Weissmann begins: "Over the past several years, the American government has encouraged, tutored, and funded nonviolent destabilization efforts and color revolutions from Burma and the countries around the former Soviet Union to Venezuela, Iran, and Egypt. Most of the local activists involved had righteous grievances and deserved international solidarity. But, American and allied European interventions pursued their own interests and agendas ..."
Spring Mobilization to End the Vietnam War, San Francisco, 04/15/67. (photo: API)
Occupy This: Learning From the Dark Side
22 November 11
Reader Supported News | Perspective
"Maybe I ought to spend more time promoting changes here in the United States because we're going in a direction that doesn't look good for democracy in our own country."
-- Col. Robert Helvey, US Army (retired), Peace Magazine, Jan-Mar 2008
ver the past several years, the American government has encouraged, tutored, and funded nonviolent destabilization efforts and color revolutions from Burma and the countries around the former Soviet Union to Venezuela, Iran, and Egypt. Most of the local activists involved had righteous grievances and deserved international solidarity. But, American and allied European interventions pursued their own interests and agendas, whether to extend control over oil, gas, and other natural resources, secure oil and gas pipelines, expand NATO into Eastern Europe, or privatize local economies.
Drawing a distinction between local movements and foreign intervention remains crucial. But, Occupy and Indignado activists can learn as much from the foxes as from the hens and roosters. Many are already learning the important lessons.
Col. Robert Helvey was clearly a fox. As a former military attaché in Burma working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was among the first in his world to see how to use nonviolent conflict in pursuit of Washington's global ambitions. You'll find the story in "Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance" in Peace Magazine, and my controversial "How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence."
Helvey took his inspiration from Professor Gene Sharp, who greatly expanded on the pragmatic, post-Gandhi approach that student movements stumbled into at Berkeley, Stanford, and other hotbeds of 1960s activism. We tended to see non-violence primarily as a pragmatic choice of tactics, though at times we thought more strategically. In the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, for example, many of the graduate students and teaching assistants clearly saw in advance how a massive sit-in could lead to a strike that would close down the university, and how that would push a majority of the faculty to come down on our side against the administration. With that in mind, we chose our tactics, timing, and outreach to faculty members.
Gene Sharp went much farther and deeper. On the tactical side, his "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action," remains a classic to which we should add as the movement creates new forms of struggle. On the strategic side, Sharp and Helvey went even farther, reformulating "strategic nonviolence" as an ongoing strategy to promote major political change, such as bringing down a government.
At the heart of their approach was Sharp's rediscovery of a basic truth that the French anarchist thinker Étienne de La Boétie explained in the 16th Century, and that the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and the Occupy movement are bringing to life. No tyranny can endure if large numbers of people simply refuse to go along with it.
As a career military man, Helvey added a precise strategic sense to planning extended nonviolent campaigns. The best descriptions I've found are in his 4-day training of Serbian activists from OTPOR and in his book, "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict," which was funded in part by the United States Institute of Peace, an agency of the federal government.
Helvey's language, at least in print, can seem stiff and his approach more appropriate to military staffs than to movement activists. But we need to learn from his insistence on having clear objectives and a strategy, and in following Sun Tzu's teaching in "The Art of War": "Know your enemy, know yourself."
Helvey's students from Serbia knew their enemy by name, which made strategic planning fairly straightforward. The question was how to build a movement that could bring Milosevic down. In addition, Washington and its allies contributed bombing raids, propaganda broadcasts, and other forms of psychological warfare.
Occupiers face a much tougher situation. Overthrowing a tyrant is relatively easy compared to bringing down a tyrannical system, especially one that we have not yet named. Are we fighting against global finance, as suggested by the original name Occupy Wall Street? Or are we fighting against the warfare state, the giant corporations who game tax systems around the world, the student-loan system, or all of market capitalism?
If we cannot agree on who we are fighting, we will never create a workable nonviolent strategy to defeat them.
But don't despair. The movement is just beginning. It has brought the question of economic inequality to the forefront. And it has created real and virtual spaces where we can raise the hard questions and come together to find the best possible answers.
So, what do you think? Who exactly are we fighting against? And how do you see a nonviolent strategy to defeat them?
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he writes on international affairs.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
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To end huge corporate lobbying, that is controlling our politicians and government right now. To put the government back into the hands of the people. I think it all ties together, Corporations and wall street controlling the politicians through lobbying billions of dollars to get laws passed so they can operate as they please for higher profits, less jobs, and low to no payment of taxes. Its not just one thing its the culmination of all these things.
WE THE PEOPLE want our country back and our voices to count and be heard again...we are the 99%!!
OCCUPY OCCUPY OCCUPY!!!!
