Transcription
Hello and good evening, everyone. So we'll go ahead and get started. Everyone, thanks so much for being here tonight. We are going to break down some color revolutions and look at why elements of the left and the far left are planning a color revolution against the incoming Trump Administration.
As a matter of fact, there's one strategy call that is happening right now. One of our teammates from Early Warning Network is sitting through that call right now, and we will have notes for Early Warning Network subscribers. We have notes for members in tomorrow's report. Then there's another one on Friday night that I'll be sitting through, and notes on that will be in our Monday's early morning report.
My name is Mike Shelby. I'm a former intelligence analyst. I got out of the army as a sergeant, which is a non-commissioned officer or NCO. Later, I got into intelligence contracting, both as a soldier and then later as a contractor. I was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, part of every year from 2006 to 2011, so just over three years of total deployment time there. My primary experience was in human intelligence and, as a contractor, biometric targeting. But I'll tell you, I am really fascinated by what's called low-intensity conflict, and that has been my main area of interest really since 2016.
That's when I started tracking far-left movements like Antifa. Back in 2016, I started attending their events and going to their demonstrations—the Black Bloc demonstrations around the country. I have a lot of firsthand knowledge about the far left and all these various groups and movements and, um, really, because of my intelligence background, just a very unique understanding of that threat. You know, I spent so much time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even downtime, even not being deployed, we were looking at insurgencies; we were looking at insurgent groups. One thing I found is that a lot of these far-left groups, they're cell-based, just like an insurgency. So there's a lot of crossover here, and that's another thing that is pretty fascinating to me.
So, at any rate, today I am a low-intensity conflict analyst here at the Early Warning Network, and we will get into that momentarily. In the next roughly 45 minutes or so, you're going to learn about color revolutions, some of the things I expect to see over the next four years here in the United States, some things I believe the far left is going to do, and in many cases going to attempt again, starting really from yesterday and going through 2028.
Now, a color revolution is a unique type of conflict that would be classified as a form of irregular warfare, and it's also referred to as low-intensity conflict—that's what I still call it—but it is a form of actual warfare, and it is every bit as much a revolution as any other kind of revolution. But what makes color revolutions unique is that it is predominantly non-violent. There are almost always large-scale protest movements, and the way they win is by exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities within an existing societal, and especially within an existing government system. I'll talk a lot more about the strategies and tactics later on. But the last point here is that color revolutions use a specific color to represent their ideals—their ideals of freedom and solidarity. Ultimately, ideally, this is a peaceful mass mobilization that often achieves victory over the course of weeks or months. We're not talking about long, dragged-out, very destructive armed conflicts here, over that that are drawn out over the course of years. These things typically take months, sometimes weeks. Yeah, fiery, but mostly peaceful. Listen, there's some really good reasons why people engaged in a color revolution do not want to use violence. We'll talk about that a little bit later on.
To many of you, this may seem counterintuitive, because how is it that unarmed protesters can defeat a standing government that's protected by a military and its intelligence services and the secret police and security forces? Well, well, nonviolent revolutions, including color revolutions, are a lot more common than the average person would actually think. Here's an incomplete list of where color revolutions, or revolutions, both of which are predominantly nonviolent, have been successful. It's a long list; we don't have time to go into all of them. But color revolutions are a form of low-intensity conflict, and that exists in the gray—the gray area—between outright war and outright peace. So it exists beneath the threshold of conventional war. So we're not talking about tanks and bombers—that's high-intensity conflict, like World War II or the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine—but it exists above the threshold of routine peaceful competition. So it's often been said, America, we're not really at war with each other, at least not yet, but we're definitely not at peace with each other. And this is the gray space; this is the gray area between war and peace. And a lot of this goes back to how the left and the right see conflict, or see war. Someone once said that the right views war, or violence, or conflict as a switch: it's either all the way on or it's all the way off. But the left sees conflict as a dial that can be turned up and turned back down and then turned back up as the situation warrants. And that's something that's very unique; it also makes combating it a lot more difficult. So it is—color revolutions are a form of low-intensity conflict. By the way, that low-intensity conflict is really an umbrella term, because that includes everything from violent social movements to terrorism to guerrilla movements, popular revolutions, color revolutions, up to and including insurgency. So all of those types of warfare are low-intensity conflict. It exists beneath the threshold of conventional war; that's the most important thing.
