As unrest spreads, I think it’s worth looking at the weaknesses of American police forces in particular. Most of these vulnerabilities also apply to the National Guard.
Non-violent protest has been the dogma, especially on the center-left, for generations now. It wasn’t always thus: old time unions fought pitched battles with police and in one case coal miners fought the military straight up. Blowing up buildings was not verboten, nor was assassination. The history of America is not what pansy-moderns think it is, and the same is true of Britain and Canada and so on. Our forbears did not think that letting the state beat you, shoot you, torture you, imprison you and kill you without fighting back was either virtuous or, in many cases, smart.
Modern Americans, increasingly impoverished (average Chinese have better standards of living, more on that in a later article) and living paycheck to paycheck, increasingly homeless, and with less and less to lose may decide that dying on their feet is better than lying there and letting cops beat the shit out of them, then having ICE deport them to some third world torture prison.
If they do, and I, of course, would never suggest such a thing, then American police have significant weaknesses. The most important is a simple one:
Modern American Police have been trained to be cowards. This sounds like rhetoric; like hyperbole, or at the least like exaggeration for affect. Let me assure you it is none of these. American police are trained to care about their own safety more than anything else. As a result they are trigger happy and unwilling to risk themselves against anything that looks genuinely dangerous.
This means that they travel in packs and when threatened they clump up in large groups for their own safety. This was shown when cop-killer Christopher Dorner, a trained soldier, killed a cop and her fiance. The police immediately clumped into large groups and used most of the force to protect themselves and their families.
Nor is this just a matter of extreme circumstances: anyone who’s watched how police act around demonstrations will see that even tiny demonstration attract much larger numbers of cops than necessary, and modern police, unlike those of fifty years ago, almost always wait for SWAT teams or at least backup before entering situations they consider dangerous: and what they consider dangerous is often very little.
This makes the police easy to deal with by any coordinated group which has not been infiltrated. Simply set of a bomb or use a drone attack on police or their families. Then do it again. Then again. Make threats against a number of targets. They will clump up, be unable to search from their own fear, and will become ineffective.
Then the group simply hits whatever the real target is.
This speaks to the basic principle of guerilla warfare: attack where the enemy is weak. It’s just that American police, and I’m betting the National Guard won’t be much better, are especially easy to move around because America police are cowards and because their doctrine is one of overwhelming force and caution, it’s easy to move them around at will, to push them into a defensive posture and to push them off balance.
Simple standard insurgency techniques will work well against American police. A few IEDs near where police can be expected to go, remote triggered as police drive over them, and the police will retreat even further into a shell. Civilian drones can easily be used to make helicopter operations dangerous, as well. The police will move slowly, in force, and retreat easily when something explosive happens.
All of this will work well against US paramilitary organizations as well. ICE would be trivial, as their movements are very predictable and they are likely even more cowardly than normal American police, since their job is almost entirely about brutalizing unresisting people.
During the Irish revolution assassins would walk in on British officials eating breakfast with their family, kill the official (leaving the family unharmed) and walk away.
A little fear goes a very long way to gumming operations up completely.
Smart insurrectionists will not, of course, do what Dorner did and target family members, as propaganda is always part of any successful guerilla organization. (Mao discusses this at length in his class work on guerilla warfare.)
Other principle of operation should be obvious. Use a cell organization so that damage from discovery is limited. People can’t reveal what they don’t know. In the modern environment, don’t use or even carry cell phones, except perhaps ones that are deliberately damaged so they have no connectivity. (Everyone carries a cell phone, so operatives should appear to do so.)
Do everything old-style. The state is excellent at electronic intelligence, but has let human intelligence wither to a large extent.
Successful insurrectionists will have a rule that they 100% kill any informants or undercover operatives. No deal will be made with prosecutors or police, they always backfire in the longer run.
Of course I hope that none of this happens and this article is just a look at what smart insurrectionists would do, taking natural advantage of police weaknesses. The police are welcome to read this and decide to change their doctrines and training to be less cowardly and avoid the worst of these weaknesses. As a side effect, they’d also kill less people because of their fear, and that would make insurrection less likely.
Ideally American elites will realize that they are better off and safer if everyone is cared for. From enlightened self-interest they will start taxing themselves again and make sure that ordinary people have enough money for rent and food. They will end predatory pricing, be fair and kind and make medical care easily available. The American people, who, like all people, would rather live a good life, will respond and prospects of insurrection will fade like mist against the noon-day sun.
