Preparing for the Next Coup

Preparing for the next coup

 

Waging Nonviolence is once again teaming up with Choose Democracy to provide resources on how to stem the rising authoritarian tide. This is the second in a series of interviews with experienced organizers and movement thinkers on ways to defend and expand democracy.

Last month, the New York Times published a broad overview of rising political violence in the United States, noting that, “By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking.” According to one poll, more than 80 percent of local officials said they had been threatened or harassed…..

 

In cases like that, how did people prepare themselves to handle a potentially violent response?

Anticipating what the other side is probably going to do is actually helpful because the fear of the unknown is often paralyzing — and people succumb to confusion, and then demobilization. I so admire the scholar Brian Martin and others who have done research into what makes repression backfire. They point to the five steps perpetrators use to try to inhibit outrage:

First, they cover it up, deny it ever happened and try to prevent knowledge of it from spreading.

Second, they devalue the victim and try to reduce their social standing in the eyes of onlookers.

Third, they reinterpret the abuse that happened by claiming it was necessary — that the police, who may have done something totally unlawful, were actually just trying to keep order or do their jobs. Or they were just a few bad apples.

Fourth, if they have to, they’ll say they’re going to launch an internal investigation. They like internal investigations that are closed doors, because they give the appearance of justice and take time. People demobilize frequently when they see an institutional process is underway.

Finally, they offer threats and rewards: threats against people talking out and rewards for people who stay silent.

That’s the playbook. It’s used by authoritarians. It’s used by governments and businesses. It’s used at a micro personal level. It’s used at a macro level.

How can organizers respond to these moves?

The backfire framework tells us what we need to do to counter all that. There’s five R’s:

1. Reveal what happened. Counter attempts to cover up.

2. Redeem: value the victim, humanize the victim, don’t let them be othered and cast aside.

3. Reframe and say “Actually, what’s going on is systemic, deeply abusive, corrosive and actually the tip of the iceberg. It’s indicative of a much deeper problem.

4. Redirect: If there is an institutional process, you may participate in it, you may not, but you don’t depend on it. You continue to mobilize. You continue to use that institutional process as a mobilizing opportunity.

5. Resist threats and bribes, and possibly turn them into new forms of backfire.

 

Read more: 

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/06/political-violence-surging-2024-election-authoritarian-playbook-hardy-merriman/

 

 

Refugees

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Dear Duane,  I’m so immensely grateful for your incredible support of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s work providing care to refugees, migrants, displaced people, and others caught in crises around the world. As World Refugee Day ends this week, I wanted to share some reflections with you on how your support of MSF makes such a difference in the lives of our patients. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the refugee crisis right now. There are currently more than 110 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced by war, political violence, hunger, and persecution. That’s more refugees than at any other time in modern history—a shocking statistic. But when I look at MSF’s global movement of supporters, I see so many reasons to have hope. Supporters like you have stepped up in force, donating to ensure our doctors, nurses, technicians, and the rest of our nearly 68,000 global staff can go wherever the medical needs are greatest. Your support has enabled us to: Support more than 30 health facilities across Sudan, working with a team of over 1,000 staff—including over 930 Sudanese staff—to provide surgical care, mobile clinics for displaced people, maternal and pediatric health care, and more. Provide about 400,000 liters of water per day at 30 water distribution points in Al-Mawasi and Khan Younis in Gaza. And screen 5,000 patients for malnutrition at Al-Mawasi Health Post in Rafah. Provide 67,000 outpatient consultations in Mexico, including providing mental health care for migrants traveling dangerous migration routes and treating 90 victims of torture. From all of us at MSF—thank you so much for making our lifesaving medical care possible

 

Rev. Dr. William Barber - “White Poverty” & Poor People’s Campaign March...

Economic myths. The rich. Reich.

 Dangerous Economic Myths. Robert Reich.

The Rich deserve to be rich.

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/debunking-myth-2-government-obstructs?

Don’t be fooled by the myth that people are paid what they’re “worth” — that the rich deserve their ever-increasing incomes and wealth because they’re worth far more to the economy now than years ago (when the incomes and wealth of those at the top were more modest relative to everyone else’s). 

The distribution of income and wealth increasingly depend on who has the power to set the rules of the game.

Those at the top are raking in record income and wealth compared to everyone else because:

1. CEOs have linked their pay to the stock market through stock options. They then use corporate stock buybacks to increase stock prices and time the sale of their options to those increases.

2. They get inside information about corporate profits and losses before the rest of the public and trade on that insider information. This is especially true of hedge fund managers, who specialize in getting insider information before other investors. 

3. They create or work for companies that have monopolized their markets. This enables them to charge consumers higher prices than if they had to compete for those consumers. And it lets them keep wages low, because workers have fewer options of whom to work for. 

4. They use their political influence to get changes in laws, regulations, and taxes that benefit themselves and their corporations, while harming those without this kind of influence — especially smaller competitors, consumers, and workers.

5. They were born into (or married into) wealth. These days, the most important predictor of someone’s future income and wealth in America is the income and wealth of their parents. Sixty percent of all wealth is inherited. And we’re on the cusp of the biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history, from rich boomers to their children.

None of these reasons for the explosion of incomes and wealth at the top has anything to do with worth or merit. They have to do with power — or the power of one’s parents.

Meanwhile, the pay of average workers has stagnated because they have lost economic power and the political influence that goes with it. Corporations have kept a lid on wages by outsourcing work abroad, replacing workers with software, and preventing workers from unionizing. 

Bottom line: Wealth doesn’t measure how hard someone has worked or what they deserve. It measures how well our economic system has worked for them. 

Thanks again for joining me today. I hope you’ll share our “debunk” series. If you’re able, please help support our efforts by purchasing a paid subscription for yourself and a gift subscription for someone else.