http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/cellular-construction-a-basic-introductory-primer/
Cellular Construction: A Basic Introductory Primer
(The previous article, from an anonymous member of the Special Forces community, led me to decide to put together a short article on cell construction for undergrounds, and how it can be done within your community, for community defense purposes. This has been discussed in depth in several classes, as time allowed within the program-of-instruction, or when specifically requested by a participant..–JM)One of the pre-supposed greatest weaknesses of irregular force organizations is the obvious risk of compromise by aggressor forces. The ability to grab-and-bag a single member of an organization, thus leading to all other members of the organization being rolled up easily, through the exploitation of interrogation, rightfully tends to scare the ever-loving-daylights out of many people. This historically led to the fatally-flawed concept of “Leaderless Resistance,” purportedly developed by US Army Colonel Ulius Louis Amoss, a former intelligence-branched officer and rabid anti-communist in the 1960s, as a back-up to organized resistance operations in the event of an invasion by the USSR. While I certainly don’t know the (presumably-late) colonel, I would guess that, as a professional, his hypothesis was, in a resistance against an outside invader, the missing leadership and core mission would be provided by the shared goal of ejecting the invader.
The concept was re-vitalized and popularized amongst the denizens of the WN movement by that paragon of virtue (PLEASE, PLEASE note the sarcasm) and rational though, Louis Beam. The problem with this approach was still “solved” by the presumably shared commitment to resist against the government.[1]
For community defense considerations in the current world however, there are numerous issues with the concept of leaderless resistance is the lack of shared information, and all the other issues pointed out in the previous article. We’ll stay away from that in this instance, and focus on how cells can be developed in a rational, intelligent manner that provides maximum security and operational functionality.
For the purposes of this article, I’m going to steal a page from American Mercenary and semi-fictionalize this, or at least turn it into a semi-narrative….oh, I don’t know the right terms to use.
The Leadership Cell
Somewhere in Montana, in a small community (not that there are a whole lot of large communities in Big Sky Country) of 5000-10,000 people, a group of buddies have been talking and training together for several years, preparing for the troubles that all of us can see coming. As the world becomes more dangerous, they begin to realize that their six families aren’t going to be able to do much besides struggle for a subsistence level existence. No opportunity to restore Constitutional Rule-of-Law in their community, or provide help and hope for their neighbors, when all they will have time to do is struggle to grow, gather, and store food and provide inadequate security for their little retreat position.
We’ll call them Bob, Bill, Ben, Bert, Brian, and Brad (ain’t alliteration fun!?). The B-Boys decide that they need to start expanding their organization, providing training for other people, and providing the ability for themselves to have an expanding belt of security around their families, in order to enhance their preparedness. After all, being intelligent guys, they recognize that security is more effective, the further out you can project force away from your HQ facility. They’re also, like most people, concerned about security of the organization and not ending up renditioned to some shit-hole prison in Syria, under the control of US-sponsored Al-Qaeda operatives posing as anti-regime freedom fighters.
As they discuss it amongst themselves and their wives, one of the wives comes to the intelligent conclusion (I don’t know about your family, but in mine, HH6 has ALL the brains. I’m just the brawn) that they should base it on a cellular construction as they expand the network.
The problem of course, is they all have friends and associates, outside of The Group, but they don’t necessarily know the preparedness-oriented leanings of those friends and associates, and they are concerned about blindly bringing outsiders into contact with The Group.
They decide, based on the advice of Bert’s brother Bud, a retired Special Forces Sergeant-Major, that they need to develop independent cells, based on their local networks of friends and neighbors.
In other words, Bob has friends and associates that the rest of the B-Boys aren’t familiar with, or aren’t familiar enough with to call “friends” or have a predisposition to trust enough to discuss such topics with. In reflection, each of the other B-Boys similarly has friends and associates that aren’t known to, or aren’t familiar with the others of the group, or Bob. Likewise with their respective spouses.
So, each of the B-Boys assigns themselves a role, or is assigned a role, within the group. Bob, being a local cop, knows not only all the cops and security guys in the area, but also many of the local gun guys. He decides, or has it decided for him, that he will work on developing direct-action security cells. So, Bob heads out, and over the course of the next several months, independent of the rest of the group, starts three or four groups, or joins three or four groups, of paramilitary-centric preparedness cells.
Bill meanwhile, being a local wheat farmer, starts talking to his friends and associates in the local farming community about preparedness, and ensuring they have enough crops in the ground to feed all the local folks. In doing so, he begins to realize that most of those guys not only have wheat and other feed crops, but large trucks and trailers. So, Bill doesn’t only start food-based logistics cells, but a transportation cell that help with escape-and-evasion operations by moving evaders out of the immediate operational area.
The list, obviously goes on, based not just on vocation, but also on avocation and social networks. The members of Bill’s subordinate cell don’t need to know what other cells Bill has developed, and shouldn’t. Likewise, Bob’s cells don’t need to know what Bill’s cells are, or even that Bill exists, and vice versa.
If the self-appointed leadership cell decides that an operation needs to be conducted, they determine that Bob’s Direct-Action (DA) cells will conduct a raid. In the conduct of their raid, one member of the cell is severely wounded.
Fortunately, because they took a cellular approach to their organization, they have a transportation network in place, so after stabilizing the casualty, they leave him in a pre-determiend rally point location, and leave. A member of the transportation cell stops by and loads up the casualty, then drives him to another pre-determiend location, close to, but not proximate to, a safe house. The driver drops off the casualty and leaves. A member of the medical cell then stops by the location, picks up the casualty, and moves him to the safe house, where the medical cell is able to provide advanced medical care to heal the casualty.[2]
The cut-outs between cells provided by temporarily dropping the patient in rally points, provides security from compromise from cell to cell.
Within the cells, there is the obvious risk of compromise if one member is captured or turned. Only to his own cell and cell leader however. The obvious extension of this is that if one of Bill’s cells is compromised, Bill may be compromised, leading to compromise of the entire leadership cell, and then top-down, the entire organization.
There are four basic solutions to this potential problem.
- ensure that, once operational, the leadership cell is secured. This is where the concept of a secure guerrilla base area becomes paramount. It’s one thing to have an operational cell compromised and give up the name or identity of a leadership cadre. It’s something else entirely to leave that leadership cadre in a place or position where he/she is susceptible to capture that puts the entire organization at risk (it is important to recognize that this is not saying that the leadership should remain isolated and not contribute deliberate action and efforts).
- Use aliases and disguises when working with subordinate cells. Unfortunately, in a local, community-centric effort, this is completely unworkable, since it reduces the efforts to build rapport and a community-centric organization.
- If someone is captured, there needs to be a way to allow his/her cell to know within hours that he has been compromised, allowing them to disperse and disappear into the underground, as well as stopping/destroying operations that the detainee may be privy to information about. This is an effective method, but may be unrealistic.
- Sit home, shut up, and do whatever you’re told by your betters in the bureaucracy, already.
Ultimately, you need to understand that, as scary as compromise and capture by hostile elements is, if you’re basing all of your decisions and planning solely on that fear, you’ve already died. Do what is necessary to be effective, be as safe and secure as you can be, while still being effective, and drive on already, accepting the fact that, we’re all dead, and we don’t get to choose the time. All we get to do is choose how we’ll be remembered.
DOL,
John
Footnotes:
1. One problem I've noticed with cell structures, that MountainGuerrilla didn't seem to mention, is that you don't necessarily know who you're working for, or with. Mark Mirabello tells of an American who thought he was spying on the USA for Israel and was actually spying on the USA for the USSR. So are you really fighting the Feds to restore liberty and constitutional government to America, or are you just paving the way for China and/or the International Caliphate?
Another issue is one of fellow travelers. Not everyone who hates the Establishment wants the same thing that you do, and any cell system that grows big enough will soon start resembling a telephone game. You might start out with a group of Patriotic American gun owners, but in a few years might find that one of your newest cells is full of Pagan White Nationalists, another is full of Islamic Black Nationalists, and one is a bunch of Baptist Mestizo Anarchists (hah hah). Are you going to be okay with that, or will you decide that maybe you were better off under Obama? (In all fairness, Karl does touch on this in the comments... so succinctly in fact that I'm going to repost him too.)
2. This is a weakness I've noticed with my own operation; we have enough med skills that we'll be okay mild injuries, but if someone comes home dragging their guts behind them? Well...
Found elsewhere, more fuel for the fire:
Covert Cell Networks, building, operating, maintaining.
A Covert Cell Network is necessary for the operation of a covert resistance movement against a totalitarian regime. Most people in America think of the French Resistance of World War II as the model. While that is to some degree a valid model, few would be able to explain in detail how it worked, and why it worked, and how the Germans were unable to unravel it in detail. It is worth noting that Al Queda is also a valid model of how a Covert Cell Network can operate – and after a decade of intense US Intelligence Forces focused on it, the actual map of that network has been effectively cracked, and is in the process of being unraveled in detail. Even if the network continues to operate, the key leadership and organization that existed prior to 2001 has been killed or captured. The French Resistance only had to operate for at most five years (1940-1945).
“I can just get all my friends together, come up with neat codenames, and then go out and build a resistance from that, right?”
You do that, and it is only a matter of time until the regime rolls you all up in one fell swoop. Guerrilla Warfare/Resistance Movements/Unconventional Warfare has to go in phases. You cannot skip straight to launching a coup d’état or Restoration of the Republic with you and your drinking buddies or pool league. There have been famous attempts at such. Members were killed. Leaders jailed.
“Ok, what about leading a pitch-fork and torch wielding mob to storm the Bastille/Capitol/Reichstag/Parliament/State House/Town Hall/VFW post?”
Some of those have actually happened. Context and preparation is important to understand. The French didn’t just get up one day and decide to storm the Bastille, no matter how much they may cling to it as a national myth. It took preparation, organization, and time to get from “Let them eat cake” to heads quite literally rolling in the streets.[1]
“Ok. Where do I start?”
As Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt said upon realizing that they had landed in the wrong place on Utah Beach on D-Day: “We’ll start the war from here!” You’re convinced, right? You realize things are going pear shaped, right? The Constitutional Republic has been effectively overthrown/The One True King has been forced into hiding/The Aliens have taken over/You aren’t going to get tickets to the Super Bowl this year. You aren’t alone in this, right? You know like-minded people right? Friends who agree with you? Good. If you are all alone in thinking these things, you might want to consult a therapist/cleric/deity (greater or lesser)/your mother. Odds are exceptionally good if any of the above has in fact happened, you are not alone in recognizing this. Speaking it may be dangerous. Acting on it more so. Wars may be fought for broad concepts of ideologies and nations. Battles are fought for the buddies in the foxhole next to you, or pinned down behind some cover just a few meters away. You go to war as a patriot, but you fight as friends/buddies/brothers. This is where you start. With your friends and confidants. Problem is, ARE they your friends? Are they your confidants? CAN they be trusted?[2]
Peer Networks
Peer Networking is mostly thought of from a computing realm. Different computers on the same network are “peers” to each other. Each has the same “authority” on the network as the next. Communication is “peer to peer”. Social Networking sites map this style of networking into human social interactions. If we had a network that encompassed everyone, you could (the argument goes) get a message FROM anyone TO anyone in six steps (six degrees of Kevin Bacon ring a bell?). While the actual numbers may be argued, that’s the big idea. If you’ve ever played on social networking sites, you can learn a great deal about your “friends” networks, and even friends of friends. You no doubt have found some of your friends and family’s comments/posts on such sites to be horribly offensive/idiotic/irritating/infuriating/comical. Probably NOT a good idea to plot the resistance against the Lizard People on Facebook.
Trust No one Someone.
We all know the X-Files catchphrase “Trust no one”. All well and good. Except if you want to get something accomplished. What’s the point of an underground to return the One True King to the throne if you aren’t going to work with anyone? So, at the very start, you have to trust SOME one. Just one. Not just anyone. You have to pick very carefully. If merely speaking to the wrong person what you have come to realize means you wind up in the reeducation camp, or disappeared into the gulags, you can’t just grab someone off the street or from your fraternity and confide in them at random. Pick carefully. Feel them out over time. Gauge their positions, their potential dedication to the cause. A mistake at this point is potentially a fatal blow to your involvement in the cause (to get your super bowl tickets, right?), if not outright fatal.
So you have someone you can trust with what is the most important, dangerous secret you may ever have. Great. You have now entered the realm of being a co-conspirator. Congratulations. Depending upon your circumstances, this may now make you a felon/enemy of the state/enemy combatant/insurgent. First question, once you both trust each other this far, are either one of you ALREADY part of a resistance network? If so, great! Welcome to the network (there are a few caveats that will need to be addressed). If not… well that’s why I said “we’ll start the war from here.”
Expanding your network
Some simple rules.
• Nobody gets added to the network without two members agreeing to it.
• Everybody gets a codename of some variety (yet more caveats…). If Brian and Matt are the initial pair, and they want to add Steve, that’s fine. Now Brian, Matt, and Steve are in the network. And they all know each other. When Matt and Steve want to add Garry, but Garry doesn’t know Brian, he shouldn’t know Brian except by a codename that has no connection to who Brian is in public – just who he is in the network. This is why you see popular culture references to “Agent Falcon” and “Number 3” and “Agent K” and the like. So, we give Brian the codename Falcon, Matt the codename Eagle, and Steve the codename Raven. When Garry is added, he is referred to by his codename Owl. Owl and Falcon never meet, and only know each other by their network codenames, and only communicate though network members they know (in person, or via whatever mechanism they were brought into the network. Beware of internet only introductions – they are very easy to spoof/fake).
• Limit each member’s connections (Two connections is too tight, Falcon, Raven, and Eagle each take up two connections each just to add Eagle by mutual agreement of Falcon and Raven. Eight connections is too many – if one of the group get caught/is a plant/turncoat, then everyone who knows that member gets taken out as well – 7 more nodes. This is how you unravel a cell network. Al Queda notably had some large cells, opening up large groups to capture. Five to six connections is a happy medium between robustness and risk.
• New members are not introduced around the network. They are mentioned only through channels, and only by codenames.
• Certain capabilities can only be performed by groups of people who already know each other (an 8-man team is not going to sneak into the alien mothership in any kind of coordinated fashion if they have never worked together before, let alone even met). When such groups are formed, they need to be treated as a single node in the network, and Ops Node (or similar). One of them gets found out, the whole group gets found out, etc. so the risks to them are much higher – plus sneaking into the alien mothership is an inherently risky proposition, the likelihood is that one or more of them won’t be coming back, so limit the number of connections in/out of an Ops Node.
• Communication is relayed from node to node to node. Because every node has at least two connections (unless there is damage to the network), one channel is primary. Secondary channels are only to be used if the primary is down (use of a secondary channel is indication that the primary is lost/unavailable/compromised/now a pod person). In our above example, Owl talks to Falcon via Eagle. If Eagle is eaten by the lizards, Owl and Falcon communicate via Raven. The very fact that each is hearing from the other by the secondary channel tells them that the primary is gone.
• NO ONE IS TO KNOW THE NETWORK LAYOUT! If any node knows more than their contacts to the wider network, they know too much about it. The truth is, the Regime/Aliens/False King/NFL Commissioner will know far more about the topology of the actual network than the members. If Owl knows who Falcon is, Owl can give up Falcon (everyone cracks, it’s just a question of when – you cannot give up what you do not know). Owl and Falcon could even work with each other and know each other in public, but they cannot know that they are in fact Owl and Falcon in the network. Owl knows how to reach Falcon in the network. Falcon knows how to reach Owl. That’s all they need to know about the layout. Anything more gives the Regime/Aliens/NFL/NCAA too many chances to pick apart the network. Remember, lives are quite literally on the line, as is the cause.
• When a node is lost (Eagle got picked up by the regime/eaten by the lizards), all nodes that know Eagle have to report along all their channels that Eagle is gone; and for the network to discard all messages for/from Eagle (caveats on reconnecting – what if Eagle was simply on the run, not actually nabbed?)
So, now you have a basic network running. You are all keeping to 5-6 connections per person, except for Ops Nodes, right? Everyone has codenames. No new members are being added unless two members agree to add that member, right? Remember, with each new member, the odds that it’s a Lizard/NFL Rep/Regime Plant increase. With each new member, the number of people in the network increases, as does the overall risk of detection. It’s not just YOUR life on the line, it’s the life of everyone you know in the network (and in the real world possibly as well). It’s the CAUSE on the line. It is important that the network expand, but carefully (Especially early). As time goes on, the natural growth of connections will start a rapid expansion (or the regime will become effective at rolling it up, and we’re all doomed anyway).
At some point, if the network grows sufficiently, it will start bumping into itself. I will reference one of the early questions “Are either one of you already part of a network?” When that happens, you have successfully created a link between branches. It is possible, if not likely, that multiple parallel networks will exist. Bridging these networks is important, even if they are very different in origin/style. Only together can we get our courtside seats/repel the alien invasion/return the King to the throne. News of these bridges needs to be disseminated through the existing network.[3]
Do Something
So, we have a network or series of networks of like-minded people. We’re all talking to each other through these covert channels (You aren’t talking openly about it in a Starbucks where the Praetorean Guard happens to frequent, are you? You aren’t posting these in public chatrooms on the internet are you? You ARE passing these covert messages via some form of face-to-face or strong digital encryption right? Right? If you are using electronic communication, you are destroying your logs, right? You aren’t doing this via plaintext in email, or keeping them in Gmail, right? RIGHT? RIGHT?) Remind me to put something together about basic computer security/encryption – but in the short-term, if you don’t understand what I’m talking about – keep it face-to-face. Not phone. Not chat. Not email. Face to face, in private, or dead-drop. (maybe I need to add some info on covert comms, ya think?).
So, now what? We just sit back talking to each other and wait for things to fall our way, right? NO. We have to DO something. What, that is up to the network to decide. Don’t take unilateral action. Discuss it at least with some other members of the network (who may discuss it with more). If you advertise a capability, be sure you can deliver. If it is a one-shot-and-done, make sure that it is known that you have one press on this button and you are done. Time may come that it is needed. Be sure you can deliver. The whole system may depend upon you doing what you said you can do. You may have to pay the ultimate price to do it.
Damage
Any resistance network worth its’ salt will lose members for various and sundry reasons. Some will be rounded up by the Lizard People or Collaborators. Some will be killed doing something dangerous. Some will be scared off for some reason. Some, and these are the most dangerous, will be plants (or will become plants). There is a joke that most of the members of some Mafia organizations were actually undercover Feds from different offices all trying to find out everything they could on what turned out to be other Feds with a cover story. In networking terms, the loss of a node is “damage.” This is where having double-link connection allows for immediate repair of any one lost node. A new backup link will have to be created – with the caveat that you don’t want to increase the links of neighboring nodes above critical thresholds. A dead node is just a dead node. The dead tell no tales… except in the digital age others can step into the digital footprints of the dead – unless the critical information is only in the head of the dead node (passwords, pincodes, dead drop locations, etc.). A captured node, on the other hand, can be interrogated. Everything they know can be extracted (you really think they’re not going to torture you to get information out of your head that can help bring down the resistance? Everyone breaks. Everyone). Breaking takes time, however. So, regular communication between nodes should be frequent enough to detect that a given node has gone off-line unexpectedly, give some warning that it may have been compromised/turned. If a node KNOWS that a neighboring node has been compromised, the warning can be sent to the whole network.
What’s this about plants? Wouldn’t the green leaves and potting soil give them away? That would be great… but the real world doesn’t work that way. A plant that stays and collects information is very, very dangerous to the network. Part of the defense against this is that no nodes relay the real identities of the any node to any other node. IF a node is a plant or undetected they will only be able to reveal the real-world identities of the nodes they directly interact with (if you’ve been following the rules, that should be no more than 5-6 connections – bad, but survivable for a robust network). Use of PGP Encrypted messaging system would be ideal. With public and private key encryption, messages can be passed through intermediaries without the intermediary being able to read it and relay it to the authorities. While there are rumors of backdoors that the Feds can use, I have never heard that from someone who actually understands cryptology. There is also a large PGP infrastructure that exists in the world that can be used to support such a comms system. Many email clients already support PGP encryption (Thunderbird, for example) and are a good choice for secure comms. Limiting the information intermediary nodes can actually use is vital to limiting the damage of a plant or a turncoat. The real hazards that remain from such are from being involved in operational planning/analysis. As such, they have to actually know the subject matter being discussed (not just an intermediary), thus they can relay this to the authorities. This is why careful vetting of potential members is so critical, but plants WILL find their way into a successful organization. Members WILL become turncoats, even after coming through in the clinch (ref. one of the Hero’s of the Revolution, Benedict Arnold). Careful with the paranoia however, as you have to trust each other in the network, and too much paranoia will see everyone turn on each other. You have to trust that the network as a whole will detect leaks, plants, and turncoats, and start to bypass them.
Covert Communication Techniques
We have a network, we know how to build it, how to manage it, how to protect it, and how to repair it. Now, how do we actually communicate on this network? Just use your iphone to call Brian, but use his codename Falcon? Not a chance. Think Cell Phones are secure means of communication? How about land lines? Surely computers are secure, right? Ask anybody who works in the Cyber Security field, and they will tell you that the average user is already screwed. If you use your computer to talk over a network or phone-line to another computer, it can be monitored. Even robust security only gets you so far, but by-and-large the biggest problem with computers is the Dancing Bunnies Problem:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/07/12/438284.aspx
“What’s the dancing bunnies problem?
It’s a description of what happens when a user receives an email message that says “click here to see the dancing bunnies”.
The user wants to see the dancing bunnies, so they click there. It doesn’t matter how much you try to disuade them, if they want to see the dancing bunnies, then by gum, they’re going to see the dancing bunnies. It doesn’t matter how many technical hurdles you put in their way, if they stop the user from seeing the dancing bunny, then they’re going to go and see the dancing bunny.
There are lots of techniques for mitigating the dancing bunny problem. There’s strict privilege separation – users don’t have access to any locations that can harm them. You can prevent users from downloading programs. You can make the user invoke magic commands to make code executable (chmod +e dancingbunnies). You can force the user to input a password when they want to access resources. You can block programs at the firewall. You can turn off scripting. You can do lots, and lots of things.
However, at the end of the day, the user still wants to see the dancing bunny, and they’ll do whatever’s necessary to bypass your carefully constructed barriers in order to see the bunny
We know that user’s will do whatever’s necessary. How do we know that? Well, because at least one virus (one of the Beagle derivatives) propogated via a password encrypted .zip file. In order to see the contents, the user had to open the zip file and type in the password that was contained in the email. Users were more than happy to do that, even after years of education, and dozens of technological hurdles.
All because they wanted to see the dancing bunny.”
So, at the risk of being repetitive, don’t try to see the dancing bunnies. You can keep a computer reasonably secure, so long as you never connect it to anything else. But, who wants to go back to the pre-internet days, right? Well you do if you want to be secure in the use of covert networking. Keep another computer as your “dancing bunnies” and internet surfing computer. Continue to watch youtube videos with your iphone or android. Just don’t use them for in-network communications. Generate your content on a standalone computer that you keep with an encrypted hard drive (don’t know how? The internet does. If you don’t understand what the Internet is telling you, don’t use a computer for this). Pass your messages encrypted on a CD or thumb-drive that is only used on your in-network system (thumb drives are much easier to use in a dead-drop than a CD, but both have good roles). Putting your in-network thumbdrive on your regular internet computer means you just gave a virus to everyone else on the network, and possibly just gave the whole real-world identity of the network to the authorities. DON’T DO IT! THIS MEANS YOU!
So, without computers and telephones, we’re back to REALLY OLD SCHOOL techniques. Benefit of these is that the rumored NSA sniffing/tracking systems won’t work. Draw back is, they are low bandwidth.
• The Dead Drop – is the practice of securing a package of information (encoded, of course) in a public space such that it is unobserved, and will only be found by the designated person to retrieve it. A classic example is to attach the package to the underside of a postal box, and to leave an otherwise innocuous mark somewhere else (Newspaper on a park bench, a certain window left open, etc. etc. etc. The limit is your imagination). The other party will see the indicator signal and retrieve the package. A given dead-drop should not be used for bi-directional communication. This needs to be pre-arranged by both parties involved, but neither party actually has to know who the other is.
• The Live Drop – the converse of the dead drop, both parties meet face-to-face to exchange information. This has the benefit of not leaving information in a public place, but has the drawback of having to meet in person. This can be a meet-in-passing (akin to pick-pocketing), or an actual meeting that both attend, or anything in between (ever see someone carrying a briefcase or other lockable case walk into a Wendy’s, order a small frosty, then sit at a table waiting for someone else, who joins him later, and then leaves with the case? It happens. Have you seen it?)
• Remote Messaging – Once you have something encrypted and ready to send, you can use regular email to send the encrypted blob (either as an attachment or in-line). Not sure how to do this? Don’t.
• Disaster Signal – use this to indicate that you have been made, or that you are going rabbit. This tells everyone who knows this signal that they are not to trust your regular routes as they may have been compromised.
Look them up. There are plenty more out there. This is not intended to be a full FM on how to perform each and every possible task, but an intro level guide into things to think about and research. This is a beginning, not the full instruction manual. Much of it will be written by you as you go along, as these things always have been.
Footnotes:
1. The Russian Revolution, on the other hand, actually was a semi-spontaneous event that took everyone, including most of the revolutionaries, by surprise (people, not entirely accidentally, tend to confuse the two). However, this too had seen the groundwork laid years and decades beforehand. Most of the participants weren't even born when Czar Alexander II was assassinated.
The Bolsheviks were among the weaker organizations in 1917, and considered Russian society too primative for a communist uprising. However, their discipline, flexibility and organizational skills is what allowed them to outclass their leftist rivals politically and their rightist rivals militarily.
2. There is a small subset of the human populace who can effectively fight and kill out of intellect and not sentiment. These people are called sociopaths, and high-functioning sociopaths at that. Thing is, there's not many of them in any given society, you might not want to have one watching your back, and they're said to be a little scary (wouldn't know, myself).
3. Takes all types...
http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/comments-on-leaderless-resistance-from-a-professional/
Comments on Leaderless Resistance, from a Professional
(The following was posted in comments by reader “Frank Pinelander.” For anyone not at all familiar with Special Forces lore and training, Pineland is the notional land where much of our training takes place during the Q-Course, so “Frank Pinelander” indicates either an SF veteran or someone who has supported SF training as a contractor or role-player. I don’t know of course, because I don’t personally know Frank. The comments below were sent to him and they are spot-on, and something a whole lot of dumb morons need to read.
While I don’t agree with everything herein, the overall message, regarding Leaderless Resistance and it’s fatal flaws, is spot-on.
Italicized parenthetical comments are, as always, my own.–JM)
Author: SMB (US Army, Retired)
Edited for content.
A Brief Overview
Nothing defines the blatant ineptitude and rank incompetence of the radical resistance more starkly than the concept of so-called “leaderless resistance” (hereafter, LR). By its very nature LR amounts to little more than anarchy and, as demonstrated by some of the most recent examples, very rapidly degenerates into simple banditry. Furthermore, one notes for the record that the most vociferous proponents of LR have, in common with those to whom that fantastic idea appeals, exactly zero experience in guerrilla warfare, its theory, or practice.
Simply stated, the concept of LR posits that individuals or small, close-knit groups, acting on their own initiative, performing their own targeting and relying on their own resources, can strike at the government’s infrastructure at will without fear of infiltration. Tactically, LR ranges from individual nuisance acts for the sake of causing a nuisance on one end of the spectrum to small unit terrorism for terrorism’s sake on the other. However, nothing can be said about LR’s potential operational impact because, by definition, through rejection of any superior organizational structure, it can have no operational impact.
Strategically, LR is conspicuously absent from any historical examples of successful insurgency. The idea has been advanced by several writers on the subject that LR is essentially a modern version of the Committees of Correspondence of American Revolution fame. I do not think those writers mean to purposely distort the realities of revolutionary organization in the colonies, but their zeal to justify LR apparently overrode their rational faculties. If those writers had simply paused to consider the word “committee” juxtaposed with “correspondence”, the notion that Committees of Correspondence were autonomous bodies acting independently of one another would have collapsed of its own illogic. In fact, the members of the several colonies’ Committees of Correspondence were appointed by their colonies’ legislative bodies, everyone knew who they were, and they coordinated their activities between each other or with the Continental Congress through a chain of command. Hardly an example of leaderless resistance (in fact, the only close to functional example of psuedo-successful LR would have to be Earth First, and last time I checked, we’re still logging and driving fuel-guzzling SUVs, so that could hardly be considered particularly successful either…–JM)[1]
There are however several striking examples, discussed below, that demonstrate why LR is fundamentally flawed as a resistance strategy.
The Order
“The Order” is frequently cited as an example (in its early stages, before it began recruiting) of the principle of LR. Given that most members of The Order are either dead or in federal prisons it is also an example of many of the fundamental flaws in the concept.
The Order began as an eight man cell dedicated to creating an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. How eight men expected to accomplish that objective has never been clearly explained, but following their logic it seems that the organizers of The Order believed that direct action against the government for the purpose of financing other organizations in the racialist resistance would inspire others to imitate their example thus creating an avalanche effect as other self creating “cells” rallied to the cause. Predictably, that “strategy” failed miserably.
Had the organizers of The Order expended half the effort in researching failed insurgencies as they did planning armored car and bank heists they would have found that their strategy (if indeed they ever had one beyond “do things”) had already been tried by no less than Che Guevara. The name of that “strategy” is called the Loco (i.e., focus). The theory is this: Plunk a small band of guerrillas down in an ostensibly “oppressed” countryside, begin maiming, murdering and robbing the oppressors, and the peasants will rise up and flock in proletarian support to the Loco to sweep the bourgeoisie from the political landscape.[2] However, the “oppressed” in whose name Che fought snitched off his band to the oppressors, and Che and his Bolivian Loco bandits were hunted down like animals and killed. End of insurgency.
Aside from robbing banks and armored cars and sharing the loot with phone booth emperors who were vying for the same mailing list, The Order did manage to kill a Jew in Denver, blow up a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and murder one of their own recruits before they were finally hunted down, killed or arrested.
