Sacred Cows and Why You Need to Smash Them
You'd be surprised at how many of the beliefs about resistance are counterproductive, obsolete, or just plain bad.
Today we are starting a series on some of the tropes and beliefs that permeate the resistance and activism world. Groups and individuals often cling to beliefs, tactics, or traditions that feel righteous or noble but are, in fact, lethal weaknesses. These are the sacred cows: illusions you protect so hard you forget to check if they still serve you and your group’s goals. The problem is that an adversary with half a brain will spot these faster than you do and exploit them every single time. Consider this article as data for your reorientation.
Let’s take a look at the first part of the list.
1. Bigger crowds mean more power.
Numbers don’t actually work in your favor, and depending on the topic or issue, can work against you. (Imagine people are sitting in your favorite restaurant when 200 of you, all carrying long guns, descend on the venue in a bid to ‘normalize’ open carry. How do you think that will go over with the public—the public that you need to support or at least tolerate you?)
Big crowds are also a big target. Mass participation without cohesion is easily infiltrated, mapped, or misled. Small, disciplined cells move more effectively and survive. While Army FM 3-24 stresses being smart about both mass and compartmentalization, the NATO Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) draws on historic lessons from WWII resistance, Cold War stay-behind networks, and modern UW (unconventional warfare) theory to point out that compartmentalized cells can survive, adapt, and regenerate. Claire Wolfe and I mapped out what that looks like in our book Basics of Resistance: The Practical Freedomista.
2. If the people see the truth, they will rise up.
Let’s be real. People see truth all the time and do nothing. Cognitive dissonance, fear, and normalcy bias are stronger than moral disgust. “Awareness” is not enough, which means that if your group’s goal is to “raise awareness” about a topic or issue, you’re behind the curve. Kuran discusses this in the book Private Truths, Public Lies, explaining that people often privately hold one belief but publicly conform to the dominant narrative to avoid punishment, social exclusion, or worse. If you’ve ever kept quiet at a family gathering when politics come up because you didn’t want the hassle of disagreeing with the crowd, you’ve already seen this on a micro level. Also consider how many people virulently disagreed with mandatory COVID vaccinations but literally hid or even lied about their status to family and friends in an effort to keep the peace.
3. We don’t have anything to worry about because we aren’t doing anything illegal.
This is one of the most dangerous beliefs out there, and it comes under the “if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that” heading. Being legal doesn’t mean safety. If your activity threatens legitimacy, embarrasses people in power, or exposes corruption, you’re a target whether you’re breaking laws or not. This is true especially now, when doxxing is widespread, and “canceling” people is a favorite tactic. Smear campaigns, intimidation, surveillance, job loss when they call your boss, harassment of your family, frivolous lawsuits…all of these are often unpunished, and so they get used as tactics over and over. Not to mention, there are always the “entrapment elves” who show up. If you aren’t doing anything for them to grab on to, they’ll create you something to do. Oddly enough, they’re slightly less prevalent than the enemies you have on the other side of the aisle.
4. Our group is so cohesive it is self-sustaining.
No.
Groups are systems, and all systems are prone to entropy. That’s even before you factor in the part where humans are involved. Groups require maintenance, conflict resolution, and constant reorientation. Boyd’s Destruction and Creation applies here. You cannot sustain a system without specific, intentional, healthy, disciplined investment in it. If you believe that your group cohesion will protect you, with no intentionality on your part, then your group is already in trouble.
5. Martyrdom is the highest form of service to the cause.
This one is particularly nasty, and yet it seems baked into many resistance models almost to the point of cultlike behavior. In reality, martyrdom is strategically expensive, because dead people are out of the cause. Their skills, brains, and abilities are permanently off the table. Their relationships are shattered, leaving multiple people in a state of grief that affects their decision-making. One more effect that no one really talks about is the canonization that often occurs in the wake. If we follow truth at all costs, then we have to be truthful about everything, not just the comfortable things that we like to hear. Keep that in mind as you read the next paragraph.
The death of LaVoy Finicum in 2016 during the Malheur standoff turned him into a martyr instantly among many sympathetic circles. What’s more, it made him a saint. His image, words, and cause were immediately enshrined as moral certainties, and questioning anything about him became a massive social taboo for liberty groups. If you orient to operational truth instead of emotion, however, you’ll notice a few things:
Finicum’s death removed a skilled, motivated, intelligent, and charismatic operator and educator from the movement permanently.
It fractured the decision-making among the remaining occupiers, contributing to panic, confusion, and collapse. Some of them ran from the occupation so fast they left their firearms behind (not to mention an absolute biohazard of a mess).
It shocked and traumatized his family and friends, as well as the greater movement. This resulted in emotion-based decisions that did not help their overall cause.
Do the Work.
If you treat your sacred cows as immune to scrutiny, you are guaranteeing your own destruction. Resistance work is harsh. It demands you slaughter your illusions in favor of the truth, without hesitation. That means asking: Does this belief serve us? If the answer is no, it goes to the butcher block to be cut out and replaced with a correct belief over and over in a never-ending upward spiral.
That’s how you stay effective and survive.