(A series in which I ramble some personal perspective on ICYDAK's "30 Proven Tactics to Resist Authoritarianism in Daily Life," because most of this stuff is just default daily life to me.)
ICYDAK: 30 Proven Tactics to Resist Authoritarianism in Everyday Life
#1: know your rights
#2: secure your communications
#3: diversify your news sources
#4: develop financial independence
#5: learn to spot propaganda & psychological warfare
#6: strengthen your mental and physical resilience
Loud resistance can make you a target. Strategic, quiet action is often more effective.
Tough question time: Do you want to change things, or do you want to *be seen* changing things?
People who gravitate toward the first one don't need advice on low-profile, high-impact presence - they already are one. People who gravitate toward the second, however.... I'm here for you.
The US (and global popular cultures generally) are celebrity-driven. We tend to assume that you need a large, loud platform to make a difference because that's what we see in the media. The media IS large, loud platforms.
But take any one celebrity off the air, and not a lot changes in your daily life. You can't say the same for eliminating, say, your town's garbage collectors. Or your mail carrier. Or that ER nurse who noticed something no one else did and thus saved your life. (Mine was named Kendra and I pray for her daily.)
Here's how to be one of the people who slips sand into the gears of the authoritarian juggernaut...without (one hopes) getting hauled up as an example.
Remember when the WWII SSO Simple Sabotage Field Manual went viral after the 2024 election?
It's been declassified for a good reason: It's not exactly up to date on modern technology. But it definitely has the right vibe for "strategic, quiet action." And one of the things it covers is how to drag your feet if you are a minor functionary for a system that is turning increasingly, and disturbingly, authoritarian. For instance, per the manual:
A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of
placing tools in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one's fellow workers, engaging in bickerings, or displaying surliness and stupidity.
This isn't exactly fun, especially if you like your job and your co-workers. I run a high school library, for instance; I enjoy my job, my colleagues, and the kids. I have a hard time picturing myself deliberately misplacing materials, picking on my co-workers, or pretending to be the village idiot.
But that's partly because this place is still run by people who have no intention of complying in advance. (Our "if ICE shows up" training was short and sweet: "Say 'go to the office.' That's it.") Should that change, I will happily become the world's worst public service employee.
I dig graffiti, aesthetically. One of my summer hobbies is taking my bike on urban jaunts so I can photograph graffiti. I also dig graffiti because it's a way to get a message to a lot of people in a very short time. Even if the message is just "you're not alone" or "fight the bastards," it's something.
If you're not into permanent graffiti, sidewalk chalk is cool. Wheat pasting flyers is still a thing. My local thrift store has Lite-Brites for $5 each. Get creative! People notice art!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about this silly "tablet for toddlers" my niece had:
mood: toddler tablets presage our technofeudalist doom
At that same family dinner, I asked her if she wanted to see what was inside said tablet. She did. So we got a screwdriver and took it apart. Its contents are about what you'd expect: a little speaker, an LED, a couple wires, and the chips with the chirpy voice on them.
There is also, it turns out, a LOT of space inside children's toys. Plenty of space to squirrel a microSD card in there.
You may not have to go to such extremes. But, at a minimum:
(Related: I recently downloaded the entire 111 GB Wikipedia ZIM file, available on the Kiwix Library.)
A coalition is a group of people who come together for one common goal, even if they have different ideas or aims otherwise. Coalition-building is a skill, and it's one that has fallen by the wayside in the highly granular extremely online world.
In your interpersonal relationships, seek to build bridges. Express care and communication. Listen to people even when you don't agree with them - and resist the urge to disagree or correct people as you listen. Sometimes you're just there to see what is being said, not to Be Right.
Some tips I've picked up from becoming the go-to Listening Adult in a school of 400 teenagers:
Some more reading on coalition-building:
EFF: Coalition-building tips
NCAN: Coalition Building
Bartleby is my hero:
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street, by Herman Melville
People are always surprised to hear how many things I do out of spite. I find it a great motivator. After the motorcycle accident, I learned to walk again out of spite (fuck you, I'm not staying down). I'm currently learning basic electronics so I can build household appliances that run directly off solar panels (fuck you, electric bills). I quit social media and spend a lot of that time watching my chickens run around the yard instead (fuck you, algorithmic ads and data extraction).
"No" is a complete sentence. "No" is also an action. There are a surprising number of things in life that you can just...not.
The difference between a business that survives its founder and one that doesn't is whether the business is built to run without its founder. The same is true of resistance movements, mutual aid groups, community gardens, and every other project.
Standardize jobs and methods. Make things easy to teach. Build everything with the goal that anyone could step into your role if you were suddenly unavailable. Build it to outlive you. The movement can be loud, but no one person within it should have to be.
On the outside, I'm a pretty boring person. My personal style is somewhere between "normcore" and "basic bitch." My hobbies include watching chickens and reading books. My summers consist mostly of growing and preserving food. I own an 11 year old car I drive fewer than 30 miles a week on average. I go to bed at 9 pm and get up at 5 am. I have nailed the Grandma Aesthetic.
I also do not funnel free behavior data into social media sites. Work advice to "clean up your social media profiles" misses me, because I have none. I no longer get ads at home, apart from the occasional junk mail flyer. I don't shop recreationally; in fact, I barely shop at all. I don't have an Amazon or a streaming account. I don't even have Internet at home.
As George Orwell noted, "if you keep the small rules, you can break the big ones."
--