All Truths Are Important, But Some Are More Useful Than Others for Removing the Rich from Power

Consider which truth is more useful when widely known: #1) 9/11 was an inside job, or #2) The vast majority of people would LOVE to remove the rich from power

Veterans say NO!

Compare the usefulness of these two truths for removing the rich from power:

Truth #1. The official story of 9/11 is false and the U.S. government was complicit in that attack.

Wikipedia reports on public opinion regarding the cause of the 9/11 attack:

United States

Zogby International

The polls that have received the most widespread media attention are those conducted by Zogby International. The Zogby polls have been sponsored by organizations within the 9/11 Truth Movement including 911truth.org.^{[citation needed]}

The first one was conducted in late August 2004 on 808 randomly selected residents of New York State. It found that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state citizens believe individuals within the U.S. government "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act."^[5] The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent.

In the years since 2004 the evidence for 9/11 being an inside job has only increased and come to the attention of more and more people.

But this fairly well-known truth has not caused people to rise up in revolution, has it?

Why not?

I think the reason is this. The many people who are justifiably angry as hell about the U.S. government’s complicity in the 9/11 attack, and who would therefore love to remove the guilty U.S. ruling class from power, feel hopeless about the possibility of actually doing that. They believe hardly anybody else wants to remove the rich from power, that it is therefore futile to try to build a movement to make that happen. The mass (and alternative) media work very hard to convince everybody that if you want to remove the rich from power then you are all alone and if you’re smart you won’t even talk out loud about that desire because if you do then people will think you’re nuts or even worse.

Truth #2. It is the vast majority and not a tiny impotent minority that wants to remove the rich from power

This truth is the opposite of what most people think. The truth is that the vast majority of people would LOVE an egalitarian revolution to remove the rich from power. See the evidence for this here.

An amazing thing happens when people who are righteously angry at the ruling class learn that they are the VAST MAJORITY in being angry this way. I learned what happens in 1969 and wrote about it in “What Causes a Political Sea Change.”

What happens is that people change from being hopeless and hence paralyzed regarding any actual organizing to defeat the ruling class, to becoming hopeful and hence inspired to start doing concrete things to organize and defeat the ruling class.

This #2 truth, when widely known, is EXPLOSIVE! This truth is more useful for removing the rich from power than the #1 truth about 9/11 and similar truths about, for example, the CIA’s assassination of JFK.

There is a widespread misunderstanding among activists about why people rise up in revolutionary action and why they don’t. I wrote about this in my “Confidence & Hope, Not Suffering and Despair, Drives Revolution. Revolutionaries: Beware of the false notion that ‘the worse, the better’." This linked article proves what its title says.

Fear is what makes the world turn round. What is the antidote to fear?

The other day on an activist zoom call I expressed the idea that “Fear is what makes the world turn round,” meaning that the ruling class uses fear to control us, fear of getting fired or fear of one’s career being dead-ended, or fear of being evicted, not to mention fear of more draconian things such as imprisonment and torture and a violent death. I then added that the antidote to fear is numbers, meaning knowing that one is not alone but joined by many others in one’s righteous anger at the ruling class. The antidote to this fear, I said, is doing things to ensure that people knew the truth—the #2 truth—that they are NOT alone.

A person on the zoom call replied, however, that in her opinion the way to deal with this fear is to tell people, “If you don’t do X [meaning some specific action to oppose the ruling class that they fear doing because of the likely bad consequences for themselves personally, such as getting fired or expelled from one’s college, etc.] then innocent people will suffer [e.g., children will die in Gaza, etc.]”

Well, there is certainly some truth in what this zoom person advocated saying to somebody in order to motivate them to do action X. But this truth doesn’t actually motivate a person to do X. It’s a truth (no doubt an important one), but not a very useful truth for building a movement to challenge the power of the ruling class.

The intention of this zoom person was to essentially SHAME a person into doing X, to make them feel guilty for not doing X. But the fact of the matter is that mass movements are not fueled by shame or guilt. They just aren’t. Point to one if you disagree. I challenge you to find one. There aren’t any.

Mass anti-establishment movements and revolutions are fueled by righteous anger at the ruling class COMBINED WITH knowledge of the #2 truth—knowing that one is not alone in having this righteous anger. It is this combination that is key. Righteous anger by itself does not a revolutionary movement make.

The chief aim of a movement is to do things that let the larger general public discover the #2 truth. A small demonstration is useful in letting the participants learn that they are joined by all the others who join the demonstration, and it is also useful in letting the general public see that there are others who share their righteous anger at the ruling class. The next demonstration will be larger because people who didn’t go to the first demonstration are inspired to go to the next one by having seen from the earlier one that more people than they had realized were angry and determined to fight. And the next demonstration will be larger still. This will inspire even more militant actions that in turn demonstrate the determination of people to fight and win. This is how the anti-Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movements grew larger and larger. It is how virtually all past successful movements grew large. It was NOT by activists shaming people, guilt-tripping them.

If you want to build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to remove the rich from power I urge you to do what I propose here.

Here are the kinds of things that people do, in spite of all the fear of the consequences, when they know they are not alone in their righteous anger.

This is how the right to form a labor union was won.

Assistant Dean of Students, Archie Epps, is forced down flight of steps in the Administration Building and escorted out by students protesting Reserve Officers Training Corps Program at Harvard in 1969 during the Vietnam War