on the consequences of resistance: making submission irresistable

The goal of fascist violence is to make submission to the overextending hands of domination and consumption both compulsory and irresistible to the masses, and more importantly, to make resistance hopeless, futile and dangerous. We see this clearly in our analysis of the expansion of AI and data centers which seek to commodify and destabilize local stewardship over land and access to clean, drinkable water and in the latest acts of aggression towards Venezuelan, Cuban and Iranian sovereignty.  Through an internationalist lens, the narrative of the “inevitable, positive expansion” of consumption– made possible through our willingness to cosign the integration of data centers, hyper-surveillance, AI and technofascism into our lives– is revealed to be a lie. Simultaneously, the rhetoric of our “shared responsibility” to restore order within the “unsalvageable, uncompliant, and dangerous” regimes of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela is revealed to be a spectacle created to manipulate the consciousness of the masses into complicity for geopolitical violence and co-optation. This insidious logic is designed to manufacture our consent for the acceleration of interventionist, imperialist and ecological domination over natural resources and global anti-imperialist communities. 

The god-complex of the elite ruling class claims hegemonic control over all of the earth’s resources– whether that be human labour, oil, water, land, clean air, food, or sunlight. Therefore, in the eyes of fascists, universal control and abuse are "birthrights" to those who can afford it and denial of these “birthrights” is a crime, punishable by death. And this is what we are seeing before our eyes– collective punishment, starvation, and genocidal intimidation. In the last two months we have witnessed the escalation of US-backed political and humanitarian crises through the co-optation and disregard of the Iranian people’s right to political, social and economic sovereignty, compounded with the destabilization of Venezuelan autonomy over how, and with whom they choose to trade oil and develop political alliances. Both of these acts of violence have positioned the US well for the actualization of genocidal policies, restricting oil from Cuba, in hopes to literally starve Cubans and their leaders into submission– a public punishment for daring to choose socialism, collective accountability, and humanity over capitalist expansion. 

Within the belly of the beast, our capacity for struggle and resistance is compromised by technofascist, energy hoarders who have created irreversible depletions to the water that sustains our lives. In times like these, our steadfastness is tested as we witness the extrajudicial killings of Venezuelan, Iranian, and Cuban military personnel and citizens for having the audacity to dream of an existence outside of western hegemonic control, which ultimately holds a dual function: 1) to desensitize us to the deaths of our comrades and 2) to scream “THESE ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF RESISTANCE” to a population already prone to having no inherent backbone and which has yet to develop a cohesive, strategic direction away from capitalism. Whether we are here in the belly of the beast or abroad, we are constantly reminded of our position under the boot of imperialism. The headline remains the same: submission must be irresistible, resistance must be unfathomable. It is these politics of intimidation that enforce a relationship of exploitation, uneven power geometries and concessions that are designed to ultimately manufacture consent for imperialism, policing, hyper-surveillance and genocide. 

It is our responsibility to consider seriously, the links between our struggles to develop local community stewardship over resources within the belly of the beast in conjunction with how the US positions us divisively against our Black, Brown, and Indigenous community members outside of the western world. The idea that “we” are separate from “them” and that the “core” is somehow independent and unchanged by the “periphery” must be dismantled within us. These attempts to separate humanity from itself are used to stifle our budding solidarity with resistance movements, practitioners, revolutionaries, healers, and cultural workers who are developing the tools to manifest our dreams of self-determination, liberation, and ecological co-creation in contemporary reality. These attempts to divide us exist because they do not want us to know, and furthermore, to believe that it is possible to live outside of the bounds of hyper-consumption and violence. 

The pressing need for autonomy over our minds, bodies, land, resources and relationships to empire must be at the forefront of our struggle towards self-determination and liberation. This requires an undeniable rejection of the neo-colonial, imperialist and capitalist violence which manifests itself as an omnipresent, erosive disease that permeates the air, the water, the land, and our ability to dream of a better, different world. Our task is to make resistance irresistible, and to learn from and defend the sovereignty and rights of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people who are brave enough to sacrifice their comforts for the possibility of the world we envision. Our responsibility is to become not only allies but active participants in the global struggle to end US imperialism, fascism, and ecocide. This is the only way that we actualize our capacity to resist, and build the muscle of moral and political steadfastness that becomes unwavering in the face of distraction, intimidation, isolation, misinformation, and discomfort. This is how we begin to make the beast obsolete.