Summary: As the middle class slowly erodes away, we support our elites by becoming even weaker. Race riots help our rulers in so many ways. Stoking fears in the lower middle class (making them more loyal), exacerbating ancient hatreds (fragmented), and arousing dreams of the great day when they set the nation on fire — usually starting with their own neighborhoods (fantasy rather than organizing). What signal might mark the beginning of a serious threat to our elites’ power? Such as the use of 4th Generation Warfare?
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As inequality grows and social mobility falls, the people on the lower rungs of the social ladder lose hope. Our elites have spend decades preparing for this, bulking up the police and reducing the legal shackles limiting their actions.
A powerful description of the result: “America Is Not For Black People“, Greg Howard, The Concourse, 13 August 2014 — Excerpt:
Michael Brown is not special. In all its specificity, the 18-year old’s death remains just the most recent example of police officers killing unarmed black men.
Part of the reason we’re seeing so many black men killed is that police officers are now best understood less as members of communities, dedicated to keeping peace within them, than as domestic soldiers. The drug war has long functioned as a full-employment act for arms dealers looking to sell every town and village in the country on the need for military-grade hardware, and 9/11 made things vastly worse, with local police departments throughout America grabbing for cash to better defend against any and all terrorist threats. War had reached our shores, we were told, and police officers needed weaponry to fight it.
Officers have tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style boot camp training. It’s a constant complaint from what remains of this country’s civil liberties caucus. Just this last June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. Few paid attention, as usually happens.
The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he’ll reasonably think that his job isn’t simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.
If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy. And because of correlations, rooted in historical injustice, between crime and income and income and race, the enemy population will consist largely of people of color, and especially of black men. Throughout the country, police officers are capturing, imprisoning, and killing black males at a ridiculous clip, waging a very literal war on people like Michael Brown.
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… To ascribe this entirely to contempt for black men is to miss an essential variable, though — a very real, American fear of them. They — we — are inexplicably seen as a millions-strong army of potential killers, capable and cold enough that any single one could be a threat to a trained police officer in a bulletproof vest. There are reasons why white gun’s rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children’s toys.
The plight of the underclass, disproportionately Black and Hispanic, will grow worse as the erosion of the middle class continues, as it puts even greater pressure on those less well off. So what happens next? More riots, probably. More and stronger response by the security services (formerly known as “law enforcement”), certainly. Peasants protests, proles venting pressure, keeping the inner party members scared and loyal to the regime.
The wild cards are leadership — and 4GW
The wild card is, always, leadership. The tools of 4GW lie in the open, ready for any group desperate, motivated, and disciplined enough to wield them with their terrible political force. How will we know when this happens? We will see more stories like this:
Sunday was Brown’s vigil, and several hundred people congregated in Ferguson. They began to march toward the Ferguson police station in protest. Police met them in full riot gear, with rifles, shields, helmets, dogs, and gas masks. Protesters yelled, “No justice, no peace!” They called the police murderers. They raised their hands in mock surrender, saying, “Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed.”
But they will not contain this:
And then the protest turned violent, as some citizens began to break into, loot, and set fire to storefronts in their own community.
The absence of this element will make the wise among our elites tremble. All large-scale violence is political in nature, but it’s seldom effectively political. 4GW is the difference between Yasser Arafat and Gandhi, between the Palestinians’ struggle against Israel and the Vietnamese victory against the French and Americans. For insurgents 4GW is the difference between victory and defeat.
There are as yet no signs 4GW has come to America. But the preconditions are there. The books are available for anyone to read. Our foes in other lands have demonstrated its effectiveness. The underclasses lack only competent leaders.
Note: about labels
As Chet Richards and others have said, 4th Generation Warfare is a misleading label, somewhat like the Holy Roman Empire (neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire). But it’s the most established term for the dominate form of violent conflict in our age, and is so used here.
