Global Guerrillas

The American Autumn

Some thinking you might find useful.  It might sound wild and remote, but we are in a wild and out of control year.  ANYTHING can happen.

A treasure trove of e-mail and voicemail messages from the Democratic National Committee has been leaked.  Here's what happened.

• The first installment of the leaked e-mails was released by Wikileaks at the start of the DNC convention.  More leaks have and will follow.
  
  
• The contents of the leak show a brazen attempt by the DNC to help Hillary win the primary.  It also shows Dem campaign staffers to have acted inappropriately and in a prejudiced manner.
  
  
• Based on forensic analysis of the leak, it appears that the Russian government is involved

The effects of the leak have been immediate and intense.

• The leak provided the confirmation to Sanders supporters that the primary was rigged against them.  This has led to intense protests both within and outside the convention.  This suggests that the Clinton campaign lost a large number of Bernie supporters forever.
  
  
• The media and the US government reaction to the leak has been aggressive.  They claim that the release is a brazen attempt by Putin to influence the US election by helping Trump win. There have been attempts by the media to tie Trump to Putin but those lack evidence of any connection.
  
  
• Further, now that the Russian have interfered in our election, it's possible that they will do again.  This could be done through more leaks or as Bruce Schneier has pointed out: a hack of poorly secured voting machines on election day.  

Where could this end up?  This is the interesting part.  This election isn't a normal election.  It is also a good demonstration of something the great scholar of warfare, Martin van Creveld said ~ if you fight barbarians long enough, you become a barbarian too.

• The Trumpification of the Establishment >>  Trump isn't running a campaign, he's running an open source insurgency (see my earlier article on this) that makes him nearly immune to personal attack, and it is working.  He has secured a whopping 7 points (47 to 40) lead over Clinton in a recent national poll by the LA Times/USC -- despite the fact that nearly EVERYONE in the media, academic, government, and political establishment is working against him.  This loss of control has infuriated the establishment, leading to increasing levels of paranoia, hyperbole, and anger (particularly in the media).  In short, the establishment is starting to act increasingly like Trump does -- exaggerating and amplifying everything.
  
  
• Intentional Electoral Disruption.   The potential threat of Russian hacking (voting machines, etc.) fits the scenario I outlined in my freakishly popular US Civil War article from earlier this year.  With the tension between the divisions in the country increasing rapidly as both sides amplify and exaggerate every event, any overt attempt to rig (through disruption or hacking) the outcome of the election could result in widespread violence and/or a national fracture.

• The Administrative 'Coup'.  Here's something that I didn't think possible until this week.  The Trumpified establishment might have found an avenue for disqualifying Trump as President:  Trump's rhetorical suggestion that Russian hackers should find Hillary's deleted e-mails.  This has led many people in the establishment to contend that Trump committed 'treason and is now a clear and present danger to the security of the US.'  This national security angle -- the overt interference by Russia in US governance -- could make it possible to block Trump as a candidate on national security grounds. 

Social Violence Networking

It's amazing how quickly social media broadcasting has become central to social violence. It is being used by all of the participants:

Attackers (video was removed):  Larossi Abballa Facebook livestreamed his terrorist attack on the home of a police chief in France.  

Victims:  Diamond Reynolds Facebook livestreamed a policeman shooting her boyfriend while he was reaching for his wallet.

Bystanders. Michael Bautista livestreamed the Dallas police shooting.

 

 

Social Violence Networking 

 

This use of social media has led to a new dynamic that bypasses the "redirecting - calming - slowing" influence of traditional media and the government.  This new dynamic is raw, unfiltered, and fast.  It also radically increases both the likelihood and the intensity of social violence.  

 

Let's dive into some of the details:

• Violence as performance art.  Selfies.  Instagram videos.  Twitter.  We've been conditioned to record our experiences using social media.   Naturally, we're are seeing the same thing with violence. Recording violence and showing it to the world, raw and unedited, can be used to "elevate the act" and memorialize it.    NOTE:   ISIS recently stumbled onto this as a way to motivate people to engage in terrorism.  In these cases, the attackers used social media to turn their bloody attacks into both performance art and solemn ceremony.  It gave it meaning. We'll see more of that in the future.
  
  
• We are bombarded with Instant outrage.  We are more vulnerable to emotional manipulation than ever before.  Our use of social media has changed us.  We are constantly on the hunt for pics, news, stories, and videos that grab our attention and titillate us.  Once we find them, we are then quick to share them with others.  Few things provoke outrage faster than violence and injustice.   It is proving particularly effective when the videos arrive raw and unedited from an individual rather than from the media.  These personal broadcasts have an authenticity, a vulnerability, and an immediacy to them that greatly amplifies their emotional impact.  This makes them more effective at triggering violence than any sterile broadcast from a traditional media outlet. 
  
  
• Echo chambers.  Our virtual networks on Facebook, Twitter, etc. surrounded us with people who think like we do.  These networks can easily become echo chambers.  Echo chambers that radically amplify outrageous social media videos, spreading the outrage like a contagion.  More importantly, it appears that this amplification can trigger individuals on the fence to engage in violence.

Watch out.

This roiling dynamic for amplifying social violence is very, very dangerous.  It has the potential to rip the lid off of this country faster than we can respond.

 

John Robb