Post-Radicle sync at 2025-06-03 14:29:43

archives/fc001_StalinOfMakerspace/06_grassroots_authoritarianism.md

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+## **VI. Makerspace as Microcosm: Grassroots Authoritarianism in Action**
+
+🗎 **Filename**: `06_grassroots_authoritarianism.md`
+
+---
+
+When we think of authoritarianism, we imagine it descending from above—
+an iron fist, a charismatic tyrant, a top-down seizure of control.
+
+But what if the most insidious tyranny grows **from below**?
+
+What if it looks like helpful volunteers,
+procedural motions,
+and polite rule-followers who smile as they bury the soul of the commons?
+
+**Grassroots authoritarianism** is not a contradiction.
+It is a **pattern**—and Dallas Makerspace became its incubator.
+
+At its best, a makerspace is radical democracy.
+But democracy without vigilance becomes **ritual**,
+and ritual without soul becomes **coercion**.
+
+The illusion of participation masked a deep truth:
+power was no longer distributed.
+It was centralized in the **stewards of procedure**.
+Those who knew how to time agendas, enforce silence with "civility,"
+and redirect dissent into meaningless channels.
+
+Meetings became theater.
+Votes became pageantry.
+Bylaws became **barbed wire** around the castle walls.
+
+Members still believed they had a voice.
+After all, they could still speak.
+But the **frame** had already been set.
+The boundaries of permissible thought were drawn in advance,
+…not by open debate, but by unspoken consequence.
+
+And those who challenged that frame?
+
+They were met not with confrontation, but with **quiet punishment**:
+—muffled posts
+—dropped projects
+—vanished opportunities
+—and a growing sense of being “out of sync” with the culture they once helped build.
+
+This is not theoretical.
+It’s a **case study** in how democracy dies—not with a coup,
+…but with a committee.
+
+The tyrant is not always a monster at the top.
+Sometimes, it is the soft-spoken facilitator,
+the bylaw whisperer,
+the one who never raises their voice,
+…because they’ve already trained the community to whisper in theirs.
+
+Dallas Makerspace became a petri dish—
+not for invention,
+…but for **submission in the name of order**.
+
+And what grew there now reflects a larger truth:
+
+Authoritarianism does not need to seize power.
+It only needs **us to hand it over**,
+…one polite motion at a time.
+
+---