So when we talk about color revolutions, and specifically this manual, which is entitled *From Dictatorship to Democracy*, everyone, I sent out a link—a link—if you don't have it yet, I'm going to send a link after this, and I'll include a link where you can download it. I'll send an email out. When we're talking about color revolutions here, we're really talking about how to topple dictatorial regimes, how to topple dictators, and that's what this book is all about. I can acknowledge that Trump was obviously not a dictator. We live in a federal system; it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Trump to actually become a dictator. There are too many powerful people and too many powerful institutions that would oppose him. And I—I want to say I can understand where these people are coming from; I get—I get their fear. It's just—it's not one of my fears. I just—there's a lot of talk about it; I just don't see Trump being successfully becoming a dictator. I think he would be stopped if he tried, pretty shortly, because no one is going to give him unchecked power. And we live in a federal system. If that does happen, we still have the states. Will he do things the far left dislikes and finds intolerable? Yeah, I hope so; I hope he does. But extreme dislike does not make someone a dictator. And this manual is really written about how to take down dictators, but the principles contained in this manual also apply to taking down politicians or opposing—opposing a government that you dislike. That's the bleed-over there. And this is the big—the hurdle that I think the far left really has to overcome. Number one, they—they have to start creating popular dissatisfaction against a Trump presidency, which is going to be very difficult to do, seeing as how the man won the Electoral College and the popular vote. But that is their—that's really their chief task if they are going to follow this playbook, which I think they will, because you read through it and read this stuff and you're like, that—this was going—going on in 2016, 2017, 18, 19, 20. So to create popular dissatisfaction, they really have to do is create a desire to oppose a Trump administration and then a desire to see him removed from office. And I think there's actually two ways that they could do this. Remember that a decisive victory in a color revolution is not waiting out the clock for four years to allow Trump to implement his domestic policies. I'll be honest, I see a potential future where Trump is—Trump has a similar impact on the United States that Reagan did, where you have this—this long-term kind of secular cycle—secular political cycle—where the country starts to slide, starts to become more conservative. So if you are the far left, if you are the left, you simply cannot fade into irrelevance if that happens. And so I think this is—this may be existential for the far left. You know, you look at US history, and this is really like the third iteration of the far left in this country—the modern far left. You have the anarchists and the socialists back in the 19—you know, you had the Palmer Raids. These violent anarchists mailed a—a basically a pipe bomb to the home of—Palmer, who was—was the attorney general, and—like, he wasn't home, but I think his family was, and—here it blew up in this mailbox, and that—that ruined his week. And before you know—I think in like 1921 or so, 1919 or 21, you get the Palmer Raids, and they go through and they just arrest thousands of these anarchists and socialists, and they deport them back to Europe. They tell Italy and Germany, "We don't want your socialists; we don't want your anarchists. Have them back." And you also had this group called the Socialist Workers Party, which is a revolutionary socialist party. The Communist Party USA was formed in 1919 here in the United States, same year as the—the Communist International. So that was the first iteration of the far left. And then you have the second iteration of the far left, and—listen, basically, they—they were destroyed. The FBI went after CP USA; they went—arrested a bunch of them on tax evasion. The FBI, back when it was an anti-communist organization, they would go—literally, they would go to these people's houses—the members of the Socialist Workers Party—they would go to their parents' house or their girlfriend's house and talk to the—the member's parents or like the parents of the girlfriend and say, "Do you know this guy's a subversive radical? Do you know this—this guy's a communist? Um, do you understand this is what your child's become?" or the girlfriend's parents. And I read this in this one little thing in a book, but basically they said, um, "Do you want your girlfriend—this subversive communist?" And of course the answer is no. So that was the first iteration, and then you have the second iteration of the far left, which was in the 60s and 70s, and that's a lot more well-known—whether underground—and Symbionese Liberation Army and Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. And there's a really great book about that called *Days of Rage*, and in that book, the author, Brian Burrough, cites some FBI statistics: there were 2500 bomb—domestic bombings in the United States in the first 18 months of 1971, in 1972, and then eventually that went away. So I think if you're the far left and you're looking at a Trump administration, you know, you can't ride it away forever. And if Trump really does have a lasting impact on this country like the Reagan presidency did, where you have this—this effectively a shift—a political shift—the far left is looking at irrelevance in the next few years. I do think that—and then the third iteration will recede, and then I don't know—our kids are going to have to deal with the fourth iteration, I guess.
At any rate, there's two ways I see the far left trying to induce a domestic crisis for Trump, and really what they have to do is give people the desire to remove Trump from office. That's a huge challenge, but I think they're going to try to do it; they really don't have a choice. So the first way is to build the perception that Trump is illegitimate, because if you have an illegitimate president, then the next logical conclusion is that he needs to be replaced with someone who is legitimate. And that's really what the Russia hoax and the lawfare and the political warfare and the impeachment were all aimed at—casting Trump as illegitimate and therefore you have to remove him from office. Obviously, that failed in the Senate, but they came really close. And—and you just look at—you look at Trump, and they're talking about Elon Musk and Ron Paul joining the administration in some capacity to pair down government fraud, waste, and abuse. That's a lot of jobs. What's the saying about slaughtering the hog—or the fat hog or something like that? Um, that's a lot of money that's going to disappear from these people's pockets; that's a lot of grift and I'm sure a lot of corruption and backdoor money-making, because the way—you know, the way this—the system works is it's a—you know, lots of people have said this: it is—kind of a benefactor relationship where a politician gets elected, he or she funnels money to all these pet projects for these people, and they get mega-million-dollar contracts and they get grants and they get all sorts of—of stuff. It's a patronage network, and they get all this—they get all this money from the federal government, and then what do they do? They donate some of that money back to the politician and get the politician re-elected. I'm not saying that Trump is like going to be some political savior or anything, but I just think some—he's—he's going to have some very serious people in his administration, and if they are successful at some level—um, we—we'll talk about this a little bit later—but we—we actually may be in like an elite counter-elite situation, which is actually one of the most dangerous things that can happen. We'll get to that later.
