By Tom H. Hastings
For decades the rightwing movement at all levels has been massively funded, far more than moderate, left, or progressive organizations, political think tanks, or associations. This has purchased them a commanding chair right now.
Rightwing think tanks in particular have been underwritten by rightwing wealthy political activists for many years, hiring willing PhDs to concoct countless scenarios, long cons, and general reshaping of our culture, our politics, and now the very fabric of democracy in the US.
To date, unfolding right in front of us, the current culmination of this is Project 2025, spearheaded by far-right Heritage Foundation and others. It is the Trump regime playbook, and was devised by far right political intellectuals, including Christian nationalists, and is the plan to dismantle democracy, sector by sector, smashing guardrails against autocracy one-by-one.
Trump and his henchpeople break the laws, flout the US Constitution, at will. We all see it daily. Declare emergencies and issue Executive Orders that launch unprecedented measures not contemplated by the vast majority of Americans, including, so it seems, those who were officially supposed to be the most vigilant watchdogs for our basic rights, our elected federal officials.
Democrats have been asleep at the wheel for decades, never showing the spine nor foresight necessary to prevent exactly what we see right now. While Trump himself and the many incompetents he’s appointed have not actually governed but have instead run a shambolic nascent dictatorship, Democrats are much more prepared to protect their individual careers than to prepare to actually defend democracy from domestic antidemocratic forces, as we see.
- While Mitch McConnell was reshaping the federal judiciary, Democrats fluttered a bit of outrage and actually did Nothing. Not only was McConnel able to get away with denying Obama his normal right to nominate a Supreme Court justice when Antonin Scalia died, he shoved Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett through over Democrats’ ineffectual handwringing.
- Once McConnell packed the Supreme Court, as if one Kentucky senator could overpower the sum total of all elected Democrats, the rulings of that court of last resort paved the road to the hellscape the Republicans are now creating. When the far-right SCOTUS ruled that Trump was immune from criminal prosecution, did the elected Democrats do anything except bemoan their subservience? Nope. There were rumors of changing the rules, the make-up, and the roles of the Supremes, but rumors were all the vapid Ds could generate.
And here we are. Trump just ordered the military into my town, Portland, Oregon. He sent the Marines into LA. He assumed total command of the Washington DC law enforcement and is threatening other cities.
The Democratic elected officials–and many are nice people, just not fit to mount a credible defense of what they are supposed to defend–issue statements, hold pressers, file lawsuits, and give excuses for their impotence.
How will this get fixed?
Either the people rise up with sustained, strategic nonviolent resistance or it won’t get better, only worse.
Strategic nonviolent resistance means:
- Massing up in the streets frequently, with a militant code of nonviolence–no violence, no behavior that the public will interpret as violence (smashing windows, throwing soda cans at cops, shoving troops).
- Mass boycotts of corporations that support or have funded Trump, Republican elected officials, or the rightwing institutes that planned all this.
- Labor solidarity to resist as much of the actual shenanigans as possible–refuse to ship supplies to the military in our cities, refuse to work on products associated with far-right robber barons like Elon Musk, etc.
- Mass citizen federal tax resistance, including all possible paths to paying little or no federal taxes, including but not limited to maximizing deductions, filing for as many extensions as possible, manipulating savings to defer taxes, and, in some cases, giving away enough to reduce or even eliminate federal taxes.
- Mass efforts to protect elections, with huge unarmed citizen involvement in the various roles that can do this. If warranted, mass physical interference with implementing election fraud.
And much more, only limited by our imagination and our willingness to join the resistance.
Key to all this is also maintaining and improving our nonviolent discipline. This is crucial because our resistance should look as attractive and invitational as possible. Wreck nothing except the nefarious rightwing plans to switch out democracy for dictatorship.
All empirical research shows that nonviolence is far more effective than violence, with far fewer costs, and wins faster.
Therefore, a natural rightwing activity is to infiltrate nonviolent movements and try to ruin them by advocating violence or excusing it, or any other actions that would serve to alienate the citizenry from the movement. A rightwing goal is to raise the barriers to recruitment for the resistance. Therefore, anyone acting like an agent provocateur should be questioned: “While we are sure you are not an infiltrator trying to damage our movement, why are you doing what those agents provocateurs do?”
A crucial goal of any nonviolent resistance is to foster security defections–when the armed agents of the state stand down and refuse orders from autocrats–and loyalty shifts–when anyone in an establishment position stops working for the authoritarians and moves to help the resistance.
This is most readily accomplished by calling them in rather than calling them out. Evince serious support publicly for anyone who engages in either security defection or loyalty shift. Help them if they do so at a sacrifice to their ability to support their family. Pressure their bosses to reduce or eliminate consequences. Urge others in a position to support them to do so.
Teach and train each other in strategic elements of effective resistance. Learn the stories of successful campaigns and movements. Develop peace teams to nonviolently enforce nonviolent conduct.
Enforce? Yes. There will usually be a few who want to “burn it down” because they are enraged, or because they are actual agents provocateurs. So if the leadership constantly reinforces the mandate for nonviolent conduct and all publicity stresses that, it is entirely possible to train media and law enforcement to understand that anyone not conducting themselves in that code is not part of the campaign. I have seen this work again and again when a campaign is serious about building numbers and has developed this strategy.
Is this all a guarantee to resistance success? Of course not; there is no guarantee with any method of social movement or uprising.
When we place our bets, however, we should at least do so wisely, wagering on the methods that have worked more often. That would be strategic nonviolence.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University. His views, however, are not those of any in