Shaping the Domestic Information Battlespace
If anyone thinks this is all just the normal course of American affairs, you are dead wrong.
Credit: Center for Security and International Studies
Michael Anton, a man who needs no introduction, had this to say last month concerning the Regime’s civil war fever:
To fight a civil war, you have to organize. But organizing is all but impossible for those who genuinely dream of taking on the state. The U.S. government is incompetent at many (most?) of its assigned responsibilities. But it’s quite good at keeping tabs on any hint of “right-wing” “insurrectionary” impulses. That task is made much easier by the fact that there is so little such activity to monitor—so little, in fact, that the feds increasingly feel compelled to incite it.
It would be hard to hide a mass movement of people gearing up to fight a civil war. Do you see one anywhere? I don’t. If there were one, don’t you think the feds would be all over it? Of course they would. And don’t you think regime media would be blaring about it 24/7? Again—of course. This is a classic case of a dog not barking. Silence is confirmation that nothing is happening.
Organization, like civil war, requires elites. Indeed civil wars, like all wars, are fought between two opposing factions of elites. Even backwoods insurgencies have leaders. Where are the elites poised to lead red America in a civil war? Who are they? There is Trump to be sure, and regime propaganda insists that he’s a modern-day Jeff Davis-Robert E. Lee hybrid. But this is the same Trump who spent January 6 tweeting. The real elites made sure that was his last day on that platform—and then impeached him for the second time. The real elites—Republican and Democrat alike—wish he would crawl into a hole and die. Trump may have tens of millions of committed followers. But a real civil war requires generals and colonels and captains and lieutenants and sergeants. Go ahead—name some. I’ll wait. [bold mine]
In my last entry, I explained how any sort of disobedience within the military ranks was virtually guaranteed to fail (probably not a bad thing), not without some involvement by influential leadership high up in the chain of command. Anton is speaking in a slightly different context from mine, but the lesson is that nothing as dramatic as a civil war, coup, or insurrection is going to happen in this country unless those behind the effort have some institutional backing. Outsiders, no matter how influential or wealthy, cannot substitute for those who have the ability to marshal masses and resources within the very entity they’re trying to conquer.
Without downplaying the need to oppose political violence by anyone, no matter the cause, it’s safe to say the Regime is seriously overrating the threat posed by the Right. Furthermore, no matter how bad our divisions may be and how hard the feelings are, it’s never enough alone to spark a civil war. Stephen Hayward, an academic at left-wing bubble UC Berkeley, says:
The giddy talk of civil war trivializes our divisions, which are real and deep. It is hard to maintain a sense of common citizenship when we increasingly see each other as utterly alien. But projections of a new civil war are overwrought. For one thing, we lack the sectional geographical divide that was central to our actual Civil War and a single, central issue over which compromise became impossible.
…
It is more likely that Americans will continue the accelerating process of self-sorting. Americans are moving in large numbers to states more congenial to their political and social views (mostly from blue to red states) or forming enclaves within red and blue states.
Despite a massive population, the U.S. is big enough that people can afford to self-sort as a way to avoid conflict. Comparatively, some of the worst civil wars occurred in lands no bigger than many of America’s largest counties. For now, America has enough land and resources for everyone and this poses a significant roadblock to civil war.
Yet, the Regime’s wolf-crying proceeds apace. Anton explains why they’re doing this and it’s exactly the reason you’d expect:
So what’s going on? Two things, I think—one conscious, the other less so.
The conscious effort is what’s known in national security geek speak as a “psy-op,” a.k.a., a “psychological operation.” These are coordinated efforts to use propaganda, disinformation, truth and half-truth, to influence the target’s thinking in ways favorable to those behind the op. It’s not simply propaganda; that is, not Tokyo Rose merely telling American Marines they’re destined to lose. Seemingly fact-based lies are an essential element to a psy-op. Think Tokyo Rose telling Marines about to hit the beach that an American carrier has been sunk when it hasn’t.
Psy-ops can have many objectives, demoralization being the most common. But they can also be used to prep the ground for other operations, to create opportunities that otherwise might not present themselves.
That’s what’s going on now. The regime wishes to crush all actual and potential opposition. To do this, it needs to criminalize dissent. But doing that runs against the letter and spirit of the great charters of American liberty, and against the grain of the American character. To do what they want to do requires changing public opinion. Or, more specifically, it requires wearing down Americans’ inborn resistance to censorship and political persecution.
