The last time I wrote about the larger issues of the culture wars I talked about coercion. Not just coercion by the state — although that looms ever larger these days — but also coercion by employers against employees, by private corporations against their customers and vendors, and by various institutions such as schools and universities against their charges.
My thesis is that the real ideological divide nowadays is between those who want to coerce others to do their will and those who don’t. It’s true that the coercive impulse is more likely to be found on the left than on the right, but the division is not uniform. There are leftists who stick their necks out for libertarian principles, and there are right-wingers who are itching for the chance to force progressives to abandon their utopian efforts.
Coercion came to the fore during the Corona hysteria in 2020. Governments at all levels implemented draconian new restrictions on businesses and citizens. The new measures lacked the force of law, but were pushed through via the ramrod of nebulous “state of emergency” declarations issued by the executive. Businesses and private institutions simultaneously imposed their own rules, ejecting customers who violated social distancing and expelling students who refused to wear face masks.
It soon became clear that certain political leaders reveled in their new authoritarian powers, and enjoyed setting arbitrary rules that ordinary citizens were required to obey. Nurse Ratched types came into their own in hospitals and doctors’ offices all over the country. Ordinary citizens with authoritarian tendencies ordered complete strangers around in stores, restaurants, and other public places. Indignant apartment dwellers snitched out their neighbors to the police for violating lockdown rules. My first encounter with the zealots of the New Normal came when the guy ahead of me in line in Whole Foods screamed at me for not standing far enough away.
Then came the vaccine mandates. A huge number of people were presented with the choice of getting the needle or losing their jobs — or not being able to return to college, or not being able to get an indoor seat in a restaurant. I had to miss out on attending a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth because I was unable to present proof of vaccination.
The situation has eased somewhat in the last year or two, but the stench of coercion still hangs thick in the air. A state of emergency is even now in force in some jurisdictions, and it’s obvious that there are numerous political leaders who would welcome the opportunity to issue new totalitarian ukases if a new emergency were to arise and present them with the opportunity to roll out COVID 2.0.
The world is now divided into liberty-minded people on the one hand, and people who like to coerce — along with their willing subjects — on the other. The latter category is exemplified by those earnest citizens who wear a mask when they are out alone on the sidewalk walking their dog, or driving by themselves in their car.
Liberty-minded types are harder to spot. They don’t wear masks, even when prominent signs are posted reminding them to do it. They ignore social distancing rules. They never wipe down the handles of their shopping carts with sanitary wipes. If they have symptoms or are worried about getting sick, they stay home and drink plenty of fluids, rather than ordering others to behave in a certain way to accommodate their anxieties.
In other words, the only way we can be distinguished is by our failure to obey. That’s not always obvious now that masking is optional, so we tend to fade into the background.
At times like this, when coercion is all but universal, how do we resist?
If we don’t resist, those who coerce us will be emboldened, and impose ever-stricter limits on what we are allowed to do. The Corona Psychosis was just the beginning — it’s been a sort of trial run of authoritarianism, a mild version testing the waters in advance of the more serious totalitarian program that is planned for us.
COVID-19 was the rationale for the test, but the big push will use the “climate” to justify absolute control over every facet of our lives, implementing universal surveillance, digital currency, and artificial intelligence to monitor us and keep us in line. Eating the bugs. Fifteen minute cities. Social credit scores. Facial recognition on every corner, with every lamp post an eavesdropper. And all to Save the Planet.
How in the world we will be able to resist that? Where do we start?
Resistance begins when you say: “I will not comply.” With whatever it is — wearing the mask, eating the bugs, showing your vax pass, climbing into the cattle car.
Each act of resistance is a deliberate decision not to go along with a demand for compliance, however small the required behavior may be. Wearing a mask and staying at home are obvious examples from the COVID madness. New ones, more draconian ones, will undoubtedly arise as the “climate crisis” sets in during the run-up to 2030.
But not all of them will be that clear-cut, and not all of them will be easy. Refusing to drive a car with a “kill switch”, for example, may force you to travel by bicycle or on foot. Refusing to present a vax passport (or whatever the new digital pass is) may keep you from being able to buy groceries. Refusing to use digital currency may keep you from buying anything at all, except on the black market.
Part of “I will not comply” is the acceptance of the consequences of non-compliance. Refusing to pay your taxes, for example, is likely to invite severe consequences. If hundreds of thousands or millions of people do the same thing, enforcement will be dicey, and you may be able to skate by. But if you’re the only person who burns your 1040, and you get caught, you will be made an example of. You have to accept that.
