We ARE Fighting

Present tense. Very, very tense.

Nine months before the coming election I posted We’re Gonna Fight and I followed it up two months later with November’s Civil War Referendum. I stuck a worthy label on it four months ahead of the election - we’re having a Snivel War.

This is a fairly subjective thing, but I think the time has come to say …

We Are Fighting

The two things that trigger civil conflict, which you’d know if you’d read How Civil Wars Start, are anoncracy, that danger zone between democracy and dictatorship, and factionalization. Both signs are plentiful, you don’t need to look far to find examples.

We’re six weeks aware from the election and I think it’s now indisputable - it has already begun.

I recently, after a third instance of being confused with Alex Jones, rebranded this site, in Farewell Infowar, Hello Netwar. We’re not going to see a 21st century bombardment of Fort Sumter, Civil War 2.0 will be a conflict like those described in Arquilla & Ronfeldt’s Networks and Netwars.

Let’s take a look at the combat reports that have come in thus far …

Attention Conservation Notice:

How Civil Wars Start showed why it was inevitable, The Insurgent’s Dilemma gives us the broad strokes of what it will look like, and Networks and Netwars is the first of a series of books that offer various takes on 21st century conflict. This will just be a recitation of news that shows “netwar” activity here in the U.S., some thoughts on the factions involved, and one of those rare “fundraiser” things.

Netwar 2024:

What news do we have that shows the amorphous, distributed activity of the type described in Networks and Netwars? This is the stuff I caught on my own.

USDOJ Election Threats Task Force page. June 2021

Poll of Election Officials Finds Concerns About Safety, Political Interference 1 May 2024

Trump assassination attempts 13 July 2024 & 15 Sept 2024

Election officials prepare for threats with panic buttons, bulletproof glass 17 Sept 2024

Threats to Local US Election Officials Are Rising, and More Workers Are Quitting 23 Sept 2024

As threats grow, funds for election security see a squeeze 24 Sept 2024

That this was going to happen has been obvious for some time, but we can use January 6th, 2021 as a starting point if you’d like. The election threat task force has been ready since June of 2021.

“But the assassination attempts are aimed at Trump!”

Perhaps a trifle surprising at first, but Trump has drawn the most unhinged people he could find, and as part of their radicalization there are schisms. While the center of the threat to our democracy IS Christian Nationalism, Heathens & Heretrics was an inventory of the various parts of that world that are NOT going to just get in line behind whomever Leonard Leo thinks should be in charge.

Not as easily cited are the details of the threats against political campaigns, election offices, and workers I see reported via Substack. Bullets flying at the Pima county Democratic party HQ twice this month. Key counties in swing states where they’re forced to follow biohazard protocol when opening the mail - two or three envelopes of flour or powdered sugar weekly have put everyone on edge. That appears to be systemic - a national disruption campaign, but it’s unknown if there’s a point source directing and funding it, or if it’s stygmergy. My money is on the latter, on the network threat expressing itself.

Stochastic Terrorism As A Service offers a prior perspective on where the domestic violent extremist engagement ladders are kept. Noisome chan culture web sites, like 8chan and Kiwi Farms, for those who don’t have the time to click through.

Better Sources:

I know three sources that produce daily and monthly summaries, as well as one that does in depth on their schedule studies regarding America’s violent right.

The best daily feed on extremist events in my Inoreader is Teddy Wilson’s Radical Reports. Militia Watch has a monthly roundup that focuses a bit further up the food chain. Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights produces in depth reporting on white nationalist and have done so for years.

Antifa is an ideology, not a structured group, they’ve been responsible for just two murders in the thirty one years since the label began to be used, but if you must, Unicorn Riot is as close as one gets to a newsletter from that area. There are some antifascist groups that use Action Network, but also among them you find IREHR, DailyKos, where I also write as nealr, and national labor unions; you can’t assume ZOMG LOCATED ANTIFA HQ!@!@!, it’s just a center & left tool.

Heterogeneity:

So there will not be a formal declaration of war, there won’t be large scale maneuver warfare as depicted in some of last summer’s movie Civil War, and these are the closest things you’re going to see to uniforms.

If you are looking for two “sides”, one with red accents, the other with blue, unless this is your very first article on this Substack, I would suggest that you’ve not been paying attention …

All of them have federal undercover attention. All of them are jockeying for position, for funding; the embers of internal conflict are spread broadly. Law enforcement will seek to fan them just enough to harm the threat network, without causing an outburst.

Factions:

There are groups of factions lined up among each of our two major political parties. This world is fractal in nature - you look closer, you start seeing natural divisions. Understand that there are FOUR major forces at work here.

• Democratic party - labor, women, immigrants, LGBT, reality based science

• Republican party - oligarchs, religious sects, xenophobia, rural areas

• Independents - non party members who still sort into Dem/GOP for elections.

