The BDSM Passion Play of the Capitalocracy

Several months ago, the famous liberoid Michael Moore published an essay wherein he pointed out that a lot of his fellow liberoids are secretly envious of the conservatoid neo-fascists who Stormed the Capitol for having the chutzpah to make such a maneuver.

I see what he’s getting at, and I think he has a point; when LIFE ON EARTH is the bet on the table, folks who prefer to live ought to show such chutzpah. Of course, only so much chutzpah is necessary when you’ve got the complexion for the protection… and you’ve got presidential encouragement. At this point, it feels almost clichéd to point out that a more darkly tinted crowd would’ve gotten a very different reception.

In the course of his essay, Moore used some variation of the term “nonviolence” approximately 253 million times (I counted). I don’t know what it would take for liberoids (and their sad cybernetic offspring, the wokesters) to consider violence a viable option for self-defense and survival, but clearly the impending fascist conquest of the U.S. and extinction of the biosphere don’t qualify.

It was difficult for me to take Moore’s essay seriously, because by the time I reached the 1,437th mention of the term “nonviolence,” I was already picturing him in leather thong underwear, with a ball gag in his mouth, hanging on a ceiling-mounted chain and begging for more flagellation.

I hope that image stays with you forever.

Much has been said by the tattered remnants of The Left™ in this country about the sheer naivete, impotence, and apathy of liberoids, who in the last 20+ years have offered no meaningful challenge to encroaching fascism and industrial extinction. The first presidential election I was eligible to vote in took place in 2000, when the Supreme Court handed the presidency over to the most overtly criminal regime to ever run the country. Political rivals of that regime, and every regime since, seem to have been unable to contest it with anything more serious than bitching and pithy remarks.

If I may be so bold as to offer a tomahawk to this intellectual thicket: I propose that the core sickness of the liberoid personality is not apathy, naivete, or even raw animal fear. To put it simply, in the BDSM Passion Play of the Capitalocracy, conservatoids are the Doms, and liberoids are the Subs.

Liberoids will never offer any real resistance—and, in fact, are not capable of doing so—because they’re already indulging their fetish for the Death Urge. The Victim Personality revels in punishment and martyrdom. I’ve met enough left-ish activists to know that many of them are way too excited about the prospect of jumping underneath tank treads. My view is that, in the face of such overwhelming force, a wiser tactic would be to sabotage the tank. This view is not popular.

The most deadly infection brought by European invaders to Turtle Island is not smallpox, syphilis, or even Christianity—it is Western Civilization. No other culture has ever been as dedicated or competent in the realm of life-destruction. They’ve turned forests into moonscapes, made water flammable, disintegrated entire populations with atomic weaponry, and rendered countless thousands of species and cultures extinct. They consider such accomplishments proof of their inherent cultural superiority.

Civilization, represented everywhere by a physical manifestation of systemic hierarchy in the form of a pyramid, is based on power-over. Subs and Doms are part of the same cult; I call it The Cult of the One Ring, as in “One ring to rule them all,” as in J.R.R. Tolkein, literary prince of white supremacism.

Shit rolls downhill; those who submit to domination will usually exert domination over others at the first opportunity. They may not be willing to resist fascism, but goddammit they’ll shame you for using plastic straws.

Western acolytes of this cult hold a soul-deep belief in such false idols as Progress, Enlightenment, and Rationalism. Their philosophies are abstract and incoherent, their spirits stunted, and their wisdom lacking. They are fundamentally alienated from their relationships with the rest of the living world, and they worship machines; when people who are completely colonized by smartphones and other tech-fetish artifacts go online to tweet about “decolonization,” there are giggles in Hell.

It’s no coincidence that, as everyone knows who is even slightly familiar with the sexual exploitation industries, the Dominatrix is a popular “service provider” among rich and powerful men. That is, at least, for the ones who don’t instead get off on choking, beating, and spraying bodily fluids on women and/or children—you know, the Epstein crowd. And to think, they call us savages.

How useful can the “liberation” philosophies of a culture built on body hatred, ecocide, genocide, gynocide, chattel slavery, and technological alienation possibly be? These folks are one part human to three parts Whips & Chains.

The Great Mystery blessed all living creatures with a will to live and survive. I’ll never forget seeing, as a child, news footage of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, where fish, seals, and birds struggled to live despite being so saturated with crude oil that they were barely recognizable.

If you capture an elephant—say, to force him into performing as a circus minstrel—naturally the elephant will try to escape. However, if you chain him down so that he cannot escape, eventually he will give up trying, conditioned and resigned to his fate. Even the mightiest creatures can have their spirits broken.