The second possible way is that they have to build—the far left has to build up so much domestic opposition that they can—they create popular dissatisfaction and get Americans to demand Trump's resignation, because ultimately they—they want to remove him from office. And they do that through manufacturing crises and then exploiting and amplifying that dissatisfaction. And that's why these mass mobilization protests—the amplification through media coverage—are so important, because they create the common perception of popular dissatisfaction. And I do think that was the intent behind the unrest of 2020. And speaking of the unrest of 2020, they called that a revolutionary rupture—that is—that's a colloquial term on the far left—it was the revolutionary rupture. So when we look at this, especially low-intensity conflict or any kind of revolutionary rupture, we're looking at three different things here. Number one, on the left there, we're looking at fault lines. It was racial in 2020; it was class in—in 2008. So those fault lines—they could be religious, class-based, economic—lots of potential fault lines. And we call these social cleavages, and this is literally where the fabric of society starts to rip. These are the—the tectonic plates that are shifting against each other and creating these tremors. And then we have accelerators of conflict. So how the opposition media covers certain events could accelerate conflict. You can have sporadic violence or specific government policies that raise the temperature—raise the social temperature—and this is when—when we're bringing our pot here to a low boil. It's hot; we can see these bubbles start to form, and then it keeps getting hotter and until it's just about to boil out of the pot. And that's what we call a trigger event. And triggers are specific events, or sometimes they are a string of events that cause a revolutionary rupture. So Lexington and Concord was one; Fort Sumter; the MLK assassination that kicked off the 1968 riots; before that, Marquette Frye kicked off the Watts Riots in 1965; Rodney King in '92 or whenever that was; and then George Floyd in late May 2020, that kicked off over 100 straight days of riots. Those were trigger events. Before you can get a trigger event, before you get this revolutionary rupture, you need accelerators of conflict that build pressure inside a system—enough pressure so that it explodes or—or the pot boils over, or the system explodes. And before you can start building pressure, you need to exploit those social cleavages and drive a wedge into those fault lines. You have to continually tear at the fabric of society. That is—that's the only way you get a revolution—by agitating and making people angry and resentful—angry enough to spill into the streets and act. And we look back on 2016 to 2020, we saw a Trump term that was full of manufactured crises, full of these things that tore at the fabric of society—things that built pressure up inside the system until it was bound to explode at some point. I mean, every—every week, every month, there was something else; there was some new thing. Back during the last Trump administration, they have to return to that, because that—well, that's the kind of pressure campaign that the left needs to—needs to rebuild. And so a lot of people predicted riots in the street if Trump was elected, and just—I was a few weeks ago, I put up a video on YouTube that said, "Everyone's concerned about far-left riots in the streets—um, it's not—we're not going to repeat 2020; it will not be as bad as 2020," and it will not be. But they—so at any rate, the far left has to build up all this pressure into the system, because that—they need the system to explode, because that's when you get that revolutionary rupture; that's when you get that mass mobilization—that mass participation event—that puts people into the streets and gets people to take direct action. This is not going to happen immediately. The election of Trump was not a trigger; it was an accelerator at best. The inauguration, I don't think is going to be the trigger; it may be an accelerator, but the chief task of the far left right now is to get our society back to that point.
Now, there are some other prerequisites or enabling factors for a color revolution. One is an imbalance between the power of the state and an atomized and isolated civil society. So when that happens, you have this social reaction that attempts to rebalance the power—reduce the power of the state and increase the power of civil society. So the question is, how is the far left going to promote the perception of those conditions? Next is awareness and education on nonviolent resistance, because participants have to understand—understand what role they play in a color revolution. Having gone through 2020, I think that is much more—much more ingrained into the educational doctrine of the left. And finally, powerful NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, that are capable of developing a strategic plan for revolution and also capable of organizing and directing these resistance campaigns. There are two organizations: one is Refuse Fascism; the other one is a new group that I'd not heard before until about a week ago called the Election Response Center, and they're holding strategy calls this week. And this is the kind of stuff they—they are discussing: how can they get the resistance and get American society back to the point of bringing about a revolutionary rupture against Trump? There's a comment here: "Hard to see Antifa operating in a nonviolent fashion." Well, they operate in a non-armed fashion, by and large. There's—there's been very little armed violence—some, but very little. Throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails and incendiary devices at cops is not what anyone would call non-violent, but that is still beneath the threshold of any kind of conventional armed conflict.
