The Straw That Broke The Fascists' Back

We are called to be straw, not Skywalker.

I only look sweet and innocent.

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.

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.

The dynamic trio: awesome, but fictional

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?

And this is where we falter. Because the simple fact is, we are not organized and we are not disciplined enough to develop and implement a strategy which would bring about devastating consequences for the empire if they don’t meet our demands, consequences which would force them to stop.

That doesn’t mean we should quit what we are doing or give up. Stay with me here.

A successful nonviolent movement requires: a) education, b) organization, and c) mobilization. The last one comes last for a reason.

You cannot mobilize a nonviolent army of uneducated, disorganized people.

The people of India, together with Mohandas K. Gandhi, liberated their country with numbers, unity, and discipline.

Their liberation came from the grassroots, which means there were millions of people involved (numbers).

The soul-force (satyagraha) warriors were educated in the nature of their oppression because they lived it every day.

They trained in how to stand their ground peacefully in the face of imperial brutality. They were rigorously spiritual and disciplined in their practice.

Gandhi used that spiritual practice to organize and unify the country behind a clear, single goal.

And so Gandhi was able to mobilize them to free their country.

And it still took 30 years, following centuries of British domination to see India liberated (so it could 60 years later be run by a fascist, but I digress).

We have the numbers. The vast majority of the world opposes this genocide.

And, sadly, Israel’s sadistic brutality over the past 15 months has educated more people about this conflict than a century of Palestinian resistance, in all its forms. There’s always more to learn, and that’s why so many of us are on Substack. But, educationally, we’re in the best place we’ve been.

But trained? Disciplined? Enough to take on an empire. No.

Organized? No. That we are not. We don’t even know how to organize in the U.S. anymore. We don’t even know what it looks like.

Labor organizing has been all but destroyed. The socialist organizing of the early 20th Century is an inspiring but distant memory.

For the past 30 years or so a powerful immigrant rights movement has been building, constructed atop the scaffolding built in the early 20th Century and now, as a result, may be ready to confront the challenges of the Trump Administration. They are mobilizing.

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.

My favorite of the Star Wars films is Rogue One, and I like its prequel, the series Andor, even better. Rogue One is itself a prequel to the first Star Wars film. In it, we see just how many thousands of people fought and died so that Luke and Han could receive medals at the end of A New Hope.

In Andor we see the awful ethical quandaries required of a resistance movement fighting an empire. It is the most realistic of all the Star Wars universe, and, in some ways, the most compassionate. Small groups of rebels, all of whom will die unknown, make the big victory possible.

Straw, upon straw, upon straw, upon straw.

The moment that led to the destruction of the Death Star was more than 20 years in the making. The rebels were patient, self-sacrificing, and utterly disciplined and unified.

We in the West have to stop deluding ourselves that we can “instantly” build a movement capable of stopping a genocide. We can’t. But we can be straw, and continue in strawness as we gather other pieces of straw, building, bale upon bale.

Fortunately, we don’t have to stop this particular genocide. We must help, as best we can, but the Palestinians have been building their liberation movement for more than a century of imperial overreach. As have the Lebanese. The Yemenis. The Iraqis. The Syrians. The Iranians.

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.

Israel has the 4th most powerful army in the world and the Palestinian nonviolent and armed resistance—working with mostly homemade weapons, or weapons recovered from the IDF—have so far defeated the Zionists’ efforts to eradicate the Palestinian people not for 15 months, but for a century.

Even though the Gaza Strip is flat (a topographical disadvantage in war), and faces the sea (allowing no land retreat), and is roughly the size of Heathrow Airport, the Palestinian people have numbers, unity, and discipline. They are exceedingly well-educated, know better how to survive in impossible conditions than most people on the planet, and are organized because their community is strong and in tact. They know the land, they know each other, and they have everything to lose. They are entirely clear on their unified goal. Palestine is their homeland; they are not leaving.

Despite the horrific murders, the imprisonment, the torture, the devastation of schools, homes, mosques, hospitals, as a people, the Palestinian people have successfully resisted Zionist-British-American brutal efforts at erasure and expulsion for more than 100 years.

They are not the camels.

They are the straw, and I believe they will be victorious.

So do they.

We must not give in to despair and impatience.

We must continue to be the individual pieces of straw we are, getting out of bed each day and being the strawiest selves we can as we confront the empire in our myriad ways.

But we 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.

My writing is free to use with or without attribution, but as a farmer living below the poverty line, I appreciate your paid subscription as it keeps me writing. Thank you.

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