The Need to Find New Ways to Resist Oligarchy and Reaction in 2025

Harry Targ

Gandhi once wrote, “Even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” A Trump tyranny will not be able to continue without the support and acquiescence of those whose lives and future it is destroying. It will only be able to pursue its destructive course if they enable or acquiesce in it. A movement can overcome the most powerful regime if it can withdraw that cooperation. https://pdacnm.org/2025/02/08/defending-society-against-maga-tyranny/

https://strikecommentaries.substack.com/p/what-really-happened-in-the-first?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1095730&post_id=158416089&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=103rn&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

So as we begin the latest phase of educating, agitating, and organizing the multitudes we might reflect on the patterns of resistance that have been used in the past and may still be useful today. Jeremy Brecher has recently published a lengthy discussion of forms of “social self-defense” which give direction to how progressives, the multitudes, might resist the onslaught of President Trump/Musk’s new policies and parallel policies imposed on people at the state and local levels.

In addition, peace traditions as well as the labor left have engaged in patterns of resistance at various points in history. Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent resistance provide a useful checklist which may have applicability to today’s struggles.https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

Moving Ahead in 2025 the Following Questions Remain

1.How do we organize locally and statewide, particularly in “red states”

2.How do we develop in our literature and public agenda the view that what we are struggling against is a forty-year program of austerity, redistributing the wealth and power from the many to the few. And how can we effectively show that our local struggles parallel those in other states and countries.

 3.How can we effectively link our theoretical understanding of history, much like Rev. Barber’s provocative discussion of the three reconstructions, to the concrete campaigns we are engaged in

4.How can we take the general worldview and discuss:

   -the threat to voting rights

   -racist police practices

   -the transformation of a 150-year tradition of public education into for-profit charter schools

    -the deregulation of environmental controls at the very same time that fires, floods, draughts are increasing

    -the rationing of health care and the rising cost of medication

    -the use of state enticements to bring investors who create low wage jobs that worsen income inequality

    -the use of government to destroy the right of workers to form unions of their choosing and to honor the work of those unions to defend worker rights

    -the support for war and violence everywhere and the danger of nuclear war

Below are the substantive strategic issues that we face, now with a brutal new billionaire racist oligarchy.

 -the proportion of work devoted to inside and outside strategies

 -the relative weight and autonomy to be given to national, state and community organizations

 -the connections between socialist, labor, environmentalist, peace, anti-racist, feminist, educational and other organizations

 – the relationships we need to create between varying decision-making bodies, local organizations and issue committees

 – finally thinking tactically such as relating to Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent activity.

https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf

Conclusion

The world is in turmoil. Protests across the globe have some common origins, causes, and solutions. While communities have their own problems, they are not too different from those elsewhere. The ongoing work must involve addressing specific issues while being cognizant of the general, building coalitions of shared responsibility and respect, organizing people power from the streets to the centers of power, and reconstructing institutions that serve, not oppress the people.

A Summary Statement in Protest of US Policy in the Middle East
The Committees of Correspondence For Democracy And Socialism (CCDS):  The Middle East Wars and United States Imperialism

By the CCDS Peace & Solidarity Committee

Feb 10, 2025 

We in CCDS believe there can be no moral, ethical, or ideological justification to excuse the brutality and modern-day barbarity of US supported Israeli actions in Gaza since October 2023. 

Palestine is first and foremost a settler occupied land where Zionists, assisted by western colonial and imperial powers, imposed a colonial set of social relations on its majority Arab Muslim peoples. This majority prevailed from the 7th century to the mid-20th century. Then, prior to the state of Israel being declared the Nakba began, that is, clearing the land of Arab Palestinians. 

In the 1890s A World Zionist Organization was formed with the overt intent of creating a Jewish homeland in the Palestine region along the lines of a Jewish nation state. But why Palestine, and not any other place? A long Jewish historical association with the land of Palestine, and a firmly established religious and social strife involving Christianity would provide the emotional bonds and a powerful symbol to anchor a Zionist political ideology with global reach and appeal. 

The UK, which held the mandate to govern Palestine, gave the green light to the Zionist project through the Balfour Declaration. In 1947, in the face of years of terrorizing violence directed at Muslims by Zionist settlers, and an alarmingly increasing resettlement of Jews in Palestine, the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states. At that time, only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new state of Israel. Palestinians and Arab neighbors viewed this as an occupation of the residents’ historic land. And the first Middle East war between the new Israel supported by the UK and the US, and Arab states ensued. 

During, and under the cover of this war, the Zionists intensified the Nakba which has taken various forms over the decades. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes, villages, towns, and country to bring us to a Jewish majority on the ground today.

Subsequent wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s to today’s brutal, genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. These wars supported by the West emboldened Israel to extend its territory both within and beyond its borders. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Through settler and state sanctioned violence Palestinians were terrorized and cleared off their lands; villages and towns replaced by new Jewish settlements and the territory of Israel expanded. 