But if they refuse to discontinue their policy of mass impoverishment backed by fear, it should be understood that those who finally do decide on insurrection will not find, contra various myths about American impregnability which repeated losses against men in pajamas should have put to rest, that American forces of law and order (or repression, depending on your politics) are without weakness.
May God grant that it never comes to this. If it does, may the side of good, which cares for the welfare of the people, win.
***
If you’ve read this far, and you read a lot of my articles, you might wish to donate or subscribe. I’ve written over 3,500 posts, and the site, and Ian, take money to run.
Revelo
The vulnerabilities you cite are current vulnerabilities, but police can and will adapt veey quickly. The real strength of the authorities in the USA lies in surveillance and propaganda. If and when there is insurrection, police will become proactive in hunting down rebels identified by the massive surveillance apparatus. And then the propaganda machine will confuse everyone about what is happening. For example, suppose that hypocritical assassin kills a police or government official eating breakfast but leaves the family alone. Do you think this is what the propaganda machine will say happened? Of course not. The machine will say the cowardly assassin put a nail bomb in the house and killed everyone.
Real vulnerability is economic. Long insurrection, combined with all the other geopolitical changes in progress, could cause the USA financial structure to start collapsing. Stock market bubble, housing bubble, debt bubble, dollar bubble. Something will eventually cause these bubbles to burst. War with Iran followed by closing the straits of Hormuz might do it, for example.
Mark Level
A brilliant post, Ian. Yes, thank you.
Let’s not forget what happened in Uvalde, Texas. The coward cops did exactly what you said, they clumped up far away from the child-killing and waited it out. Despicable.
Per Wikipedia, “the shooter remained in the classrooms for 1 hour and 14 minutes before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit breached the classroom and fatally shot him.[9] ” Perhaps the cops were having coffee and donuts as they so enjoy doing while on duty during that 74 minutes . . .
Cops are always pushing for more militarized weapons, Tasers (used on a 6 year old, e.g.), and starting under Obama there was a massive release of tanks, robot weapons, etc. to thousands of US agencies, municipalities, etc. I’m sure they will likely switch to drones and remotely injure or kill people while sitting in a sheltered office, eating donuts and drinking coffee.
Some time back, Harper’s had a piece about a couple whose house was burglarized when they weren’t home. Rather than go in (the burglar was long gone anyway) the local cops sent a robot to break down the door (which it not only did but smashed the door frame) and then the robot went thru the house randomly smashing kitchen cabinets, furniture, etc. The couple sued (think it was in a Northeastern state like Delaware) for something like $3,500 in damages in Court, They lost, got nothing back but a burglary of some small items and then thousands of dollars of vandalism by lazy, fat, cowardly cops with complete impunity to hurt civilians without any recompense.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” indeed.
LIke & Subscribe
The wealthy elite are likened to Robert Conrad in this iconic commercial. They are taunting the peasants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dD-Oekbmlo
United Healthcare decided to be a bit more “generous” in the wake of the alleged Mangione assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Blackrock’s Larry Fink filed a lawsuit against UH for caving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODl4-2SZKU&t=1s
https://medium.com/@hrnews1/blackrock-is-suing-unitedhealth-for-giving-too-much-care-to-patients-after-the-ceo-was-murdered-4af185038a62
Larry Fink is taunting the peasants. He’s quite literally saying, “I dare you to knock this off.” Larry Fink truly believes his violence and the violence of his peers beats any violence the peasants could or would conjure.
mago
I like the way you think Ian. Alas I think the chances of the ruling class gaining intelligence and humanitarian ideals is somewhere between zero and nothing.
I give an effective insurrection the same odds. Such action is dependent on the young and I see neither the will nor the cojones to pull it off. I could be wrong of course.
Back in the day I knew some serious students of the Anarchist Cookbook, and a couple of people who took action, however ineffective or ill advised. A friend’s brother for example rolled a car loaded with explosives down a mountainside into a wealthy Colorado community. Kinda pointless, but there was gumption. (The perp died in exile.)
It’s true that law enforcement is by and large fat and lazy and usually pumped up on steroids, male and female alike. On the other hand potential young rebels aren’t exactly lean and hungry wolves. So I don’t know. . . I’m ready to be proven wrong.
