"De-Peasantize Your Mind!" - Russ' Speech at Rage Against The War Machine

Bob Dylan, late in his career and well past the peak of his powers, recorded the forgettable blues tune “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” The conceit was that no matter who you are, laborer or King, you have to bend the knee to something or someone. A lot of people seem to believe this and as the election approaches like a meteor set to strike at the last of our illusions of American exceptionalism, with its choice between a half-bright narcissist and a deep state hologram, we can see formerly sturdy knees hit the dirt one by one and formerly sensible mouths speaking the most ridiculous justifications for their service to one of these two exemplars of social collapse.

The Palestinian people who have been bought and sold and traded and betrayed so many times already, are now being sold out again by many self-described progressives for the promise of a free school lunch and legal weed, with Kamala’s selection of stolen valor candidate and serial liar Tim Walz being just the fig leaf they needed to go home to the corrupt Democratic Party that they only pretend to leave between election seasons. 

Some saw gold in them thar Gaza genocide hills-many of the commentators who have been racking up clicks and ad revenue off the exploitation of Arab death, have run from their cause like Matthew Miller from a crucifix and sunlight now that the better opportunity of the Kamala campaign has come along.

Of course, nobody says outright that they’re abandoning the Palestinians to their fate. Instead they pretend to be reading subtle messages hidden in Kamala’s selection of Walz, and in her occasional acknowledgment of the untold horrors that the Biden-Harris administration continues to fund and equip. The subtext being: it’s the old white guy’s fault. Just wait until a black woman is in that White House. She’ll show ‘em. This in spite of the fact that insofar as we can infer anything from Kamala’s record, its that she will be the perfect puppet that the deep state has been after since Kennedy caught a bullet for thinking he was in charge.

This offers a tremendous opportunity for a rival campaign to set a different course. Unfortunately, the Trump campaign is not that campaign. Many say they like Trump for his honesty and one does have to admit, no other politician at his level of the game would stand in front of a bank of flags representing a foreign country (in this case Israel), and brag about how billionaire advocates for that country (in this case the Adelson’s) told him what to do on that country’s behalf, and then go on to brag about how quickly he got he got it done, as he did last week, declaring his intention to make Israel great again for good measure. The American people seem to have slipped his mind in the heat of the moment as he danced for those sweet AIPAC dollars.

And how sweet they are. So sweet that many who would speak at a Rage Against the War Machine focused on Ukraine last year, will not speak at one who’s declared aims include ending the war in Gaza. Others do not want to be associated with its sister event Rescue the Republic. But I believe, as do our hosts Angela and Nick, that we should speak to those with whom we disagree.

It’s truly remarkable how many people who saw so clearly that the war in Ukraine is something we have no business being involved in-European country though it may be, avowed bastion of the Western values that so many here this weekend claim to adore so much-have revealed themselves as rabid and unreasoning supporters of Israel after October 7^th. “No, this is not our fight,” they said, rightly, when it came to Ukraine “and besides, this country is so corrupt, they gave Hunter Biden a job. Who knows how many BMW’s and back waxes our money is going to end up paying for?” But when it comes to a country so corrupt that its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would rather keep on slaughtering children, than negotiate a peace that would allow the ongoing criminal proceedings against him to resume, they’re all in. When it comes to a racist, apartheid state that blocks food aid as a weapon of war, that attacks hospitals, houses of worship, and its own declared safe zones, that openly executes journalists and activists, some of them American citizens, they say, “We have to stand with Israel. It's an oasis of Western values in the Middle-East.”

If by Western values we’re thinking of King Leopold’s tenure in the Congo, Spain’s gay romp through South America, the US’s genocide of its native population, the Australia where an Aborigine scalp could fetch you a few pounds, well then, yes, a country full of white Europeans dropped in the middle of a non-white indigenous population who’s land they steal and who’s people they slaughter, all the while blaming the “savages” for their “savagery” when they attempt to fight back, Israel is a true bastion of Western values in the Middle-East, and God help the indigenous people there if history is any guide.

To all of this the Israelis have an answer: the Bible. In this they are of one mind with their Christian Zionist supporters. They only differ on canon. For Jews, there is only Episode I: The Phantom Hebrews in which they take the land from the unwashed Philistine. If they contemplate the sequel in which they function as Jesus-bait, before those Jews who continue to reject the Prince of Peace are thrown into the lake of fire upon his return, they have the good taste not to mention it as they indulge the apocalyptic fantasies of their Christian counterparts.  In the words of the great Israeli historian, Ilan Pape, “Most Israelis are secular, but they all believe God promised them Israel.”

So, do you really have to serve someone? Do you really have to get behind an establishment avatar or a trust fund plutocrat? There is something slavish in human nature that tells us it is so, but there is also something noble in us that tells us to resist. It was not the nobility that was most devoted to the King. It was the peasants that took the most pride in their connection to the big man in the castle on the hill. Who saw their place in the world as being inextricably linked to their acceptance and celebration of their place in the feudal order. It’s the same impulse that drives people to think that union busting, Netanyahu knee-pad wearing Elon is their champion, that Trump is a friend to the working man, in spite of all the working men he’s stiffed over the years, that Kamala is anything more than a cut out for the anti-human agenda of her handlers, or the fact that the country is running just the same without a President as it ever has with one, doesn’t prove once and for all that the job has become ceremonial with the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of ruling through bloodless ghouls like Jake Sullivan.

Some say you have to decolonize your mind. That may be so. But what you also have to do is de-peasantize your mind. You don’t have to bend the knee to any of these war-mongering narcissists that wouldn’t piss on you and yours if you were on fire, whether you’re talking about Nancy Pelosi, Dick Cheney, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. We need to get off our knees. Because when the people come together and stop accepting the way things are, that’s when they truly change. And that’s exactly what they’re afraid of. That’s why they keep us bogged down fighting about drag queens and DEI hires while they laugh their asses off and count their cash, whether it’s from the house on the hill, or from the podcast studio where the most money is to be made catering to cultural grievance while the rich get richer and you keep on getting poorer. The CIA and the FBI used to send agents out to infiltrate political groups and get them fighting. They don’t have to do that anymore for the most part. The social media algorithms do the job for them and there are plenty of folks with a microphone happy to help.

If we want to stop these wars we have to stop playing their game. We need to stop accepting their framing. We have to call an election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump out as the disgrace that it is. We need to reject a system that tells us we have no better choices than these and that we don’t deserve better choices than these. We do have a choice. It’s a choice between endorsing this system or coming together to shut it down. To shut down a system that thinks so little of us that it expects us to take these disgusting freaks that pass themselves off as our leaders seriously. And don’t let the new commentariat tell you otherwise. Those folks are getting fat off your desperation, while they funnel you right back into the system whether it's the grifters telling you to vote Kamala for the free school lunch or the grifters telling you that Donald Trump is your champion. When someone tells you either of those things, you should put your hand on your wallet because they’re about to steal it.

De-peansantize your mind. Because when we listen to that other voice, the voice that tells us to stand up and resist, that’s when castles fall. That’s when old, corrupt systems crumble. That’s when revolutions are made.

You can watch the speech below: