What Is To Be Done - Redux 2007

I guess on the plus side, people are starting to wise up. But is it already too late? Hopefully, never.

Over the past few weeks, the popular blogosphere has resounded with threads pointing out that:

a.) The West, and the UK in particular, is buggered.
b.) The economy is going pear-shaped.
c.) The corporate feudalists own the government and the media, and they prioritise corporate interests above those of the people.
d.) That our own governments are the bad guys, preemptively attacking other countries to steal their oil.
e.) That we are facing a major resurgence of authoritarianism in the West, and clearly now in the UK, against which an anti-authoritarian, liberal consensus is slowly, agonisingly, coming into being.

So, we've talked about it. But, at the risk of being repetitious, what are we doing about it? Calls to "direct action" are all well and good, but what do they mean?

Manuscripts Don't Burn thinks the time is now ripe for the foundation of some kind of "Liberty Party". Some kind of concerted attempt to resist the corrupt, corporate, authoritarian control-freaks who are attempting to nail down the UK population and remove the hard-won freedoms we've enjoyed. Because the authoritarians are winning.

We don't just need a talking shop (although we need that, too). We need an organisation to resist the Authoritarians on the battlefields where they're currently winning. We need media outlets, spokespeople; we need legal specialists to oppose the endless run of anti-liberty laws which our government is steamrolling through. We need politicians to vote for, who can take on the Authoritarians in parliament and the public eye. We need champions, specialists, propagandists, journalists, TV stations, radio stations, websites, educators, comedians, voters, marchers, protestors, lobbyists, agitators; we need activists.

It's not a left-wing / right-wing thing. Manuscripts Don't Burn sees wide agreement throughout the blogosphere on that point. It's simply a battle between the muddled, confused, often frenetic reality of life in a liberal democracy (or as near as), and the dull, homogenous, strident, heavy, and oppressively calm future our government, media, and corporate system appears to be planning for us.

Time for concerted action. Because, without it, we are all just individual voices moaning obscurely on the internet. And, when they finally come to shut the internet down, they will shut us down just as surely. It's happened before; it can easily happen again. Most people who live in times like these cannot believe it is actually happening; it all seems too mad, too preposterous, to even think about. But the Reichstag has already burned down, and our liberties are being legislated away.

Their very outrageousness is the best weapon the Authoritarians have - unless it is exposed.