FIRED

[eric_erosfan]

Eric S. Raymond@esrtweet

I'm a student of history. Here are three possible futures following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're based on historical examples of what happens when a Communist subversion campaign or insurgency overplays its hand and triggers broad popular resistance.

1. Popular revulsion against aboveground leftists celebrating the murder gives the Trump administration political cover to go after Antifa and its shadow funding network hard. Both are smashed.
- Communist agents of influence in the mainstream media and academia continue to self-discredit.
- Relatively few Communists are arrested, but their millions of aboveground tools become isolated and demoralized.
- Propelled by a huge swing in voter registrations that we are already seeing happen, the Democrats get crushed in the 2026 midterms.
- The long period of fever, madness, and Left ascendancy that began with the assassination of JFK by a Soviet agent in 1963 ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

This is the best case scenario for everybody, including the Communists who don't get thrown out of helicopters or shot down in the streets.

- If things don't go this way it will likely be because Democratic lawfare prevents the counter-subversion push from being fully effective. An obvious index of this failure would be another high-profile political assassination or attempt against a conservative target about 4 months out.

What happens in the event of that failure, especially if the third public attempt to kill Trump succeeds:

2. A period of Caudillismo. A charismatic strongman rides popular anger into power. If this happens, the Left better pray that the strongman is an infuriated JD Vance, because any alternative to him is likely to be worse for them.

- The crackdown against the Communist network becomes brutal and routinely uses extra-Constitutional means, possibly thinly covered by a declared state of emergency.
- At the harder end of this range of possibilities, right-wing death squads not exactly formed by government but winked at by it go after Communist public figures that are out of reach of the law because they've carefully preserved deniability. Many journalists are at the top of this target list.
- It is not likely that the Communist network can survive this future. The only way it happens is if they have enough popular support to develop a semi-militarized resistance - in effect making certain parts of the country no go regions for Federal agents.

Going by historical precedents, the index of this failure would be a resurgence of banditry by armed groups, initially with overtly political goals but decaying into general predation.

This would land us at:

3. Low-grade civil war, a la Bosnia or the Irish troubles. Anybody wishing for this has no idea how bloody, ugly, and brutal it would probably be. Especially if the Left succeeds at what it will with absolute certainty try to do, which is racialize the conflict.

- I don't think there is any realistic scenario in which the Communists win any of these confrontations. Not in the U.S., not in the 21st century. The question is how much blood and agony the rest of us will go through before they are finally defeated.

*************************************
Let me add a little to the conversation for others who may not know what "low intensity" really means. And how truly barbaric a modern civil war may actually be.

Ironically, it’s not new at all. Low intensity conflict is just a return to the way humans fought before nationalism: frequent clashes, smaller in scale, but relentless. The 20th century was the anomaly: tens of millions dead in a few short wars. That kind of massed slaughter is harder to replicate now. Large-scale buildup of forces across oceans is almost impossible. The disruption zone of combat stretches right into our living rooms.

Yes, low-intensity conflict may define the future. But don’t mistake “low intensity” for mercy.

In any modern Western civil war, the ingredients are already visible: late-stage dehumanization, mass migration fueling tribalism, nations splitting along urban–rural lines. Cities will find themselves under de facto siege, their supply chains strangled by rural zones controlling food, fuel, and rail. Electricity can be cut, trucks blocked. The bread and circuses that keep people docile vanish. And when that happens, every human is 72 hours away from turning feral.

Urban forces will strike outward to reopen supply lines. That means battles. Not global-scale campaigns, but fierce, bloody fights with no clear front lines. And here’s the darkest truth: a thousand small wars are more horrific than one large one. When conflict is spread across 5,000 places instead of five, who takes prisoners? Who trades them? With no central authority, no common banners, there’s no reason to keep anyone alive.

This is how genocide starts. Not with armies, but with neighbors. Slavery returns, rape becomes a weapon, and death is a daily occurrence. Air power won’t save us; we’ve tried that abroad, and it never works when the war is in the streets.

So when some people talk casually about “low intensity,” they miss the point. It is not safer. It is more savage. The rule of law collapses, and “traitor” simply means the man you’re pointing a rifle at.

That’s why I’ve spent so many words here on this platform. Not to glorify this possibility, but to warn against it. Because if we stumble into it, it will not look like the movies. It will look like the worst parts of human history, resurrected in our own neighborhoods.

God some people really belong in insane asylums.

 

[Baztrachian]

God some people really belong in insane asylums.

Damned shame that people like you closed down the insane asylums. Now you have nowhere to go.

 

[Baztrachian]

Eric S. Raymond@esrtweet

I'm a student of history. Here are three possible futures following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're based on historical examples of what happens when a Communist subversion campaign or insurgency overplays its hand and triggers broad popular resistance.

