Guardian: no more snitching [View all]

[RainCaster]

A great op-ed piece on how we should respond to our government in the new administration.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution for Trump’s America: no snitching

Bad times are coming. In less than a month, Trump will return to the White House, with far fewer checks on his power than he had the first time around. He will be surrounded by a team of sociopaths, internet-poisoned bigots and single-issue quacks who have figured out that for the low, low price of absolute loyalty, their boss will grant them the absolute right to pursue their deranged passions as far as they please.

We are entering an age of boutique persecution, in which a broad swath of maniacs will be unleashed by a president devoid of ideology but full of narcissistic craving. A thousand petty tyrants will soon occupy the halls of the federal government. On the other side of this corps of gleeful little bullies sits the general public. We will all be enlisted, to varying degrees, as either collaborators or targets.

Yet hidden in this grim forecast is a chance for all of us to do something righteous. Government persecution requires a lot of informers. It is hard to deport immigrants, infiltrate protest groups and attack civil society without a lot of people telling the powers-that-be where all their enemies are and what they’re doing. None of the most oppressive regimes in history could do it with secret police alone. They needed the help of snitches. Fascism needs snitches everywhere in order to work. By vowing not to snitch, you can therefore strike a blow for justice, without doing anything at all.