50 Strategies of Revolution

revolution

From Mongoose Distro by Dan Baker

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April 2nd, 2022

Modern media portrays anarchists as insane mass murderers. We cannot allow profit driven capitalists to define us – we must engage with the public and define ourselves through direct acts which benefit our communities. Every guerilla insurgency that has failed was isolated and alienated from the very same community they relied on. Spies and undercover cops infiltrated, and continue to sabotage, revolutionary movements. They continue to do so by providing bomb making materials and encouraging passionate activists to go too far. Any direct action worth doing in secret is too dangerous to discuss with even one other person. Everyone has beloved friends, family and even pets and careers, many allies have addictions and health problems, and all these can be used as leverage to turn lovers into informants. Every government in existence regularly abducts and tortures people. The future of kinetic resistance is lonely, but this is only one facet of effective activism.

We should not discourage the brave and passionate. At the same time, we should encourage the cowards and the compassionate. Put suspected informants and spies to work distributing food and planting crops. Never speak of illegal projects with them. The stakes are so high – if we fail to stop racist genocide, profit driven wars, and enslavement of prisoners, and the subjugation of women, foreigners, queer and trans friends, animals and plant life, the climate will change in a dramatic way that we cannot survive. This is an appeal to your self interest, and your concern for your loved ones and neighbors. The so-called “Post Apocalyptic Wasteland” portrayed in media already exists in the Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, Palestine and for the poor worldwide – even and especially in the slums and ghettos of the U.$.A.: there are sprawling homeless camps, squatters, refugees, roaming convoys of rubber tramps and more, all escaping large wildfires and posses of violent cops.

So how do we change the world?

There are so many ways to change the world that fill me with hope for the future, humanity and nature. These are listed here and will then be discussed in detail, except where self censorship is practiced to protect friends and avoid further oppression and enslavement at the hands of the state. They go both ways.

Throughout history the demonic power of words have been abused to sow confusion, and hijacked to demand freedom. Religion has also been used to enslave, and to resist colonization. “Magic” rituals have persisted despite inquisitions. The idea of a soul has been colonized to tax believers – and to inspire slaves to demand equality. Ethics and morality have domesticated passionate people. Enslavement and exploitation have followed in the footsteps of animal husbandry and housewivisation to selectively breed physical and psychological traits of obedience to domination in men, women and so-called livestock. The concept of acquiring skills has been totally denigrated by the image of mastery, the submission to authority, the division of labor and hyper specialization of skills. We have psychological separated ourselves from reality by calling humans “people” and all other life “nature.” Cities corral a work force but also provide sanctuaries of social development and rebellion. Vices destroy health and fund revolutions. Drugs are used as leverage, but can heal, and enhance the performance of athletes. Prostitution can be criminalized, be degrading under pimps, or it can be liberating for self-employed sex workers while dismantling illusions of hetero-normative village structures that are perpetuated by zealots of the mythological god of Abraham. Renunciation has both put people in workhouses and provided another way for oppressed women, asexual people and the poor to reject capitalism. Begging also humiliates the poor – and highlights a peaceful way to refuse the accumulation of material possessions.  For the proud robbery, especially of the rich, has long been an equalizing force that strikes fear into the hearts of the greedy, but the rich also rob the poor. The creation of oases in the midst of dystopian police states give hope to children, adults and the elderly while providing protected sanctuary for animals and sick, injured and homeless people. Guerilla gardens, cultivated in urban areas, provide food in nutrition deserts, without asking the state for permission. We can study the successes and failures of personalities like Ghandi, Che Guevara, Mother Theresa, Mao Zedong, Abdullah Ocalan, Nesrin Abdullah, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Voltarine deClayre, John Brown, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis – and then imitate and modernize their strategies.

We have seen missionaries operate as the vanguard of colonial expansion – and as medics. Hare Krishnas and Catholics collect information for various nation states but have also supported alternative options for people stuck in poverty, and workers’ rights organizations have sprung up from these misguided religions. The nihilist perspective can encourage people to resist even in the face of seeming hopelessness. Indigenous peoples have spearheaded resistance in northern and southern hemispheres worldwide while modernizing their struggle and preserving their culture. Musicians and artists preserve the spirit of ages of activism, providing beautiful and emotional expressions of the triumphs and traumas we witness and experience. People share their homes with modern underground railroads, providing safe houses, transportation, disguises and a stable supply of nutrients for abused women, refugees, freedom fighters and falsely accused people and political prisoners on the run from fascist slave catchers and death squads. Groups like the Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts (ALF & ELF) actively sabotage and destroy property that is used to destroy ecosystems and kill plants and animals.

