Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly. – Mao Tse-Tung
One of the biggest problems with HIV/AIDS dissidence is that many who call themselves dissidents, including many who would like to believe they are politically sophisticated, are almost completely ignorant of revolutionary theory. After all this time and after all we have written in all kinds of styles for all kinds of tastes, we still get comments like the one below:
I recognise the spreading nuances within RA and it is annoying that they carry on oblivious to the oddities they made themselves, but still it seems like PG has more of a grudge against RA than AIDS Inc. Apparently Anthony got mad at Christine Johnson for wanting to remain neutral between RA and PG. She might have joined PG if it had not been for him. That’s the way it seems. (Received Oct 27, 2011)
[NOTE! The author of this message has asked us to make clear that when using the words "oddities" he refers to theories not personalities. We interpreted it as a comment on theories rather than individuals and believe our answer reflects that]
Our answer to dissidents in general:
If you want to be considered more than a joke who has chosen to dissent because it justifies not getting a real job, there are some fundamental things you should know by now. One of them is that dissidents will always be destructive, disruptive, bad-mannered, foul-smelling, and holding “more of a grudge”. It is intrinsic to dissidence if you’d care to stop and reflect just one second:
Dissidents are pitted against the status quo, which necessarily means disrupting and destroying everything that has its orderly functioning within the status quo. In this case Rethinking AIDS represents the status quo, entrenched power, as much as AIDS Inc. does, and the Perth Group are the dissidents.
Those already in power benefit from conciliation, hence they almost always advocate it, at least out of one side of their mouths, while their money, their media and their political influence are put to work subverting, slandering, co-opting and destroying the revolution, as are their police and the full force of their laws, with batons, pepper spray, searches, permanent surveillance and random arrests among the powerless.
Conciliation means keeping the staus quo that is inherently biased in favour of Power and against dissidents. Therefore those in power ALWAYS, and almost always successfully, assume the role of the reasonable compromise-seeking grown-ups and cast the dissidents as immature, unrealistic, ignorant. With their boots on the dissident’s neck they will tell him, “You are free to dissent and that shows how great and tolerant our democracy is, but be civil about it, follow the procedures that are built into our fine system of governance, that’s the right way, the responsible way to go about it.”
If you follow the Occupy Wall Street protests, as any serious dissident should because that is where the trenches are dug in the Western world at this point in time, you will have seen this dynamic being played out real time. Were you fooled by Wall Street’s own President Obama for one second?
Those in power control the propaganda machinery aka the mainstream media, thus the day-to-day narrative. Your own President Crowe has taken over the Rethinking ADS initiative, the Hivaidsparadigm forum and now the Rethinking Facebook forum by force, at least some of it while you were watching, uninvolved. Were you fooled by this president for one second?
Internal house-cleaning is always more vicious than the battle against the external foe. That is because the enemy within is the most dangerous. If you allow him to subvert you it will be impossible to even begin battling the enemy without. The Parenzee case provides the most vivid illustration of this truth imaginable.
Now, Christine Johnson is supposedly an intelligent woman, if she really made her decision in this matter of untold historical consequence based on whether “Anthony got mad at her”, what does that tell you about her? There is no such thing as “neutral”. Neutral is a weasel word for unprincipled, siding with Power.
What does it tell you about yourself when you say: “Yeah it’s kinda annoying, I guess, when the organisation that claims to represent us all make oddities of themselves – make oddities of us all – however, if only Anthony hadn’t become mad at Christine Johnson everything might be different, at least that’s how it appears to me”?
What does it tell you about yourself when in one mail you tell me you can’t be bothered getting involved and in the next you tell me how things appear to the uninvolved and the unreflective? It tells me that you should read the Mao quote a hundred times over before calling yourself a dissident again.
CLAUS JENSEN
