No Masters! No Kings!

The following is a work of fiction; it contains scenes of politicized violence. Reader discretion is advised.

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Placards of liberty floated at the front of the angry crowd.

Women, but mostly men marched in a thick file ahead of the mob that chanted the old war chants of liberty. Stripped to their under clothes save for their agency’s protective vests, and with hands bound before them. The placards were mostly symbolic, a final chance their the targets of the chanting to see the errors of their ways.

No one had much faith left.

To the minds of the mob, the prisoners were also symbolic. A declaration that they were simply in the final phase of the political gambler’s fallacy. All government requires a ruling minority of some kind. From all points of the spectrum, from the most meritocratic to feudalistic fiefdoms necessitate in some form, a decision making body or person. After their selection, peaceful or violent, the gamble began until one side walked away. Eventually, one side will always reach their breaking point, and walk away from the table.

Before the rise of democracy, those breaking points were called uprisings, wars of succession, revolutions, rebellions, and elections. And the relative lack of success of the earliest peasant rebellions were due mainly to their limited ability to challenge authority. Now the mob had every ability, and to them the gamble was long since at its end. But they would give just. One. More. Chance.

Few knew themselves or the world well enough to engage with the foundations of their protest. Few understood the nature of the fallacy. Few could put their feelings and their anger into words. But still they would act on them.

Ahead of the bellowing mob, a sight once only seen in far away lands and other places from the comfort of home, a cordon of soldiers blocked the street.

Shouted commands echoed through the mob. Relayed from mouth to ear until the host came to a staggering stop fifty yards from the soldiers. A young man with his arm in a sling and a microphone in one hand broke through and ran into the heart of no-man’s-land. Following him, several others carried forward a music stand, papers, a speaker, and a platform onto which the man with the sling stepped.

He began to speak.

Questions, mostly. High-minded and idealistic ones, mostly. The power of the mob and the recitation of human level grievance is a dangerous tool. One to be used only in cases like this last chance, to see the power fail. Only the naive few thought that they would not.

Music blared but the speakers overrode it. The display, cousin to its primeval warfare predecessor, was meant as a last-ditch effort to avoid bloodshed. It had been meticulously planned.

“DISPERSE!”

“Are you not sworn to uphold the Constitution? Do you not see that what they have done abandons the promises of the Founding Fathers?”

“RETURN THE HOSTAGES AND DISPERSE!”

“’We the people’ are the first words of that paper for a reason!” the speaker bellowed to the vigorous assent from the crowd, placards swinging overhead and prisoners cowering behind the speaker’s podium. “And we The People are telling you that you are on the wrong side!”

Briefly, the roar of the crowd drowned out the speaker’s words, but he continued. Alone between the hammer and the anvil. Slowly, his voice overtook the ebbing roar.

“RETURN THE MURDERED AGENTS, TURN OVER THOSE RESPONSIBLE AND DISPERSE!” The front rank of soldiers slapped their clear shields once with their batons. They were responding to the primitive display with one of their own. Naked aggression.

“Why should we release people who have committed human rights abuses against us when their victims are still in foreign concentration camps?” More roaring from the crowd, people began to trickle forward, filling in the spaces between the terrified prisoners. Pushing them back.

“Why should we release people who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong? Why should we release them when they’ll just come back for revenge?”

And the crowd chanted what had been the terror of Luis XVI. No masters. No kings.

“Why, with no promise of action, should we release those who have been terrorizing us? WE THE PEOPLE have the inalienable right and duty to stand up against tyranny! Our founding document, the thing that empowers you, gave us that RIGHT! Will you join us in demanding better?” More cheering. “Will you do your duty to your country and defend the Constitution alongside us?”

Quiet fell between the two groups. Somewhere, the music died.

On screens around the world that injured young man’s eyes did not waver from the soldiers. Behind him fluttered a sea of flags. Unlike the protests where soldiers weren’t called in, none of the flags were upside down. None were disfigured. And no symbols of hate flew. Spotted among the swells of Old Glory, flags of love and of allied nations flew shrouded in Liberty’s stripes.

Far enough into the mob where the speaker could be neither seen nor heard the protestors watched screens with bated breath, or else struggled to get closer to the front.

The moment of awful quiet stretched until the speaker said, “this is all of our country, isn’t it? The land of the free, should we fear the abuses and over-reaches of a tyrant? Their path will never end. They will keep finding enemies!” Again, the chant of the oppressed rang out from the crowd. “And if you’re one of them to the end, who will be left when they eventually come for you? For your children?”

Corporate news agencies called them terrorists. Public news called them dangerous. Public comedians and human rights activists called them heroes. Podcasts claimed they were heroes or the anti-Christ. Video essays praised them as leaders. Left and right raged at one another but left out the most fickle and important of all. The one that determined which way the dominoes would fall. The last gambler on the people’s side to step away from the game.

A shift was imminent. A potentially cataclysmic one in the political order of the nation. A moment that would determine which direction the majority would go when the uninvolved majority took a side.

“RETURN THE HOSTAGES AND DISPERSE! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!”

“Why do you stand against us? Why are you on their side?” the speaker indicated the whole of the military presence as the soldiers beat on their shields again. “The people who want the power to disappear us! Who want to use you as a means to control for power’s sake! That is how our enemies think!”

Behind him, the crowd responded with its own small surge forward. The chant continuing. No masters. No kings.

Almost no sight of the prisoners remained. Those who had managed to flee, had already run far. The rest tried to hide as far away from the bleeding edge as possible.

