State students?

I don’t know any more. They’ve really learned from the civil rights and anti-war protests in the 1960’s. You can see the effectiveness of these lessons in their murderous counter-programming during the summer of peaceful #BLM protests, which prompted Kyle Rittenhouse to show up armed with semi-automatic legal assault weapons and gun people down because they were “afraid for their lives” in a situation of their own creation. Kinda like what’s-his-name did with Trayvon Martin and what every cop does during bogus traffic stops.

All those thoughts and prayers and warm condolences really do some heavy lifting in the land of cotton where the old (racist) ways are not forgotten, look away, look away, look away White Grievance Land!

The World War II Danish Playbook

Even if we can’t convince our rural conservative Christian white neighbors to stop putting Brown people in concentration camps by watching their secret police beat the holy tarnation out of non-violent mostly white protesters, we do have another tactic to use.

We can take a page out of the World War II Danish playbook, specifically one written by Arne Sejr, who authored the Ten Commandments of Being a Good Dane. They greatly influenced how the Danes reacted to being Nazi occupation and are very applicable to our current situation.

Here is my adapted version:

The Ten Commandments for Resisting Fascism in America

1. Don’t work for Republicans – government, corporations, individuals.
2. If you must work for Republicans, do a bad job.
3. If you have to work for Republicans, work slowly.
4. Be accident-prone around Republicans; destroy important machines and tools.
5. Destroy everything that could benefit the Republicans.
6. Delay all transport concerning Republicans, especially ICE.
7. Boycott Republican-aligned media outlets.
8. Don’t shop at Republican-owned stores.
9. Treat traitors for what they’re worth.
10. Protect anyone oppressed by Republicans, especially by ICE.

The good thing about ten simple rules is that there is something for everyone to do at whatever level of risk you’re comfortable taking. Not all of us can quit our jobs at Amazon or Walmart, but we can do small acts of sabotage, even if it only amounts to wasting toilet paper and hand towels.

Boycotting is an American liberal tradition — the American conservative tradition is to buy the product and then burn it on a badly made social media post; they still have a few kinks to work out of their system. But, we’re good at not buying stuff. We’ve boycotted lots of products, and those boycotts have wrought significant changes. Anyone remember the pressure put on corporations over Pride and #BLM just a few short years ago?

We’ve engineered significant changes by choosing where to spend our money, which states to visit, and which networks to watch. Our power is in our numbers. Fortunately, many are working to organize us. Here are three groups to watch:

General Strike

A couple of New Yorkers put together this website to begin organizing a general strike after the Dobbs decision in 2022. They’ve succeeded in claiming chapters in nearly every state and getting over 350,000 people to sign up. If we could get ten million Americans not to show up for work on the same day, I think we’d have someone’s attention.

If ten million of us would strike for a week or a month, the economy would grind to a halt. It’s already slowing. They are hoping for a Trump-made disaster to justify declaring an emergency and really unleashing the secret police on us. It just might bring about the final conflagration of the Felonious Reich a bit sooner.

No Kings

No Kings seems to have developed specifically to coordinate a day of protest on 14 June to send a message to Der Fibber and the Republicans, and boy did we ever. But, now what?

The search is on for significant dates to plan events around. One is 17 July, John “Good Trouble” Lewis’ birthday. If you’re looking to get in on some GOOD TROUBLE, you might could swing on by to find one of the hundreds of events planned around the country.

Also, they are looking to train one million people in non-violent civic disobedience to enact the ten commandments. You could be one of those million. The Foundations course is on 16 July; Train the Trainer, 30 July; and Campaign Design, 13 August. The Nazis are coming at us hard, we’ve got to return it to them even harder, just with non-violent hardness.

We Hold These Truths

We Hold These Truths is a website where you can take a pledge to defend the truths that we profess to be self evident in the Declaration of Independence. You know the ones:

• Personal freedoms of expression, due process, and personal agency.
• Equality before the law and in opportunity, expression of opinion, regardless of our differences.
• Free and fair elections with one person, one vote, and peaceful transfer of power.
• The rule of law applied neutrally and equally. Clear separation of powers enforced through checks and balances.

It was drawn up by some of the heavy hitters that regularly grace the TV news shows: Judge Luttig, Stacey Abrams, Pete Buttigieg, Sherrilyn Ifill, and Jamie Raskin. It represents a commitment to our Constitution, government, and way-of-life.

Indivisible

I never thought I’d call Indivisible the grandparent of the resistance, but there it is. We’ve gotten to this point. They are probably the largest and best-organized resistance group with chapters in communities big and small all around the country. Their tactics are time-tested and effective.

In these tumultuous times, we must stand firm and united against tidal wave of fascism. While the road ahead may seem daunting, history has shown us that collective action and unwavering resolve can lead to meaningful change. By channeling our outrage into constructive resistance, supporting one another, and holding fast to the ideals of democracy and justice, we can reclaim our democracy and freedom.

Image Attribution

The meme used as a feature image was made by me. The original source of the photograph has long since been lost by Ye Olde Blogge — we sincerely regret the error.