Liberation Martial Arts and Meme Deconstruction (Patreon)

This is an old meme but relates to Southpaw in two ways. First, on the position of violence and duress. Second, to our current two-part series on Fanon, Indigenous people, and colonialism (ep. 83, 84) and how the Left can split on anti-imperialism and -colonialism.

From the tradition of critical theory, I will analyze this meme. Hopefully, we will come to a greater understanding of the world we actually live in (and not the one in our hopes and imaginations).

(You can listen to the audio version here: https://youtu.be/IOaGzFJfeds)

Since we are building out the politics of liberation martial arts, part of this article is to share the insights I've made doing this project, the political research I did around martial arts prior to Southpaw, and talking to thousands of people and synthesizing their concerns.

Local and Direct

The concept of punching up or down, AKA positionality, was one of the main contentions between the Left and liberals, and still is. The question of punching up or down continues to be a popular dunk against the Left by liberals. The explanation provided by the "daggers-drawn" meme illustrates how gross that is and why it sparks anger. This unwillingness to analyze from positionality is why liberal politics is often on the wrong side of the argument or, as they often frame it, the wrong side of history—as compared to the Left. This is why they were late to the party on police brutality and late in general when it comes to justice—as far as optics. However, because of their framework, when they arrive at the right conclusion, they will still reinforce the problems that gave rise to the injustices in the first place.

(A popular intersectional imperialist-colonizer)

(Imperialism as PR)

The "daggers-drawn" meme also deconstructs what radical means; it means understanding the position of power and who is the victim. As liberation martial artists, all these concepts are important, on a personal level as far as self-defense, but also as we build out our politics.

Global

If this is radical, what happens when we apply this same framework from the meme onto countries? Then we get an analysis of imperialism. The split I referred to happens when some Leftists only use this framework domain specifically (personally, locally, or domestically) vs. across the board.

As a liberation martial artist, I don't reduce and flatten by class. Identity is a genuine thing and a term that was first used by Black Marxist women. Dealing with all the fascism that has been in and around martial arts, we are more aware than the rest of the Left how identity can be the difference between life and death, and to pretend it's all the same is naive.

Regarding Frantz Fanon, he's gotten push back from not only white liberals but also white Leftists. What is at the heart of this pushback? Algerians shouldn't have risen up against French Imperialism. (They may not say this out loud, but it's not always what they say but don't say because they don't say the Algerians were right in doing this either). Another point of contention is national consciousness, since "we would have done it this way" or "they should have done it another way" or "here's how they did it in this other nonwhite country and since you're all nonwhite, you're probably all the same so why can't you do it like they did?" Which is marred by cultural bias, xenophobia, European or white bias, hindsight bias, and even flat-out racism. Comparing one minority group with another is racial triangulation. Pitting Black Americans against the Asian model minority is a classic example. The Left version would be the rebel model minority. Leftists, like liberals, can also reinforce the problems that gave rise to the injustices in the first place. Just as Leftists can be misogynists or Transphobic or racist, they can also be imperialist and colonialist.

(If you didn't know what outlet this was or who the author was, you would think it was David Frum from The Atlantic. The colonizer's justification of "saving them from themselves" still appears even in Left politics.)

(An anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-racist framework.)

Many have gone so far as to state that any revolution that isn't based around workers, whether anti-colonial or anti-imperial, is automatically reactionary. This is their case against national consciousness. It's a proletarian revolution ONLY. It's never a proletarian revolution OR an anti-colonial revolution OR an anti-imperial revolution. The assumption is, those other things will take care of themselves if we uplift the worker class (or this is the revolution and society they didn't know they wanted, but we know what's best). The ideal society being a European Enlightenment vision.

Furthermore, when another nonwhite country is brought up as an example, was their survival plan about forming the right kind of Left government that white Europeans and Americans would approve of, or were they more concerned with "what can we do right here and now to make things better?" Bringing up other countries that have nothing to do with this is like bringing up your nonwhite friends. Erasing context and culture, why psychologically colonized and enslaved people need national consciousness, to erase and ignore that is bigotry.

