Disruptive Insurgency

 

It is all the rage in today’s liberal wing of the legacy press, to speak of the Republican Party in terms of being an insurgency (as opposed to a bona fide political party). In a recent interview on Al Jazeera, the great liberal lion, Noam Chomsky recently made headlines with his statement that the Republican party has become “not a political party" but a "radical insurgency."

He made his comments in regard to how the GOP’s “brand” suffered through messaging missteps of two recent developments. First… former President Donald Trump brazenly admitting that he fully intended to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Second… in an official censure of Republican house members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the Republican National Committee referred to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots as a form of "legitimate political discourse."

In his new book: Insurgency – How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Wanted, author Jeremy Peters argues that… “In many ways, the GOP had been Donald Trump’s for decades.” Peters goes on to quote Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio in identifying a new demographic of GOP faithful… “the 'Infowars’ Republicans,” or those who believe in at least four of the baseless theories spread by the Alt-Right operative/LARP character: QAnon, as dutifully reported on Alex Jones’ Infowars website.

By his estimates, the Infowars Republicans now make up 10% of the GOP electorate. The more far-right Republicans migrate… the more extreme the insurgency becomes. The resulting fascist tomfoolery pushes the GOP ever further to the ideological Right.  As hard as this is for progressives to believe… the emerging GOP insurgency will become even more hardline, Alt-Right in coming years… more so than even the great Robber Baron/Trickster King himself.

Alas, all of this craziness is nothing new for those intrepid observers who have recognized and witnessed the unfolding, alt-reality of contemporary high strangeness. The idea of a political (or social) movement, being described as an insurgency, has been bandied about this website… for years.

I first began to think seriously about, and report on modern politics in terms of insurgent operations, back in 2011. I had then been introduced to the writings of John Robb, former USAF pilot in special operations, and author of Brave New War. In a 2011 post titled: Navigating the Apocalypse 1.5 – Open Source Jihad, I chronicled how Robb outlined the “open source” nature of modern insurgency fighting forces. 

In light of Robb’s writings, I realized that the disruptive insurgency model best described, not only political operations, but modern, networking technologies as well. In my 2017 post, titled:  Blockchain & Social Networking in a Disruptive Future, I began to flesh out a model of disruptive innovation. I pointed out that political movements were operating more like a network, than a bureaucracy… driven by new technologies.

For me, the idea of socio-political operations, morphing into disruptive insurgencies, has since become a recurring theme. In my Blows Against the Empire series, I more thoroughly laid out the disruptive insurgency vs the bureaucratic orthodoxy paradigm… incorporating a synchro-mystic component, in the model. Viewing the DI/BO model through a synchro-mystic lens, affords the inclusion of magical practice as, not only a practical, working element… but an additional, deepening component of critical discernment. For we would all do well, not to underestimate the rise in magical thinking that has occurred over the last few decades.

A magical perspective provides new insights and creative ways to deal with the intrenched, bureaucratic orthodoxies that have been the hallmark of late-stage capitalism. In part 4 of my Blows Against the Empire series, subtitled Set and Setting, I identified bureaucratic orthodoxy as the working arm, the “business end” of the predator/dominator paradigm.

  

It is the predator/dominator paradigm that is at the heart of our collective traumas. It can be defined, in part, as the pervasive, age-old patrilineal system that imposes a punitive, top-down approach to managing worldly affairs of state, commerce, and familial authority. The ultimate “Big Daddy” figure in the predator/dominator paradigm, is none other than the angry, jealous god of the old testament: Jehovah… aka the Demiurge.

Opponents of the predator/dominator model, such as Riane Eisler and Terence McKenna, propose an egalitarian structure of society, founded on mutual respect among its inhabitants. They name this opposing philosophy the Partnership Paradigm. In this model, all segments of a population… including ethnic minorities, refugees & the displaced, the poor, LGBTQ, and most powerfully, women… form a working partnership, rather than being preyed upon.

Symbolically, metaphorically, mythically… the “Big Mama” of the Partnership Paradigm is Mother Earth. It is vitally important to remember that Mother Nature, Sophia, Gaia… is our greatest ally in our struggle against EMPIRE and it’s predator/dominator paradigm. The successful transition to a partnership paradigm is reliant on the recognition of the feminine as a source of receptive energy that is not subservient to, but equal to active, masculine energy.

