NON-VIOLENCE & the legacy of the white rose movement

Resistance is the path they will follow, but it will be based on non-violence, of subversion, of undermining this belief system. The Group are influenced by the young students of the German Resistance, namely the White Rose Movement with Sophie and Hans Scholl and their dissident friends.

Sophie and Hans were caught by the Gestapo, interrogated, convicted and executed (by guillotine) within four days of their arrest. Justice had been replaced by power in the Third Reich and the sentence was carried out rapidly.

White Rose (C) Geoff Hall, 2020.

Strix was taught the ways of non-violence as a child and he’s still conscious of his father and mother’s legacy. His father, Jack Stanza has links to the German Resistance in the 0w1 series. As for Strix and his friends, they will not hold mass protests, advertise their presence in the projects, nor use violence as a means of social and cultural change. They will honour their influencers, like Sophie and Hans Scholl.

When everything, even their spirituality, is governed by the State they need to beware that even at the Cathedral there are Security Agents lurking and watching their every move. The State does not suffer anyone with a voice that differs from its own, because anyone with a voice will be undoubtedly a dissenter and will stir up trouble. Speak of ‘freedom of speech’ and you will be carried off to one of the Political Correction Facilities and you may not return.

All through their school days, they have been assessed through thought-patterning, to detect not just their future employment, but also detect any aberrant thoughts or permissive concepts which may prove to be confrontational in the future. Thought-patterning was measured by the books you liked to read outside of the curriculum in the public libraries, or your essays on various topics from geography and science, to art and literature.

Because of their obvious love of books, Calvin and Strix were assigned jobs in the Library Services. The only downside to this was that all the books they’d want to read had been thoroughly censored and only politically correct titles and authors were allowed.

It was then, very fortuitous that they both found in the bowels of the Central Library, the banned book store. This is were titles are kept and eventually processed for burning, but those books had a way of finding a new home in the Projects.

It took Strix back to his Orphanage days and reading banned dystopian titles, all collected by Stevie Griffin, (Freddie’s father), who worked at the Greenfields Orphanage, as a Janitor. Strix also remembered going to bookshops with Paul and being in awe of such sacred cultural spaces. Paul was his father’s publisher and instilled in Strix that the burning of books was a crime against, firstly the writers and then for their readers.

So then, it is with this legacy in mind, which is woven in his consciousness, that he understood a State that bans freedom of speech and sees dystopian novels as the words of malcontents and political insurgents, is in fact a weakened regime.

This would inform their tactics for future projects to undermine the State.

Geoff Hall