To dig deeper, did this other country survive with the world's most powerful imperial power as an enemy or an ally? Again, positionality. Living with clean running water, food, Amazon delivery, and 12-months quarantine toilet paper, you have time to think about things. Suppose you're under duress, trying to survive, and working under a ticking clock. In that case, the ideal plan may be inappropriate and cause delays that can risk the life of the whole country. Political theory in a vacuum from time is compelling. It makes for beautiful prose because you're writing from the perspective of infinitude. But it's also cruelly optimistic and dangerous because time does exist and constantly runs out.

The "daggers-drawn" meme doesn't state any Left tendency, but it's very much working from the anti-fascist/ACAB framework of violence. However, if we are to follow even this framework, it reframes the whole authority dynamic. If we are rebels organizing to fight an imperialist power—France, UK, America—then who's the authority? The rebels or the imperial powers? But too often, the rebels are seen as authoritarians if they are not decentralized or a federation or a syndicate. What happened to positionality?

I can see why positionality is missed by other types of Leftists, but for liberation martial artists, positionality is not just theoretical or a political strategy; it is also visceral and lived-in. Every time someone has us in the mount or has our heads clamped down in a double collar tie, we understand positionality and that we are not working from the same position of power. We'd like to be, but that's not material reality. Positionality is not an idea for us; it's an experience. It's also not one of the many ideas that come from a certain politics but the MAIN idea for martial artists.

What is the most critical thing in martial arts? Position. If we applied that to politics, then we get positionality. Position before submission. Positionality before analysis.

All cops are bastards because the roots are rotten, so it bears strange fruit. You remove one bad cop, they will be replaced by more bad cops or worse cops. Reform the police, and under this imperialist system, the new police will still be a problem.

In the case of regime change wars, remove one dictator but maintain the same constraints, and it will bear strange and often worse fruit.

However, this logic and framework aren't applied when thinking about countries in the Global South and Asia. I believe it's often due to an American-centric worldview and some white-European cultural superiority. Becoming a Leftist/socialist isn't a magic pill. You don't accept Left politics into your heart and have all the American exceptionalism, misogyny, white supremacy, and Red Scare magically disappear. You do what you practice. Even within the anarchist framework of Means and Ends, you reproduce what you know and what you've been conditioned to believe, even within Left circles. The US is an imperialist reactionary culture, and that reproduces itself. Assuming it's a magic pill is the reproduction of Christianity in Left circles. No one calls it a magic pill; I get that. But that's how it's treated and experienced.

Speaking to cultural supremacy when there is no homogeneity or default: let's say you're an Indigenous community, and you're used to a council (which might be culturally appropriate), and so in your uprising against imperialist genocidal fascism, you band together as one "node," a term some theorists use in explaining decentralized political networks. One node in this case would be one national collective with leadership. If you were to win, you might have an "anarchist spirit," as Malatesta points out. However, you're still authoritarian (which he also points out). At this point, if you were part of a Left federation, you would have to leave. But that would be the "beauty" of the Left, they'd say. If there's a disagreement, you can part ways, but you can't be in the federation with an "authoritarian" single network. So now you have no help, which limits your options and puts you under duress.

Now let's imagine an imperialist power wants to set up a coup or take back what you've won. What do Leftists who are watching do? In the case of some white Left journalists, they side with the imperialists. "Look, I hate the CIA but they have to go in there because authoritarianism must be defeated."

Their domestic politics and their international politics don't often square.

(The problem with some white Leftists and the bargains they make is a lot to unpack and too much to cover in this article, but perhaps after reading this article, you'll see things with new eyes.)

(Black Lightning, regardless of cause, won't work with the feds)

In applying the logic of the "daggers-drawn" meme or positionality, why are the rebels the "auth Left" and US and CIA not the authoritarians? This is why I actually hate the term "auth Left" and that whole framework. Are dictators a "bad cop" formed out of nothing or from the pressure cooker of a global imperialist system applying constraints and anxiety; like embargoes, proxy wars, constant overthrow attempts, and a laundry list of other hard-to-soft power moves that also includes neocolonialism?

