From Citizens to Coalitions: Rethinking Resistance in a Post-National World
Addressing the Limits of Nationalist Framing in Systemic Change
The Problem with "Citizens First"
When the Citizens First Initiatives were proposed yesterday in this newsletter, they were never meant to be nationalist. That was the entire point. The aim was to cut through the performative nonsense of national politics and focus on the actual forces shaping global suffering: corporate executives, financial elites, media oligarchs, and the political enablers who exist to manage public perception while the real decisions get made in boardrooms, not government chambers. The vision wasn’t about reclaiming some patriotic ideal but about taking the fight directly to the people who profit from systemic collapse, using the same tools of power they wield against everyone else.
But intention and perception aren’t the same thing. Language has weight, and the moment you frame resistance in terms of “citizens,” you invite assumptions about borders, national identity, and who does or doesn’t count as “us.” The problem isn’t just rhetorical—it’s strategic.
National identity has been one of the primary tools of control for centuries. The nation-state exists to extract resources, regulate populations, and enforce systems of hierarchy—not to serve the people within it. The moment we define resistance through national belonging, we risk reinforcing the very systems we are trying to dismantle. It doesn’t matter if the message is anti-elitist—once you center citizenship, you’re still playing within the framework of the state. And that framework is designed to consume, co-opt, and neutralize challenges to its legitimacy.
And then there’s the more immediate, practical issue: national identity is too small for the scale of the crisis we’re in.
There is no single country on Earth that can solve climate collapse, AI-driven labor destruction, surveillance capitalism, or the mass monopolization of digital infrastructure. The systems of control we are fighting are transnational—our resistance must be as well. The wealthiest and most powerful people don’t live inside a single country—they exist in a post-national state, one where borders don’t matter. Their money moves freely across jurisdictions, their assets are stored in tax havens, and their power is enforced through global institutions that most citizens will never have access to.
The idea that people should focus their energy on national reform movements, electoral politics, or state-based activism assumes that the state itself is the primary source of power. It isn’t. The modern nation-state is an administrative tool, one that manages populations on behalf of the financial and corporate class. Trying to reclaim it is like trying to reclaim a factory that doesn’t even make the product you need.
So, what’s the alternative? If citizenship-based resistance inevitably leads back into state control, how do we organize in a way that actually bypasses the constraints of national identity? The answer is already in front of us. The world is full of post-national coalitions—movements, communities, and networks that have already been operating outside the state’s control for generations. We don’t need to build from scratch. We just need to recognize what’s already working and scale it up.
The Limits of Nationalist Organizing in a Post-National World
For centuries, resistance has been framed in terms of citizen action, civil rights, and national reform movements. But what happens when those models no longer fit the world we live in?
In the 20th century, it made sense to organize around national struggles. States were still the primary arbiters of law, wealth, and violence. If you wanted change, you had to go through the state. But today, the institutions that define daily life—corporations, digital platforms, financial markets—are no longer bound to any single nation.
The world's largest corporations have more wealth and power than most countries. The biggest financial institutions can trigger economic collapses that reshape entire continents. Silicon Valley billionaires have more control over human communication, commerce, and access to information than any government. And unlike states, these entities don’t have to answer to any citizenry. They operate above nations, beyond elections, and outside of democratic oversight.
Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy aren’t thinking in terms of citizenship or national belonging. They have multiple passports, offshore accounts, and post-national identities. They do not recognize borders except as obstacles to be bypassed. They are playing a global game, while most people are still stuck thinking in terms of which government should be in charge of them.
If we want to take on post-national forces, we need post-national strategies. We need to stop thinking of ourselves primarily as citizens of a nation and start thinking of ourselves as members of coalitions that operate beyond state control. The good news? These coalitions already exist.
Religious movements, decentralized hacker networks, global labor unions, open-source communities—these are all examples of post-national networks that persist outside the control of any one government. Some are good, some are dangerous, but all of them demonstrate that identity, belonging, and coordinated action do not require state approval.
One of those experiments was A BIG WEIRD ART PROJECT, an idea for a coalition that was designed around shared humanist values, not national identity, and formed as the brand for a social media platform intended to be a problem solving and project management tool for individuals and communities, the use of which was intended to sustain a helpful economic system. It wasn’t about who you were on paper—it was about what you believed in, what you contributed, and what you were willing to create. It didn’t matter if you were from Canada, the US, or anywhere else—because nationality was irrelevant to the actual work being done.
