America's 'Years Of Lead' Have Begun
Unless you want to get in the mix, your job will be to stay out of it as much as possible.
In earlier essays, I compared the coming civil war to The Troubles of Northern Ireland. Though there will certainly be parallels in terms of how the conflict was waged, I’ve since backed away from the comparison. This is because The Troubles were a sectarian, ethno-nationalist conflict, for which there exists no analogue in the United States or even the broader West currently.
If The Troubles were fought between parallel societies, the burgeoning civil wars of the West will be fought between ideologies. The situation in each country differs, but what you do see are broad coalitions whose interests may not align perfectly, often in contradiction to one another, yet are united by common worldviews. Whether you want to call them coalitions or factions, the conflict will be largely dictated by these two large sides.
At the micro-level, we could see ethno-nationalism, sectarianism, or tribalism in general. But at the macro-level, the conflict will be ideological, making something like Italy’s Years of Lead, a period of low-intensity conflict and terrorism from the late 1960s to late 1980s, a better example of what we face in the coming years. Recent events show we are headed this way.
Let’s talk about this grave threat to our country and way of life.
Far-Left Insurgency Metastasizes
We just had the most overt attack to date on authorities in reaction to the Trump administration’s hard-line anti-immigration effort. We all knew this was coming; the Left mostly stood down during the Biden administration since their leadership was in power, but with Donald Trump back in office, it was only a matter of time before they mobilized again.
Ten people have been arrested on attempted murder charges after attackers in black military-style clothing opened fire outside a Texas immigration detention center in a “planned ambush” that left one police officer wounded, a prosecutor said.
The officer was shot in the neck on Friday, the night of the Fourth of July, after reporting to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Dallas. He was treated at a hospital and released, the Johnson County Sheriff’s office said.
The shooting took place as President Donald Trump ’s administration ramps up deportations, which will be turbocharged by a massive spending bill that became law last week.
Initially, the attackers set off fireworks, and damaged cars and a guard structure by spray-painting “traitor” and ”ICE pig” on them. The attack “seemed to be designed” to draw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel outside the facility, “and it worked,” Nancy Larson, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said at a Monday night news conference in Fort Worth.
Two unarmed corrections officers spoke to the group in the detention center’s parking lot as someone standing in nearby woods appeared to signal with a flashlight, according to a criminal complaint. Then the Alvarado police officer arrived and someone in the woods opened fire, Larson said.
“Another assailant, who was across the street, nowhere near the corrections officers, shot 20 to 30 rounds at these unarmed corrections officers,” she said. “There was an AR-style rifle found at the scene” that was jammed, she said. A flag saying “Resist fascism, fight oligarchy,” and flyers with words such as “Fight ICE terror with class war” also were recovered near the center.
As an aside, I’ve been saying that the reason the Left has backed off gun control isn’t only because of the realities of gun violence in America. It’s also because the Left now views the necessity of ongoing guns to wage war. The motivation among leftists to own guns, by their own admission, have little to do with crime or personal safety, but with fear of the political opposition. Nobody on the Left is scared of “assault rifles” anymore.
Here are the suspects who were arrested in connection with this potentially disastrous crime:
We’ll talk about this more in a second, but these mugshots reveal something about who today’s far-left insurgents will be.
Days later, this happened:
Up until now, I’ve emphasized the “lone wolf” threat over the group threat. It’s now clear we need to start worrying about both, even as lone wolves will be the more prevalent threat type. What’s more, we need to worry about the fact they’re now taking the fight to the authorities, because this amounts to an insurgency and is often what leads to the outbreak of civil war.
Here’s yet another incident which occurred in just last few days, this one in Los Angeles:
Here are the suspects connected to the crime:
Jude Jasmine Jeannine Allard. What’s that supposed to be? He/her/they? It appears a profile of today’s far-left insurgency has emerged: predominantly White and Hispanic, equally male and female, with strong LGBTQ+ representation. It appears many of the extremists are gender-confused, but don’t let that fool you. It suggests they’re unstable and perfectly willing to engage in violence.
And yes, this is a nascent insurgency. I can hear liberal and normie Americans replying with, “Aw, c’mon, don’t be hyperbolic! That’s not a real insurgency!” Then what is? An insurgency is simply an armed effort at undermining the legitimate authority or to subvert the existing order. I think the events described above fit that description. I’d bet that a lot of the people who’d say this isn’t a real insurgency also believe January 6, 2021 was a genuine attempt to overthrow democracy. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The point is that if the shoe fits, no amount of word games can alter reality.