These competing paradigms mirror the great yin-yang, dark-light nature of 3-dimensional universe… sky god and earth goddess. Like the concept of dualism, they are metaphors that symbolize the mysterious workings of that which cannot be articulated. These two grand paradigms point to aspects of a reality that we cannot fully comprehend. As models, the predator/dominator vs partnership paradigms represent mock-ups of something real… of something that we know in our bones to be true. The mechanisms of these models, (ie: DI/BO) act upon energies at play, that affect our perceptions.

Consequently, disruptive insurgencies, as well as bureaucratic orthodoxies, effectively trigger our emotional energetic system (circuit three, within the 8 brain model)… thereby altering our behavior. Because they are effective… they make good models. They accurately reflect the changes in our behaviors, driven by actions implemented to alter our emotions.

Of the two, it appears that disruptive insurgencies (as potentially manipulative as they can be) model creative, evolutionary disruption to the status quo. DI's appear poised to enact change at a faster rate than BO's. As we have seen, disruptive insurgencies are nimble… they move fast. Bureaucratic orthodoxies are slow… they take time to react.

 

So it is, paradoxically, that disruptive insurgencies will be the drivers of evolutionary change, as well as vehicles for a reactive, recoiling desire to return to a 1950’s Amerika. As we are learning, insurging disruption cuts both ways… Right and Left. In response to these insurgencies, bureaucratic orthodoxies also cut both ways. They are the main opponent and steadfast obstacle to transformation… the very manifestation of Empire. Yet, strangely enough, bureaucratic orthodoxies also represent guardrails that allow for incremental transition to evolutionary change.

It is this paradox that is at the heart of Philip K Dick’s infamous comments, concerning Empire.

So where does all this leave us? As my old anarchist, hillbilly buddy: Ricky-Bob Barfly used to say… “We are standing directly above the center of the Earth, in the State of Confusion.” And little wonder. The times that we are living through are changing so fast, that confusion is our new resting state. It is the confusion over the quickening of change that is the true driver of reactive, populist movements, world-wide.

It is the confusion (and fear) over our wondrous, beautifully changing world, that drives people toward any nationalist despot that promises to “make things the way they used to be.” The next, post-Trump, even-farther-Right despot who sells people on the empty promises of a return to the good old days, is peddling the worst kind of fraudulent disinformation. That’s what despots do… they sell their agenda by triggering fear. But guess what… we are not going back to 1950’s Amerika… and by the way, who would want to?

The current, reactionary, fascist impulse of the GOP insurgency is a dead-end, precisely because it exploits nostalgic fantasies that never happened. 1950’s Amerika wasn’t the good old days… something to happily return to. We were being sold out in the 1950’s. This was the era of the rise of the Military Industrial Complex… a return to the never-ending Empire. I suspect that the motives of the powers behind the GOP, have something more sinister in mind than a return to the way we were.

Moving forward, it will be parapolitical observations that most closely model the effects of targeted disruptive insurgencies. It will be synchro-mystic observations that more accurately describe and forecast potential outcomes. Such tools will prove invaluable as we now move into the era of the Disruptive Insurgency.

   

Remember… up to this point, in talking about such matters, we are referencing models. We are describing forecasting tools that are employed, just as political pollsters utilize exit polls. As we have seen, polls have proven to be susceptible to manipulation. As a forecasting tool, the disruptive insurgent model will most likely, best predict evolutionary change. The bureaucratic orthodoxy model will best forecast resistance to change.

Moving out of the realm of models… into creative action… the mind-set that is best suited to take advantage of disruptive insurgency, is… Magical Thinking. Incorporating this mode into our thought processes, enables powerful visualization, intention and affirmation skill sets (circuit six, in the 8 brain model). By these means, the thoughtful "intelligence engineer" begins to tip the odds in their (our) favor.

The coming years promise to be... shall we say... novel... indeed. They will be filled with all types of intrigues, treacheries and outrageousness. They will also be filled with unexpected triumphs and welcome surprises, arising from sources where we least expect them. In the era of Disruptive Insurgency, novel modes of thought begin to transform into instances of more favorable outcomes... as if by magic!