Designed to finish the job.
The mission is to change or eliminate any regimes that are not there by meaningful consent. Due to the scale and complexity of the world around, this is a massive job! To accomplish this will probably make this the single most effective movement on the planet.
Let me assure people, that the ambition of the Rebel Warrior Movement falls nothing short of that.
We need to act on a proportional level to the challenge at hand. The movement is to design and execute large scale, heavy hitting and strategically logical courses of action. Imagine lots of big things happening in a co-ordinated manner.
Existing forms of protest, direct action and activism are to be encouraged. Do they have any affect? Yes they do. However, they alone are nowhere near enough to achieve our objectives. There are many obstacles which can’t be solved by existing forms of activism even if it was done on a gargantuan scale, and in any case the existing activist culture is completely under-powered for the task. Imagine trying to power a battleship with a motorcycle engine!
The scale of the job ultimately requires the co-ordination of over half the population in a target regime. It requires innovation in the business field for the financial aspect alone. It requires problem solving regarding the predictable resistance that regimes have to any change, and creative ways to avoid creating a war or violent situation. It requires plenty of research about pretty much every single subject that exists, and especially on people and how to communicate with them.
Each obstacle we have to solve. I have already developed solutions for these problems, although they of course must be continuously developed. Violence, for example, is not the only or most effective way to achieving anything in most situations. Co-ordination of millions of people doesn’t have to be centralized and hierarchically run – in fact, I have already developed some never-before-seen solutions to this problem.
I wish there was a magic slogan that would work to communicate a decade’s research and development, but there isn’t. This is reality. The purpose of this movement is not to give entertaining sound bites and feel good slogans, it is to achieve a difficult objective.
The pillars
The core objective is to have all authority and control over the population to be with their meaningful consent. Basically, if people are fed up with the system for whatever reason, the movement feels they should be able to change it. On this level, it is not more complicated than that.
However, it is all very well campaigning for something, but how do we go about achieving this? Go outside no. 10 with placards and ask them for a word? Our strategy is far more sophisticated than that. Achieving this objective involves a lot of elements, not least of which is co-ordinating a load of people who don’t necessarily agree with each other and working for a common objective.
The pillars are stances the Rebel Warrior Movement takes in order to achieve the primary objective. From a different perspective, each pillar could be seen as the primary objective in their own right. People with particularly painful experiences from discrimination and abuse, for example, might find the pillar of healing societal rifts a priority. However, the pillars are there for a strategic reason as well.
Pillar
Standing against atrocities
.
.
.
Heal what divides us
.
.
Stewardship of the Earth
.
.
.
Stand against poverty and struggle
.
.
Free flow of information
.
Fun as non-negotiable
Strategic reason
To demonstrate the absolute bare minimum moral and legal standard (don’t slaughter large numbers of civilians) that most people will agree with, giving immediate grounds to question what ‘consent’ a regime is operating under if they can’t even adhere to that. Ensures we are clearly steering away from that direction, appeals to the massive amount of people who suspect their regime is contributing to atrocities.
Extremely good communication and coordination is the backbone for how we will achieve anything. Solves a societal problem (or goes in the direction therof) that is making people miserable, so people start having a positive association with the movement. Eliminates poor campaign practices, such as blaming other groups or acting without regard to how it looks like to other people with different opinions.
Without a hospitable planet, there is no future. Taking responsibility for the planet around is evidently necessary for anyone with control or influence. Developing better stewardship of the Earth than the system calls into question their level of responsibility. Means that whoever’s in charge cannot use ecological matters as an excuse or propagandist tool to maintain or tighten control.
Appeals to those who are suffering under their regime, adds elements to the campaign that cause suffering but aren’t campaigned directly about (wage slavery), solving poverty allows us to command enough resources to do bigger projects (such as infrastructure) and frees up more time, reduces stress and therefore propensity for extremist ideology, narrow views and hatred of one another.
Reduces misunderstandings about each other, makes us less susceptible to manipulation, necessary for actions that require correct information, allows us hold regimes acting under incorrect information accountable.
Quickly gets us to a state where most people want to be, reduces tensions, increased effectiveness and creativity, more appeal to people who don’t really want to think about world events, good for health (usually!).
The strategy
Eighty Percent
Step 1 – Co-ordinate. We get people involved who are interested, vibe with the principles of the Rebel Warrior Movement and like the strategy. We do whatever it takes to either resolve any issues, conflict or discomfort around each other, or work together, with awareness that we are not perfect, despite some dissonance. For example:
- Creation of safe environments to accurately communicate any issues such as discrimination, underlying discomfort or undercurrents, difficulties communicating to other groups, specific needs that aren’t being addressed, and a whole host more.
- Collecting data (with consent) from various groups of people and organising it in a way which we can improve communication and co-ordination
- Well-organized debate spaces to resolve conflict
- Publishing and communicating en-mass where an ideological conflict between two groups of people is based on simple misunderstanding
- Fun events specifically designed for the purposes of improving social cohesion
Step 2 – Solve problems. Now that we have good co-ordination and communication, we can help each other out.
- Collectively solving poverty by intelligently trading resources, identifying contributing factors to poverty, sharing of information and skills, and starting commercially viable projects as a group.