Insurgencies typically begin with assaults on authority. What’s the significance of law enforcement being targets? As usual, I’m perfectly fine with giving the floor to someone who can explain it all better than I can. Here’s former police officer “Don Shift” elaborating the stakes:
Now imagine a coordinated campaign of violence against police, or even just the fear of one. Even a few targeted killings would be enough to provoke the same institutional panic. Commanders would prioritize officer safety over crime prevention. SWAT teams would be called out for routine calls. Cops would avoid public contact, adopt “high threat” tactics, and start treating everyone like a potential ambush. Patrols would thin, enforcement would evaporate, and criminals would flouish in the resulting void.
That vacuum in public safety will not go unnoticed. The public will feel it, especially the law-abiding people who thought they didn’t need the police—until the police stopped showing up. When the perception of risk outweighs the paycheck, officers will disengage. And once the public sees what a police-less society actually looks like, opportunists will act. Criminals will take advantage of those unable to defend themselves. And you would-be vigilantes looking to clean house will suddenly find out it’s not so fun being in Condition Orange all the time and that there are much bigger, badder fish out there.
A lot of people will read that and become inclined to criticize police for refusing to put themselves in harm’s way. But here’s the thing - the police aren’t soldiers. In fact, it’s liberals who often remind us of that. They’re meant to protect, not fight a war. If anything, the predominant narrative when it coming to policing is that our cops do too much, need to back off, and let the people live their lives in peace. This is an utterly corrupt narrative - a population like America’s has proven time and again it cannot manage even the most basic of social conflicts without an armed adjudicator - but that’s besides the point. The criticism of ICE raids shows Americans have no appetite for any real enforcement of the law.
Right now, all that matters is the fact that the more police come under fire, the more risk-averse they’ll become. The alternative is for police to take an even more front-footed stance, for which there exists no public support for. It’ll be many, many moons, after much carnage, before Americans begin to genuinely support stronger law enforcement measures again. We’re deep into a major societal crisis, but there’s still many more dominoes left to fall.
There’s also a lot more than politics at risk here. Even a low-level irregular war will irreparably tear our social fabric, and we don’t have much it remaining to start. Some may view the present and coming time as a redux of the 1960s to 1970s, which we managed to survive, but this is based on a view of history which begins after the end of World War II. When going by the Neil Howe and William Strauss historical model, the ‘60s and ‘70s were during the Second Turning, what they called an “Awakening,” where a new cultural ethos emerges.
But we’re now in the Fourth Turning, the “Crisis.” If we underwent the events of the ‘60s and ‘70s today, I don’t think our country would survive that. We aren’t as robust nor united a society today as we were then, to say nothing of the demographic changes we’ve undergone. So, it’s not useful to compare the current moment to then. I think it’s pretty clear to most that we’re in an unprecedented time in our history, at least in our lifetimes. We are quickly approaching the first real existential crisis America has suffered since World War II.
Back to insurgency. Even as law enforcement may inevitably take on a lower profile, eventually, insurgents will get arrested or even killed. As they do, they’ll realize that attacking the state isn’t a good idea, but my instead resort to attacking civilian targets, most notably anyone and anything associated with the civilian population. We’ve already seen how the far-left engages in property violence, damaging Tesla vehicles, for one, but we also see how they’ve destroyed pregnancy centers, churches, even attempted assassinations. There have also been incidents associated with the Right, including the assassination of a Minnesota state representative in June, but this only underscores just how hot the temperature is getting in the country.
Attacks against civilians and their property are already quite prevalent, even if deaths are rare. Here's a recent incident from Seattle, a far-left hotbed:
SEATTLE — Police are investigating after multiple gunshots were fired into a home in Ballard early Sunday morning. The Seattle Police Department said the house was “potentially targeted due to political and ideological signs in the window of the residence.”
According to the SPD, officers responded to reports of shots fired at a home around 3 a.m. Sunday. Responding officers found several bullet holes in the window of the home where the signs were hung.
Photos from the scene taken Monday morning show at least four bullet holes in a window that has multiple President Donald Trump signs, a thin blue line “Police Lives Matter” sign, and a sign with a Confederate flag visible. The homeowner also told KOMO News pride flag stickers were also placed on their vehicle during the incident.
