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want to welcome everyone back to the Pekaona Show so
the first time. Mike Shelby, how you doing, Mike Hey?
Speaker 2: Doing well?
Speaker 1: Pete how are you doing well? Doing well first time
on the show. I always ask everybody to run down
whatever they're you know, whatever they want to share from
their background.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, yeah. I was an all sorts of intelligence analyst.
I dropped out of college in two thousand and three
and listened in two thousand and four and spent a
few years in Iraq in Afghanistan as a soldier, went
back as a contractor, and then I got out of
that world because I got tired of deploying, and you know,
just I didn't like what I was doing. And then
twenty sixteen yearlls around and I started seeing all these
Trump supporters being attacked. I wasn't a Trump supporter at
the time, but I just said, you know, this is
not right that these these innocent people are being intact
for their politics. And then I started looking into antief
and I was like, hey, I actually really hate these bastards.
And I said, look, I've spent my entire adult life
at that point, or close to my entire adult life
at that point, tracking down insurgents. And I said, this
is this is a proto insurgency. And you know, twenty
sixteen obviously into twenty twenty and so I just started
tracking all these far left groups and I made a
business out of it essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you you basically go in, you gain access
to like, you know, a bunch of us a few
years ago used to get like during twenty twenty Indivisible,
Indivisible emails, things like that. But you go even deeper.
You you'll even listen in on some of their some
of their conference calls. How do you how do you
get in there to do that or is it just public?
Speaker 2: Well, it depends which type of left wing group you're
dealing with, a lot of that stuff does occur online.
The far left, the revolutionary anarchist that does not happen
online as much. The progressive groups do do a lot
of things out in the open. So, yeah, groups like Indivisible,
it is pretty easy. Actually, are just listening into one
of their calls, their Thursday afternoon call. But the yeah,
the Antifa types is they're a lot more closed off.
They have a security culture, and it's for you know,
for the most part, it's very difficult to track the
internal communications of those groups.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's jump into this. I wanted Trump
to win because I well, first of all, I want.
I wanted the j sixers out. I also thought that
it would buy us some time because I thought that
if Kamala one, it would just be a continuation of
Biden and it would just be more more of the
same and more targeting of people who have views that
are antithetical to the regime. And you know, one of
the things though, that you know, you come to realize
is that you know, we live in a system. We
live within a system where you get to vote every
two to four years. And if that happens, if Trump
gets elected and he doesn't seek to just destroy these
people in any way, shape or form. I'm talking about financially,
I'm talking about, you know, making it being like okay,
you can never have power again, taking even taking away
their wealth. I'm sorry, you know, I mean this is
how I've studied. All I need to do to study
radical left groups is study the Spanish Civil War. And
these people are well on their way to being like
the anarchists and the communists that were dealt with there.
So if Trump doesn't destroy these people, they will be back.
So what are you seeing. I know you've said, you know,
it's like, don't expect twenty twenty to be like it,
where there's going to be this insane color revolution. And
you said twenty twenty four, this or twenty twenty five,
this summer twenty twenty five. Don't expect it to be
like twenty twenty, but it could be. What are you
seeing for the future.
Speaker 2: Well, I always like to get consider a range of
potential options. And maybe it's probably an edge case, but
maybe there is a case where there is a unit
or not a divider. We'll call that a potential course
of action or a potential future. The chance is not
very high, but it's not zero. I think the most
likely outcome for well, let me back up for a second.
I'm talking about future elections here. Right, we're looking ahead
to twenty twenty eight, and Trump is I mean, maybe
he'll be on the ticket. I don't know. I doubt it,
but I'm extremely entertained by all the talk. And so
the question is going into twenty twenty, are we going
to have another twenty twenty or another what I think
was a popular revolution? And so you know, I look
at that and I say, all, if jd Vance loses
or whoever the Republican is, and you get a Kamala
Harris or an AOC or whoever. It really doesn't matter. Yeah,
are all the the political persecutions coming roaring right back?
Obviously they are. I think there's an edge case that
that maybe there's a uniter, not a divider, that that
runs as president, that maybe maybe they don't we don't
have that. But one of the things you talked about
is the the likelihood that we don't. That it's it's
not just right wing figures that get j six or
get unfairly prosecuted. It's it's like mainstream or mainstream conservatives.
Because I do think there there is an aspect where
they said, well, we've we had we had the first
Trump administration and we got through that. I think they
essentially sold the twenty twenty election, and this is their
version of never again. We cannot we can never allow
these people to come close to the White House ever again.
And so you know, I think that pendulum swinging is
someone's got to stop the pingdulum swinging. So at any rate,
going into twenty twenty eight, I expect something like twenty
twenty to be on the table. You have essentially a
popular revolution that is coincided with the election I don't
think it's going to be this year. I don't think
it's going to be next year. I think they're setting
up a general strike for twenty twenty eight. I think
that's our betting man at this point. That is kind
of the next high water mark, which is not to
say that things won't get rough this summer. I think
they probably will and into twenty twenty six. I think
Democrats are likely to obviously take back the House, and
we're going to see impeachment, We're going to see House investigations,
and you know, when these people say that that accountability
is coming, that they're going to go after Trump supporters
and all the people who enabled the Trump administration, they're
obviously serious. So it's extremely just as someone who studies
low intensity conflict, it's extremely concerning what's about to happen.
Speaker 1: So where we've been sold this narrative about USAID defunding
so many of these groups? Where are these groups getting
their funding from? Like? Where where does an indivisible get there?
I'm only using them because they are something. They are
a group that a lot of people may already know
who they exist. Where are they getting their funding from?
Where are these groups getting their funding from. Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately I don't have receipts, but we know there
are plenty of DNC backers who are funneling money into
these protest groups. I think a lot of that stuff
covers stuff on the expenses on the operational and organizing level,
so logistics, websites, communications, Obviously, you have to have a staff,
you have to pay a staff who's kind of the
top of the pyramid kind of command and control for
these things. But a lot of this stuff is actually
I would I look at Indivisible, and I actually do
think it's grassroots. It is volunteer active that are organizing
at the local level. They're grabbing their friends, They're inviting
people to meetings, and they say, look, we've got to
build the people power. We have to build social power
to stand up to the Trump administration. So, you know,
like I said, I don't have receipts. I don't know
exactly where they're getting their money from. There are plenty
of left wing billionaires and financiers who are happy to
spend a little pocket change to facilitate these groups. But
you know, I look at the funding, and the funding
is the least important part of these movements. The organizing
is the most important part, and that is that's a problem.