- Identify factors that are causing unhappiness, suffering and loneliness, and using our developed communication pathways creatively come up with solutions.
- Communicate what works with the general public, through demonstrably helping people and verbally or through media.
Step 3 – Expand.
- Identify changes to the area locally, the country and the world that could be achieved creatively through projects. For example, changes in agriculture that help food, farmer and nature, infrastructure to help poverty and homelessness, inventing new technology to solve problems
Twenty Percent
Meanwhile – Engage the regime, as safely and peacefully as possible.
How this is done depends on who is involved and on the regime itself. A different strategy should be involved in an area where protesting often leads to machine gun fire by the regimes guards, for example, than one where it doesn’t. These should be risk assessed, and the safety of activists and the general public should be prioritized.
Examples of direct engagement:
- Use of the country’s voting system, petitions, and creating alternative political parties where applicable.
- Protests and demonstrations
- Peaceful non-compliance where safe, lawful and supported by the majority of the population
- Use of the legal system where applicable
- Withholding financial support en-mass, again, where safe, lawful and supported by the majority of the population
- Creative and entertaining outlets to communicate with the public
- Exposure of hidden control elements
- Personal engagement and compassionate communication with those in positions of power
The power of peaceful direct engagement comes from the work co-coordinating and creating. Without what we are spending about eighty percent of our effort doing, we can not get any meaningful consensus.
Method in the madness
If a regime is controlling without the meaningful consent of the population, asking them kindly to change their ways is unlikely to work. A violent uprising is not likely to work in most regimes, and will probably end in a massacre so we want to avoid those.
Our strategy sends a simple statement. Are you not going to take the interests of the population into account? That’s fine. We will band together and slowly start to solve the problems that you are unwilling or unable to solve, and the problems you have caused. Any dependence or pretense of legitimacy will erode, and you will lose control over the population.
Create the new before toppling the old
This is something that confuses those with an anti-authoritarian leaning. When you get rid of the establishment, the thing that replaces it doesn’t just ‘happen’. It has to be created. Now, if you think you know how to run a group of people, whether through a country, something more complex than that or something different altogether, you don’t.
The purpose of the eighty twenty principle is to develop, not ‘promote’, ways of working together and understanding each others needs. We want to develop and demonstrate ways of solving problems. This is a lot of work. Our strategy does not call for the swift toppling of any regime with what happens later as an afterthought.
If a regime does need to go swiftly, the thing to do is exactly what is set out in this strategy, but fast. Solve whatever is preventing people working together, actively solve societal problems. Don’t ask permission. This always needs to be the primary focus.
Our stance on violence
The Rebel Warrior Movement is committed to campaigning in a non-violent way. In fact, we will take it a step further than this. We are committed to developing ways to change the world that reduce the level of violence overall. For example, the core of our strategy involves ironing out misunderstandings and conflict between people, this will by definition reduce the incidence of violence.
This is not to be confused with a strict pacifist ideology. Of course, strict pacifists are very welcome in our movement. The Rebel Warrior Movement does not follow a defined ideology beyond the principles published on the website, and individual perspectives may vary. By definition, the police and military are users of violence and they are welcome to get involved as well.
In certain regimes in certain parts of the world, adopting a strict pacifist stance will not go down well with the population who have little meaningful choice but to fight. The Rebel Warrior Movement aims to provide other options where possible, and will call people out when they, despite the best intentions, are acting in a way that is making the situation worse.
We, of course, are an influencing force, not a hierarchical organization with ‘members’. We do not control what people do, but aim to test methods that are peaceful and work and communicate these to people.
The slippery slope of ‘the end justifies the means’
The Rebel Warrior Movement deliberately involves about as little morality as possible. Taking a stance on atrocities, poverty and the environment is about the limit on this, not due to absolute morality per-se but because it is reasonable to believe that the overwhelming majority of people on Earth, where stress, confusion and misinformation is dealt with, would take a similar stance. My judgements on morality are probably wrong. Other people have their own morals, and the movement aims to understand these and work with them.
The objective of our campaign is for all control structures to there from meaningful consent of the population. Obviously, in this case the perception of morality matters substantially! Actions that are violent, but ‘justified’ on the grounds that the regime that is being fought is far more violent, causes groups to very unpopular to certain people. Beyond morality, this needs to be looked at tactically.
If there is support for the regime (whether or not that constitutes to meaningful consent), the regime could frame, for example, a violent confrontation, without the surrounding context. The worst likely scenario is that the regime decides that this is exactly the excuse they are looking for and annihilates the resistance (along with scores on non-combatants). Another scenario is a prolonged, bloody war.
The feeling of a need to resist violent aggressors is not by itself a good reason for violence. Even in self defense or defense of property, it should be questioned whether it will actually work for the purpose. Regimes that are willing to use violence are likely to win these conflicts, and if they have a propagandist element to their control they will frame themselves as the ‘good guys’. That people are put into a position so as to have to fight to defend themselves against a control system is a miserable situation beyond words and one of the reasons this movement exists.
A strict pacifist stance would be easier and safer for this movement to adopt. However, this will be an insult to those where this doesn’t feel like an option, or literally isn’t. Unless you can actually beat a regime in combat (and the effects on non-combatants are considered), in almost all cases non-violent or violent-reducing methods of creating change are advised.