HANDBOOK: How To Resist Musk/trump Fascism? Become Ungovernable

For a day, a week, or as a rolling walkout, we could shut down the economy and most governmental functions and bring the country to a standstill.

Mar 29, 2025

“When people refuse their cooperation, withhold help, and persist in their disobedience and defiance they are denying their opponent the basic human assistance and cooperation that any government or hierarchical system requires.”
— Gene Sharp, from Dictatorship to Democracy (Free download)

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (3/29/25)

If you are like many — most — wondering WTH to do to resist the whirlwind of the Musk/trump fascist putsch, you are not alone. With the corrupt fossilized Democratic party pretty much sitting on the sidelines, this is the time for citizens to unite, mobilize and lead the resistance to fascism.

The two articles below provide solid suggestions and powerful resources. In the first piece, Nan Levinson quotes from Gene Sharp, but does not mention his book Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework For Liberation, which has inspired a number of liberation movements around the world. Given the totalitarian regime we are in and the despotic path we see before us, I urge you buy a paper copy or download and print out a free copy. Do not depend solely on a digital copy. The fascist collapse is accelerating by the day and it won’t be long before the digital resources for resistance will be limited, cut off or used to track resistance.

Most print shops can put it on a spiral binder or you can put it in a three-ring binder.

Note the link at the bottom of the post to the national “Hands Off” protests on April 8th. Link to find actions near you.

Pass this information on to others. Solidarity.

NOTE: This post exceeds length for some email platforms. You can click on "View entire message" to access the entire post in your email app.

RESIST THIS FRESH HELL: Withholding Consent & Compliance From Musk/trump Regime

For a day, a week, or as a rolling walkout, we could shut down the economy and most governmental functions and bring the country to a standstill.

By Nan Levinson
Tom Dispatch (3/14/25)

Not even two months since Inauguration Day and it’s already been quite a trip. Ping-ponging between vindictive pettiness and unconstitutional overreach while using everything in his power (and much that isn’t), U.S. President Donald Trump has served up a goulash of dubious orders with a slathering of venom on top. He’s been abetted in the upheaval he promised on the campaign trail by the richest man on Earth, a cabal of lickspittles, and a cabinet filled with people who appear to have answered job ads stipulating, “Only the unqualified may apply.” As it became clearer what the battles to come would be, a friend wrote me: “I feel now like we’re watching it all happen. It being that thing that can’t happen here.”

There would be something strangely exhilarating about the frenzy of activity in Washington, if only it weren’t so careless, mean, dishonest, and destructive. Some of the most egregious actions have indeed been temporarily halted by the courts, but there’s no guarantee that trend will hold up—if, of course, Donald Trump and crew even pay attention to court decisions—especially when cases arrive at what’s potentially “his” Supreme Court. Meanwhile, insidious ideological purges encourage citizens to rat out their neighbors and coworkers, as leaders of industry, the media, and other institutions rush to appease the president before he dissolves into a hissy fit of revenge. (The speed with which many corporations complied with the order to axe DEI programs illuminates how shallow their commitment to that effort really was.)

In the months after the election, I mourned, ranted, resorted to magic thinking. I reminded myself that, while Trump did (barely) win the popular vote, democracy isn’t something that only happens every four years. Then, after my umpteenth conversation diagnosing how the hell we got into this mess, I had had enough. Okay, I said to my friends (who didn’t deserve my impatience), now what are we going to do about it?

Bedlam or Bust

Of course, I’m anything but the only person to ask that question. My inbox is crammed with notices of newsletters, podcasts, videos, and Zoom meetings full of rallying cries and, increasingly, suggested responses like the growing “economic blackouts.” With the executive branch already a kleptocracy, congressional Republicans in a state of amnesia when it comes to the Constitution’s separation of powers, most congressional Democrats waiting all too quietly (with the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders (-Vt.) and a few others) for the midterm elections or for Trump to screw up irremediably, and the courts tied up in rounds of Whac-A-Mole, it falls to civil society—that’s us—to try to check the slash-and-smash rampage of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of that crew, while offering a different vision for the country.

