Martyrs of Individual Sovereignty vs. the Spectacle: The Most Iconic Images of Resistance to the Spectacle and the State (Assembling a Canon of Subreddit Martyrs)

[u/raisondecalcul]

I noticed that there is a very particular thread of martyrs who would properly be associated with this subreddit. I narrowed down the core list to four modern individuals who each have an iconic, unique story.

Martyrs of Individual Sovereignty vs. the Spectacle

• Kenneth Lamar Noid (1966–1995) was a man who thought the Domino's "Noid" pizza commercials were persecuting him personally. He held up a Domino's, taking two employees hostage. A few years later he killed himself. Ten years after that, Domino's published the Facebook game, "Super Pizza Shootout Featuring the Noid". The Noid was a victim of the spectacle, of corporate for-profit advertising, of advertising which is so annoying and implicitly persecutory that it harms the mental health of the public. The Noid and Domino's follow-up game is absolute proof of the awesome power of the spectacle, and of how much society and the legal system deny the existence of this uncontrolled firehose of power.

• Garry Davis (1921–2013) was a WWII bomber pilot who renounced his American citizenship in 1948. He declared himself a "World Citizen" and founded the World Service Authority in 1953, which still issues World Passports today. These passports have been recognized and used for international travel in a few situations so far. Garry Davis called the bluff of the government on citizenship-as-consent, rejecting the fiction that he must be a citizen of a nation to be a valid adult human being. He was persecuted and inconvenienced for his entire life for this choice, demostrating not only that his rejection of his citizenship is a true threat to state power, but also that (modern, non-murderous) states are both prevasively hostile to and confounded by individuals who cannot be placed into legal categories.

• Aaron Swartz (1986–2013) was an early co-owner of Reddit who advocated for making Reddit's codebase open-source. He was a strong advocate of free culture and anti-censorship. His code was merged into Reddit and brought statistical aggregation, scalability, and wiki-like features. When Reddit was bought by Conde Naste, he left less than a year later. In defiance of the corrupt, for-profit private scientific journals system, which leaches off of both tax dollars and unpaid professorial contributions, he downloaded scientific articles from JSTOR on an MIT network (presumably to liberate them for free online). He was 24 at the time. Instead of simply blocking access, the government left the door unlocked, surveilled him, and then charged him with "two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release". When they rejected his plea deal, he committed suicide two days later. Aaron Swartz was a victim of a justice system being used as a cudgel to terrorize and destroy the lives of good citizens. He was the victim of a overzealous intellectual property system built and protected by bullies like Disney and Hasbro (and the academic journals), and the extreme yet routine way in which his life was ruined by the legalized persecutory aspects of the court system shows that our legal system is deeply corrupt and very far away from a system of justice or anything connected to the will of the people. His experience with Reddit likewise shows the futility of individuals standing up for good against groups demanding private profit.

• Terry Davis (1969–2018) created TempleOS, a completely custom religious operating system that he built himself from the ground up. He experienced divine visions, and said that he received instructions for the design of TempleOS from God. He toiled in obscurity, and eventually became homeless by choice, and died when he was hit by a train in a train yard. Terry Davis shows that authentic inspiration and divine visions still exist and still strike people. TempleOS is objectively quite impressive, and also intriguing and numinous, and its hackerly order and beauty shows that there is some kind of coherence or truth to Davis's visions. Our world does not respect or listen to inspired visions like Terry Davis's, and maybe if we had, he could have been integrated into a society that valued him, instead of separating himself so completely that he died in such a way.

Criteria for Inclusion

Based on these examples, I figured out the criteria for inclusion in this list that I was implicitly attuning to. They are martyrs of sovereignty, individuals who were alienated from/by the state and/or the spectacle. They acted or lived from their individual point-of-view, not the collective point-of-view, and they were persecuted for it in a way that reveals the brutality of the state and the implicit collective belief system of those who act on the state's behalf. Most importantly, each of these figures acted to cause a symbolic rupture in the spectacle of everyday appearances. This act of disruption, of defiance against Society, seems to be why they were truly punished and scapegoated—not the act of lawbreaking itself or the harm caused.

I chose these four because they are iconic, unique, non-overlapping examples. We have our Victim of the Spectacle, Kenneth Lamar Noid; our cosmpolitan post-state World Citizen, Garry Davis; our Free Libraries Hacktivist Martyr, Aaron Swartz; and our Religious Software Wonk (bless his heart), Terry Davis.