They have solved that they do not have a problem organizing.
That's the hardest part.
Speaker 1: Why is that it doesn't seem like the right wing
can organize a church picnic. So what how come they
can organize?
Speaker 2: Well, they've just they've had a long standing practice. You know,
I was reading through some you know, we call it
human infrastructure. I was looking through some organizing documents going
back to the sixties and seventies, and you read to
that stuff that this is the same exact stuff they've
been they're doing today, the anti Trump organizing. They've been
doing this for decades. And if you want to go
back to the first communist groups, go back to the
Russian Revolution, and then the communist the establishment of the
Common Turn and then communist politics in the United States
starting in I think nineteen nineteen or so. They've just
been doing it for one hundred years and we haven't.
I think that's and then you can go back into
the oh, the right wing rugged individualist, you know, we
don't need a team. We're anti collective and pro individual
and you know, I think maybe part of that just
is a philosophy or a worldview that is not inherently collective.
Speaker 1: Let me ask this to just go go off that
subject for a second. I was talking about my buddy
Greg Hood. He goes by James Kirkpatrick on Twitter and
he said, he asked a question. We're looking at all
these executive orders, We're looking at all these We're looking
at these judges, these activist judges. I mean, they're not
even activist judges. I mean, I just think that they're
basically traders. I mean, I'm reminded. It seems like the
McCarthy time, when you found the time of McCarthy, when
you found out, Oh, this person literally answers to Moscow,
where's Congress? He has Congress? Why is Congress not doing
Why aren't they cementing anything? Why aren't they Executive orders
can be turned over by the next president. All of
this goes away in four years unless somehow it's put
into law. I mean, and we know they'll ignore the
law anyway, but at least, I mean, something something that
the normy can look at and go, hey, you know
what's going on. Where's Congress now?
Speaker 2: Well, I think part of it is some part of
the Republican party's obviously been captured. They're part of the
establishment elite. They're not part of the counter elite. Number one.
Number two, since you brought up into visible, you know,
one of the things they constantly say is we need
mass mobilization protests because it enables us to do two things.
Number One, it enables us to go after vulnerable Republicans.
There are a lot of House and Senate seats where
the left, the establishment left, the progressive left, is dumping
in millions of dollars to one seat, and their message
is pretty simple, if you go along with the Trump administration,
you're going to lose your job in the next election.
And I do think that scares Republicans. The second thing
is a very similar effect. They say the Democrat politicians
look at these mass mobilization protests and they know that
they have the grassroots behind them, and that encourages them
to take more extreme action. This is something that Senator
Chris Murphy said last month, Democrat from Connecticut. He said,
Democrat politicians have to take quote unquote exceptional tactics, and
what he's talking about is being a lot more extreme
and a lot more hardline against the Trump administration. And
this is something that politicians cannot do on their own
very well. But if they know they have their base
behind them, they're far more likely to do that. I
don't think a lot of these Republicans really feel like
the bases behind them, at least I'm not seeing it,
and so I do think they're I don't think discouraged
is the right way. I'll say they're not sufficiently incentivized
to go through and pass laws that will submit these
changes rather than just having them roll back in three
and a half years.
Speaker 1: Well, if Republicans don't think their base, the base will
be behind them, I mean considering that, like we said,
the right can't organize, I mean, organizing on a street
level is basically illegal for anyone left like Bernie Sanders.
So I mean it's kind of it's easy to think
that a left winger a left winger. I don't even
know what to call these people anymore. Left and right
doesn't even when everyone's in the same party. Left and
right just goes out the window. But it seems like
the left, or let's call them the left, they they
know that their base will be behind them no matter what.
They're not too worried about that group in the middle,
the quote unquote undecided or independence as long as they
have that strong base. But it seems like if you
know that the right will not protest, if they do protest,
you know, it's like, remember there was an anti war
protest a couple of years ago in Washington, DC that
was set up by libertarians and some conservatives, and they
invited communist part communists to come with them and speak.
If you're not going to at least gatekeep, if you're
not going to at least be able to organize true
protests any you may not even be able to do
that because you may they may shut it down quick
because you're right wing. I mean, really, if you're if
you're a Republican politician, it really just seems like you're
going through the motions and collect and waiting for that
fifteen thousand dollars a month, you know, pension.
Speaker 2: You know. I think another part of this is have
you seen all these polls come out recently. There's a poll,
a survey from the PRI I don't know whoever they are,
that's found some like sixty percent of Americans say, quot unquote,
Trump is a dictator whose power needs to be limited
or before he destroys democracy or something like that. That
was the question. They said, sixty percent of respond it's
agreed with that. You go you go in and you
look at the polling, the actual data there and the polls.
The Paul itself is over a month old, and it
was recently just published by Axios, I think yesterday, the
day before. And my first question is why did they
sit on this for a month? Well, obviously to coincide
with the first hundred days. I think there is a
concerted effort, and you can call it information warfare for
not a syop, but I do think there's there's some
there's an active strategic messaging campaign against Republicans to convince
them that the majority of Americans believe Trump is a dictator,
and I think that that dissuades them. I think that
descendivises them from from working with the with the Trump
administration to pass these policies, especially into law and Congress,
and so I I think it's a lot more insidious
than just Republicans are ineffective and the right can't organize.
I think, you know, the right, I think has been
pretty famously, as you've kind of said, been disintegrated as
a as an organizing force or as a political social force.