One of the things I've learned from martial arts, self-defense, and being trauma-informed is that you don't blame the victim. You don't call it a choice when it happens under duress. For instance, with the Korean Conflict, if you're from the North and 70% or more of your civilization has been destroyed by the War, and you only have food to last you for months, and your imperialist enemy who did the destroying isn't France or the UK or a neighboring Middle Eastern country, but rather THE MOST POWERFUL country in the world, and not only do they refuse a peace treaty but they say they're coming back, and they're camped outside an imaginary border they created. What do you do? When they aim their new nuclear weapons at you after showing you what it can do to your previous oppressors? Positionality. This is a different context from when the US is an ally or even neutral.

(In Ichi the Killer, Ichi kills a woman's abuser then tells her how he will be her new abuser. When she attacks him, Ichi is confused as to why she assumes she has a say and kills her. Non-Korean Leftists will use Animal Farm to say the Korean freedom fighters became hypocrites when they became the DPRK, rather than seeing the US, as Ichi, replace Japan as the new oppressor.)

Many of us don't have to imagine; we have had a 300lb grappler sit on our chest with us on the bottom, helpless. From this position, without even trickery or set up, they can easily take an arm and put it into an armbar—they could just as easily make us punch ourselves. You don't say, "why did you punch yourself" as if we had a choice. Non-martial artists who come from the top of the social hierarchy probably can't imagine this situation. Why materialism makes sense for me is because idealism in the eyes and minds of the privileged just becomes cruel optimism. "Stop punching yourself," "You don't have rice? Well, mutual aid." Asshole, mutual aid from who? What if I need a hospital, you going to mutual aid that? Mutual aid is vital, but pretending it's a cure-all is double victim-blaming because not only will it not solve everything but also implies you COULD have solved it. While global imperialism exists, there ARE unsolvable problems. As martial artists, we understand there are impossible situations. Because as fighters, our trade is objective reality, not just ideas or hope. Sometimes you're stuck and since you've been there, you don't talk shit. A lot of Leftists sound like the guys who tell a survivor, "You should have done this" and when they come to the gym, they actually often are those guys who say that to trauma victims. I see it in message boards and Facebook groups all the time, not to mention also in real life.

Whether you use the term bootstrapping or not, believing every situation can be solved by everyone doing their part is bootstrapping and also ableist. Pretending everyone always has a choice is not only victim-blaming but also oppressive as fuck. No different from when cops say you had a choice to steal or not steal when you come from extreme poverty. This then justifies more policing. For the world police, this justifies more embargoes. This circular reasoning creates a circle of oppression and justifies more oppression. I oppress you, which forces you to do things, which gives me license to oppress you more, which forces you to do more things, and so on.

Miscategorizing what I'm saying as "this is my ideal situation" is also manipulative and gross. Actions of victims of abuse aren't always ideal, but you understand their position. Often white American Leftists take stances that are right of even centrists in South Korea. I can only assume they do this as well with other countries. In fact, I often talk to people of color who try to pushback or even take what would be considered a mild liberal take from their mother country, and they're called a "tankie." (A term that has lost whatever meaning it ever had, if it ever had one. No different from liberals saying Bernie Bro.) This is something that many people of color bond over, which is also why we create groups just for ourselves, regardless of Left tendency.

This also speaks to white American hegemony because since you're the default, we're the tankies. But from our perspective, you're the neocon (to Palestinians, Bookchin is the necoon). Even South Korean liberals and centrists who hate socialism have more of a compassionate and nuanced view of the DPRK than white Leftists in the US. They may not like state socialism but get why they adopted it. Korean Leftists, regardless of tendency, get so exhausted, we don't even want to talk to Americans about it. But why is the white American view the default? Only the neocons in South Korea agree with them. But why are they siding with the neocons? What is the flaw in their analysis that led to this? Never questioning the American default is evidence of how Left politics will not cure you of your reactionary tendencies. Many Leftist women have experienced how Left politics doesn't erase misogyny, and it permeates because many on the Left think it's impossible to be misogynist and Leftist. After all, that would be a contradiction. But it's only a contradiction if you are aware of it. This lack of awareness is called a bias, which leads to prejudice. Why identities matter is because people from different identities may not have the same prejudices. Radical politics that doesn't come with self-reflection and internal work is not radical politics. You can be a Leftist and a reactionary because Leftists are still humans and humans are full of contradictions. Being a Leftist doesn't mean you are all of a sudden consistent on all things.