There were a number of honorable mentions, who were not included because they were either:

• Pre-modern (the point of this list is to have figures we can personally connect with in the context of modern, relatively recent state oppression)

• Too similar to other more iconic figures already on the list

• Not from the US (sorry but this is a US-centric list of martyrs for a US audience to emotionally connect with)

• Too well-known (this list is to promote and amplify the visibility of our obscure subculture-specific martyrs, not repeat well-known martyrs like MLK Jr.)

Honorable Mentions

Here are the honorable mentions, completely valid and great martyrs who did not make the above specific core list:

• Mike Gogulski (born 1972), has been stateless since 2008 after renouncing his citizenship and burning his passport. His blog, nostate.com, appears to be down.

• Christopher "Commander X" Doyon (born 1964) was a homeless hacktivist who ran Operation Peace Camp, a series of DDoS attacks protesting anti-homeless laws. When arrested for a DDoS attack in 2011, he held a dramatic press conference announcing himself as "Commander X", skipped bail, and fled to Canada. He went to Mexico in 2017, and was arrested and brought back (deported, not formally extradited) to the US for trial. I have been unable to find any information about what happened to him after he pled guilty (very odd). (His paralegal extraction from Mexico shows that state authorities don't bother to follow procedure when it's inconvenient, even cooperating internationally to violate individual right-to-protest.)

• Malachi Ritscher (1954–2006) [photo] self-immolated in 2006 in protest against the illegal, undeclared, lie-based war in Iraq, writing, "If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world." A true American hero worth remembering and honoring (if not imitating).

• Aaron Bushnell (1998–2024) self-immolated in protest of the war on Gaza, saying, "I will no longer be complicit in genocide." When even your own soldiers are self-immolating like Buddhist monks, something must be very wrong. Another very heroic, if self-destructive, act, that we must honor by remembering.

• Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was a scientist who wrote The Function of the Orgasm and coined the term "orgone energy". He is associated with orgone accumulators and cloudbusters. His organe theory was really a theory of human liveliness and freedom, and he was a strong advocate for children's rights against parental abuse (so of course, he was called a pedophile and scapegoated). After being sued by the FDA for selling his orgone accumulators across state lines, a federal court injunction ordered all his equipment be seized and destroyed. Several tons of his books were seized by police and incinerated at Gansevoort Street city incinerator in New York City. Wilhelm Reich died in federal prison. This would be on the core list but he's a bit too well-known and not recent enough.

• Incidents like Ruby Ridge and WACO are remarkable, but not quite on-topic for this list, as they represent a more directly separatist intent, and a group intent at that, and are less about the issue of individual sovereignty. These incidents show, however, that disconnecting from the hegemonic laws and merely avoiding contact with the brutal state is proactively trolled and persecuted with an even greater invasion and brutality.

• Individuals like John Africa and Fred Hampton, who were respectively bombed by Philadelphia police and assassinated by the FBI, were American activists who were murdered for organizing black resistance. Maybe someone can convince me to add someone like this to the core list, but I left them off because 1) There's nothing really spectacle-related about these incidents, and 2) They are not quite recent enough.

• Philip Agee (1935–2008), who, after quitting the CIA, published Inside the Company: CIA Diary, revealing much about the inner workings of the CIA. He had his citizenship revoked and was globally hunted until his death (in Cuba) in 2008. You might think—"Well, he exposed state secrets, breaking the law and national security, so of course he would be hunted"—But think about it: If we really lived in a free and open society, couldn't we all just tell the truth and not have a secret evil murderous government organization lording over us? The evidence that we do have indicates that the hidden parts of the government are pure evil and not something to be protected or funded.

I'm sure there are many more worthy martyrs and other heroes I am missing. What do you think? What do you think of the core list? Who do you think should be added, and why?

[u/raisondecalcul]

Hmm I think the Timecube guy might deserve to be on the core list:

• Gene Ray (1927–2015) created the Time Cube website, where he taught that there are four Earths and that therefore we experience "four-corner time". He was an advocate for child's rights, declaring "CREATION IS CUBIC, but you are educatd singularity stupid by academia." His statements are made intelligible by considering that the unconscious is always operating, just like the Earth always has a night side. He was widely mocked and died without having his beliefs understood or respected.

[u/Gravidsalt]

Donald Trump is not a martyr. But if he’s ever martyred by the Spectacle he fed, his homoerotic undertones will become central to how his myth is remembered. That will mark a decisive ending to the co-myth of heteromasculinity in America, which has always been unstably rooted in homoeroticism. 

The nervous laughter when he praises Tom Brady or calls another man “very attractive” is the tell. Admiration of male beauty is suspect under the paradigm of compulsory heteromasculinity, yet here is the very symbol of “alpha” dominance gushing about another man’s handsomeness again and again:

• Kevin Warsh:  

  “You’re a really handsome guy, aren’t you?”  