And so I until we can solve that problem, until
we can fix our own messaging problem and be resistant
to those kinds of psychological information operations you want to
call it fifth gen warfare whatever, Until we can solve
that problem, I think we're just going to have continue
to have these really pretty astounding limitations put on put
on us.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, we even see the trope that
people that I know, people on my side of Twitter,
are promoting that Trump is the reason why the Canadians
elections went the way they did. It's like, and you
could have the opinion that Trump influenced it, but when
you look at the graph that showed that most of
the people who were under who are like in the
zoomer and late millennial age ranges, they voted for They
voted basically, you know, we can't afford to buy a house,
let's do something about the economy. And then the boomers
and we don't even know what the insane amount of
immigrants from the subcontinent vote there that they voted to
defeat Trump. It's okay, So how do I mean if
that's going to be if we're getting the message here that, oh,
he's a dictator, and then we're getting the message at Oh,
the reason why Canada went to the World Economic Forums,
guy is because of Trump. I mean, if you can't
win the if you can't win the narrative war, you're done.
It's over.
Speaker 2: Well, this is something that the Trump administration is learning
this lesson the hard way. I think they had a
really good opportunity to explain to the American people what
they were about to do. I don't think the average
American wants to be beholden to China. But I don't
think the Trump administration did a very good job of
making of stating their case, saying, we're going to do
some things that are maybe unpopular for the short term,
but your kids are going to thank us for maintaining
our national sovereignty. And I haven't heard that. I mean
maybe a handful of people. I think Treasury Secretary Scott
Besson's done a good job of saying that to the
CNBC crowd. But and granted I don't you know, I
don't watch every Trump administration presser, but just as a
of a luminous consumer of news, I have not heard
the administration effectively make that case, and they should have.
It goes back to the messaging war, which I think
the Trump administration is losing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if this, if you're losing the messaging war,
if there is a chance that they're going to lose
the House in twenty twenty two, and if twenty twenty
from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four, I mean,
if in twenty twenty six, why do I keep wanting
to say I'm obsessed with the past. If twenty twenty
six to twenty twenty eight is going to be just
like twenty twenty sixteen to twenty twenty where Trump can't
get anything done. And we'll talk about these judges in
a second. What should we be on an individual level
or a community level? What should we be doing?
Speaker 2: Well, these groups like Indivisible, and you have to respect
their hustle because they're you know, they're putting in the
low millions of protesters and activists out in the streets
for these national days of protests and action. I would
just look at what they're doing. And one thing they
tell their people is all all forms of power are local.
You know, they say all politics is local. So until
we're organizing at the community level. Like you know, if
you want to win a state level race, you have
to organize a bunch of communities that get involved in
and go out and get out the vote and do
all the things in a democracy. And so I really
think it does come back to all forms of local power.
If you want to change national level politics, that I
don't think that can be done very well. It can
be guided maybe through through what happens in DC, but
if you want any kind of cultural staying power, that's
going to happen at the local level. And so until
we can figure out what local organizing looks like, I mean,
I think we're just going to continually be surprised we
win national level elections like twenty sixteen and twenty twenty four,
pleasantly surprised, but then not at all surprised when we
see the left reverse everything good that happened over the
last four years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, people say, well, Portland is lost, San
Francisco has lost, Seattle is lost. The left has it. Okay,
they have it. They not only have it, but they
have it at an activist level. When you look at it,
it's like you can say, Okay, the most radical, the
most radical one. I'm not even saying like the most
radical rightist can go and you know, should or go
take over a town. I'm talking about like maybe some
strong right of center people be like, Okay, this is
our town, this is what our town is going to
look like. Is that is that something that is just
not in the right winger because they're so or the
person conservative, you know, right of center, let's call it,
because most people are just classical and most people on
the writer are just classical liberals or even liberals who
think that the border should be closed. Do you think
that that's just been bred out of them, that you
that you want that? Do you think it's the whole
thing of oh if you just if people just leave
me alone, I'll just leave them alone, and not realizing
that these these are not the kind of these these
are the people who are not going to leave you
alone to the point of death.
Speaker 2: M Well, that's a good question. And I think everyone's
seen what I would say is the conventional wisdom on this,
which is we have jobs and we have kids, and
we've got lives outside of politics, and the left is not.
We see that on on online all the time. It's
a fair explanation and a fair point. I think there's
a Last night, I went to a meetup. It was
the Young Republicans for My County, and there was a
huge focus on politics. We talked about the huge focus
on politics, and one of the things I brought up
is it it's not just politics. We're actually dealing with
three pillars here. You want to talk about power, It's
not just political power, it's social power, and it's also
economic power. And my County's Republican machine focuses on political power.
They are not trying to build social cultural power. They're
not trying to explicitly build economic power. And you look
at the left with the way they've indoctrinated the core,
taken over the corporations and hiring all these indoctrinated workers,
and the marketing and the ad teams put constantly pushing
these social messages. I think they have. The Left obviously
does a great job of building social power and building
and capturing economic power. Let's be honest. I don't think
they build economic power themselves. I think they just capture it.
And we on the right, I mean, I all my
and listen here, the Republican Party. I'm like I don't know.
I don't go to their games, but like I'll watch
them when they're on TV, like I'll cheer for them.
It's not even really my I don't even I don't know.
I vote Republican obviously, but it's not I'm not like
excited about the Republican Party. And one of the reasons
why is because it's all politics and no one's out there.
I think very few people are out there trying to
build social and economic power. But if you want to
build a power machine, it cannot just be political. It's
got to be social and economic as well. I think
that's the real change that needs to happen on the right.
Speaker 1: And so many are caught up in ideological capture of
you know, free trade and which basically when when you
tear it all the way down, it's just basically globalism.
We have to have the borders open, or they buy
into the trope that there's not enough people here to work.
Maybe there isn't, I don't know, or you know, the
whole thing about free trade. If you're not for free trade,
you're a communist, because the communists weren't for free trade,
and every I mean, you can see that fancied out.
You know, tariffs are tariffs are protectionists, and that's what
you know. Isolationist countries do things like that. But yeah,
I think the biggest problem is it seems to me,
and correct me if I'm wrong on this, it seems
to me like the left they're willing to come together
in a big tent kind of way just to keep power,
just so that power keeps flowing from their side. And
whatever the right is is so fraction is so fractioned
off because is factional because of ideology, whether it be
pro free markets, whether it be pro Israel, whether it
be anti Islam, whether it be this that and everything.