Such responses will undoubtedly involve a variety of approaches. These are likely to range from the immediate to the long haul; from small, local acts to ease individual lives—accompanying immigrants through the legal process when their residency is imperiled, for example—to more traditional activities like lobbying, petitioning, and supporting civil liberties organizations, or even movement-building and large-scale actions aimed at challenging the power of Trump and changing our very political situation.

When I allow myself to dream big and boldly, I envision a nation of Bartlebys, the title character in a Herman Melville story who replies to all work assignments with the impenetrable refrain, “I would prefer not to.”

We’ve already seen individual acts of principle, along with small communal acts of subversion. When someone in the Air Force took the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion purge literally and cut a video about World War II’s Black Tuskegee Airmen from a training course, a senator decried it as “malicious compliance.” In Silicon Valley, there was a “quiet rebellion” when Meta workers brought in certain sanitary products to replace those removed from men’s bathrooms by order of their boss, Mark Zuckerberg. A DOGE hiring site was besieged by mock applications from well-qualified Hitlers, Mussolinis, Francos, and a Cruella De Vil. Then there was that World War II anti-fascism Simple Sabotage Field Manual, downloaded at least 230,000 times since 404Media made it accessible online. Ways to gum up the works suggested there include, “Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks,” and my fave, “Act stupid.”

Traditional forms of lobbying—emails, phone calls, petitions, or attending town hall meetings—have also proved to be important options, but in one of the kinks in democratic representation, the legislators we most seek to influence are often the ones with the least reason or desire to listen to us. My representatives are all outspoken, progressive Democrats, so all I can say is, thanks or try even harder. Meanwhile, good luck getting through to swamped legislative offices, which generally accept messages only from their constituents.

And finally, marches and performative protests are photogenic and build solidarity, but because they seldom disrupt much of anything, they are often all too easy to ignore. Moreover, in Donald Trump’s topsy-turvy world, it’s hard to know not just where to direct your protest, but even at whom to direct it. On February 5 and again on a frigid Presidents’ Day, sizable demonstrations against Trump, Musk, and their policies took place across the country. If you didn’t notice, no surprise there since they barely made a blip in what passes for the news these days (and apparently not even that in Donald Trump’s consciousness).

May I Have Your Attention!

“Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics,” writes New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. MSNBC host Chris Hayes, whose most recent book is about attention as a valuable and endangered commodity, has called Trump’s skill at commanding it a “feral instinct.” He noted that, while the president excels at getting the public’s attention, he’s not all that great at holding it. Still, give Trump credit for his remarkably relentless pace of presidential threats, orders, and mind lint to keep our synapses sparking and, while he’s at it, overwhelming any opposition with the enormity—and folly—of resisting him or his administration.

Always leading with his chin, Trump employs a variety of tactics, including:

Stating something as fact when it isn’t. He did not win a mandate last November with just 49.7% of the vote; Panama did not agree to a freebie for U.S. ships in its canal; and Ukraine did not start a war with Russia. [Editor Note: Yes, but Nato did begin the war as Boris Johnson — on orders from Joe Biden, ordered Zelinsky to back out of a peace treaty initialed by Ukraine and Russia. Why does the left LOVE this war? — M. Taylor]
Repeating and embellishing half-baked ideas—including annexing the Panama Canal and Greenland, turning Canada into the 51st state and Gaza into a golf resort—until they become articles of faith or at least possibilities worth considering. By then, of course, he’s already corralled the discussion.
Drowning us in verbiage, belligerence, and hollow proclamations—or, as Steve Bannon put it, “flooding the zone”—until it’s impossible to respond. In his first week in office, Trump typically talked so much that even official stenographers scrambled to keep up.
Confusing everyone (probably himself included). Take the inherently illegal directive that froze massive amounts of federal funds already appropriated by Congress. Except it was utterly unclear what money was being frozen and, according to the White House press secretary in her first press briefing, it was legal because the relevant Office of Management and Budget memo said it was. Oh, and then came that other directive rescinding the first one. Except it turned out to apply only to the memo announcing the other directive, not the directive itself. Except… no, wait! That non-rescission applied to previous executive orders. Except… oh, never mind.
Whining about “unfairness” to the United States and—yes, of course—him (he often conflates the two) as a cover for bullying people, organizations, and countries into submission.
Not giving a damn if he’s caught in a lie or an error or simply sounds nuts as long as the focus remains on him or, these days, on his stand-in, Elon the Enforcer.

