The theme of this essay is about freedom and the necessity to forge a popular front out of our shared interests. I take inspiration from Abby Martin, film maker, journalist, and revolutionist.
Why hasn’t a popular uprising already happened given our present circumstances?
In a recent interview/podcast with Danny Haiphong and Lowkey, Abby Martin, filmmaker/journalist, lamented that there is not a mass peace movement. She reflects on the lack of collective indignation, especially in the context of the Gaza genocide, the Maduro kidnapping, the crushing of Cuba, and so on. These acts of imperial domination should drive people to turn against empire, she observes, but it hasn’t.
Abby Martin made a movie about the destructiveness of the military system. Her documentary exposes the vast damage the US military inflicts on nature and society. It is the world’s worst polluter, and destroyer of life. If people knew the truth about the military, this would be a galvanizing factor to collectively resist. https://earthsgreatestenemy.com/
Martin wants to make a better society, but she knows it will take a collective fight from a movement, a bloc, to rein in the military-industrial complex and tame the ruling class, and ultimately remove them entirely from power.
On what points of agreement could a majority form a popular front?
Let’s consider a list of grievances for which we seek redress pursuant to first amendment right:
- President Trump’s endless abuse of power since he took office.
- Trump has profited from the presidency,
- He has broken the law by kidnapping President Maduro and his wife,
- He is stealing Venezuelan oil,
- He enables the Israeli Gaza genocide
- He conducts the war against Iran
- He enables a slew of other corrupt acts.
- Working class people are suffering under stagnated wage levels, high housing costs, high cost medical care, while executive salaries rose with CPI and beyond
- The ecology of the earth has been degraded to catastrophic levels
- The Epstein files redactions show impunity of the billionaire class
- Artificial Intelligence is a threat to human labor and further empowers emerging technocracy
- Most egregious, the government lied to us about the September 11 attacks which spawned “forever wars.” and we are now 6 years past the Covid, and there has not been justice nor accountability for either deep state crime. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/covid-dossier/
The people do know and understand that there is a powerful ruling elite; they are the billionaire class, plutocrats. What people may not know is that democracy is captured. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/crisis-of-citizenship-delusion-of-democracy/
So, why aren’t people planning a revolution, given how bad things are?
I can’t say I have a solid answer, but I can offer some insights.
First off, to forge a popular front, (which is what a revolution requires), we activists will need to break out of our silos (of what we think is the most important thing to do) and find common cause by rallying around a clear intention and purpose for a popular front. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/liberation-coalition-manifesto/
Why is this not happening? We, revolutionists, have failed to establish a common cause.
Many recall the Occupy Wall Street rally in 2011; it started as a low key protest and morphed into a heartfelt rejection of corporate domination of society and the economy. Perhaps, its failure to advance an overarching goal clipped the movement’s wings. Occupy didn’t expand beyond “occupying Wall Street.” It failed to grow into a bigger movement that would advance demands for systemic change.
Perhaps the same could be said about the protests at college campuses against the Gaza genocide, and the Israeli apartheid system that oppresses Palestinians. Young people do connect the genocide with Israel and empire. Many have paid, are paying, a steep price for exercising First Amendment rights to protest empire, Israel, and genocide. But, they did not make a demand for systemic change, one that sets a north star for an egalitarian society.
Meanwhile, we, revolutionists, freedom advocates, need to put together a coherent program to advance a popular front. I suggest we need to get out of our silos and collectively focus on, and explicitly criticize, plutocracy as a juggernaut of power, the driver of empire, and the destroyer of life. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/blame-plutocrats-not-the-people/
A solid majority of Americans are against empire and the wars it generates. A majority want peace. A majority have turned against Israel for its Gaza genocide and warmongering against Iran and Lebanon. A majority want the environment and natural ecosystem protected from pollution and wanton waste. A solid majority want the Epstein Files un-redacted and fully disclosed and revealed, as the law calls for, and they want accountability and justice.