• Accelerationists - End of days nutters, Aquarian age nutters, Qanon, etc

The national Teamsters did not endorse Kamala Harris, while all the state level swing state organizations did. Earlier this year there was a concern that labor was going to cleave to Trump in the misguided view that his America first rhetoric meant they would benefit. That seems to be passing.

Always There Are Two, about a month ago, was the first time I’ve addressed the U.S. attempted reassortment while maintaining our bipolar two party system. This puzzles our European friends, but we’re never trapped in endless “forming a government” exercises. The flip side of that coin is that when we get far enough off balance, we stagger towards civil conflict, as we are doing now.

The Accelerationists are NOT political independents, nor are they anarchists - they’re societal or species level nihilists, so you can feel free to deride them as chaos monkeys if you’d like. The Boogaloo Bois, those fellows up above in Hawaiian shirts, do not have a party platform, they just plan to burn it all to the ground, on some vague notion that whatever comes after that will be better. There are radicalized environmentalists who would not only agree with but perhaps even work with Boogs in order to trigger some sort of blowout, each having dramatically different ideas of the future this would bring.

The Republicans, for whom I was a ticket voter until twenty years ago, have come unzipped from objective reality. The deny science, they deny demographics, and their so called plans tend to be nonsensical. I feel the Democrats are also a bit adrift; they talk a good game, but I don’t think they’re ready to face down the existential threats our species faces either. The independents are equally scornful of both and I guess I’m a blue tinged Indy these days., albeit quite hawkish on international issues.

Faster And Faster:

The wildcards are the Accelerationists. Whether ideologues or psychopaths, these are the folks that will yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater … in their home town … after seeing people they know in the audience. The two Trump shooters were both loose screws, but they came out of the same motley box of spare parts. Hopeless, confused lone wolves are law enforcement’s worst nightmare. Such people go off the rails of their own private spur line with little to no warning, then we’re treated to weeks of the media salivating over details of manifestos never published and nearly random social media pronouncements.

These agonized, performative “investigations” never produce results. In fact, I’d argue the ritual is meant to soothe, not enlighten. A classic example is Cesar Sayoc, the MAGA bomber. Just a random madman, right? Unless, of course, you had the tools and skills to track down the guy who radicalized him in the first place … which we did back in 2019, and which has NEVER been properly reported. I long ago grew weary of showing this to reporters, accepted things as they are, and only the FBI has seen it.

AI could maybe spot these people. The problem is that the majority of AI in action today would be seeking to weaponize them. This “gap analysis”, spotting lone wolves moving via their absence, was something we talked about quite a bit at Project VIGILANT, now fifteen years in the past.

Conclusion:

What can society do about this?

First things first, competing corporate social media AIs benefit from engagement, and they facilitate that best when facilitating outrage and reactivity. A melange of competing foreign intel and private extremist AIs are striving to make it worse. California is leading the way here, having just passed laws against addictive algos affecting children.

This is the direction things need to go, but it’s way too little, far too late for 2024.

What can the government do?

The combination of 1st Amendment protections for individuals and CDA Section 230 protection for corporations make for an impossible tangle. The outer limit of provocative speech was set in Brandenburg v. Ohio, a ruling made five months before the first internet connection was ever created.

So we can’t preempt trouble, we have to wait till it’s a roaring wildfire before there is any sort of tool that is applicable. This is not clear, but it would likely happen under the authority of the Insurrection Act.

What can YOU do?

You’re reading this site, which is a good start.

Some of you are following portions of the instructional posts, preparing yourself for what is next. Please be careful.

There are a lot of civil society NGOs in this area. Donating is worthy, but with this caveat - those people who are just admiring the problem, putting out studies without putting in work, producing those studies becomes more of a needless burden with each passing day. Objective reality and the rule of law are in mortal danger; things originating from the perspective that they are inviolate natural rights, and all we need do is to fact check/accurately characterize in order to prevail … that is not how things are, it’s not how things have been for quite some time.

---

I don’t pester you guys with constant “upgrade to paid” stuff. Among the paid 34 there are 28 people I comped because we talk one the phone, so that $667 comes from just half a dozen. Being transparent, from among those 28 comped I’ve received about twelve times that $667 amount directly over the last year, as well as hardware contributions in the form of Pinky & Brain, an iPhone XR, and an iPad Pro.

Based on Substack norms, reaching a five digit income is pretty amazing, even more so because it comes from just 3.4% of subscribers, which I am told is a normal rate for this platform. Thanks, people.

But looking at it from the other side, that’s about what I should make in a month living here in the Bay Area given my work background. Just yesterday I closed on something that will carry me through Q4 of 2024, but on an extremely bare bones basis. I could really use any of the following:

• Tips on additional commercial work.

• Subscribers at the newly reduced $5/month or $55/year rate.

• Gift cards for Amazon.

• Monero to this wallet: 858uLdDd15gMj6atCvLdczbyaj4jiQc4ahpSHkgq4jE9hu9Aw1Md866Q13eraRS17T59vXL1XzGkD6NwKY2MuzMzMMNqmdB

• I would be happy to receive additional slightly dated hardware.