So let's talk about this color revolution here. Let's talk about why it has to be predominantly non-violent to work. Again, some people may think it's counterintuitive, but this is ultimately about soft power versus hard power. And hard power is the use of force and coercion or the credible threat of violence. And traditionally, when we talk about warfare, we're talking about the exercise of—or—ordered murder. That is hard power; that is hard power projection. But then there's also soft power, and that includes things like reputation and persuasion and influence and, most importantly, moral authority. When you go out and start shooting people, you lose the moral authority; you diminish your soft power. And these color revolutions—the popular revolutions, the mass mobilization protests—are built on soft power. That is why—that's one reason why they pursue non-violent forms of action. And this is the main point here on nonviolence versus violence and why resistance elements in a color revolution choose nonviolence. Violent resistance movements often turn into civil wars; they carry very negative consequences; there's no guarantee of success; there's also a very high death and casualty toll. And the state has more hard power than you. I mean, if you're the far left, you do not want to get into a hard power contest against the Trump administration—a hard power contest. They have more troops and personnel; they have bigger and better weapons; they can kill a lot more of you than you can kill of them. And in these violent conflicts—typically talking about guerrilla wars and insurgencies—and if you know anything about insurgencies, they're not quick. The average length of an insurgency is about 10 years. So who wants a hot war with their government that lasts from the time your son is a newborn until the time he graduates from the third grade? That's a long time. But you look at the history of color revolutions; they're typically measured in months, sometimes in weeks. And that's because of how a color revolution is waged. This is the big thing that people on the right just typically don't understand. Again, people on the right think violence or warfare is a switch: it's on or it's off. The left views violence or conflict as a dial that could be turned up or down depending on the situation. So the overall goal of a color revolution is to topple an existing government. In the case of the manual, they're talking about toppling dictatorships. In the case of the people who use this manual as a basis for the anti-Trump resistance, are talking about forcing Trump out of office in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of human suffering. That—that is the two of the big points from this book. And the way to do that is by creating vulnerabilities within the foundations of government and then attacking those non-violently. These are the three pillars of government, by the way—this is not in the book; I'm just—I'll do a little—going to do a little mansplaining here. Government sits on top of three pillars: legitimacy, authority, and capacity. Legitimacy is the recognized right of a government to rule. So in our case, a lawfully elected president is viewed as legitimate; we have a lawfully elected Congress, so on and so forth. Whereas a president who steals an election—whether that's real or perceived—will be seen, at least by some, as illegitimate. If there's a military coup, if there is a use of force involved in taking over a government, they're going to be seen as illegitimate; they did not come into power through legitimate means. That's a huge problem. Next is authority, and that is the ability to enforce your laws. So government is unable to enforce its laws in places where it has no authority or where no one recognizes their authority. So authority is something that can be undermined. And finally, capacity is the ability to carry out the state's duties. So government may be legitimate; it may have authority, but if it lacks the money or manpower to carry out its duties, then its legitimacy and authority will suffer. And these are the targets of a color revolution. I can't tell you how many times in this book the author talks about mass political defiance. That mass political defiance strikes at the foundations of government—of legitimacy—by convincing other powerful people and powerful institutions of the illegitimacy of the government. John Boyd talked about grand strategy—actually, this book talks about grand strategy too—but one of the most important things John Boyd said about grand strategy, he said it is the process of connecting yourself to as many power centers as possible while simultaneously disconnecting your opponent from as many power centers as possible. And this is all—this is what non-violent warfare is all about: it is getting individuals, powerful people, and the masses of people—it's getting institutions to withdraw support for a dictator or would withdraw support from a regime or from a presidential administration in this case. And you look back, 2016 to 2020, it's exactly what they were doing. A color revolution strikes at authority by getting others to ignore laws—by convincing others that government authority is immoral and therefore doesn't need to be recognized or obeyed. And finally, it strikes at capacity by reducing access to the things that a government needs to function—that could be money, could be natural resources, could be human capital. The ability to get large groups of people—talking about mass participation here—to attack these pillars of a government in unison is far more powerful than any standing army. Again, I'll just repeat that part: getting the mass of people to attack these pillars in unison is far more power—far more powerful than a standing army. Legitimacy, especially—that is the Achilles' heel of any government, be they dictator or lawfully elected government. When a resistance element is able to erode the public's trust in government and they're able to encourage the view that a government is illegitimate, then the people no longer have a moral duty to obey it. And when the mass of the people believe that a government is illegitimate, they will demand or create an alternative. And that's how you get shadow governments, and that's how you get revolutions—when enough people drop their allegiance to an existing government in favor of an alternative. And this is exactly what a color revolution does, and this is the primary challenge and—also the chief objective for the far left going forward. This would be their—this would be their grand strategy. A color revolution doesn't actually need weapons or the use of violence to attack the political power of a regime—or in this case, to attack the political power of a lawfully elected president, Trump. And this is something that could start with a thousand people, and then those thousand people get organized, and they go and convince their—their friends and neighbors and comrades that the sitting government is illegitimate. They may be able to do this a number of ways—we'll talk about that a little bit later. They use any opportunity to manufacture a crisis that undermines legitimacy or to provoke an overreaction by a government's security forces, such as beating or killing peaceful protesters. That is going to undermine the legitimacy in the eyes of the people watching those videos. I mean, how many times have we seen in Iran and other—other places security forces attacking peaceful protesters, and what is—you know, what is the international response always? It's always the same thing: it is not very good for the Iranian regime. Or they could do this by cooking up scandals or criminal probes or criminal charges or accusations of corruption, which—don't—don't have to be false; they also don't have to be true. But all those things can further undermine a government's legitimacy. And this should be sounding pretty familiar to everybody.
All citizens of a country fall somewhere on this spectrum from cooperation—from—excuse me—from support to defiance. And one of the overarching goals of any revolutionary is to move the mass of the people from some level of support to some level—level of defiance. And this is what they attempted to do from 2016 to 2020. A substantial portion of this manual is dedicated to the concept of reducing support for a government, which can be translated—reducing support for a Trump administration. And it talks about compelling supporters to drop their support; talks about how to approach the military and military officers and police units to resist orders or to encourage defections. These are all things that I expect will happen again, especially around these deportations. I think this is the—if there were one thing that I were going to attack, it would be the deportation stuff for a couple of reasons. Number one, somewhere around 50% of the country actually supports—supports mass deportation, according to one poll I saw just a few weeks ago—56% of Americans support mass deportation. Trump has a mandate to do that; he says it's going to start happening on day one. And I'm sure people will—some people—some of them will self-deport as well. But if you're the Democrats, you spent so much political capital moving these people into the country in order to make them citizens. I tell you what, this country may actually have averted a constitutional crisis and maybe some form of domestic conflict by electing Trump. If Harris had won and if Democrats had held the Senate and taken the House, mass amnesty would be on the table. States like Texas and Florida would be flipped blue in '28 if those conditions stood; if those laws were passed, this country would never be the same, one way or the other. So I actually think we averted a national catastrophe by electing Trump.
