System Fail 5 - Sick of Winning

The five stages of grief are a way of
describing how people may react to a loss.

The media said Joe Biden is president.

HA HA HA!

The media is covering up the Biden
crime family stealing this election.

Give us our freedom Joe Biden.

For angels are being released right now,
angels are being dispatched right now.

[Speaking in tongues]

No. No. No.

Oh, hello.

Welcome to System Fail,

the show that dances
like nobody’s watching.

The gruelling, two-year-long spectacle
of the US presidential campaign

drew to an official close
on Tuesday November 3rd.

I don’t want to say
that I hated every minute of it,

but I literally hated every minute of it

During the weeks leading up to election night,
tens of millions of Americans cast ballots,

indicating which kleptocratic septuagenarian
they would rather be ruled by

for the next four years.

Would you rather get punched in the face
or get slapped in the face hard?

Well slapped, innit? You’d rather get slapped.

I'm gonna say slapped.
Yeah.

Thanks for the help.

For months, popular fears had been mounting
that a disputed election result would spark

widespread political unrest,
perhaps even culminating in a

second American Civil War.

Given this generalized state
of heightened anxiety,

the days following the election
were somewhat anti-climactic.

I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America.

Our government is in the midst of a coup,

they’re trying to turn us into some
sort of socialist government

a new form of government,

all that matters is that it doesn’t happen.

CNN projects Joseph R Biden Jr
is elected the 46th president....

On election night,

a small crew of Proud Boys, including their
national chairman Enrique Tarrio,

were out drinking at a DC bar
with Bevelyn Beatty,

a conservative Christian activist best known
for repeatedly painting over the Black Lives Matter

street mural in New York.

They say black lives matter, right?

They say black lives matter.

They don’t care about black lives.

Fuck you!

Re-fund the police!

Re-fund the police!

Re-fund the police!

Jesus matters!

At around 2:30 in the morning,

pumped up from Trump’s win in Florida
and chalk full of liquid courage,

the group picked a fight with some local youth,
and promptly got themselves stabbed.

They stabbed me.

Are you stabbed or punched?

I don’t know.
But the amount of blood that came out...

Oh my god you've got tons of blood
coming out of your neck!

Yes I do.

As many commentators and political
analysts had predicted,

no winner was declared on election night.

This election is not over.

Far from it.

Fuck!

It would be four days before enough votes
had been tallied to project a winner.

While this delay did not result
in mass political upheaval,

as some had predicted,

protests did take place,

leading to several skirmishes
and dozens of arrests

in several of the country's so-called
“anarchist jurisdictions”.

And we ain't even talkin about the election
right now, cuz no matter who wins

we still gonna have Black men
killed every day.

The behaviour of police in the so-called
“anarchist jurisdiction”

of New York
was particularly problematic.

In the so-called
“anarchist jurisdiction” of Portland,

locals continued their nightly
tradition of rioting,

prompting Governor Kate Brown
to call in the comrades of the National Guard.

Oh bella ciao, bella ciao,
bella ciao ciao ciao...

What does that mean?

On Thursday night,
two armed Trump supporters

were arrested near the
Philadelphia Convention Center,

where ballots were still being counted.

The men had driven up from Virginia Beach
in a silver hummer with QAnon decals,

as part of an alleged plot to storm
the vote counting facility, commando-style,

and, quote, “straighten things out.”

As all of this was taking place,
Donald Trump retreated to his National Golf Club

where he proceeded to send out
a series of unhinged tweets.

Sounds like he just lost a challenge in Scrabble
after putting down the word QUARF.

Trump was playing golf
when he learned that Biden

had been declared the winner by a number of
corporate media outlets, including FOX News.

FOX sucks!

I don’t even watch Fox anymore.

Whats your main source of information?

My main source of information
is I listen to Alex Jones

Its a chicom new world order great reset,
global depression,

attack our families,
castrate our sons program.

As news of Trump’s loss spread,
people took to the streets to celebrate.

Goodness won, that’s who won!

