San Sebastian, Bay of Biscay, Spain / 2020 / oil on canvass
Below are the rough translations of two German-language articles by a political activist from Berlin named Milosz Matuschek.
There is a vibrant freedom movement in Western Europe in response to the EU’s vax mandates and passports — and Austria’s recent move towards mandatory mRNA shots for all citizens, which Germany has (unfortunately) announced it may soon emulate.
The articles provide a good strategic analysis of how protest movements in liberal democracies work and what the weaknesses of such systems are. This kind of analysis is necessary for a resistance movement.
Many people must understand that this is a war for human civilization, replacing relatively free democracies with despotic technocracies. As the author argues, it’s best to approach this struggle non-violently. I’d agree with that, not only for moral reasons, but as he points out, it’s more strategically prudent.
It can be won on that basis if enough people wake up and join the movement in defense of human freedom. But as the author also notes, it will take more suffering before most will awaken from their denial and torpor.
You can see recent photos and videos of protests in Europe, the UK, and Israel here.
Good resistance is strategic resistance. A little advice.
by Milosz Matuschek, Dec. 18, 2021
[my comments in square brackets]
It may not look like it at the moment, but resistance works. Throughout Germany, local groups are currently sprouting up, uniting in both big and small demonstrations: the wave of protests is here.
At the same time, the state and the media are trying to label any criticism of the government’s actions as radicalization and terrorism. [This is true everywhere now, it seems] When the state is afraid of intrepid citizens, the democratic spirit blazes a path again.
Resistance works
Of course, one can say: What have the protests, demos, articles, Telegram groups, videos, et cetera achieved so far? Little to the outside world, because politics proceeds according to the method of the blocking latch. It always goes only in one direction, never back. [I think he means a ratchet, which turns in only one direction]
The morass of lies and deception is getting deeper and deeper, but the pace at the same time faster and faster. It is quite possible that the state will eventually give itself a leg up in this feverish haste [to impose the new order].
At the latest, when the many vaccinated people fall out of the vaccination protection and realize that they have been lied to from the beginning, it [the edifice of lies] must tip over.
Even if all this was foreseeable, many people probably need the hard impact, the bitter experience, and the example on their own bodily experience to wake up.
[NB – This is a great observation; he means that in order to realize what’s going on, some people have to suffer more privation. Right now they prefer to scapegoat the unvaccinated irrationally because it’s easier than acknowledging the truth of what’s happening]
Resistance works, but it seems invisible at first. With effective resistance, it’s much like opening a jam jar. Only when this has passed through many hands, the lid suddenly opens.
There’s the flash of a redemptive moment [a moment of epiphany]. After that, [the resistance] always seems logical, but before that, it looked as if nothing had been happening. So the most effective resistance is the one that just never lets up and keeps going. Resistance is a Sisyphean task, a long-distance discipline.
[The jam jar is a great metaphor for understanding how social and political change occurs. It happens slowly, through great effort, and requires patience. Unfortunately, those trying to change our society for the worst know how it works: they’re engaged in a campaign of mass behaviour modification, to induce fear and uncertainty until people learn to obey a centralized authority and give up their freedoms. But the author is arguing that activism against this can also work the same way.]
The question of the right resistance at the moment is one that we should be asking. Politicians and the media are longing for an escalation with measurable opponents. In normal times, one would now also think of general strikes, consumer boycotts, or the like. But are these approaches applicable in the current situation?
In the current situation, it must be assumed that politicians are working on a fundamental system of change. It needs despair, anger, and a disaster scenario to increasingly introduce the next restrictions in a supposed response. The feeling of helplessness and lack of alternatives in the population is the best companion for this [and what they hope to acheive]. In February of this year (2021), I wrote:
“It takes a lot of coolness and effort to make others believe that as a government you are not planning something rotten and that the current state is only a failure and not wanton sabotage [of the current system]. I think the latter [the willful sabotage of society by the media and our political leaders] is closer to the truth. But presumably, this idea is too monstrous for many to let it get to it.” [In other words, there are still a lot of people in denial about what’s really going on, even though the signs are all around us. The article this paragraph is taken from is re-posted full below this one]
Alleging sabotage and wanton destruction by politicians is a serious accusation. But take a simple example. The weather service announces a storm surge [meaning a lot of rain] and you live in the north [which is prone to flooding]. What do the politicians do? They lower the dikes. There is even a subsidy for the lowering of the dikes. Does anyone understand that? It doesn’t make sense, but it happens. Incidentally, in the event of flooding, politicians can declare a state of emergency in order to be able to govern. What interest do politicians have in doing this? Are primarily interested in gaining power, or in preventing flooding?
