08-07-2020, 07:34 PM
(08-07-2020, 02:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:Your evidence for the Boogaloo Bois “partnering” with Trump’s “secret police”? I’m not saying such a collaboration doesn’t exist. Indeed, it wouldn’t shock me very much at all. But can you point us to a source?(08-07-2020, 02:17 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I think back to the Weather Underground in the Sixties setting off bombs everywhere, even on a college campus. They managed to pull off quite a few bombings before going into hiding. Here’s my point: a guerilla group (Boogaloo Boys, let’s say) operating today would find it much, much harder to organize and map out strategy, communicate throughout the organization, and execute armed violence without being detected by the increasingly sophisticated surveillance of the state. Guerillas with their AR-15s might inflict significant casualties on their targets at first. But once their cells are located, they would quickly be dispatched by the superior tactics and weaponry of law enforcement and/or the American military. And who or what would the guerillas target exactly? Minorities? That’s the “wet dream” of a paramilitary group like the Boogaloo Boys—to start a race war. Good luck with that; our population is too diverse and our law enforcement and military too integrated to have that notion get very far.
No, more likely than guerilla warfare is the no-less-palatable prospect of more Lone Wolf attacks which, given our saturated gun culture, is a hairy thought too. In short, anarchic violence.
Finally, America is still very much a capitalist nation, and anything or anyone that seriously threatens that political economy with widespread violence will quickly be squashed—by either a Biden or Trump administration. Barring outright societal collapse, of course.
Overall, I agree. I might supplement the analysis a bit.
The Boogaloo Bois are partnering with Trump’s secret police to promote violence. They might have trouble using this tactic against someone who listens to the people, who doesn’t deliberately match the violence with violence, who gives the protestors what they are protesting for.
Targeting infrastructure hasn’t happened. Stuff like wind turbines, power lines and bridges are spread out enough that they will be very hard to defend. I thought at the time of September 11th that someone would shift targets, but they went after highly symbolic office space. Good luck running the US out of office space, but it was enough to bring the US into the Middle East. Still, this form of violence just is not taking place. It doesn’t seem to be glamorous enough for the average terrorist.
I have heart the Boogaloos Bois are deliberately decentralizing to avoid surveillance or infiltration. As much as they can, each cell works on its own. This seems prudent these days. Put as little as possible on line or shared. As an approach it makes something bigger hard to do.
Would decentralizing a paramilitary group into cells necessarily avoid surveillance or infiltration for very long? So often, individual members of Islamist cells perpetrating attacks in Europe were already on the “radar“ of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but could not be arrested until legal hurdles had been satisfied. Too late by then, oftentimes. Unless authorities decide to bend or flout “the rules.” We certainly have ample precedent for that here. Edward Snowden pretty much pulled back the curtain on the warrantless data mining of Americans’ electronic communications after 9/11. As for infiltration of paramilitaries, those of us old enough to remember the Sixties do recall how the FBI’s COINTELPRO illegally and—yet effectively—planted snitches and agents provocateurs inside radical groups deemed as threats to our national security. Among other violations of activists’ civil rights, such nefarious domestic espionage led to the veritable assassination of Black Panther revolutionary Fred Hampton in the 60s, soon to be dramatized in a major motion picture, by the way.
If street violence does erupt in the wake of the 2020 election, even running gun battles with the police or National Guard, I still contend that such lawlessness will be met with overwhelming force. Whoever is Commander in Chief will have ever more sophisticated surveillance tools at his disposal: drones and facial recognition (TBD) coming on stream, not to mention cameras of every kind everywhere by which to document whatever can later be used as evidence in court or before a tribunal, if it comes to that. I just don’t see how disparate paramilitary groups—each differing from the rest either in composition or ideology—can coalesce into a unified guerrilla force with a common goal, such as overthrowing the US government or, God forbid, creating a white nationalist state.
Violence might very well unfold in the wake of a disputed 2020 election, should the outcome—or court verdict—inflame the political passions even more. And if malicious actors were to seize on the moment to instigate some kind of war, I don’t think the American people as a whole would tolerate—much less, stomach—it for very long. We are, more than ever, a visual people. Images of bloodshed and brutality might play on TV and the movies, but as for cameraphone videos of the real damn thing happening on the streets of America...well, whatever kind of war occurs, it won’t last long. Besides, it would be too disruptive of the commerce on which we all rely, and COVID-19 has disrupted our lives enough as it is. Frankly, fighting off this pesky pandemic may well exhaust any collective energy we have left to wage any kind of war, at least for the foreseeable future.
Bob, I’ve heartily agreed with you all along that it would take a “spiral of violence” sufficiently bloody and prolonged to lead on to the kind of 4T war America has fought in the past—civil or otherwise. Our global battle against this pandemic (or the next)...maybe that’s the “real war” in this 4T. That, or else the oncoming climate catastrophe which, let’s face it, has the potential to exact a greater human toll than any war ever fought. What if that is the true existential crisis we’re all up against—here and around the world? Russia and China, too. Come to think of it, America may never have a better opportunity than now to pursue detente with our enemies, to mutually disarm—or at least deescalate tensions—while there is still time to re-direct global resources away from militaries and toward our common enemy—climate change. (Sigh). One can always hope.
I’ll be signing off for awhile. Go strictly read-only. You and others have given me much to ponder, as always, whatever our differences. I could use a little break from 4T rumination, maybe go fishing, and save my emotional capital for after the election. See you all on the other side (of November 3rd, that is). If we get a new administration, maybe we can shut down this incarnation of the forum, start over with version 3.0. Just a thought...