Looking ahead here to 2025 and beyond, I think mass deportations and violence against ICE is by far the most likely course of action, because the far left can attack legitimacy by attacking those things. They say, "Oh, deportation is immoral; they're—they're just as American as you; they do the jobs you don't want to do; they've been here for 30 years; this person's a grandma and has three kids here," and they'll say deportation is immoral, and an immoral government is an illegitimate government. They need to come up with some kind of catchy slogan for that, I'm sure. I mean, they had a few back in 2016 to 2020 or 2017 to 20. They can use this to attack authority; they can encourage non-cooperation and open defiance. About six months ago, I noticed some of these pro-immigration groups and the—the social activists started holding what's called de-arrest training. And de-arresting is when activists go and they pull people—as—as ICE or law enforcement trying to arrest someone—they get de-arrested; they get pulled—they get pulled away from police custody. And there's a bunch of videos from 2017 to 2020 showing this, and they're holding trainings; they're holding trainings on how to set up blockades, how to deny entry—or entry. You remember one of the things they were doing back during the ICE deportations back during the—the first Trump administration? They're handing out these flyers: "Know your rights if you're an—if you're an undocumented American here—your rights; you have the right to this," and so on and so forth. And they—they try to build this big mass movement around blocking ICE access and not allowing them to arrest these illegals—like hiding an illegal up in their attic. I mean, it was—it was—what it was—all that stuff's coming back. At any rate, they can also use this to attack capacity. So property damage against ICE vehicles—we saw that during the last go-round; we'll see it again. Violence against ICE personnel—we saw that in the last go-round; we're going to see this again. I think they also will attempt to—to provoke an overreaction. One chain of events that is a possibility is you have these pro-Palestine people who are also on the verge of irrelevance. Just Unity of Fields is the—the kind of the umbrella group over there, and they even said—um, they even said just a couple of weeks ago, they're like, "We either need to broaden this coalition and start including more people because we're shrinking." They didn't say they're shrinking, but they are shrinking. "We either need to broaden our coalition or we're just going to be counter-insurgency into irrelevance." So one way I see they can become relevant again is either you have these pro-Palestine groups or may—like Palestine Action USA and there's some other ones—or some part of the far-left movement becomes overtly violent against a pro-Israel Trump administration. If you're the Trump administration, I think you have to be very careful, and what—regardless of what the attack is, I think you have to show some restraint, because any—any misstep or any overreaction is going to be characterized as fascist. And I think that has the—actually the likelihood, not just of provoking anger, but actually increasing some hostility among the—the moderate left. And again, if you're a revolutionary, your job is to reduce the level of support and increase the level of defiance. And so provoking these overreactions is a really good way to do that; it's a really good way to turn—to turn neutral people into non-compliant or non-cooperative people. And I think that's got to be part of the plan, also. I think economic warfare is again on the table. This is something that we saw back during the last Trump administration. I'll show you a larger view of this map here in just a second, but I think we could see—this is a very distinctly possible course of action—economic warfare to coerce an end to Trump policies or budget cuts. If Elon Musk has this—what's it called?—the Department of Government Efficiency—if he does have this—uh—input into the Trump budget, which could be passed by the House—reducing fraud, waste, and abuse—that's a lot of people's fat hogs are going to be slaughtered; that's a lot of grift and a lot of money that is going to disappear. And so I think we could see those people who are dependent on that kind of patronage system move to support economic warfare. That could be the use of selective strikes and work stoppages or slowdowns, blockades of ports and commercial facilities. They have tried to do this multiple times actually in the past year. We've seen—lots of this stuff—it's been low-level; it's been sporadic; it's been pretty short-lived—but blocking—interests—supports—we've seen that multiple times. Here's a bigger view. This was back in 2020. There was a pamphlet that was published—by the way, I collect all this Antifa stuff—like anytime I see a zine or like a manual—by the way, I was just showing Mark these earlier—I buy this stuff—if I can't find it, like I go to these anarchist book fairs, and—you know, like this one was like four bucks—but this one's called *Blocks and Tactical Evolution*; it's about how to run Black Bloc, how to organize an insurrection. I keep all these pamphlets and stuff. So here's one that I found online; I downloaded it; started flipping through it, and one of the things they were saying is how relatively easy it would be, if you did have a mass mobilization movement, how easy it would be to shut down the national economy. And this is what they were talking about doing back in 2020. They said if Trump had stayed in office—legitimately or illegitimately—it did not matter—if Trump had stayed in office, they were going to shut down the US economy, and they were essentially going to hold the US economy hostage until Trump resigned. They talk—there's—there's recordings on Zoom calls—"Shut Down DC" and all these other organizations talking about this stuff. There are people talking about bombing the FedEx facility in—in Memphis to stop—uh—stop the—if not the largest—and one of the largest commercial shipping companies in the United States, at least for—for mail. So at any rate, they're talking about all the ways that you could shut down import and export activities by blocking the ports, blocking commercial facilities, blocking arteries that are used to transport goods—choke points in a fragile network. I shared it with Early Warning members like a day after it came out, by the way. I pass all this stuff on to Early Warning folks.
