The rules of war that apply to states are also binding upon anti-state revolutionaries as well. Those who undertake the task of a war of liberation against a tyrannical state must conduct themselves according to the highest standards. Every possible precaution should be taken to avoid injury or damage to the person or property of innocents. Persons taken as prisoners of war, from the highest to the lowest, should be treated as well as conditions of war permit. Military actions should be pursued only when there is a reasonable chance for success and when there is some genuine strategic or defensive purpose involved. Those who involve themselves in such actions must be prepared to face full responsibility for their actions and fully consider the very likely consequences. Execution, lengthy terms of imprisonment, or death in combat are the frequent fates of those who engage in armed struggle against the state. Generally, revolutionaries are worth more to their movement alive and in civil society rather than dead or in prison. So caution is obviously of the utmost importance.
A campaign of armed struggle against the state would likely take place over a lengthy period of time and involve several distinct stages. Different types of armed struggle would be employed at each stage in the fight. The earliest stages would primarily involve acts of tyrannicide or strategic bombings carried out by individuals or small groups. Larger guerrilla actions against broader targets would follow. The final stage would involve popular insurrection and militia self-defense. It must be kept in mind that any discussion of these matters is entirely theoretical. There is simply no way to predict all of the many variables that would factor into an actual revolutionary situation. There is no “operators’ manual” for the prosecution of an armed struggle campaign. Individual situations must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and individual persons must rely on their own value judgments. The purpose of this article is not to provide instruction or give orders as to how an armed struggle effort should be carried out. Rather, the goal is to construct a theoretical model of what a hypothetical armed struggle in the United States would look like. Therefore, what follows is intended for education and discussion only and is certainly not intended to be any sort of “game plan,” “instructions,” orders,” or “advice” for potential revolutionaries to follow.
Revolutions are never made by the majority. When the American war of independence from Great Britain began, only about five percent of the population of the colonies thought secession from the British Empire to be a good idea. By the time independence had been won, only about thirty percent had come over to the side of the revolutionaries. To use a more recent example, only about five percent of the US population participated in the movement to oppose the US war in Vietnam. The complaint of most Americans was that the government was not fighting the war even harder than they were. Yet the efforts of this minority of protestors and antiwar activists severely weakened the government’s war efforts. Those who seek to depose an established regime will always be in the minority during the initial stages of the struggle. Most people prefer security and familiarity to sweeping changes in the social order. Most people acquire their notions of right and wrong from cues taken from peers or perceived authority figures, so revolutionaries are always initially perceived as criminals or troublemakers. This is particularly true of revolutionaries who take up arms against an established regime. Typically, when an armed struggle commences, the revolutionaries are frowned upon by the general public who regard them as extremists, terrorists, and fanatics. The state will seek to engage in further repression for the sake of its own preservation and to expand its own power, and the general public will acquiesce. However, the repression eventually expands to the point where “ordinary” citizens start becoming the victims of the repression, thereby generating an increased loss of public confidence in the state.
An interesting example of this is the American War on Drugs. This war has been going on in various forms for nearly a century. However, the current level of intensity of this war has its roots in the Reagan administration’s police state ambitions during the 1980s and has been continued by subsequent administrations. Initially, most Americans enthusiastically supported the drug war as is common when the state targets a socially disapproved of scapegoat for persecution. However, the increased repression involved in the drug war began to spill over into other areas of society. The militarization of law enforcement traceable to the drug war led to the attacks on gun owners and religious minorities and Waco and Ruby Ridge. Asset forfeiture laws created as a means of fighting the drug war have subsequently been used against other persons caught in the web of federal regulatory agencies. This state of affairs has generated a wider dissatisfaction with and hostility to the federal regime among many of the same population groups who were initially strong supporters of the drug war and still are in some cases. It can be plausibly argued that the creation of the militia movement, for example, is directly traceable to the drug war as it was the spillover effects of the drug war that led to the antigovernment militancy of those who formed the militia movement.