Yes I agree, I did mention way more then just taxes. I think I said all of that, I think we both agree on the same things. A more even playing field.
In biology, nothing grows forever. Rapid growth occurs when organisms are young and immature, as our nascent economy of the 1800s did. Then, as the adulthood stage is reached, growth either stops altogether (as in most animals) or slows drastically (most plants). Attention turns from merely increasing the organism's physical size to other matters, which in other species is mainly reproduction, and in humans also includes pursuits such as art, leisure, creativity, and spirituality. Just growing physically for its own sake is either cancer or obesity, and we must accept that there are limits to growth the way we've been defining it for decades.
Understanding that the paradigm itself is sick is what will change the focus towards sustainability and a kinder, more humane future for everyone. Greed and corruption will cease to thrive in such a system of interdependence , which of course should be balanced with individual independence as well.
I know this is a big issue to bring about. But you start eating an elephant one bite at a time, and this is one place we can start discussing this. Our survival depends on it.
My latest epiphany, which I in no way claim is original thinking, is that highly organized systems, be they organisms, corporations, or national economies, create internal order and stability by exporting disorder into their environments. As they grow, the disorder gradient between inside and outside becomes steeper and increasing amounts of energy must be used to keep exporting more disorder (measured as entropy). The exported disorder takes the form of plundered resources, exploited workers, and environmental pollution.
We need social leaders with some understanding of biology and thermodynamics in order to create viably sustainable economic systems. Scientific knowledge is NOT optional for politicians in this day and age.
As a biologist, you'll also appreciate the analogy that sometimes complex species, such as orchids highly dependent upon one insect for pollination or predators that can only feed upon one prey, face a double-edged sword of survival. The advantage to specializing that far is that your fate becomes extremely reliably dependent upon another organism, to the point where you both need each-other to survive. The flip side is: due to that co-dependence, if either one of you changes or your environment does, you become that much more vulnerable to extinction.
Today's modern technological society has become so complex, and reliant upon the perfect coordinated functioning of multiple arcane systems that it can be damaged or destroyed with only minor changes in the flow of money, energy, labor, materials, etc. It is evolutionarily complex and miraculous in some ways, and extremely vulnerable in others.
We should diversify and build in redundancies to hedge our bets against failure. It's not as efficient and some won't make as much money, but it's more stable and more of us will remain functional in the event of stressors. More than one basket for all of our eggs, so to speak. Nature does this too. We should follow that.
Write to people with influence to support positive change. Pressure Congress. Find and elect candidates who want to see our government working again. The Occupy Movement is creative, so there may be unconventional, nonviolent ideas we haven't thought of yet.
Someone wrote that it took 30 years for wealthy right wing conservatives to destroy democracy in our country. The system is so entrenched, new members of Congress could be susceptible to the same corruption. So we are back to GET MONEY OUT.
I.e. Give the average guy a bigger voice, and the wealthy and powerful a smaller voice.
I suggest we're fighting against those Americans who by "adhering to their [the United States's] Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" commit treason contrary to the treason clause of the Constitution. Persons who for their own power, prestige and profit persist in playing "The Great Game" of imperialism are "Enemies." Their success to date has terminated the existence of the United States as a constitutional democracy under the rule of law and that is the only right to exist that the country claims; or can claim pending a duly processed constitutional amendment. That, at any rate, is what the Mahican and Mi'kmaq Tribes have argued and substantiated as a matter of law alone in the [recently revised] "Justice as Truth Legal Argument" at their Website "Might Is Not Right."
As for "a nonviolent strategy to defeat them," why not give the rule of law a chance? True, it has not done much to prevent imperialism and its wars and genocides before now. But still, is it reasonable and fair to count it out before having given it every opportunity to function? At the moment it is the only viable candidate for establishing in practice the constitutional intent of Justice, Tranquility, defence, Welfare and Liberty.
That, to me, sounds like two different ways of saying the same thing.
In fact, you sound pretty left-wing to me. Don't worry. It's not a naughty word.
The evolution of events at Davis are a perfect example in a small context. A couple of hundred students participated in a scene where cops assaulted some of them with pepper spray. This was so crazy it brought worldwide attention. The student response was both nonviolent and brilliant (the silence which greeted the chancellor as she walked to her car), and that generated thousands to the next demonstration.
This is how a movement can be built.
With the FSM we had specific demands. Occupy must not try to develop specifics, despite media types or pols arguing that this is necessary. The movement can keep growing organically if it is not narrowed or directed to specific political purposes.
Thanks, Steve, for your work. We're still out here and we still mean it.
Let's occupy the press and allow voice to all, "extremists" included.