Another—just two more considerations here for '25 and beyond. I think domestic terrorism against the Trump administration and MAGA politicians is on the table. I mean, we saw that back in 2016 with the—the Steve Scalise shooting and some other stuff that could happen again. I think you have a small minority—maybe a fraction of the far left—let me tell—can I just tell you what's actually going on with the far left right now? They're exhausted; they—they're still exhausted; they do not want to get out there and fight with cops for another four years. There's a reason—well, there's a couple of things, but I'll
Is a top-down event and it's actually not, or excuse me, a bottom-up event. Revolutions are rarely peasants and pitchforks. You may have like revolts and stuff, but not real revolutions. That's actually not actually state breakdown where an existing government breaks down. But he said this actually happens when with the formation of elites and counter-elites.
I look at guys like Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Peter Thiel and some of the other folks. And I'm not talking about some of the liberal Tech Bros and the hedge funders who just didn't like Kamala Harris, who are not true believers. I look at that and I see the formation of a counter-elite, which is very dangerous because that's actually when you get periods of state breakdown. When the elite and the counter-elite get into conflict, that's when the stuff actually happens. You look at the American Revolution, and nothing happened until the elite started getting pinched, and then stuff started happening. So anytime you have the formation of an elite and a counter-elite, things become very precarious. And so I think there there's a possibility for elite conflict leading that leads to organized political violence over the next four years. That is also a most dangerous course of action for me that I'm following. Yeah, it's the money. When the when the spigots that were running it full blast get cut off, you get a lot of angry people.
Let me tell you about what we do every day at Early Warning Network. We produce an intelligence briefing every morning. It goes out via email. It's also posted to our web app, and we also do a live morning briefing. It is the best five-minute briefing without a top-secret security clearance. We cover what's going on in the Beltway, and I'm not talking about what you will go home and watch on Fox News or CNN. We talk about internal government documents and political documents that otherwise don't see the light of day. We talk about national security stuff that's happening within government and here in the west, foreign activity here in the Western Hemisphere. We talk about risks to agriculture and the supply chain. We monitor critical infrastructure and the energy sector. We also track upcoming protests and civil unrest. We have whole whole tab. We also are running a map now, an interactive map where you can actually zoom in and see where the upcoming protests are in your area. And then we track the risk of war, the geostrategic level, NATO, Russia, US, China, really this whole East-West geostrategic conflict that's been developing, the United States in Europe versus BRICS.
But I want to invite you to join the Early Warning Network. This is an offer that I will make to all tonight, pretty much one time only. I'm going to send you an email after this with a link. Uh, you can say I think it's like 50% or something like that right now, 199 for the next year. I mean, think about all the things that are going to happen in the next year, starting with this transition to the inauguration, the first 100 days, the first summer, the first potential riot season, the first big protest season against a Trump administration and beyond. You're going to get a daily briefing on the far-left, everything that I come across, filtering through their stuff, I put in the report. We also have that daily riot and protest tracker, the interactive map where you can zoom in and out and see where these protests are. There are a lot of other Early Warning Network benefits as well. And what I'm going to do for people who sign up tonight, I have, there's got to be at least 100 in there, there may be substantially more, there's at least 100 far-left publications, zines, and manuals, stuff like this, how to organize an insurrection. I got a bunch of stuff in there. I'm going to give that to you for free. It's already on Dropbox. I'll send you the link. You can download it. You can flip through this stuff yourself and look at their tactics and look at the doctrine and look at how they're educating other people within the far-left. I'll throw that in for free for everyone who signs up tonight. Doc says, "I've followed Mike and the team for over four years, kept friends including my daughter safe in 2020 based on their Intel." Yeah, that's when we started moving to when we started producing daily Intel reports on what was going on with the far-left revolutionaries all across the country. How much does the word fascist even work anymore? No one knows what fascism is anymore. Yeah, this is why the color, the leaders of color revolutions need to be identified. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's it's the non-governmental organizations, it's the NGOs who do this stuff around the world. They've increasingly turned their attention since late 2016 here to the United States. Can we get this map? Yeah, I I mean it's been online. When that map came out, I sent out to Early Warning Network subscribers. I'll tell you what, if you subscribed to Early Warning Network, not only can you get this map, you can get all future maps that we come across. Neocons are elite or counter-elite. So the way this works, neocons would be the elites, they'll be the elite establishment that's been in power. This is like the post-1945 establishment, the really the kind of globalists and internationalists. So neoconservatives would be the would be the elite, the George Bush, "Let's go remake the Middle East, let's go turn all these traditional societies into freedom gay democracies," that's all that's all the elite. Yeah, the way this works is you get into a period of what's called elite overproduction, and that's when a society produces more elites than there are elite positions. And this can be clearly seen back in the I think the one of the best examples is in the lead-up to the English Civil War, which was back in the 1640s into the 1650s. And what happened is you had the population, the percentage of the English population who were landless peasants went from 11% to 40% in less than 100 years. So it quadrupled, and now you have 40% of your entire society are landless peasants. There is no upward mobility. There is uh, it's just a a lot more, it's popular miseration is what it is. And so you know, one another one of the things that happened to it is or another one of the contributing factors is you had all these the members of the gentry, the landed gentry class, and they would have two or three or four or five sons. And in in that time it was most common to give all of your land holdings to your first son. And so your second