https://rebellion.earth


Roger Hallam

The mathematical proof of the necessity for revolution and the depravity
of reform in the context of Endtimes.

A bit of a mouthful but hey...

I am happy to publicly say I have a soft spot for Donnachadh McCarthy
[1]. Over the last few years, he has periodically laid into me on social
media with varying degrees of justification. But happily, I am from a
generation and culture that looks upon getting offended as a necessary
part of democratic discourse. So it's all fine by me.

I raise this because he, and others, make an elementary error about the
strategy (and moral necessity) of attacking reformism – the ideology of
present-day liberals - in our present moment. He believes we are all in
this together and should work together; let's focus our attacks on the
bad guys rather than attacking each other and related arguments.

We are not and we shouldn't.

I want to be quite precise in this post. When I am promoting my views
about the necessity and justification for a revolution I am not doing it
for some lazy, machismo, anti-social or generally unpleasant reason.

First, let's create some definitions. Reformism is the creation of
political change within an existing political regime. Revolution is the
creation of a new regime – which can be nonviolent or violent in the
historical record. Of course, there are always fuzzy edges but there is
a clear separation here between these two strategies.

Second I want to make clear I am not against nor for either reform or
revolution as a matter of dogmatic principle. The argument is entirely
contextual. 20 years ago, for instance, I would have said the prospect
of revolution in western societies was ridiculous, while now I think it
is inevitable. And I have, pragmatically and ethically, a lot of respect
for our reformist traditions, and I've read enough about revolutions to
know they can be – well, tricky. This is not the point here.

The point is this. There is a particular context where reform becomes
both strategically and morally disastrous and there is one viable path:
revolution.

Consider this analogy. Your car is heading toward a cliff at a momentum
unit of 20. There are four of you – two revolutionaries (pushing back at
6) and two reformists (pushing at 3) – the total unit of push back is
18. The car rolls over the cliff. The outcome is binary – either the car
stops or it goes over the cliff. There are only two outcomes. To stop
the car you need 4 revolutionaries: 4x6= 24 – greater than 20 to get the
car to stop.

The situation becomes direr in the following context: 4 reformists are
pushing against the car (4x3=12). Everyone who is honest enough can see
they are going to fail. Think about COP26 with 3 years to save the
world. Four revolutionaries are on hand to stop the car (4x6=24) but
they cannot get to the car because the limited space to stop the vehicle
is occupied by the reformists (see my previous post about Greenpeace and
Oxfam getting all the tickets/space at Glastonbury).

You can see the point. In Endtimes, that is, when you are objectively
about to lose everything forever, the unavoidable strategic and ethical
logic points to only one course of action – to remove the reformists
from the field of play. If we had fifty years then we could all be
friends. If we have three, and we do only have three, then it's us or them.

Concretely speaking – everyone has to support and engage in a nonviolent
revolutionary process – that is civil resistance (to the extent of
getting over 20) or be the subject to direct action and moral exposure
to get them out of the way. This is what being in a climate emergency
actually means.

It's not that intelligent analysts in the reformist space aren't fully
aware of the situation. A top Greenpeace strategist confessed privately
to me that the only viable thing to do was "drive GP into the state"
rather than engaging in "managed defeat". It's the age-old routine of
incumbent power trumping moral responsibility.

In other words, in 2022 it's revolution or certain death – because it
just is. Reformism delays things for a year or two. Reformism dupes our
young people with comforting fairy tales as we send them into the
furnaces –"carbon neutral" "net zero", and all the rest of the
self-evident bullshit. As Johan Rostrum says 2C will lead to 3C, and you
don't need to be a climate expert to know that 3C leads to 4C.

It's not that civil resistance leading to a revolutionary change of the
regime is bound to work, it's that reformism is 100% going to fail.

Do you get it? If you do, you are a particularly intelligent or morally
sensitive person or gifted with a certain moral courage that enables you
to see the reality before it blasts itself into the face of the 99% who
cannot do the maths, or whose privilege stops them from accepting it.

In the literature, on the historical sociology of revolution, the key
objective of the revolutionaries is to destroy the reformist political
space. This is structural as well as moral. This is what Martin Luther
King was getting at in Letter from a Birmingham Jail when he said the
white moderates were the biggest block to black liberation because they
hold the space on pushing the car back, but they push it with one finger
while making sure the radicals and revolutionaries don't get a look in.

Throughout history these Endtimes – when it's all or nothing to make
system change happen, the "Ending" has been limited in both time and
place. A particular part of the world and a particular period of history.

This time we face the Endtime of all Endtimes. It is infinite: the
collapse of the whole global ecological/social system effectively
forever. This is why reformism in 2022, is infinitely stupid and
infinitely morally depraved.

Strange as it may seem it's this maths which animates the extreme
emotion which is now needed to make the transformation we need. In order
to stop the unimaginable suffering, we are allowing to be imposed on others.

So offence being taken at my revolutionary rage is the last of my worries.

To contact civil resistance groups around the world: this is my email linkring2021@protonmail.com