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Not, The Resistance [1]

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Date: 2025-04-09

In another of my series following the theme that Words Matter — it’s time again to dispel the inappropriate use of the term, “The Resistance” in relation to what’s happening now with the Trump regime in America. I had briefly touched on this over a month ago, yet I still see the term sprinkled everywhere in the media.

Let’s start with the basics — what is a Resistance ? The best known use for the term is attributed to the French Partisans during WW2 who fought against both the German occupiers and their Vichy Government stooges. However, there are many other similar movements that have been referred to in this manner.

The characteristics of a Resistance tend to include the following: 1 — Complete tyranny, resulting in the total exclusion from any aspect of Governance (by a large portion of the country’s population). 2 — Occupying forces in that country. 3 — Armed resistance against those occupying forces.

Now, let’s look at the reasons why the current Opposition to Trump 2.0 is Not, The Resistance…

We are not being occupied by a hostile force (nor will we be).

While there is certainly an attempt to impose Tyranny here, it has not by any means succeeded yet.

There is no armed resistance, nor does there need to be one if the political opposition finally gets their act together and actually opposes the march towards tyranny. (so far, all of the effective opposition is coming from the grass roots).

Well, many might say that it doesn’t matter so much whether we use the term Resistance rather than the term Opposition. They’re wrong and here’s why:

The term Resistance implies helplessness, e.g. it assumes that there are no legitimate mechanisms left to oppose Tyranny — that we’ve all already been excluded from all Governance. That’s simply not the case.

“Resistance” takes away legitimacy from the Opposition right when we need to own that legitimacy. We are the defenders of Democracy and that Democracy has not yet been snuffed out — we are in fact the only legitimate Governing force at the moment.

“Resistance” also implies a certain amount of lawlessness (given the nature of the imagery associated with the term) — and again it is not our side that is truly lawless, but the other one.

For anyone who truly believes that words don’t matter in this case and all the other ones related to our current situation; please reflect on how we got here. It was the distortion of reality through the manipulation of words and ideas that somehow convinced nearly half of America to vote for a wannabe dictator, not once but twice. His rise to power was entirely dependent on his side’s ability to own both rhetoric and semantics in a way that only tyrants tend to do. Our first step in denying them that ownership is right here on the ground floor — by clarifying and owning the language, term by term.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/9/2315503/-Not-The-Resistance?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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