Resist Much, Obey Little
As a frontline worker during the information war, I am asking people to take a cue from the poets, historians, and philosophers — obey less, resist more
When I wrote Unmusked last year, I knew Elon Musk was tasked with the Twitter Operation to disrupt communications, truth, and to turn it into a Russian propaganda outlet. Sadly, he’s lived up to my prophecy and the prophetic words of those I interviewed.
His latest attack — to remove news headlines — is part of the continued assault. For independent reporters like me, it causes further economic harms. Twitter was once the biggest marketing arm for getting independent reporting to a wider audience, and this intentional further thwarting of our work on top of throttling Substack thumbnails and disabling cross-posting Twitter threads on Substack is more evidence that Musk is doing everything in his power to accelerate global fascism. His warfare against Ukrainian communications — both on Twitter and in country, when he cut off communications, shows that Fiona Hill was correct — he is aiding Putin in his genocidal war.
As I wrote in The Cult of the Genius Tech Bro, no one reads the terms and conditions, and nowhere in those unread terms and conditions was a funding disclosure that a Putin bag man initially financed Facebook and Twitter.
No one read the terms and conditions, or checked the box for the part where the world becomes a deeply divided wreckage site.
—Professor David Carroll, digital rights activist
Yale professor Timothy Snyder — in his seminal tome ‘On Tyranny’ — instructs us not to obey in advance, and I believe far too many people are — far too many are succumbing to exhaustion and despair and fear — as if caving to small corrupt men is our only option. Those small corrupt men are trying to postpone the miserable endings reserved for all dictators. We can accelerate their miserable endings, but not if we obey in advance.
As I wrote in January:
I keep my copy of On Tyranny on my bed at all times, like a talisman against fascist evil. I clutch the small volume like a set of pearls - break glass in case of emergency. It’s all there in the Table of Contents - among my favorites:
Do not obey in advance
Defend institutions
Be wary of paramilitaries
Believe in truth
Investigate
Stand out
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
Be as courageous as you can
How Un-American it would be to obey in advance.
We are a country that defeated fascism, and we are being called to defeat fascism again.
Putin and his allies are waging war on the West, and we keep acting surprised at the cruelty. Have we really not learned anything in a decade of this?
If you are not asking with each act of terrorism and each staged cruelty “How does this benefit Putin” then you’re missing the f**king war and will continue lurching from crisis to crisis.
We are at war.
The war is global.
We have been at war in the US since 2016, when Putin and US traitors installed a corrupt creep as our president, and we just swallowed.
The only thing that works to defeat fascism is resistance as Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote in ‘Strongmen.’
In How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Jason Stanley explains how to identify fascist politics and understand its power so that it might be resisted effectively. “Understanding the meanings, history, and rhetorical patterns behind fascism are crucial to challenging politicians that would take advantage of them.”
Putin’s GOP in America are leading an ongoing insurrection. Call it what it is so we can resist effectively.
The poet Walt Whitman once warned us to “resist much, obey little” — believing that unquestioning obedience could lead to enslavement, and if a country is enslaved, the people may never regain their freedom.
A free, democratic society is its diversity of opinions, he believed. Whitman said that blind obedience must be resisted — implicit in obedience is totalitarianism.
His words:
TO THE STATES.
TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-
ward resumes its liberty.—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Do we want liberty or not? Or do we want to just hand over our democracy and explain to our children and grandchildren that when we had a chance to fight tyranny, we failed to resist.
My parents didn’t raise me in America to surrender when things got tough.
I’m gonna resist much, and then I’m gonna resist some more.
We only win if we do this thing together.
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer to donate via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated. A private link to an annual membership discount for activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous@gmail.com.
The next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Sunday, October 8, 4 pm PT, featuring activist Julie DeLaurier, who co-founded Truth Tuesdays — a weekly protest in front of Fox News headquarters in New York. As Jim Stewartson says, “Be like Julie.” Our interview with her on RadPod is dynamite.
Paid members will also receive invites to our weekly Bette’s Happy Hour, a wellness checkin every Tuesday. This Tuesday we will be checking in at 5 pm PT.
In addition, our next Founder’s Day event is on Oct. 15, at 1:30 pm PT and features war reporter/author/poet Zarina Zabrisky live from Ukraine. Our Founder’s will get a firsthand account and update on the war and what we need to know about the US’s vital support. You can upgrade to Founding member here:
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, 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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“We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.”—David Pepper
“I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.”—David Pepper
“The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.”—Martin Sheil
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“I say a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I walk upon the earth.”-Audrey Peterman.
“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member
“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, that can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member
“Nothing but blue skies from now on…”-Irving Berlin
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