Seattle police said the victim’s vehicle also had bullet damage, along with several stickers that were placed on the vehicle that reflected the suspect’s “own political or social ideology.”
People can make all the excuses in the world - the gunshots were meant to scare, not to kill. Imagine thinking shooting in anyone’s direction should be taken as something other than a direct attempt on someone’s life. Most political violence, contrary to the public narrative, is carried out by the Left, primarily through protests, but also through low-level acts of violence like this. Meanwhile, leftists, even their extremists, live in “Red” counties and states without any real fear of violence, besides that inside their own head.
Where are we headed with this? Longtime readers ought to know, broadly, what I think. To summarize for the new readers, I see 2025 America the same way I view 1969 Northern Ireland, even as The Troubles serves as an unfit comparison. 1969 was the year the British government deployed troops to the country and is widely viewed as the year the conflict, which had been brewing for years, finally metastasized into a conflict. Three years later, Northern Ireland was at the brink of civil war. In 2025 America, we had troops deployed to Los Angeles to support immigration enforcement operations, with armed soldiers facing off with rioters. Three years from now is 2028, an election year. I think the comparison works in this respect.
We could easily go back to seeing mass protests in America as we saw as recently as in 2020 and during the 1960s. During the ‘60s, both President Lyndon Johnson, who was sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement, and President Richard Nixon deployed active-duty military forces to America’s cities in response to unrest. America has plenty of individuals willing to take part in political violence, that’s never changed, even as the size and scale of it has diminished somewhat.
Under the Trump administration, it’s quite likely troops will be deployed if another serious bout of unrest arises again. America’s tolerance for “peaceful protest” is still uncomfortably high, but not nearly as much as it was five years ago. Will it escalate to the point where the U.S. military, like their British counterparts did in Northern Ireland, take part in long-term peacekeeping and counter-insurgency operations? What if police begin being targeted en masse? Will we see an invocation of the Insurrection Act, declarations of martial law, and American troops tasked with restoring order? These all have precedent in our own history, even if a major insurgency doesn’t.
Or nothing might happen. At least, the military won’t get involved. During Italy’s Years of Lead, the armed forces played a limited role, the task of combating the insurgencies falling mostly on police and intelligence services. Which way we go, in my opinion, will depend on circumstances beyond the scope of this discussion. What I’m fairly confident in is that under a Democratic administration, the troops will stay out of the fight.
Whatever efforts will be taken against the insurgents will be done quietly, out of public view, hoping that the public can instead be distracted by other problems. After all, this isn’t 1968 and the Democrats no longer have a vested interest in keeping a lid on leftist violence, especially since it’s become so normalized. The “Silent Majority” today is more concerned with protecting protest rights than it’s with maintaining public order. At some point, the Democrats will return to power, and without a major change in social values, the space for leftist violence will remain.
Whatever happens, keep this in mind: we’re already at risk of widespread violent unrest. Always have been. Now, we need to consider the prospect of even more serious scenarios, such as an uprising and Without Rule-of-Law (WROL). Similar to France and elsewhere in Europe, there exists critical mass for just such a conflagration. If it happens, America doesn’t have enough cops and troops to restore order. Aside from maybe China, no country does. Even a localized WROL, if it were to happen in Los Angeles, would stretch resources to their limit. Like a wildfire, it can only be contained and allowed to burn itself out.
That should come as cold comfort to us all.
Democrats Want Blood
A truly disturbing report from Axios regarding the rapidly increasing radicalization among partisan Democrats in America:
At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.
…
What we’re hearing: The grassroots wants more. “Some of them have suggested ... what we really need to do is be willing to get shot” when visiting ICE facilities or federal agencies, a third House Democrat told Axios.
“Our own base is telling us that what we're doing is not good enough ... [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public,” the lawmaker said.
A fourth House Democrat said constituents have told them “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence ... to fight to protect our democracy.”
A fifth House Democrat told Axios that “people online have sent me crazy s*** ... told me to storm the White House and stuff like that,” though they added that “there’s always people on the internet saying crazy stuff.”
Central to Democratic sentiments is that the Right and the Republican Party have engaged in violence and it’s worked for them. The only reason anyone believes this is because of media conditioning - the Left has not only been far more violent overall, they resort to violence more frequently, as a matter of habit - but what matters is people believe it. If someone believes the worst about you, saying, “I’m not that person” won’t sway them.