Ultimately, the last of these may be Trump’s greatest menace, but also his greatest weakness, because what he does give a damn about is his image. It doesn’t take an armchair psychologist to recognize why Trump preens and puffs himself up or a master strategist to know how easy it would be to make him lose his cool (which may be the only time the words “Trump” and “cool” appear in the same sentence). And boy, can he not take—or make—a joke!

So, one simple way we could resist is by denying him our full attention. Of course, we can’t ignore him completely, since willful ignorance is self-defeating and, like an adolescent testing parental limits, he’ll just keep upping the ante to see what he can get away with. But it’s necessary not to be derailed by every inanity or outrage. I’m choosing to concentrate my attention on two or three areas I know something about, while counting on my fellow outragees to attend to other issues.

Not that I think Trump cares what I do, but if enough of us focus less on what he says and more on his actions that have discernable policy outcomes, we might indeed be able to cover all the bases and have enough energy and attention left over to push back more quickly and effectively.

The Key: Disrupt The Disruption

As for the longer range, I’m tired of being told resistance is futile, not to mention a bad strategy. The Democratic Party may be in disarray and protests probably were more impressive during Trump’s first term, but enough already! It’s time to focus on the majority of the electorate who didn’t vote for Trump and who still think democracy is worth working toward.

Which leads me to Gene Sharp, an unsung but influential theorist of nonviolent resistance, whose pragmatic ideas about peaceful protest were picked up by popular liberation movements around the world in this century. He argued that the power of governments depends on the cooperation and obedience of those they govern, which means the governed can undermine the power of the governors by withdrawing their consent. “When people refuse their cooperation, withhold help, and persist in their disobedience and defiance,” he wrote, “they are denying their opponent the basic human assistance and cooperation that any government or hierarchical system requires.” While his suggestions for challenging power included individual resistance, he advocated a nonviolent insurgency big enough and sustained enough to make a country ungovernable and so force the governors to truly pay attention to the governed. [Download a free copy of his book From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework For Liberation here. Then PRINT it out, do not just depend upon a digital file.]

How big? Political scientist Erica Chenoweth has suggested that about 3.5% of a country’s population participating actively in nonviolent protest can bring about significant political change. If that’s accurate, an effective resistance would need about 12 million Americans taking to the streets. And yes, that’s a lot, but keep in mind that the women’s protest march early in Trump’s first term gathered more than 5 million Americans on a single day, many of whom were part of a political protest for the first time.

Imagining change is a crucial step to achieving change.

When I allow myself to dream big and boldly, I envision a nation of Bartlebys, the title character in a Herman Melville story who replies to all work assignments with the impenetrable refrain, “I would prefer not to.” We Bartlebys, then, would withhold our cooperation by staging a massive national strike. For a day, a week, or as a rolling walkout, we could shut down the economy and most governmental functions and bring the country to a standstill. But unlike the systemic disruption going on now in Washington, the change would be at the will of millions of Americans cooperating with each other.

The United States hasn’t seen a major general strike since 1946, when workers from multiple unions shut down Oakland, California for 54 hours, but there have been recent, small-scale versions, notably, A Day Without Immigrants this February, when businesses across the U.S. closed in solidarity with the approximately 8.1 million undocumented immigrant workers in this country.

Recent actions of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are reportedly driving more workers to unions and, well before the last election, the United Auto Workers invited other unions to align their contract expiration dates in preparation for a giant general strike planned for May Day 2028. But 2028 is a long way off and a lot of damage will be done in the meantime. What I’m envisioning would go beyond organized labor to include anyone who contributes to the economy and civil society, be they employees, managers, owners, government workers, freelancers, independent contractors, retirees, students, homemakers, volunteers, or whomever I’ve missed.