“It is the fact that we do not do things like them won the Second World War!” No masters. No Kings. “Then we beat communism because it was too hard on its people!” No masters. No kings. “Didn’t it murder and torture millions of its own people? Didn’t it imprison or send people to camps without a fair trial?”

Chants calling for justice died away, consumed by a growing, violent, new one as the soldiers advanced again.

“Wasn’t it our peace and prosperity that finally meant they couldn’t compete? Didn’t we beat them because our freer, more just system was simply better? We may be messy, but their authoritarianism was no matched for us at our freest!” Lesser chants among the mob succumbed to the rising tide.

Across the lessening gulf of no-man’s-land between the speaker and the soldiers, the latter took another, thundering step. Banging their sticks on their shields again, they brought the primal ritual to into its next phase.

Tears began to flow down the speaker’s face, but he dared not stop speaking to dash them away. His one good arm was occupied by the microphone; the other had been broken in the brief skirmish that had led to the captured agents and dead on both sides. A fight that had broken out after one of the officers shot and killed a detainee on the street. Gang land.

“Isn’t this the Home of the Brave? Show your faces! We aren’t scared for the world to know who we are! We are proud of standing up for what we believe in! The only people we’re scared of are the ones giving you orders! The ones who think they should have power of life and death over us! Why aren’t you on our side?”

The speaker could hear it now, as the soldiers took another deafening step and the mob surged in howling challenge. He could feel the mob’s frenzy in the air.

Eyes still steaming flashed with a sudden angry light across the world. News agencies and private citizens had managed to fly small camera drones into no-man’s-land and were streaming his every blink to billions of screens. Him, and the rising, blood chilling chant.

“What do we owe the people who think they can own us?”

No tyrants faded, its remnant hold outs engulfs by the domination of the new chant. “No Masters, No Kings.” And the hoards tramped forward.

“How do we respond to dictators?”

“No Masters, No Kings,” quickly flooding to fill the vacuum. And the two lines of opposing pawns stepped closer still.

“What did our grandfathers say on the beaches of Normandy?”

Lady Liberty doused her torch and turned away. In a howling wave, the final and most foundational pieces of the social contract fell away. The Powers had finally raised the ante so high that the final gamblers had no choice but to break the table. The chant of No Masters, No kings fell beneath the thunder of the mob.

“DEATH TO FASCISTS!”

Tear gas canisters flew from behind the clear plastic shields. Some were quickly returned to their sender. Others were hastily kicked into buildings, down nearby side-streets, or quickly covered in heavy blankets to provide even a little defense. But enough went off.

The wave crashed against the shields, the first and fastest assailants quickly being pulled behind the wall and cuffed. But the force of humanity was too strong for such a strategy to hold. Regular people tore at the shields, teeth bared in snarls of primate instinct. Hate flooding off them strong enough to smell.

Night sticks crack against anything within reach. People screamed in fury and pain and terror as the press from behind forced them closer to the shields.

Still audible over the howling madness, the speaker shouted into his microphone. “Throw down your weapons! You are on the wrong side! Join us and we can save this country! Join us and we can all be free! Join us and we can be great again!”

Flashbangs went off and bats, hammers, bricks, and rocks found their way to the skirmish line. The new weapons crashed against the shields as stones and bottles and bricks flew overhead. And still the speaker, alone over the heads of the crowd, shouted into the void.

“Your oath includes our protection! Who are you protecting us against now? The only people starting violence is you! How have governments treated you? How have they looked after so many of our veterans? You’ve been mistreated for decades but these people will not help! We WANT to help!”

Away from the front line, safely buffered from the violence, booted feet began to shift. Shields seemed to gain in weight as their wielders listened to the speaker’s desperate voice.

“Aren’t you sworn to fight tyrants? Do your duty and st-”

A gunshot split through the maelstrom of battle. Noticed by only those near him, and the millions around the world watching live, the back of the speaker’s shirt exploded with crimson. His body thudding to the pavement; minutes later Molotov cocktails joined the hail of projectiles streaking towards the soldiers.

Fire erupted behind and among the soldiers’ ranks. Chaos bloomed, slowly spreading like a cancer through the martial host. More bullets flew into the protesting horde, fired by the frightened at the enraged.

Suddenly the line of shields bent, its reserve strength gutted by a cluster of Molotov cocktails. Bent then broke.

Berserk protestors tore through the breach, lashing out in every direction at anything in uniform. More gunshots. Bones broke under nightsticks and hammers. People screamed. And people died.

Screaming people began stumbling over bodies as bullets continued to fly indiscriminately from behind the crumbling shield wall. And the mob returned fire.

A few soldiers turned their weapons on their comrades, infant insurrections quickly put down. Others simply deserted, slipping out of their uniforms and joining the protestors. Or running away. Few noticed until the battle was over.

Everywhere, people died.

Lone soldiers were brought down and savaged by everyday citizens caught in the intoxicating killing frenzy of a crowd pushed too far. Soldiers with families fired wildly into a crowd that never seemed to thin, before they were drowned in a flood armed with knives held by others will families. Civilians with guns hunted soldiers using their own weapons..

The battle was declared lost, and reinforcements brought in.

As the soldiers were routed, the kill box closed.

High calibre. Rapid fire. Industrial.

And people died.

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The above is an account of the Compton Massacre. It is reliably dated to around C.E. 2026 at the end of the Last Republic. According to experts at the University of Crater Lake, it was published anonymously shortly before the government’s reprisals for the protest and in response to the official report explaining the need for the resulting massacre. Which would go on to instigate the Los Angeles Insurrection and in turn, the Californian War.