[POST] How to trigger an insurgency in America
The path and the particulars are fairly clear
First off, flood the zone with fake AI-generated videos, like the already infamous one above.
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It seems fairly obvious that the Trump administration is using its intense immigration crackdown scheme to pick fights with Blue Cities around the country (all but two major cities in the US feature Dem mayors), and, already, the mini-me copying by Red governors is unfolding.
It gets me wondering: If you truly want to trigger an actual insurgency so you can institute some patchwork of martial law across the country, what would be your logical steps?
By definition, authoritarian leaders routinely employ coercive and repressive tactics to maintain the all-important image of control, but certain actions — purposeful or accidental — can quickly and inadvertently provoke insurgency or widespread revolt.
After all, are these not some of the harsh lessons we learned in nation-building across the Global War on Terror? All I’m saying is that we’ve now internalized all that fear and struggle and willingness to be brutal.
Call it Osama’s revenge from beyond his watery grave.
As I argued here recently, the use of indiscriminate violence (e.g., a Kent State-like “massacre”) can do the trick. One naturally wonders about the potential Stonewalls out there, waiting to be lit — on purpose.
Nothing stokes fear like undercover cops grabbing people off the streets while refusing to identify themselves (arbitrary arrests).
Collective punishment is an oldie but a goodie: cite some particular crime and then use it to justify some unbearable restriction being placed on a wider community.
History says, and we certainly learned this in Afghanistan and Iraq, that when regimes target civilians rather than just suspected insurgents, they often radicalize previously neutral or even regime-supporting communities. Right now we’re being sold on the notion that only criminal undocumented migrants are being targeted when it is clear that the nets being cast are — by design — quite indiscriminate. That creates the if-they-can-do-that-to-me-then-they-can-do-that-to-anybody vibe that fuels insurgency.
Also key is to aggressively suppress any voiced dissent, to include peaceful protests, self-declared opposition parties, and independent media, threatening all with arrests, or executive orders that disallow this or that activity, or lawsuits, or denial of media access … pretty much the entire toolkit we’re seeing now with Trump 2.0.
Encouraging the Cultural Revolution-like targeting of anyone in Congress or the courts who stands up to Trump 2.0 by the faceless MAGA online mob is also becoming prevalent in a very Weimar Germany sort of way.
But, of course, provoking riots is a tried-and-true method that generates great video, which nowadays can be faked at speed (see above). You just need to provide the public with big, fat, juicy targets — like the in-your-face raids in LA or Trump’s DC military parade this weekend, already countered with these no-kings demonstrations planned all over the country in a mass counter-programming move. It will be amazing if nobody gets killed, because, as we all know, martyrs are essential fuel to insurgencies.
Such showdown dynamics are crucial to triggering an insurgency — if that is your government’s goal, because, when people feel they have no peaceful means to address their concerns, some (typically the radicalized young) will turn to insurgency as the only remaining option.
Then there is the scapegoating and targeting of vulnerable communities — a MAGA stand-by. Muslims — bad, anybody who criticizes Israel — bad, migrants in general — bad, LGBTQI+ — by definition bad, Dems in general — bad (un-American), women seeking abortions — very bad, and so on and so forth. America, by these definitions, is full of un-Americans, so let the round-ups begin, with the simplest route being to provoke them into self-selected street battles that gathers them up for your dragnets to grab them.
Throughout history, a very direct path to triggered insurgencies has been when the government engages in large-scale population displacement or forced transfers — basically the thrust of Trump 2.0’s war on immigrants. The sheer venality-seeking-oppositional-anger is seen in this administration’s rendition flights to places like Libya, South Sudan, Gitmo in Cuba, and the mega-prison in El Salvador. Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t dumped some of them in Gaza. I mean, why not marry up our round-them-up vibe with Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing, or that of Putin’s Russification of captured Ukrainian provinces?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
And no, there is no concern over the local economic damage, because damaging Blue cities is part and parcel of the larger scheme. This way, as the economy falters, the blame can be shifted to those insurgent Dem politicians who refuse to rid our land of the “vermin” infesting it, the answer at that point being more force and more aggression on the part of Red States, Red America, and the USG that has their backs.
