The first objective of a coup, uprising, insurrection, or revolution is to gain control of critical infrastructure. Plotters study maps of the capital to chart routes to television stations, military bases, and universities. They take precautions to prevent the military from intervening to protect the government. They move fast before popular resistance to the coup is allowed to organize and take shape. For a revolution to succeed, free speech must be curtailed. Judges, the military, and police must be intimidated into neutrality or joining the cause.
Could it happen in the United States? Has it already? One would need the chief law enforcement agency of the United States, the FBI, to submit to the mob. The mighty U.S. military must be politicized and intimidated into abandoning the president. We’re reminded of the February Revolution of Russia, during which power changed hands as a result of military and police figuratively taking a knee to the protestors. Mobs conquering police stations and assaulting cops would set examples sufficient to frighten those charged with maintaining civil order.
In America, social media would need to be yoked to the cause as an indispensable tool of silencing critics. Publications would be easily intimidated by threats against their ad revenue. If the mob sees traditional media stepping out of line, a news van could be torched to set an example. Statues of historical figures could be toppled as a powerful symbol of the revolution’s victory over the past. Territory would need to be captured and held.
Look around. America’s cultural revolution appears already to have seized control everywhere and all at once.
Mao-style political educators are fanning out across government and private businesses to lead “discussions,” in which people fearful for their jobs repeat slogans or remain silent. Purges have begun. Criticizing the revolution, as the Chinese might have said, “making counterrevolutionary statements,” can get you fired. Fear is spreading faster than coronavirus. Police kneel and grovel to the mob. Children are taught to be ashamed of their birth circumstances and publicly apologize for how they were born.
Revolution came in two stages in Russia. Academics and progressive liberals dominated the February Revolution with endless philosophical debates over egalitarian ideals borrowed from the French and American revolutions. The leaders of the provisional government opposed violent revolution and talked about things like equality before the law and the rights of unions to organize and strike.
While the utopians and academics debated, the Bolsheviks amassed guns. In October, Lenin led a comprehensive second coup in which armed thugs easily brushed aside the idealists. The academic debates were just a distraction.
“The only real power comes out of a long rifle,” Stalin once quipped. These historical events come to mind after watching the Seattle warlord Raz Simone in the free territory of CHOP (a.k.a. “CHAZ”) distribute expensive AR-15 rifles to insurgents he barely knows. Just a few weeks ago, Simone was using Airbnb to raise beer money. Now he is building an armed resistance. The video linked above hints at shadowy benefactors who have showered Raz with so many weapons that he resorts to handing them out to strangers.
Last week’s Supreme Court decision on the patently unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was the figurative equivalent of judicial kneeling.
It’s easy to be critical of the capitulation of Chief Justice John Roberts until one considers the situation from his point of view. Had the court ruled otherwise, the mob might have swarmed past D.C.’s cowering police to storm the Supreme Court. So to save itself, the court ridiculously found that an illegal Obama executive order has more force of law than an election. Fear explains the court’s recent decisions upholding liberal priorities on LGBTQ, gun control, and now illegal immigrants. The justices are human and live and work in Washington, D.C. where rioters recently torched a church sending the clear message, “yesterday’s sacred is today’s kindling.”
As Newt Gingrich notes, “All of this is the result of three generations of brainwashing going back at least to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University of California, San Diego professor who taught young Americans the philosophical foundation of Marxism in the 1960s. As early as 1972, Theodore White was warning that the liberal ideology was becoming a liberal theology and dissent was less and less acceptable to the left.”
Universities have been allowed to indoctrinate our next generation. Narrative replaced knowledge. You can’t test unprovable generalizations about “colonialism,” “white privilege,” and social justice. Students can’t argue or debate the “truth” of political slogans. Either choose to parrot the politics of the professor for an easy “A” or disagree and wear a scarlet “R” for the rest of your academic career.
Digging ourselves out of this mess necessarily involves ending taxpayer subsidies to Maoist hatemongers in the universities who teach grievance and train future revolutionary foot soldiers. Academic freedom should be restored and universities must be forced to stop mob veto of diverse points of view on campus. Unverifiable political dogma should be thrown out of the classroom in favor of real knowledge that can be confirmed or refuted with research and testing. But that’s for the future.
For now, the tools of resistance to tyranny are still at our fingertips: Non-violent disobedience, prayer, speaking out against violence, and refusing to submit to the politicization of everything. They will go too far. They will turn on each other. A little courage will inspire others. America can reclaim her birthright of individual liberty if we persevere.