Living Well Is The Best Revenge

When I said the other day that the only way we’re going to win this war is through peaceful non-compliance one or two people on our side (we’re the Goodies, by the way) got quite angry.

Some got cross because it sounds just too passive, too insufficiently punitive, too ‘trust the plan’.

Others, tiresomely, used it as an excuse to play the class card. “It’s all very well for you stuck up toffs with your rolling acres, armies of gardeners and under gardeners, and limitless resources to quit your jobs and move off the grid. But us horny-handed ordinary folk with no gardens and no money blah blah blah…” they went, more or less.

Both groups have got the wrong end of the stick and I’ll explain why.

First, I’ll address the Storm the Barricades crew. Look, I’m totally with you in spirit. I’m prepared to die for this one. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, and all that. The future, if we lose this one, will be unendurable.

Furthermore, I fully recognise that the people we’re up against are some of the most evil, monstrous, despicable bastards that ever raped and murdered a child while off their faces on adrenochrome. Of course I want to see their heads on spikes and their quartered bodies displayed in gibbets across the land as much as the next forgiving Christian.

But here’s the deal. Violence is what they want. It’s part of the plan. Problem, reaction, solution. They want to provoke an uprising which will enable them to take out all the rebel leaders - using precisely the playbook which was used to put down the Peasants’ Revolt, when Wat Tyler, John Ball and so on were put to death pour decourager les autres.

And they can do this very easily because they have a monopoly of force, as do most governments around the world - and by design rather than accident. Most nations aren’t lucky enough to have had Founding Fathers who understood that all governments, given half the chance will tend towards tyranny, and who thus created the Second Amendment.

Also, suppose the bloody revolution some of us fantasise about actually succeeds. Just look at history and see what happens after bloody revolutions. The mob that replaces the regime is usually at least as bad as its predecessor. Who wants to live in Terror-era France or Bolshevik Russia?

Now let me address the Class Warriors. Yes, I concede that what you are saying is trivially true; that is, if you are, say, Lord Rothschild it’s going to be a lot easier to withdraw inside your moat and live off the produce of your splendid estates and to avoid the attention of the authorities than it would be, say, if you live in a Hackney council block like the ones in Top Boy.

But my counter to that point is: no one is claiming otherwise. The point about peaceful non-compliance is…

….well, I’m not sure I can put it better than this passage from a book I happen to be reading. The paragraphs jumped out at me last night, unexpectedly and serendipitously - almost as if God knew the article I was planning to write and wanted to give me a helping hand.

The book is called I Was A Stranger. It’s by John Hackett, a brigade commander at Arnhem who was wounded, spent many months being sheltered by the Dutch behind enemy lines, and eventually made it back home after many extraordinary adventures which make you marvel at what a man can achieve when possessed of sufficient faith, pluck and quick wittedness. [He was saved by Christians and kept himself occupied by reading the Bible, which I believe is why he made it out safely.]

Anyway, here’s the key passage, which concerns how the Dutch under German Occupation managed to govern themselves using a parallel system to the official one.

I knew that food resources were slender in Holland and rationing was strict. How, I asked, was it possible for the family to feed me? This led them to explain to me something of the organisation of the resistance in the country. First of all, I had to understand that there were many men in hiding, mostly because they refused to work for the enemy. These were called ‘onderduikers’ or under divers. My hosts were too tactful to emphasise it, but I was myself clearly a very heavy undercover indeed! For the under divers a rationing system had been set up parallel to the official one. In order to minimise distortions in food distribution ration cards were stolen where possible, but when enough could not be stolen they were secretly printed. Control of underground rationing was pretty well as strict as if the system were run with all the weight and sanction of government.

For most of the Dutch, indeed, the complex system of Resistance movements (if it could at that time yet be called a system) with the guidance of the more solid citizens and the support of the clergy, was all the government they recognised, though the orders of the German-controlled administration were obeyed when there was no alternative.

I’ve italicised the last paragraph because I think it’s the most important bit. Hackett’s observation is in some ways a reiteration of Jesus’s ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s’. And also, perhaps, to my least favourite passage in the New Testament, Romans 13.

Trying to find an accommodation with arbitrary tyranny, in other words, is not a new thing. As I understand it, that passage from Romans I find so objectionable ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation,' is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Paul was perhaps trying to spare the readers of his epistle the risk of exposing them to the near-certain death if they took on, head on, the might of the entrenched Roman system. And if so he surely had a point. It would be the same now if we stormed Downing Street. We’d get a lot of frustration off our chest and it would be glorious - up until the moment we got ourselves shot or imprisoned and the government implemented martial law.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe the entire system is irredeemably corrupt. There can be no peace or justice till it is destroyed utterly - but this is going to happen anyway because the structure is so rotten and worm-ridden it will eventually collapse under its own weight, not to mention its own absurdity and evil.

But given that those of us who are Awake are best placed (because we are last compromised) to rebuild our New Eden we will be of more use alive than dead. This goes against my personal instincts. My heart is with the Forlorn Hope storming the ramparts at Badajoz or Ciudad Rodrigo, not the shirkers to the rear. But - here’s another thing I learned from I Was A Stranger - the plans that tend to work are the result of cool consideration rather than hotheaded desperation.

Back to the point about: “It’s all very well for people with land and money…” Sure. I agree. It’s about doing what we can individually, depending on our circumstances. Some will have the capacity to move fully off the grid - and good luck to them. Many others won’t and it will be up to them to decide which forms of non-compliance suit their special circumstances and which will do them (or, more importantly, the cause) more harm than good.

I like that proverb, popularised by George Herbert: ‘Living well is the best revenge.’

Amen. I hate what they’ve done to us and what they continue to do to us. At the same time, I do find it piquant, amusing and invigorating to live in an age where successfully going abroad for a summer holiday - or even using homeopathic and naturopathic medicine rather than allopathic medicine - has been transformed into an heroic act of defiance.