The Left Beats The Drums Of Civil War

The fact is, people like Nicholas Decker either end up being civil war’s first casualties or a war criminal by the end of it.

Nicholas Decker, future civil war casualty. Or war criminal. Source: Nicholas Decker

George Mason University PhDd student Nicholas Decker airs his grievances, then concludes that the only recourse is civil war:

He writes:

Evil has come to America. The present administration is engaged in barbarism; it has arbitrarily imprisoned its opponents, revoked the visas of thousands of students, imposed taxes upon us without our consent, and seeks to destroy the institutions which oppose it. Its leader has threatened those who produce unfavorable coverage, and suggested that their licenses be revoked. It has deprived us, in many cases, of trial by jury; it has subjected us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and has transported us beyond seas to be imprisoned for pretended offenses. It has scorned the orders of our courts, and threatens to alter fundamentally our form of government. It has pardoned its thugs, and extorted the lawyers who defended its opponents.

If these actions become normal, the government could arrest anyone and deport them to prison in a foreign land, without hope of redress, for no reason. It is nothing less than the total abdication of rule of law in this country. There is no guard or protection against it. If this theory prevails, then it is the end of America as a free nation.

It’s a very leftist critique of current events. Much of it concerns the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Decker appears to be concerned that attempting to enforce immigration law, trying to clean up the mass immigration mess resulting from generations of both inaction and deliberate action, will result in tyrannical governance.

If that’s what he really believes, then we may not as well enforce any laws. Not to mention, the rule-of-law those like him suddenly have newfound love for has existed in only a nominal sense for just as long. Where has he been?

He gets to the point [bold mine]:

But what to do? The rot of the present administration runs deeper than one man. The sacrifice of a hero is insufficient to save our nation, and a gust of wind on a summer day would not have saved us. For let us make no mistake; the problem is not one man, but a whole class of people. If one head is cut off, another would take its place.

In the context of the overall essay, he seems to be making it quite clear that he sees everyone not on his side to be the enemy, an enemy which must be forcefully eliminated:

Violence only makes sense as part of coordinated strategy. This is why protests are important – not as a way of changing the present administration’s actions, but as a way to coordinate a group. There may come a time when we shall have no guarantee of freedom but the one which we make for ourselves. If it comes, I tell you that there is no greater honor than he who lays down his life for his friends. Until then, we must wait.

It’s a short essay - read it all and make up your own mind. Personally, it’s hard to feel threatened by someone like this. Decker is not someone - and I’m totally confident in saying this - who understands violence in any meaningful sense, besides what he sees in fiction and the little history he’s read in his time. It’s one thing to warn against civil war, which is what I’ve tried to do, and it’s another thing to agitate for it, which is what he’s doing. Simply put, people like Decker, in the outbreak of civil war, are either its first casualties, or they live long enough to become tyrants if they win, enemies of the state and war criminals if they lose. Quite the things to aspire to.

That said, my concern is that what Decker says here represents the views of millions of Americans. In fact, I know it does, not only from looking at social media, but also having lived around leftists and liberal-minded people my entire life. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my years and anything I try to impart on all of you, it’s that an ugly savagery lies beneath the surface. Never allow “peace and love” to lead you into thinking leftists and liberals are harmless, incapable of waging war. It’s all a veneer. Humans are what they are, always, it’s just that it shows up differently depending on the type of person.

John Michael Greer explains:

For decades now liberal Americans have forced themselves to conform to the cult of mandatory niceness, and all those bottled-up feelings of rage and hatred and nastiness have to go somewhere. So they glorify murderers and rapists when they think they can justify it to themselves, just as they brutally maltreat people below them on the social ladder, and swoon over Barack Obama personally vaporizing wedding parties with drone strikes. It’s all a vicarious release of their repressed emotions.

