What is freedom to a slave trader? — indi.ca

I grew up in America and Freedom™ was burned into my brain. But that was just more branding on more slaves. America has always borrowed its branding from Rome, from slavery to its brazen talk of freedom. Take, for example, the coin Brutus minted to commemorate his assassination of Caesar in 44 AD.

The Brutus coin depicts the cap given to a freed slave, between two daggers for the regicides. But Brutus did not free any slaves. He merely led a bunch of oligarchs in a petulant rebellion against a monarch, as American “revolutionaries” did centuries later. It is all, as my historical thesis goes, same shit, different day.

As Ramsay MacMullen said in Enemies of the Roman Order:

If the deepest ideas of most of the conspirators had been examined, they would doubtless have meant only that they might carry on the burden of their family in the old way; “free” movement of power among all members of the traditional oligarchywithout limitations of faction or tyranny; in short, free access to the political trough for all the usual companies of nobles and their servants.

This was indeed what the American revolutionaries were fighting for. Oligarchic privileges for slave drivers against a distant tyrant. They wanted the right to continue to slave and commit genocide with less taxes. America was founded as a slave state with tax breaks, that is the whole story of their Revolution©. All the bullshit about ‘we the people’ was just branding, like the fool’s cap on Brutus’ coin toss. When America was founded, less than 10% of the people in that country could vote, and even that power had to be diluted via electoral colleges in case it messed with current oligarchic power. The American Revolution was Real fought for the privilege of a few wealthy oligarchs, like Brutus’ gang of high-born assassins, but with much more brutality and better marketing.

All the writings about the American Revolution—all the declarations and pamphlets—fit into the old Roman tradition of eloquence, which as far as I know was proto-podcasting. MacMullen said, “It was believed that power over the written and especially the spoken word gave power over the entire citizenry, and the needs and ramifications of this belief were most fully worked out from the time of Pericles.” And indeed, the American rhetoric did give them power over citizens and non-citizens, both to appease local farmers and to condemn the global proletariat. America’s trademark of freedom was a historic coup that cost many people their heads, myself included. Only now is the label beginning to peel away and the same old slavery is revealed.

The revolution that has kept America going all these years is as Frank Wilhoit described it: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition… There must be in-groups that the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups that the law binds but does not protect.” You can visualize this idea as the facesa bundle with an axe pointing outwards. An ancient symbol showing the power of an in-group to overpower outsiders. This survives as the mafia logic of made men versus fair game, and is in fact still the ruling principle of western civilization, once you take the pretty packaging off. Fuck you, pay meFreedom for the fucksticks inside the package and exploitation for every living thing without, from chattels to livestock to the climate gods themselves. Fascism is not an anomaly in Western civilization, they have faces everywhere. You can the faces on coins minted by Brutus’s ancestor, as well as on modern American coins.

I don’t really think about the Roman Empire that much, but I’ve read about it as a news source, and it helps you understand the shape of the Overton Window today. American Freedom™ is really about the limited freedom of a certain class of people to criticize their government. Free Speech® is a registered, licensed trademark that actually belongs to the merchant class, i.e. the oligarchs who took over a continent in 1776 and have exploited it ever since. These class traitors are in fact (unconscious) traitors to all life on earth, merely proxies for the Business AI who has ruled the world since 1602, but that’s another story.

I think a lot about the American Empire and the branding around Free Speech® is falling apart pretty publicly. Britain arrests more people for free speech violations than Russia by far. Canadians get their bank accounts frozen for protests while they scare you about China’s mythical social credit score. The world’s biggest terrorists are calling for the Resistance against their genocide terrorists, and deaths us children (the children are all ours, re: James Baldwin). Now the wheels have fallen off the whole imperial enterprise and they can no longer be bothered to lie convincingly.

The Empire no longer claims you are free, they merely claim they are less evil than some tyranny they made upmaking propaganda for a Putin hiding under every bed, bloodthirsty Muslims around the corner, and scary Chinese doing scary Chinese things. The only thing they offer at the elections is fewer evil, which is an irrelevant point when the choices are Genocide and Diet Genocide. Voting is a meaningless anointing of lying idiots. The best description of imperial elections today comes from Imperial Rome. As some of the guests in togas said:

It is not liberty (for oligarchs) that is now at stake; that has long since disappeared. The question is whether the state shall belong to Caesar or Pompey. What have you to do with this dispute? It is none of your business. A tyrant ((dominus) is selected. What do you care who wins?’

That’s how I feel about the American election, over 2000 years ago. Who gives a fuck? A pox on both houses, with literal fasces in the woodwork. At least the Romans were honest about themselves, they had slavery, they conquered people, they were honestly evil. In America slavery is freedom, peace is eternal war, and the boot that forever stomps on a human face is Nike. It’s real 1984 shit in 2024. Ambiguity.

That’s the perspective you need today to break through, and that’s actually same shit, different day. Leo Tolstoy wrote Slavery Of Our Times in 1900 and it’s still better than reading the New York Times for understanding current events. When they talk about freedom, you have to tear the wrapping off to reveal the steaming pile of fasces underneath. The real question isn’t freedom versus tyranny, that’s just old Roman whining in new bottles. The real question is freedom for whom? Those who wield the axe, or those who are most engaged with it? What does freedom for slave traders mean to you and me? Jackboot shit. It’s just marketing.

While Adolf the Younger was rapping, “They say this is the land of the free (that’s a lie), but to me it seems like the land of fools.” As Dolph said before he was shot in Memphis, “Over the years they have given us a little bit of freedom, but that is only a temporary pacifier.” Dolph’s last album was called Rich slave and he was right. What does freedom mean when it comes from the mouth of a slave driver? It’s just slavery with a better branding. Right on our collective buttocks, just like it has been for centuries.