Saying “I will not comply” means not waiting for your elected representatives to pass a law that prevents the government from issuing this or that diktat. It means remembering that your constitutional rights exist, regardless of any blatantly illegitimate state legislation or executive order that attempts to countermand them. As tyranny descends upon the land, your liberty may be taken from you, but not your freedom, which is God-given. Freedom lies between your ears and behind your eyes. Even a rifle butt in the back of the head cannot take it from you.
Non-compliance is a difficult habit to learn. Most of us are polite, and would prefer to go along with whatever civil society expects of us. Saying “I will not comply” goes against the grain, especially when the consequences for doing so are severe.
You’d rather wait for that law to be passed, or for the governor to have a change of heart, but in the meantime you get a kill switch in your car, your kid gets “transitioned” in school, and your credit card won’t let you buy any more meat if you exceed your monthly limit.
Widespread non-compliance is the only way to forestall tyranny. If enough people in enough places say “I will not comply,” then the coercion will fail. There are far more of us, the non-compliant, than there are would-be tyrants.
Neil Oliver is thinking along the same lines when he talks about “the power of no”.
Saying “I will not comply” obviates the question of “Who are you going to shoot?” Yes, at some point you may have to exercise your Second Amendment rights (or, in countries where the constitutional right to bear arms is sorely lacking, get the Luger out of its hiding place under the floorboards). You may have to pull the trigger someday, such as when the rifle-butt-in-the-back-of-the-head moment arrives.
But there will be thousands of other moments of decision when shooting people will not be the appropriate response. When Nurse Ratched orders you to put on a mask, the most prudent response will not necessarily be to pull out your concealed carry and ventilate her.
For every situation where gunfire would be an appropriate response, there will be a thousand other petty bureaucratic coercions. That’s where “I will not comply” comes in. If you practice it often enough, it becomes the default response.
When Nurse Ratched says, “Put the mask on,” you say, “No. I will not comply.” At that point you may be ejected from whatever medical facility you’re in. Or the nurse may call the cops on you. Your access to health care may thereby be curtailed. The consequences of not complying may vary from trivial to serious.
As I said earlier, part of non-compliance is accepting the consequences. Those who would coerce you depend on your desire to avoid the consequences. That’s how coercion is successfully implemented.
A final note: One of the most important acts of non-compliance is to give up your cell phone.
Much of the implementation and enforcement of the coercion that lies ahead will arrive via your phone or other hand-held device. That’s how digital currency will be accessed. Your phone will contain your digital ID. In a 5G city it will allow your location to be tracked within a few feet. It can listen to ambient voices even when it’s not turned on.
Ditch your baby monitor.
I’m the only person I know who doesn’t own a cell phone. It means that there are times when I don’t comply because I can’t comply. For example, when the Corona madness first set in, the office of my primary care doctor started requiring people to stay in their cars in the parking lot. Patients had to call in to announce their arrival, and then await further orders. I couldn’t do that, obviously, so I just strolled into the building and went up to the receptionist’s window. She said, “Stay in your car; we’ll call you.” I replied, “You can’t. I don’t own a cell phone.”
She made me sit in the car anyway, and sent a nurse out to get me when they were ready for me. It was, at best, a small victory for “I will not comply.”
But it was a victory nonetheless. And after there have been thousands upon thousands of such victories, the Empire will fall.
I will not comply.
The cell phone is certainly the hardest test.
I find it indispensable while simultaneously detesting it.
I skate under the radar while improving my black market and petty lawbreaking skills. Luckily I live in a place where Brandon is a dirty word and even the jackbooted law enforcement types mostly live and let live as long as one isn’t brown or black. If they started enforcing the laws without discrimination I would have to decide how much to endure before going kinetic. I have a lot of patience though, so others would probably take the kinetic route first before I would.
Certainly there are plenty of others like me, and pushing people until they have nothing left to lose and take the kinetic route as the default response to their harassment is a monumentally stupid move on the part of the managerial class. I have an exit plan but I need time which I probably don’t have enough of. Hope increases the amount of Barbara Streisand that someone will endure but even so there still are limits.
I don’t have a cell phone. You can do it.
“No” is a great word which has fallen too much into disuse. As a society, we need to again learn how to use it, and mean it, if necessary with exclamation points appended.
I live up here in the great commie country of Canukistan and man did i cause tears and rage with a simple but polite “no thank you” when commanded to obey an arbitrary decree in stores. Gotta admit i usually enjoyed the freakouts.
Read Etienne de la Boetie on this subject. A classic.
Randers: Thanks for the reference. I’ll try reading it in the original French, as the book (essay) is short and the writing is likely clear and direct. Plus, the French paperback is cheaper than the English versions!