One of the reasons why leftist Americans don’t talk about crime in a critical manner is because part of them enjoys the idea of other Americans, Whites or others they regard as “privileged,” getting a dose of karmic justice. I don’t mean to get ideological, but it’s still important to understand, as a practical matter, that leftism is an ideology rooted largely upon resentment. “Bad things must happen to people unlike me, better off than me” is a core animating principle. It’s not enough to just not live with such people, their entire existence is the problem, because it means we live in an inequitable, unjust society, and we cannot have that, period.

Later on, Decker added a preface to the essay, in response to the reactions he received:

Edit 04/18/2025: Well didn’t that get quite a reception! The response has been far greater than I anticipated; I was certainly impressed by the inventiveness and facility of my interlocutors with slurs. I wish to make a few points clear. Violence is a last resort, not a first resort. It must come after the exhaustion of all possible remedy. It is not, moreover, appropriate for decisions which are merely unwise or disastrous. It is to be employed only in defense of our Constitution, and of democracy. If it is resorted to, it must be narrowly targeted, and aimed only at extirpating those who have power, and are unjustly resisting giving it up.

The last sentence is a back-track; he made it clear in the original essay, which he has not since altered, that “a whole class of people” are the problem. Granted, this can mean any number of things, but ambiguity is often used for the expressed purpose of avoiding clarity. It’s how they avoid not only moral culpability, but even legal culpability, if it comes down to it.

The vast majority of war criminals throughout history have been combatants and political leaders, but every so often, you see others charged and convicted for war crimes as well. Ferdinand Nahimana, a Rwandan academic, was one of the most recent examples. It’s rare, yes, but the point is that being a civilian, an academic, and journalist, none of it will save you from being accused of war crimes.

The fact is, people like Nicholas Decker either end up being civil war’s first casualties or a war criminal by the end of it. I think when the next civil war breaks out, we’re going to see a violent outburst from the Left, as we often do, even from seemingly harmless liberals. People become animalistic when strongly provoked, believe there are no consequences for their actions, and are assured they’re doing the morally right thing. The Left is an inherently ideological faction even at its least extreme, and idealists invariably believe everything they do is for the morally correct reasons.

In the long run, however, leftists and liberals like Decker will disproportionately end up the casualties of civil war. It’s a dynamic similar to how criminals end up getting killed more often than they do the killing. By the end of it, the Left will use the death toll to fashion themselves as victims, using it to undermine the Right, claiming to have been fighting peacefully for democracy and freedom, when they were doing no such thing. We’ve seen it far too often to think it’d go otherwise.

This famous saying has been circulating recently in leftist circles:

Source

The next time you see this, it’s your duty to remind whomever posted it: when the communists and socialists came to power, they came after everyone who wasn’t a communist or socialist. When they achieved total victory, the communists then went after the socialists for not being communists. Once the communists stood alone at the top, they not only spoke up for no one, but nobody would speak up for them, either. Deservedly so.

They are who they are.

Not Like Us

Scott Greer explains Black tribalism:

This may shock white observers. How could people hear about this story and come to the conclusion that Anthony was in the right? Who stabs someone over a seating dispute? And how could blacks insist that it was a race thing?

This boggles white minds because they don’t understand black culture and norms. Blacks, unlike whites, are tribalistic. They rally behind their own against racial outsiders. They collectivize these cases while whites individualize them. They also view seating disagreements and other minor slights very differently from whites. These can be grounds for murder in their bizarre form of honor culture.

He’s obviously referring to the killing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at the hands of Karmelo. Greer addresses the fact, despite years of evidence, that Whites simply fail to accept that Blacks don’t operate along a similar worldview as they do.

Greer explains this worldview:

Blacks with a hood mentality also feel stabbing someone over a seat is perfectly normal.. Giving up your seat in the ghetto would establish you as a punk that others can walk all over. Everyone will take advantage of you in this version of honor culture. The only answer is to resort to violence to let others know you aren’t a punk. It also explains why some blacks shoot each other over getting their shoes stepped on and other “disses.” These are insults that demand a response. While Anthony may not have been living in the hood, he imbibed the mentality.