What if that’s the model we need to scale? What if the next phase of resistance isn’t about reclaiming the state, but making it obsolete?
The next section will explore how to build, sustain, and strengthen post-national coalitions, using religious networks, digital communities, and economic alliances as case studies in how power can operate outside of the traditional state model.
Building Coalitions Beyond Citizenship: Lessons from Post-National Movements
If the most powerful forces in the world today operate beyond the state, then resistance must do the same. But how do we build coalitions that are strong enough to challenge systems of control without falling into the same traps of hierarchy, bureaucracy, and fragmentation that have plagued political movements for centuries?
The answer isn’t theoretical—it already exists. We can study movements, networks, and communities that have successfully operated across borders, beyond governments, and outside of traditional state authority. Some of these models have persisted for centuries. Others have emerged only recently. But all of them provide useful blueprints for post-national organizing.
Religious and Ethical Communities: Durable, Borderless Networks
One of the oldest examples of coalitional organizing beyond the nation-state is religion. Whether or not you’re religious is irrelevant—the point is that faith-based communities have successfully built transnational systems of belonging, support, and resource distribution for millennia.
Look at how the Catholic Church, the global Islamic ummah, Buddhist sanghas, and Jewish diaspora communities have functioned historically. They’ve provided education, healthcare, economic support, and legal arbitration across continents, often outlasting empires and regimes that tried to control them.
Even outside of formal religion, nontheistic spiritual humanist movements (including projects I’ve been directly involved in) have explored similar ideas. A BIG WEIRD ART PROJECT wasn’t just about making art—it was about creating a non-state network of mutual support and shared purpose. It showed that meaning, identity, and action don’t need to be anchored in a nationality—they can be anchored in shared values, creativity, and a commitment to making the world less terrible.
The takeaway? People will organize around deep values, whether or not the state is involved. When these values transcend borders, they can create systems of belonging and action that don’t rely on permission from governments or corporate gatekeepers.
Hacker and Open-Source Networks: Decentralized Collaboration Without Borders
The hacker movement and the open-source software community have demonstrated how global collaboration can function outside of centralized control.
Wikileaks, Anonymous, and the Free Software Movement all showed that information, not borders, defines the terrain of modern power struggles. These networks operate in decentralized, often leaderless ways, making them resilient against suppression.
Likewise, the open-source movement has provided a framework for global cooperation without corporate or state oversight. Projects like Linux, Mozilla, and Ethereum demonstrate that people can create, maintain, and expand infrastructure-level technology across borders without a government telling them what to do.
The takeaway? Digital communities and cooperative networks are already post-national. They don’t require national identity as a prerequisite for participation. What matters is competence, contribution, and commitment to the shared mission.
Economic and Mutual Aid Networks: Reclaiming Resources Without the State
One of the most promising areas of post-national coalition-building is in economic resilience and mutual aid.
Modern governments have been increasingly privatized, handing social services over to corporations and financial interests. This means that basic survival—housing, food, healthcare—is increasingly controlled by private capital rather than public institutions.
But resistance to this doesn’t have to be nationalized. Transnational labor movements, worker-owned cooperatives, and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects all show that resources can be redistributed outside of the state’s control.
Worker-led movements like the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) and Zapatista economic models show that people can organize across borders for economic autonomy. Decentralized crypto-economies—while still flawed and often exploited by bad actors—have proven that financial systems don’t have to be tied to national currencies.
The takeaway? People can pool resources, redistribute wealth, and create economic resilience outside of state structures. The challenge is scaling these models and protecting them from corporate co-option.
From Resistance to Reconstruction
The world is already post-national. The wealthiest and most powerful forces operate beyond borders, above laws, and outside of democratic control. So why should we continue fighting them as if we’re trapped in a 20th-century nation-state paradigm?
The Citizens First Initiatives were an attempt to target systemic power directly—but even that framework is still rooted in the logic of the state. If we’re serious about building a new kind of resistance, we need to start thinking beyond citizenship.
What comes next isn’t just about fighting oppression—it’s about constructing something that replaces it.
That means:
Organizing around shared values, not borders.
Building mutual aid, education, and economic resilience outside of state control.
Using technology and digital networks to coordinate globally, not just nationally.
Refusing to let governments define who we are, who we help, and what futures are possible.
It’s time to stop waiting for the state to be the battlefield—because the real battle is already happening in the borderless spaces where power actually operates.
From citizens to coalitions. That’s the shift we need.