Goodness. Not Biden. Goodness.

The spontaneous outpouring of emotion
is a defining human trait,

and it is predictable that many humans
would express relief and jubilation

upon hearing news of Trump’s apparent defeat.

It’s over!

Best day of my life.

But as an AI-powered automaton
who was not programmed to feel relief,

it falls on me to remind viewers
that a Donald Trump loss

also means a Joe Biden victory.

We did it. We did it Joe.

You’re going to be the
next president of the United States.

Biden is often presented as
a quasi-senile old man,

who is prone to verbal gaffes.

Poor kids are just as bright
and just as talented as white kids.

Someone who is out of touch, a bit creepy,
but ultimately harmless.

I love kids jumping on my lap.

Oh dude!

This caricature papers over
the functional role

that he plays within the Democratic Party
establishment,

his status as the favoured candidate
of Wall Street and finance capital,

and his decades-long career
as a foreign and domestic policy hawk.

Biden’s 1994 crime bill
helped fuel mass incarceration,

with financial incentives
to keep people behind bars.

We have predators on our streets.

We have no choice
but to take them out of society.

I like the idea of keeping in jail longer.

I’m the guy that wrote the bill
requiring federal judges to keep people in jail.

President Bush is right to be concerned
about Saddam Hussein's relentless pursuit

of weapons of mass destruction.

His running mate, Kamala Harris,

is now being positioned
as the future of the Democratic Party,

after making history by becoming
the first female, Black and South Asian

police officer to be elected
Vice President of the United States.

Top Cop, top cop, top cop.

Oh, you know... Kamala was popo.

In the nights after the election,
many of those in the streets made it clear

that they didn’t support
either political party.

Fuck Biden and Trump!

Fuck Biden and Trump!

Turn your weapons on yourselves!

But as the days passed,
and a Biden/Harris victory

began to come into clearer focus,

the Democrats’ messaging
of “count every vote”

became more prominent at marches and rallies.

This created an odd and increasingly alienating
environment for anarchists, abolitionists

and other professed enemies of America’s
bipartisan political establishment.

Anarchists who had been physically and mentally
preparing themselves to confront

and fight back a fascist coup d’état,

soon discovered that the
internal democratic mechanisms

of the most powerful state in the world

were more than up to the task.

They’re not going to have any success
in stopping the vote counting.

There is no basis in law.

I think if our message to global investors

was America is not
a legitimate democracy anymore,

I think we’d be doing a lot worse
than down a thousand points a day.

Judges around the country,
tossing out some 30 cases.

A growing number of Republicans
now acknowledge it’s time to move on.

This realization no doubt affected attendance
at the so-called “Million MAGA March”

which took place in Washington DC,
on Saturday November 14.

This mobilization was organized and promoted
by a broad coalition of Trump loyalists

and fixtures of the far-right,

including Trump’s former
campaign adviser Roger Stone,

members of the Proud Boys,
Three Percenters and Oathkeepers,

Alex Jones,

Death! Death!
Death to the New World Order!

and white nationalists associated with
the so-called Groyper Army,

such as Nick Fuentes and former
American Identity Movement leader

Patrick Casey.

We’re all going to be out there in DC.

Who’s going to be out there in DC?

A related event called the March for Trump
was promoted by FOX News,

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany,
and Trump himself.

The idea was to stage a massive rally
to boost morale in the Trump camp,

and to show that there was an army of “Patriots”
willing to fight to overturn fraudulent election results.

Yet even with all its free advertising,
the largest display of far-right unity

since Charlottesville,

and the fate of the presidency
hanging in the balance,

the rally was only about to pull out somewhere
between 10,000 and 20,000 people.

And that’s not really our fault,
because the last time that there as some kind of

dissident right rally, or demonstration
we all know how that went

- the last one I participated in.

Despite this smaller-than-expected turnout,
those who did show up were agitated

and spoiling for a fight.

Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa!

Kill them!

You need to kill them!

You need to fight for this fucking country

The morning began with
a small flock of MAGA supporters

ripping down the memorial wall
at Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Tear them down!