The fact that Democratic voters are demanding actions like storming the White House shows how far they’re willing to take things. By the way, rioters did try to storm the White House grounds during the 2020 riots. Only this time, they’re demanding politicians take the risk instead.
More from Axios:
Zoom in: Many lawmakers said these voters tend to be white, well-educated and live in upscale suburban or urban neighborhoods.
“What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and ... a lot of times that's coming from economically very secure white people,” said an eighth House Democrat.
Again, take stock of the demographics of far-left insurgents. They’re mostly White and Hispanic. Other races, like Asians, are underrepresented. Conspicuously absent are Blacks, which is another story all its own. Many of them have graduated from or at least attended college, which are indoctrination institutions, incubators of left-wing radicalism. The Left fashions itself as the underclass fighting the elites, but this is far from the truth. If anything, the Left LARPs (Live-Action Role-Playing) as the underclass.
More:
“Not only would that be a gift to Donald Trump, not only would it make the job of Republicans in Congress easier if we were all mired in legal troubles ... [we are] a group that is disproportionately people of color, women, LGBTQ people — people who do not fare very well in prison.”
It begs the question: why risk prison, then? Or have they no reason to fear prison? It’d explain the propensity of leftists to participate in protests and riots. Given that many of the participants are people of color, women, and LGBTQ, it’s ironic for them to be worried about prison, especially since nothing serious ever seems to happen to these people. If they are truly afraid of prison, well, maybe that’s what they belong.
Finally:
The bottom line: “The expectations aren't just unreal. They’re dangerous,” the eighth House Democrat said.
A ninth lawmaker told Axios: “I actually said in a meeting, ‘When they light a fire, my thought is to grab an extinguisher,’” a ninth House Democrat told Axios.
“And someone at the table said, ‘Have you tried gasoline?’”
If Democrats themselves are taking this threat seriously, why shouldn’t Americans writ large? Especially as Democrats themselves aren’t likely to do anything about it. If the party itself recognizes an increasing threat from within their own constituency, then the hour is already probably late.
This does offer the possibility of left-wing terrorism. We’ve already seen plenty of instances of it, with the Tesla firebombings and now the attacks on immigration law enforcement. There is plenty of underlying support for the violence among the Left. These people genuinely believe Trump is establishing a fascist dictatorship. That provides ample justification for violent acts.
Does this mean the entire left-wing base is ready to head to the barricades? No. The vast majority of them are not going to do violence themselves. Many of them are incapable of it. Lawmakers told Axios they primarily received the demands for blood from older, white middle-class people. These are the elderly people going to “No Kings” protests and doing boycotts against Tesla. They’re annoying, but harmless. This is not a base from which to launch a civil war. Low-energy Gen Xers and Boomers are not going to be fighting any wars.
This gets to something I’ve talked about many times: the aging of the population caps off, if not entirely rules out, civil war. America isn’t an old country, but it’s not young either. It has lots of young people, just not disproportionately so. This is part of the reason I don’t see a large-scale, high-intensity civil war like that of France, Russia, or Spain happening in the U.S. The aforementioned countries had much younger populations.
More from Greer:
However, these people do provide the moral support for violent acts. Potential terrorists need that to know they’re right. The terrorism will be the work of lone wolves, not organized networks. All it takes is the sentiment to push them towards murder. The outpouring of support for Luigi Mangione did more to encourage left-wing terrorism than anything imaginable. I predicted a few months ago that we would see a lot of lone-wolf left-wing terrorism during the second Trump term. This grim prediction is starting to become true.
I somewhat disagree - organized networks will engage in terrorism, as we’ve just seen. However, Greer is directionally correct in that lone wolves, in part influenced by organized networks, will engage in terrorism the most. The groups will eventually hit a wall much sooner, since it’s easier for police and intelligence to target them. But individuals are tougher to deal with. Since there are so many radicalized individuals out there, that’s a whole lot of terror in the pipeline.
Imagine attacks on law enforcement or even civilians happening every week. Then throw in frequent protests and rioting. Up until now, Americans have been content to ignore it all, but it’s going to inevitably become something we’ll all need to more conscious of.
Turns Out Antifa Is A Dangerous Idea
History won’t be too kind to Joe Biden for many reasons, but one reason ought to damn him more than any other: providing cover for Antifa.