The Order therefore illustrates Reason #1 LR does not work. “Grass roots” resistance is doomed to failure; there are no examples of it having ever succeeded. Frustrated by any appreciable effect of propaganda on a population so dim it could offer not even neutrality, and impatient with time proven organizational principles, they simply decided to “kick things off” themselves armed with nothing but a single idea that was immediately discredited because (1) the population did not care about the idea, so (2) they possessed no means of enlisting assistance or acceptance for their crime spree. The lesson learned about The Order’s example is that rebelliousness has no place in a resistance.[3]
Eric Rudolph[4]
Personally, my reaction to the bombing of abortion clinics and gay bars is, “Where’s the crime?” In many respects Rudolph exemplifies LR at the individual level. He didn’t make threats or discuss his plans with anybody, he didn’t ask permission, he simply started punctuating his deeply held beliefs with explosions.
If Rudolph has one thing going for him (aside from being the “1997 – 1999 Hide and Seek Champion of the World”) it’s that he has a steep learning curve. Note the successive “product improvements” of his devices. He obviously paid close attention to the official Bomb Damage Assessments of his handiwork, and progressively applied those lessons learned to his subsequent projects, not only mechanically (although he had not yet come to appreciate that nails are crap for shrapnel — ball bearings are much better, having sounder ballistics) but also tactically.
For example, constructive development of Rudolph’s devices progresses to smaller timers, smaller batteries, dynamite instead of pipe bombs and thicker pressure plates. By the time of the Atlanta gay bar and abortion clinic bombings his devices fit very nicely into a book bag, and at the lesbian bar he left behind an 80 pound time delay “present” intended for enthusiastic crime scene investigators. A year later, a Birmingham, Alabama, cop who was guarding an abortion clinic between stints as a guard at a gay bar, poked at a flower pot with his baton causing Rudolph to allegedly command detonate his device (or lose it to the bomb squad). Significantly, the device was directional, the majority of the blast was focused on the front door. Eric’s obvious goal was to abort the abortionist when he arrived, but the cop’s ill considered curiosity preempted the objective of the attack. Nevertheless, Rudolph had progressed from crude pipe bombs to command detonated directional devices in four operations. Not bad.
Rudolph’s problem was that, while his devices advanced both mechanically and in lethality, their basic construction, and therefore their “signature,” remained the same. Because he was driving his own vehicle to and from the target area the feds quickly obtained a description of it and the plate number, and by the time he had driven back in Murphy, North Carolina, the FBI was scouring the city for him. Informed by friends that he was being sought by the FBI as a “material witness” to the Birmingham bombing, he did the next logical thing. He went to Burger King, bought some chow, then disappeared into the mountains.
What is remarkable about Rudolph, as an individual example of LR, is his focus, his dedication, his coolness, his self reliance, and his aggressiveness — and that he is still alive. In fact, by the spring of 1999, the FBI had almost completely retreated out of the mountains and into their compound in Andrews, North Carolina, because, in the words of SSA Terry Turchie, Rudolph manhunt director, “We think he is hunting us.”
But those very qualities that make young Eric so remarkable are precisely those qualities that make him not only the exception to the rule, but also a positive example of why LR on an individual level is again doomed to failure except in the rarest of circumstances. Eric possesses what precious few other individuals who might contemplate the “Rudolph model” of LR possess — the semblance of an infrastructure. Young Eric’s infrastructure is composed entirely of friends of belief in kind, or tacit sympathy for the act even if not for his beliefs. However, that necessarily delimited his operational radius. And even though Rudolph enjoys the active neutrality of the population in his area of operations, his limited circle of friends lacked any infrastructure that would have enabled him wider range in his holy mission.
What Rudolph’s circle of friends were incapable of providing was operational support. He procured his own explosives and materiel. He built his own bombs. He performed his own targeting. He emplaced his own devices. He provided his own transportation. His circle of friends were useless operationally, and the best they could do for him locally when he became a fugitive was turn a blind eye when he raided their chicken coops or delay reporting his presence when he broke into their houses to raid the cupboard.
Eric Rudolph therefore illustrates Reason #2 LR does not work. It has no formal infrastructure, thus its support is at best haphazard and is always uncoordinated. Consequently, such notional “support” is bound to fall apart at the seams at some point. Even though there is not yet any evidence that his network of friends is beginning to crumble, it is painfully obvious that they are incapable of supporting or sustaining any further operations by Eric. The lesson learned about Eric Rudolph’s example is that independence of action means isolation from effective support, hence an inability to sustain operations in the face of determined opposition reaction.
Further Considerations
The above examples of group and individual LR illustrate only a very small number of associated problems. For example, as mentioned in the Eric Rudolph example, the lack of a formal organizational infrastructure means that LR “cells” must provide for themselves everything appertaining their operational requirements. This fact necessarily places the LR “cell” in the unenviable position of being personally involved in all the activities, such as logistics (including financing), communications, targeting and planning, needed to execute their operations. Because of their personal involvement they dramatically raise not only their own “profile,” but also that of the operation. Those named activities in a properly constituted resistance organization would be delegated to cells (unknown to the “direct action” operatives) specifically tasked to perform those functions thus virtually eliminating the operation’s profile — until bodies need to be dug out of the rubble. Traditional procedures also so diffuse the opposition’s post action investigation that it takes months or years, instead of days in the case of an LR “plan,” to unravel all the pre-mission details and thereby identify and begin hunting the operatives.
Furthermore, LR as a “strategy,” if we are to believe what its proponents expect us to believe about it, has specific appeal only to the lowest (or most psychotic) common denominator within any given organization. The fact that the notion of LR is being propagated should give pause to serious minded individuals because those organizations that promote LR almost universally make their appeals for membership to the “proletariat,” as demonstrated by the crudeness of their rhetoric and public manifestations. Nevertheless, the idea that independently conceived and executed “grassroots” action solely for the sake of action can have any appreciable impact as a resistance methodology to the planned destruction of our society is nonsense. And if the history of LR is any indicator it plays right into our enemy’s hand.
Consider the Progressive distorted prosecutive “legal” strategy known as vicarious liability. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence vicarious liability is the “indirect or imputed legal responsibility for the acts of another… as between an employer and employee… or a principle for torts and contracts of an agent.” (Black’s 6th ed.) In a nut shell, the Progressive-contorted version of vicarious liability contends that “hate speech” creates a “climate of hate” that propels small groups or individuals to commit “hate crimes” and that, therefore, any organization that espouses Progressive-defined “hate” is “responsible” for the actions of individuals or groups, employees or not, who commit the “crime.”[5]
Never mind that the Progressive-version of vicarious liability perfectly inverts the traditions of Anglo-Saxon legal precedent which places responsibility for crime upon the individual criminal and which reserves vicarious liability to employers whose agents’ (i.e., responsible to the employer) acts result in willful harm to others. In the example of the justifiable murder of the abortionist Sleppian, a web site that listed the names, addresses and photographs of abortionists was ordered to shut down even though there was no proof of any connection between the owners of the web site and the righteous man who dwindled our Progressive infestation by one. The web site had “created a climate of hate,” you see. (It seems the web site was honest enough to leave Sleppian’s data intact — with an “X” through it. This was deemed to encourage others to cross other abortionists off the list. One hopes so.)
The Progressive-twisted version of vicarious liability is reserved solely for Christian men and their organizations. Why? Eric Rudolph serves as another example. Hundreds of FBI agents [has anybody else noticed that the FBI refers to its personnel using the same term intelligence officers understand as “street shit?”] are hunting him, and a million dollar reward has been offered for him, not because he allegedly planted a couple of bombs, but because he committed a politically incorrect crime; he tried to blow up abortionists and gays. His motive is the reason he is being hunted.