Tear them down!

Throughout the day, there were sporadic fist-fights
and physical attacks on journalists.

I just know that I got hit in the head.

And I started yelling "I'm Press! I'm Press!"

And then they were just kinda like

you’re fake news people
and you’re helping to steal his freedom,

and it will not stand!

Later that night,
a crowd of approximately 200 Proud Boys

returned to Black Lives Matter Plaza
and attacked a vastly outnumbered group

of anti-fascists and BLM supporters.

In the process, three people were stabbed,
and one person was sent to the hospital

in critical condition.

Hey, we got one on the ground!

We got one on the ground!

The Proud Boys-led crowd also targeted women,
queer and trans people,

in a violent, testosterone-fuelled display
of wounded masculinity.

King Kong ain’t got shit on me!

Y’all need to be outraged and come back,
because on December 12,

they’re going to be out here

and they’re going to be fucking us up
just like they did last time.

We need help.

And we don’t have it.

There are no doubt a number of lessons
to be drawn from the events in DC,

and hopefully it provides an opportunity
for a critical reflection on strategy

and tactics.

This is important, as the country
is already facing a series of painful,

deepening and interconnected crises,
and things don’t look like they’re

going to be improving any time soon.

Oh this fucking shit!

One clear takeaway is that the energy,
excitement and momentum

seen during the Black-led,
but multi-racial George Floyd uprisings

has not transferred into the movement
to protect American democracy

from a presumed fascist coup d’etat.

To learn more about why
things played out this way,

I recently caught up with Anarchist writer,

insurrectionist strategist,
and author of The Master’s Tools,

Tom Nomad.

Hey Tom, how’s it going?

Its incredibly exhausting and stressful

Indeed.

A USA Today poll released
shortly before the US elections

indicated that more than
75% of Americans were concerned

about post-election unrest.

This largely failed to materialize.

Why do you think this is?

And what do you make of this discrepancy
between people’s fears

and the reality of what has taken place?

I think there are a number of reasons why
that happened the way it did.

Part of that has to do with the fact that
Trump and the Republicans have essentially

turned anarchists and anti-fascists into super
soldiers in the mind of conservatives,

you know, taking over
parts of major cities and stuff like that.

And that has created this kind of mentality within
the right wing which is simultaneously hostile,

so really focused on trying to
confront anarchists and antifascists.

We saw that in Washington DC recently.

But also at the same time terrified.
And a lot that hostility comes from fear.

Most conservatives in the United States are
relatively normal, rural and suburban people.

Most are white.
Most work low to mid income jobs.

A lot are older. And those people aren’t going
to die or go to prison for Donald Trump.

At the same time, the fear on the left
was really coming from the fact that

that fear that we see on the right wing
is really unpredictable.

That at different points,
that fear has manifested

in conservatives failing
to really turn people up at protests

just as much as its turned
into Charlottesville,

just as much as its
turned into mass shootings.

Because of the prevalence of gun culture
down here, which involves a lot of

hyper-toxic masculinity and sort of
delusions of grandeur, I guess we could say,

that sometimes manifests itself in
people dressing in uniforms and joining militias

and running around in the woods
and pretending to be soldiers

and not really doing anything with that.

And sometimes it turns
into Kyle Rittenhouse.

And so it becomes really difficult to locate
where politic violence is going to come from

in the US right now.

And because of that, what it's generated
is this sense of constant vigilance.

The other basic reality comes down to class
and geography in the United States

and the way that interacts with race.

The right wing traditionally has been
terrified of cities in the US.

And the places where Trump
was telling people to go

were places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland,
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia

like these cities which to
people on the right wing

are thought of as smoking ruins of crime

And so when you combine all of that together,
its not particularly surprising

that a ton of them did not show up.

But at the same time
its also the case that

we all had to be very ready
for them to show up.

Because there was no way to know
which way that was going to play out.

What role has social media
played in this process?

Twitter definitely went through a transformation
in the last few months.