It just you have one group who's like, no, I'm
not going to you know, how can we be America first?
If you know, we let another country basically run our
foreign policy or whatever. It just seems like if they
concentrated on power and lost the idea, the ideological baggage
with it, that that would just be the biggest, the
biggest start, because it seems like the left doesn't have that,
does it. The left is willing to become whatever it
has to become in order to keep power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's some truth to that I see
a lot of infighting on the left though, the Bernie
and the AOC crowd versus the Hakim Jefferies and Nancy
Pelosi wing, the establishment versus the the Democratic socialist wing,
the progressive versus the Democrat socialist, the left liberal split
on the within the Democratic Party. I don't know. I
look at DSA Democratic Social South America and you know,
they're talking about abandoning, abandoning the Democrat Party. So I
don't know. I think there's just a lot of infighting
on the left and maybe it's maybe it's not seen.
I like, I read these guys. I'll watch videos all
day about these guys. I maybe they do vote in lockstep,
but they're getting tired of it. I'll tell you that
the left liberal alliance within the Democratic Party I think
is shaky, and uh, you know, well, we'll see Democratic
Social South America dsay they're running ten candidates not as
Democrats in the in the midterms, they're running ten House
h House candidates not as Democrats but as independents. So
I maybe maybe there is somewhat of a party split
coming up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, But does that make them more dangerous
if they feel like a coalition if they feel like
some of their power and some of their numbers could
be falling away, or they have to push it, they
have to push people out because they're just two far
to the left. Say the DSA is can be insane
with some of the some of the I mean, I
think Jackobt Magazine, I mean, come on, does that make
them more dangerous? Does that make them want it more?
Because you know they see that there's something that is
falling away at that point.
Speaker 2: I think what they have realized is that DSA will
never be a national level party unless they're a local
party first. And so they there's been a lot of
discussion and maybe debate within the various DSA factions of
the caucuses, the various caucuses of DSA, and they're talking
about abandoning electoral politics at the national level and trying
to go all in and summit a foothold build a
strategic base at the local level. And you know, it's
maybe they're a handful of other kind of far left
parties like the Party for Socialism and Liberation that they're
also compete with, But I I think we probably have
been towards this. I think the end if you want
to look at this as like a tournament bracket. I
think we're gonna end up in the championship between the
populist left and the populist right in this country. I
don't know when. I almost certainly be within my lifetime,
if it could be in the next four years. So
I think at some point, I mean, you look at
all the Yeah, they're young progressives, but you look at
the Democrat Party and there's old a lot like the
Republican Party, they're old, and so the question is who
are they replaced with? And Hakeem Jefferies is he's not
a far left guy, he's a progressive. He's an establishment
elite type of guy. And I think what will probably
happen is you get these parochial type groups on the
left and they hold political power to local level, and
they use that as a strategic base, and you know,
maybe they take over a region of a state, and
maybe they take over a state eventually. I don't know.
I I guess it defines how how how you define
danger dangerous?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, one of the things that you you know,
you do talk about is it seems like the right
is thinking that these groups are going to go hot,
Like it's almost like they want them to go hot,
which is something you don't want. I mean, look at
what twenty twenty wrought. And but that is something that
you you have to think about, is is that if
it does go start going into a populist a direction,
you know, on both sides, if both sides are just
as populism and it's not radical enough for these people.
I mean we haven't even talked about you know, Antifa yet,
but if it's not radical enough for these people, what
could they possibly do? And you know, if DSA decides
they want to go to the political up once to
go to political rep Okay, fine, that doesn't mean that
they're going there. That means they're probably going to want
to stay away from groups like that. But there are
going to be groups like I mean Antifa is they
take breaks. You know, they disappear for a while. They
never stop talking, but they disappear for a while and
you don't see them. But eventually, and especially if the
last you know, one hundred days have told anybody anything,
they're going to be back soon. So I mean, how
do we you know, how do you see that playing
out as far as when it comes to violence, because
I think that's what I think people are. I think
Republicans are fine with losing as long as they have
a seat at the table, as long as they're there,
as long as they're getting a paycheck. They can make
a living doing this, doing whatever it is that they do,
whether it be politics, whether it be commentary or whatever.
But it doesn't seem there are groups out there on
the left who are all about tearing this down. So
when do you see what what do you see to
be a catalyst where that could reintroduce itself.
Speaker 2: Well, I look at these groups like Antifa and the
various affinity groups across the country. They're they're true revolutionaries.
They view themselves as revolutionaries. They're working towards revolution. You
look at the the establishment elite, especially within the mainstream Democrats,
and there there are they are reformers. They don't want
to topple the government, they want to take it over
and run the government. And then you get these far
left groups that are revolutionaries and they want to abolish
their anti government. They want to abolish the government. They
want to abolish police, abolished prison, prisons, abolish all forms
of of hierarchy. And so I look at that and
I say these two people are are natural bedfellows in
that they hate everything to the right of you know,
Bernie Sanders. But really they have competing interests on a
strategic level. The establishment elite want want to run the country,
They want control of government. The far left does not.
They they want to overturn everything and abolish the government.
So then you get into this situation where Antieva is
really nothing more than a cudgel that the establishment elite use.
They used it against a Trump administration, they use it
against right wing groups like right wing organizers, right wing
events and rallies that we saw from twenty sixteen through
you know, twenty twenty obviously, so the question is when
when will the establishment elite want to use their cudgel again?
And it's okay, obviously this year, you know, we look
at May looking through all the Mayday events that are
coming up. This is the first May Day that I
can recall in the past several years, probably since like
twenty twenty one, maybe was actually a risk of Antifa
black block forming like black block demonstrations. So I think
we are getting there. When when you look at Antifa,
one of the biggest reasons why they have been inactive.
It's like, you know, I've followed them since twenty sixteen,
and it's like in twenty twenty one, someone just flipped
a switch and they there were sporadic events. You know,
there's been like a couple of campaigns where they've been active,
but nothing sustained, nothing widespread. It's been extremely localized. It's
been extremely short term, and so in order for them
to operate, there has to be some level of support there,
and for the past few years there has not been support.
