Every revolution is helped along by people inside the government who turn against it. The most effective members of any Resistance are the men and women in law enforcement and the military. Because every act of government is backed up by the threat or use of violence, it doesn’t work when cops and soldiers refuse to arrest and kill people at the State’s bidding. It can collapse completely when cops and soldiers turn their violence away from the State’s enemies and toward the real enemy: the State itself.
Of course, this doesn’t happen very often. Most cops and soldiers are just like everyone else: slavish dolts who accept the State’s claim to legitimacy at face value. “I’m just doing my job…I’m just following orders.” And like most other people, they are driven by self-interest. They chose their professions for reasons like job security, health benefits, steady pay, college tuition, and the desire to blow shit up and beat people up. And let’s face it: The average cop or soldier is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. How many federal agents have thought about the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve? Not many, I suspect.
But some cops and soldiers actually have a brain and a conscience. You are the ones I want to reach. Maybe idealism motivated your career choice; you honestly believed that you could serve the People by serving the State. But now you feel that there is something deeply wrong with this country’s legal system, foreign policy, or government in general. I want to inspire you by pointing out the many examples where people in your position turned against their governments—sometimes at great risk to their reputations, careers, and lives.
Cassius Chaerea (1st century AD). Cassius Chaerea was the Praetorian Guard who assassinated the mad Roman Emperor Caligula. The assassination was a broad conspiracy involving Senators, Equestrians, and other Praetorian Guards (the very men who swore to protect the Emperor). Cassius wanted to restore power to the Senate, but his fellow Praetorians declared a new emperor instead. Cassius was one of the few conspirators to be sentenced to death. He requested to be executed with his own murder weapon, and this was granted.
Saint Florian (304 AD). As commander of the imperial army in the Roman province of Noricum, Florian was sent by the Roman regime to persecute Christians in its effort to eradicate Christianity. After Florian refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Gods, he cheerfully accepted torture at the hands of his fellow soldiers. He was executed by drowning in the Enns River with a stone tied around his neck.
Tower of London Guards (1381). When a group of rebels stormed the Tower of London during the Peasants’ Revolt and killed the government officials who were hiding there, they were probably let in by tower guards who sympathized with the rebels.
Daniel Shays (1786–1787). Daniel Shays was a distinguished officer during the American Revolution before leading Shays’ Rebellion, a tax revolt against the Massachusetts legislature.
Robert E. Lee (1861–1865). Lee initially ridiculed the secessionist states. But when President Abraham Lincoln decided to invade the Southern Confederacy, Lee turned down an offer to become a major general in U.S. Army. He resigned and became commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was one of thousands of soldiers who broke their oaths to the U.S. military and fought for their native states against a brutal, unconstitutional, and unnecessary invasion by the federal government.
Smedley Butler (1930s). At the time of his death, Major General Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Every Marine learns in boot camp that Smedley Butler won the Medal of Honor twice. What they don’t learn is that he later became a crusader against U.S. imperialism. One of the first to make the connection between war and corporate profits, he warned that U.S. war games in the Pacific would provoke the Japanese, and he wrote the following in War is a Racket:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes…To hell with war!Butler began a long tradition of veterans joining the antiwar movement: Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Iraq Veterans Against the War; etc.
Eamon Broy (1919–1921). Eamon Broy was a double agent within the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the Irish War of Independence. While working as a clerk in the intelligence branch, he passed sensitive information to IRA leader Michael Collins and helped him identify the informants who were later assassinated by Collins’ death squads. Played by Stephen Rea in the movie Michael Collins, Broy says to Collins, “I’ve been making notes of your speeches. You can be very persuasive. What was it you said? Our only weapon is our refusal.”
German Army Officers (1934–1944). The most effective members of the German Resistance were officers in the German Army, who retained a surprising level of independence after the Nazis took control. The reasons for their resistance included democratic ideals, disgust with the SS and the Holocaust, Hitler’s instigation of a war that Germany couldn’t possibly win, and the view that Hitler was “the incarnation of evil.” As early as 1934, senior officers were discussing the possibility of deposing or even assassinating Hitler. In 1938, General Ludwig Beck tried to sabotage Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia, and Colonel Hans Oster was conspiring to overthrow the Nazi regime. Colonel Henning von Tresckow tried to blow up Hitler’s plane as part of a coup attempt in 1943. Two officers—Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff and Axel von dem Bussche—volunteered to carry out suicide missions against Hitler. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that nearly killed Hitler. Remarkably, some of these plots were elaborate conspiracies involving dozens of participants—and all of them were protected by a code of silent solidarity among senior Army officers. Even those who disapproved of the plots refused to report them to the Gestapo or inform Hitler when his life was in danger. Two hundred people were executed after the July 20 Plot, and very few of the plotters denied their involvement or tried to escape. They went to their deaths knowing their honor had been satisfied.
