Click here to access article by Moti Nissani from Veterans Today.
The article begins with the lyrics and YouTube video of a popular activist song by Phil Ochs,
a genuine radical during the Vietnam War. This is followed by a list of
the previous articles about the pillars that support the ruling
capitalist class. Then Nissani gets into the meat of the essay with the
section entitled "Benefits of Leading, Infiltrating, or Co-opting the
Opposition". (Although the title indicates this is part 1, I don't see
that it has been followed up by a part 2.)
What follows is essential reading for any serious activist to
understand. I learned these lessons about co-option over many years, but Nissani gives
us this knowledge in one essay. I see this pillar as probably the more powerful than the previous two discussed in this series (see here and here) because it functions so skillfully below the consciousness of
most activists. This pillar allows the ruling class (Nissani refers to
them as "bankers" because they are so numerous at the top of the ruling
class) to very capably manage dissent. The co-option pillar supplements
all the ideological organs of capitalism in that those who escape
capitalist indoctrination are herded into what appears to be activist
publications or organizations which are often managed by
well-meaning people who fool themselves into thinking they are
uninfluenced by taking money from agents of the ruling class. As a
result much of seemingly progressive activism or media is defused and limited,
and thus is no threat to capitalist rule.
It is when all of these pillars fail to contain activists that they will bring out the mailed fist of fascism
or a police state to crush dissent. They didn't hesitate to do this in
the 19th century when the new ruling capitalist class used private
armies as well as their government armies
to thoroughly crush organized worker opposition. Farmer resistance
during the Populist Movement
was more easily managed by capitalist political operatives which co-opted
resistance leaders and diverted activists toward dead-end projects like silver coinage.
Today our ruling masters are once again prepared to do this with
their creation of militarized police forces, 24/7 surveillance of
citizens, stacked courts with ultra-conservatives, Patriot Acts etc that lay
a veneer of legality to their police state methods, unaccountable
secret agencies, and the armed forces if all else fails. However they
depend on ordinary people to staff all these agencies of control, and
frequently there are people like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and William Binney who rebel. This is their weakest link in the chain of control, and it is this link that we must work hard to break.
But first we must attack their control of pseudo-activist organizations
and pseudo-activist media, and to do this we must be able to identify them--Nissani
helps us with that task in this article. Simultaneously we must financially and otherwise support
genuine alternative media who bring us information that we vitally need
to act intelligently for our interests in creating equality, social
justice, and sustainability.
