What to Do if DT Stages a Coup

Many progressives are preparing for the possibility that the Dems will win in November, but DT will refuse to cede power in January.

One of my mentors in nonviolent struggle, George Lakey, interviewed my one-time co-author Stephen Zunes about how eight different countries used nonviolence to defeat coup attempts. Go read the whole thing. Here’s my favorite paragraph:

When the first people to resist use tactics and rhetoric that make sense to those in the center who have been hoping to stay “above the fray,” the center is likely to throw its weight more strongly against the coup. Then, together, it can be defeated.

While I am no longer the news junkie I once was—I want to preserve my sanity when the news is often so distressing–I am definitely paying attention to DT’s constant attacks on our democracy.

It is obvious to me that even though he doesn’t study anything he should be studying, he does study how fascists come to power and does his best to emulate them. I think there is a high probability that if his plans to steal the election are unsuccessful, he will resist the transfer of power as the first US president ever to do so. I’m very aware of the chatter about what to do if that happens and I think it is likely that a general strike can be organized quickly and he will have to capitulate. We have a big advantage in that the military is not in love with him, to put it mildly. So he will have to rely on the armed goons within his base, who are not going to be disciplined enough, not going to agree on targets and tactics, and hopefully not too many of them actually willing to shoot random strangers just because they disagree with them.

I have been a student of non-violent resistance for almost 50 years. Non-violence has brought down viciously authoritarian governments and was often more effective than violent resistance. While it certainly didn’t bring down the government, nonviolent resistance was even surprisingly effective against the Nazis . There are hundreds of documented examples of this. All those people who smuggled hidden children or hid people in an attic or helped virtually all of the Danish Jews escape over the sea to Sweden in a single night. We saw decades-long non-violent resistance to the incredibly cruel and violent British occupation of India, and in our own American South, and in South Africa, and the Arab spring.

It is worth pointing out that these were not benign governments. They were nasty, vicious, violent. And they fell in the face of this kind of power.