Dan Baker is an anti-fascist political prisoner currently serving 46 months for defending his community. Read more about his case at prisonersolidarity.com/prisoner/dan-b. In this letter from Dan, he reflects on the novel “After the Revolution” by Robert Evans.
Hello friends,
This is a group message.
I recently read “Nation on No Map” and recommended this book to everyone I can reach, which is somewhat limited in prison. I am now reading “After the Revolution”, a novel by Robert Evans. “Nation on No Map” is probably the best non-fiction book I’ve read since going to prison, and “After the Revolution” is now the best novel I’ve read. The author has front line experience as a war correspondent and this shows in the skillful storytelling. Being a combat veteran I am deeply moved by this book. More importantly than the realistic descriptions of humanity’s violence is the prophetic prediction of the life cycle of the United States government.
Before white colonists came to North America there were nations of Indigenous people here. Columbus raped them and so did British colonists. After slave owners rebelled against the British colonialists the United Sates government was born on the backs of African and Irish slaves, then immigrants from all over the world. This country has been the battlefield of Revolutionary War, Civil War, a War with Mexico, a war with Spain, and an ongoing war against slave uprisings and the present day war against the working class wage slaves. My point is that America is a battlefield. In reality the entire world is a battlefield. The misconception that North America will not be the scene of modern warfare is a gross illusion based on privilege at the expense of the global victims of American imperialism. Many countries are known for some cultural trait, like tea, or spiritual traditions, technology and so on. America is known for guns. Not only is America going to experience civil war, sooner than later, it is inevitable. All things are temporary, this is a fundamental law of physics. This includes governments and nation states. Every country, empire and government has a life cycle. They are born in coups or revolutions and the rise and fall over time. “After the Revolution”, while indulging in science fiction for the entertainment of the reader, accurately describes the process by which the United States will eventually fracture and divide into states resembling European and Middle Eastern countries, each about the size of a current American state. America is already at war within itself, with the police working for the interests of the wealthy ruling class to criminalize race, poverty and pretty much anyone else they can. Charismatic leaders like Donald Trump want the whole pie for themselves and their wealthy heirs, but they will settle for a seceded white nationalist Christian ethno state. Likely candidates for the first to secede include Florida, Trump’s base of racist operations, Texas, who already consider themselves a republic, and Alaska, a state of fiercely independent survivalists.
I’m not just spewing conspiracy theories. In Florida, where I grew up, a toxic culture of white Christian nationalism exists in coordination with the descendants of the confederacy of the old south. When they say “the south shall rise again”, they mean it, and they are willing to fight and die for that. In Tallahassee, my home for the last decade, I was approached by Jordan Jereb, leader of a neo nazi gang which has wisely rebranded itself as “the Republic of Florida”. They pulled up to the corner where I was begging for my daily bread while homeless and unemployed, at a Wal-Mart on Tennessee Street, holding a “hungry veteran” sign. Their offer was food, housing, weapons and training in exchange for my militant loyalty to their racist organization and ideology in coordination with members who had already infiltrated local and federal police and the military. They said, “You look like a racially aware person, with your shaved head.” I told them to fuck off of course, but that day I began to receive aggressive attention from the FBI, Tallahassee Police and the Leon County Sherriff’s department, specifically a deputy called Larry Folsom, who is widely active in the Jujitsu, MMA and Judo communities in Tallahassee. The end result of their campaign of targeted harassment is that I am now sitting in federal prison. Jordan Jereb bragged about training school shooter Nicholas Cruz by the way. He also recruits kids at high schools and middle schools with flyers in plastic bag with candy. I’ve seen them, they are similar to the flyers he used to distribute at Walmarts around town until my friends and I organized a town council meeting to put a stop to this. The flyers ask kids if they feel threatened by people from other cultures picking on them, and foreigners, and invite them to join RoF for safety and camaraderie. The reason I bring all this up is because there are very real organizations who are already deeply supported by so called law enforcement in Florida and Nationwide, who are actively, openly and covertly working to create white ethno states, to return to “the good ol’ days” of plantation slavery. These are not people who will listen to reason. The hippies cannot “hug it out” with these people. They are very real, they are already here, they are armed and they are now globally networking with white supremacists, fascists, racists and far right wing conservatives in Austria, Germany, Italy, the U.K., Turkey and Russia, to name a few. Some of them have infiltrated the YPG international, like Ryan Patrick Kasperik. The danger is real.
We have been warned by authors like Robert Evans. In dystopian, authoritarian police states like the United States it is dangerous to even write truths like this, but a medium that is available for many is fiction, where dangerous truths can be shared with less violent response from the cops. We live in a time when the prophets of the new age include Robert Evans, Margaret Atwood, with her Handmaid’s Tale’s and Abdullah Ocalan. The words of these great minds serve as parables and clear warnings to present and future generations. We know about the Holocaust, but we are watching another approach us over the top edges of our smart phones, sinking lower into our seats to just keep scrolling and swiping. This is not enough for us to be on the correct side of history, or even to survive long enough to allow truth and freedom to continue to evolve in the face of regressive forces of domination, hierarchy and dogmatic mysticism. Please take the time to read these writers’ messages to the world. Just because war seems distant in the Ukraine, Rojava, Syria, Iraq or anywhere besides the so called United States does not mean that it is happening in a different world. If you listen closely you can hear the screams of immigrants dying in America, the sounds of gunfire and artillery in Ukraine, the smell of burning bodies on the wind from the Middle East. It’s a small world and America’s sins are coming home sooner than later. My personal ideal is nonviolence with an emphasis on rescue and healing, but survival may necessitate a variety of tactics. Listen to the well traveled and well read, and then become well traveled and well read and realize the warning signs before it’s too late to fight back. A country built on slavery will always be that, and the wrong life cannot be lived the right way. This is the land of the fee and the home of the slave. It will stay that way until we make something new and better to take its place. We can and we will. We should not cause the needless loss of life or instability but when these things come naturally in the course of nature, beginnings, middles and ends, then we can create something new, continuing to evolve and refine the application of fairness, equality, truth, beauty, love and freedom in human global society.
Thank you all again for all of your support. Please reach out to other political prisoners, like Lore, Jessica Reznicek, Eric King, and the elders, like the Black Panthers and Leonard Peltier. More and more people are being rounded up, but we don’t seem to be making the connection between the American prison industrial plantation and the German death camps, mainly due to the liberalization of prison culture. Please reflect deeply on this, and reach out to activists you admire, and raise awareness in your community. We need your help to get through this.
Thanks again,
Dan baker
aka Alishare
Received by email.