Do Not. Side. With. The. Powerful. by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2020-07-29 at 13:16:03 )

Do Not. Side. With. The. Powerful. by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

I had a weird dystopian dream recently where I was running away from these evil Agent Smith-type characters who looked just like normal people, so there was no way to recognize them; they could be an old man or a child or a librarian, or anyone.

The only sign that allowed me to tell them apart from real people always came too late: if I ever talked about the dark forces I was fighting, at some point they would say the words "Well, what did you expect?"

As in, what did you expect when you disobey us? What did you expect when you try to stand against our power? Did you think we would not come after you? Did you really think you could win?

It was a really scary, trippy dream, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

I have been thinking about it because it is such an accurate reflection of how subservience to power actually manifests in our world. You talk about abusive power structures in our world, from police brutality to corporate predation to imperialist military interventionism, and many people are receptive. But you always wind up standing across from some freaky empire zombie saying "Well, what did you expect?"

It really is like a zombie infection, like a virus of the mind which spreads through propaganda and toxic ideologies and leads people to support the abuse of the disempowered by the powerful.

She is 14 years old.-Brynn July 27, 2020

Whenever there is an act of police brutality caught on video, no matter how brutal or inexcusable it may be, when that video circulates online you will always see comments saying "Well, what did you expect? That person was disobeying."

Literally always. Always, always, always, without a single solitary exception.

There is a certain type of mind virus whose victims literally cannot help themselves. They absolutely cannot resist the impulse to start making excuses for the authority figure explaining why it is okay for them to assault and abuse the disobedient weaker party. You get the impression that they are not even really thinking about it; it is an entirely mindless reflex for them. Like robots. Or zombies.

And it is the exact same mind virus which justifies literally any violence by the powerful against those who disobey them, from the smallest to the largest of scales.

Those who respond to videos of police brutality with "Well what do you expect? They were disobeying!" are not just defending the police, they are defending every power structure in the world where the weak are attacked for disobeying the powerful.

From governments which attack, subvert and destroy weaker nations which disobey them, all the way down to parents who hit their children for annoying them.

It is the same mind virus, and it is the same dynamic, and it all funnels upward in support of the same power structures.

The doctrine which says it is okay for the powerful to use violence upon the disobedient disempowered applies anywhere else one might choose to apply it.

Which is why there is so much overlap between defenders of police violence and supporters of various kinds of United States imperialism.

The 14-year-old boy was pinned to the ground, but apparently that was not enough for this cop.-In the NOW April 30, 2020

Do not side with the powerful against the disempowered.

Just do not.

Learning to distinguish between empowered parties and disempowered parties can be a little tricky, even for relatively awake people, because nobody likes to think of themselves as siding with the powerful against the weak.

It is something we all know intuitively to be wrong, so we will often find clever ways of using an incomplete analysis of the power dynamics at play which allows us to feel as though we are fighting the power when we are really doing the exact opposite.

And propagandists are of course all too eager to help us do this.

Israel is a perfect example.

You can squint at it in such a way that lets you feel as though you are defending a disempowered religious minority with an extensive history of persecution that is surrounded by enemies, but really it has nuclear weapons and the full might of the United States empire on its side.

In reality the Palestinians are the down-power ones, but people who want to believe the Israeli government is a poor widdle victim will do mental gymnastics to contort the power dynamics.

These compartmentalizations ignore where the actual power is at on a global scale and just zoom in to a local analysis which ignores all else.

Whenever you see the western mass media and their propagandized followers talking about "The people of [insert targeted nation here]", they are cheerleading a United States empire-backed movement against a weaker government which has resisted absorption into that empire. But they are posing as supporters of the little guy.

Juan Guaido is the brave rebel fighting the powerful Maduro regime! No, he is backed by the United States-centralized empire against a much weaker government which is trying to stage a coup in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.

Yay, the freedom fighters in Syria are fighting the tyranny of their oppressive ruler!

No they are not, they are jihadist extremists who were backed by the United States and its allies with the goal of toppling Damascus in order to seize control of a crucial geostrategic region.

Yay, the brave people of Hong Kong are liberating themselves from the tyranny of Beijing!

Well really China is far less powerful than the United States-centralized power alliance and the United States government is unquestionably intervening in the Hong Kong protests. But people make believe it is just the people vs the big bad Chinese government.

In 500 media articles in 16 yrs, terms like the "Venezuelan people" or "civil society" were used exclusively to refer to opposition groups in alignment with (and funded by) the United States government.-Media Lens February 1, 2019

This impulse to pretend you are fighting the power instead of fighting for power is so pervasive I have seen people do ridiculous things like say Julian Assange is actually the power because WikiLeaks is influential. He is one guy!

That is also what you are seeing when people try to spin these United States protests as a Deep State color revolution backed by George Soros and "the Chicoms".

No it is not, you just do not want to admit that you support the government and its armed goon squad against people who are sick of the brutal United States police state, so you are doing ridiculous mental gymnastics to make it feel like you are actually punching up.

Online forums are full of self-described "anarchists" who constantly wind up on the same side as the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States State Department on foreign policy because they act like every "revolution" in every nation is the people vs power while ignoring a global-scale analysis of real power.

If your "anti-authoritarian" worldview frequently leads you to supporting agendas which make the biggest power structure on the planet more powerful, then you are not anti-authoritarian, you just want to feel like you are.

You are fundamentally no different than any other MSM-brainwashed tool.

Learn to see clearly where the power is, and refuse to side with it.

Expunge the "What did you expect?" mind virus from your system and you will be doing all of humanity a big favor.

"This Ms Caitlin Johnstone article and its links are here:"

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