REVISED: Stop Doing The Empire's Work For Them
I know we're all feeling angry, despairing and powerless. Turning against each other--especially publicly--only helps those we're resisting.
This past week the man who etched himself in our consciousness for calling his beloved granddaughter the soul of his soul was murdered by Israel.
As I write, the heroic medical staff and patients of Kamal Adwan Hospital—the last functioning hospital in North Gaza—are under siege and possibly dying.
And yet, neither of these holds a candle, when it comes to filling me with rage and despair, to the writers on Substack using your forum to do the Empire’s work for them by attacking, ONLINE, your fellow activists and writers.
Back before the flood, when I was starting out in activism, if you didn’t want the Feds/FBI/fill-in-the-blank-with-your-country’s-version-of-national-police knowing about the fissures in your organization, you didn’t say things over an open phone line, or put things in writing, or invite unvetted people to your meetings.
I think about all the Federal workers who lost jobs when the internet came into being. After all, who needs a spook by the door when we write our GD dossiers ourselves!
This week, two different anti-imperialist writers whom I deeply admire took to this platform to rip their fellow anti-imperialists new assholes.
This screed is not a judgment on whether their complaints were legitimate.
Back in the Pleistocene, we had a saying. We didn’t care if you were on their payroll or not; if you were doing the work of a Fed, of an infiltrator, you were a Fed. In fact, serving them voluntarily lowered you in our eyes to beneath an actual Fed because you were taking someone’s job.
If you’re angry with a fellow activist or writer working against imperialism, tell them. Offline. Meet up with them. Send them a note individually, not on X, or Threads, or Insta, or Facebook. Call them, if you can. The Feds will still know, but all they’ll know is that two people are in conflict with each other.
Going global with your complaints about another activist sows discord throughout the entire movement; in other words, it does the work of whatever your version of “the Feds” is. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop.
Yes, of course we have to hold one another accountable for racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, etc. And yes, if someone engages in such behavior publicly they need to be called out in the forum in which they did that.
In neither of these cases that I’m referencing was Substack the forum in which the activists “committed their crimes.” And yet, here I am, reading about them.
Before you start writing the FBI a dossier about all the fractures in our movement they can easily exploit, please ask yourself the following questions:
Is this going to hurt the struggle more than help it?
Is this going to help the Empire more than the Rebel Alliance?
Is this about my personal ego? Either because my ego was wounded by another writer or activist, or because they disappointed me, or because I want to feel better about myself by showing them for the hypocrite/insufficiently pure ideologue they are?
The Confucian questions: Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?
Do I want to hear my words read back to me in an interrogation, a deposition, or a courtroom someday? Do I want to read the words “Exhibit A” written above them?
There are nowhere near enough committed activists, writers, and teachers organized and thriving in this movement for us to be able to afford to just throw people away.
Those of us in the West are not, for the most part, at war. The people in Palestine are. The people in Yemen are. The people in Lebanon and Syria and Israel are. The people in Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and Russia are. I could go on.
Please don’t shame those of us in what passes for an anti-imperialist movement in the West by having these (sometimes very well-written and well-documented) pissing contests on line.
How do I know that whoever killed health insurance CEO Brian Thompson worked alone?
Because he achieved his objective.
But we can’t save this world alone.
For the love of all that is holy, take it outside.