This is completely alien to how suburban whites operate. A seat dispute could lead to harsh words, but no one would think to stab each other over such a triviality. There’s nothing lost in giving up a seat. Reason and good sense prevail. If someone steps on your shoe, you say sorry and the matter is done. No one needs to kill over their honor. Middle-class whites abide by different rules and norms than those of the hood. Austin Metcalf was a victim of this culture clash.

Of course, you hear the inevitable refrain that Whites do in fact kill each other senselessly. Sure, but nowhere near to the degree that Blacks do. Bringing up exceptions is to concede the point you’re contesting is actually quite accurate. I think everyone of all races knows that violence is a peculiar problem within the Black community, it’s just the “why” which differs. Most people don’t want to live in Black neighborhoods; they can say it’s not about racism, but there’s just no way to separate the quality of the area from the quality of the people. There’s no such thing as “magic soil.”

Americans are still dangerously uncomfortable with admitting that Blacks simply don’t live by the same rules as everyone else. There’s nothing racist about pointing this out - Blacks themselves indulge in the fact they buck “White America” and live by their dictates, what I call the “I Don’t Give A F**k” mentality. Not only that, the Regime, which is still fronted by White people, encourages Blacks to express their uniqueness and flex their muscles as the only real ethno-nationalist group in America. Nobody expects Blacks to assimilate. If anything, it seems like the rest of America has been assimilating to Black culture. But like the good ethno-nationalists they are, Blacks know best: you can listen to rap, you can watch basketball, you immerse yourself and even adopt urban culture to your heart’s content. But at the end of the day? If you’re not Black, you never will be.

Greer says, accurately, that Blacks are individualists amongst themselves, but as part of a wider society, it’s them against everyone else, and Whites cannot wrap their brains around this ethno-nationalist mentality:

Anthony wasn’t just standing up for his own individual “honor”–he was standing up for the honor of his race. Metcalf’s seat request was doubly offensive because he was white. The young athlete wasn’t a mere individual. In the eyes of Anthony’s black supporters, Metcalf embodied all the evils of white America. By virtue of being white, he was a lyncher and a Klansman. Anthony struck back against white supremacy with his knife. They collectivize the stabbing, seeing their race in Anthony and their enemies in Metcalf. That’s why they donate to the black youth’s fundraiser.

Normal whites, like Jeff Metcalf, can’t comprehend this. They just see it as a matter between two individuals. Neither represents any larger group. One individual did something very wrong, and justice must be done to him. Reason and logic make this an open-and-shut case. There are a few delusional whites, such as Tim Pool, who buy the bogus theory of “self-defense.” But they are a tiny minority. Most whites see this as an unjustified murder, regardless of whether they acknowledge the racial element.

In that sense, Blacks are more imaginative than Whites. Blacks are able to distinguish when agency applies at the individual level and when it applies at the group level. In some ways, that makes them more human, more normal than the rest of us.

This all calls to mind a famous interview Jared Taylor once did with Japanese journalists. Towards the end, he mentions he receives death threats occasionally. When asked who he believes is issuing these threats against him and his family, he says he’s not sure, but if he had to guess, they’re Whites. One of the Japanese journalists is stunned to hear this.

Watch/listen to Taylor explain his suspicions (I’ve set the video here to start at the part where he begins talking about it):

Taylor is referred to as a racist, White nationalist/supremacist, every leftist slur under the sun. Yet Taylor has more in common with the vast majority of Black Americans than most White liberals do. He shares a similar worldview with them. Not only that, how Taylor and Blacks think is actually more in line with how most of the world still thinks today. Humans are tribalistic creatures, like any animal. Tribalism, as historian H.W. Brands once said, isn’t entirely a bad thing: it’s a big reason why humans have yet to go extinct.