These wars, then and now, have been waged by Israelis, with unconditional Western support, against Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. The deeply embedded issues fueling this inimical void are two-fold:

Internally: the legitimacy of the state of Israel; the dehumanizing apartheid and racist policies towards Palestinians; the control and weaponizing of energy, water, airspace, and movement to impose a pervasive repressive regime over Palestinian lives; the transformation of the lived reality of the Palestinians into a veritable open-air prison; a draconian military justice system curtailing civilian life; and an on-going unrestrained settler violence as a prelude to settlement expansion and ultimately the removal of the Palestinian people. 

Externally: Palestine is centered in a web of geopolitical interests. Control of the region’s oil economy is vital for Western corporate and cartel capitalism’s global economic hegemony. So is Palestine’s geopolitical location along a historical bridge connecting Western Europe and North Africa to Asia. Israel also features prominently in the US led capitalist empire’s quest for control of the territory and its resources from the Red Sea to the Adriatic Sea and control of the Mediterranean Sea. For these Western interests, Israel is the vital outpost to ensure geopolitical control. It performs the role of destabilizer and attack force.

Various organizations like the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah emerged to challenge and resist the Israeli state and its land expansion over the last fifty years. The United States, Britain, France, the former Soviet Union, and neighboring Arab states have all played significant roles in the development of this conflict. 

Emerging from World War II as the most powerful economic and military power on the globe, the United States cultivated a special relation of support for Israel that refuses to falter even in the face of starkly evident genocidal actions against humanity. Israel has the most powerful military in the region suited up with the latest in military technology and weapons from the US; is a nuclear power and boasts a powerful global intelligence network. The United States, through finance; technology and intelligence sharing; military support; and its veto privileges in international institutions, has aided and abetted every aspect of this abominable state.

In the very period of Israel’s genocide, between October 2023 and October 2024, the US provided Israel with $17.9 billion, and devastating bombs that make a mockery of nuclear scares. The US provides Israel with enough military material to defend itself from any other country’s intervention. And today, the US president openly advocates for the total disappearance of Palestinians in Palestine to be replaced by others from or favored by the US. We therefore hold the United States equally culpable for all of Israel’s crimes against humanity. The United States is also deeply enmeshed in the expansionist drama unfolding in Syria. Even further it is involved in imperialist regime change and secession programs in many parts of the world.  

Today, pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel. Israel, with United States support, opposes serious negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. That the countries of the world, for multiple and strategic reasons, have not been able to militarily intercede in this genocide in Gaza may result in a hardening of Israeli opposition to any serious negotiation in the aftermath of signing a temporary cease-fire. Israel and the pro-Israeli United States appear untroubled by the global tide of criticism from the real international community and its demand for a just peace.

We in CCDS believe there can be no moral, ethical, ideological, or other justification to excuse the brutality and modern day barbarity of US supported Israeli actions in Gaza since October 2023. This is first, a crime against Palestinians; then it is a crime against all of humanity – a crime against all of us. We condemn the actions of the US for its complicity and partnership in Israel’s genocidal actions. 

We call on our fellow US citizens and residents, institutions, and political organizations to stand firm against the genocidal and expansionist actions in Palestine and beyond. 

We demand in the name of peace, justice, democracy, and freedom for all the world’s peoples, 

  • an end to Israeli support 
  • an end to legislative endeavors to curtail just criticism of Israeli actions
  • an end to imperial designs 
  • an end to regime change
  • an end to our military presence around the world
  • an end to hybrid wars
  • an end to support for terrorists and assassins 

Let us stand for a just and shared future for all in the world. 

 

CCDS CONDEMNS ISRAEL’S GENOCIDAL POLICY

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) joins peace and solidarity organizations in the United States and around the world in deploring the attacks on Israeli citizens on October 7 as well as the subsequent violence against the Palestinian people. Further, CCDS joins the worldwide call of peace and justice organizations demanding that Israel stop its genocidal war on the Palestinian people. Particularly we urge the Biden Administration to stop encouraging and arming the murderous Israeli government.

We recognize the fundamental role the United States has played in the Israel/Palestine conflict and the long-standing Israeli vision of a “Greater Israel” empire in the Middle East. And we recognize the need for a movement of progressives to mobilize to end US complicity with Israel’s violent policies. For 75 years, the United States has supported the victimization of  the Palestinian people. And we recognize that Israel’s policies continue to expose its citizens to terrorist retribution and have fueled the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia everywhere.

As Dr. Martin Luther King said long ago still holds true: “The chain reaction of evil–wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

For now we say that  peace and justice movements must expand their educating, organizing, pressuring politicians, and hitting the streets demanding that the Biden administration end its support of Israeli militarism and promote the liberation of the Palestinian people. Further, we ask all peace and justice-loving people and organizations to urge President Biden and the UN to take bold and immediate steps to discuss and implement plans for the self-determination of the Palestinian people.