Here's PROOF Most People Want an Egalitarian Revolution. Let's Tell Them We Agree!

The problem is very few people KNOW that most want an egalitarian revolution, so they feel alone and powerless and hence politically paralyzed when it comes to fighting for what they really want

What happens when you ask random people on the street or people at a pro-Trump rally if they think it is a good idea, or a bad idea, to “Remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor,” which is to say make an egalitarian revolution?

I wanted to find out, so I went on the streets of five Boston neighborhoods and asked random people exactly that question, and videotaped (no cherry picking, just random people!) what people said. Watch them here:

Even more interestingly, what happens when you ask people this question: “If an organization with a reform goal that you liked declared that it aimed to win not only the reform but the larger goal of removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, would you then support that organization more, or support it less?” Here’s how random (no cherry picking!) people answered that question:

But what about people at a pro-Trump rally? How would THEY respond to the “Let’s remove the rich from power, have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor” question?

To find out I went to a pro-Trump rally in the summer of 2016 to ask random people at the rally this question. Here's what happened.

First, let me tell you about the rally. Officially the rally was one in support of the 2nd Amendment, called by the Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League (GOAL, sort of a local chapter of the NRA), in response to a move by the state's Democratic Attorney General to limit what kind of guns could be purchased. The rally was in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. It was a very hot day and there were several hundred people--three or four hundred I would guess--at the rally when I arrived, all listening to speeches by people standing in front of the State House.

All of the people were white. Almost all of them had MAGA caps. Many held American flags and had NRA insignia shirts. Most were, I believe, from more rural parts of Massachusetts, not the liberal city of Boston.

I came with a bunch of PDRBoston.org buttons (like the one in the above videos) that said "Let's remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor" and I also was wearing a T-shirt with those same words in a large font.

People were focused on the speaker in front when I arrived at the rear of the rally and everybody's back was turned to me. So I tapped random people on the shoulder and when they turned around I asked them, "Do you mind if I ask you a question about this button?" as I handed them a button to read. Everyone was willing to hear and answer the question, so I then asked, "Do you think what the button says is a good idea or a bad idea?" I asked fifty random people this question. What happened?​

Forty-three of the 50 random people (86%) said it was a good idea and gladly accepted the button when I offered it to them; many pinned it on themselves right on the spot. A woman at the rally who had bottles of cold water (it was a very hot day), in appreciation for the message I was spreading, insisted I accept a bottle from her!

Four of the 50 people (8%) responded with verbal (though not physical!) hostility. One said that we have a capitalist society and people have a right to get rich. Another said, "Now we have a billionaire on our side" (referring to Trump being in support of the right to bear arms.) The other two said things similarly hostile to the button's egalitarian message.​

Three people shrugged their shoulders and said they didn't know what they thought.​

THINK ABOUT THIS!​

Eighty-six percent of these pro-Trumpers thought the egalitarian idea was a good idea and most of them even pinned the PDR button with the egalitarian message on their shirt!​

Only eight percent of the these pro-Trumpers were hostile to the egalitarian idea.

If you wonder whether the people I interviewed in the above videos and at the pro-Trump rally were just telling me what they figured I wanted to hear based on the fact that I was wearing the pro-egalitarian-revolution button, then watch this more recent video of person-on-the-street interviews in which I don’t reveal my personal belief and you’ll see that people still say they want radical egalitarian change.

And yet, virtually nobody knows that there is so much support for the egalitarian idea among pro-Trumpers. In fact, not even the pro-Trumpers know this. How could they? The people who are leading these pro-Trumpers never talk about egalitarian ideas or goals. They talk about ideas such as the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms--ideas that anti-egalitarians as well as pro-egalitarians might agree with. This way, the pro-Trumpers who are pro-egalitarian never learn that they are a majority standing side by side with an anti-egalitarian minority who sharply disagree with them on fundamental values.

The Gallup Poll Co. certainly will not ask pro-Trumpers if they think the egalitarian message is a good idea or a bad idea. I discovered this when I offered to pay the Gallup Poll Co. to do a survey asking a random representative sample of all residents of the United States this question. I spoke with Gallup people about doing such a survey, but didn't say what the question was at first. Gallup was all willing to take my money and do the survey but as soon as we started talking about the details of the question--that it was the same question I had asked the pro-Trumpers at the rally--the Gallup people said they would not do such a survey. You can read the full story of this and see the emails between Gallup and myself here. The ruling class and its corporate elite absolutely do not want people to know that they are the majority in thinking the egalitarian message is a good idea.

