Weekly Insurgent 11/02/2020
Hey folks! Thanks for signing up for my newsletter, I’ve been really stoked at all the positive feedback I’ve been getting on my work building the Contextual Insurgent Project.
This is your contextual insurgent weekly roundup, where I link you to a selection of the previous week’s previous notable events/articles/tweets and contextualize them with a short analysis drawn from a synthesis of hands-on experience and theoretical knowledge
I’m going to start by plugging a book on antifa that came out last week from the Center for Security Policy. It’s a solid piece that provides great insight in the hard left, with the bonus being I wrote the tactics chapter. That’s 17 information-packed pages laying how antifa operates, drawn from my first-hand experience facing off with them as well as going undercover in the black bloc. There’s also a chapter from a former antifa member and another with detailed breakdown how they finance their operation, so this monograph should be your go-to primer on the topic.
I released two podcasts last week, episode 5 covering Shut Down DC and the so-called “Transition Integrity Project”, and Episode 6 doing a deep dive on Democratic Socialists of America, their history and objectives, and explain the ways they organize and build networks to press for political power.
Episode 5 is a must-listen before the election, because I lay out how they’re organizing for mass, sustained disruption, then explain what you should expect and how you should prepare. Essentially be prepared for at least a month of supply chain disruption if you’re any where near a major urban area, keep your vehicle topped off with fuel, and make sure you have a likeminded group of trustworthy local friends/neighbors you can collaborate with if the worst case scenario pans out.
To be clear I don’t think that sort of outcome is guaranteed, but if you listen to my cited podcast you’ll understand why it think it’s a high-enough likelihood scenario that you should take it into account.
Episode 5:
Episode 6 on the DSA. Listen to this one if you’d like a simple explanation for how the left builds organizations, properly contextualized in a way that provides easy lessons for you to apply in your life.
This next link is a segue onto the topic of radical Islam, specifically a pretty astounding opinion piece in a student paper justifying and excusing violent terrorism. The specific topic is the Charlie Hebdo attack, where 12 employees were killed after the magazine published a caricature of Muhammad. The money quote:
“Let’s not make excuses: The magazine had to have known that there would be a response to their illustrations. Everybody knows that you will get bitten if you poke the bear.”
I linked this piece because it’s something the left does fairly often as well, which is camouflage a threat as an point of argument or debate. Righties have this weird tic sometimes where we get too literal-minded and miss the subtext behind these sorts of statements, which usually is some variation on “gee that’s a nice business/free speech/life you have there, be a shame if something happened to it.”
https://georgiastatesignal.com/free-speech-is-not-an-excuse-for-malice/
This is tool for journalists to help them in their research, it’s also a great guide for things like uncovering the real identity of anonymous online accounts. Reading over this will help you in your own research, as well as give you a good idea of what tactics leftists and journalists may use against you.
https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-3
These next two links are doxxing prevention guides covering both in real life and online applications, and they complement the verification research guide.
https://hackinghustling.org/doxxing-prevention-harm-reduction-training/
Many conservatives think lefty organizing is an solely urban phenomenon, and they’re often surprised when they find out there’s a long history of effective rural organizing.
This is a great link about a group of neophyte rural organizers and the lessons they learned along the way. This pairs well with my Episode 6 DSA podcast, and it’s worth it to read and listen to them together if you can.
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/indivisible-rural-resistance-stories-field
This following tweet is from last week’s riot in Philadelphia, you can see a sizable contingent of poorly-equipped police break be chased from a neighborhood by rioters. I’m convinced we’ll see something similar happen again this week during the essentially-guaranteed post-election riots.
It’s really hard to express the magnitude of the watershed moment that was the capture and burning of the Minneapolis PD 3rd precinct, but in my opinion almost every incident this year where LE were beaten back and/or overrun can be traced back to teaching aspiring rioters that such a thing was possible -and that they had a good chance of getting away with it.
The link below is the organization aligned with ShutdownDC, but with a national focus. Pay attention to the similar website design and color palette between this site and ShutdownDC, which is likely due to being produced by the same people or using a premade plug and play template for activists.
I keep talking about building onramps for people and removing obstacles, part of doing that is providing infrastructure and toolkits to make things easier. Go peep the website and check for events in your area, so hopefully you won’t be blindsided if riots break out.
My analysis is the greatest likelihood of riots (outside of DC) will be in the rustbelt swing states, especially if the vote tabulation is close. This will amply strategic pressure on the democratic state governments while individuals with the Transition Integrity Project work on convincing them to stop counting or send a different slate of electors, which is something TIP has already said they plan on doing.
https://protecttheresults.com/
This link discusses the polling issues this year, and you might find it informative. My opinion is shy Trump voters are more likely to be in cohorts especially vulnerable to cancel culture and social pressure, which could help explain some of Trump’s polling weakness with college-educated surburban whites.
Something else people often don’t realize is the 2016 popular vote results were within the margin of error of the final national polls, it was the battleground state polls that were dramatically wrong -up to 10 points for some places.
I think Trump is going to dramatically overperform expectations, but I do think the electoral college results will be close. I’m leaning towards Helmut Norporth’s 276 EC prediction, but we’ll know soon enough won’t we?
In my Episode 6 DSA podcast I talked about resolution 9 they passed, establishing antifascist working groups. This is an informative tweet thread from a DSA member that opposed the resolution, and explains exactly when it means and the liability that goes with it.
I hope you found this weekly roundup useful, and please go vote tomorrow if you haven’t!