We live in indisputably dark times. Everywhere we look, the foreboding shadows of authoritarianism, globalism, and the imprisonment of the human spirit seem abundantly evident. 2020 demonstrated more than ever the naked and brazen power of the elites that misrule us, whether they were banning a sitting US president from social media or governing our lives entirely by technocratic diktats under the pretence of Covid-19. Nearly a year after the initial outbreak of the disease, untold millions across the globe are still virtual prisoners in their own homes, deprived of the small vestiges of community and human interaction that made the modern world bearable. The news cycle is an unending daily attack on liberty, rationality, the natural order, whiteness, and Western civilisation. One could be forgiven for thinking that 2020 was the final victory of the deep state, globalist politicians, and the tech oligarchs over the citizens they purport to be answerable to. The prospects for a reversal of this situation in 2021 at first sight seem bleak.

As the MAGA movement fades into obscurity the notions of personal liberty and free speech appear to have vanished along with it. Initially constituted as a populist outpouring that exuded energy and potential, picking through the wreckage it is hard to identify much of lasting value. It could be said that the idealism that inspired this revolt was also its fatal weakness, as political naivety hindered its success again and again. The MAGA adherents truly believed in Trump as the man alone who could drain the swamp; whereas in reality he remained mired in it, despite his fitful efforts to free himself. As their faith in their leader wavered, they retreated into an increasingly distorted reality viewed through the lens of Q-anon, a sunshine cure that promised redemption in the end for the movement. Even in their final act, the storming of the US Capitol building was based on the naïve and fundamentally misguided assumption that power still resided there. The political frontmen have long been supplanted by their billionaire masters.

Yet though lacking a clear political strategy, the storming of the US Capitol nevertheless had a value. In every movement for human renewal, symbols are important. And this symbolic act revealed several underlying truths. The shambolic lack of security at the heart of the most militarised state in the world exposed the hubris of the elites; they simply were unable to conceive that such a thing could happen. The people who had for so long been servile and dormant, reasserted themselves and delivered a catastrophic blow to the credibility of the American Empire around the world. The images of a Confederate flag flying in the halls of the Capitol building provoked splenetic outrage from those same elites who had declared war on Confederate history years earlier. They may have succeeded in destroying hundreds of Confederate statues and markers, but in the end the spirit of defiance rests not in cold stone, but in the people. They have always been terrified at the power of the stars and bars to animate resistance, and seeing it paraded through the halls of government confirmed their worst fears that it may well rouse resistance again. General Lee, in the end, had the last laugh.

The true lesson of 2020 was not the consolidation of suffocating state power, but of the primacy of random events and how they can be capitalised on for political ends. Whether it was the death of George Floyd or the Coronavirus, the elites utilised these chance encounters to fully advance their agenda. But events also cause unintended consequences, and we cannot look at the political landscape purely from a deterministic point of view. In a simple mathematical calculation if we measure the state’s power versus our own, the outcome seems plain to see. The state with all its military, technological and legal might will ruthlessly crush those who oppose it. Yet only a few short weeks after the Capitol insurrection, our overlords suffered another unexpected black eye as a group loosely organised on Reddit known as Wall Street Bets decided to play the elites at their own game.

By massively increasing the price of flagging retailer Gamestop’s shares, the group managed to wipe as much as 53% off the value of Melvin Capital, one of the largest hedge funds in the US which was profiting from shorting the ailing company’s stock. While the Capitol insurrection ultimately only caused a mild panic among the financial masters of the universe, the reaction to this economic populism was telling. Trading platforms almost immediately suspended the ability to make purchases and forced many users to sell at a loss. This was a clear effort to unlawfully intervene in a free market, and to intimidate those engaged in fiscal resistance. However, those buying the shares were largely not attempting to speculate and profit as vulture Wall Street capitalists do. This was a moral act of defiance by Generation Revenge, who bore the losses gleefully because the 1% were losing more. They deftly executed a guerrilla manoeuvre, and a war of attrition played out over several weeks, which spread to other stocks such as AMC and Blockbuster, as well as the commodities such as silver. In the end, the markets may have largely returned to normal, but the monetary and psychological damage to the so-called masters of the financial universe will remain.

Journalists quickly drew comparisons between the Capitol unrest and this financial insurrection. For once, their assessment was honest: these were two interrelated efforts to unnerve and unseat an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian global regime. When the dust settled, it had been proven those in power can neither defend their Capitol or their capital. And these two acts of defiance were joined by another episode where it seems David has triumphed over Goliath. The much-beleaguered UK now finally nominally free of the EU was expected to sink beneath the waves. Yet instead of sinking, it has joined the populist tremors by exposing the lethargy, inefficiency, and ineptitude of that bureaucratic behemoth. As the UK races ahead in terms of vaccination, the EU was left red faced and impotent as it failed to secure vaccines for its own citizens. It transpires that due to interorganizational infighting, the EU was vastly slower at ordering and securing the vaccines it desperately needed.

While some may say that vaccination in itself is an assault on liberty, and that the UK’s success in vaccination has more to do with its centralised and authoritarian nature than anything else, this nevertheless remains an interesting case study in the resurgent power of the sovereign nation. The EU is a deadening influence, a safety valve and a parasitic cadaver sprawled across the nations beneath it. By freeing themselves, EU members will once again unleash the power of the untrammelled and free sovereign state, for good and for ill. Thus while 2020 may have seemed a consummate lesson in the invulnerability of the globalised, authoritarian, and unaccountable elite, 2021 in just a little over its first month has provided three shining of examples of their inherent weakness. Whether we make our resistance at the political, economic, or national level we have been re-endowed with agency.

Each one of these acts of defiance is a stone catapulted from the populist David’s sling towards the monstrous liberty crushing Goliath. And these are only the warning shots, the unsteady but enthusiastic stirrings of a greater will to resist. Each loss of face, each vivid reassertion that the emperor has no clothes, will spur on more acts of collective disobedience. We have once again discovered our individual and collective potential. While our enemies must totally control every lever of power to succeed, we require only a few organised individuals to disrupt their plans. And we have something even more powerful in our favour: the nature of who we are.

The hated and abused Western minority are the architects of the system that the elite are now immorally presiding over. It is our Faustian and Promethean nature that created the modern world, that allowed the current regime to usurp its power. Yet latent within us is the strength to reforge that world; to re-write our collective reality. Whether it is the physical courage to resist in mass actions such as the Capitol siege, or the ingenious economic fightback, we are a tenacious and stubborn adversary. 2020 was a concerted attack on humanity, an effort to accelerate the trends of atomisation, loneliness, hysteria, and state power over our lives. 2021 will not go as our masters expect, because all their overreaching and meddling has reawakened the slumbering rebel nature of those committed to a free, human, moral, and Western world. Let us all now organise and work together inspired by these acts of selfless resistance to make 2021 the year that David Defeats Goliath.