E. "Weapons of the Weak"

Finally, let's talk about strategies and tactics that we might

find in the course of a revolution or insurgency or

tactics strategies that inform the breakout of revolt.

So let's look at some pretty, uh, you know, intuitive

things like protest tactics, marches, demonstrations, sit ins, occupation, civil

disobedience. These are things that are relatively unsurprising that you

would find.

And, of course, of a revolution.

Right? Um, but I want to say a little bit

about strikes.

Strikes like the 2012 Marikana miners strike in South Africa.

Pictured Here are the best tools that workers have not

only to improve working conditions, but also to change the

entire economy if they can get a general strike going.

So general strike is a strike that happens in an

entire sector or throughout an entire economy is not just

located in one workplace.

So through the strike, right workers are basically withholding their

labor, and this stops the regular functioning of the economy

and stops the flow of profits to their employers or

to the government or to the top, whoever they're working

for. And so as long as workers continue to work

and play the role that is expected of them.

There is no incentive for bosses or governments to respond

to their demands, whether they speak for a better wage

or better working conditions or a more egalitarian society.

In fact, lots of workers don't just strike for better

conditions for themselves.

They are striking for some broader social change for everyone.

So basically, workers have to stop work to be heard

because all their leverage lies in their labor power.

They are the ones that are producing the goods and

services that make society function and that make profit for

their bosses.

And if they stop work, they create a disruption in

everyday life that forces people to listen and forces society

to change.

But striking can also be extremely dangerous, as when the

police, um, come to the defense of the private mine

owners, as in the Marikana South Africa case, rather than

defending the lives of the striking workers.

And so, in this case, um, the police shot and

killed 34 um, mine workers that went on strike, um,

in 2012, and and instead of being deployed to protect

the mineworkers from retaliation from their bosses and in the

U. S, we see this very same sort of violence.

The U.

S. Is actually has the bloodiest labor history out of

all Western industrialized countries.

And that is because of the ways in which the

police has been deployed to protect private property interests and

the interests of the business owners, employers over the workers

and, um, and this history of employers hiring private mercenaries

in order to violently repress striking workers.

We also find everyday resistance as a weapon of the

weak. Right.

These are any subtle, indirect or non confrontational acts that

challenge power holders to make daily life more bearable for

people. And so think about a situation in which power

relations are highly unequal between a boss and a worker

between the landlord and tenant between the Lord and the

surf master slave Brahman untouchable, as in, um, the caste

system in India.

Any dominant race versus a subjugated race, right?

Power relations in these contexts are very unequal.

And so if the subjugated person were to openly resist

rise up against the dominant, they would surely die.

They would surely be putting their life at risk, putting

their livelihood at risk, and so they have to find

some other way right to resist power to, um, silently

assert their dignity, right?

To make it so that the material appropriation of their

labor that they're feeling, um is lessened, right?

Just to make daily life more bearable, more livable.

And so then the subjugated people will engage in X

that will kind of undermine how power normally works.

It undermines the authority of the dominant in a way

that the dominant doesn't realize this and hidden ways, right?

So this can take place via theft or arson or

tax evasion.

Or if you're at work, right and you feel like

you're not being paid fairly, you might do less work

when the bosses are looking or you might slow down

work. You might do less quality of work, right?

Um, just to even the playing field or lots of

times we've seen in history that workers will kind of

mess with machinery on the workplace and pretend that it

broke down by itself.

Um, sometimes everyday resistance just takes place in your mind,

as when you dream about salvation from, you know, slavery

or from, um, your very exploitative work situation or you

dream of revenge against the dominant right that is exploiting

you. And in fact, each of these acts, while they're

subtle and interact and they don't actually directly confront power,

they still become fuel and practice for open resistance.

Later, lastly, I'm going to go over a particular form

of insurgency that is guerilla warfare.

Guerilla warfare consists of hit and run combat tactics.

This is usually conducted by a small group of combatants,

right, and you can think about it as then popping

up, attacking and then retreating again before their opponent even

knows what's going on and has the opportunity to retaliate.

And so guerilla warfare is making your strategies of fighting

extremely mobile.

There is no clear front line here everywhere, and everything

becomes a potential terrain of battle, and so contrast this

to traditional warfare.

Conventional warfare, in which two armies come together in a

given territory and fight to the death and whatever armies

left standing, is the one that claims that territory, whereas

guerilla warfare doesn't have like a meeting place.

The meeting places anywhere the guerrillas pop up in order

to attack and retreat again, and then pop up in

another location where you least expect it to attack and

retreat again.

