danbashaw
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@sumac.carol I’ve been following your concerns about the ideologies that are being publicly attached to the trucker convoy, and wanted to chime in with my own perspective on this.
My roots are revolutionary leftist – I.W.W. (Wobbly), with decades of united front, solidarity, and antiwar work in collaboration with other reds, as well as those of many other hues.
During that time I ran into pretty well every strategic and tactical failure that a mass and/or vanguard movement could have inflicted on them… or self-inflict, as was often the case. An insistence on an absurd level of ‘ideological purity’ was a common way for us to fail, as was the opposite extreme of over-embracing ‘diversity of tactics’ to the point where it became child’s play for provocateurs to grab the narrative at a demonstration by donning a bit of black cloth.
So, I have empathy with the truckers, and mandate protesters of other stripes, as they stumble into a myriad of traps, both external and self-set. I also have no ‘truck’ with fascists – either the ones I may oppose, or the one I may become, without ever noticing the transition. So I think I understand some of your concerns.
I derive great value from my experience in those revolutionary decades – there is no learning experience deeper than complete and utter defeat on all fronts, from the global to the local! It gives perspective.
Now, objective conditions have changed. The left-right spectrum has gone full kaleidoscope. Am I to remain in the shadow of past struggles that have no remaining energy or path forward? Or do I assess what I believe and have learned and move forward?
Some things I carry with me from my past: Justice. Equality. Solidarity. “an injury to one is an injury to all”. “we are all leaders”. “never defend a fixed position against a superior force”. Other things I have learned recently from those who were once my opponents. One of these is the value of abstract ‘Freedom’. Freedom for me was always conditional: Freedom to… what? Freedom from… what? Now I actually get it: It is a thing itself, irrespective of conditional considerations.
So how do I proceed in this new world, where my former comrades have almost all taken the New Sacrament and look on me with confusion and condemnation, and I find myself among strangers again?
To some extent I do what I have always done – watch, listen, learn, and reflect to understand the new situation. Noticing that there are very few allies that share ‘my position’, I realize that I must speak clearly for myself. What I believe. How I make my choices. What I embrace and what I reject, and most importantly, why. And I need to do this not to convince, to justify, to manipulate others. I must do it simply to live in clarity.
If I find I do not support any of the new alignments, then so be it! I can stand alone. (In fact there are some who share overlapping perspectives with mine: David Holmgren comes to mind. And many more I learn from despite, or due to, their differing perspectives.)
I also am mindful that many overarching truths appear in different guises in different belief systems. If ‘Defend our Canadian Freedoms’ does not resonate with me – and it does not – then something else does. In my case, is it a quote from Marge Piercy in an old revolutionary novel from the 1970’s:
“Person must not do what person cannot do.”
@sumac.carol I’ve been following your concerns about the ideologies that are being publicly attached to the trucker convoy, and wanted to chime in with my own perspective on this.
My roots are revolutionary leftist – I.W.W. (Wobbly), with decades of united front, solidarity, and antiwar work in collaboration with other reds, as well as those of many other hues.
During that time I ran into pretty well every strategic and tactical failure that a mass and/or vanguard movement could have inflicted on them… or self-inflict, as was often the case. An insistence on an absurd level of ‘ideological purity’ was a common way for us to fail, as was the opposite extreme of over-embracing ‘diversity of tactics’ to the point where it became child’s play for provocateurs to grab the narrative at a demonstration by donning a bit of black cloth.
So, I have empathy with the truckers, and mandate protesters of other stripes, as they stumble into a myriad of traps, both external and self-set. I also have no ‘truck’ with fascists – either the ones I may oppose, or the one I may become, without ever noticing the transition. So I think I understand some of your concerns.
I derive great value from my experience in those revolutionary decades – there is no learning experience deeper than complete and utter defeat on all fronts, from the global to the local! It gives perspective.