They're on election night in Seattle, there was a black
block demonstration and it ended when police made five arrests.
They went through and arrested five of these people because
the black Block demonstrators were arrested for like graffiti vandalism,
and so they're just had the Mike Day, who is
the Portland Police Chief or Portland Police Bureau chief, said
in May twenty twenty four that they had essentially adopted
counterinsurgency tactics against the Rose City Antifa, all the various
ANTIFA groups and around Portland, and he said there was
a NASH there was an information sharing basically a center
for lessons learned, sharing their best practices for law enforcement
agencies across the country, and they have all adopted I
think kind of these more or less. You read what
they're doing and it's like, hey, that kind of actually
sounds like counter surgency to me. And so I think
there's just been this huge coordinated effort, and no one
has been kneeling for Black Lives Matter anymore, no one
has been kneeling for Palestine. City leaders are not giving
anyone room to riot. I just think the underlying conditions
for Antifa direct action have not been there, and they've
and that's one reason, one reason why we haven't seen them,
with all the talk about Trump's a dictator and we
have to do more, and we've got to escalate, and
you know, protests don't work. Now we have to move
to the direct action. Now we're getting into the period
where I think I think some of these Antifa groups
could actually start to reorganize and and be let off
the leash again. I think, obviously we'll see it for
we'll see it for May Day and then uh I
through the summer. I don't see why we wouldn't see it.
Speaker 1: So when you bring up like Trump basically arresting judges
or you just basically kicking judges off the bench. You
will see some people you know on the right be like,
you know, you'll I'll tell them, Okay, he does that.
These great that we're talking about, and you know, all
these groups, that's an activation but that's an activation switch
for them there. Whoever is informing them is going to
use that as an activation switch. And people are like, yeah,
that's where we have to get to that, that's that's
you know, put a little nick Land accelerationism in there
and be like, yeah, that's that's what we need. Do
you think that that's why Trump isn't really moving forward
in enmass to try to get rid of these these judges.
I mean, these the judges are insane. I mean, if
it's true that thirty to forty percent of the judges
in the DC Court in the DC District were born
in another country, I mean we're we're basically infiltrated. I mean,
we don't have a country. We don't have a country
at all at this point as far as I'm concerned.
You can't look at it and tell me that we
have a country, because we don't have a you know,
especially under this world order, you have to have a
Constitution in order to be considered really to be considered
part of the post war or order. And we don't
have a constitution anymore, and we don't have judges who
we are even born here. And not to mention, sure,
politicians that are in charge or the elites behind them
may want people who weren't born in the United States
to be to be judges, But what does that say
about the people who weren't born here who'd want to
be judges? So I mean, we're I mean, well, to
go back to the question, do you think that may
be one of the reasons why Trump isn't activating so
quickly on getting rid of some of these judges because
he knows that they're the potential for street violence is there,
and he's not willing to crack down on it like
he wasn't willing to crack down on it in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a large part of that has to
do with who is advising the president there. Earlier this
week there was an executive order. In one of the
sections in the executive order directed the Department of Justice,
so Attorney General Pambondi and Secretary of Defense Pete Hexf.
I think it gave them ninety days to identify forget
the exact term, it's something like excess military national security assets,
basically telling them identify with national Guard, active component, military whatever, personnel, equipment,
training opportunities, whatever to be that could be used for
domestic security. And that didn't get a lot of press.
The left wing has been covered in left wing media,
has been covern it a lot, and so there I
will just tell you. Their conclusion is that the President
is serious about invoking the Insurrection Act. And they see
this as Trump effectively telling the Attorney General in Department
of Justice or DOJ and the DoD to identify personnel
or units or equipment or whatever, or or law enforcement
training opportunities to get ready for this. That's how they're
taking it. President Trump has previously threatened to invoke the
Insurrection Act. This is not something that if he invokes
it this year, we're going to live under the Insurrection
Act for the rest of his term. I think this,
I think it would be a trigger. I think it
would be it would greatly accelerate a domestic conflict. And
I'm not talking about like eighteen sixty one types civil war,
but you know, popular revolution Euro Maydn Arab springs. You know,
whatever they're going to call the American Spring a color revolution.
Terrorism can't terrorism obviously, So I not just against the
federal government. I think against Trump's prominent Trump supporters as
they look at enablers. So I think the Trump administration
is in a precarious situation where I think Trump's just
dealing with a popular revolution. I think this is something
they're going to launch in twenty twenty eight. Obviously they
are going to be periods of acceleration, but I think
invoking invoking the Insurrection Act is going to make things worse,
not better.
Speaker 1: I mean, are we looking at like possible posse commentados?
I mean, what is that? What would that even look like?
I mean, are we looking at what's the It just
completely escapes my mind right now. The law that keeps
US troops off of off of American soil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Posse Commatatus Act basically yeah, yeah, yeah. The military
cannot Basically military has have to be in a supporting role.
It's called back this military assistance to civil disturbances. They
have to report to like a state governor or civilian leadership.
It cannot be military leadership. There will be martial law.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's not like they weren't in charge
in the LA riots or I mean even even April
twenty first, nineteen ninety three a Waco, they were directing
everything there. But the Yeah yeah, so.
Speaker 2: The paper reality will differ from the from the ground reality. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how again for people who you know are just
living their lives, but who are openly you know, have
had Trump signs and they're in areas where it's kind
of mixed, where your your neighbor might have a Bernie
Sanders sign or you have no idea who I mean,
how does how would one think about they're personal? I
mean I always say, you know, when it comes to organization,
you have to start personally. You get your own house
in order, and you figure out where where your neighbor's at.
Then you figure out where people in your town is
that and it has to work out from there. It
has to. You know, you can't. It's hard to even
think about wanting to organize when your house is you know,
in shambles. So how would people even start to consider
preparing for what would to me if he was to
if he was to invoke the insurrection, if he was
to we're looking at a greater escalator escalation of violence
than what we saw in twenty twenty. I think we're
looking more along the lines of what we saw in
Wisconsin and what was the name of the town with
just going right off, just with the Kyle Rittenhouse town Kenosha. Yeah,
I mean where you know CNN is reporting as everything's
burning in the background and going out is just you know,
we got some protests going on here. How do people
even start preparing for that?