When tribalism does result in catastrophe, it’s not always because one group was physically weaker than the other. It’s because one group wasn’t tribalistic enough to even fight for itself. Tribalism isn’t just a survival strategy; it’s a winning strategy. 13 percent of the U.S. population understands this, which is why they don’t seem like they’re only 13 percent.

I warned in my last column that we ought to strongly consider the possibility that Karmelo Anthony may in fact get away with killing Austin Metcalf. The outcome will come down to many factors, but one of the biggest will be jury composition. We’ve seen the role it plays in numerous high-profile, racially charged cases, and outcomes never leave consensus on whether justice was rendered or not.

Americans may not be aware of just how close we are to the trial-by-jury model functionally collapsing:

America is devolving to the same situation Singapore was in in the 60s, where the jury trial system couldn't function due to jurors choosing to convict or acquit based solely on ethnic prejudice rather than the facts of the case.

Prior to becoming prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew worked as a criminal defense lawyer and cited his own experience as justification for abolishing jury trials in 1970. He described being assigned to defend four Malays accused of killing a Royal Air Force Officer and his family during a race riot. The jurors included other Malays and Lee used their hatred of white people to secure his client's acquittal despite both him and the judge knowing that the defendants were clearly guilty. He was sufficiently disgusted by what he had done that it convinced him that trial by jury was unworkable in a multiethnic state like Singapore, since ethnic conflict would always prevent justice from being served.

Black jurors are on the same level as the Malay jurors that Lee convinced all the way back in the 40s. They will always vote to convict a white person and will practice jury nullification when it's one of their own facing charges, no matter the facts of the case (see: Derek Chauvin). Leftist prosecutors are aware of this and will always try to jury shop trials involving white people to areas with large black populations to secure whatever outcome they want. I'm still surprised they failed in Daniel Penny’s case even after the judge showed blatant favoritism towards the prosecution by allowing them to drop the manslaughter charge after the jury deadlocked (since the negligent homicide charge would be automatically dismissed if Penny was found not guilty of manslaughter).

I don't know how you fix this in America short of blocking black jurors from the jury pool. The Constitution guarantees jury trials, but the pool is tainted.

Everything we’ve come to expect as part-and-parcel of liberal governance, including trial-by-jury, depends on a whole lot assumptions without any basis in fact. If anything, it’s all a matter of blind faith and trust. And sure, if we can’t trust our fellow citizens to do the right thing, then what’s the point of all this?

That’s what’s most troubling of all. When we realize we cannot trust our fellow citizens, our reasons for staying together vanish, don’t they? But I think we’re well past that point and we’re just coasting along, until someone fixes it, or we finally drop off a cliff.

We’re This Close

We’ll close on this story demonstrating just how close we are to the precipice:

A progressive district attorney has declined to charge the state employee in Tim Walz-led Minnesota who was allegedly caught causing $20,000 damage by vandalizing half a dozen Teslas — a decision the local police chief ripped as the latest betrayal of victims.

The suspected vandal, 33-year-old Minnesota government employee Dylan Bryan Adams, was allegedly spotted keying the vehicles and stripping their paint off while out walking his dog around the city.

Despite what police believe to be evidence of Adams committing felonies, Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty will seek diversion rather than criminal charges.

Remember: they didn’t let anyone get away with “defacing” LGBTQ+ rainbow crosswalks, even though burnouts are rarely pursued criminally unless witnessed by police, and are never considered property damage. Rule of law in any meaningful sense ended long ago and the legal system is used not for maintaining order, but for engaging in political warfare, to hurt those who stand opposed to the Regime. In that sense, the system has already failed. We’re just playing pretend now, because, well, what’s the alternative? War?

Anyway, it’s your turn now. What’s your reaction to Nicholas Decker’s call to arms? Shall we take it seriously? Or is he a young college student who just thinks he’s got something profound to say? What are we to do with those who insist on playing by their rules, while the rest of us must follow the rules?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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