[Perhaps the local government gets more funding for climate change if there’s more flooding? If so, that would be analogous to the allegation he’s making here: which is that leaders helped create a disaster in order to benefit from it. I’m not sure of the specific situation he refers to, with flooding — which appears to be common in that region of the world — but he seems to be saying that politicians will often do the opposite of what’s needed in order to give them emergency powers]
The same thing happened in the pandemic with the intensive care beds. These were dismantled instead of built up and subsidized by the state. The danger of overloading the health care system is the basis of the epidemic state of emergency. If emergencies lead to the gain of power and all politics is always geared towards gaining power, politics will create distress rather than fight it — whether it be virus mutations, blackouts, cyber-attacks, etc. [This is sometimes called disaster capitalism] The way out of this situation is as simple as it is difficult: say less to no politics. This could be called disempowerment of the apparatus.
hospital funding, to illustrate the author’s point that funding for hospital beds went down]
Turning the tables
Good resistance is first of all non-violent. It has been proven that nonviolent civil disobedience is significantly more effective than a violent one. The latter [violence] plays into the hands of the state. Compared to cheerfulness, humor, love, music, and everything that has a lot to do with being human, power-obsessed technocrats are relatively powerless. Unless they want to appear ugly and then even everyone realizes what kind of person they are [i.e, they expose themselves as villains in the public eye by opposing a life-affirming political movement.]
[This is a great point. Violent resistance will tend to backfire. It’s what the state wants to build its case against the resistance movement, to marginalize and destroy them. But if resistance is non-violent, politicians have a hard time turning political opinion against it]
Good resistance requires strategic thinking. What’s the condition that the state wants the citizens to be in, in order to be able to rule over them? The state wants:
- Division, separation, isolation.
- Fear, panic, helplessness, despair.
- Neediness, impoverishment, dependence on aid.
- Disorientation, loss of standards.
[And all these things are precisely what has happened as a result of lockdowns, on purpose, consisent with the destablization strategy for a Comunist takeover originally devised by the USSR and then taken up by the CCP, to defeat the West]
Let’s assume that nothing in politics is left to chance. Anything else would be naïve. Gaining power, maintaining power and expanding power are definitely not random outcomes. Resistance is therefore anything that thwarts the goal of attaining power.
So what can you [or we] do?
- Avoid propaganda as much as possible [e.g., mainstream media, ‘fact-checkers’, corrupt social media such as Facebook].
- Build networks and bridges to dissenters – especially to vaccinated people [no need to preach to the choir] The minority of skeptics can also easily become a majority [i.e., reach skeptical people who are not quite there yet]
- Reduce dependence on the state. Intellectual freedom and financial freedom go hand in hand. Any form of dependence is an obstacle to freedom. Those who collect state aid can hardly resist their interests.
- And finally: Have a little patience and trust. Time works for us. [and I have personally found, with activism, that perserverance over the long term is important; that is, to never give up, even when all seems lost, but to keep pressing forward]
Actually, I wanted to be at a protest at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin today at 12 o’clock [poster above]. According to the current state of things, this is prohibited, as there is a risk of infiltration by ‘lateral thinkers.’ Unbelievable. Maybe I’ll take a walk nearby instead.
[Apparently, there is a movement called by this name in Germany: “Querdenker, or the German term for a person who thinks in nonconventional terms and thereby runs the risk of offending society” According to one report, “self-stylized “lateral thinkers” have forged a coalition that encompasses far-right extremists but also anti-vaxxers who historically have aligned with the left. At both ends of the political spectrum, protesters seem to share a deep-seated distrust in government. In other words, the police shut down the protest; the mainstream media reported that ” demonstration should have taken place at the Brandenburg Gate, which explicitly wanted to adhere to the hygiene regulations and had explicitly positioned itself in advance against right-wing extremism and racism.” An interview with the organizer:
“I received a call this morning and was told that the assembly authorities were planning to ban our demo because there were indications that “lateral thinkers” were planning to come to the demo. These are known to not adhere to the hygiene requirements. [does he mean social distancing and mask mandates?] My objection that a cancellation must be the ultima ratio and that we see the task of the police in protecting us from people who want to “hijack” our demo and do everything possible so that the demo could take place was heard. An hour later, however, the verbal announcement of the prohibition came. The prohibition order came shortly afterwards.”