But as much as Americans hate those things, they also hate and fear even the prospect of terrorism, civil strife, and domestic conflict. Here we come to another dog resolutely not barking. There is no terrorism, civil strife, or domestic conflict—at least not coming from the Right. Yet the Department of Justice recently created a “domestic terrorism unit” to target “those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
Read carefully that unusually candid statement. They aren’t going after actual terrorists or terrorist acts. I suppose they would if they could find any. But there aren’t any to be found. So instead they’re targeting motives, animus, and ideologies—i.e., ideas and feelings, not actual acts. [bold mine]
At some point, even someone deeply invested in the idea of “normalcy” has to wonder if the Regime isn’t deliberately stoking the fires of civil war. Critics, mostly on the Left, have decried similar attempts by authorities to fight all sorts of social maladies - crime, drugs, poverty, you name it. But when it comes to wrongthink? At least, they’re not really bothered by the thought it, despite the utterly tyrannical precedent it would set for everyone, not just those who think terrible thoughts.
It says something when people like Professor Barbara Walter of San Diego State University (whom I’ve profiled extensively on this blog), arguably the leading figure in the Regime’s information environment-shaping, and Canadian writer Stephen Marche have books published at exactly the same time-frame and around the anniversary of 1/6. Obviously, this is deliberate - after all, the best time to put out your work is when it’s most likely the public will be interested in it. My suggestion isn’t necessarily that this is all being centrally-directed by political leadership in Washington.
But the fact there is such a big effort in all of the Regime’s major institutions - academic, journalistic, etc. - to put out this information shows those wielding power in America either see an opportunity to tighten their grip or sense a threat within the populace that they feel must be stamped out immediately. In other words, they feel the time has come to assert their dominance, the same way other well-known regimes throughout history have done so when they felt they were losing control of the underlings. The situation in Canada, which I talked about in my last post, is a good example of that. It’s actually not a surprise the authorities view it as a national security threat unlike other, more violent protests, because truckers are actually essential workers. How dare they exercise their right to protest! That’s for college students and the underemployed only!
If anyone thinks this is all just the normal course of American affairs, you are dead wrong. Look at what the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration recently announced:
The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation. While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.
Keeping with Anton’s observations, those charged with internal security in the U.S. under the Biden administration are worried less about things that are actually happening and more about things that are being said and thought of. This isn’t to downplay the significance of threats - terrible things often begin with thoughts and words, certainly - but to say that targeting “MDM” is a slippery slope to sure-fire tyranny. Is “wrongthink” really something the Regime intends to spend large amounts of money combating? In a free society, people are allowed to be wrong, even deliberately so. Should groups like Black Lives Matter on the Left be targeted for propagating the falsehood that police kill thousands of unarmed Black men per year? Or, is that permissible because the cause that lie supports happens to be one the Regime approves of?
Free speech absolutism does carry moral hazards and I’m not, admittedly, a free speech absolutist. But, there’s a difference between free speech restrictions which are consistent across the board, rooted in a common culture, and implemented for common-sense, know-it-if-you-see-it reasoning, not as a form of political warfare. As we’ve seen regarding the ongoing dust-up over Joe Rogan, this has never been about facts or science, but about ensuring powerful, independent voices cannot gain the upper hand over those who can impose their facts on us through violence.
This is, ultimately, a tale as old as time. Those who possess the means of imposing their will on the people through violence are feeling threatened by those who have found not only their voice, but an audience. Instead of engaging in the marketplace of ideas, as the state in a liberal republic would if healthy, it’s instead resorting to threats and force to get its point across. Of course, the state would possess no legitimacy if it didn’t have the ability to impose its will on the people, but it has to play this card discriminately and judiciously. It can only crack the whip so many times before it begins to be perceived as less of a government and more like a regime. I think we’re clearly past that point.
The only line that hasn’t been crossed is the one where the state begins lashing out violently against it’s citizens. It’s a line I hope never gets crossed, but I also can’t shake the feeling, between the civil war drum-beating and increasing attempts at policing protest, speech, and thought, that someone will eventually commit a tragic error from which there’s no return.
After all, when you’re right, you’re right. End of Story. Get back in line.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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