Americans might look at "third-world" countries, look at the problems, and say, the buck stops with whoever is leading the country—which sounds a lot like the Great Man Theory, which the Left supposedly hates. Without positionality, the problem becomes how the government is organized rather than looking at what other nation is oppressing and coercing them. Without positionality, if you run out of water, the problem must be how you stored the water, not the landlord who is keeping the water from you. Positionality also means priorities.

Blaming how the government is organized runs counter to the meme's whole positionality framework, or ACAB applied more broadly. The buck stops with the imperialists. This is what the 60s-70s Black and Brown and other PoC revolutionaries in the US also understood, and though their numbers have dwindled, they still understand this. The thing about this meme is, you read it and agree with it. But will you put in the effort to apply this logic consistently? Positionality is not the only thing you look at, but it's the first thing. Before you look at the submission, you look at the position.

This is why anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism may overlap with other tendencies but is still its own framework. White Leftists are not going to set the framework for the liberation of nonwhites, just as white settlers shouldn't lead the revolution in a settler colony like the US.

I saw a white Leftist in a Leftbook group try to dunk on communists by saying, "Since the 60s and 70s, communists haven't done much in the US and the autonomous zone created by anarchists is a bigger victory than anything they've done lately." Okay, so this is racist, settler colonialist, and condescending as fuck. This is a framework people have, but this is where the overlap with anti-colonialism and -imperialism ends. The similarities between now and the 60s-70s Black Power/Civil Rights movements are—they were both led by Black radicals. That's the commonality. Why is this missed? Prejudice.

There is this axiom I see bandied about, "Just because they are against the US does not make them good." This is a true statement, but the pick-up artist style bait-and-switch is, once you agree to this first premise, they tack on other premises you might not agree with, but you go along with them because that becomes easier once you agree with the first premise. Being against the US does not mean you are not the Empire. That idea gets added on, and America and the Americans become the white saviors. Because we as Americans are complicit regardless of Left politics because whenever we use US currency, we are helping the Empire, which is part of why a moneyless society is one of the keys to communism. This is our guilt as residents of the American Empire.

A truer axiom would be, "Not every country that is against the US are the rebels, but America is ALWAYS the Empire."

What country that has an antagonistic relationship with the US is considered a "good" country, by the way? What were the "correct" nonreactionary revolutions? Some of you will say none. Then, are the "good" countries only our allies? Do you see how this might be unwittingly reinforcing imperialism and colonialism? They are "better," and the quality of life in those "bad" countries worse because capital is extracted or deprived from those countries and sent to the rich countries. Using quality of life or antagonism with the US as the bar is privileged and reactionary. If you look at the position of power, it makes complete sense why they are antagonistic. Are gangs the problem or the poverty that creates them the problem? Are poor undemocratic countries the problem or the imperialism that creates them the problem? If you say both, did you also say both when it came to the "daggers-drawn" meme? No. See the bias?

When fascism became evident in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we looked at the instructors, we looked at heads of associations, then we looked at the structure of Brazilian jiu-jitsu itself. This seems innate for us as martial artists, but where other tendencies might stop at cops being bastards, we kept going up and said the whole system is a bastard. Then no other country can live to its potential unless the very structure of imperialism and colonialism collapses—until the Empire collapses. Just as organizing starts bottom-up, you don't look at the middle for the cause of the problem and work your way down. You work from the top. The most important submission in grappling is the choke; you cut off the head first. That is at the top of your priorities.

A Left politics informed by martial arts is not primarily anarchist or communist, but anti-imperialist and -colonialist first and foremost. Many of these martial arts are traditional knowledge taken from poor cultures that have been colonized. That is where we are coming from. Not as European peasants or factory workers, but as colonized or those informed by the arts of the colonized, occupied, oppressed, and exploited. This is liberation martial arts.

Martial arts is international. I speak to people literally from across the globe. Because the podcast is bottom-up, I speak mostly with marginalized people. If people are people and a domestic life is not worth more than an international one, regardless of my politics before I started this project, anti-imperialist and -colonialist is the only place I could end up without betraying these people. Liberation politics is about uplifting the most oppressed voices first and understanding the nature of their oppression and where it's coming from.