My comment: What is meant by “far-right” or “anti-vaxxer”? Like the term “white supremacist” these are pejorative terms that are often the creation of Leftists’ fevered imaginations. So I don’t think our friend Milosz Matuschek, who is writing this article, should go along with this pejorative dismissal of the ‘lateral thinkers.’ The organizer of the event seems skeptical — though it’s tempting in activism to position oneself against other perceived factions, even if they seek the same objective.
Myself, I would be all for everyone attending, as long as they agree to be non-violent. As for this Querdenker movement, it sounds as though they disagree with uncontrolled mass migration — especially the disaster of 2015, which has been called “cultural suicide” — and if so, I’d have to agree with them. That doesn’t make them ‘right-wing.’ It’s common sense to not let in one million young men from a war-torn country, many with ties to Islamist terrorist groups]
An urgent procedure against the ban on the demo is currently underway. More information here. You can reach me at kontakt@idw-europe.org
The revolution of the many begins
by Milosz Matuschek
Powerful people only react to the loss of their own power. The most effective proof of power is the self-empowerment of the individual. And that’s what’s happening right now.
When you realize that something is fundamentally wrong, at some point the cardinal question arises for all those who want to implement changes: what to do?
In democracies that have become dysfunctional, such as the current Western ones, every normal civic activity turns more or less freely. We accelerate at idle. Elections and votes hardly seem to have any effect. Petitions fizzle out.
Protest alone will not bring it and what “resistance” is supposed to mean (in the context of the German Basic Law [which is essentially their constitution]) is also not quite clear to many.
The fact is that change comes neither from above nor from a savior, but only from the individual himself if he or she manages to unite with others. For this, however, the citizen must abandon the illusion that change can be delegated. So this is also about a recalibration of the state-citizen-economy relationship.
“We are ruled by fools”
The world is currently engaging with us like a kind of software whose updates you have to blindly agree to if you want to use the previously known freedoms. This has been going on for a year, followed by restrictive measures – be it mask mandates, lockdowns, or now, vaccinations.
This in turn leads to powerlessness. Powerlessness leads to frustration and frustration leads to regular eruptions in ever new collectives, expressing anger.
The Covid criticism is currently becoming a bit harsher in the mainstream media, but it took too long to do so. When I asked The Neue Zürcher Zeitung [a Swiss, German-language daily newspaper, part of the mainstream media] in September [2021] whether the [so-called] ‘covidiots’ [a pejorative term for those who oppose medical tyranny] could not also be right, it was almost considered heresy.
Meanwhile, columnist Jan Fleischhauer is ready to call the government a fool’s troupe. I think you have to turn a turn: It takes a lot of hardening and effort to make others believe that as a government you’re planning something rotten. [In other words, most people are hesitant to believe the government is planning to replace our current society with another, far more autocratic system — even though many openly say they plan to do that, such as New Zealand’s and Canada’s prime ministers. Or else they know and agree with that plan.]
So the current state is “only” failure and not wanton sabotage. I think the latter [sabotage, treason, leading up to the Great Reset, which is Communism in disguise] is closer to the truth. But presumably, this thought is too monstrous for many to acknowledge it.
Be that as it may, it’s time to shift from idle to first gear and accelerate. The times for this have never been better than they are now. The tools are there, the knowledge is available. Only the implementation is missing.
A few small investors in the U.S. have shown how it works in recent weeks. This example may not be perfect, but it illustrates what it’s all about. Large hedge funds had sold shares of the company Game Stop short, by betting on falling prices. Then retail investors gathered on the Reddit platform and turned the tables. They agreed to buy the stock. The price skyrocketed, the hedge funds had to “cover” their short sales and buy back the stock at ever-higher prices.
The retail investors sparked a real revolutionary party, vowed to “never” sell the stocks themselves, posted funny memes, even bought huge banner ads in Times Square and elsewhere with their profits. Hedge funds slipped into bankruptcy, lost billions, the trading platform [ironically named “Robinhood”] restricted the trading of the stock, had to let itself shoot up money. Meanwhile, the channel is censored on Reddit itself, moderators have been removed. The uproar has been great in recent weeks, the story has gone through all the major media, which often sided with the big funds in the tenor and even warned of a collapse of the financial system.
[The more detailed story, here, is that online activists rallied online to thwart the plans of hedge fund investors. “The GameStop Short Squeeze is a great parable for illustrating how the stock market does not always reflect reality.” The author here is using this as an example of activism overcoming great odds.]
This, in turn, has to be allowed to melt in your mouth: A group of retail investors with funny memes on Reddit is supposed to be a serious threat to the financial system? This is not exactly confidence-building.