In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence motive is merely a mitigating factor. When Progressives are permitted to practice law — or more horrifying, make law — in Anglo-Saxon nations, the law rapidly degenerates into quibbling. In the case of vicarious liability, the extrinsic motive becomes the real crime. In other words, what you were thinking when you committed the crime is more important than what you did, and what you were thinking is the fault of the organization – whether you are a member or not — that espouses what you believe. Ergo, according to Progressive lawyers, the organization is vicariously liable for your crime and can be sued. The most recent Southern Poverty Law Center law suit against the Aryan Nations is only the most recent in a pattern of similar suits.
Why the long winded speech about vicarious liability? Because the organizations that promote LR are being sued in rotation by Progressives when proletarian groups or individuals (employees, members, or not) take them at their word and begin practicing it. Significantly, organizations that demand at least a modicum of discipline from their members and which prefer to recruit from the bourgeoisie, have so far been spared the embarrassment of “loose cannons” in their ranks. Think about it.
How “It” Is Really Done
What often amazes me is the simple-mindedness of those who propose to wage one or the other of many forms of armed resistance against the government. Because the sheer scale of the proposition cannot be grasped by minds conditioned to think in terms of snappy political slogans and time frames rarely exceeding seven minutes between commercial breaks, I often find that when the scale is explained to them their response is blank incomprehension. This inability to grasp the complexity and magnitude of the proposition is but one reason why such ideas as Leaderless Resistance gain currency.
Among all the outpourings about LR, the only comprehensible rationale given for promoting anarcho-resistance is the fear of opposition infiltration and penetration of properly constituted organizations. That rationale is the very reason LR should be dismissed out of hand as the drivel of flagrant neophytes who possess just enough comic book knowledge about armed resistance to be dangerously stupid (emphasis added –JM); and who are irresponsible enough to share their “knowledge” with others.
The reason advocates of LR advance the fear of infiltration as their only comprehensible rationale for promoting anarcho-resistance is because, like every other band of proletarian dissidents, they believe that resistance begins with armed groups. In other words, they organize everything backwards, from the bottom up. This does, as they fear, leave them vulnerable to penetration when they finally discover that they cannot support or sustain their own operations and of necessity need to recruit new members or organize some semblance of a support apparatus.
Armed resistance is only one subset of what is properly defined as Political Warfare. Policy making in Political Warfare encompasses ideological warfare, organizational warfare, psychological warfare (wherein falls armed resistance), intelligence warfare, and mass warfare. Within the subset of armed resistance we find planned political violence (assassination, kidnapping, bombing), which is employed as a tactic of both disruptive and coercive terrorism. The disruptive nature of terrorism is the repression of and reprisals against the general population that it provokes from government. As a coercive measure terrorism enforces obedience from noncombatants or punctuates the demands of the terrorists.
Note the words “policy” and “planned.” That means there must be a policy making body who turn their deliberated decisions over to another organizational element which plans the implementation of those policies, in turn delegating responsibility for executing the plan to further subordinate elements. This requires not only a centralized command element that makes decisions, but also a staff who turn those decisions into mission taskings to the staffs of subordinate resistance activities. In descending order of manpower and complexity of organization those activities are, (1) the underground, (2) the auxiliary, and (3) the guerrillas.
Mission tasking, broadly speaking, covers five basic categories; (1) action, (2) security, (3) cover and logistics, (4) surveillance and intelligence, and (5) communications. Each category is serviced by in independent element. Each element’s requirements are then forwarded to management who assemble the information into a mission planning guide and requirements list. Once this information is assembled, planning follows an ordered sequence.
The Intelligence Cycle sets into motion collection operations in response to the informational needs expressed in the requirements list. Targeting is highly discriminatory, begins very early in the planning process, and includes consideration of both primary and sub-targets. Wargaming, which considers the action to be taken and the probability of success of several courses of action. Protection, which prevents discovery, prevention of arrest, and provision for building and maintaining cover. Operational Support falls into five broad categories; (1) communications, (2) accommodations, (3) transportation, (4) technological support, and (5) supply. Planning of the final phase, Action, does not begin until all other planning requirements have been met.[6]
LR objections to the foregoing model are, as already stated, the fear of infiltration and betrayal by government informants or penetration of the organization by government spies. The reason I mentioned my disdain for the tendency among the various proletarian organizations to organize armed cells first (i.e., do the whole thing backward) earlier in this essay is because organizing backward creates the very condition that leaves their groups open to infiltration and betrayal — their eventual necessity to organize some form of support. To do this they need to recruit from outside their immediate circle.[7]
Tim McVeigh & Co. is an excellent example. When they realized they could not pull off their operation on their own they began enlisting support from people and organizations who really had no business knowing what they were up to. Within hours of the OKC bombing the FBI was all over them like flies on dung (and there is considerable evidence that the FBI began manipulating the operation about midway through their “planning”).[8]
The point I am making is this: In a properly organized resistance one of the first things constituted is an overarching counterintelligence body that permeates the very fabric of the organization at all levels. Coincident with counterintelligence is the compartmentalization of the resistance organization and planning — something almost totally lacking in LR “cells.”
Furthermore, for those among you who think that resistance warfare is some type of free-booting tryst where “rugged individuals” can “get some back” from their oppressors, I suggest you stay home with the women. The authoritarianism and regulation of the standing military pales in comparison to the rigid authoritarianism, regulation and submission to duty found in resistance organizations.
Although some small measure of disjointed disruption may be achieved by LR, and although LR may exert some paltry degree of temporary coercion, its lack of far ranging planning, organizational discipline, coordination with other elements, or a support net designed to sustain operations will find them littering the streets with their corpses.
If there is a single good thing to be said about LR, it is that while LR “cells” are distracting the Enemy, the grown-ups can go about their more serious business.[9]
Footnotes:
1. LR is working rather well in the Muslim world last I checked, even if they largely adapted it due to attrition on the part of their leadership. The Lebanese didn't even bother with upper management the last time Israeli Tanks rolled across their border (knew that Mossad hit teams would hunt them all down within a matter of days), they just planted weapons and explosives throughout country, ran a few Specials on the Battle of Grozny, and told the youngsters to go hunting.
Speaking of Grozny, Chechnya is still a semi-dangerous place, despite the fact that Chechen leaders and indeed Chechen people are getting rare outside of Hell and Boston.
Al Qaeda is doing better without Osama bin Laden than he could have ever dreamed. They still have Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, parts of Egypt, parts of Syria, part of whichever other country we choose to invade next (blame the last two American presidents for that if you wish, but it's pretty good showing for a group who think they have to blow THEMSELVES up before they can harm the enemy).
2. Here again he's a little off on his history. Che got basically 50/50 results: win in Cuba, stalemate in the Congo, loss in Bolivia. Fair odds, considering that he and Castro had adapted the strategy because previous, more conventional ones had failed. Also, the Zapatistas did fine.
3. Should have borrowed from Hunter instead of the Turner Diaries. As I recall, the protagonist in the former actually admits that his lone wolf activity ain't causing enough damage to hurt the System, and couldn't be maintained long-term even if it was.
4. In-game resistance leader Robert Donner is loosely based off of Eric Robert Rudolph; he was going to have a bigger role as an NPC but it didn't really work. I've read his writings on what happened while he was on the run, and personally I think he's telling the truth about receiving no overt help from the locals. Very few of the uneducated right-wing fundamentalist hillbillies who populate the hills of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina approved his actions (speaking as an uneducated right-wing fundamentalist hillbilly myself), but the Feds didn't make friends by treating us all as though we did.
So did we turn a blind eye to some of his doings? Maybe. That brings up a good point: the locals don't neccessarily have to help you or even like you. They merely have to hate you less than they hate the System. With Eric Rudolph, we had the choice between the son of moonshiners and the sons of revenuers. We knew exactly who to go with.