and third plus sons were as so well or maybe they got very small land holdings. Well, if you're a if your last name and your family is a member of the landed gentry and you you have no land, um, and that means you have no land for your heirs either, you're basically going you're you're going to push your family down into a lower strata of society. And so what these people did is they were locked out of these elite positions, and many of them became counter-elites. And if you're if you're an elite that is being locked out of your elite position, the only thing you can do is get pushed down into a lower social strata or go to war with the elites. And that's one of the things that happen, and that's one of the things I'm very concerned that may actually happen between today's elite and counter-form elite and counter-elite formations. Let's see how do you counter a color revolution? Yeah, that's a great question. It's not easy. Um, you really have to stop the political warfare. So you can do a number number of things. You can look for where the funding is coming from. This is why color revolutions are so much worse than the just like simple protests or or riots, even compared to 2020. I think you have to investigate the NGOs in the political and social organizations that are attacking you politically. I think you have to call it out for what it is, which is political and social and economic warfare. You have to go back to grand strategy, John Boyd's grand strategy, and a color revolution movement is trying to disconnect you from as many power centers as possible and connect themselves to as many power centers as possible. So you got to identify those power centers and figuring out where where the revolutionary movement is getting its its own power from, which is from the people. And ultimately, this is a battle for the people. This is how you it's narrative and counter-narrative. I mean, as the people go, so does your government. Neil, thanks, longtime supporter. If you're not subscribed, then do so. This is the Intel spot. Appreciate that. Peter, yes, this also would include all the all gray zone research stuff, given the numerous fault lines at play, understanding that acceleration events are unpredictable, of course, which of the current fault lines currently present the most lucrative opportunity to meet the current CONUS-based revolutionary element objectives of acceleration? I what's the most vulnerable place to put their wedge? Well, that's a good question. I think a couple of things. Number one, you look at BLM. They've been blown out. BLM is nothing anymore. They hired a PR firm to build them a new website, do all this market image, Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, but I think they were so I think they were so harmed by the corruption, you know, buying like these $7 million mansions with BLM money in California and stuff, um, they may be able to rebuild. I'm I'm not sure, but BLM's pretty played out. I'm I'm actually and with this whole like multi-racial, multi-ethnic Trump stuff, I don't see BLM rebounding. I mean, you look at I mean among black men, Trump Trump made better ground among Hispanic men. Trump, I think he won like 50% of Hispanic men. So I'm actually not sure that it's going to be based around race. I would be I think it's very unlikely to be based around race this time, but based around class. This is the this is my biggest concern actually. If you want to get I mean this is just speculation, put on my tinfoil conspiracy hat here, and it may be a conspiracy fact before too long, but I'm actually very concerned about a manufactured crisis or some kind of engineered crisis or a financial crisis. Maybe they pulled a plug on on something and it actually does turn into a really bad financial crisis and it does turn into some kind of prolonged recession because that's what's needed for a class-based, you know, we kind of go back to like 2008, Occupy Wall Street, capitalism is to blame. Since 2016, Ray Dalio has been warning about a civil war in the United States, essentially saying this is going to be a war between the socialists and the capitalists, and maybe maybe it will come to that. Maybe there is an attempt at some kind of socialist revolution during the Trump administration. For that to happen, I think we'd have to be have to have like a pretty bad financial crisis in a recession. But you know, one of the things that enabled 2020, we had the recession, people were out of work and and out of school, they're getting walking around money, direct cash payments from stimulus, and when you don't have to go to work on Wednesday and the government's paying your rent, you can go out and riot all night. And so if we do have something like that happen, then I I would put my my money on a class-based wedge like Occupy Wall Street 2.0 or or something, some kind of socialist revolution that that gets blamed on on a crisis that just gets blamed on capitalism. All right, three hawks, appreciate it. FO, which is Early Warning Network and Mike Shelby is worth every penny. Certainly appreciate that. Brian says, "As a TNA member, I can vouch for the value of the service personally and professionally." Brian, I appreciate that as well. By the way, we're gonna start we're going to be opening up I think next week opening up memberships to special projects as well, which is a well I'll tell you a lot more about special projects in the next week. How do ordinary how do little people like us, I'm a little people as well, help counter this color revolution against Trump? Well, again, if we operate from the the assumption and it's not really an assumption, if we operate from the principle that political power is derived from the poly or from the people, then really any kind of popular revolution to include a color revolution is really a battle for the people. Remember, as a revolutionary, you're trying to move people from the support side of the spectrum over to the defiant side of the spectrum, and if you're a counter-revolutionary, you're trying to move people from the defiant side of the spectrum over to the support side of the spectrum. So the question is how do you do that? Do you have a historian on staff? I mean, I guess I'm an amateur historian. I just read a lot of books. Are there any examples of successful we'll say like in examples of defeating color revolutions? Um, yeah, there have have been a few examples of color revolutions that have failed. So the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 failed. That was against Mavvi and against Ahmadinejad. That failed. Um, Iran is really good at repressing its citizens. So again, you know, this is here here's one of the fundamental problems. If you're trying to defeat a color revolution, a it means you have a major legitimacy problem like in your government. So the first thing I would do is identify that deficiency. Why do so many people view me as illegitimate, and what can we do to make them view me as legitimate? Number one, if you have a color revolution, it's kind of already too late to stop it. Iran put down the green color revolution by repressing it. Now that tends to backfire. I mean, Iran is