What the Reddit rebels have achieved so far has been a symbolic proof of power, illustrated by a (at least temporary) transfer of assets. The power of the many can bring powerful Wall Street greats to their knees. Because they understand only one language: that of money. In other words, the loss of money.
To think that you would impress Wall Street by camping in a square a few hundred meters away from it, as the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement did after the financial crisis, is as naïve as it is touching. It is about as effective as trying to fight the monetary system by throwing stones at bank buildings.
[The author is saying that costing the system that’s trying to oppress through investor activism is more effective than street demos – though he does attend them. So should we invest in the MSM and Big Pharma and bring it down, collectively?]
However, the example of Game Stop has also presented another problem. And it is the central problem: the crisis of trust. The market infrastructure is in the hands of a few. It is influenced by actors who are not neutral. It’s like a seedy casino: as long as you lose, you get free drinks. If, on the other hand, you have won, and perhaps forced the bank itself to its knees, it is far from clear that you can get away with it.
Or to put it in the drastic words of former Goldman Sachs trader Max Keiser: the business model is fraud. And that fact has long been inherent in the system.
The story of Game Stop has many intricacies and is probably not over yet, but some things have already become clear: the game is manipulated in favor of the big ones.
The Robinhood platform offers trading without commissions, its business model is to ultimately sell the information about purchases and sales to large investment firms that can position themselves accordingly. And they manipulate the market when it goes against their interests. It is essentially the same as with social media à la Facebook: where a service is “free” the user is the product, not the customer.
The boundaries of our living environment are currently drawn by “last instances” of trust, often embodied by institutions or faceless entities. When these institutions unilaterally indulge in the interests of the powerful, trust erodes and is lost in the morass of systemic corruption. Then a fundamental change in the structures is needed.
Our living environment is based, for example, on:
- Confidence in the pricing mechanism of the (unmanipulated) market.
- Trust in the exerting forces of the state’s monopoly on decision-making and the use of force.
- Trust in central banks in their function as guardians of currencies and de facto money-producing companies.
- Trust in the media and press agencies as a goalkeeper of the right information.
- Trust in the processes of science as production institutions of knowledge.
We are currently experiencing the fact that the existing instances [that together shape up our social and political environment] are rapidly losing confidence, and new instances that can bring structural changes but have not yet finally prevailed. [In other words, our society is in flux]
[This battle is being] fought by the gatekeepers of the old world. The social medium Parler, a competitor of Twitter, has been banned from the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Wikileaks has always been a thorn in the side of the major media because it was and is system competition. It’s similar with Bitcoin and central banks.
What to do?
The citizen has the opportunity to strengthen transparent decentralized alternative structures and systems by withdrawing [his or her] allegiance from the old ones.
The end of the story is far from being reached as far as the question of self-empowerment is concerned. There is such a thing as a pyramid of engagement, broken down by energy expenditure from the highest commitment of the deed to the lowest commitment of denial of allegiance.
[I think he means that withdrawing allegiance from the existing order – such as canceling your smartphone for example – is a low-level act of resistance, and there are higher-order actions, such as the investor activism as noted above]
Every change begins with the termination of allegiance to a false authority. This is the least that everyone who does not want to see themselves as a sheep has to do and often can do. [I’m sure no insult to actual sheep was intended; they are just a symbol of submissiveness]
After that, it is important to promote alternative structures and to encourage others to do the same. After all, the supreme discipline is to develop new projects yourself and to join forces to form a new ecosystem.
The ecosystem of franchised companies has been in the process of setting up an alternative funding system for years, developing new decentralized alternatives for social media, where participants retain sovereignty over their data.
Other pioneers are working on the further development of the concept of city or state. It is an eternal cycle that is just turning into a new twist. It is supported by technology, but ultimately driven by the freedom-energy of the many.
The philosopher Étienne de La Boétie put it this way a few hundred years ago:
“The oppressor has nothing more than the power you give him to oppress you. Where does he have enough eyes to scout you out if you don’t deliver them to him yourself? Where is he supposed to have the many arms to beat you if he does not borrow them from you? Where does he get the feet to trample down your cities if they are not your own? How can he have power over you if not through you? How dare he attack you if not with your own cooperation?”
Changing structures is the supreme discipline of engagement. The time in which we live is the phase of testing whether we succeed. This change does not require a majority, but only a “critical mass.” [That’s true; social study experiments show that just 10 percent of the population moving in a new direction can influence the rest to follow] The old institutions will still exist, but they will be like empty shells and orphaned palaces. The institutions are the cocoon from which the individual must emerge to become a butterfly.
Let’s hack the system.
In defense of human freedom 