Most (about 86%) pro-Trumpers would join and support an egalitarian revolutionary movement if they saw one (which unfortunately they do not see today, not yet). Yes, about 8% would be hostile to an egalitarian revolutionary movement; these are the pro-Trumpers, of course,  who get prominently displayed by the mass media.​

"Yes, Trump's an asshole, but he's OUR asshole"

Many and arguably most pro-Trumpers know that Trump is an asshole, and sure, they'd rather have a decent leader championing them in their hostility to the ruling elite that so obviously holds them in contempt and treats them like dirt. But they follow the only national leader there is who does champion them, despite the fact that he's an asshole.

Read here about how the reason so many people are sports fans is because they hate capitalism.

WHAT ABOUT RACISM?

First of all, many people who voted for Trump had earlier voted for Obama.

Secondly, Trump's appeal to white working class people was that he did NOT accuse them of being guilty for (and benefiting from) systemic racial discrimination against non-whites. In contrast, liberals such as Hillary Clinton told--and tell--white working class people that they are indeed guilty because they benefit from systemic racial discrimination against non-whites--that they enjoy "white privilege" (and the word "privilege" as everybody knows means a benefit.)

Well, the fact is that on this question, Trump's appeal was based on the truth and Hillary Clinton (and the liberal establishment) were--and are--telling a lie.

If you don't understand this, I suggest you read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s explanation in a speech he gave (read and listen to his speech here and also read the articles linked to near the top of this article) about how Jim Crow laws harmed, not benefited, the poor whites. MLK, Jr. explains what many people today don't grasp--because the ruling class works hard to prevent them from doing so--, that among ordinary people AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.

The ruling class has worked very hard to persuade white working class people that anti-racism is code for anti-white. This is precisely what Affirmative Action was designed to do, as I explain here. The liberal wing of the ruling class has been using its false framework on race (i.e., the lie that racial discrimination benefits working class whites) to deliberately drive whites into the waiting arms of racist white nationalist leaders whose pitch is that they are merely defending whites against unfair attacks on them carried out in the name of anti-racism. I discuss this in some detail here.

So yes, it is true that many pro-Trumpers are very confused about race, and unfortunately do believe that anti-racism is code for anti-white, and do not know the truth about the fact of systemic racial discrimination against non-whites (read here how the War on Drugs is designed to make them think that blacks and Hispanics are "criminal races") and do not know that such racial discrimination harms ordinary whites as well as the obvious non-white victims. An egalitarian revolutionary movement would make the truth about these things widely known. So yes, we have work to do. But the notion that most pro-Trumpers don't want to know the truth and would be hostile to it is flat out false.

Most pro-Trumpers want the egalitarian goal that requires removing the rich from power. When they learn that racial discrimination against non-whites is used by the rich to foment fear and resentment and mistrust between ordinary whites and non-whites in order to destroy their solidarity and prevent them from being able thereby to remove the rich from power, then guess what? These pro-Trumpers will be ANGRY at the fact of racial discrimination, and will view the perpetrators of it as their enemy.

Yes, there are KKK-type racists (such as David Duke, and others) who view pro-Trumpers as potential recruits to the white nationalist organizations they control; this is why they support Trump. These racist leaders recruit by denying they are racist and insisting that their organizations are simply for defending white people against unjust discrimination against them that is done today in the name of "anti-racism." Read about how these racist leaders operate in "What do 'white supremacists' believe?" and read how liberal establishment leaders help them to recruit good and decent white working class people in "America's Liberal Establishment Has Done the Heavy Lifting to Recruit Working Class Whites Into White Supremacist Organizations."

HOW DO YOU KNOW MY EXPERIENCE IS WHAT YOU WOULD EXPERIENCE IF YOU ASKED RANDOM PEOPLE WHERE YOU LIVE THE SAME QUESTIONS?

There’s only one way to find out. (Hint: it’s not by relying on the mass media to tell you!) You need to ask people where you live the same question I asked people. It’s really that simple.

The hardest part about doing that is overcoming the fear you likely have that if you asked random people this question they would respond with hostility. The mass media have worked very hard to make you have this fear, so that you will remain—with respect to building an explicitly egalitarian revolutionary movement—paralyzed with hopelessness.