just a pariah state anyway. Um, there's really no good violent way to put down a color revolution. Don't think um I think you will lose international support. You'll lose diplomatic standing and diplomatic power, and just in today's modern society that matters for countries. Maybe it matters less so if if BRICS come to if China reshapes the global order, it will not matter as much. But yeah, there have been several failed color revolutions. I can't recall them off the top of my head, but I know Iran was one. By the way, I really kind of specialize in insurgency, not color revolutions, but this is somewhat related. Jedi says, "Thanks to everyone in chat, train and expand your skills. Mike puts on great classes." Thank you. Area study class was great too. Yeah, listen, once we get past this election, depending on what happens between the election and inauguration, I'm going to jump back on area studies and start producing a lot more content on area intelligence and how to gather vital intelligence information on your area. Is this the quiet before the storm? I mean, it's definitely the quiet, but yeah, I don't think the far-left is done. I mean, I think um I think I think they'll have one one last hurrah. Do you think a Trump presidency may take federal action against a renegade state like Washington, California? I don't know. It's I think Trump is very unpredictable. I can see I can very clearly see Trump saying, "Well, if you're not going to allow us to deport illegals from the state of California, then you're you know, then you're not..." I I don't know exactly what the what the legal legal ramifications are, but yeah, I can see Trump saying, "Well, we're going to cut funding to something for California." And listen, California had this this kind of little burgeoning secession movement under Trump as well. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly referred to California as a nation-state. California is not on my top list to to like see an actual secession, but honestly, if I think Harris if Harris had won and and actually got close to threatening mass amnesty, I think we would have seen like the Texit movement here in Texas, the Texas Independence Movement, and maybe some other Southern States. I think we would have flirted very heavily with secession. I think that would just have ignited a secession movement basically saying, "If if the federal government's just going to keep changing the rules on on who can vote in the elections and just create citizens out of thin air for for their political advantage, then what's the point of being in the same country anymore?" I I could very clearly see that. Michael brings up a great point: one of the best ways for all this to stop is a successful economy and reforms being made by the government. Absolutely. I think that is why the I think that is the the biggest challenge for the far-left. What do you do in a successful economy? What do you do when they're just not um when there's not dissatisfaction, when there's not popular miseration? The more grievances there are, the easier your job becomes as a revolutionary. The fewer grievances there are, the more difficult your job becomes. This is one reason it's just it's a very very difficult environment I think for the far-left to try to like bring back the Antifa and stuff now, the protest, the mass mobilization protest, the idiots in the pink hats marching on DC, all that stuff's coming right back. I think violence against ICE, violence against federal law enforcement, the Trump administration, I think some of that stuff's going to return as well. It's not going to be an easy four years. It is going to be a very difficult in many respects very difficult four years under Trump, and I hate to say it, that's kind of presuming that he makes it four years. John says, "Former SF Ops Intel guy here, right on valuable briefing, thank you." Yep. He says, "It's the best investment of your money for personal readiness that's out that's out there." Well, I appreciate that too. Unfortunately, the dollar's on the way out. Yeah, you know what, um, yeah, if the dollar's on the way out, go ahead and spend it with us, um, because you'll get our intelligence reporting for a whole year. And when this stuff does actually pop off, which it could be this summer, which we actually start seeing some I I honestly I think mass deportation deportation is going to be like the number one issue for a long time, and we're going to see violence. We're going to see violence against ICE officers. We're going to see violence against the federal government. We could actually see terror campaigns here, and um if that stuff starts happening, we we're going to let you know before that starts happening. We're going to be able to see those signs and and key indicators and let people know like, yeah, this is this is going to be a thing. Any new books in the works? Yeah, I have a book that was halfway finished back in 2022 on low-intensity conflict actually, and um it's like it's like I said, it's like halfway, maybe 75% done, depending on what I cut out. Maybe I'll find some time to finish that. I was also thinking about maybe taking a crack at like a a security manual, like covering like op operation security, information security stuff like that, communication security, COMSEC. Will the J20 inauguration turn into a riot, will the one in 2017 did? J20 2017, you know, we that was back when I lived in downtown Austin, and we rented a a hotel conference room. We just had like I don't probably six or eight people there, and we battle-tracked the Antifa riots, and you know, they were like blocking the entrances and trying to they were attacking Trump supporters. I'm not sure. Um, I would I would just say that it is obviously possible. I would like to look at what Philly Antifa and like and Baltimore and maybe North Carolina and some of those Mid-Atlantic States and New England states. I'd like to take a look at what those Antifa groups out there are doing in the next month or so, and I think that'll that's going to give us a lot better idea of what we can expect for the inauguration. But I would just say if you're if you're planning on going to the inauguration, plan for that, plan for there to be counter, you know, protests or counter-demonstrations against that. Again, until leads the fight that it does. Do you think they will initiate attacks like the Red Brigades did in the 1970s? I I don't think it will be as organized. I think it will be I mean, maybe maybe I think I look at this. I think it's going to be a lot more like kind of lone wolf stuff or like individual actors, individual people motivated by ideology as opposed to organized political violence where you have groups like a terrorist group. I think you'll have a terrorist individual motivated by ideology, not motivated or coordinated by a group. That's what I think. It says, "Sign up folks, well worth it." All right, well, I certainly appreciate that. Yep. All right, Early Warning folks, we'll see you in the morning on the morning briefing and then on the roundtable as well. All right, guys, I appreciate it. Everyone have a great night. See you next time. [Music]