For More Information
(a)Â Posts about the events in Ferguson, MO:
- Our elites smile at events in Ferguson, MO. They’ll cry if it pushes Blacks to try 4GW., 14 August 2014
- Will the Ferguson protest force development of African-American leaders?, 15 August 2014
- Why America has militarized its police and crushes protests, 16 August 2014
- The protesters at Ferguson might have won, but choose to lose, 18 August 2014
- Events from Ferguson explain why we are weak, 19 August 2014
(b)Â Posts about 4GW:
- A solution to 4GW — the introduction
- Why We Lose at 4GW — The 2 kinds of insurgencies
- About Fourth Generation Infections – Chet Richards explains the nature of outlaw organizations in the 21st century
- The War Nerd shows how simple 4GW theory can be
- 28 Articles: a guide to a successful insurgency against America
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Not 4GW, but:
“With Ferguson, Missouri practically under martial law, the Missouri Citizen’s Militia is NOW IN Ferguson to protect innocent Americans from the ‘tyrannical police state’ according to the linked facebook post from Aaron Penberthy. Missouri’s Militia was recently at Bundy Ranch.
Aaron Penberthy If peaceful protesters get fired upon, it is my duty to uphold the constitution Clay Martin. If innocent families are being attacked, I have no choice but as a human being to go defend.”
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/militia-in-missouri-to-protect-americans-from-tyrannical-police-state-as-martial-law-draws-near
Re FM’s comment on Gandhi. Gandhi was not just some soft, fuzzy-wuzzy guy. Take the “cute” photos of him sitting in his loin cloth, spinning cotton. The economic heart of the British Empire was its cotton industry, which it sold to its captive market, India. By encouraging Indians to spin their own cloth, he was going after the mills of Manchester, gutting the British Empire.
Duncan,
That’s an important point. No successful insurgency has a soft leader. It is among the hardest of games.
The model for the police who are committing such abuse in Ferguson and elsewhere has been described in “The Rise of the Praetorian Class” http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/rise-praetorian-class
“The Praetorian Class includes members of the Armed Services, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel as well as numerous militarized officials including agents from the DEA, Immigrations, Customs Enforcement, Air Marshalls, US Marshalls, and more. It also includes, although to a lesser extent, various stage actors in the expanding security theater such as TSA personnel. The main mission of the Praetorian Class is to keep the order of the day. This requires displaying an intimidating presence in their interactions with the Economic Class.”
“Members of the Praetorian Class are typically recruited from the Economic Class and usually from the lower socio-economic spectrum, which offers them an opportunity for personal and professional gain that otherwise might be out of their reach. Early on in the training and indoctrination process, a strong emphasis is placed on teamwork and advancing the welfare of the team above the individual. While independent thought is never overtly discouraged, the fact is that questioning authority and failing to display complete loyalty to the team results in censure, shunning and even expulsion. Naturally, the recruit learns in short order which behavior is rewarded and responds accordingly. This forges a lifelong, unbreakable bond between the brothers-in-arms. This bond can be observed when people proudly display unit insignia and decorations decades after their departure from service.”
Assuming the Praetorian Class thesis is correct ( and FM has disputed this thesis ) then 4GW would entail using this analysis somehow to negate the factors upon which the Praetorian class depends or – less likely – to change or co-opt its behavior. Note in particular that this article cites a relationship between the Praetorian Class and the Economic Class. This relationship also could be a point of attack.
This is, of course, just a thesis. There could be others. However, it would be unproductive to debate this thesis unless we had another one with which to contrast it.
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Those examples of 4gw have different demographics. Blacks at 15% are more like ME Christians demographically.
DaShui,
Good point! I was not showing any broad similarities, just contrasting failure with success.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
Very good analysis!
It’s sobering to read about 4GW … and it’s also sobering to realize that yes, some of those “conspiracy guys” are becoming right.
What police department in the US has tanks?
Major Marginal,
What laypeople call “tanks” in fact light armored vehicles. Massive, with large guns (in terms of policing). In terms of impact on civilians they are tanks.