General George S. Patton (1944–1945). General Patton was growing increasing critical of Allied leadership at the end of World War II, specifically: U.S. collusion with the Russians that cost American lives; General Eisenhower’s strategic blunders; allowing the Soviets to seize Berlin and Prague; and a punitive occupation policy that starved and enslaved German civilians. When he threatened to return home and go public with his criticisms, he was assassinated with the connivance of U.S. leaders.
Hungarian Soldiers (1956). The first shots of the Hungarian Revolution were fired by Soviet secret police on a large crowd gathered at the Radio Budapest building. Hungarian soldiers sent to relieve the secret police initially hesitated and then, tearing the red stars from their caps, sided with the crowd. Even some Soviet troops showed open sympathy for the demonstrators before crushing the rebellion.
Kim Jaegyu (1980). South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee was assassinated by his former close friend, Kim Jaegyu, who was Director of the Korean Intelligence Agency. Jaegyu was executed by hanging on May 24, 1980.
Berlin Wall Guards (1989). On November 9, 1989, the East German government accidentally made an announcement that anyone would be able to cross the “Bornholmer Strasse” checkpoint into West Berlin. Hundreds of people showed up. The police tried stop the euphoria, but the crowd refused to back down. “Don’t be stupid!” they yelled. “Open the gate!” The border guard called his superior but was refused permission to let them through. Faced with overwhemling pressure, the guards decided on their own to open the gates and then watched communism collapse before their eyes. The narrator says in the above video, “The most heavily guarded border in the world broke apart because a handful of guardians could not and would not protect it from its citizens.”
Waco Truth-Tellers (1993). The truth about the Waco Siege came to light after many government officials exposed the tyrannical actions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI. Robert Sanders, a retired ATF Deputy Director, said that the raid was meant for publicity purposes. Robert Rodriguez, an undercover ATF agent, testified that the ATF knew they had lost the element of surprise before the initial raid and then lied about it later. Edward Allard, a former manager of the Defense Department’s Night Vision Laboratory, proved that the FBI fired on the compound during the standoff and as it was burning to the ground. Farris Rookstool (FBI photographer), Nizam Peerwani (county Medical Examiner), Rick Sherrow (retired ATF Arson Specialist), and David Byrnes (captain with the Texas Rangers) all agreed that the FBI confiscated or destroyed evidence at the crime scene after the fire. Sherrow even said, “I’ve seen this happen before.” Rookstool was left with the “haunting opinion” that the Branch Davidians were “homicide victims” of the government. Maurice Cook, a senior captain with the Texas Rangers, testified that federal agents lied to him during his investigation. ATF Associate Director Hartnett said that the Treasury Department engaged in a cover-up. Jack Zimmerman, the heroic defense attorney for the surviving Branch Davidians, was a Vietnam vet, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves, and a practicing military judge. Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General, called the Danforth Report a “whitewash” and said that Waco remains “greatest domestic law enforcement tragedy in the history of the United States.”
Conscientious Objectors. Since U.S. law requires that conscientious objectors be opposed to war in any form, most soldiers who refuse to fight in specific wars for constitutional or moral reasons are sentenced to prison and dishonorably discharged. Moreover, they have historically been subject to mistreatment and abuse. Nevertheless, many soldiers have refused to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. André Shepherd explains his motives for seeking asylum in Germany:
Well, it’s very simple: In the war of aggression against the Iraqi people, the United States violated not only domestic law, but international law as well. The U.S. government has deceived not only the American public, but also the international community, the Iraqi community, as well as the military community. And the atrocities that have been committed there these past six years are great breaches of the Geneva Conventions. My applying for asylum is based on the grounds that international law has been broken and that I do not want to be forced to fight in an illegal war.
