George Monbiot: There’s no solidarity in ‘sovereign citizen’ protests — only incoherent rage
The “sovereign citizen”
theory is a powerful current running through these movements. Its
adherents insist that they stand above the law. Some of them refuse to buy
vehicle licences, or pay taxes or fines. They believe they are exempt from
public health measures, such as lockdowns and vaccine passes. In other words,
they arrogate to themselves sovereign powers that not even the monarch enjoys...
There’s no solidarity in ‘sovereign citizen’ protests — only incoherent rage
When a group in black fatigues called Alpha Men Assemble began practising paramilitary manoeuvres in a park in Staffordshire at the beginning of this year, it looked pretty threatening. These men, we were warned, were about to launch an insurrection against vaccines and in favour of “the sovereign citizen”. Since then, silence. It wouldn’t be surprising if the group had dispersed: a society of self-proclaimed alphas is bound to fall apart.
This was just one example of the incoherent protests now sweeping rich, English-speaking nations. Others include the truck blockade in Ottawa and its duplicates in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and the angry men outside the British parliament, waiting to pounce on passing politicians. By incoherent protest, I mean gatherings whose aims are simultaneously petty and grandiose. Their immediate objectives are small and often risible, attacking such minor inconveniences as face masks. The underlying aims are open-ended, massive and impossible to fulfil. Not just politically impossible, but mathematically impossible. Listening to these men (and most of them are men), it seems that every one of them wants to be king….
George Lakey on Capitalism, public health and the Nordic model
Can Capitalism and Democracy
Coexist?
WHITNEY WEBB: Wall Street now monetizes nature
Walter Benjamin: Capitalism
as Religion (1921)
Noam Chomsky:
Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance)
Society
of the Spectacle / 'इमेज'
- 'Image': A Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid
Ravi Bhoothalingam: Coronavirus and the
Mandate of Heaven
Gastón Gordillo: Nazi Architecture As
Affective Weapon