1. Popular revulsion against aboveground leftists celebrating the murder gives the Trump administration political cover to go after Antifa and its shadow funding network hard. Both are smashed.
- Communist agents of influence in the mainstream media and academia continue to self-discredit.
- Relatively few Communists are arrested, but their millions of aboveground tools become isolated and demoralized.
- Propelled by a huge swing in voter registrations that we are already seeing happen, the Democrats get crushed in the 2026 midterms.
- The long period of fever, madness, and Left ascendancy that began with the assassination of JFK by a Soviet agent in 1963 ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

This is the best case scenario for everybody, including the Communists who don't get thrown out of helicopters or shot down in the streets.

- If things don't go this way it will likely be because Democratic lawfare prevents the counter-subversion push from being fully effective. An obvious index of this failure would be another high-profile political assassination or attempt against a conservative target about 4 months out.

What happens in the event of that failure, especially if the third public attempt to kill Trump succeeds:

2. A period of Caudillismo. A charismatic strongman rides popular anger into power. If this happens, the Left better pray that the strongman is an infuriated JD Vance, because any alternative to him is likely to be worse for them.

- The crackdown against the Communist network becomes brutal and routinely uses extra-Constitutional means, possibly thinly covered by a declared state of emergency.
- At the harder end of this range of possibilities, right-wing death squads not exactly formed by government but winked at by it go after Communist public figures that are out of reach of the law because they've carefully preserved deniability. Many journalists are at the top of this target list.
- It is not likely that the Communist network can survive this future. The only way it happens is if they have enough popular support to develop a semi-militarized resistance - in effect making certain parts of the country no go regions for Federal agents.

Going by historical precedents, the index of this failure would be a resurgence of banditry by armed groups, initially with overtly political goals but decaying into general predation.

This would land us at:

3. Low-grade civil war, a la Bosnia or the Irish troubles. Anybody wishing for this has no idea how bloody, ugly, and brutal it would probably be. Especially if the Left succeeds at what it will with absolute certainty try to do, which is racialize the conflict.

- I don't think there is any realistic scenario in which the Communists win any of these confrontations. Not in the U.S., not in the 21st century. The question is how much blood and agony the rest of us will go through before they are finally defeated.

*************************************
Let me add a little to the conversation for others who may not know what "low intensity" really means. And how truly barbaric a modern civil war may actually be.

Ironically, it’s not new at all. Low intensity conflict is just a return to the way humans fought before nationalism: frequent clashes, smaller in scale, but relentless. The 20th century was the anomaly: tens of millions dead in a few short wars. That kind of massed slaughter is harder to replicate now. Large-scale buildup of forces across oceans is almost impossible. The disruption zone of combat stretches right into our living rooms.

Yes, low-intensity conflict may define the future. But don’t mistake “low intensity” for mercy.

In any modern Western civil war, the ingredients are already visible: late-stage dehumanization, mass migration fueling tribalism, nations splitting along urban–rural lines. Cities will find themselves under de facto siege, their supply chains strangled by rural zones controlling food, fuel, and rail. Electricity can be cut, trucks blocked. The bread and circuses that keep people docile vanish. And when that happens, every human is 72 hours away from turning feral.

Urban forces will strike outward to reopen supply lines. That means battles. Not global-scale campaigns, but fierce, bloody fights with no clear front lines. And here’s the darkest truth: a thousand small wars are more horrific than one large one. When conflict is spread across 5,000 places instead of five, who takes prisoners? Who trades them? With no central authority, no common banners, there’s no reason to keep anyone alive.

This is how genocide starts. Not with armies, but with neighbors. Slavery returns, rape becomes a weapon, and death is a daily occurrence. Air power won’t save us; we’ve tried that abroad, and it never works when the war is in the streets.

So when some people talk casually about “low intensity,” they miss the point. It is not safer. It is more savage. The rule of law collapses, and “traitor” simply means the man you’re pointing a rifle at.

That’s why I’ve spent so many words here on this platform. Not to glorify this possibility, but to warn against it. Because if we stumble into it, it will not look like the movies. It will look like the worst parts of human history, resurrected in our own neighborhoods.

You're clearly a reader and you comprehend what you read. Bravo.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Eric S. Raymond@esrtweet

I'm a student of history. Here are three possible futures following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're based on historical examples of what happens when a Communist subversion campaign or insurgency overplays its hand and triggers broad popular resistance.

1. Popular revulsion against aboveground leftists celebrating the murder gives the Trump administration political cover to go after Antifa and its shadow funding network hard. Both are smashed.
- Communist agents of influence in the mainstream media and academia continue to self-discredit.
- Relatively few Communists are arrested, but their millions of aboveground tools become isolated and demoralized.
- Propelled by a huge swing in voter registrations that we are already seeing happen, the Democrats get crushed in the 2026 midterms.
- The long period of fever, madness, and Left ascendancy that began with the assassination of JFK by a Soviet agent in 1963 ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

This is the best case scenario for everybody, including the Communists who don't get thrown out of helicopters or shot down in the streets.

