Solidarity as a strategy — exemplified by the 1994 Zapatista/Civil
Society alliance against NAFTA — made clear the power of unifying the
indigenous peoples movement, the human rights movement, and the
environmental movement. Taking a lesson from the iconic uprising in
Mexico, the U.S. military reorganized its intelligence and public
relations capacities to engender a more sophisticated form of
psychological warfare and counterinsurgency that includes co-optation of
reform-oriented, Civil Society NGOs.
Working in tandem with State Department initiatives to undermine
indigenous nations’ jurisdiction under international law, especially the
2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Pentagon
and NATO now frequently create a distorted image of human rights as part
of the cover story when destabilizing or overthrowing non-NATO
governments. Reinforcing State and Defense Department efforts to subvert
the international human rights regime, Treasury and other departments
of the U.S. Government — through the austerity agenda — are steadily
eroding the ability of Civil Society to support the indigenous peoples
movement.
Austerity, as such, is not merely a larcenous agenda by federal
governments in cahoots with Wall Street and the European Central Bank;
it is equally valuable as a tool of oppression of the populations
impoverished by the financial services empire.
The audacity of austerity’s exponents also serves a purpose:
transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness
creates a submissive citizenry, inoculated against revolutionary
politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable
opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a
reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants
to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the
oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize
disorganized, which ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and
demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power
of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic
delusion.
