ORGANIZING UNDER FASCISM! The Straw That Broke The Fascists' Back
We are called to be straw, not Skywalker. ...Straw, upon straw, upon straw, upon straw.
I only look sweet and innocent.
Editor’s Note: This post by fellow Substaker Val D. Phillips is the best piece I have seen on gathering together and organizing the scattered, squabbling shards of the Left. We are in a full-on fascist state that, essentially, has no organized opposition. It’s time for the American Left to get serious. Note Val’s completely correct comment about doomed online-organzing-only. Truly, people, lots of essential information and perspective in this post.
Pass along. Time is short. Pass along.
— Mark Taylor
[W]e must also re-learn how to organize, train ourselves in the skills we need, develop discipline in our ranks, strengthen our communities, and build ourselves into bales of straw no fire can touch.
Educate. Organize. Mobilize.
Numbers. Unity. Discipline.
We should have started 100 years ago.
The second best time to start is now.
By Val D. Phillips
Another World Is Possible (2/6/25)
I love camels. I always have. They are beautiful, strong, generous, perfect for surviving in the land they come from, and patient as death.
But you DO NOT WANT TO FUCK WITH THEM.
Not unlike Palestinians.
Ergo, I have always hated the phrase, “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” What kind of asshole is trying to break a camel’s back?
Now, “the straw that broke the fascist’s back?” That I could get behind.
This morning I received a desperate message from a dear friend who fears the worst is about to unfold in Palestine, that Trump and Netanyahu will definitely, absolutely succeed in ethnically cleansing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, “if we don’t stop it.”
I recently learned the marvelous phrase, “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
We can’t read the future. There are so many variables at play. Physicists cannot solve the three-body problem let alone the millions-of-bodies-problem.
The genocidal thugs may succeed. It is possible. But perhaps not.
I haven’t replied to my friend yet because “we,” if she’s referring to her and I, cannot stop it. Alone.
But we can be straw. Light, anonymous, weak and completely nonthreatening, but deadly when combined with millions of other pieces of straw.
Organizing takes time, knowledge of one’s community as much as one’s cause, patience, tenacity, and it CANNOT BE DONE SOLELY ONLINE. This is one of our most terrible weaknesses. We must actually talk to and, more importantly, listen to our neighbors. Without the mediation of a cell phone. We must get to know them, and them us, if we want them to have our backs for liberating Palestine, or liberating the U.S. from fascism.
Americans in particular, and Westerners in general, are obsessed with stories of superheroes defeating evil, righting wrongs, killing the bad guy, saving the day.
A fellow writer, whose name I regretfully can’t remember, recently asked (referring to Americans), “Is everything Star Wars to these people?”
Unfortunately, to a large extent, yes.
Luke Skywalker was a superhero because he had a special power, he knew how to use the “Force.” His friend Han Solo was a superhero because he was a preternaturally gifted pilot, a rogue with a heart of gold, who was willing to risk everything to save Luke and the Rebellion when needed. Princess Leia was a woman, so, duh, obviously a superhero, but also brilliant and fearless. Together they destroyed the Death Star, a major blow to the Empire.
I won’t drag you through the Marvel Cinematic Universe to belabor the point.
But I am neither Luke, nor Han, nor Leia. Neither are you. These characters are fictional creations of a culture obsessed with the idea that one person, alone or nearly so, can change the course of history.
This obsession with the lone hero, with what one brave person can accomplish, on their own, is a problematic myth, profoundly but not uniquely American. I know this because Rabbi Tarfon in First or Second Century C.E. Palestine was admonishing all those would-be-rebel Skywalkers, saying, “It is not up to you to finish the task, but neither are you free to avoid doing it.”
Encouraging individuality, initiative and self-sacrifice is good. But a single piece of straw is easily destroyed. It can still be as annoying as a lone mosquito in one’s room at night, sticking in your bra, or your armpits, or nether regions, tickling you, getting stuck in your hair. I’m a farmer. Trust me, I know of what I speak.
But like a lone mosquito, it can be smashed and stopped.
One piece of straw is not going to break a fascist’s back. Neither will two.
A well-made bale of straw, on the other hand, combined with hundreds of others, can build a well-insulated house, which, when dropped on a fascist’s back, will most definitely do some damage.
I know, because I live in such a house. I built it, together with literally hundreds of other people.
A pile of straw can easily catch fire, but a straw bale is almost impossible to burn because there are a) thousands if not millions of pieces of straw in one bale and b) they’re packed too tightly for even air to move between them. If they are sentient, I would say the straw is c) too disciplined to allow air to move between them.
A) Numbers. B) Unity. C) Discipline.
Pick up a pencil and try to break it. Easy, right? How about two pencils? Harder, but still doable. Hold a bunch of pencils tightly together and you cannot break them with your bare hands. You know this.
Numbers. Unity. Pencil discipline.
We’re all trying to figure out what to do, how to stop this horror. The answer is simple, but requires patience, tenacity, and commitment.
Numbers. Unity. Discipline. Yes, I’m fond of threes.
We may have the first on our side, but we don’t have the latter two, and therein lies the rub. Brilliant Alon Mizrahi cried out from the wilderness of Northern California the other day that we must demand our governments—all of them—cease relations with Israel if it continues with the genocide.
This is a great strategy because, if successful, it will leave Israel alone, to survive or not, succeed or not, and I think we’re all pretty clear at this point what that outcome would be.
Israel, alone, is just a piece of straw.
But what Alon didn’t speak to was the other side of the demand, the “teeth,” as I call it. What will we do if the government doesn’t meet our demands? …
A Lesson For Times Like Now…
Remember Vietnam? The U.S. killed two million Vietnamese people, losing only 50,000 of their own soldiers in the process, and you know who won that war?
The Vietnamese.
They were fighting on land they had lived on for centuries, the only home they’d ever known, and they’d been doing it a long time. The Vietnamese people were resisting French imperialism for seven decades before the U.S. joined the party.
They were numerous, they were unified, and they were disciplined.
They were educated, trained, organized, and mobilized.
— Val D. Phillips, The Straw That Broke The Fascists' Back (2/6/25)
“My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”
— Mother Jones, labor organizer and co-founder of International Workers of the World and known as the ‘Miners Angel’.
Just brilliant, Val - and so VERY true!
Marvelous and important