Eric Anderson
Truth. To. Power.
bruce wilder
I remain skeptical. In the Age of the Surveillance State, the police, like the rioters, are theatrical props introduced to enhance the drama and kayfabe, but they have ceased to be the business end of power. The police and the rioters are engaged in performative cosplay. Individual bodies may get hurt, but systems of power are not at risk — in fact, systems of power are scarcely engaged at all. Maybe, there is an element of “flushing the pigeons” but otherwise the vulnerabilities of The Man scarcely matter, when we the people are required to rebel against palsied incompetence, a palsied incompetence in which we are participants and true believers.
Like & Subscribe
It’s a pandemic of cowardice and complicity from top to bottom. There’s also a coalition of AGs who support Newsom’s stance and lawsuit but there more who don’t and welcome a police state. These AGs come from states that receive more federal aid than they pay in federal taxes meaning they are welfare queens. The blue states need to join forces and institute a tax revolt and quit subsidizing the red states with their constituents’, immigrants included legally here or otherwise, hard-earned federal tax dollars.
https://mitchellnow.com/news/236632-attorney-general-jackley-stands-with-republican-ags-in-support-of-president-trumps-action-to-restore-order-in-california/
GrimJim
The Roman Crisis of the Third Century took place between 235 and 384 AD, a stretch of 50 years that ran from 262 to 311 years after the founding of the Roman Empire.
While I have often compared the Anglo-American Empire (the USA, AAE) more to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire rather than the Original Roman Empire (ORE), I feel that the decline and fall of the AAE will be along the lines of the ORE rather than that of the Byzantine.
The circumstances of the decline of the ORE and AAE are almost identical — due primarily to the greed and stupidity of its elite, compounded by the end of the flow of tribute from newly conquered lands, and exacerbated by the growth in power and population of bordering nations dealing with the collapse of long-stable ecosystems.
The AAE and ORE, like most empires, are effectively a sort of socio-economic cancer. They grow and grow and grow, and take and take and take, until they have consumed and destroyed the healthy body and left nothing more than an empty shell.
None of the technological or sociological advances made by the empire are of any real value, as they all essentially go into the uncontrolled, deadly growth of the empire, destroying everything around it, just like cancerous cells.
So, how does this apply to the issue at hand?
Well, one often missed element of the collapse of the ORE is the development of the Bagaudae, which were, per Wikipedia, “groups of peasant insurgents in the western parts of the later Roman Empire, who arose during the Crisis of the Third Century and persisted until the very end of the Western Empire, particularly in the less-Romanized areas of Gallia and Hispania. They were affected by the depredations of the late Roman state, wealthy landowners, and clerics.”
Generally considered by the authorities as little more than brigands, they were somewhere between brigands and revolutionaries, depending on the time, place, mix of peoples, etc. They even on occasion may have worked with the invading migratory barbarians, finding common cause against Roman authorities.
These were the peoples of the cities and countryside who refused to become the servants of the wealthy landowners (those who bent the knee turned themselves and their descendants for a thousand years into serfs, owned by the nobles descended from those wealthy landowners).
History does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
For various reasons, the AAE has reached a state of worse decline, faster than the ORE (and these even further accelerated by the Trump presidencies and other related developments). The denouement of the AAE also won’t take 50 years, it will be much quicker once it hits that tipping point.
The factions in the collapse of the ORE were effectively the following, in various combinations:
1) The remaining Imperial Authorities (AAE: The Federal Government)
2) Provincial Authorities, which often combined with local military to form break-away or competitive Imperial powers (AAE: The States)
3) Barbarian Tribes (AAE: Nothing really serious quite yet, but possibly might include the Mexican Cartels and full-on Migrant Hordes once Climate Change gets rip-roaring, and at the rate ICE is working, they might just create the very as-yet non-existent demons they seek to exorcise)
4) Foreign Powers, i.e., Parthia (AAE: China, Russia, Iran, eventually everyone else)
5) The Bagaudae (AAE: The Homeless and Underclass)
We are already seeing the dissolution between the Imperial Authority (Feds) and Provinces (States); we saw this under Obama, more under Biden, and now under Trump.
ICE’s actions of late might actually force the currently inchoate, disorganized mass of undocumented immigrants into organized masses not unlike the German tribes of old, merely for mutual self-defense. And as Trump and MAGA are already overplaying their hands on their plans down the road vis a vis the African American population, we might see further organization on that level, once they realize they are frogs in a boiling pot (Google “Trump white privilege credit card Fort Bragg”).