Thank you Ned
A beautifully expressed call for resistance from a brave and honourable man.
Yes. The awake must spearhead the resistance by non-complience.
Because initially the PTB will be winning — due to their clandestine long-term planning, their shock-and-awe tactics, their strategical alliances, their ownership of critical resources and their ability to dupe humanity.
But then, when the PTB once again overplay their hands (in ways they did during the corona psyop) in some of their Maoist Lines of Effort to implement totalitarian tyranny that will eventually affect the masses, the ensuing non-compliance of the normies will naturally induce huge black swan events as most of the peasants start becoming non-compiant.
And when those huge fat black swans begin taking off by themselves, one can move mountains by using their kinetic energy and giving them direction.
In general, the human desire for liberty and meaning oppressed by tyranny, will do the job — we just have to facilitate that with creative methods of warfare.
During the demolition phases of the great fascist reset we can count on the anger of our fellow citizens that the Powers rob and kill to favour others.
And during the ‘build back better’ phases it is the enemy that has to infuse energy into a new system in order to create a new order — which means that entropy is then on our side. The tide changes! Which means that we will be able to destroy parts of their new systems with very little effort while they are sweating to build it all up. No criminal or immoral actions needed: houses of cards collapse easily.
And in the more advanced phases of the NWO when “They” have built up some new worlds, tyranny will have everything to lose and liberty will have everything to win. “Their” successes will be uneven in space and time. Which makes them very vulnerable, as well as their fragile technical systems. So we can wait till they build up, say, their first test runs of the 15-minutes prisons … and then sabotage those prisons… for example by exposing them in other parts of the world.
In even more advanced stages of the war (in some decades) the predatory overclass will be much more divided than they are now — what pleasure it will be to play their fractions against each other and watch their tyrannical systems collapse, giving way to liberty!
Eventually, parallel societies will become so strong that when the Evil Empire starts to decline, normality will gradually take over. That will take place in 50-100 years.
So yes, we are doing it for our descendants. And that is also a huge advantage because seemingly small deeds in the present may have enormous repercussions in the future.
Also, God and collective mind power can do wonders.
They can’t kill us all, or subjugate us for ever.
¡ No pasaran !
Somehow I feel cheated. I never ‘bent the knee’ during that Covid insanity. Never wore a mask. Never “socially distanced”. Never locked down. Certainly didn’t get jabbed! Carried on life as normal other than the fact my favorite pub was closed during the madness. No one ever confronted me. I was ready, too. Cocked and loaded for the Karens. Plenty of mask wearers around. Maybe they were just too timid, I dunno. Maybe next time.
same here
Same for me and my wife. I sort of miss those days but do pray they won’t return.
If you want to see examples of non compliance, there are a multitude of what are called 1st Ammendment auditors on youtube. The interactions go every which way with law enforcement. These are usually initiated by someone filming inside a post office, government building, parking lot of a police station. What happens next depends on the law of the state. Usually the next step is the LEO asks what they are doing and then for their ID. It depends on the circumstances and the state but you generally don’t have to respond or provide ID unless you are getting cited are suspected of an crime they can articulate. If they were not filming this all would be a very foolish endeavor and they may have to resolve it all in court. Of those I have seen, those that walk away cleanly only do so with the involvement of a supervisor that seem to be more aware of the law than the patrol officers.
What about the state police in West Virginia?
https://wchstv.com/news/local/eyewitness-news-investigation-reveals-multiple-accusations-against-wva-state-police
BREAKING: WV State Police IMPLODES | Whistleblower Tells All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBILmuRlLl0
I wouldnt try that in germany.
There was once a guy who read the law about how a passport should look like.
According to the law the passport should read: “First Name” (in German: Vorname) and “Last Name” (Nachname).
But in Germany it is customary to shorten “Last name” to just “Name”.
But on the passport you just see “Name”.
So he went to the municipal building and demanded a law-compliant passport.
They first told him to accept it, then to let the 5 be square (german expression for accepting this error) and when he didnt stop he was slapped with the MPU aka Idiots test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical-psychological_assessment_(Germany)
If you drove to fast too many times or the state thinks you are mentally unfit to drive, you have to take the MPU and it costs – at least EUR 1.500,-. And the majority dont make it on their first try.
And this guy was told until he withdrew his demand for a law-compliant passport, he would never pass the MPU.
By the way, I would really like to know how the IRS would react, if they tell you that you made an error in your tax returns and you tell them to let the 5 be square – as the “lady” in the municipal buildung told the guy.
I bet it will end in a total, thorough and merciless search of your entire tax-history and I wouldnt put it above the IRS to demand a full body-cavity search to be sure you hide nothing.