The purpose of the early stages of armed struggle is to wear down and weaken the regime by disrupting state activities, psychologically paralyzing state functionaries, removing individual tyrants, and generating a loss of public confidence in the regime. The American regime is largely an oligarchy of transnational corporate interests, career bureaucrats, and professional politicians. However, these interests would be powerless without the various layers of stooges whom they employ to carry out their directives. The symbolic assassination of a head of state is strategically useless as such characters are nothing more than easily replaceable figureheads in modern state systems. Instead, direct engagement of those involved in the day-to-day “nuts and bolts” operation of the machinery of statist oppression is likely to be the most fruitful course of action. Without the vast armies of police, district attorneys, judges, prison administrators, media propagandists, inspectors, regulators, and tax collectors who do their dirty work, the plutocrats, media bosses, and politicians would be powerless. The system’s stooges are generally more easily located and eliminated than the oligarchs themselves. Wearing down the state’s oppressive machinery through a war of attrition could paralyze the ruling class politically.
Again, it must be remembered that military actions against the state should be strategic or defensive rather than symbolic if they are going to be effective. For example, not all judges are equally tyrannical. Physical elimination of the most tyrannical judges would have the dual effect of curbing the worst excesses of the abuse of state power through removing individual perpetrators and providing serious psychological incentive to other judges not to cross certain lines. If more moderate, mild-mannered judges were to observe some of their more tyrannical colleagues simply disappear Jimmy Hoffa-style, then they might certainly consider becoming less tyrannical themselves. The same is true of the police. Indiscriminate, random attacks on uniformed patrol cops would be ineffective as cops would have no means of knowing how to alter their behavior to avoid becoming the target of such an attack. Some cops are relatively honest and decent. Others are scum who engage in police brutality and the framing of suspects. If individual cops of this type were to be physically eradicated their less heinous comrades would know what types of behavior they should avoid.
Most serious, organized state repression is not carried out by ordinary uniformed patrol cops. Instead, this repression is the domain of special police units such as SWAT teams, narcotics, firearm, gang enforcement and vice units, political police (formerly called “red squads”), and federal paramilitary forces such as the FBI, DEA, and BATF. In an armed struggle campaign against state tyranny, all police agents of these types would be legitimate military targets. Mere membership in such units indicates a willingness to disregard the rights of others. The identification, tracking, and elimination of such individuals would necessarily be a primary component of the armed struggle effort. Another effective tactic might be the destruction of the facilities that headquarter tyran
nical government agencies. Such objectives could even be achieved without the loss of life. The Weather Underground bombings of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not involve even a single injury. The Weathermen would plant a bomb and then give notice in time for the building in question to be evacuated. So the bombing of buildings owned by government or corporate enemies need not involve massacres of the Oklahoma City variety.
As the rebellion spread and gained more converts and recruits, larger guerrilla operations against enemy targets would become possible. Raids conducted against police stations, courthouses, the headquarters of enemy government agencies and corporate entities, prisons, media centers, legislative buildings, and, eventually, military bases would serve the purpose of disrupting the day-to-day operations of the system for the purpose of rendering the state machinery dysfunctional. Police stations that constantly have to been on guard in case of a guerrilla attack will have fewer personnel and resources with which to conduct investigations, arrests, stings, entrapment schemes, infiltration of political organizations, etc. Court operations that are consistently disrupted by such attacks will have less time to herd human chattel into the prison-industrial complex. Raids on prisons resulting in the freeing of prisoners, the elimination of administrative personnel, and the destruction of facilities will prove quite costly to prison-industrial profiteers. Some corporate officers and government agents would no doubt be inspired to resign from their jobs in the face of guerrilla attacks. Assaults on media centers would likely throw a wrench in the propaganda machinery of the ruling class. During the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, probation and parole offices were attacked and their records destroyed. Police precincts were similarly attacked. Actions by large groups need not even involve violence to be effective. For example, in urban areas where corporations, elite civic organizations, and class interests work to repress the economic activities or civil liberties of the poor, a nighttime torchlight march of masked crowds of poor people and dissidents through gentrified districts or outside the homes or offices of leading class enemies would no doubt be somewhat effective at intimidating and deterring such individuals and groups.