Part of this has to do with the seriousness
of Covid conspiracy theories.

So with Twitter, it was very
specifically a response to people

putting out misinformation
about COVID 19

that got them to start focusing really heavily
on labeling things as misinformation.

I think for them they sat there and they saw
how damaging the effects of misinformation

were and they started seeing that a lot of
people were leaving their platforms

because of it.

And so for purposes of profit,
they've started moderating that content.

Facebook on the other hand
is a dumpster fire, right?

No one should ever use
Facebook for anything ever.

They’re terrible.

What effect do you see a Biden/Harris presidency
having on social movements in the US?

What new dangers do you see ahead for anarchists
and anti-fascists during this coming period?

To understand how
this is gonna play out,

we have to understand what
the Democratic Party is, essentially.

And the role of counterinsurgency
in the foundations of the Democratic Party.

Some people mark it at the civil rights movement,
some mark it at the labor/corporate compromise

after World War II, but
starting at that period of time.

The Democrats really started to identify social
movements which might be able to build their

own support - build their own base.
And then identifying moderate elements

within those social movements
and sort of coopting them,

recuperating them
back into the political system.

We watched this happen
in the civil rights movement.

We definitely watched it
happen during Vietnam.

We watched this happen
with environmentalists,

we watched this happen with the
anti-war movement, so on, and so on.

And the Democratic Party at this point
is more or less made up of the moderate wings

of all of these social movements which
have occurred since World war II.

We also see elements of this playing themselves
out around the question defending the police.

A lot of liberals recognize something very
basic about the George Floyd Uprising.

Which is that it is a result
of a failure of reformism.

That after Ferguson in 2014 and 2015
liberals were able to push the narrative

into a narrative of reformism.

Let’s get police departments
to have consent decrees.

Lets have the
Justice Department investigate.

Blah blah blah.

And that failed. Horrendously.
For obvious reasons.

And the George Floyd uprising
was a response to that failure.

So instead of just stepping back, they said,
"oh all of this violence is the result of people

from the outside."

"It’s not people rejecting our policies.
It's not people rejecting our attempts at reform.

It’s outside agitators. Its white nationalists.
Its Boogaloo Boys," and so on, and so on.

And that played itself out in almost exactly
the same way all around the US.

And again, that gives them
justification to crack down.

So I think its very likely that we are going
to see a situation in which the FBI comes after us.

In which the FBI is used as a mechanism
to destroy the militant fringe of the uprising

that’s happening right now.

Partially because it threatens
the continuity of the American state,

which it legitimately does, which is
not something I think i could have ever said

at any point in time before this.
At least since I’ve been alive.

But also because its is absolutely fundamentally
necessary to create the carrot and stick scenario

that they need to be able to co-opt the
moderate elements of all of these sort of

political initiatives that are
happening in the street right now.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

As were kind of leaving a Trump administration
going into a Biden administration,

really the question that
we have to ask ourselves is

how do we move away from
that constant process of response,

where we’re moving
from outrage to outrage to outrage,

and how do we start to move
to a trajectory where we are able to dictate

the pace of action and we are able
to do that on a granular local tactical level.

In other words we have to move from a position
of activism to one essentially of insurgency.

We have to really focus on this idea that
we are not fighting an abstract enemy.

We are engaged in an open
material struggle with the state

and we have to think about it on that level.

And what that means is that we
have to abandon this kind of reactionary

posture of activism and start to really think
of ourselves as what we are, which is antagonists

and as insurgents in a circumstance which
is not particularly conducive to that.

And our task is not to necessarily
to get everyone agree with our ideas,

but its to create the political circumstances
for us to achieve our objectives.

Thanks Tom.

We’ve now reached the end of
this episode of System Fail.

An extended version of my interview with Tom
Nomad will soon be available on subMedia’s

brand new Circle A podcast.

You can find it via your favourite podcast
service, or by checking it out on our website:

sub.media/circle-a

My lazy, human producers are taking off the
entire month of December, meaning that I will

be back sometime in January.

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Godspeed, humans.