- If things don't go this way it will likely be because Democratic lawfare prevents the counter-subversion push from being fully effective. An obvious index of this failure would be another high-profile political assassination or attempt against a conservative target about 4 months out.

What happens in the event of that failure, especially if the third public attempt to kill Trump succeeds:

2. A period of Caudillismo. A charismatic strongman rides popular anger into power. If this happens, the Left better pray that the strongman is an infuriated JD Vance, because any alternative to him is likely to be worse for them.

- The crackdown against the Communist network becomes brutal and routinely uses extra-Constitutional means, possibly thinly covered by a declared state of emergency.
- At the harder end of this range of possibilities, right-wing death squads not exactly formed by government but winked at by it go after Communist public figures that are out of reach of the law because they've carefully preserved deniability. Many journalists are at the top of this target list.
- It is not likely that the Communist network can survive this future. The only way it happens is if they have enough popular support to develop a semi-militarized resistance - in effect making certain parts of the country no go regions for Federal agents.

Going by historical precedents, the index of this failure would be a resurgence of banditry by armed groups, initially with overtly political goals but decaying into general predation.

This would land us at:

3. Low-grade civil war, a la Bosnia or the Irish troubles. Anybody wishing for this has no idea how bloody, ugly, and brutal it would probably be. Especially if the Left succeeds at what it will with absolute certainty try to do, which is racialize the conflict.

- I don't think there is any realistic scenario in which the Communists win any of these confrontations. Not in the U.S., not in the 21st century. The question is how much blood and agony the rest of us will go through before they are finally defeated.

*************************************
Let me add a little to the conversation for others who may not know what "low intensity" really means. And how truly barbaric a modern civil war may actually be.

Ironically, it’s not new at all. Low intensity conflict is just a return to the way humans fought before nationalism: frequent clashes, smaller in scale, but relentless. The 20th century was the anomaly: tens of millions dead in a few short wars. That kind of massed slaughter is harder to replicate now. Large-scale buildup of forces across oceans is almost impossible. The disruption zone of combat stretches right into our living rooms.

Yes, low-intensity conflict may define the future. But don’t mistake “low intensity” for mercy.

In any modern Western civil war, the ingredients are already visible: late-stage dehumanization, mass migration fueling tribalism, nations splitting along urban–rural lines. Cities will find themselves under de facto siege, their supply chains strangled by rural zones controlling food, fuel, and rail. Electricity can be cut, trucks blocked. The bread and circuses that keep people docile vanish. And when that happens, every human is 72 hours away from turning feral.

Urban forces will strike outward to reopen supply lines. That means battles. Not global-scale campaigns, but fierce, bloody fights with no clear front lines. And here’s the darkest truth: a thousand small wars are more horrific than one large one. When conflict is spread across 5,000 places instead of five, who takes prisoners? Who trades them? With no central authority, no common banners, there’s no reason to keep anyone alive.

This is how genocide starts. Not with armies, but with neighbors. Slavery returns, rape becomes a weapon, and death is a daily occurrence. Air power won’t save us; we’ve tried that abroad, and it never works when the war is in the streets.

So when some people talk casually about “low intensity,” they miss the point. It is not safer. It is more savage. The rule of law collapses, and “traitor” simply means the man you’re pointing a rifle at.

That’s why I’ve spent so many words here on this platform. Not to glorify this possibility, but to warn against it. Because if we stumble into it, it will not look like the movies. It will look like the worst parts of human history, resurrected in our own neighborhoods.

If . . . .


It ain't gonna look like anything we have ever seen.


If . . . .

 

[ChloeTzang]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1968710357410525300

 

[1984X2024]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1969121770817864095

 

[Rebel5soul]

 

[latecomer91364]

The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a job or a TV show. There are other legal mechanisms in place.

 

[ll74]

The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a job or a TV show. There are other legal mechanisms in place.

Does the first amendment stop the government from coercing action against people's speech?

Asking for a friend

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way"

 

[latecomer91364]

Does the first amendment stop the government from coercing action against people's speech?

Asking for a friend

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way"

It certainly didn't stop the Biden administration.

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/p...iden-white-house-censorship-regime-new-report

 

[ll74]

It certainly didn't stop the Biden administration.

Deflection is fun.

 

[Rebel5soul]

Does the first amendment stop the government from coercing action against people's speech?

Asking for a friend

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way"

Stop spreading lies.

 

[Bn2f]

Stop spreading lies.

What is the lie?

 

[ll74]

Stop spreading lies.

""We can do this the easy way or the hard way"

 

[Rebel5soul]

""We can do this the easy way or the hard way"

Is that all you got?

 

[ll74]

Is that all you got?

That's all I need.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Is that all you got?

Yes.