More generally, open and inflammatory corruption can mobilize an insurgent opposition. Here, Trump 2.0 is off the charts by all American standards. I mean, when your president and his family pocket $3B in the first six months (and on crypto alone) … man, that’s out there.
Of course, rampant corruption and the exclusion of key elites or groups from power can fracture regime support and encourage both popular and elite-led rebellion, but Trump has been very careful to keep the billionaires and the Tech Bros on his side — for now. However, as soon as those insiders lose faith in the regime, they typically support or initiate insurgency or coups. In short, there is never enough money-making to keep these types beholden to you, because the more they “earn,” the more they want even more money flowing their way.
One of the easiest ways to stoke insurgencies is to encourage political violence by your adherents and then just ignore it — thus sanctioning it. Again, here, the mass pardons of the January Sixers is a powerful form of signaling: you can even kill cops and get away with it.
Allowing or encouraging pro-government militias to commit violence, or failing to control political violence, can escalate instability and provoke a violent response from opposition groups — by design, because your ultimate goal is to create that cycle of violence that spirals into full-scale insurgency — thus justifying your continued grip on power amidst a “national emergency.”
It is my decision as president to postpone the November elections due to the ongoing national emergency.
In sum, the fastest way for an authoritarian leader to inadvertently spark an insurgency is to combine indiscriminate repression (the more random and over the top, the better) with the elimination of peaceful avenues for dissent, especially when targeting specific communities or causing mass dislocation.
Tell me that’s not what’s going on here in this mass-deportation scheme?
The Trump administration’s legitimacy is crumbling outside of the MAGA base, where it remains quite strong. Given enough time and pressure and violence and media coverage, the opposition will cohere — says history. Push them even farther and you make violent resistance appear as the only viable path for change — also says history.
This is the path we’re on, and the dynamic is entirely top-down in momentum.
Hitler had his Brown Shirts, Trump has had his Proud Boys. But things don’t get truly serious until the organs of state control are refashioned into instruments of mass repression, which is what we’re witnessing today by the militarization of the Department of Homeland Security and the cross-wiring of those national police forces with the US military in the eventual imposition of martial law-like “temporary” regimes — albeit in a regionally piecemeal fashion (Blue States, not Red).
Again, this reminds me of the Neo-cons and their eagerness to solve overseas issues through overwhelming military force (shock and awe). Trump just took all that nervous energy and fear and hatred and turned it inside our borders. Now, the White House that loathes overseas military deployments cannot get enough of them at home — against, of course, the “true enemies” of America, which we all know is code for non-White, non-Christian, non-straight, non-native Americans (if they even deserve that term).
Imagine an historical scale that compares the rise of authoritarianism in the US with that of Nazi Germany, and I would estimate we’re presently situated right around early 1933 — just immediately after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor but before the full legal consolidation of dictatorship.
The rationale?
There is severe democratic backsliding and polarization, but not yet the complete abolition of opposition or civil liberties. There are credible plans and rhetoric for rapid consolidation of executive power, similar to the Nazis’ use of crisis to suspend democracy (e.g., Reichstag Fire Decree, Enabling Act). The possibility of using extraordinary legal or military powers to suppress dissent is already being discussed and officially planned for, as was done in Germany after the Reichstag Fire — a scenario insert comparable to January 6th, 2021 but suspended in time by the Biden/“Bismarck” interregnum.
What worries me now? How fast could America possibly be propelled to 1938 Nazi Germany — you know, when all that anger needs to be redirected both externally (hello Greenland! but more likely a war on Mexico’s drug cartels) and internally (the “detention centers” at home networked to a Gulag Archipelago abroad).
Did I always assume it would get this bad under Trump 2.0?
I always knew it would be attempted. The only question was how resistant the country as a whole ended up being, and that’s not looking good, because we remain essentially two Americas right now.