The most important phase of the armed struggle would occur during the days when the state is on the verge of collapsing. By this time the regime will have lost credibility in the eyes of the general public and large popular revolutionary organizations will have previously been organized. The most effective revolutionary strategy would probably be to seize political power at the local or regional level, and then secede from the central government. A number of past revolutionary experiences are instructive as to what kinds of scenarios might come about in a revolutionary situation. The American Revolution of 1776 came about through the radicalization of colonial governments and a declaration of independence from the British crown. Similarly, the election of hard-line separatists or revolutionaries to local town councils and regional assemblies could result in a new large scale secessionist project resembling the colonial secession from Britain or the Southern secession in the days leading up to the beginning of the American Civil War. The Spanish Revolution of 1936 involved an insurrection by popular militias. The Libyan Revolution of 1969 came about through a coup instigated by radicals who had infiltrated the military. The anti-Communist revolution in Eastern Europe of 1989 occurred largely through passive resistance, popular non-compliance, and the loss of state legitimacy.
Armed struggle against the US regime would likely commence following several waves of mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, strikes, riots, formal declarations of independence by regions and localities, and direct armed confrontations with the state of the Waco variety. The armed forces of the revolutionary struggle would be drawn from a variety of sources, including militias created by popular organizations ranging from labor unions to churches to gun clubs, mercenaries hired by sympathetic groups and individuals, public militias organized by sympathetic local governments, defector units within the state’s armed services, local and state militia units, sheriff ’s departments and National Guard that have defected or been redirected by superiors, armed outlaw groups like street gangs, motorcycle clubs, or prison gangs, and troops donated by sympathetic foreigners, perhaps even foreign governments.
Three overriding principles would have to be adhered to during the course of the struggle. A primary strategy of the government would be to attempt to crush the revolution by “starving out” the opposition. This would include the shutting down of utility, transportation, and communications systems within areas that served as strongholds for the revolutionary forces. It would be essential that in the days, months, and years leading up to the collapse of the central government the revolutionary and popular organizations begin preparing for such a scenario. Large and readily available supplies of food, medical gear, clothing, heating and energy sources, vehicles and vehicle maintenance equipment, fuel, communications equipment, ammunition and weapons would be essential. The ideal weapons for popular militias would be those that are easily maintained, transported, and resupplied with ammunition. This would include semi-automatic handguns, high-powered sniper rifles with a good scope, and ordinary shotguns sawed off as low as possible. Grenades and landmines stolen from the military or provided by foreign sources would also be quite useful. The government’s arsenal of atomic weapons would be useless in combating a domestic insurgency but the government would likely employ the use of chemical weapons and poison gases. Any sort of equipment that could be used to counter potential attacks of this type would be important.
It would also be vital that the revolutionary forces be organized as a decentralized militia confederation. This would be necessary in order to prevent the recentralization of power following the defeat of the state, safeguard against potential treachery at the top, and avoid the potential for the government to crush the revolution by “cutting off the head.” The revolutionary forces would not need to “win” a civil war against the regime. They would simply have to “not lose.” It would be futile and foolish to confront the state’s armed forces directly. The correct military strategy would be to wear down the government’s forces through a war of attrition of the Viet Cong/mujahideen variety. The American colonists achieved victory through a strategy of this type. The Southern independence forces lost the civil war of 1861–65 largely because of their efforts to carry out a traditional military campaign which they were not equipped or qualified to do. Let’s learn from their mistakes.
[1] Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1966), 8–9, 62–63.
[2] Ibid., 59–127.
[3] Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991).
[4] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948).
[5] Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 9–10, 43–44, 24–28, 40–45.
[6] Ibid., 9–14.
[7] Ibid., 132–58.
[8] Ibid., 166–73.
[9] Gay, The Enlightenment, 63–64, 103, 105, 407–19.
[10] Werner J. Dannhauser, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed., ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 829–31.
[11] Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader, ed. and trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 202–3.
[12] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., trans. John Lees (New York: Howard Fertig, 1968 [1899]).
[13] Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1948).
[14] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage Books, 1965 [1961]).
[15] Ian Buruma, “The Anarch at Twilight,” New York Review of Books 40, no. 12 (June 24, 1993); Hilary Barr, “An Exchange on Ernst Jünger,” New York Review o
f Books 40, no. 21 (December 16, 1993).
[16] Thomas R. Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 1–7; Gerhard Loose, Ernst Jünger (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974), preface.
[17] Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 9–26; Loose, Ernst Jünger, 21.
[18] Loose, Ernst Jünger, 22; Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 27–37.
[19] Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 49.
[20] Ibid., 57.
[21] Ibid., 61.
Attack the System Page 31