Here is was in a debate during the 2020 presidential election:
I’d ask to imagine if Trump had said “White supremacy is an idea” while also denying the existence of such groups, but we all know nobody would care. When it comes to the public discourse on extremism, the discussion is allowed to go only one way.
But you and I live in the real world, so we don’t deny reality, and the reality is that Antifa, if it’s an idea, is a really dangerous one, with real-world consequences. For Biden to describe Antifa as merely an idea means as much as calling Islamism an idea. It sure leads to a lot of carnage!
As Andy Ngo reports, if the insurgents who attacked the Texas ICE facility weren’t Antifa themselves, they sure were inspired by it:
One of the suspects’ backpacks contained Antifa political propaganda and far-left extremist anarchist zines that are popular with Antifa members. Additional firearms, loaded magazines and twelve sets of body armor were found during the search of the suspects and their vehicles.
Ngo includes a photograph of an incident in Fort Worth in April 2023 clearly showing Antifa flag-bearing militants clashing with police:
Ngo also mentions that thousands of dollars have already been raised towards legal expenses for the nearly dozen arrested, with some donors contributing substantial sums. Again, if this is just an idea, it’s an idea with not only significant support, but a tremendous amount of money behind it.
Kyle Shideler, who has also researched Antifa for years, argues that Antifa isn’t only a real threat, but also one which authorities are struggling to get a hold of:
For a decade now, I have been a student of this network, its origins, and ideology. As I told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution in 2020, Antifa is the direct linear descendant of the violent communist urban guerrilla movements of the 1970s like the Weather Underground.
Like its predecessors, which also began with campus protests and street riots, Antifa has over the past several years evolved to the use of bombings, especially firebombings targeting police vehicles, pregnancy resource centers, and more recently Tesla dealerships. And to this escalation, we can now add the planned ambush of federal officers.
This was a totally foreseeable development. As a 2021 German Ministry of the Interior report noted, Antifa and related left extremists were demonstrating:
…an obvious shift away from the ‘mass militancy’ of demonstrations and towards violent acts by small groups acting covertly. Their violence has shifted to the sidelines of gatherings or is entirely independent of these events.
In other words, a warning was provided. Since 2020, I have traveled the country providing threat briefings on Antifa to state and local law enforcement agencies, warning of the increased likelihood of violence, including a case study of Willem Van Spronsen, the Antifa member who used Molotov cocktails and a rifle in an attack on a Tacoma, Washington, ICE detention center in July of 2019. Many of the officers I speak to have privately expressed a frustration about the ability to get quality information about Antifa and similar left-wing extremist threats from the federal government.
Shideler notes that state-level efforts to prosecute Antifa have been more successful, but eventually, the federal government has to get involved as well. This is because Antifa is a national threat and, with Trump in office, their objectives are nationally oriented. The assault on federal law enforcement demonstrates it.
Separately, at some point, we need to have a reckoning, one which I don’t expect we’ll ever see, about the extent to which academics, the media, and politicians have created an environment where the far-left operates with impunity. In my earlier essays, I mentioned figures like Barbara F. Walter, University of California, San Diego professor, and Stephen Marche, a Canadian writer, two personalities at the forefront of an effort early in the Biden administration to marginalize the Right, singling them out, and preemptively laying blame for America’s next civil war at them or any opponents of the leftist Regime. Both Walter and Marche released books in the same year on that very topic, something I’m sure was a total coincidence.
Yet, three years later, the narrative, which had everything - money, political gravitas - behind it, has completely evaporated into the ether. Neither Walter nor Marche hold the general public’s audience now, if they ever did. They speak inside their own bubbles, the only place where their message still resonates. Meanwhile, a reality-based narrative, where the far-left and a coalition of White liberals and racial minorities is leading us to civil war, is still a good ways off from gaining a substantial audience.
Barbara Walter has mostly left the social media sphere (I wonder why?), but Stephen Marche had this to say the other day:
Check the rest of his timeline - nothing about the ICE facility assault, nothing about the attacks on federal agents or police. When you’re wedded to an ideologically-driven narrative, the problem is you can’t waver from it without destroying your credibility in the process.
Try That In A Small Town? Be Careful What You Ask For.
Gilliam said that these sleeper cells could be targeting America's rural areas since they’re “not well protected.”