And a majority support a single-payer national healthcare system. A majority want campaign finance reform and to end the legal farce that money is speech and a corporation is a person. Furthermore, a majority agree on basic democratic principles, like we have in the Constitution.
Most recently, the reaction against “Flock” cameras, and the installation of AI server farms, shows people are anxious, and taking action. So, this is the time to strike, to organize into a popular front.
Yet, for all this agreement on principals, there remains a lack of coherent response to the abuse of power by the plutocracy. Given that a majority share common values on a wide range of issues, what keeps people from forming a liberation coalition and fighting for a better society?
John Spritzler suggests people think they are alone in wanting to make a better society. Though a majority of people he canvasses readily accept the revolutionary proposition to remove the rich from power, they don’t turn out for a meeting.
Very likely a sense of futility, that nothing can be done about the problem, causes them to not engage. Or, they are too busy with other stuff, family, work.
In any case, John suggests people need to hear others stating the intention or talking about the idea that we could have a society not ruled by plutocracy. If others heard more people accepting the proposition to ditch the rich and transform society, then a movement could grow. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/ditch-the-rich-campaign/
Essentially, the inertia of inaction, fostered by lack of coherent revolutionary theory, combined with a sense of hopelessness that anyone, much less a mass movement, could make a difference, reinforces the sense of futility, perhaps.
In the face of this, John invites all people to identify as egalitarians and adopt and advance the intention that society become egalitarian by removing the rich from power, thus, defining the north star for the movement. https://www.pdrboston.org
The how of removing the rich from power is the topic for another essay, but John Spritzler goes into this at his website and sub stack. https://johnspritzler.substack.com/
I am active in the truth community, and the chief demand, generally speaking, is accountability and justice for a category of events that qualify as state crimes against democracy, a term coined by Lance Dehaven Smith. This is not a shallow demand, but it can’t be achieved without boots on the ground making the truth movement a political act. Cynthia McKinney in a lecture to the Lawyers for 9/11 inquiry, 20th anniversary of September 11, appeals to the lawyers to run for office on a truth ticket. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/cynthia-mckinney-address-to-lawyers-committee-9-11-truth/
Meanwhile, truth advocates criticize the state, and the media, for covering up (and committing) what are essentially deep state crimes, like the JFK assassination, the other 60’s assassinations, up through Watergate, to Iran/Contra, the Octopus Murders, and September 11th, and the Covid event, and this includes Israel’s 10/7 false flag event; but, the truth activists don’t make indictments of the events as state crimes. Instead, they stoop to the rhetorical low bar of demanding an investigation but don’t make a criminal allegation against the plutocratic dark cabal that runs the deep state.
Truth Action Project has upped its truther game by alleging the September 11 attacks are deep state crimes: https://truthactionproject.org/tap-finds-911-state-crime/
The Covid event qualifies as a deep state crime as well.
People in the truth community bear witness to these crimes, they know the official narrative is false, and they know that the Democrat/Republican two-party system is actually a duopoly of power. The truth community knows this but doesn’t find common ground around political approaches to dealing with what they witness. Many in the Truth Movement are conservative and subscribe to traditional values, others are basic progressives. Can they find political common ground? This is the challenge for a popular front.
As an aside, Tucker Carlson is talking about forming a new party to run against the duopoly. Abby Martin doubts that Carlson could lead a movement to make a better society on account he doesn’t critique empire; he doesn’t critique the plutocracy; nor does he seek an end to the ruling power structure; nor advocate for a true democracy.
The concern of this essay is to unite people in a popular front. A liberation coalition / popular front will be defined by the issues it advances. But it needs an overarching goal, like ending plutocracy, and making an egalitarian society.
Key issues for inspiring unity I hope would come from a concern about solving social and ecological problems, opposing empire and war, opposing Israel’s genocide, and demanding full transparency of the Epstein files, and justice for the alleged criminals implicated in the files.