So-called vagrants renounce mainstream society without selling out to religious power structure, living a full time life of protest, in groups like the Rainbow Gathering. Smugglers and drug dealers undermine capitalism by creating their own economies – ironically by imitating the dirty cops who criminalize them. The cultivation of so-called illegal plants, specifically psychedelics like cannabis, DMT, peyote and mushrooms, help people overcome addiction, trauma, fear of death and mental illness, especially the lies of profit driven economies, religions and hierarchical power structures. Party culture has a similar effect, to a lesser extent.

The use of birth control and contraceptives allows women to have bodily autonomy and helps the poor and working class to influence the population of workers available to the manipulative ruling class, which allows us to demand higher wages and better living conditions, along with reimbursement for transportation to and form work, medical care, housing and education. Conversely the Irish Catholics have weaponized their ban on birth control to increase their numbers to better combat Protestants who are sympathetic to oppressive, racist British colonizers. Rioting and the destruction of property has been a leveling practice employed by the poor and marginalized to redistribute direly needed resources back to the communities who produced them.

Armed patrols of areas, communities, nature preserves and territories empower people to protect themselves, endangered species and their homes and gardens. By crossing borders, traveling and connecting with so-called foreigners worldwide in person and online we live as one family, without borders and imaginary divisions which are used to divide and dominate us. Destroying all barriers, walls, fences, enclosures and hedges is not only a powerful mindset and life’s task, it is our moral obligation to humanity, and it can be done digitally and physically.

Protests and strikes, at work and at home, regarding women’s unpaid housework and emotional and sexual labor, are devastatingly effective, and force the ruling class and their enforcers to come to the negotiation table or face the loss of their precision profits and luxuries, which rightfully belong to the workers. Sex is both an intimate pledge between lovers, partners and parents, and a perfectly normal and healthy past time for consenting single adults, which dispels stress, myths and prejudices by awakening natural and primal urges that contradict bigotry and racism.

Disregarding gender norms loosens the grip and influence of the patriarchy and helps people to explore aspects of themselves that they previously rejected due to gender identity, like flexibility and emotional intelligence in men and strength and aggression in women, as well as people who experience, or don’t experience, gender in unique ways.

Heresy can be practiced to disprove the wrath of mythological deities and to expose the tyranny of so-called religious leaders, who are the only real source of “divine” retribution.

Humor and satire are very effective weapons for activists, because any tyrant who cannot be mocked has become far too powerful to remain, and all leaders must be thoroughly and daily criticized in order to prevent them from accumulating more power than the weakest member of their community.

Rudeness must also be welded against those who have come to power by counting on the polite nature of communities who fail to mock their ridiculous and irrational claims, such as the authority and divinity of any scripture.

As debt is again criminalized we see students and other weaponizing debt by refusing to pay for student loans and then demanding loan debt forgiveness, effectively attacking loan sharks and socializing higher education.

Occupying spaces, like squatting, is a crime of necessity, which allows the displaced to politicize their poverty and transform suffering into a form of protest that forces the wage slaves, drones and enforcers of class division to be aware of, and interact with, the homeless they try to ignore.

Physical fitness, exercise, yoga, martial arts and a healthy diet and lifestyle help to strengthen, empower, unite and make people happy, while opening peoples minds and lowering resistance to new ideas and ways of thinking – racists and fascists regularly occupy and recruit at gyms so we should do the same.

Social medias are another crucial aspect to modern activism and must be utilized and occupied to reach hearts and minds.

Learning multiple languages to fluency is a fundamental part of building international communities and movements. Communication is the most important step when moving towards any ideal in practical ways.

Offering self criticism to a core group of close friends, every day, is one of the most effective forms of self development and personal growth, as much as offering and receiving criticisms, without arguments, is a necessary process for team building.

Finally, the making of self fulfilling prophecies, vows and predictions has been shown to be a way of planting seeds than can bear fruit long after we are gone.

This work will be dynamic, changing over time and in response to input, questions and criticisms. Please send letters to discuss these topics with me, and practice and bring up these subjects in your community, except for any which are illegal. Any activism too dangerous to discuss with others should be kept to oneself.

Understand that this work is being closely monitored by fascist enforcers of class division and oppression. We live in a time and place where ideas and words have been criminalized by hypocrites who claim they occupy the moral high ground. Even reading this could be a “crime.”

I write this from prison, sitting in ac ell, having been falsely charged and then convicted of a crime I did not commit. What more can they do to me? They can take my life, but a life of slavery, based on myths and lies, in subjugation, where my existence is criminalized and I am ritualistically humiliated by strip searches, this is not a life worth living. Any one of you can also be targeted at any time, for standing up for civil rights, for the hungry, the poor and the homeless. Based on the fact of real tyranny, right here, right now, we truly have nothing to lose.

Please know that I am not suicidal or planning to disappear when I get out of prison. If I die or come up missing know that it was the work of the state or their lap dogs. I plan to live a long, happy life, in my community, free. Together we will build a better world where all are happy and free!

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