Eric Rudolph (probably) had paranoid personality disorder. It's unlikely he would have ever functioned well in a direct-action group and was perhaps better suited to work alone. Much like Ted Kaczynski— whom I'm surprised receives no mention— would still be sending bombs if he hadn't wrote letters or his brother hadn't ratted on him.
5. On the other hand: Aesop's Trumpeter. Under that interpretation, the System and it's organs have every right to discourage, punish, and kill those who encourage, sympathize or are neutral towards disruptive dissidents (can run both ways, but only if the trumpeter's people win). And... that might be exactly what the dissidents want.
Why? He touches on this later, but one of the key points of revolutionary agitprop is forcing a crackdown by the authorities that will make their citizens hate and fear them.
Join or die. That's what Tito told the Yugoslavian peasants when the Nazis started massacring them. The Chetniks, who had actually been fighting the Nazis longer and more effectively, gave up in the face of reprisals and eventually started collaborating... it saved Serbian lives in the short term but they've had to spend 70 years under the heels of Communists, Muslims and EUrocrats because of it. Tito knew that reprisals against non-combatants would drive a wedge between them and the authorities, and inspire many who wouldn't have gotten involved to flee into the arms of the partisans rather than wait around for the next reprisal. Mao did much the same in China.
6. This seems like the crux of the whole essay, and the biggest reason why I reposted it. What SFC Barry is suggesting is merely specialization, something that many LR proponents also desire to an extant.
Problem that arises with it is the issue of trust. Not the aforementioned fear of spies and turncoats, but the fear that your own people may not be up to task. You've never met these people, their capabilities are completely unknown to you, and will only be proven after the battle. If you're in a direct-action cell, would you really trust the security cell to keep a secret, the surveillance cell to figure out what you're walking into, the logistics cell to get you out, the communications cell to keep you all in contact, and the leadership cell to make the right decisions? For that matter, would any of those trust the direct-action cell not to get themselves killed and make a waste of all their effort? I can see why five specialized cells working under one leadership cell would be more effective than six independent direct-action cells (or even six direct-action cells with one assigning tasks to the others based on their secondary specialities; more or less how I imagine the Donner Parties), but I don't know if those on the ground would.
7. Hah hah... of course we would never do that.
8. Quite possibly. For that matter, I still think the Boston Bombing was an entrapment scheme gone wrong.
9. Unnecessarily patronizing, no? If one must be claim that LR proponents are disproportionately anarchists, may one also surmise that those desiring a strict, top-down system tend to be fascists? I wouldn't agree with either assertion, nor would I say that either system is always the right one in all situations.
http://downwithjugears.blogspot.com/2010/02/that-balloon-that-never-goes-up.html
That Balloon That Never Goes Up
Harold Covington
[This is some Classic HAC found in the archives. Figured I'd play Russian roulette once more, although the Organs might have a hard time explaining to their superiors why they never noticed this article at the time it was first published - HAC]
C-GRAM: September 21st, 2005
Okay, time once again to do what HAC does best: question a Movement sacred cow.
One of the hoariest and most time-honored of such sacramental beasts is the concept of When The Balloon Goes Up.
It runs something like this: the White man is completely lazy, apathetic, cowardly, dazed and confused, and useless. (I have to admit, it's hard to argue with that one.) He will continue to be so, as long as he has his job, his paycheck, his beer in the refrigerator, his television, and the Quickie Mart down the street run by Apu where he can stock up on salty snacks for his long weekends watching tell-lie-vision. He will never, ever get up off his ass until such time as the supply of all these things is suddenly cut off by some big huge catastrophe, an economic collapse with a massive depression, race riots in the streets, fuel shortages, beer shortages, aliens descending from outer space, or whatever your favorite scenario might be.
This huge catastrophe will create a Mad Max Road Warrior type scenario, and all of a sudden we'll be riding around on motorcycles with green Mohawk haircuts and driving out the thugs with crossbows, yadda yadda yadda. (I've never quite understood how a race of people who have spent their entire lives on the couch watching bakketbawl and swilling the worst excuse for beer in the world will suddenly transform into Road Warriors, but we'll let that pass.) Rite-wingers generally refer to this as When The Balloon Goes Up.
The corollary to this is that since nothing can possibly be done while NWO remains all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful (which it isn't), there is no point whatsoever in our actually doing anything until such time as The Balloon Goes Up. Or even trying. The people and the times, tsk tsk tsk, just aren't ready for us. If only the people and the times were ready, oh my, such deeds of manly heroism we would do then! But The Balloon hasn't Gone Up, and therefore we can do nothing except "educate" and "wake people up."
Educate, My Ass
If an inquiring mind is ever able to cut through mountains of waffle and get any kind of answer on this subject, "education" usually boils down to nothing more than hiding behind an e-mail address while playing with the computer in one's basement rec room, with a bowl of nachos and a cold brewski beside the mouse. "Education" in practice means circulating the same old material, mostly dating from the 1950s and 1960s or even from before the war, that we've been circulating for the past fifty years about Communists running the country, the Benjamin Franklin quotation, and an endless supply of atrocity stories about crime.
And of course, there is that lovely, risk-free internet. This is why the Movement of yesteryear consisted largely of a bunch of sad old men who sat around mailing one another news clippings telling one another how bad things are. (Some of them are still around.) Today, it consists mostly of a bunch of sad old men who sit around tapping on keyboards and forwarding news articles all over the internet by e-mail, telling one another how bad things are. But what can we do? The White man is useless until The Balloon Goes Up. Right?
Now let me dare to ask the blasphemous question. Is The Balloon ever going to Go Up? I mean, really?
We've been waiting for almost forty years now for this big disaster to occur that will finally shake the federal monkey off our backs long enough so we can take all those guns out of the closet and clean this mess up. Has anything of the kind ever even come close to occurring?
No. The riots of the 1960s and the 1990s were purely localized events and consisted almost entirely of thugs trashing their own neighborhoods. There was never any serious danger to the system, and all of these events were brought under control by the authorities in a matter of days. The fuel shortages of the 1970s were annoying, and nothing more. Jug-Ears' incompetence in foreign policy produced gas prices as high as $3.00 per gallon only last summer. White Americans grumbled...and paid. And re-elected the misbegotten moron in November.
That Balloon Ain't Going Up. Well, Probably Not.
Will there ever in fact be some kind of nationwide catastrophe which will crack the iron bands that crush us and remove the federal government's heavy hand from us all at once, so all of a sudden we find that can do the necessary? (This of course, presumes that we have the necessary physical courage and will to do the necessary under any circumstances at all, which is dubious, but I won't get into that. Since by common consent we don't discuss the character issue within the Movement, there would be no point.) Will there in fact ever be a depression so severe, a riot so widespread, an event so cataclysmic, that it will affect the supply of basic goods and services in most areas of the United States, to any serious or lasting extent? Will the electric power ever really go off and stay off, silencing the air conditioners and televisions?
Well—it can happen. It certainly happened to the people of Iraq. But will it happen here? Ever?
Or will our future just be one long, endless decline, a gradual deterioration of the quality of life, year after year, as more and more of North America turns into Brazil? I'll be honest. I don't know.
One thing I have learned in the Movement is that making predictions is a dangerous business. But I do believe that if in fact the Balloon were anywhere near Going Up, there would be certain definite indicators, and they would be visible and discussed outside the babblings of rite-wing conspiracy theorists on the internet.
I will say this: there doesn't appear to be any sign that anything of the kind is happening. This is a huge country and it still possesses virtually unlimited wealth. As god-awful as things are, America's ability to absorb economic, political, social, and biological punishment and abuse is still a long, long way from reaching the breaking point.
And you know something? I think all of us know in our heart that the Balloon ain't Going Up any time soon. And hoo boy, are we glad!
