“Misbehave, make something beautiful, and try to win.” — Curtis White’s motto for resistance

How to say no to fascism? Curtis White, the literary thinker dubbed “the splendidly cranky utopian,” has published what he calls a “manifesto” of “resistance.” On Resistance, the 75-year-old White told me, is his last work of non-fiction. He still has worlds to invent, novels to write. Enough with the manifestos.

But don’t expect a program. On Resistance is more of an anti-manifesto. “That’s not for me to say,” White responds when asked what, exactly, we’re supposed to do to resist fascism. His resistance is cultural. It’s an attitude. Borrowing from Ted Gioia’s subversive history of music, White likes the idea of “psychic treason.” Its patron saints are the first dropouts, romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge who rejected the military, clergy and family to write poetry in the countryside. But On Resistance isn’t simply sixties nostalgia. White, a veteran of Berkeley and the Haight, prefers the Nietzschean imperative to forget the past and move on to the next joyful deed.

So the only good manifesto is the anti-manifesto. If you want to say no to fascism, become a cranky utopian. Or at least pick up On Resistance.

Five Takeaways

• Psychic Treason. The arts are subversive by nature — White’s term, via Ted Gioia. His founding dropouts: Wordsworth and Coleridge, refusing military, clergy, and farm to write poetry.

• Not Nostalgia — Nietzsche. The sixties made him, but a chapter is titled “Forget The Beatles.” Move on to the next joyful deed. And the rot started with Reagan, not Trump.

• The Three False Resistances. Philanthropy, virtuous corporations, liberalism — each self-limits to protect the source of its wealth. Jobs Buddha-branded the counterculture; Gates vaccinated downwind of his own polluters.

• Dropping Out, Together. Organic farms, author-run presses, the invisible independents — against the money jail. “What we need right now is companions.”

• Misbehave, Make Something Beautiful, Try to Win. Thoreau, Whitman, Berger; alienation, not expropriation. At 75, his final nonfiction — written in a spirit of play, to be left in one.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Preorder On Resistance: mhpbooks.com/books/on-resistance

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: from dissidents and protest to resistance
00:01:39 What are we resisting?
00:01:46 Psychic treason — and the Romantics as first dropouts
00:05:05 The Taplin question: can the counterculture rise again?
00:06:26 Berkeley, Vietnam, and a country that lied
00:08:06 Living in a world that no longer exists
00:08:43 Misbehave, make something beautiful, try to win
00:09:49 How exactly are we supposed to resist?
00:10:29 What we need right now is companions
00:12:14 The three false resistances
00:14:17 Steve Jobs and the Buddha-branding of counterculture
00:14:36 Patagonia, Bookshop.org — the exceptions?
00:16:08 Philanthropy: protecting the source of its wealth
00:18:28 The Gates paradox: vaccines downwind of the polluters
00:20:50 Dropping out, doing something else, together
00:21:51 Money is a prison
00:22:35 Art-led resistance — but the arts are isolated
00:23:46 Not Trump: the rot started with Reagan
00:24:51 FC2 at fifty: the author-run press
00:26:14 The invisible indies: Graywolf, Coffee House, Open Letter
00:28:01 Melville House, proudly independent
00:29:04 Playful and fierce: the book as performance
00:30:38 Thoreau, Whitman, Williams — and John Berger
00:32:03 Which Marxism? 1844, alienation, Marcuse
00:34:02 What’s new? Reinvigorating worthy old ideas
00:35:46 Making manifest — for the final time
00:36:11 “I’m 75. I got novels to write.”
00:37:31 Thanks and goodbye