Speaker 2: Well, when you look so, low intensity conflict is an
umbrella term that covers everything from violent social movements on
the lower level up to terrorism campaigns, guerrilla warfare, insurgency,
popular revolutions or color revolutions, and so that's opposed to
high intensity conflict like World War two or Ukraine Russia.
We're not talking about tanks and bombers, but we're talking
about something above routine, peaceful competition. It's not just political
warfare between Democrats and Republicans. It is an actual form
of warfare, and it's kept beneath the threshold of conventional
war for lots of reasons. In low intensity conflict, we
have to remember that the we're talking about a very
small fraction overall, very small fraction actively engaging in low
intensity conflict. Typically when we look at them for the
past fifty seventy years, we're really looking at less than
one percent, almost always a fraction of one percent that's
actively engaged. And you say, well, we've got a country
of three hundred plus million people. You know, that's still
three million fighters. You know, that's a lot, and it is.
So that's the first thing I would look at is
what's my actual risk. Do I live in an area that,
as you say, maybe it's close politically, maybe there are
competing political activist groups, So that would be my first
consideration is what level of protests are you seeing in
your area? And you know, what is what's the potential
for more extreme elements, Like if you live near a
college campus with active communist groups, which are most college campuses,
then yeah, you are at a much higher risk of that,
you know. I think the average the average person probably
does not have a huge risk of like being targeted
by an by organized political violence, But coming out in
your car's keyed, where your your tires are popped, I
think that's far more likely than you know, you being
assassinated walking out your front door. So I those are
some of the things I would look at and listen.
It's hard to say where this thing is going, but
you know, the left, they do not want a conflict
to rise to the level of like actual armed conflict.
There's a reason, you know, Jeene Sharp wrote this book
back and then I wrote several editions of it. But
it goes back to like the at least the nineties,
maybe the seventies. It's called From Dictatorship to Democracy, and
it is about taking down governments through predominantly nonviolent means,
So building social power, the use of civil disobedience, undermining
of a government's legit intimacy, capacity, and authority. Those are
the three pillars of a government. A government has to
be legitimate. If you're President Trump, you have to be
acutely aware of anything that you do that can undermine
your own legitimacy, unless Trump's just going off the deep end,
and then he doesn't have to care about it. The
second pillar's capacity, so or authority. Authority is means that
people follow your laws. And then finally capacity you have
to have the manpower and the resources. So this is
something that even if Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act,
if he has defense leaders, if he has generals or
colonels or duty personnel or doj whoever. He's got to
have the people to do this. If they refuse to
invoke the Insurrection Act, guess what, you don't have one.
So if you're the left, you have to start looking
for they're already looking at these ways. You have to
look for ways to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump
administration or the federal government, undermine the authority by not
following the laws and encouraging other people to quote un
be ungovernable, do not follow the laws and undermine that capacity.
Because a piece of paper is a piece of paper.
You've got to have the people and the money and
the resources to actually implement what you want to do.
And so I think that is by far the most
likely scenario if we do get into some revolutionary you know,
it's funny George Soros back in twenty twenty talked about
the United States being in a revolutionary environment. We're obviously
going to be in one again. I think we're in
the beginning of one again, and so that is what
I expect. I don't expect, you know, something on the
order of like eighteen sixty one. It's going to be
a popular revolution. We know what they look like, we
know the hallmarks, we know all the things to look for.
So I think it's going to be predominantly non violent,
attacking those three pillars of the federal government with the
goal of not toppling the federal government per se, but
forcing the Trump administration from office, just like we've seen
these color revolutions for presidents and dictators and whoever else
country's rulers out of office for I don't know there's
twenty different cases or something like that. I think that's
probably what we're looking at.
Speaker 1: What have you heard about whether the judges to go
back to the judges? Is there anything in play to
basically deal with this, because the way I look at
it is you the regime wins. The regime has been
in power for the last hundred years, wins if these
judges aren't removed, because you just you've set it up
so that basically the the executive can't be an executive.
Everything has to run through I mean, who was it
who just some judge said that anyone you wanted to
deport you had to have deportation orders on. Now which
basically makes which makes supporting. I remember I think jd
Vance said on the All End podcast he just mentioned
like ten million. So okay, if you're doing that, you're not.
It's going to take you twenty five years to support
you know, ten million people. So what does he do
about these judges? Do you have you heard anything? What
are they expecting?
Speaker 2: Well, our our view is that Trump has already pretty
much just been defined the courts, but very quietly hasn't
made a big deal out of it. He hasn't flaunted it.
But you know, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump
administration has to quote unqot facilitate the return of this
a BREAKO Garcia, guy, what's the Trump administration done? Nothing?
So I think they do want to They obviously want
to force Trump into a constitutional crisis where Trump at
some point openly violates or takes some some sort of
punis action against a judge. And I think they pretty
much got their case with this Wisconsin, the county level
Circuit court judge. But I I look at that as
more of an accelerant than a trigger. I think if
you're the Trump administry, listen, I don't know, I'm kind
of getting outside my realm here with all this judicial stuff.
But I think the Trump administration, I think their their
current out look is, look, we just we continue to
do whatever we think we need to do, and we
let the Supreme Court rule on it. Where there may
be a snowball's chance in hell of the Supreme Court ruling,
you know that the Trump administration can do these things.
But there was just a court order against the Alien
Enemies Act that Trump can't cannot use the Alien Enemies
Act to deport these people either. So I don't know.
They're obviously trying to force him into some Trump's problem here.
The Trump's real problem is is legitimacy. And if he
defies the court, that is looked on by the average
American as an illegitimate action. And so the Trump administration's
challenges they have to convince the people that this is
a legitimate action. And if they can't do that, Trump's screwed.
Speaker 1: All right. So if Trump does, if he decides that
he's going to do this the you know, legal way,
almost certainly the Left comes back into power at some point.