That Balloon Lets Us Off The Hook
You remember Leaderless Resistance, the brilliant strategy laid out by Louis Beam? And you remember how and why it failed, because in actual practice it turned out to be all leaderless and no resistance?
Beam's plan was predicated on the idea that these leaderless resistance cells would actually do something. It never happened. The internet came along and everybody retreated into the cool dark of their basement rec rooms and the warm glow of their computer screens.
Do you remember Lone Wolf, the strategy William Pierce tried to inspire with Hunter? What we ended up with instead of Hunters were violent kooks like Ben Smith and Buford Furrow, who were of course cheered on hysterically by people like Tom Metzger and Alex Curtis in order to sell their Skinhead music tapes and videos. As if the White race could be saved by lunatics who hear voices in their head.
Now, am I alone in suspecting that a lot of this talk about When The Balloon Goes Up is just basically an excuse for the White man to continue to do nothing?
Maybe I'm off base, but as Northwest Migration begins to slowly (way too slowly) catch on, I'm starting to hear a lot of this "but we must wait for The Balloon to Go Up." And it's sounding increasingly worried. Here we now have a perfectly legal, perfectly logical, and personally beneficial act that anyone can carry out, and which will advance the cause of the 14 Words and give White people a wonderful place to live. Bluffs are being called, and the Movement is getting jumpy. There is one thing that Movement Man most definitely does not like, and that is having his bluff called.
The Revolutionary Tripod
Where is this leading? Oh, it's leading somewhere. It's leading to an even more subversive idea, one that will have Movement Man befouling his Fruit of the Looms.
Okay, let's recap once again. We need to take another look at that Revolutionary Tripod, the three conditions which are essential for actual political and social change to take place in any society. I know, I know, I have gone over this about five hundred times before, but guys, this is really important. This is really something that we all need to internalize. For there to be revolutionary change the following three situations must obtain:
1. The Withdrawal of the Consent of the Governed. A majority, or at least a significant and effective minority, of the people of a nation or colony must consciously desire an end to the existing political and social order, and its replacement by a new one. It certainly helps if they want your revolutionary movement specifically to replace the existing order, although as Lenin and the Bolsheviks proved, it's not absolutely necessary.
2. A Fighting Revolutionary Party. A political, propaganda, and military vehicle must exist which will express the withdrawal of consent in concrete terms, and which is prepared to replace the existing order, and which is ready and willing to take direct action to do so.
3. The Loss of the Credible Monopoly of Armed Force. All political power is based on the use of deadly force by the ruler or the state, the infliction or threat of bodily harm or death on others, without punishment of those who exercise force in the state's name. This is what makes the policeman's club or gun different from the club or gun in the hand of the criminal. The policeman may do harm without being punished for it, except within certain narrow parameters when he harms an influential, a wealthy man or some other societally protected person such as our minorities, through error or stupidity , and sometimes even then he is never punished at all.
For example, FBI agents inflict terrible tortures on helpless prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere which would earn you or I life sentences if we were to inflict them on anyone without permission from the ruling elite, and yet they are not punished, but on the contrary they are commended and promoted. This is called a credible monopoly of armed force.
In order for any revolutionary movement to succeed, it must first break that credible monopoly of armed force, by demonstrating to the public an ability to do harm to its enemies and not be punished. The people must be made to understand that change is in fact possible, because the state is no longer certainly able to punish those who oppose it. Eventually the revolutionary movement transfers the monopoly of armed force to itself, thereby becoming the established state. This is how revolutions occur.
Now let's back up a bit, to the withdrawal of the consent of the governed and the creation of a viable revolutionary party. How, exactly, is this to be achieved?
Well, first, there has to be one or more legitimate grievances. Those we have in plenty, although they vary from age to age. Our ancestors in 1775 revolted over a paltry tax on tea. Our closer forefathers in 1861 revolted over a massive insult to the South and the Southern way of life on the part of the rest of the United States, as expressed in the election of the demagogue Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Today we let our own children be routinely murdered, sodomized, deracinated, corrupted in their minds and bodies, and frog-marched into drug addiction, and we sit there staring at the television.
But let's assume that somehow we can in fact overcome the character problem and a significant minority of us do have sense enough to migrate to the Northwest and eventually form a Party of the kind Brad Davis refers to, the kind which we are clearly unable to form now—but let's just suppose. Right. We have our Party. What to we do now?[GM: get nuked, most likely.] How would we go about bringing on a revolution if, as it appears, that pesky Balloon isn't Going Up?
The Propaganda of the Deed
I know this is going to scare many of you shitless.
We need to start cultivating the habit of in-depth thinking, insofar as we're still capable of it, and thought must be free. Thought must have all the data in order to draw conclusions. Thought cannot be Orwellian and deliberately train itself to avoid certain topics, or else the mind ceases to hit on all cylinders. Maybe if you can be brought to understand the possibilities which would become available to us, if and when we ever deal with the character issue, then we might be able to persuade ourselves to deal with it.
The Reds and anarchists for the past two hundred years, ever since the days of one Gracchus Baboeuf, (don't ask), have theorized about and sometimes practiced something called the Propaganda Of The Deed. In its crudest form it consists of high-profile acts of violence or destruction meant to state a position, a claim, or a cause in such a manner that it cannot be ignored.
Let me repeat those crucial, key words: cannot be ignored.
Democracy is top-notch at ignoring messages that it does not wish to hear, and quietly, genteelly suppressing people and points of view that it finds inconvenient.
It does this with varying degrees of cruelty, up to and including death and torture, but mostly democracy utilizes its control of the public media of information, communication and expression to ignore any serious dissent or alternative to its policies or behavior. Democracy establishes a maze for the rats to run through which they call a political process, and claims that the rats therefore have nothing to complain about. But democracy is a maze that leads nowhere, designed only to perpetuate the existing order of a wealthy ruling élite and to prevent change of any kind. Democracy crushes the rats when they try to escape from the maze.
But what if the rat were to bite?
True, Propaganda of the Deed is very dangerous, and it requires men and women who are willing to give up their own lives in the service of others. We are so far from this condition that I honestly am not worried about being accused of "inciting" anyone to anything with this article. In all the nearly one hundred years of our existence, our Movement has produced exactly one Bob Mathews, one Gordon Kahl, and one Tim McVeigh...maybe. (We still don't know what McVeigh's true agenda was.)
So what is all this babble in aid of? The Reds believe that the Propaganda of the Deed, under certain conditions and with a little bit of luck, is of itself capable of jump-starting a revolutionary process. The ultimate example of this would be the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin.
Taking it further, a revolutionary movement, intelligently led and possessing not only propaganda skills but the ability to deploy Propaganda of the Deed, can sometimes create the necessary conditions for revolution itself. In other words, The Balloon does not have to Go Up before the revolutionary struggle can begin.
Historical results? Well, to be sure, they've been mixed.
It works quite often in Third World coups, (the assassination of Omar Trujillo in the Dominican Republic comes to mind) but we won't count those as genuine revolutions. In 1881 the assassination of Czar Alexander the Second definitely didn't succeed in bringing about revolution in Russia; Lenin had to wait until 1917. The assassination of the King of Iraq worked, eventually. The storming of the Bastille is a maybe. The murder of the Duchesse de Praslin in 1848 brought down the last King of France. The Kirov murder in 1934 enabled Stalin to launch his major purges, although there's a good chance Stalin himself had Kirov whacked. The Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 in Florence failed miserably. (Now you get some idea of what I do with my time, not having the financial wherewithal to go gambling on riverboat casinos.)
People, we've got to discuss the character issue. Not now. I know we're not ready. But it's going to have to be soon. Our race is running out of time, and hard decisions must soon be made.
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