“Political Jiu-Jitsu”

Pie in the sky? Probably. I can easily envision 20 things that could go wrong. For starters, even the most grassroots of actions require coordination and a means of communication beyond the capacity of TikTok, while preserving the requisite element of surprise. And some work can’t be safely left undone, even for a day. Worse yet, those in power tend to respond harshly to challenges from below, so it’s not without risk. But there is some safety in numbers and Sharp believed protesters could turn retaliation to their advantage by continuing to struggle nonviolently—he called it “political jiu-jitsu”—only increasing sympathy and support for their cause.

Of course, in the era of Donald Trump, organizing millions of people across the country could prove a breeze compared to getting them to agree on a set of demands or even a central goal. But recent polls show that, in what should be Trump’s honeymoon period, his approval rating is 15 points below the historical average for presidents since 1953, when Gallup started keeping track. Overall, the polls indicate that the majority of Americans are not okay with much of what’s going down in Washington now and there are signs that some who voted for Trump are already starting to feel betrayed, if not by him directly, then by Musk, who excels at pissing people off.

Twenty years ago, a young veteran who had fought in Iraq and then turned against the war there explained to me why he became involved in the anti-war movement of that time. As he put it, “Someone sees [me] and says, I agree with that guy, I just didn’t have the courage to do it alone. So now he comes and stands next to me. I’m not alone, he’s not alone, and more people come. It just takes one person to start a movement.”

To which I would add that imagining change is a crucial step to achieving change. Without it, we’re stuck with Donald Trump and Elon Musk in an untenable present.

Link to story (Scroll down several paragraphs on the link)

IF WE DON’T STOP THEM: They Are Going To Rob Us Of Everything!

The labor movement is supposed to have the power to shut things down. Time to act like it. Or, to prepare to die. Only two things are left on the menu. No substitutions allowed.

[Editor’s Note: Hamilton Nolan provides some good action links at the bottom of his post. Follow link at the bottom of this post. — MT]

By Hamilton Nolan
How Things Work (3/28/25)

The worst thing that the federal government has done to labor unions in my lifetime happened last night. Donald Trump signed an executive order saying that the government will no longer recognize and bargain with a huge portion of the unions that represent federal workers. Among the agencies where he says he is tossing out the union contracts are the VA, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, and others. To justify this move, Trump said that all of these agencies are involved in “national security.” This is a fiction. His statement also said that “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda,” which is closer to the true motivation. He doesn’t like these unions, so he is just trying to erase them with the stroke of a pen. None of his Republican predecessors in the White House for the past half century ever considered doing something this outrageous. In comparison to this, Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers at PATCO was a calm and reasonable decision.

There are more than a million union members working in the federal government. I have not seen an official count, but this executive order targets most of them. It is also meant to establish the precedent that the president is capable of destroying entire unions using flimsy legalistic pretexts. Oh, the Environmental Protection Agency is “determined to have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” so you can throw out its fairly negotiated existing union contract, and that is okay? Sure. Treating any of this as a legitimate political position is a mistake. This is just running into the middle of organized labor swinging around a chainsaw.

You may recall that earlier this month, the Trump administration declared that it was unilaterally tossing out the union contract covering 50,000 TSA workers. When that happened, I said that it was the worst thing to happen to unions in America in my lifetime. And it was. This latest action is many times worse. It is multiplying the unilateral attack on workers at a single agency across the entire federal government. When a presidential administration does the two worst things in the past half century within three weeks of one another, that is enough data to understand what is happening. With two points, you can draw a line. Now is not the time for organized labor to sit in conference rooms with their lawyers going “Ermm, well, this is certainly a rather radical interpretation of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978!” My brothers and sisters, this is war. Republicans don’t want unions to exist. And they are coming for us. Right now. Rouse yourselves.

Here is what is happening: First they are coming for the federal unions—the lowest hanging fruit, the most bureaucratic unions, the ones barred from striking. Then they will proceed to come for all public sector unions. Then they will come for private sector unions. Understand that the transparently bullshit nature of the justification for this move— “Uh, everything is national security, therefore Trump is king over you”—is a preview of what will be more transparently bullshit justifications for them to conduct further outrageous assaults on the very existence of organized labor. They don’t give a fuck. They are proving, over and over again, that they don’t give a fuck. This is not about law. This is about power.

We, the labor movement, cannot allow individual unions or individual sectors to be picked off by our fascist government as the rest of us stand by, thankful that we weren’t targeted this time. That is the road to death. It is also an abdication of solidarity, which is, in fact, the source of our power.

The point of the labor movement is to give working people power. That is what unions do. The unions of America purport to be powerful. If we imagine that all of our power is dependent on the kindness of the president—and that it therefore can be wiped away in one day, because a particular president is willing to stretch the wording of the law as far as his imagination will let him—then we were just bluffing the whole time. In that case, we never really had power at all. We were lying to all of the working people who believed that solidarity would produce a sort of power that was not a polite request, but an inherent fact. Do unions have power, or not? If they do, the time to exercise that power is now.

Solidarity of all, for all, now!

We, the labor movement, cannot allow individual unions or individual sectors to be picked off by our fascist government as the rest of us stand by, thankful that we weren’t targeted this time. That is the road to death. It is also an abdication of solidarity, which is, in fact, the source of our power. Naturally, if we do not act in accordance with the source of our power, we are going to be weak. And, throughout these hectic first months of the Trump administration, the unions of America have looked extremely weak. It is time to fucking wake up and act as one, before it’s too late.

It is unreasonable to run around demanding a general strike every time a single union gets in a hard fight. It is not unreasonable to demand a general strike when the very existence of unions is under direct attack by a government that cares nothing about us, and does not respect our contracts, and is attempting to throw in the trash the union contracts covering hundreds of thousands of our fellow union members, as a step towards doing the same thing to millions more of our fellow union members. This is the bombing of Pearl Harbor, against the labor movement. Will we say, “We are filing a lawsuit against this illegal bombing, and we will keep you all updated as it progresses?” Will we say, “Pearl Harbor is way out in Hawaii. I’m glad those bombs didn’t fall where I live.” These are the terms that the union world needs to be thinking in, right now. This is not an exaggeration. If we do not go to war, the husk of American unions that emerges at the end of the Trump administration will be, probably, about half as big as it was when the Trump administration started, and immeasurably weaker. That is not an acceptable outcome if you believe that increasing organized labor’s strength is the key to saving this country, which it is.

It is trite to use boxing stories as metaphors and I really try to avoid doing it but I am going to do it today, as a special occasion. When you start boxing, sooner or later you will experience a moment when you realize in a deep and palpable way that nobody is coming to save you in there. One day, you will be getting your ass kicked, and you will be getting hurt, and you will look around and see that there is nobody else in that ring but you and the person who is kicking your ass. There is no other authority to appeal to. There is no button to push to stop the massacre. Even though the fight may not be fair, even though the person beating you up may be bigger and stronger than you, the raw fact is that you will either fight back and defend yourself, or you are going down. There are no other choices. This realization has the clarifying effect of wiping away your illusions about the world and leaving you with one clear path forward.

The courts will not save us

That is the position that we, the labor movement, are in. It is all on us. Of course the successive illegal actions of this administration should all be challenged in court, but it is foolish to expect the courts to save us from what is happening. The courts will be, at best, a momentary tap of the brakes. This administration does not care about the law. Nor do they care about the fundamental right of working people to choose to come together as a union for the purpose of collective bargaining. They want to destroy all of that. And they will, unless we, ourselves, stop them. If you are a union member, contact the president of your union today and make it clear to them that inaction right now is unacceptable, and tell them also to contact the AFL-CIO with the same message. Tell them you are ready for a general strike for your brothers and sisters who work in the federal government, and for all of us. Tell them that this administration is an enemy to the existence of unions and that any union that believes that they can be an ally to this administration is undermining the solidarity of all working people.

There is a surreal nature to living through drastic things—watching things unfold that we have only imagined as abstract possibilities. That surreality can be paralyzing. It can turn us into spectators of our own demise. Let’s not do that. I don’t want to write new “the worst thing that has happened in my lifetime” pieces every few weeks. The labor movement is supposed to have the power to shut things down. Time to act like it. Or, to prepare to die. Only two things are left on the menu. No substitutions allowed.

Link to story