Somebody Actually Did Something

In fact, quite a lot of people are doing things. Among the minority who have recognised that something is fundamentally wrong and that the western world is heading in a dark direction, there is a lot of activity.

Over the past two years I’ve witnessed or participated in a number of new groups and networks that have arisen in response to the question of our times: what do we do about the new authoritarianism? I don’t know what to call this new trend; the best name I’ve heard so far is the descriptive but rather cumbersome Truth and Freedom Movement. Part of the difficulty in naming the movement lies in its diversity: some groups are focused on resistance and reform, while others are about disconnecting from the mainstream and creating alternative ways of living. Approaches vary from traditional campaigning to the anarchistic, and include both the practical and the spiritual. Some combine elements of all of these.

In a world where most of us thought the battles for freedom, humanity and equality had long been won, finding an answer to the question of what to do is taking some working out. Everyone’s at different stages in this process. Some people, I regularly discover, ‘knew’ about the nature and extent of the threat years ago. Others are only just starting to confront the enormity of the challenge it presents, clinging to the hope that things will somehow right…