The American Bagaudae will develop out of the masses of homeless and soon-to-be unhoused. Right now, there are purportedly less than 800,000 homeless in the AAE, around 0.2% of the population. With the forthcoming economic collapse that will drive the 25% of Americans who are underemployed into abject poverty, that number will increase exponentially. 1.5% of Americans were homeless during the Great Depression; if we have only that percentage, we will see some 5,000,000 homeless. I would project at least a 5% homeless rate, possibly up to 10%, so we’d be looking at 15 to 30 MILLION homeless people in the AAE.
ICE and HSD have around 25,000 agents; there are around 900,000 police officers and sheriff’s deputies; 450,000 members in the National Guard; and about 1.3 million active-duty members of the US Military.
Even the lowest end estimate of future American Bagaudae is double the total number of law enforcement and military forces in the US.
And when the SHTF, who will be paying the salaries of those forces?
When things get that bad, they will take their guns home and defend their own.
But between now and then, we’ll be seeing street battles ranging from Civil Rights-era skirmishes to Bastille Day battles through to full-on all-out Stalingradesque street warfare.
Things will slowly escalate as the people become more desperate, and the authorities become more afraid…
Mark Level
A correction on my math on the Robot destroys house story– it was more than $8,000 worth.
Oh, and there’s this from a band I saw back in the day, c. 1985–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC1U2kJcEXo
Feral Finster
“This makes the police easy to deal with by any coordinated group which has not been infiltrated. Simply set of a bomb or use a drone attack on police or their families. Then do it again. Then again. Make threats against a number of targets. They will clump up, be unable to search from their own fear, and will become ineffective.
Then the group simply hits whatever the real target is.”
Reminds me of PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. By 1972 or so, Portuguese aversion to casualties meant that they didn’t control much of the country outside of army bases.
Later Portuguese generals did reverse the situation somewhat, but the Estado Novo collapsed in 1974 before any such efforts could bear fruit.
Carborundum
This would be good advice for direct action against the police, but IMHO the environment isn’t [yet] favourable for that strategy (generally, direct action against law enforcement is a very late-stage thing – if the cops are burning their uniforms, it’s really over).
At present, the key is stripping middle class support from them by goading them into over-reaction and making them look ineffectual and self-involved. Direct action will make their turtle posture look more reasonable and open the door to the deployment of regulars, which one very much does not want.
NR
Ian, you may find this interesting: researchers found that non-violent resistance is actually twice as likely to succeed at bringing political change as violent resistance.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
This finding surprised even the main researcher who was looking into it.
Jan Wiklund
I believe these vulnerabilities would be quickly overcome if the insurrection continues. The upper class would not give up without a serious struggle. And they have command over the state, its means of violence, and the financial means for controlling these forces. Even if they give up everything else, they will cling to the forces of violence as long as they can.
In general, it almost always has. Opportunities for violence from below are rare, usually in cases when the people manning the forces of violence loose trust in their superiors.
Revolutionary activities consist of making them loose trust. They must be made to believe that their future depends on changing their superiors.
Ian Welsh
I am familiar with that study and think it’s bullshit. I may write on it in the future.
Grim
NR, its laughable propaganda from the BBC.
Marcos was ousted by the US because he was not a compliant puppet as Aquino.
Georgia was coloured revolutioned peacefully because western intelligence had already infiltrated the security forces.
Might as well bring up how “peaceful” the Jihadis were in taking over Syria, only possible because the Syrian generals were already bought off and ordered their troops to stand down.
When both sides were working for the same master, of course it’d be peaceful.
But in cases of real grass roots revolution, the authorities will not let go of their power without violence. The BBC would have you protesting “peacefully” and uselessly, where you can be easily neutralised by police violence as that is where their goal lies
NR
Hmm, okay, I’d be interested to see your criticisms of it.It seemed like they were pretty rigorous about what they classified as a non-violent protest, but there may be issues I’m not seeing.
Purple Library Guy
People keep saying these vulnerabilities could be quickly overcome. I don’t think it’s so easy. The “cops are cowards” vulnerability is based on the whole construction of what the modern police are.
It’s not an accident, it’s based on their social/class role, and the contradictions in it. The thing about the police in a country of high inequality but also nominal democracy is, it’s has to officially has the role of enforcing the law, for everyone’s benefit. But it has to ACTUALLY keep down the proles, particularly the ones from scapegoat groups, typically racial. That’s the more important job.