But still, you never know; he might go rogue in the middle of a show.

If somebody comes at you with a baseball bat and the dedicated intent of taking from you whatever it is that they want—money, sex, thrills, etc.—no amount of whining or negotiating is going to save you from a cracked skull. This understanding is basic to those members of our population who don’t have the luxury of having their personal violence subsidized by state apparatus. The rich people in the hills summon the police when they feel their artisanal lifestyle is threatened. Others are not so lucky.

An illustrative anecdote: my father, a Black man born in 1935 who spent his adolescence in Atlanta living on his own at the YMCA and hustling on the street to survive, has a certain story that he often tells. When he was twelve years old, several other young men set upon him at his school locker to demand his lunch money, with the obvious threat of violent retribution if he were to refuse. As is often the case with such packs of predators, one guy was doing all the talking, and so was clearly the leader. Having both the street instincts and the proper will to survive, my father’s response was to smash the pack leader in the face. The pack fled. My dad ended up in the principal’s office.

I imagine that, in our current era, he would probably be expelled, possibly brought up on charges, put into a group home and issued psychiatric drugs. Violence is, after all, the monopoly of the state.

To put the finest point on it, force can only be dealt with by surrender, retreat, or counterforce. When the enemy occupies all tactical and physical space, retreat is not an option. When the biosphere is on the line, both surrender and the unwillingness to apply counterforce are tantamount to suicide—which, by the way, is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 10 and 34.

OMG ARE YOU ADVOCATING VIOLENCE? No, and I never would; violence speaks for itself well enough without advocacy. I’m simply pointing out an unfortunate fact. I’m also not necessarily condemning suicide; under certain circumstances, it’s a respectable option. In dire situations it could even be prudent.

Furthermore, whether one agrees with their perspective or not, the people who run the machinery clearly consider to be violent such activities as labor organizing, blocking the construction of poisonous oil pipelines, refusing to leave one’s ancestral land, defending old-growth trees, and being Black. Thus their enthusiastic deployment of cavalry, cops, and hired goons.

If I were to advocate anything, it would be the VALUE OF LIFE, and the importance of SURVIVAL. The ends don’t always justify the means, but sometimes they determine them. As my kungfu teacher once put it, in his delightfully succinct and limited English, “Maybe you don’t want to punch and kick people. But sometimes people want to punch and kick you.”

Interlude, for a sample of three more or less verbatim conversations I’ve had in the last two years:

Me (to an Indigenous Elder): “These fascist motherfuckers are serious, and they’re heavily armed.”

Indigenous Elder (*look of calm determination, slight gleam in the eye*): “We got guns, too.”

Me (to a Black Oakland Resident): “These fascist motherfuckers are serious, and they’re heavily armed.”

Black Oakland Resident (*look of calm determination, slight gleam in the eye*): “We got guns, too.”

Me (to a White Liberoid): “These fascist motherfuckers are serious, and they’re heavily armed.”

White Liberoid (*look of fear, slight shudder of arousal*): “That’s why we have to vote for (insert Democratic candidate)!”

A little bit about me: I’ve breakfasted with former Black Panthers, I’ve suffered in sweat lodges with former AIMsters, and I’ve seen land that was wild in my youth be mutilated into strip-malls and yuppie hives in my adulthood. I’ve soaked in hot tubs in the mountain castles of Malibu, toured city walls in China, and watched cops pursue fugitive vehicles at high speed through my neighborhood in East Oakland. I’ve seen some shit. But ultimately, I’m just a tree-hugging racial mongrel from the semi-rural suburbs. I like bumblebees and sassy women. I write poetry (you call it “rap music”) and I draw comics. I don’t use a smartphone, listen to streaming music, or talk to people on Zoom. I have trouble relating to the cyborg masses.

I often joke that I’m basically a science experiment—I was raised an only child, in a box, in front of a TV screen.

Compared to many people I’ve met—especially people who are brown and working class, like me—I’ve had a blessed life of privilege and opportunity. I’ve done my best to use those advantages to be of some service to others… and to try and figure out just what the hell is Really Going On. I study. I ask questions. I listen. I think.

And what I’m thinking right now is: the infection is probably fatal.

Malik Diamond is a hip hop artist, cartoonist, author, educator, and martial arts instructor. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is the descendant of kidnapped Africans, conquered Natives, and rural laborers of the Scots-Irish, Swiss, and German varieties. He currently lives in Oakland, California, with two brown humans and a white cat. E-mail: malikdiamond (at) hotmail (dot) com