The Nomadic Alternative – Page 98

VII

Guerilla propaganda aims at convincing the established order it
is on the wrong side of the Revolution. By resisting the inevitable
cycle of Fortune's Wheel, it can hope for a prolonged death agony
but no more. The insurgents have a powerful psychological weapon.
They are the apostles of renewal. They move with the red sun. Rahab
the prostitute was moved to defect because the prospect of real men
excited her jaded passions. Such is the myth of the potent invader
bringing fresh life to an effete civilization.

Propaganda draws attention to its past successes. The freedom
fighters are few and the forces of repression are many - proof of
itself of the heroism of the guerilla. And here the propaganda
touches a raw nerve. The member of the establishment has long
suspected that civilization has robbed him of his heroic destiny,
and barred his progress along the road of trials. There comes a
point when the guerilla hero - even though he is a professional
sadist or hermaphroditi(c)al Christ-figure - can do no wrong. At this
point Civilization herself climbs off her throne, lies in the grass
with her legs wide, waits for the adored invader - and sometimes
waits in vain.

VII

The seeds of revolutionary discontent sprouted in the Old World
with the first plantings of corn on the slopes of the Fertile
Crescent - that great arc of hills and mountains extending from
Palestine to South West Persia. On these slopes, once the ice
sheets of the last glaciation had receded, wild sheep and goats
browsed over stands of wild wheat and barley. Spring and autumn rains
water this country - the "land of hills and valleys", Jehovah
promised to his people, "which drinketh of the rain of heaven."

But the forces, which shaped the struggle between the haves and
have-nots, were at work at least eight thousand years before the