My initial response was “let the 5 be square” made me think of 1984 so I looked it up. Let 5 be 2×2? I found let the 5 be even (for once). I get its meaning and context but I would argue there is a soft similarity to the scene in the book.
Very few talk of busting caps on the enemy, a pleasant surprise to see here this morning. It will eventually come and when that green star cluster goes up the ensuing will be like a firestorm. So make your list of local collaborators, (to include their families) now and update as needed. They surely have your family in their crosshairs. Give no quarter
I like how you think. (Good essay, Baron!)
62 years old and have never owned a cell phone. Land line at home is it. Had the same problem with medical types but mine was at the vet clinic. The reaction when i strolled in sans mask from suppose medical experts was hilarious.
that was my reply when my job sent out the “must get a covid shot or else” email. i had been working for 18 months under the covid cloud and it made no sense to get a shot/bioweapon now that it was “over”. i was fired in three minutes flat, after more than seven years service and escorted off the university grounds like a criminal.
Thank God I live in FL where they couldn’t terminate me for such mandates.
Man dates? You date men?
Found the feminaxi.
I was already retired when this hit and though I never masked and didn’t take the jab, I do wonder if I would have had the courage to do what you did had I still been working. Since I have a chronic autoimmune condition, I think I would have but I’ll never know for sure. Good on you for standing fast.
Jesus Christ is my Lord, and my Savior. I obey Him as His Word (the Bible) and His Holy Spirit (Who lives inside of me when I received Him), guide me. I don’t even think about what the latest regulation is. I know that any objection will be strongly and vociferously met by those who have sold, or given, their souls to this world in exchange for the world’s temporal and temporary happiness. When the Last Trump, (no not the former president) sounds I will be among those who are rejoicing as we’re meeting our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Who has come to take us home.
I will admit that during the 1st 3 months i was worried especially living in nyc metro area…but realization occurred when my wife had been running errands cuz of some health conditions i have and nothing happened i was like dude time to move on and this is overblown…my disappointment occured on vet’s day in nyc with our work vt group when i was the only one not allowed in the bar on a cold day except someone’s wife and a non-veteran friend – really sad to see some many just took the easy way out
I had to go for blood work a couple of months ago and the clinic was still requiring masks. Well, the three hundred pound whale receptionist told me that if I didn’t put on a mask, I had to leave. I left. So, a well-known hospital system hirers a 300 lb. + person as a receptionist (as about unhealthy as one can get), but if you don’t comply, you get kicked to the curb. Defiance, not compliance.
Certainly a valid response but it doesn’t really inconvenience anyone except for yourself.
The whale didn’t care, and the hospital staff who would have done the blood work likely weren’t perturbed either.
A better response would have been to go use the restroom before exiting and then flush a whole roll of toilet paper with the intention of causing a clogged toilet. That would’ve eventually inconvenienced the whale and generally made the hospital staff more miserable.
A first class response would have been to leave one or two of those tiny glass vials of rotten egg or sulfur stench on the floor in front of the desk where that whale sat. Eventually someone would have stepped on them and the resulting stench would’ve forced the evacuation of the hospital or made the staff truly miserable while they tried to air out the lobby.
Its not enough to just refuse to comply, which is noble but doesn’t really change anything. One must refuse to comply in such a manner that one’s interlocutors are also made miserable for their trouble of enforcing a onerous rule.
Bhhhhhha , Moon You are hilarious.. I can’t stop laughing about this whale ..
The problem with your suggestions is:
Who has those things on his body all the times?
And to the restroom: Employees have their own restrooms. As a visitor you dont have access to them.
You’re right in that I don’t normally carry such things on my person. However, if I knew that this would be an issue or ongoing problem I would equip myself whenever I expected to have to deal with such foolishness.
As to the bathroom, the point is to just make everyone working there miserable. Eventually some if them might be so miserable from constant arguments and verbal harassment that little things like flooded bathrooms and foul smelling workplaces might induce them to quit, thus making it harder on those who remain.
There is one nasty homeless bum who I always see in the downtown area when I am driving or delivering items. He wears absolutely disgusting filthy clothes which undoubtedly smell quite bad, and the pants hang off his buttocks, exposing them for all to see. Once I even saw him squat and relieve himself on the sidewalk with no concern for what others thought. I bring this up because if someone who was retired or otherwise had the free time could easily impersonate such a bum complete with the filthy foul smelling clothes, shuffling gait, and maybe a bottle of stale urine or two in glass, wander into such a facility that had been reconnoitered previously for the presence of Karens, and when ordered to wear a mask drop the bottles and/or relieve oneself on the floor and calmly shuffle out. Granted, the cameras would see you, but they would see a bum and there would be little effort wasted by security personnel or law enforcement to track down a bum for doing what bums do all the time.