“There is a possibility that sleeper cells could target more rural states instead of a large city. In fact, considering the evolution of attacks by fundamental Islamic attackers we’ve seen in Israel on October 7th, 2023 and in India this year, it is possible that a similar attack could happen at a rural, outdoor entertainment venue or populated vacation spot,” Gilliam said.
This is speculative commentary by a credentialed commentator, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s worth noting that some of the Iranian nationals arrested were living in places far removed from America’s major metro areas, however. So the commentary isn’t entirely without merit.
The commentary drew some hyper-confident responses on social media which amounted to: Don’t try that here. “Here” being rural America, small towns, Middle America, flyover country, whichever term one wants to use. With high rates of gun ownership, a stronger sense of community, and rugged individualism, who’d be foolish enough to mess with rural Americans?
They’re all that and more. They’re also older than the average American, many of them not in good health. Some of them belong to community self-defense groups or even militias, but most don’t. Medical care and law enforcement isn’t quite as readily available, one of the trade-offs of living in this part of the country. Point being, rural America isn’t some kind of stronghold, nor are rural Americans some fierce warrior tribe like the Chechens or Taliban. This isn’t meant to denigrate, but it’s just reality. Maybe gather them all, armed, and you could mobilize them into powerful fighting bloc. But that doesn’t mean they’re not vulnerable.
That said, rural America likely isn’t a target for most terrorists. One of the objectives of terrorism is to bring attention. Americans, to say nothing of the world, are mostly uninterested in rural America. The only exceptions to this might be places with are tourist attractions; as Jonathan Gilliam said, terrorists could try a 10/7-style attack in such locations - imagine such an attack at the Coachella music festival, at a ski resort, or at the Sundance Film Festival, all of which takes place in rural America or somewhere in flyover country, far removed from major metropolitan areas. This is a very real threat which must be considered.
Beyond that, rural areas are low-risk, low-reward proposition for terrorists.
Armed Conflict? It’s Here.
Closing this essay out, this happened during an ICE raid that happened yesterday in Ventura County, California:
Also during this incident:
All while screaming into your face that they founded and built this country, and that they’re more patriotic than George Washington himself.
All across the West, the greatest threat of all is internal. In Britain, its the unholy alliance between the Left and Islam. In France, a similar alliance exists, what they call “Islamo-gauchisme,” with a large population of Africans and Arabs, primarily Muslims, raring to tear the country down. In the U.S., you have a multicultural Left in alliance with Hispanic and Latino ethno-nationalists, to say nothing of the broader unassimilated, illegal immigrant population. Access to prosperity and a high standard of living placates them for now, but the more their power is threatened, the more violent they become, waging intifada out of a sense of grievance. It’s what I like to call The Problem With No Solution. It’s why I see war as the only possible outcome, or outright surrender on our part.
In case my thoughts seem disorganized, I see America headed towards a toxic mix of a bit of The Troubles of Northern Ireland, a lot of the Years of Lead of Italy, and plenty of Latin American-style “dirty war,” where the state uses its power to go after dissidents. Whatever form it takes, it’s going to be ugly, like all civil conflicts. Unless you want to get in the mix, your job will be to stay out of it as much as possible.
For further research, a great book for understanding our current moment is Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough. There’s nothing new about far-left violence and has always been the more enduring and prevalent threat. In the 1990s, the Left made sure to keep receipts on the wave of far-right violence, most notably the Oklahoma City bombing, Narratives drive this world and if we are to meet the threat posed by the far-left, the narrative will need be altered somehow. It’s definitely not going to happen on its own.
For anyone still not convinced we’re at war yet, if you still think this is all just a right-wing fever dream, don’t ask us - ask the leftists themselves.
From the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association:
No one seems to be reporting the fact that we have been in a wave of domestic terror attacks since the beginning of this year including at least 2 car bombings, 2 shooting ambushes, a vehicle ramming attack and a successful assassination of politicians.
Finally:
David is correct, course - constitutional republics don’t enforce the law, period. How else did we end up in this mess?
Let’s discuss. What’s your reaction to these recent attacks by far-left militants? Is this an insurgency? What can we do about it, anything? Where do you see events headed? What are some good historical comparisons to our current situation? Or is it exceptional, just as America itself? What are your thoughts on anything else discussed here?