Now, objective conditions have changed. The left-right spectrum has gone full kaleidoscope. Am I to remain in the shadow of past struggles that have no remaining energy or path forward? Or do I assess what I believe and have learned and move forward?
Some things I carry with me from my past: Justice. Equality. Solidarity. “an injury to one is an injury to all”. “we are all leaders”. “never defend a fixed position against a superior force”. Other things I have learned recently from those who were once my opponents. One of these is the value of abstract ‘Freedom’. Freedom for me was always conditional: Freedom to… what? Freedom from… what? Now I actually get it: It is a thing itself, irrespective of conditional considerations.
So how do I proceed in this new world, where my former comrades have almost all taken the New Sacrament and look on me with confusion and condemnation, and I find myself among strangers again?
To some extent I do what I have always done – watch, listen, learn, and reflect to understand the new situation. Noticing that there are very few allies that share ‘my position’, I realize that I must speak clearly for myself. What I believe. How I make my choices. What I embrace and what I reject, and most importantly, why. And I need to do this not to convince, to justify, to manipulate others. I must do it simply to live in clarity.
If I find I do not support any of the new alignments, then so be it! I can stand alone. (In fact there are some who share overlapping perspectives with mine: David Holmgren comes to mind. And many more I learn from despite, or due to, their differing perspectives.)
I also am mindful that many overarching truths appear in different guises in different belief systems. If ‘Defend our Canadian Freedoms’ does not resonate with me – and it does not – then something else does. In my case, is it a quote from Marge Piercy in an old revolutionary novel from the 1970’s:
“Person must not do what person cannot do.”
I followed the Newsbreak “360,000 Teens with Myocarditis” story links, and can’t find any source at all for that figure.
There is no reason to think it is anything but a career-limiting error by the Newsbreak writer. 4% would be absurdly high, considering that the highest figure for myocarditis we’ve seen so far is 1 in 3000 (High end of the widely-reported Israeli range from a few of months back.) which works out to .03%
I would not reference or circulate the story, unless a source is located, as I suspect it will be rapidly corrected.
I’ve seen several insightful comments recently discussing the wave(s) of stress, depression and such that many of us dissident types are feeling these days. I think that these emotions are the driving force behind the kind of ‘cornered-rats-fighting-in-a-trap’ dynamic I see in the comment threads the last few days. Lots of barred teeth and back against the wall scrapping, and weird violent imagery flying back and forth.
I’m hoping our typical civility will re-establish itself in a day or two once the current wave of panic burns itself out. I like visiting TAE to hear competing points of view, well shared and well discussed, along with good links to external research and opinion. Personally, I’d hate to see any of the regular commenters leave in a huff due to this outbreak of psychic stress!
I want to reach out to all at TAE, and thank Raul Ilargi and the Comment Crew for all of the great links and analysis that you have posted over the years.
I’ve followed TAE since back when it was ToD Canada, and along with a handful of other blogs, it has been a major influence on my thinking over the last decade and more. I want to let you know what your work has meant to me, as I expect the lights to start going out across the accidental commons that is the open Internet over the coming months and years.
When the morning comes that I launch TAE and get a 404, it will be too late to let you all know. (And too late to donate, which I have now done, insofar as I can.)
Wishing you all the best – While I hope that ‘404 day’ never arrives, if it does I want you to know that you were heard, and that I and many others have appreciated and reflected on your words.
When I ran into the Geert Vanden Bossche post yesterday, the first thing that popped to mind was ‘this is a psy-ops set-up’. The intro paragraphs seem intentionally spammy, the narrative escalatory, the science vague, with no references. Too many flags. It felt to me like it was designed to be widely circulated and then discredited.
Of course that may not be the case, as the author apparently has a long online history, and working in second language no doubt presents challenges. Still it focused my mind on the fact that there currently are some serious dirty tricks campaigns underway to flush out, discredit and de-platform dissenting voices online, and that sources that feel ‘off’ – as this one did to me – need to be approached carefully.
