Tactics for Toppling Trump: A Strategy of Invited Repression
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
— Frederick Douglas (1857)
Both the peace movement and the civil rights movement sang, marched, waved signs, gave speeches and cheered the eloquence of their speakers. But both movements included some brave souls who were deliberately provocative and prepared to engage in civil disobedience, following a strategy of invited repression. By this we mean a combination of mass demonstrations along with disruptive acts that provoke authorities to engage in the repression of dissidents and peaceful protestors, to the horror and dismay of the population at large. The embrace of this strategy moved both causes forward, just as did massive marches on DC.
Call it creative non-violence if you want but nothing could be better for recruiting more supporters. Yes, it is awful but we need to bring back or reinvent the tactics of Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery, of sit-ins and Freedom Riders. That’s where we are. If not we are blandly militant supplicants politely asking for less cruelty and more justice, please.
By a strategy of invited repression we mean not by tyrants against the people but by the people against corrupt civil authorities. Provoking armed and violent overreaction is useful and necessary, even among non-violent protestors. Give Trump the confrontation he craves. Confrontation causes moral authority and legitimacy to leak from the state until it is gone, either quickly or slowly. Some citizens will be radicalized, others repulsed. But it becomes obvious to all that the government can not rule without the flagrant and unnecessary use of force.
The Freedom Riders and their bus rides through the segregated south stuck a finger in the eyes of racist White southerners. At least three died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. The bus boycotts in Birmingham and Montgomery Alabama enraged Whites, who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church to exact revenge. The Berrigan brothers and a small group of activists broke into the Selective Service office in Catonsville, MD in 1969 and poured fake blood over the draft records, inviting the government to put them on trial. In virtually all these cases the original act was non-violent but it provoked a violent reaction that delegitimized not the protestors but the reactionaries. While being beaten and arrested they chanted “the whole world is watching,” because it was.
The No Kings mobilization was a brilliant success, but did it successfully challenge Trump’s legitimacy and authority? A huge march in DC would surely provoke Trump into taking ill-advised and unpopular action against peaceful protesters. He would order it shut down, which is well beyond the abilities of the National Guard, DC’s Metropolitan Police Force or even regular Army troops. Let Trump try and legitimize this physical repression. It will produce martyrs and outrage. Let him invoke the Insurrection Act or other powers he asserts. Flush him out of friendly fascism and into the darker, more malevolent arena of confrontation by tear gas, mace, tasers, guns to intimidate and fire at protesters. Think of all the ancillary crises this would cause. Would the DC police force use weapons on protestors? Would regular Army troops shoot their fellow citizens?
Yes, a strategy of invited repression will cause harm to individuals, but not to our cause. Angry clashes with peaceful Americans exercising their Constitutional rights will accelerate the leakage of legitimacy from Trump’s regime.
And you know how sex workers, mobsters, even hackers adopt a pseudonym for professional purposes? If you come to DC to protest keep your real name to yourself. The goal is to frustrate the state’s ability to round up dissidents for trial and incarceration. Or wear a mask to obscure your face. Any number of agencies with police power — of which there are more than 25 in DC — could be called upon to hold dissidents in custody and subsequently prosecute them.
Let the figures of authority show show that only repressive tactics will keep him in office once he has demonstrably lost the support of the American people. Trump will once again abuse his authority but it will come at a cost. A majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s actions. That number has a lot of room for growth and the more provocative we are the faster his support will decline.
