A SIMPLE DEFIANCE: My Latest ‘Hot Type’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement documents global Resistance efforts that changed the course of history
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Today’s Hot Type column just dropped in Byline Supplement, and here is a link to it:
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Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: A Simple Defiance Against Trump
Columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda on historic examples of Resistance which must inspire the fightback against the incoming US administration
As a student of history and a cinephile, I am well prepared for this war.
I have seen Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows a dozen times. The French director who was part of the French Resistance uses a 1943 book by Joseph Kessel as the foundation of the story of the underground movement to thwart the Nazis in Vichy France. Although the 1969 film is brutal and realistic, fascism isn’t something that should be sugarcoated.
In addition, I learned so much from The Battle of Algiers, a 1966 documentary-style film, co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, that tells the story of how the rebels during the Algerian War wrestled back control of their country from the French government in North Africa. The film is used as a training exercise by the US military and law enforcement.
There’s a moment in The Battle of Algiers where a rebel leader is under media assault for a picnic basket bomb detonated in a café frequented by Europeans, and he tells the gathered reporters:
“Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.”
I think it was in that moment I understood that, often, what we see in the international news is the poor fighting back against oppression. Looking back now, I also understand that what Western nations have been enduring is the digital carpet-bombing of the minds of their citizens by hostile powers, using social media as the weapon’s delivery system, to make people overthrow their own governments.
As we watch the decapitation of American democracy in real time, I find myself turning to the scholars of history who have guided my writing to date.
“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.”—Timothy Snyder, Lesson 18, On Tyranny
Because those of us rooted in reality and history watch in horror as Donald Trump parades a cast of pro-Kremlin ghouls as potential cabinet picks, it is comforting to read the words of Snyder, a Yale Professor who has written multiple books about authoritarianism and Eastern European history.
“Taken together, Trump’s candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government,” wrote Snyder in his Thinking About Substack magazine, titled appropriately: Decapitation Strike.
As he described the machinations of regime change, he also wrote about “a simple defiance.”
“This is no longer a post-electoral moment,” he wrote. “It is a pre-catastrophic moment… if it all burns down, we burn too. It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen. Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure.”
Within that simple defiance, I am, of course, moved by Ukrainian voices, as is Snyder, who specializes in Ukrainian history.
In an interview with Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi, who wrote the book Russian Colonialism 101, he told me:
“In studying disinformation and imperial myths, one of the biggest myths that separates the free world and the empires is the focus on what one person can do. The empire always tells you that one person doesn’t matter, that it’s always gonna be decided by Big Guys… by Big Geopolitics. And whatever you do on your own, you’re told it doesn’t matter. ‘You can choose to resist, you can choose to support fundraisers, but it’s all futile’.
“When in fact, when you look at Ukraine, and you look at all the Ukrainian friends, you see that that Resistance, that unlikely Resistance against all odds, facing the bleakest prospects, has been going on for over three years, exactly just because of this extraordinary Resistance by ordinary people.”
I think of Byline Times reporter Zarina Zabrisky, who spent months telling the world on every available platform that the Russian military was hunting the people of Kherson with drones, and finally the world listened and international reporters were dispatched to the Ukrainian city to document these war crimes.
One person did that…
As I turn to examples from history of successful Resistance, seeking non-violent solutions to derail the coming darkness, I offer you the following inspiration:
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
The Greensboro sit-ins, the Birmingham Children's Crusade, and the Selma to Montgomery marches led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.The Maidan Revolution in Ukraine
People rose up in 2014 against Putin puppet Victor Yanukovych, who was forced to flee to Russia and later convicted of treason. It’s worth noting that Trump and Yanukovych had the same handler, lobbyist and convicted felon Paul Manafort.
The Indian Independence Movement
Mahatma Gandhi led a decades-long nonviolent campaign that resulted in the British giving up their occupation of India.The Polish Solidarity Movement
From 1980–1989, the Polish people organized an independent trade union and took back their country from Soviet rule.Arab Spring
Starting in Tunisia in December 2010, the Arab Spring uprisings resulted in the fall of leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen in 2011.Hong Kong protests
The people of Hong Kong have protested for decades to defend freedoms and demand democracy.The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa
Boycotts and other nonviolent sanctions were used for decades to end apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s.The Velvet Revolution
In 1989, protests and strikes led to a peaceful transition from communism in Czechoslovakia.Walls don’t come down on their own.
People do that…
Today is a different day. The borders that needed protecting were the internet borders. We in the West allowed our freedoms to be exploited by countries that have no freedom, by giving hostile nations access to the minds of our citizens. An international tech treaty should be the first priority of nations that have not yet fallen to the new axis of evil.
Recent events in France also offer inspiration. The tech utopia we were promised gave way to technofascism — as foreshadowed in the 1965 Jean-Luc Godard’s film Alphaville filmed on the streets of Paris. Now in Paris, there seems to be an awareness that authorities can stop the tech dystopia predicted in Godard’s science fiction noir. Pavel Durov, the CEO of the Russian social media platform Telegram, was arrested in France in August and indicted on 12 charges, including complicity in the distribution of child exploitation material and drug trafficking.
In addition, French prosecutors are requesting a ban on Putinist politician Marine Le Pen running for public office in an embezzlement trial.
Rewinding through the mists of time back to Weimar Germany, I will never forget the words of a member of the Berlin Resistance, as documented in Anne Nelson’s book, The Red Orchestra.
The words are from Greta Kuckhoff, who was part of the Berlin Resistance against Hitler:
“We did what we could, and a lot of us gave our lives for it. And if there had only been a couple 100,000 more Germans out of our millions who did the same, we could have stopped Hitler, it wouldn't have taken that much more.”
It wouldn’t have taken that much more…
And in this brief window — this ‘pre-catastrophic moment’ — we still have agency.
Listen to Ukrainians.
“When the real darkness and the real tyranny comes, all of it stops, and you have no opportunity whatsoever,” cautioned Maksym Eristavi…
“Freedom never comes for free, and as long as we keep fighting for it — in our own personal ways — that decreases the price we have to pay for it. Because if we stop doing that, we eventually lose it, and then getting back will be almost impossible or will require tremendous sacrifice.”
“Do not obey in advance.”—Timothy Snyder, Lesson No. 1, On Tyranny
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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