Michael Scheuer (2004–present). As part of his 22-year career in the CIA, Michael Scheuer led the Osama bin Laden tracking unit from 1996 to 1999. In 2004, he anonymously published Imperial Hubris, a devastating critique of the idea that terrorists “hate us because we’re free.” He argued that terrorist attacks against Americans are the inevitable consequence of America’s interventionist foreign policy. He also pulled no punches against the Intelligence Community: “Indeed, I resigned from an Agency I love in order to publicly damn the feckless 9/11 Commission, which failed to find any personal failure or negligence among Intelligence Community leaders even though dozens of serving officers provided the commissioners with clear documentary evidence of that failure.” Scheuer was fired by the Jamestown Foundation in 2009 for his outspoken views on U.S.–Israel relations.
Drug War Traitors. Many cops and judges have become outspoken critics of the War on Drugs. Michael Levine, a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency, says, “The drug war has succeeded in militarizing police against their own people.” Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is an organization of 10,000 people—including current and former police, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, FBI and DEA agents—that lobby for reform in America’s drug laws.
Thomas M. Tamm (2005). Tamm was the Justice Department official who exposed the NSA’s illegal domestic surveillance program. After failing to get the attention of his superiors and members of Congress, he leaked details about the program to The New York Times. In 2007, his home was raided by heavily armed FBI agents. He refused to plead guilty to revealing classified information, saying he had done nothing wrong. Joe Conason writes in Salon, “The consequences of Tamm’s act have included the abrupt end of his career at Justice, many thousands of dollars in legal expenses, bouts of depression, and a difficult struggle to find work in his profession. Perhaps most difficult of all has been the uncertainty of waiting for the government to bring an indictment against him.”
Anonymous Marine (2009). A U.S. Marine released this YouTube video in support of the American Resistance. “You are under the watchful eye of an ever-increasing tyrannical government. But within that government lies patriots just like you…Let me assure you patriots that we will die fighting our brothers in arms if we must.” (Even the government is worried about disillusioned vets becoming “right-wing extremists.”)
Darth Vader (fictional). Darth Vader served as Emperor Palpatine’s right-hand man before assassinating him at the end of Return of the Jedi.
Inspector Finch (fictional). While tracking down the freedom fighter V in V for Vendetta, Inspector Finch (also played by Stephen Rea!) uncovers evidence of an unspeakable government crime. In the final scene, he allows Evey to proceed with blowing up Parliament. His best line: “If our own government was responsible for the deaths of almost 100,000 people, would you really want to know?”
Conclusion
Nobody can serve the People by serving the State. The sole purpose of the State is to plunder and oppress the People for the benefit of ruling elites. This government long ago ceased to be legitimate. The United States is an empire that attacks and meddles in foreign countries to benefit the military–industrial complex. Lawmaking and lawmakers are so thoroughly corrupt that anyone who enforces the law to the letter is nothing but an armed goon for the State.
I know it’s hard to accept. I’ve been there. (I joined the Marine Reserves in 1999 and was deployed to Iraq in 2003.) It’s basic human nature. Nobody likes to admit being wrong—much less to collaborating with Evil—especially if it requires personal sacrifice. Every institution works in its own self-interest. The camaraderie among by cops and soldiers naturally creates a “protect our own” mentality. The concept of “duty” implies that any form of dissent is “treason” or “betrayal.”
There is hope for cops and soldiers, but let’s be real. For every German officer who tried to kill Hitler, there were a dozen more who refused to help, lost their nerve, or failed to act until it was too late. For every guard who stepped aside at the Berlin Wall, there were 50 more that waited every day to gun down their countrymen. For every Ludwig Beck (the general who tried to sabotage Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia), there is a Colin Powell (the general who whored himself to the neocons by advocating a war he never believed in). For every whistleblower, there are a thousand bureaucrats who look the other way. Most cops and soldiers will never think about what they do, even fewer will develop reservations, even fewer will act on them, and even fewer will become radical revolutionaries. The heroic examples cited above are just a footnote to the daily reports of cops and soldiers mindlessly and gleefully humiliating, beating, assaulting, tasing, bullying, burning, choking, jailing, shooting, killing, bombing, torturing, raiding, raping, and sodomizing harmless citizens and foreigners—not to mention confiscating firearms, killing puppies, planting evidence, taking bribes, selling drugs, committing perjury, and covering up scandals. And despite their trillions of tax dollars and ever-expanding surveillance powers, they still fail to stop crime, catch terrorists, or make Americans any safer.
The next American Revolution will have to be a citizens’ revolution—not a military-style coup. So, for all you cops and soldiers, consider this an invitation and a warning. The revolution is coming. You should either get on board, or get the f*ck out of the way.
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
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