I’m finding the concept of 4GW fascinating, however, I’m curious, has anyone asserted that it is a phenomenon of democracy? From what I can gather Lind seems to repeatedly criticize democracy, however does not seem to connect the two explicitly? From my non-military orientated perspective, 4GW seems symptomatic of a cost imposed by media and public perception which is directly correlated with death and military success. An example of this would include the current Gaza situation in which Israeli attacks equate to political costs which result in the attacks needing to be stopped.
Chris,
4GW is the dominant form of war in our era. Brought to maturity by Mao, its techniques were used in dozens of wars to free colonies from Western nations. For more about it see the links at the end of this post.
I recommend starting here, and reading some of the links: http://fabiusmaximus.com/2007/12/03/arrows-in-the-eagles-claw-ii-4gw-analysts/
Hi, I have already read the link. From my understanding, Lind et al saw 4GW as a modern affair, and not derived from Mao?
The issue seems to me to be misunderstood, largly due to fuzzy understanding of decolonisation (due to constant anti-racist propaganda) and the political situation in the USA and greater international community. For example, the colonial wars of idependence were not won by the locals (not including vietnam -both times). The independence movements were a result of left wing agitation and US pressure which forced the issue on purpose. Without this pressure from leftists and the USA the colonies would prob still be in place. These were really internal political affairs. The formula is simple – leftists encourage revolt (numerous peoples liberation fronts in every colony), the government trys to deal with the revolt, then the leftists and relevent sections of the government/media/civil service/academia impose so much political costs on the government for dealing with the revolt that the government can’t resolve it. The Algerian war of independence is an embarising example in that the French put down the rebellion, but then were forced to lose because of internal politcs. 4gw is basicly real enemy forces co-opting this system is it not? Military defeat due to political impotence as a result of democratic dynamics?
Chris,
Lind is a partisan, and so writes in terms of good guys and bad guys. It is a colorful account suitable for a mass American audience incapable of seeing the world except thru such filters.
For a clearer picture of modern war see Martin van Creveld’s work.
hats off and salutes to Capt Ron Johnson and the Governor for intervening to bring a more representative law enforcement. It is apparent the local police Force needs replacement and to be held accountable. Kdog sends
@editor. I have read Creveld work. It’s worth noting that 4GW derived from Van Creveld’s study of the decline of the state – as if it is a systemic issue. I mean, note your current discussion of Ferguson. Isn’t it interesting that your blog has linked 4GW to race “justice” issues? It’s almost as if subconsciously the connection has been made. I mean, here (in Ferguson) is an attempt by the state to impose its monopoly of violence which is/ has been thwarted by media hysteria and democratic dynamics, which is identical in its structure to the state monopoly of violence being thwarted in foreign affairs by the very same dynamic. This is identical to the Gaza situation and the Israelis inability to resolve the issue due to – you guessed it – social justice warriors, media and democratic dynamics making the political cost too high. 4GW would then become in effect, insurgents(non state actors) exploiting the democratic states democracy and media to make it impossible for the state to assert its monopoly of violence. In short – democratic necrosis.
What is the risk of a non-oppressive democracy – like say New Zealand – of sucumbing to 4GW? People that are treated like shit will naturally fight back.
Joao,
That was one of Captain Kirk’s commonly used inspiring lines: people are not meant to be slaves, and arise and fight.
History shows this to be quite false. Oppressed people are often quiet and obiedient. And when they do fight back, it is often with futile peasants’ protests.
4gw is a useful tool, but numbers and circumstances weigh heavily in the circumstances. As do moral factors. The West’s colonies broke away as they had many moral and physical factors on their side. 4gw in an internal struggle (such as for civil rights) has more limited means and ends — more difficult to assess odds of success.
Re New Zealand — who would wage 4GW against NZ?
@joao P. Braganca – I would say 100%. They’re already doing it and they have no direct involvement in Gaza.