I experienced that same fear when I wrote the egalitarian revolutionary declaration of belief titled “This I Believe” and decided despite my fear to see what would happen when I asked random people to read it and SIGN it if they agreed. This was my very first try at talking to people about egalitarian revolution, long before I made the person-on-the-stree videos above. To my initial surprise, more than 80% of random people who read it SIGNED it. Here’s what they signed:

Here's a large PDF file online with 1,740 signatures, each pretty clearly visible if you zoom in.

 Here's a YouTube video displaying the actual paper signature sheets with 1,740 signatures.

(Note: the above report was written back when Rush Limbaugh was still alive.)

What would happen if YOU asked random people where you live to pose for a publicly-displayed photo while holding a sign that said the following?

I decided to find out what would happen in my neighborhood. I asked people (all just in my 02135 zip code) as they were entering one of the main grocery stores or drug stores to read this sign and then pose for a photo holding it if they agreed with it. Click here to see online photos of more than 500 of my neighbors proudly displaying this sign, telling the world that they aimed for essentially egalitarian revolution (zoom in on any photo to read the sign more easily). Here are just a few of them:

Do you think that I could persuade more than 500 of my zip-code neighbors to pose for such a photo if, as the mass media wants us to believe, hardly any of them agreed with this sign? Really? Do you know what was the most common reason given by people who declined to pose for the photo? It was this. “Oh no. I don’t have my make-up on.” Another reason was fear their boss would see the photo. Hardly anybody actually disagreed with the sign.

I wanted my neighbors to see that they were not alone in wanting an egalitarian revolution, so I made a banner with all of these photos of individual neighbors holding the sign, and displayed the banner in public, for example in the local public library branch. Here’s a photo of that:

No book in the library tells people the key truth that they learned from seeing this banner!

A new local organization in the two-zip-codes neighborhood—Brighton-Allston— where I live, called the Brighton-Allston Community Coalition, was formed to fight for affordable housing and to stop the terrible gentrification that was driving working class people out. The organization had 500 members on paper. I decided to recruit more members by asking random people on the street to sign the following egalitarian revolutionary statement of membership:

What happened? I got 1,021 signatures, each including their street address and many including also a phone number or email address. This more than tripled the membership of the BACC. The local newspaper ran a story about this (at the bottom of the page):

(Note: I never said what the reporter quotes me above as saying about “the poor” seeing themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” That was from the reporter’s own thinking, not mine.)

I hear leftists tell me all the time that most people don’t want “no rich and no poor” because they hope to be rich one day themselves. But when I asked people to sign this egalitarian “No Rich and No Poor” statement of belief, the number of people who expressed this desire to be rich one day could be counted with less than all the fingers of one of my hands. But the mass media never tell us the truth about this; they censor it.

THE BIG OBSTACLE

The big obstacle to building an egalitarian revolutionary movement is this. While the vast majority of people would LOVE to see an egalitarian revolution happen, they don’t KNOW that the vast majority of people feel this way. They believe that hardly anybody ELSE agrees with them about this egalitarian revolutionary aim. As a result, the best people feel hopeless. They don’t become activists. They don’t demand that reform organizations like the BACC declare they are for egalitarian revolution. Read here why they don’t become revolutionaries. Most think the reform organizations only aim for band aid reforms that don’t actually make things better because the rich have the real power.

So these good people stay home instead of going to meetings of organizations like the BACC. The upper middle-class leaders of the BACC were horrified when they saw the 1021 signatures of people tripling the membership of their organization with the aim of making it an egalitarian revolutionary organization. So what did these leaders do? They kicked me out of the organization! The reason they were able to get away with that is because the 1021 new members (on paper) stayed home, and only the loyal followers of the upper middle-class leaders came to the meetings.

The Nitty Gritty of Building an Egalitarian Revolutionary Movement

All of the above is why I wrote here about the nitty gritty of how to begin building an egalitarian revolutionary movement. The first step is to find out for yourself how your neighbors feel about the idea of egalitarian revolution: not whether they think it is possible (most say it is not), but whether they would love it if it did happen.

Just ask me (spritzler@comcast.net) and I will mail you free stickers with the same image as the button I showed people in the person-on-the-street videos and the pro-Trumpers. See for yourself how your neighbors respond to it.