Make your persecutors miserable so that the power they get from persecution comes at a steep price.
Maybe the poor bum would do it for a 20 quid note or a bottle of something? No need for masquerade, what you need is right there.
As a serious sidenote, as far as the homeless are concerned, I have really grown to assume a degree of default respect for them, regardless in what state of decay one may come across them. Rather, the worse, the more likely they are going through a horrible depression they have no chance of dealing with by themselves. And if they are also visibly of our own kin, I will assume that it is someone’s fault whose rightful job would have been preventing that it went that far, unless I really learn otherwise. Yes, there are those who have nobody else to blame but their proportional presence in the entire misery is not 100% and falling. I don’t need to be a socialist to find this highly problematic.
If you want a short, current history lesson of non-compliance and push-back, do a Google search of Christopher Dorner. Look how the Leviathan reacted. Now, my friends, imagine one or more of these individuals in each major Blue Hive in Amerika. Plan accordingly. Bleib ubrig.
I guess targeted civil disobedience would be the way to go.
Let’s take a purely hypothetical example. And of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone should do this, nor am I in any way shape or form condoning such behaviour……
Anyway, here’s my hypothetical scenario;
Say for instance someone gave you an electronic device that would have to be used in order to received services and gain access to certain locations. Let’s also assume that it became unlawful not to carry this device with you at all times. Let’s also assume that this electronic device needed access to, let’s say cellular towers, for a lack of a better word, to function. The easiest way to circumvent this particular problem by relying on civil disobedience would then be to put the cellular towers out of commission. This would render the electronic device in question useless. The same type of target civil disobedience would have to be carried out to combat similar unlawful dictates.
The human brain is the most powerful weapon around, and if it is used in a targeted and very specific manner, it can pretty much achieve anything. It is also easier for the silent majority to ignore unlawful dictates if said dictates are impossible to follow due to the damage the infrastructure these dictates rely upon have been compromised.
Or you could use aluminium foil and wrap it around such a device.
Dont you want to e a responsible citizen to protect your device from liquids or food that may at any time come close to your device?
Or, you could put it into a box that by sheer coincidence has the same effect as a Faraday cage.
Good summation; most have forgotten of are simply carrying on. I will not forget. Back when Twitter was an actual resource, I tracked the Covid oppression through myriad accounts, especially video accounts, of thuggish treatment of citizens by Australia, NZ, England, and on and on. Police beating elderly people, Antifa and BLM given free reign to terrorize the “makers”. Remember BLM showing up en masse at White restaurants, forcing Whites through fear to raise the fist? I haven’t forgotten. I could go on, but you are correct – leftist have chummed the waters and they like what they saw. More to come.
Ayn Rand’s novels are great inspirational examples of non-compliance, inspirational because the characters in them are mostly larger-than-life, impossible to emulate verbatim. But the spirit points one in the right direction. The Fountainhead is a good start i.m.o. if Atlas Shrugged is too heavy a volume. Her writings are often disliked by those who align themselves with a major religious faith because of her outspoken atheism, but I haven’t found any of that in her novels. She does not go about spewing hatred against people who choose to believe something, only those who would coerce others because of it. And that’s the spirit we are aspiring for, isn’t it?
Well yes, but her principal characters are so smug and self-congratulatory, and the “workers” so denigrated, it’s hard to take her seriously.
I prefer the being the monkey that throws wrenches into the machines to make them stop.
Don’t comply. Say NO whenever and wherever you can. When this is not possible, be silent and don’t say you approve, or even that you are indifferent. I know this is not enough, but is the it least we can do. Let them know, in every way you can, that not all people are fools…
Sorry. It should be “I know this is not enough, but it is the least we can do.”.
The characters are all overdrawn and reduced to almost singular traits, like comic-strip heroes. Her novels aren’t great as novels, they serve as containers for her message. It works if you approach them with the right expectations. The strict libertarian line just upsets most conservatives just as much as the “progressive” civilization destroyers she lived to suffer in her Russian homeland. This points to a more fundamental flaw in human nature most of us don’t like to be confronted with.
Oops, must have hit the wrong button, this was meant in response to Mark H’s comment comment here:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2023/02/resistance-begins-with-i-will-not-comply/#comment-588101
“… the only way we can be distinguished is by our failure to obey. That’s not always obvious now that masking is optional, so we tend to fade into the background.”
I often find myself missing the days when my wife and I were the only unmasked shoppers. But if and when the tyranny returns, and in worse forms, I pray I have the courage to further resist.