And we've already talked about this is what that's what
The first thing I mentioned is they get back into power,
they are going to be I don't think it's going
to be the oh, you know, we're going to be
putting old people in jail for for praying, you know,
at abortion clinics and everything. I mean, I think it'll
just that a lot of people will be targeted, whether
it would be the using the I R S, whether
it would be going into their background, whether be I
mean anything. You know, they had that book three Felonies
a day from you know, twenty years ago. I mean
you could basically find something on anyone. I mean, how
much longer can that last? How much longer can the
left be allowed to get back in charge without I'm
I'm of the opinion, and I know this is not
a When I say this, a lot of people just
can't fathom it because they just think that either we're
beyond it, or you know, we're too technologically advanced, or
is it I'm of the opinion that there's going to
be hot war one day on the on American soil,
and not something widespread like the whole South was from
you know, sixty one to sixty five. But the there's
going to be pockets of like rifle people have rifles
and they're going you know, they're going to have grenade
launchers and they're the this state, the regime is going
to back one group against is going to back one
group against another. It just doesn't seem like with the
way we're going, where the left gets elected imports ten
million illegals, fifteen million illegals, the right gets elected, they
deport one hundred thousand, it just doesn't seem like we
have a country. And it's I don't know that it's
going to be the right who's going to initiate violence,
but you know, some people on the quote unquote right
are going to say something or plan something or do
something that's going to set off the left and the regime.
And I mean, I hope, I kind of hope it's
in my lifetime so that that can get out of
the way, so that you know, the future can be
a little bit brighter, and you know, I'll deal with that.
And but it just seems like that's a foregone conclusion.
If these people regain power and keep or allowed to
keep regaining power, because all they do is expand it
once they get it.
Speaker 2: Well I think it is unsustainable. Frankly, I think if
you're it. And again we're on the left. It's not
a monolith. We're really talking about kind of the mainstream
establishment left, and then we're talking about the revolutionary far left.
And if you're the establishment left, I think you you
have to take back control without killing the host. And
the problem is if things get if we do get
into a domestic conflict, then you've got to worry about
international investors. You got to worry about treasuries, treasury sell offs,
failed bond auctions, because nobody's buying treasuries. Who in the
world is going to buy a thirty year treasury bond
when you're on the verge of a civil war or
you know, or you could be in a you could
be locked into long term conflict. And then we've got
to worry about well, I say worry, you know, and
then the government's going to be worried about how how
do you fund itself? If if industry and the economy
is diminished or in some cases shut down, your tax
revenues disappear, Well, what are you gonna do. Historically government's
print money and so and now you've got to worry
about inflation. You got to worry about dollars and so
I just I'm not very optimistic. I try to be realistic,
but I'm not very optimistic about the future. And a
lot of my what I say realistic is informed by history,
and history is just not that optimistic regarding where the
United States is in this cycle and probably what we're
going to live through. This is a we're kind of
talking about worst case scenario, and there's you know, lots
of people talk about black Swans. I don't know what
a white Swan would be. Maybe we have a white Swan.
I don't know. I doubt it, but I agree with you.
I think we're headed to a bad place. And it's
not just going to be bad politically and socially, it's
going to be bad economically and bad financially and monetarily.
We're you know, if you listen to Ray Dalio, he
talks about short term debt cycles and long term debt cycles,
and we're at the long term debt cycle, at the
end of a long term debt cycle. I think there's
a case to be made that we are at the
end of imperial history, or we're at the end of
an imperial cycle. The American Empire is, and then we're
probably you know, you look at the that the average
age of a currency as the world reserve currency. We're
nearing the end of that age of the dollar being
the world reserve There's no competitor on the horizon right now.
But you know this, this is not sustainable. I think
in the international investors are starting to look at this.
So my whole point is this is not just gonna
be a domestic conflict. This is like house a card's
coming down scenario. Because nothing in our culture is sustainable
right now. And so yeah, I agree, I think we
probably will. I mean, then we got to solve the
problem of Medicare and medicaid. And that's not a twenty
thirties problem. That's a twenty two whist problem. That's going
to be a huge political driver in the twenty twenty
eight election. It may be the only maybe the primary
for boomers may be the primary primary driver of electoral turnout.
Who are you voting for? The guy that's going to save,
save medicarecil security, the guy that's going to kill which
is all which is I'm saying all this to say,
it's going to get real messy. It's already complex, it's
even going to get even more complex from here, and
I do think we're probably headed towards the domestic conflict
by the end of the decade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if people are voting on just basically voting
their wallet, which is a lot of what's just happened
in the last especially since the seventies, well then yeah,
all the social all those issues go out the window,
and you know, we don't know where we're going.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: There is really no found foundation, no moral foundation. Everything
would just be basically would be based off of what
what the government can pay for and what you can afford.
And that really does open up the open up the
possibility that more socialistically financialized kind of you know, if
m MT, if m MT gets in there, I mean,
we're that's that's the way you solve those you solve
those problems about oh, if there's a domestic conflict, how
do you pay people? Well, you got m MT, and
you know at that point you're basically telling you know,
how how worried are you about your about your bond rating?
You can just keep printing your It's sort of it
would flip the whole philosophy of how finance works and
the mechanisms of how finance works basically destroys Wall Street.
Wall Street is kind of irrelevant if that, if that
kind of thing happens, even with it's like a CBDC,
because they're not I mean, this is I don't think
it's going to happen. Is as uh quickly as some
people thought it was going to. I think Trump is
probably the like the delay, he just hit a delay.
But the the way it's going, especially if these people,
you know, if the regime gets back in charge, especially
with some of the things that like the tech billionaires
were really worried about why they went over to Trump,
which was mostly by what some of the some of
the things coming out of the Kamala camp about you know,
taxing unrealized capital gains and things like that. I mean,
we're just down, We're down a road where it's like,
you know, really people need to start thinking about growing
their own food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got to be as self sufficient as possible.
