Illusions of Consent
The Failure of Choice / Moving Beyond Possession & Into Autonomy
What appears to be spontaneous is a product of consent manufactured by intellectuals of the ruling class. Again, not only is consent manufactured but it is backed up by coercion-in-reserve, what Gramsci calls political society: the courts, the army, the police, and, for the past 57 years, the atomic bomb. — Frank B. Wilderson, ‘Black Gramsci’
It’s too bad broke Black people don’t receive one thousand dollars, historical accountability from wrongdoers, or any semblance of inclusion into Humanity every time we think “It could always be worse.”
Behind the cashier stands a 5-foot rack of shelves housing various colors of cancer. The colors coerce customers into looking cool, amongst other things. Above the cashier, relatively inexpensive preservatives of different flavors, shapes, and sizes beg you to support prison labor (AKA slavery) with the monetary returns of your own labor.
You take your Big Mac and cigarettes to the parking lot and sit on the hood of your Honda. Today is the day you get to choose a New Master: to decide between NeoColonialism with fascist dog whistles in blonde hair, and NeoColonialism with nicer fascist dog whistles in a pantsuit. After swiping a notification off your cellular device (reminding you that you will be charged $5 for donating on a site that monetizes your favorite writers’ clout), you head to the DMV to protest-vote for Jill Stein (or Harambe because you’re a racist), knowing she won’t win. And when she doesn’t you think: it could always be worse.
You finally notice the dent your butt left on your Honda and wonder why you need a car to get to work in the first place, and why you couldn’t simply choose a Tesla instead. Oh yeah — money. Why do you have to be so broke no matter how little you spend? Why couldn’t your parents leave you a single thing? Oh yeah, slavery. But there are “broke” whites, too. Suddenly you can’t stop thinking about how whiteness is a social construct to which all non-Blacks can assimilate more than any dark-skinned Black person can. You start to think about how the opportunity and prospect to own slaves was even extended to Natives on Turtle Island, and even to Blacks in some settings — directly or by proxy. And yet, Black reprisal is the most feared event in history because we weren’t given the opportunity to do the same to any other peoples — not that we want to, and not that we could simply choose to!
It could have, somehow, been worse…
We could be living in Nazi Germany, or worse: within the “Congo Free State” under Leopold II of Belgium. But, there are Nazis marching and liberals are defending their right to mobilize more Nazis. Private prison labor still exists, as well as medical experiments on impoverished Black people, so what exactly is the difference?
Either way, at least we have choices: a choice in cancer, a choice in SSRI, a choice in fascism, a choice in anti-blackness in socialist dressings, or racism with less obvious genocide under capitalism.
The Masters of the Fourth World: Capitalists, Statists, Rapists, Fascists, Non-Blacks, Liberals and Conservatives alike, and the rest of this non-Black majority playing board have forced choices upon us: the choice to say no, the choice to suffer, the choice of death and how to go about it all weight against… well… whatever your oppressor sees fit.
*deep breath*
*long sigh*
It may take some time, but in today’s atmosphere it is easier to lose trust in this neocolonial governance than it was 10 or even 20 years ago. Realizations often enter the mind of the pissed off or saddened individual: One shitty genocidal president followed by another, 45-fold, and still Democracy is the answer? It may not be perfect, bi-partisanship and all, but it could always be worse. But alas, even if majority ruled, the invaders of this land (AKA white people) would still punish Black people for existing by refusing them a truly representational voice: their own voice.
By this point, radicalization begins to set in. Yet to the purveyor of the Fourth World, it could be worse yet: we could be living without a state, without civilization, without the exclusionary notions of Humanity or sentience, and where consent is the avenue through which all interactions (social, monetary, etc) take place.
I’m here to remind you that it’s okay to denounce all of it: the civilization/uncivilization dichotomy, statism and anarchy, and Humanism as it excludes Black existence. It is okay to rebuke it all— to demand a better world for all Black people.
When some lose hope and are on Facebook complaining about capitalism for long enough, they may find Marxism, or anarchism, or whatever meme ideology is available and useful to rally up a “revolutionary” cadre of majority non-Black people. You go to protest after protest, feeling defeated, but telling yourself that you at least belong somewhere.
