How do we fight back? We do not have the tools or the wealth of the state. We cannot beat it at its own game. We cannot ferret out infiltrators. The legal system is almost always on the state’s side. If we attempt to replicate the elaborate security apparatus of our oppressors, even on a small scale, we will unleash widespread paranoia and fracture the movement. If we retreat into anonymity, hiding behind masks, then we provide an opening for agents provocateurs who deny their identities while disrupting the movement. If we fight pitched battles in the streets we give authorities an excuse to fire their weapons.All true. It doesn't matter that there is never any excuse for police overreaction. It's like Dick Cheney's self-created lies about WMDs. As long as other people parrot the lies, the "excuse" exists.
But Hedges goes off the rails more than once:
All we have, as Vaclav Havel writes, is our own powerlessness. And that powerlessness is our strength. The survival of the movement depends on embracing this powerlessness.Hedges admits there was a difference between the Soviet System of the 1970-91 period and the Leninist-Stalinist terror state that preceded it. Which is good. The sort of disobedience Havel describes later could not have survived a completely ruthless dictatorship of a Stalin or a Hitler. But it's important to remember that the Soviet Empire crumbled for a lot of reasons, not just because of the dissidence of its intellectuals. "Solidarity" in Poland rebelled against a rising cost of living which the Soviet system could do nothing about. The excessive economic centralization of the economy produced inefficiencies and the swallowing of resources of the military-industrial complex added to the burden.
The Soviet Union's empire began to really crumble when the guy at the top, Gorbachev, went for a walk on the beach with his foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and they lamented how everything had gone wrong. The system didn't work. It was time for reform. Hence "Glasnost" and "Perestroika." But these failed as well and the rest is history. The point is, the mighty Soviet Empire did not collapse under the weight of people saying the emperor had no clothes. Just like here, I'm sure that most people tried to go along to get along. It was the system itself that did itself in.
Maybe what bugs me the most about Hedges' essay is its meaningless concluding statement:
We must assume we are targets. And we must fight back by relying on our strength, which in the great paradox of resistance movements is embodied in our weakness. This does not mean we will avoid being repressed or persecuted. It will not keep us safe from slander, lies or jail. But it does offer the capacity to create internal divisions in the apparatus of the oppressors rather than permit the oppressors to create internal divisions within the movement. Divided loyalties create paralysis. And it is our job to paralyze them, not allow them to paralyze us.So, let's passively allow ourselves to be infiltrated, arrested and slandered. The mainstream media can continue to concentrate on the Republican primaries, including entire articles about Newt Gingrich's wife's hair. Indy-Media will bear witness and the already converted can watch the abuse of the Occupy movement on YouTube. Occupy will continue to say that the emperor has no clothes, just like Jon Stewart does only for much more money. And somehow or other, the systematic assault on a passively-resisting Occupy movement will "create internal divisions" within the Wall Street - Pentagon - Politician nexus which will, inevitably (but inexplicably) "paralyze" them.
Uh, ... right.
If you look in the comments section of that commondreams page, you'll find that a lot of other people find that a little hard to swallow as well. I think what's needed is (as usual) a more mature and nuanced attitude towards political violence. Since I'm a busy man, I'm going to have to end it here and suggest that you search my blog using the search term "violence" to get a sense of what I mean.
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