OK, so when someone joins the force you can’t TELL them “Forget all that stuff about enforcing the law, your job is to swagger around the poor districts and brutalize people so they don’t get uppity”. For a lot of them, that isn’t why they joined the force; they’d be upset, they might even try to change how things are done. Somebody would publicize it. So what do they do? They socialize cops by telling them over and over how DANGEROUS the poor people are, and how the cops are under siege and in constant danger. That way, the cops will treat those people like dangerous enemies, and draw strong sides of us vs. them. But it has a side effect: The education and socializing of cops is always about what’s dangerous to them and how they should be very careful of their safety and about how scared they should be of what anyone might do. That is, they are being taught to be cowards, and this has penetrated deep into the culture. But the thing is that this is not just how it happens to be, it’s kind of a structural necessity, a side effect that’s hard to avoid.
It’s deep in the fabric of modern US policing, and I don’t think a country that spent 18 years in Afghanistan and learned nothing about how to beat the Afghans is likely to be able to turn that around quickly.
different clue
America is a country big enough to have room for several different insurgencies for several different goal-sets.
Here is a short interview with a Trump-voter who is disappointed at how things have turned out. Looking beyond the short term of Leopard . . . Face . . . and FAF=O, what might this disappoint mean in the longer term if enough tens of millions of Trump-voters come to feel it and share it? What if tens of millions of White Magastanis decide to go insurgent against the TrumpICE and the Trumpolice?
There is a saying: ” You ain’t seen a thing until you’ve seen a White Riot”.
The French Revolution was a White Riot.
Anyway, here is the link . . . from the NoShitSherlock subreddit. . . . titled: ” Vincent Scardina, a Trump voter and the owner of a small roofing company in Florida, says ICE detained a third of his workers.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoShitSherlock/comments/1la73kv/vincent_scardina_a_trump_voter_and_the_owner_of_a/
different clue
Here is a video riffing on some of the things the TrumpAdmin is clearly doing on purpose in order to get an “insurgency” going so they can mass-slaughter it quick and hard. Any left-oriented people contemplating insurgency should consider the fact that tens of million of MAGAs have hundreds of million of firearms and billions of rounds of ammo between them, and if they feel themselves to be on the “other side” of that insurgency, they will show up to help the police/guard/marines out . . . . even if the police/guard/marines don’t necessarily want them to come.
The “left” and the “liberals” have neglected to take part in America’s Gun Culture for at least 70 years now, and if they are thinking of “insurgency ” now, they are coming late to the party. They should think it through very carefully. ( And I can just about almost guarantee that Black America will NOT attend the “insurgency”, even as a passive audience or to lend moral support. They are probably making their own real and serious preparations for when the Proud Boys and the TrumpAdmin try to bring it to Black America.)
Anyway, here is the video. It has food for long slow careful cow-chewing-its-cud-type thought, re-thought and re-re-thought. And I am really coming to like this videomaker. He is much more entertaining and interesting than Beau of the Fifth Column and Belle of the Ranch, and offers a slow-build of more facts and background in his half-hour-plus videos than Beau-Belle could offer in their few-minute presentations. I wish I could watch them all, but the only way I could do that is if there was a program for playing them several times faster so I could fast-watch almost as if I were fast-reading.
Anyway, here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOF8nmAMPl8
different clue
Well, I just found another video which seems worth offering. ( And if I am offering too many videos in too short a time, and I am asked to reduce the number to not passively dominate the thread, I will offer less videos in a short time frame).
This video is titled: ” Native American Women Tell Border Patrol To Fuck Off for Harassing Them About Being Citizens “. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chaoticgood/comments/1lau9fo/native_american_women_tell_border_patrol_to_fuck/
If the TrumpAdmin were to succeed in driving several or more Indian Nations to the point of actual insurgency, they would be facing a real insurgency for real. They would have to try very hard . . . try and try and try . . . to get that to happen.
The thought of that makes me remember something I read about some decades ago.
Governor Hugh Carey of New York committed an anti-Treaty offence against one of the Five Nations of the Iriquois League/ Haudenosaunee. I can’t remember what it was. But I remember reading about how different groups of Iriquois from different mini-and micro-reservationa around New York who had all had key infrastructure imposed upon their land for decades . . . called up the Governor and explained what infrastructure they were prepared to destroy if the offense was not reversed and corrected. The offence was reversed and corrected.
I read about this in a one-time newspaper called Akwesasne Notes. I can’t find any links to it to be able to check my memory with.