New Rules for New Radicals ? *

Traductions: Français, Español “We are a movement of liberation” We are moving, marching towards our liberation. The liberation of everyone and each of us, the liberation of the entire humanity. We seek to liberate ourselves from the madness of the powerful who make us crazy mad! Mad from misery and mad from inequality, mad from exhaustion and disease, mad from our land and our planet, seized away from us and soon inhabitable, mad from competition, mad from resentment, hatred and despair. We liberate ourselves and march to discover our own humanity and our own serenity, to invent our Buenvivir and our buengobierno, in a world that, finally, is a decent one and to our measure, in which all can become responsible, simply, with benevolence. (From the communiqué N°1, Mandela Front for World Liberation, MFWL) .1. Power cannot be shared. But political power can! We want to let our potentialities express themselves. We do not seek all political power. We seek some political power. Power is force. Power is not only what we hold in our hands. It is ourselves who are in power. Our power is constantly overtaken by our potentialities. But let us beware not to take ourselves for gods and to play with the fire of all-mightiness. The power of the human being unleashes itself only within the confines of the physical-chemical cosmic world, the living world of the pachamama, the anthropological-social world of the Ubuntu and the buenvivir that we build together, permanently! We humans are particles, we are animals, we are faber and sapiens/demens. Our power cumulates the power of our body the power of our spirit and our soul. The power of the “have-nots” is without limit :flesh, blood and heart at the service of the movement of life; intelligence of the understanding of life and the explanation of things; intuitive chant of the inner self of each and of the universe shared by all. Political power is struggle for power: this is why political power is not only what we hold but what our adversary thinks we hold. To him falls the burden of showing that we have more than he does: more body, more spirit, more soul. To him falls the burden of showing that power is something other than a zero sum game and that by sharing power, we multiply it. We do not seek all political power. We seek some political power. The power to be and to act together. We are already social makers, and we seek to be that even more. Our adversary has designated us as his enemy. But he remains our adversary. We do not have an enemy. He is our adversary every time he resists our sharing of power and will to multiply it. 2. Let us never move away from ourselves Let us never move away from the personal expertise of our common experience. We would run the risk of being paralyzed by the confusion of being where we are, of being petrified by the anguish of moving forward and being blinded by the desire to escape. Our common sentiment of security constitutes both the vertebral column and the spinal cord of each one and all of us which lets us stand and allows us to get up together for our rights and our emancipation. 3. Let us escape from the logic of what is Each time it is possible, let us escape from the expertise that is hammered upon us and the logic that is drawn by the system we co-produce with our adversary. Our adversary is the one who wants for himself all the power to be exerted through domination, exploitation and a hegemonic and unique thought process. Let us try to re-enforce the vulnerabilities of our adversary and our own resiliencies, his anxieties and our serenity, his uncertainties and our harmony. “Not in my name is one of our favorite slogans. 4. Let us take the adversary at his own words! Let us take the adversary to his own principles, his own laws and rules, his own system that he is convinced he is creating for his own benefit. Our adversary will not survive: no one can survive so many persnickety rules, and so much stupidity. He will end up mad: his acts cannot correspond to the principles he pretends to uphold. He cannot keep his word without ceasing ipso facto to be our adversary and to fraternize with us. Or he will show himself to be the beast that he is still; and things will be clear, once and for all. 5. Our weapon is derision Derision is the most potent weapon at our disposal. Derision is the most powerful of all weapons. Ridicule kills our enemy. To make a mockery of him, to make him lose his senses and his rationality; This makes him angry towards us, because he is angry towards himself. This is where lies the leverage that will force him to negotiate and make concessions. Self-mockery is the only weapon that will let us defend ourselves against ourselves, against our desires to be gods, against the fantasies of our overgrown egos. 6. Our strategy is nourished by our pleasure A good tactic is made up of actions that rejoice us and provide us with pleasure. We will not be told twice to pursue them and develop them; we will find new ones that will rejoice us even more and that will provide us with even more pleasure. We will become contagious; a real epidemic of convergent tactics, the giggles, an emotional trance: liberty. 7. Our actions are targeted and die only to be reborn A tactic that drags on gets bogged down. Let us go forward! Let us not think of our enemies laughingly thinking: “When will they stop?” Let us let go of what is exhausted. And let us bet on the fertility of our tactical imagination so that practice can be reborn of the practice it bore. 8. Let us maintain pressure on the enemy without relent Let us never give the impression that we are giving up. Let us continue to imagine new actions in order to change the balance of power in our favor. An overconfident adversary deploys his power frontally; let us take the byways to attack him on his flanks though novel, poetic, romantic actions that he will be incapable of imagining. 9. We have little to lose The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself. And the adversary has more to lose than we do. Our dreams and utopia trigger upon our adversary a feeling that he is threatened. This is not trivial. Nevertheless, we do not dream of blood but of gentleness; we do not dream of vengeance but of harmony. As for us, the brutal reality which is our daily lot is not a threat anymore. 10. Our energy is renewable Our positivity is our strength; their negativity is our strength! We are positive transformers of non-renewable negative energy. We are the positive sign, the “+”) operator : more body and heart advancing as a positive mass, more tactical and strategic spirit that is pushing us forward, more sensitive soul to divert the very meaning of negativity. Let us transform the enemy’s negativity into our own positivity Let us transform our own negativity into our own positivity Let us transform our own linear positivity into our exponential positivity! We are neither growing or decreasing : we are the Full Moon having a rendez-vous with the Sun. 11. Having built a durable and sustainable alternative is the measure of our tactical victories. A concrete, durable and sustainable alternative constitutes an area that is freed from the yoke of the adversary. Until we have come up with a concrete alternative solution, let us build trenches that will prevent the enemy from advancing further towards us. 12. The adversary is not legitimate; let us demonstrate it! Let us chose carefully our tactical targets in order for our strategy to develop with success. The target itself is ridiculous. It is not legitimate, which is why we ridicule it. The more it tries to fend off our attacks, the more it is unpleasant and the less it is able to garner support. Let us isolate the target so that it rots in its isolation and solitude. The target will fall on its own, and who knows whom it will take down in its fall. What we do know is that we will be there to reseed after it withers away.