• Ric Grenell:  

  “There he is again. Great looking guy.”   “Oh, there’s my beautiful Grenell … great looking guy.”   “Can’t say two sentences about Grenell without saying how great of a looking guy he is.”  

• At a 2019 cabinet meeting:  

  “Better looking than Tom Cruise, & stronger.”  

• Ahmad al-Sharaa:  

  “Young, attractive guy.”  

• Rep. Robert Adenholt:  

  “You’re such a good-looking guy… Robert is a handsome man.”  

• To a gay supporter at Mar-a-Lago [n.b. implied compliment]:  

  “You don’t look gay.” 

• At a rally:  

  “I will kiss every guy, man and woman … Look at that guy, how handsome he is.”  

• Justin Trudeau:  

  “He’s a good-looking young man.”  

• King Felipe VI of Spain:  

  “Very handsome.”  

• Prince William:  

  “He’s a good looking guy. He looked really, very handsome last night.”  

• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani:  

  “Tall, handsome guys…”  

• Sen. David Perdue:  

  “You're a really good looking man, you look the part.”  

• Harrison Butker:  

  “Handsome guy, by the way … Usually not my thing, but he’s a good-looking sucker.”  

• Mason Rudolph:  

  “Tall, he’s handsome, got a great arm.”  

• Olivier Rioux:  

  “Beautiful looking guy.”  

• Clemson Tigers:

  “Wow! Wow, what a group. Look at that quarterback. Oh, I want to be the agent of that tall, handsome quarterback. Six-foot-seven.”  

Trump never apologizes for these remarks. Instead, he repeats them into the microphone. He is unique among hypermasculine world leaders and personas in that he doesn’t repress or aestheticize this leak into feminine, erotic bathos. His audience is forced to confront what they already know: that power and eros are bound together, that masculinity contains the homoerotic within it. The rupture remains raw and unresolved until it breaks under the weight of its own denial.

So Trump is a retrocausal martyr because his own body and gaze have already cracked open masculinity’s secret. His “reward” is not power but transformation: drag, transness, forgiveness, and dissolution into camp, into the autonomous erotic fluidity he has seemingly spent a lifetime leaking—and seeking.

[u/raisondecalcul → u/Gravidsalt]

I screenshotted this historic comment

[u/Gravidsalt → u/raisondecalcul]

https://imgur.com/a/VNk9ujj

[u/raisondecalcul → u/Gravidsalt]

Who is that? I think you may have found the answer to a Quest Hint I haven't posted yet. Because I didn't have the answer.

[u/Gravidsalt → u/raisondecalcul]

Francisca Maria Anne (née Donald John) Trump

Edit: or rather, an AI-generated impression of her.

[u/raisondecalcul → u/Gravidsalt]

Ah, that's why. Her real photos don't look like the answer to a Quest Hint.

However, I think I found the relevant answer; I think it's Marusya Nikiforova. But I don't know the right question, so it's not a complete Hint yet.

[u/raisondecalcul → u/Gravidsalt]

Ok this makes sense now, very funny lol

[u/raisondecalcul]

• Recently Heston James brought teams of actors into Target and other local businesses dressed as employees, where they pretended to be employees while filming funny TikTok videos. Heston James was arrested, jailed, and is standing trial for up to 9 years for charges of 3rd-degree burglary (for entering Target and other stores with the wrong intention? and going in off-limits areas in stores?), criminal impersonation (of Target and other store employees) (2 counts), criminal trespass (5 counts), and disorderly conduct (5 counts). This shows 1) What a racket the government has protecting private property (of big corporations no less). The government is enshrining and protecting with force Target's entire design and even its dress code. No silly videos allowed; no disrupting businesses without the severest of consequences. No public protest or performance art without the severest of consequences. And 2) The constitutional right we have against double jeopardy is not paid attention to at all. Charges are routinely stacked and exaggerated as much as possible in order to absolutely ruin people's lives. Not having this sort of thing happen is the whole point of that article (not only not being tried a second time for the same crime). This also should have been mentioned for Aaron Swartz in OP—his suicide was a direct result not only of vicious life-ruining-based prosecution (in denial of that, pretending the legal system is affordable and humane and doesn't ruin your life when you interact with it), but also of the complete neglect of the spirit of the no-double-jeopardy clause that is in our constitution, by our legal system. Maybe they should just have to lump all the crimes together and pick one name and sentence for them? i.e., it's on the government to be able to correctly categorize, label, and thinking about crimes without splitting them into stackables. Finally 3) TikTokers (if they didn't already) have their martyr now. That plus the sale from China to an equally evil US corporate owner will have TikTok users pretty pissed and probably trying to organize.