So let's take a look at a quote from Mao,

who is one of the very influential strategists of guerilla

warfare, He said, Select the tactic of seeming to come

from the east and attacking from the west Avoid the

solid attack the hollow.

When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw.

When he advances, harass him.

Then when he stops, strike him when he is weary,

pursue him when he withdraws.

And so the idea is to find your enemies weakest

points and to attack their, for instance, attacking their communications

line attacking person now that are less armored, right, hiding

among rough terrain in caves among civilians.

So that entails winning over the support of the population

so that you can hide among them.

Right? All of these ways protect you from an upon

your opponent while you're sort of re, uh, regrouping and

re strategizing getting your forces together for the next attack.

And so guerilla warfare is extremely adaptable.

It adapts to the changing local conditions of particular local

conditions that you face and the limited resources that you

have. So basically, you try to maximize what little you

have and compensate for your own weaknesses.

And so one of the ways that this is done,

um, is through, For instance, if we look at the

Vietnam War, right, the Vietnam gorilla rebel fighters They have

dug this very elaborate series of tunnels and got civilians

to help them do this to, um where these tunnels

they might dig underneath a US military base.

And then they would crawl through the tunnels and an

attack within the base and the retreat in the tunnel

before anyone was the wiser.

Um, so then they would seemingly come out of nowhere,

right? And that they would also have, you know, spaces

for eating and cooking and sleeping and showering in these

tunnels. Um, that then allowed them to be safe and

to hide out from, you know, their opponents from the

U. S.

Military from the South Vietnamese government army and from the

bombing campaign.

So as soon as the bombs started to come, they

would jump into one of these tunnels.

So, overall right, guerilla warfare is best used against a

traditional army that's technologically superior, because technological, superior armies you

cannot win against unless you play smart because you don't

have the force behind you, Right?

So if you have an invading army that has all

these big tanks and helicopters and bombers and you don't

have any of those things, how do you win against

an army like that?

You have to win through guerilla warfare.

Um, because that army is going to be less mobile

venue, right, even though it's technologically superior is gonna be

less mobile.

So you have to use your mobility, um, as a

in your advantage.

And finally, the guerilla warfare tactics is not just about

military strategy, but there is also a political program involved,

a political project involved in this and that.

It's about winning the hearts and minds of the people

via good governance by providing them social services or by

forwarding a political program of unification and emancipation of all

the people.

And so your goals have to seem to accord with

the aspirations and the interests of the people to win

their hearts and minds over to you.

Um, because that will increase your likelihood of success.

And so usually this entails using propaganda.

So let me show you an example of some propaganda

posters that were used by the Viet Cong during the

Revolutionary War during the Civil War in Vietnam.

Um so due to limited resources like posters like this

one were often drawn on scrap paper and then distributed

that way.

And this particular poster called on civilians to pave the

path to victory by participating in the war, and in

particular, it seems to be calling civilians, too.

Construct and operate the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is

a series of roads, paved roads that were built largely

by civilian supporters of the insurgency and sometimes the insurgents.

With four civilians that build these roads for them and

on these roads, they would transport supplies to different, you

know, rebel stations.

And so they often relied on civilians to do this

type of work and mobilize civilians to support the war

effort. In this way now also noted, note the gender

dimension here that this woman right is sort of like

leading the way here and guiding the transport vehicles through

the whole human trail.

And, um, this is very common in particularly left wing

insurgency's, where you see much higher participation rates by women

not only a support staff for the war, but also

as active fighters as guerilla fighters.

I mean, that's because women are more drawn to left

wing insurgencies because they often have a promise of gender

egalitarianism. They're more committed to the ideals of gender equality

than other types of insurgencies.

Would be, um, so let's take a look at one

more propaganda poster example from this era.

And so this says, um, this poster points out Nixon

as a murderer, right?

This is sort of what this says, and you can

see how in Vietnamese Nick Song, uh, that's just the

Vietnamese way of saying Nixon.

And there's a caricature of him here.

And this propaganda poster refers to how three times more

bombs were dropped during the Vietnam War than all of

World War Two combined.

And that was a world war, right?

So then that's seven bombs for every man, woman and

child in all of the areas that were, uh, became

the battlefield in the Vietnam War.

So posters like this were used to really highlight that

the vast majority of deaths suffered during the war were

from US actions and not the actions of the guerilla

fighters. And this was another way of winning over the

hearts and minds of the people to the revolutionary insurgency

E. "Weapons of the Weak"

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