Some of you may grow into these affiliations, argue and posture, reassure yourself, and make moves like a professional social capitalist. You do this so well you’ve even found your way into radio and television interviews, pulling more mulah than any Black transwoman out there on GoFundMe or Patreon because you are oppressed too(?). Besides, you can argue Desirability Politics to any pleb under the table so you must be deserving, right?
Some of you believe in restorative justice, so you practice integrating sex offenders into groups because No One Is Completely Good or Bad, The goal is to provide freedom from prison labor AKA slavery — plain and simple, and to provide the opportunity to have freedom to, again. It goes well: the molester seems empathetic, the victim accepts the apology. Someone gets molested or raped again by the same offender, but who knows if you’ll ever hear about it. You do all of this without the consent of society, and you’ve got the clout to back you up. And if you don’t, you may have a large enough army of voices to do it for you.
Some of you are the victim, trying to tell people online that rapists, molesters, and other variations upon the same scourge are kept hidden in the “far-left” organization you separated from, but for the sake of Party Building, you are ignored or shouted down. Or, you may continue to survive the multitude of microaggressions thrown your way by Righteous Leftists, because Nazis Are In the Streets. Your choices: stay and suffer because Divisiveness if Counter-Revolutionary, leave and suffer because non-Black people are still racists whether they belong to some variation of the Neo-National Socialist Party, or quit social justice altogether and continue harm the rest of us harming ourselves. And if you haven’t been through or refuse to acknowledge this violence, you do know someone who has experienced most of the above (*points at self*). What ought the survivor to do within this endless nesting doll of pain? How did I get involved in the first place? Why do we make so many mistakes?
Well, it was the best choice I was aware of, meaning much else was obscured from my decision-making process. It was an opportunity I took, for which me as a useful resource was raped for whatever comfort the organization could find. How could I have known there was a place beyond The Left? How could I have made that choice properly? I couldn’t have known, and if I had known, it wouldn’t and isn’t easy organizing beyond that. But that’s the point: Amerika is the epicenter of social caste.
The Masters of the Fourth World, the Designers of Choice, Chiefs of Cookery, Wizards of Consent have given us choices, and thus, you operate on their terms: on their playing board. You are on the political spectrum they have provided you, within the state you are born into, under the ever-present caste system you were assigned by means of intergenerational wealth (social, monetary, and ability-wise), or lack thereof. Opportunities are based on your ability to have access. To have access, you need all of the above. The opportunity is always there, though :). And yes, it’s a self-sustained cycle with the only unchanging variable being ability.
deeeeep breeaath*
*looooong siiiiiigh*
Hundreds of brand-named medications with handfuls of side effects, all laid out in front of you. But you need one, to stop feeling that throbbing of pain deep within your muscle tissue… But at least they warned you; perhaps that makes you feel more comfortable — coercing you into feeling like you can trust Big Pharma and the corporate entities keeping it afloat far and wide because they told you what you’d feel before they hurt you. But in the end, you may only be choosing your own suffering. Which chances on your wellbeing will you take?
At the epicenter of anti-Blackness there are lies wrapped up in lies and nontruths, resembling fractals, or nesting dolls, each a copy of the last in at least one way. At the epicenter of anti-Blackness that we call Amerika, we are conditioned to believe that we have utmost free will. There is an Amerika in every land on Earth, and collectively they make up The Fourth World: a place that only exists to the benefit of The Man™ because The Man™, AKA white people of every class, get nothing out of it but supremacy… Which is basically anything they want and the expense of Black people internationally. This includes assimilating non-Blacks into whiteness over time.
Everyone knows that oppression is hurting society as a whole. So much loss of life in the name of those who profit ontologically, and usually materially as well, occurs so often that its become normal to associate slavery with Blackness. It explains why people whose family is majority non-Black are so quick to call themselves Black even though One Drop and those of Hypodescent aren’t actual laws anymore. It’s because we all know Black people are supposed to suffer most within this epicenter of white supremacy: this is the Fourth World of ontological oppression — a colony, nation, and an anti-home.
