Transcription
This is from William Ator. Uh, forces within US society work to keep people divided along partisan blue red lines, distracted screens everywhere, fluff and stuff news and downtrodden low wages, expensive healthcare, etc. Is it possible to mobilize a mass movement under such conditions, especially with militarized police forces and an increasingly intrusive surveillance state? It's extremely difficult, which is why I'm so worried.
Um and uh the the left in this country which was very robust at one point especially on the eve of World War I but again with the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s uh and the left uh took on a a different shape during the 1960s uh one that unfortunately divorced itself largely from labor. Um uh but even even then those movements the civil rights movement the anti-war movement uh both of which my father was a part of uh the uh the the gay rights movement the aim the indigenous rights movement the feminist you know all of these uh created uh blowback or push back against uh the dominant forces in society and then there's been just a steady war to destroy destroy all of them since the early 1970s and through the Powell memo which I've written about and spoken about before. So we are very weakened at a time of rising authoritarianism.
Uh corporate control over corporate and oligarchic control over the two major parties. Um the Democratic party doesn't function as a party. The Republican party is a cult around the demagogue Trump. Uh so yes, it's it's a very perilous moment, but that is why I took the time to go to Italy and of course brought a film crew because I think the Italians have shown us the only mechanism we have left to protect our rapidly eroding civil liberties uh and you know halt the genocide because the the genocide is uh is a template for what's coming with climate breakdown. It is a rule of barbarity. It's it's it's the evisceration of the rule of law. It's a message which the global south understands. Uh as the climate or the crisis uh exacerbates uh you will have tens hundreds of millions of uh of of people attempting to migrate to save themselves from uh the ecoside. And uh and I think the these climate fortresses in the north through Gaza have delivered a message. We will stop at nothing um to eradicate you, destroy you, and protect our uh our hold over uh resources and wealth, our disproportionate control of resources and wealth. Uh and your lives don't matter.
Um and so yes we have to develop a kind of militancy and mass organization but um you're right there are many um mechanisms uh by which uh you know wholesale surveillance militarized police uh you know all of the tools of control in the outer reaches of empire have now migrated and are you being used against us. If you look at the the uh border with Mexico or or uh in Greece or other places, all of the technologies that have been quote unquote battle tested on the Palestinians are now being used against migrants and and increasingly against dissident. So you had seek farmers for instance uh protesting in India and suddenly overhead are these Israeli drones dropping tear gas.
What are your specific prescriptions for mass demonstrations against Trump that have more effect than the walks with signs that seem fruitless? Yeah. Uh I mean effective resistance requires u or effective mass mobilization as any effective union will tell you requires months and months of preparation. So you can create flash mobs um but the state doesn't care about flash mobs. It cares about the kind of resistance that took place in Italy where you have dock workers refuting refusing to load weapons onto ships that are bound to Israel. Um that requires a level of education. Uh it requires a kind of continuity. So it's it's not just one action. It is it is about mobilizing to essentially disrupt the machinery in this case of the genocide. But ultimately the machinery of state and the machinery of commerce.
Uh a good example of this is just stop oil. They shut down the M25 motorway. Um this saw very harsh uh reaction on the part of the UK government. Uh Roger Hallum who founded extin one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil even though he was not physically on the M25 motorway was given a 5-year prison sentence. Uh you look at the uh uh criminalization of Palestine action uh which has disrupted Elbert systems uh which is these are weapons manufacturers in the UK that produce weapons for Israel. Um so when there is effective resistance um the state responds very very harshly. Uh and that's how you know it's effective. Uh but we have to begin to build those kinds of movements.
Uh the only power we have is the power of the strike, the ability to strike. That's why the oligarchs and the corporations have worked so assiduously to break organized labor. Only I think less than 10% of of the American workforce is unionized and many of them are public sector workers and can't even strike. Um, so we have to step outside the system. The Democratic Party, as I have said repeatedly year after year, is not going to save us.
Um and in a way, we're beginning at zero, which is very frightening given the rapid consolidation of control by the authoritarian uh state. Uh whether that's through the uh massive funding of ICE and building of these detention centers, uh whether that's stripping green card holders or people on student visas of their right to be here, uh whether that's uh declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, which is ridiculous. Um, I mean, most of the Antifa people I know are kind of white kids who live in their mother's basement in Eugene. The idea that they're terrorist, I mean, yeah, they may throw a trash can through a window, but the idea they're terrorist organization is absurd, but that becomes a way to demonize the quote unquote radical left. We saw this kind of rhetoric after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Um, and Antifa is is just uh the first step. it's uh any kind of uh resistance, political resistance will be characterized as u or you know criminalized in essence in the same way for instance Palestine action has been criminalized in the UK.
Okay. What happened?