And that's not even to we haven't even talked about
global trade. And then you know, maybe then probably then
to globalism and you know, by do we go to
war with China, Japan and the Philippines seem to think
we will, And maybe by the end of the decade,
we get twenty percent of our imports from trying to
roughly forty percent from the Endo Pacific, another twenty percent
from Europe. What happens when that breaks down? I mean,
we're talking about not having the things we need to
maintain a civilization. So I think we will go backwards
for a while. Yeah, let me just say this one
other thing too. One of the real problems of twenty twenty,
those riots in the protests would not have been as
big if we didn't have a recession and we didn't
have the COVID lockdowns that put people out of work,
and all of a sudden, you don't go to work
Wednesday morning, you don't have class Wednesday morning because you're
doing online or whatever. Your college is closed, and you
have stimulus money, you got walking on money. Of course
you're going to go out and write all Tuesday night.
If we do have a if we have a domestic
conflict that actually puts a lot of people out of work,
that's going to be a lot of people resorting to
criminal behavior as well. And I hate to be like
a doomer, and I try to be even keel and
just recognize the worst case scenarios rarely the most likely,
but you know, I think this could get very ugly,
very quick. So all that's to say, you know, high
youth unemployment is a universal warning indicator for civil unrest.
And so if we do have a period where maybe
AI and robots maybe that do that does eventually lead
to like forty percent job loss. I'm talking about like
neo Luddite movements and lots of young people with nothing
to do, and they realize they don't have a future,
or they realize their future is not going to be
what they wanted it to be. And what are these
young people do? So I just you know, I people
talk about these industrial revolutions, they always generate internal conflict,
and so yeah, maybe what is this the fourth and
industrial revolution we're in now or something like that, And
then you got the fourth Turning and all these other
kind of long term indicators, and I think I don't
see a reason why they're not all ending at roughly
the same time or overlapping at roughly the same time
like this in the next decade. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people think one of the biggest problems
that we have is that basically because of the civic
nationalist religion. We think that you elect the right person
and they can fix everything. And really the only way
that yeah, and I hate to say it, the only
way that you even attempt to start fixing something in
this country is if you get elected left wing or
right wing and you basically become a dictator and start
tearing things down. I mean, it just doesn't seem like
there's like change. And I'm talking about change that you
may like or you may out. I was saying all
throughout last year. I think left wing or right left
or right wing authoritarianism is in our future. And I
know which one I prefer, but I'm prepared for both.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, life just sucks under authoritarism because you
get all these you get all these controls, and they
more often than not, they destroy the economy. They may
fix some social issues, maybe they paper over. Sometimes they
make social issues even worse. But life is not good
under authoritarianism. There was a book that came out in
I like probably twenty seventeen, I think, called How Democracies Die?
Have you heard of that book? Yeah, it's a good book,
Like yeah, Ziblat and Levinski, I you know, I read
it with an open mind I actually thought it was
a really good book. These are two lefty professors and
they they wrote a book about how democratic systems end
in authoritarianism. It was actually a really good book. But
they talked about all these cases where you have these
right wing authoritarians rise up and take control of the
country and become dictators. And I just thought, man, that's
that's so weird. Why, you know what, for no reason
at all, you know, why, why would they do that?
And so I started reading. So I started, you know,
reading about the history of all these what's the uh,
what's the guy that said, now the rest of the
story Paul Harvey? Okay, now the rest of the story,
the rest of that book. I went. I started started
going back through and reading the history of of what it's.
It's it's a foot race between communists and you know,
fascists or whatever you want to call them. And it's
not like fascists just arise out of nothing. I think
fascism is a reactionary response to communism. If you go
back and actually read history, it's like, well, what are
they reacting to? They're reacting to communism. And so this
was not a case where you just have these right
wing authoritarians say, you know what, it's Sunday morning, I'm
gonna take this place over. It is we have to
take power to stop the communists from taking power. That
is something that these people who are so intellectually dishonest,
they always talk about right wing authoritarians, and they never
talk about that being a response to left wing authoritarianism,
which is the history. We can the history of the
past one hundred plus years. So I agree, I think
we are in a foot race towards that as well.
And you know, with thirty seven trillion dollars and in
national debt, we got two hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.
Lots of people are getting a haircut, lots of money
is going to be printed in the future. We're on
track for a conflict. This is not something that a
country can just get over. I don't think without having it,
without actually fighting it out for a future. Because what
happens is you have these the vision of this country,
and they're you have two visions and they're diametrically opposing.
This is a zero sum game. If one side loose,
if one side wins, the other side will lose. And
I just I look at the fracture of the elites.
And this is something that Peter Turchen and put in
Jack Goldstone, a lot of other people talk about a
fracturing of elites, between the elites and counter elites, and
I think that it has what has happened, and some
of that Jack Goldstone points out, it's just very fascinating.
A lot of people think revolutions are bottom up. Okay,
it's like peasants and pitchforks. Now what happens is you
have a fracturing of the elites, and the elites decide
to go to war, and you have the peasant and
the merchant class in the middle class line up behind
the side that they that they favor that is promising
them the best vision of the future. I think that's
where we're at, and that leads to state breakdown, civil war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it always seems like the the elites side with
the quote unquote lower class to fight the middle, the
high low versus the middle, and the middle is the
ones and the middle are the ones that are actually
the productive class, the ones that know how to run
a water treatment plant and things like that. And then
so if you get that, if you get that, and
we've had that. We've had it without without too much violence,
but it started, and all that has to do is
just go a little bit more more radical and you know,
then you know infrastructure, you have infrastructure issues, which historically
you've seen it. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, Mike, I'll let you
go tell everybody where they can find your work, please.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well thanks. I'm I'm pretty active on Twitter, slash
x at Grayzone, intel gray with an A, and then
I also write a substack and write sit reps on
what's going on with the far left and what I'm
reading about in terms of like revolutions and civil wars
throughout history that I think we can learn from. And
the substack is gray Zone Research dots abstack dot com.
Speaker 1: Somebody will probably want to know, isn't there another outfit
called the gray Zone, the gray Zone? Are you affiliated
with them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? There is the Gray Zone, and I have zero
affiliation with them. Yeah. I chose gray zone because it's
the space between war and peace, it's the area of
low intensity conflict. But now I have nothing to do
with the Gray Zone.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people are very happy to
hear that right now. Thank you very much, love to
have you on again in the future to continue, especially
to get updates if things start getting you know, start progressing.
Take care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks yeah, thank you, thanks for having me.