When I think of peaceful grassroots activism, three historical examples come to mind:
In each case, the people’s noble cause eventually prevailed, but not without a cost. The strategy of centralized protesting can lead to martyrs and collateral damage. As I wrote about the Canadian truckers:
I admire them and support their cause of freedom. However, I have mixed feelings about their strategy. They are taking the fight to their opponents on their opponents’ home court. There was bound to be a reaction from authorities. That reaction will test the peaceful resolve of the truckers; I hope they stand firm in their commitment to peace. And I hope that none of them become martyrs, and that there is minimal collateral damage.
Since I wrote this, there has already been a harsh reaction by authorities, including threatening the children and pets of the truckers and a reported death. This is to be expected, and it can get worse. This is what happened to some of the salt marchers:
Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down ... Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance ... They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police ... The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.
Good people who put themselves at the mercy of bad authorities, expecting them to respond with compassion, are taking a big risk. Many of the people in positions of authority have compromised their humanity to get those positions and making a plea to their humanity often arouses murderous hatred rather than compassion.
In the Watchmen film, the girl putting the flower in the gun is like a battered woman who says “you’re hurting me, please don’t hit me again”. It is the stance of a helpless victim which, in practice, often enables the abuser. Confronting an abuser on the abuser’s home court (and the public square is seen by the authorities as their home court), enables the abusive pattern to continue, which benefits neither victim nor abuser.
Sometimes, abuse is deliberately provoked in the hope that the abuse will be witnessed by a third party stronger than the abuser, who will then intervene to stop the abuse. This actually happened with the Salt March and eventually lead to Indian independence. I’m not suggesting that this strategy can’t work, but why not at least consider a more peaceful strategy that avoids violence altogether, if at all possible?
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” — Isaac Asimov
Authorities expect protests, marches and occupations and are ready to give themselves emergency powers, declare martial law, and deploy militarized SWAT teams with “non-lethal” weapons like LRAD whenever the natives become restless. Why play into their strength, if there is a better way?
Decentralized peaceful grassroots activism, in accordance with Fractal Sovereignty, bypasses mechanisms of suppression that authorities have spent billions on, rendering them useless. It is entirely peaceful and legal, and most importantly it is so dispersed as to be invisible to authorities until they have already lost. There is no centralized target to strike. It is the withdrawal of support, the refusal to actively participate in a system that exploits and enslaves.
One example of decentralized activism is the silver stacking movement, which has its current online headquarters at WallStreetSilver subreddit. (Don’t worry, they will not be deterred if Reddit censors them.) At this moment, 180,000 silverbacks, as they call themselves, plus a great many more throughout the world, have come together from all walks of life in a common cause, which is twofold:
Store their personal wealth in a real physical asset in their possession to protect and provide for their families as the legacy financial system implodes.
Hasten that implosion by depleting the silver stockpiles used to prop up the corrupt central bank system, which debases the population’s currency while transferring wealth to their cronies, multiplying their power and dominance over society.
The second point needs some explanation. Banksters rely on suppressing the price of precious metals to create the illusion that their debt instruments, such as the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Note, have any real value. The price of silver is especially easy to control because it is such a small market in comparison to gold. The actual mechanism of suppression is to sell silver that doesn’t exist to put downward pressure on the price.
This is deemed legal as long as the banksters eventually buy back the fake silver, which they are usually able to do at a lower price, giving them a profit. There is no limit to how much fake silver they can sell — they’ve been known to sell a year’s worth of silver production in a few minutes to drive the price downward, which no sane investor would do unless the goal is to manipulate the price by inducing panic selling.
However, when the day comes that silver stackers force the price higher by depleting inventories, the banksters will be forced to buy back their paper silver at a huge loss, potentially bankrupting them, breaking their corrupt system and with it the illusion that their debt instruments have any real value. The value of their debt instruments is entirely based on confidence that they will retain their purchasing power (notwithstanding that they have lost well over 90% of their value since 1913).
There is a tremendous camaraderie among stackers. They are united regardless of age, gender, race, religion and class; all the differences that the elite tries to exploit to divide them. They won’t give up; it’s just a matter of time. And that time would be shorter if more people join the movement.
A comparable strategy for the Canadian truckers would have been to simply stop delivering products. Their country would quickly come to a standstill; they would be dealing from a position of great strength. Granted, authorities might try to force them to work, like slaves, but would they be able to track down and coerce every trucker in a country the size of Canada? I suppose it’s possible, but wouldn’t this decentralized strategy be worth a try before putting one’s livelihood, health, freedom, children, pets and even their lives at risk?
These two actions, trucker striking and precious metal stacking, are two of many possible decentralized actions that could be coordinated by The Nexus such as boycotts, strikes, votes, donations and prayer.
The key to success is to motivate mass participation. Success breeds success, so the first action should be selected based on the likelihood of demonstrable success even with relatively small numbers of participants.
The stackers have already given us a head start and made great progress in the past year. Consider joining in! In lieu of that consider moving your money out of the megabanks into local banks and credit unions or public banks such as exist in North Dakota.
I support the building of a parallel society rather than tearing down the legacy structure, and in so doing, avoiding class warfare and bloody revolution.
"What you resist, persists." -- Carl Jung
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― Buckminster Fuller
Canadian general strike begins tomorrow:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/099/249/620/original/f81c021a0045a7e4.mp4
“what you resist persists” - i hope there’s an exemption for covid biologics