Using a self-defense art to attack class warfare
The best defense is a good offense — from The Art of War
In class warfare on citizens, is a self defense art superior for battle?
Jiu Jitsu is classified as a self defense art. At first glance, this may resonate as a “turn the other cheek” philosophy, unsuitable for battle, much less for class warfare and for citizenry needing a way to fight back.
If that’s what you think, you need a reboot.
The basis of preferred hand-to-hand combat arts in the military are Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Aikido, Krav Maga and others. Judo and Aikido were both broken out of Jiu Jitsu by Jiu Jitsu masters. Krav Maga incorporates boxing, Aikido, judo and other arts. The point being that military combat arts are dominated by Jiu Jitsu and its derivations. It is a resoundingly effective and notably deadly art.
Part of good self defense is knowing when to go on the offense. Without a strong, intimidating and relentless offensive threat, our side loses.
We are all familiar with the Second Amendment chant that, “An armed citizenry is a strong citizenry.” Well, what about a weaponized citizenry? Because not all weapons are guns.
5 Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive. 6 Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength. — The Art of War, 4:5–6
Always Be Attacking
Pay attention to your strategists and seers, progressives. There are many writers who are providing both inspiration and tactical strategies to utilize moving forward.
Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira shine not just a light but a flare the size of a nation on the undeniable liberal successes of California. Their premise is partially described as what happens today in California will be happening in the rest of the nation in 15 years.
“Trump is the last gasp of the conservative era and will bring down Republican rule. What comes next is California right now.”
Leyden and Teixeira place in front of us a model economy for moving forward, recognizing that while California has a great deal of positives to emulate, there are still many struggles — including affordable housing — that it’s still grappling with.
Noam Chomsky cites two main existential threats to humanity: nuclear war and the election of Donald Trump along with the angry wing of conservatism that placed him in office. We might add global warming to the mix, or Neoliberalism, or the concentration of wealth in the one percent (which is my main concern). There is a huge spectrum of Chomsky writings and interviews. Here’s one.
According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, nearly 8 in 10 American workers live paycheck to paycheck in order to pay for necessities.
Chomsky speaks a great deal to the topic of the insidious usurping of individual freedom, in the sense that we embrace certain things — such as technology — never fully realizing that our embraces end up enslaving us. We willingly wrap ourselves in locks and chains of our own making. It’s an ultimate Jiu Jitsu move that’s put over on us. “Lock me up!”
Never bashful, Chomsky calls war, war:
“Out of the spotlight, the most savage fringe of the Republican Party is carefully advancing policies designed to enrich their true constituency: the Constituency of private power and wealth, “the masters of mankind,” to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase.” — interview from TomDispatch
Caitlin Johnstone encourages progressives to support anyone who is in the battle against the enemy. Overcome your reluctance to ally yourself with strange bedfellows at times, she encourages. Because alliances build strength, and strength topples power. And power is the issue:
No matter how you vote, the plutocrats and their multinational corporations and banks win, and the American people lose. This is settled beyond dispute for anyone who’s been paying attention. We tried all the political doors, and they’re all bolted shut. — Source
Johnstone’s tactical suggestions, spread throughout her work, are essentially a comprehensive combat playbook.
From, How to Fight the Establishment Propaganda Machine and Win
So what can we do? We make them fight our fight. If they’re a shark and we’re a tiger, we make them fight us in the jungle. If they’re a Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt and we’re a kickboxer, we make them fight us standing up. Since they’re an old power structure in a rapidly-shifting media landscape that completely lost control of the narrative in 2016 and we are denizens of the internet, we make them fight a media war. The oppression machine cannot operate without its propaganda engine, and we have right now at our fingertips the ability to cripple that engine. Once it’s crippled, they are powerless, and the old mechanisms of manipulation and control will be shrugged off like a heavy coat on a warm day.
Marcelo Garcia, arguably the greatest grappler to have ever lived, teaches his students that they should always be on the attack, that any time their opponent has forced them to play defense, they’re losing the fight. This is an important mindset for the media war, too. We can’t be reactive, waiting for them to tell a lie and then rushing out to defend against it, because then they’re on the front foot and they’re already sweeping the public up in their narrative while we scramble to catch up. We’ve got many years’ worth of establishment lies to point at and scream about.
Always be attacking; put them on the defense. Keep advancing causes that make them uncomfortable and ideas they have to defend against. Force them into situations where they need to do things like come up with ridiculous explanations for why Assad would gas his own people at the worst possible time when he stood nothing to gain from it and everything to lose. Make them look stupid. The more stupid they look, the more openings they’ll create for further attacks, and the less belief mainstream America will invest in their narratives. Don’t wait on them; attack now. Attack now and show no mercy. Keep shoving that sword through until it comes out the other end.
In a prologue to a science fiction story I’ve never completed, I wrote:
The competition had been fierce. Each baron of business was determined to make their operations the most efficient — and profitable — in the world.
It had started with assembly lines, followed by automation and outsourcing. Costs plummeted. Benefits disappeared along with the hired help, and profits soared. The barons were giddy.
They called it many things: automation, robots, TQM, bottom-line, Deming-on-Steroids, and artificial intelligence. Of course, as we all know people became less useful, more redundant. Until the last of them simply turned off and died.
Defend, attack or die.
UPDATE, 11/2/17:
I just came across an article by one of the founder’s of the Occupy Wall Street movement. At the very end, he states that for movements to be successful these days, organizers need to account for infiltration by local and foreign governments, including local and foreign plants, as well as spy agencies. To keep governments off balance…
That means exporting our protests to every country, especially those suspected of supporting, co-opting or controlling our movements. If Russia wants to create civil rights protests in Oakland then they must be prepared to deal with those same protests back into Moscow. From this point forward, our best defense is a global offense.
“Our best defense is a global offense.”
