What the Left and Right Both Get Wrong About the Oregon Militia Standoff

Left-Vs-Right-HeadsOp-Ed by Dan Sanchez

Imagine a serf is beaten by his master, who then says the beating was requested by a slave over some alleged transgression. Seeking vengeance, the beaten serf requests that the slave be beaten in return for his own misdeeds. The master obliges, telling the slave that his beating was requested by the serf. The slave then retaliates likewise. The slave and the serf then become locked in a proxy war with each other, through the medium of their master. They are so preoccupied with their enmity toward each other, they never even consider uniting against their true and common enemy. To the contrary, each becomes positively devoted to his master, as his chief champion against his perceived enemy. “If only I could finally get the master fully and finally on my side, then everything would be great!”

That is how the modern State divides and rules. Recent developments have shown how successful the American government has been in this regard.


A spokesman for the activists now occupying the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is also an anti-Muslim activist. He is willing to put his neck on the line for the sake of ranchers beset by government persecution. Yet he petitions his government masters to persecute Muslims. Some of his conservative fellow occupiers may obstinately defend brutal cops and their license to persecute and even kill civilians, especially blacks.

Meanwhile, progressives are petitioning their masters to rain down drone fire on the “domestic terrorists” for daring to occupy government “property” in protest over a Federal land grab (click here for the full story). Yet many of these same progressives oppose the drone bombing of Muslims abroad, support civil disobedience and the occupation of public space (so long as it’s for Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter), and oppose Israeli land grabs in occupied Palestine (often perpetrated under environmentalist pretexts).

Both sides seem entirely insensible to cognitive dissonance.

Conservatives are oblivious to the fact that the Federales threatening their gun rights, seizing their land, and regulating their livelihood into oblivion are doing all those things using the military gear originally produced for wars that conservatives supported and the “national security” legal and bureaucratic apparatus that conservatives helped build up.

And progressives look to Federal agencies to disarm and crush their politico-cultural enemies, as well as rein in the local cops who have declared open season on people of color. Yet it is those same Feds who have militarized police forces across the country. And if you think cops are unaccountable now, just wait until they are even further Federalized. Their current “qualified immunity” is as nothing compared to the impervious “sovereign immunity” of Federal agents. Moreover, gun restrictions, which progressives are so fond of, are among the most common pretexts cops use to torment, fine, and incarcerate blacks.

Ask not on whose face the boot stamps. The boot stamps on thine.

This is exactly how the State likes it. It wants its subjects at each other’s throats. The State’s worst nightmare is all of its varied victims recognizing it as their common enemy, and joining in solidarity against it.

Imagine how powerful it would have been for cowboys and Tea Party types to have marched in Ferguson, Missouri, or for OWS and BLM activists to have marched in Burns, Oregon.

Such an alliance would be powerful enough to truly secure our property from land-, money-, and gun-grabbers and our sons from the modern-day slave catchers for the prison industrial complex.

But such solidarity is only possible once we all recognize that the grabbers and the catchers are all part of the same State apparatus, which is our common enemy. Only then will we stop jostling for a spot at the controls of that machine in order to wield it against each other, and instead join together to dismantle the apparatus of mutual oppression itself.

This article (What the Left and Right Both Get Wrong About the Oregon Militia Standoff) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dan Sanchez and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email edits@theantimedia.org.


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4 Comments on "What the Left and Right Both Get Wrong About the Oregon Militia Standoff"

  1. Very good article Dan.
    Couldn’t be more applicable and painfully honest.

    Now, only time will tell if these words of wisdom will be pearls before swine, or the catalyst that helps free men.

  2. I’ve heard that the Hammond’s own some prime real-estate that the government wants. The Hammond’s weren’t willing to sell it. Trump up charges, arrest and imprison them, wait until they can’t make payments and VOILA!, now the Feds own it. I’ve heard of this and other dastardly deeds being done to land owners to get them off their lands. Flood them out so that they can’t work the land, the value drops, and another VOILA!…now the Feds own it.

    • And conveniently we are having this huge gas problem in Ca that threatens to evacuate many.

      Don’t have enough data to make an intelligent assessment but as you can see I’m slightly suspicious with good reason.
      There are rumors we are giving this land to some of our creditors as payment.
      U.N. China

  3. Matthew Michael Crown | January 14, 2016 at 7:24 am |

    Here’s a lesson never taught in our schools & colleges:

    1) This American warned that the Quran commanded the faithful to
    “plunder and enslave” non-Muslims. – Thomas Jefferson

    2) Another wrote that Islam was founded by a “military fanatic”
    later writing that Islamic law was “contemptible.” – John Adams
    3) A third American wrote this: “The precept of the Koran is
    perpetual war against all who deny that Muhammad is the prophet of
    God.” – John Quincy Adams &

    4) These words: “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund,
    Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.” This same man
    warned that, “were it not for Christianity … the civilization of modern Europe might fall.”

    Considering recent events Winston Churchill was prophetic to say the least.

    The first American navy was built by Jefferson to fight the Barbary pirates- Muslims.
    Islam is a peaceful religion, except for just a few. Oh, if you
    are a peaceful Muslim and your mosque says that the group is going
    for the infidels, and you the peaceful muslim, if you do not go out
    and help, and participate, and kill the infidels, and rape the
    infidels, well, it is muslim law, it is sharia law that the muslims
    that are participating, well they can go to those non-participating
    muslims and kill them, and rape their wives and rape their children
    and make these peaceful muslims into slaves. IT IS WRITTEN in the
    KORAN……… If one studies Islam, and if one listens to Salman
    Rushdie Videos on youtube, one will hear the facts, the facts with
    references.

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