Indeed, Caitlan Johnson argues that opposing empire is the most important stance anyone can take, given Israeli genocide, and Sudanese genocide too.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/for-a-westerner-opposing-the-empire?publication_id=82124&post_id=214242987&isFreemail=true&r=qbltf&triedRedirect=true
But to form a popular front, we need to break out of our silos, and agree on a game plan and body of ideas.
A “silo” is what an individual feels/thinks is most important to get done if we, the people in society, want to make a difference.
The key silos that I encounter among my fellow freedom fighting activists are anti-war / pro-peace; monetary reform; banking reform; Georgist land tax; Marxist/Leninist workers’ revolution; radical egalitarianism.
I meet free market/libertarian types and basic progressive/liberals (who don’t believe their government would commit a state crime); others hold conservative/traditional values (but do accept their government would commit a crime). There is the silo that holds that if only Zionists were all gone, then things would be made right. To varying degrees, all these claims have value and a place in a popular front.
John Spritzler, my comrade, has done extensive first-person research on the popular attitude about removing the rich from power so we can have a real and not fake democracy and build a society based on egalitarian values. The majority support the proposition.
John is in a silo of this truth; if we would only make a collective intention to remove the rich from power, and make this the primary target of popular will, the chances of success go up.
He writes about this possibility at length. He supports demanding reforms, but reform is secondary to the ultimate aim of ending plutocracy; this requires, he insists, that we the people frame our demand for immediate reforms with the general and broad aim of making an egalitarian society without rich or poor.
Meanwhile a popular front will need to advance a program with a platform of ideas that define and describe the ambition for society. In an open letter to Howard, the Green Liberty Caucus endorses monetary reform as the tip of the spear, lead issue, for making an egalitarian society. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/open-letter-to-howard/
We need to find common cause by rallying around a clear intention and purpose. Maybe this hasn’t happened yet because a compelling story of a revolutionary possibility hasn’t been told.
Many recall the Occupy Wall Street protest in 1999; perhaps its failure to advance an overarching goal, the north star of removing the rich from power, that this lack of a north star, precluded the movement from expanding beyond “occupy” and into a bigger movement seeking systemic change.
Epilogue
As the chief proponent for a Green Liberty Caucus that critiques the power structure and provides a vision for a better society, I am in my own silo, for sure, but the mission of Green Liberty is a liberation coalition/a popular front. So, while Green Liberty is immediately concerned with demanding justice and accountability for state crimes (political truth), for example, Liberty Greens stand in solidarity with a larger cause of advancing systemic change by way of a liberation coalition that seeks to create an egalitarian society, one not dominated by a plutocratic oligarchy.
Green Liberty is inspired by Cynthia McKinney’s address to the Lawyers’ Committee for the 9/11 Inquiry on the 20th anniversary of September 11. Her lecture was intended to inspire the lawyers to run for office on a platform about getting justice for state crimes. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/cynthia-mckinney-address-to-lawyers-committee-9-11-truth/
Green Liberty also frames libertarian municipalism as the revolutionary means to build an egalitarian society, where we have real and not fake democracy. https://greenlibertycaucus.org/libertarian-municipalism/
Finally, Green Liberty Caucus is founded on the possibility of a liberation coalition, that a popular front could materialize and transform society. Of course, for this to happen, a liberation coalition would have to agree on the purpose and goals. A story would need to be told that captures the hearts and minds of a supermajority of Americans.
I continue to grapple with what could/would be the winning issues that could instill coherence into a popular front/liberation coalition https://greenlibertycaucus.org/winning-issues-advance-liberation-coalition/
In the end, without an intention, we can’t build a movement that will stand up to the juggernaut of plutocratic power, the driving force behind empire.
Appendix:
BREAKING: US is attacking Iran as war spirals out of control. Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin joins the show for the first time to tell us how her new film investigating the inner workings of the US military and its impact on the planet relates to the restart of the Iran war. She is joined by rapper and journalist Lowkey for a massive discussion on why Trump and the US empire’s war is going worse than you think.