The History of Resistance We Aren’t Taught

They want you to be passive and quiet. But history tells a different story. We’re joined by award-winning comic creator Ben Passmore, author of Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance, to dig into the stories that history books, and Hollywood, whitewash:

• De-sanitizing Resistance: We discuss how films and media often strip away the political intellect of figures like the Black Liberation Army, reducing revolutionary struggle to nihilism.

• Community as Armor: Ben puts the focus on true resistance as mutual aid. From the Jane Collective organizing healthcare, to prisoners organizing even from solitary confinement, the most radical act is building a culture of care.

• The Trap of Online Activism: In an age of surveillance capitalism, Ben warns that we must move beyond the “power fantasy” of social media. Real solidarity happens offline, face-to-face, building trust that algorithms can’t suppress.

As MAGA’s Supreme Leader expands the surveillance state through Peter Thiel’s Big Brother Palantir and unleashes a KKK gestapo through ICE, we must learn from unfiltered history and understand what it actually takes to survive.

January 15th is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Civil Rights movement ushered in the Third American Revolution, defeating the authoritarianism of Jim Crow, which John Roberts’ Supreme Court is bringing back. Listen to our episode on Stride Toward Freedom, the memoir by a young MLK Jr. after he captured the world’s attention leading the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. For more on resistance strategies, listen to our episode on Gene Sharp, author of From Dictatorship to Democracy, and our interview with his protege Jamila Raqib, the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution: Fire in Our Peace: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance.

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Show Notes:

• Watch: A sobbing mother calls 911 as federal agents force their way into her home to chase down a DoorDash driver who was just trying to deliver food. https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1q8vvwa/st_paul_mn_a_sobbing_resident_calls_911_as/?sort=old

• Trump Taps Palantir to Build a “Big Brother”: How the administration is partnering with Peter Thiel’s tech giant to monitor Americans. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

• ACLU Investigates Police Use of Flock License Plate Surveillance: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup

• Project 2025 Tracker: Monitoring the conservative policy blueprint and authoritarian roadmap. https://www.project2025.observer/en

• Want to Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators: A guide on how to target the businesses fueling the deportation machine. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/ice-businesses-boycott-campaign/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPR1kdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEezKLIFd9EZUL6g5uRoGAhj6cAItrut7MjpF8RislyssfXbo-V_-dZNqW2Fw4_aem_f4IvbocKBVROoBGqO-V_Kg

• Prairieland Defendants: Legal support and mutual aid for protesters. https://prairielanddefendants.com/

• Police Accountability and Reform: An activist checklist for demanding transparency. https://activistchecklist.org/police/

• The Singing Revolution: How music helped liberate the Baltic States from Soviet occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution

• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776): The full text of the pamphlet that sparked a revolution. https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1776ThomasPaine.pdf

• “The Voice of Dust and Ash”: A documentary film on resistance and silence. https://vimeo.com/753111135?fl=pl&fe=cm

• Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. https://share.google/t85l3THA4XfvEEbNo

• Whistleblower drops ‘largest ever’ ICE leak to unmask agents: ‘The last straw’ https://www.rawstory.com/ice-agents-data-leak/

• Review: ‘One Battle After Another,’ What Black Women Call Life https://blacknerdproblems.com/review-one-battle-after-another/

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This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.