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Resistance is futile. You will disarm your weapons and escort us to Sector 001. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s1e1: Emissary ***** opening words from Locutus/Picard at Battle of Worf 359
I have observed from Ensigns Torres and Paris that humans sometimes require a pretext to be intimate with one another. Resistance is futile. Star Trek: Voyager s4e13: Waking Moments, Seven of Nine
The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance. Thomas Paine
Black power: the words that can send shivers down the spine of the nervous white man. While the white man struggles with his nightmare, the black man struggles with his dream. Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, contemporary commentary of march, BBC 2021
West London 1970: a group of protesters march against harassment by the police of a black-owned restaurant called The Mangrove. Black power had arrived in Britain. Young black people were fighting back against a hostile environment. They stood up to the state and they defied the brutality of the police. It was a conflict that reached the highest courts in the land. ibid.
The migrants played a key role in rebuilding Britain. ibid.
Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua, was stabbed to death by a white gang one night near Notting Hill. The police denied that the killing was racially motivated and nobody was prosecuted. ibid.
Even at school children were not safe from institutional racism. ibid.
Stokely Carmichael’s visit had the Labour government so concerned that Special Branch ordered him to leave the country and he was banned from re-entering. Soon afterwards the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, set up a secret police department specifically to monitor radical black groups in Britain. ibid.
On Sunday 9th August 1970 a crowd of over 100 people gathered outside the Mangrove restaurant to show their support … ‘They [Conservatives] wanted to justify the Immigration Bill’ … For the 9 people arrested following the Mangrove Demonstration, it seemed that the whole machinery of the state was now set against them, and the idea of Black Power in Britain was being unfairly demonised. ibid. activist
Oval 4: When a BBC journalist started investigating Winston’s case, it was revealed that Detective Sargeant Derek Ridgewell’s testimony was directly contradicted by eye-witnesses … ‘The only [mugging] witnesses were the anti-mugging squad themselves’ … The media’s account of Winston’s case helped him appeal and his sentence was reduced, but the judge did not overturn the criminal conviction. ibid.
To resist is to exist. Palestine wall message
There is a inner freedom that comes from defiance … In every act of rebellion we are free. Chris Hedges, lecture New York Sanctuary For Independent Media 10 November 2017
Resistance, as my students taught me, is not about what we can achieve, it is about who we are able to become. Resistance is an act of faith, belief that the good draws to it the good. Chris Hedges, Constructing Rebellion: The Overthrow of Corporate Tyranny, Youtube 2019 1.33.48
We have to stop sitting here and taking this stuff. We have to recognise that all of these systems are designed to crush us and that it’s time to rise up. It’s time to resist. ibid.
The expanding social inequality and capture of our democratic institutions, including the media, the Congress, organised labour, academia, and the courts by corporations and oligarchs, would inevitably lead to an authoritarian and finally Christian fascist state. Chris Hedges, lecture Workers Fight Back Conference 2025, Youtube 36.16
A serious impassioned plea to take the decay seriously. ibid.
This despair, this loss of hope, this denial of a future, leads the desperate into the arms of those who promise miracles and dreams of apocalyptic glory. Donald Trump does not herald the collapse of democracy. He heralds the ripping away of the veneer that masked the rot wihin the ruling structures and their pretence of democracy. ibid.
The Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans. ibid.
They embody the moral decay unleashed by unfettered capitalism. ibid.
Now we are shifting to totalitarian’s more recognisable form, one dominated by a demagogue and an ideology grounded in our homegrown Christian fascism. ibid.
The utopian ideology of neoliberalism and global capitalism is a vast con, a mechanism to funnel wealth upwards to the billionaire class. ibid.
The labels liberal and conservative are meaningless, evidenced by a Democratic presidential candidate who turned to Wall Street bankers to formulate her economic policies, and bragged about an endorsement from Dick Cheney, a war criminal who left office with a 13% approval rating. ibid.
Trump lies like he breathes, but the lies told by the two establishment parties caused far more pain and did far more damage than the lies told by Trump. ibid.
We are a culture awash with lies. ibid.
Empty mind-numbing chiches and slogans most of which are absurd and contradictory replace political discourse. ibid.
The cult of the self dominates our cultural landscape. ibid.
These are the debauched revels of a dying civilisation. The system is not reformable. ibid.
They know when you fight for the oppressed, you get treated like the oppressed. ibid.
Hope comes when we physically defy those in power. ibid.
They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Gaza or a child in the blighted pockets of Washington DC diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. ibid.
Our strength comes from our steadfastness to Justice and Truth. ibid.
The more we make compromises with those who serve privilege and power, the more we diminish our own strength. ibid.
If we cannot make the elites scared of us, we fail. ibid.
We must organise and organise fast. ibid.
And we must end the genocide in Gaza. ibid.
The mafia state will be brutal. ibid.
We may not succeed. So be it. At least those who come after us, and I speak as a father, will say we tried. ibid.
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth. William Faulkner
And I just think that it’ll take a little time for kids to start doing the duties that they’re supposed to do, which is challenge things, like corruption. Kurt Cobain, recorded interview 1992, often paraphrased as ‘The duty of youth is to challenge corruption’
It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important. Ian McEwan
It seems that all my life I have been waiting for it. 1984 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Gregor Fisher & Suzanna Hamilton & James Walker & Andrew Wilde & Corina Seddon & Rupert Baderman & John Boswell & Phyllis Logan et al, director Michael Radford
Julia, do you think the Resistance is real? ibid. him to her
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. Leonardo da Vinci
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it. Woodrow Wilson
Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. Noam Chomsky
Resistance to tyranny is man’s highest ideal. Emma Goldman
When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies, — are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean embassy shouting, Resist! Resist! Which is quite an ironic thing to shout when you’ve been accused of rape. Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, BBC 2019
Needless to say, the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many expressly bolstering the oppression of Black people. Particularized reflections of existing social inequities, these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For Blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting, we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus. Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning, 1971
I came across a book called Black Heroes of the American Revolution and was stunned to learn that African-Americans [and Native Americans] played a crucial part in our country’s fight for independence. What I learned changed my life and my sense of heritage. It’s a story every American should know: it’s a story of black patriots. Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution, Kareem Aldul-Jabbar reporting, History 2020
In 1770 in colonial America revolution is in the air. But this idea of independence is very different depending on the colour of your skin. One-fifth of the population is of African descent and slavery is a way of life in all thirteen colonies. Our black patriots begin this story in bondage; by War’s end they will have new identities in the new nation. ibid.
The black loyalists fighting for the British are making a significant impact on the War … A truly integrated unit: the first Rhode Island regiment is born … With roughly 140 black men now in the unit, their first taste of action is the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778. Covering the retreat of six American brigades, they courageously withstand three ferocious British assaults, saving the day … Other colonies followed suit. ibid.