“The day of the sit-in, the lay-in, the crawl-in, the cry-in and the beg-in, is outdated.” — Malcolm X
Personally, I look forward to an autonomous existence of self-determination, meaning everyone decides for themselves what their needs and wants are. This may resemble such faulty ideas such as “freedom of speech”, where for example a majority racist population “is allowed to” continue being racist. It may also seem like a dogwhistle to egoists and egotists alike. But autonomy is more. Autonomy takes into account collective responsibility and accountability for each other, meaning that one person’s freedoms must not impede on another’s. This also requires that we all take the blame for what we suffer so as long as responsibility can be determined; what some Leftists may call a culture of self-critique complimented by critique of the Other is only a fraction of what autonomy represents. Autonomy is the complete horizantalization and blurring of The Self in exchange for the whole. In an autonomous society, this would not resemble loss of identity but look like disdain for what Ursula K. LeGuin would call “egoizing”.
It also goes to say that all notions of private property would have to be abolished as well, since the present and futures of these properties (eg. of production, of status, etc) would be under the determination of the society as a whole as well. The personal, however, must be assumed to be anyone that can determine its own autonomy, and therefore, to be respected as such. In this way, we would not profit off of each other by claiming any sort sovereignty over an object, idea, or person. This would be a world in which every structure and destruction in our lives would be decided upon on an individual basis, to the collective perspective, and finally as a society. Our
For starters, it would be great to start believing that things could get better just as much as they could get worse. We don’t need to accept this playing field shoved down our throats. We don’t need to accept blurred lines in our relationships with people or with entities. Most of us have the ability to draw our own boundaries, and those who do not deserve our whole support. We don’t need to choose between mass lines, populist programs, and other “representational” bylines. We don’t need to “fit in” to be liberated. It’s okay to be a critically-thinking individual, to speak out about injustices you have suffered, and you ought to have support when you have been wronged. But how? How do we organize ourselves, internally and with others, in order to be considerate to ourselves and others? We can begin with structuring all our organizations and communities with a program of consent, extrapolated to all aspects of life: there would be no possessive words in our languages, no possessive actions on others or on things, for possession inevitably leads to detriment of autonomy.
We can begin viewing the histories of peoples, individuals, cultures through a lense of consent. An example: Did Black slaves consent to slavery? Did Black people consent to being designated Black? And if not, does that means Blackness is perhaps not something decided by one’s own accord?
Then we can begin making changes based on this consensual framework of analysis of history: Which designations in life are we forced to endure today? Capitalism, anti-blackness, sexism, transmisia, and oppressive psycholingistics (eg. being forced to survive in a culture of ownership as opposed to autonomy) are only a few characteristics of a nonconsensual culture we survive in today. Once we begin addressing the ways in which we are being taken advantage of and ways in which we can repair the damage done to us in the past, we can move on to the visionary process and create a future in which everyone shares without taking advantage of another. There will no longer be anyone to say “I” for you.
So much talk of irrelevant illusions such as access, opportunity, and choice is afforded in far-left spaces, without discussing the fact that none of us have any consent in deciding which options are available to us. This is the illusion of consent: the action of offering a person a limited amount of choices as to benefit oneself, while making the person choose feel like they have control in the situation. In other words, choices, access, and opportunity are irrelevant if either are limited by a state that doesn’t not enforce the concept of a real consent.
For those of us who are discovering the failures of identifying within far-left proponent of ideology (including great-man or hero worship), we are faced with the challenge of identifying as a revolutionary without being labeled as anarchist, Marxist, or some other colonial/white-created narrative. The truth is that no one asked for a Left vs. Right narrative before white people forced these choices upon us. I know the Zapatistas and other Natives have experienced this unconsensual type of erasure and continue strong without the consistently loud support of most Leftists in Amerika. Meanwhile, every Black nationalist is de facto a socialist… It’s almost as if white people are free to co-opt useful ideas, while Black people can are only allowed to belong to the proponents of those ideas. Sad.
It is a very non-Black, Amerikan habit (read, pogrom) to co-opt, assimilate, and integrate subaltern peoples into theirmodes of existing in order to identify with a group of peoples they can never wholly identify with. It usually occurs when a subaltern group is useful, or valuable. But for most of us who have a hard time accepting the irony of a white person decolonize anything without undoing themselves completely, or to be anti-capitalist without addressing the ontological aspects of oppression, being useful or valuable is nothing more than coded language that echoes our ongoing social deaths.
