Know Your Enemy

Who is your enemy?

The corporate media would have you believe it’s everyone in the “wrong” party. They present one theatrical fight after another. A game where they’re wearing different-colored uniforms, but they’re really on the same team.

Our political leaders would have you believe our enemy is the “dictator” of another country. Fearmongering day and night about what they might do to us.

Everyone feels it; everyone knows there is something fundamentally wrong with our country, our society, our world. To understand the reason, we must ask the question: Who has the power, the wealth, the control? The answer is clear: The billionaires.

Both literally and figuratively, the buck stops with them. They have one special talent: turning money into much more money, in their pockets. Everything else is secondary. The greed of the billionaires is insatiable — if that wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t be billionaires.

Our capitalist system funnels money and resources from the many into the hands of the very few at the top and, here in the late stages, the wealth inequality is worse than ever. While everyone else struggles, they get richer and richer.

Even if we put aside the morality of allowing that level of wealth and power, there is a simple, practical fact about the billionaires: We can’t afford them. The current system is unsustainable and headed for collapse; it’s just a matter of when and how.

So yes, the 99% must view them as the enemy. But they are not are all-powerful. The billionaire class has enormous wealth and resources — but they also have weaknesses:

One — they compete with each other, ruthlessly. There are different flavors of billionaires, from different economic sectors — banking, finance, energy, war machine, Silicon Valley, media, big pharma, real estate — and they all want not just a piece of the pie, but all of the pie. They knock each other down without a second thought.

Two — they can’t control the narrative anymore. There was a time when corporate media could decide what the 99% could see, and even think. But this is the information age, and anyone who cares to look can see what is happening. That is powerful.

Three — they are few, we are many. At any time we, the non-billionaires, can decide that it is time for real change. But the only way it happens is with a mass movement, one that is organized around a clear, concise set of demands — like the Eleven Demands for Real Democracy and MC/DS.

We’ve seen glimmers of this kind of mass action: Occupy Wall Street, the George Floyd protests, the Bernie movement. But they lacked a comprehensive explanation of the root causes, clear demands, and systemic solutions. Eleven Demands proposes to provide this.

No billionaire is going to save us — it’s quite the opposite. It’s up to us. Join the Eleven Demands Collective and let’s get started on something real.

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A readout by EricT Red:

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