The root of our political, justice, and educational systems is diseased by a few misguided, disconnected people who forgot or never learned the beauty of interdependence , an interconnection based on equity and a preservation and cultivation of the sacred in all. I wonder if we are destined to know our true selves shaped by a universal consciousness that realizes what we do to Earth we do to ourselves, where all of us will finally experience how fragile life is. We seem to be like a small town or a large family where individuals can no longer get away with their transgressions. When we see "them" as us with wisdom and kindness the actions we take within each moment will guide us toward an enlightened society. We need a caring economy where all voices are heard. One strategy is keep speaking your truth and to listen with respect while seeing others as yourself, educating each other, comparing notes, ridding ourselves of competition and aggression, gratefully and fearlessly giving and receiving with reverence for life and impermanence.
However, most current office holders have their positions because they were able to raise the enormous amounts of money required for a winning candidacy. As a result, most elected politicians now (correctly) believe that their political survival depends on access to this money. In fact, as long as getting elected requires the enormous expenditures that it now does, elected officials will always be indebted to the sources of that money. The fact that big business, the military, and the rich nearly always get the legislation and political favors that they want is a perfectly rational and necessary consequence of the way that elections are financed. Even when a public-spirited president or member of congress gets elected, the large majority of our so-called representatives still do the bidding of the powers that put them in office and prevent any real reform
for the nourishment we can no longer find within. Values,which came from intangible intuitions, from feelings too
subtle to be verbalized or analyzed, cannot be found,appear to have been illusions. At a certain moment in the
process of loss--the devolution of being-- attributes like'good', 'powerful','merciful','just', 'wise' are withdrawn from God and shifted to the supremely inflated sign—-the
God-Child of western civ—-MONEY.
If these comments here are reflective of "who people think we are fighting against," then we're doomed to fail. Occupy Wall Street-all public-traded corps, worldwide, run the place(s.) Period. Didn't we just learn that 147 Int'l Corps control everything worldwide? With a small list of global elites owning that 147 base. And there are 9 sectors of the economy that collude (1-MIC,2-medical,3-finance/ins/banks,etc,) as the "second tier" control under that. In other words, keeping deliberating and educating people about their nemesis, because that is obviously not getting through (per these comments.)
How to fight that broad base of a nemesis? Now that's the $800Trillion question (the amount of black market derivatives that constitute all value in the world today.)
It's a delicate dance and it varies from nation to nation, regionally, and individually as well.
You grow a garden amidst the wreckage of the vacant trashed out urban lots if that's where you find yourself. Eventually the beauty of what you're doing will move others to join you. And little by little, your understanding changes to something positive and you alter the trajectory of those around you.
Don't forget that the tip of a pyramid is held up by its base. The power lies lower down at least as much as it does up top. Those $800 trillion in derivatives mean nothing if we won't cooperate with the system. Or if we harness its power for common good.
A handful of Occupiers have already changed the terms of debate for the better. This only took a few weeks, actually - amazing! And most of us haven't even really awakened to rebuild America yet. Just wait and see - the seed has germinated and the growth of the foliage will apply great pressure to the restricting prison walls.
It's a big job, but we can do it. Life will find a way. ;-)
Catherine Fitts, former HUD admin, explains who these global elites are, funded by US black budgets and the recent '08 bank bailout. Here's the link. It's a dousy, chock full of honesty and no delusion about reality, so I'd rate it for the audience as "NC-17 in truth:" http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/74988. Movie Inside Job is truthful too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpNlnpn0Jvk&feature=player_embedded
We are attempting to apply an expanding economy on this finite planet.
Democracy cannot continue unless it reins in the economy.
Allowing monopolies to control discourse is corrupting the discourse.
The core problem, the cancer, that has overtaken the America and the world we want can be summarized in one or two words: BIG or with a little more precision, BIG Money. Everything else is a consequence of BIG and the influence and power that comes with BIG.
http://habitablezones.blogspot.com/
"greed and bleed"
Samples of foreign IRI propaganda would seem laughable if tried here, but perhaps citizen group developed issues on the model of PBS "By the People" events like "What Next California" with 400 citizens spending 3 days coming up with questions for expert panel discussions, would provide focal points for non-violent group tactics to bring to wider public attention. Perhaps the honest and ethical Wall Street insiders, will help overcome the propaganda and power of the anarchical capitalists Hoover complained about, and help us with better knowledge based critical thinking we can demand from Wall Street, lobbyists, and political machines.
I agree with those who feel it is not necessary for the OWS to make isolated specific demands. To do so makes them seem like an isolated group The 1% already used this tactic when it attempted to marginalize the protesters.
The word "consumer" by the way, is from the word "consumption" i.e.TB. I agree it is not a sustainable economic system.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
... Abraham Lincoln
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