Secondly, we could begin to center Black voices, and the further-oppressed within Black communities, not as tokens but as the main ingredient to revolutionary thought, strategy, and outcome. It’s the only bottom-up liberation that exists in this timeline. Why? Because every classification of an oppressed/subaltern community can be found within the Black community. Literally, every single classification, which means that all oppressions are inherent to anti-Blackness, which means that if all Black people are liberated why would any other group be? We ought to differentiate tokenism from a centered Black voice.
As tokens increase in number while identity politics become more popular, our traditions and practices to establish autonomy and well-being in our Black communities are constantly translated for non-Black people to use and recruit valuable Blacks into their ranks. Faced with the threat of being ousted, they tend to cling to their new clout-soaked status as the Darker Face of [x], never standing up for the plebs they look down upon, regardless of how right they are. But like all heroes, they eventually get cancelled, or become irrelevant, and become field n*ggers like the rest of us. Time and time again, they are disillusioned, but the damage has already dealt. They find themselves at square one with broken hearts and spirits, if not in the communities of afro-pessimists (which have their own anti-black issues to deal with as well).
Non-Black Majority Org. — 1, Black person — 0, especially when there is no accountability involved. These organizations are too busy justifying their behavior with narcissistic responses: you chose to join us, no one forced you, etcetera… All in the name of awareness, to their ends, and in the name of representation of the specific population of minority they decide exists. Representation is a farce unless representation is direct, individualized, and therefore inexistent. We do not need anyone to speak for us, as we are able of speaking for ourselves, even when we can’t speak at all.
By cultivating a culture of consent, we can prepare each other to prevent physical, psychological, spatial, and emotional molestations and rapes from an early age. For those who aren’t able to speak up within a given situation in which one is susceptible to molestation or rape, we ought to have created a process of thought or action for the unsure potential molester or rapist (because these two things can happen even when it isn’t someone’s will to do so eg. being blacked-out or just naïveté).
It would also be nice to see some accountability that is not tied to the illusive restorative justice that seeks to reintegrate offenders of any sort back into any community. We can do much better than a simple democratic voting mechanism that ignores the minority’s opinion, especially where the minority is most often the subaltern of any given community. So consider this:
Democracy is not consensual.
Democracy is a dictatorship of the majority. The majority can’t decide what’s best for itself because it is heterogenous.
Consider consensus instead.
Consensus is extreme, horizontal representation — so horizontal it might as well not exist. Consensus as decision making & tool of analysing systemic hegemony is key to absolute redistribution of present & potential wellbeing.
Consensus is not only an ecological (in-between) tool, but also an internal one. A community that cannot reach consensus and be decisive suffers as much as a person who can not reach consistency will be haunted by cognitive dissonance.
We could be developing communities, organizations, and affiliations structured through consensual decision-making processes that debilitate the chance for us to be raped in any way by one another. We could be laying groundwork upon our own autonomous and self-determined foundations without the need to rely on non-Black radicals who would be so happy to appear next to dark-skinned people without much money.
We could, finally, admit that it doesn’t matter if we vote or not — that asking others to not vote is meaningless, that asking them to vote is also meaningless because it is impossible to vote Amerika and everything it stands for away.
What is most important is showing people that the voting process is meaningless, powerless, illegitimate, and unconsensual. Destroying peoples belief in voting matters more than voting or not voting.
Would I be a revolutionary if I voted one month before I took part in a series of large scale, pro-communist, anti-Human insurrectionary riots? Yes.
Without the ability to consent and convey exactly what we want and need, we are left to the devices of others.This is also true when consensual processes are withheld from others, such as telling someone what a relationship ought or ought not to be. This is rape, pure and simple: the denial of autonomy, the perfect extension of denial of ones’ “humanity”. It makes us “for the taking/pillaging”, objects against our will, cattle, less-than-thou. And thus, we ought to be doing all of the above even if it is “hard work” because true consent is a large part of the end to all oppressions. With consent, we will be engaging in thorough education and informative conversations with one another, leading to all sorts of actions and mobilizations that we can all benefit from. We can begin to forget about majority rule, about why we have found ourselves in any hole we’re in today, and how to move forward with actualized solidarity between our peers. But more importantly, we can begin with ourselves, and with the children.
Suggested Reading / Watching
Reaching Consensus: Alternatives To Majority Based Voting
Bush Mama
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Xenogenesis Trilogy, Octavia E. Butler
Possession (1981), Andrezj Zulawski
Ashes and Embers (1982), Haile Gerima