Talk about it in the comments.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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The MAGA meltdown over Epstein is going to be one of those data points that future historians of this era will consign to a footnote, if they even pay attention to it at all. This, along with a bunch of other Trump stumbles lately, is going to galvanize the populist right into finally realizing that Trump is either unwilling or unable to any longer live up to his promises or be the political messiah the common person on the right has been looking for. Trump promised a lot, and talked a good game, and may actually be doing some good on things (time will tell), but his core mission has failed in the eyes of his supporters, and that is rolling back the political and economic apparatus that people see as disenfranchising them.
The elite tend to miss the point a lot of the time. The rich elite tend not to be creatures with strong political ideology, from what I’ve found. Half the time, they are influencing politics and political decisions. The political elite look move in the circles of the rich elite and think that material conditions are fine. Max’s point about comfort a couple of weeks ago drove that home. The elite think that if they can deliver a society which is essentially comfortable, then the rest doesn’t matter. The elite tend to be materialistic creatures much of the time, so they think everyone else is as well.
The average person often pays more attention to the system and how it works, for or against them. They can’t tolerate shifts in things nearly as well as the elite can, and most people live in a state of financial anxiety these days. When you are living on shaking ground, you need some form of assurance or security or faith that things are consistent enough to be able to buy a house, start a family, and raise your kids.
That is what Epstein was about. The average person takes a very dim view of sexual predation, especially on the young. Sexual predators are rightly seen as figurative wolves among the sheep, but you don’t know who the wolf is. That’s why it’s essentially that there is clarity and truth around how they are handled. Epstein was a member of the elite and a sexual predator, so a double whammy. And he was seen as connected with the shadowy world which people realize affects them, but they don’t understand all the workings and are told to have faith that things are run correctly. At best, there is an information gap, at worst, it’s a true conspiracy. The people get this, which is one reason they supported Trump and expected all of these things to come out.
Now, some possibilities. One is that Trump knew it was all garbage and just talked it up to convince people to vote for him. Second is that he thought there was fire beneath the smoke and thought he could expose it. Third is that he was warned not to release it. Fourth is that he realized releasing it would cause a great deal of damage, possibly to himself. Fifth is that there was never anything of substance there and he saw it sort of as a talking point. The truth doesn’t matter, just the fact that he created expectations of taking on the swamp.
The MAGA crowd is quickly losing faith in their champion. The war in Ukraine is still going on, the big beautiful bill is going to be another debt blowout, etc. They have already divorced the establishment right. Now they are going to divorce the Trump right. Previously, they still had some faith in the system, as long as their person was heading it up. Now they no longer have faith in him.
This is going to be the catalyst that will make political violence from the right far more common in the near term. The left, by its very nature, often divorced the system. The right has always tried to conserve the system, until their access and input to it is no longer there. This is when the right turns populist and will attempt to restore their version of the system. In other words, the right has now really realized they are disenfranchised in a meaningful sense.
If the left embraces transformative forces like immigration, and has made it the core of their being, like slavery was to the antebellum south, then the right’s core is a system they believe is stable and they can have faith in. If that’s gone, social restraints imposed by the system that the right supported no longer matter, and the buffer between the transformation of the left and the preservation of the right is gone.
I think the one unasked, or at least unanswered question, of 2020 was about the missing right wing violence. Plenty of guns, the ability to use them, and a scared 17 year old shooting three idiots trying to beat him to death, was the poster child of “right wing violence.” The right was not violent then, because Trump was still in power and everyone had faith. Trump’s in power now and people have lost faith in him. I think we are going to start seeing real violence coming from the right very soon and it will be very new and shocking to our era.
It will be interesting to see what types of convictions and sentences these attackers will get. In the aftermath of the George Floyd riots leftist prosecutors were able to get minimal sentences for their own sympathizers.
I would say that one “strength” the American system has is the ability to put these people out of commission for long periods, if it so chooses. Historically a lot of revolutionaries got very short sentences and were even able to organize in prison.
My feeling is that we are entering very straitened years when a lot of expectations will be unmet due to high debt, aging populations and frustrated young people. Trump is trying to cut off an immense level of funding for leftist NGOs and organizations. If successful the long term dividends will be immense, but in the short term there will be a reaction.
Also note that a lot of young people are unable to start families and get established, so the stakes are lower for them to get involved in violence. People with kids aren’t going to get involved in street violence if they don’t have to.