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Fourth Generation Rhinoceros Warfare
Special for Western Rifle Shooters Association readers, 10 Jun 2011, graciously linked here
"What 'wins' at the tactical and physical levels may lose at the operational, strategic, mental and moral levels, where 4GW is decided." William S. Lind.
We are entering a new phase in the war for liberty. Clearly, police and courts are perfectly comfortable entering homes at will and killing the inhabitants once there. Meanwhile, the Oathkeepers have demonstrated a lack of motivation to do little more than pass out logo shirts to widows, while refusing to even blame anyone for the murders or demand specific personal accountability of those we pay to shoot us. Even so, it isn't yet time to drop the Gandhi suits. Instead, we need to up our game and start acting like people who have a chance of winning. We, like our well-meaning friends in the Oathkeepers, have been trained to impotency, but this is a treatable condition.
Two weeks ago, I published "The Least You Can Do", in which I used the phrase "purple rhinocerous alpha two six" and encouraged the reader to spread it widely. I deliberately requested that this article be published on only one site, the Western Rifle Shooter's Association blog. If you saw the original article, ask yourself the following questions, and try to answer them honestly:
1. Did you think (hope) that this phrase was an actual "go-code" of some kind, or at least a deliberate spoof intended to confuse and consume intelligence resources?
2. Were you motivated, in either case, to assist in such an effort by spreading that phrase?
3. Did you exercise due diligence and then discover that the phrase "purple rhinoceros" is associated with the gay and lesbian community? Or that "purple rhino" is a variety of marijuana (along with many other interpretations)?
4. Did the above discovery "turn you off" and take some of the fun out of it?
Enter the art of traffic analysis, in which useful, and sometimes actionable, intelligence information can be gleaned not from the content of traffic, but from its patterns and linkages. I leave a detailed description of this art to others, but you can bet the bad guys are really good at this. Here is what I discovered from traffic analysis of this particular exercise.
First, a couple of liberty-oriented sites did echo this phrase (BZ), one even to the point of using it as a call-sign in a fictitious broadcast. Yet, both of these missed a crucial detail: the original phrase was misspelled (as was "Stars and Cresents" a while back). Over the air, a word is a word. The phonetic alphabet was invented to prevent "verbal misspellings" from garbling a message. But, in a printed or electronic medium, character-per-character (or in the case of some graphic one-time pads, pixel-per-pixel image data), can be important. Attention to detail, my friends. In both retransmission cases, the correctly spelled word was substituted instead. Similarly, never reprocess an important image, as these must be copied as-is to be of any value.
Second, watching the Google rankings tells me that prior to the release of that message, the lambda.org gay and lesbian interpretation of "purple rhinoceros" (alone) was a low ranking search term. After a day, the two aforementioned liberty sites were at the top of the list, with the gay and lesbian interpretation having moved up to the bottom of the first results page. After two days, the gay and lesbian interpretation was on the top of the list, never to be challenged again.
Now, in traffic analysis terms, the raw numbers don't make any difference at all. Whether or which two or two thousand responded or acted on that information is not as important as the patterns of that action as a whole. In this case the group pattern reflects first interest, then curiosity about the terms themselves, and then a single-minded focus on their potentially negative aspects followed by a strong backpedaling retreat.
This analysis tells me, as well as the bad guys, that the liberty community, if it accounts for the majority of the search traffic for that term, is given to pulses of interest, have very little staying power, and can be completely distracted by issues which do not align well with its almost homogeneous social, religious and moral perspectives. This is not surprising, and is completely understandable. The liberty community is generally composed of upright people who see their children's future soiled by undesirables in and out of government. It is no surprise, then, that this community finds the idea of an "American Redoubt" so compelling.
But, the liberty movement is also composed of a lot of uptight people who are bound and determined to remain lily-white. For some, but certainly not all, liberty is a fine ideal in the abstract, but not if it means getting soiled a little bit in meatspace. This is the spring from whence flows grand impassioned statements such as "I'm not going to ally myself in this struggle with THOSE people", whomever those people may be at the moment. More on this lily-white concept later.
Importantly, Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) isn't about you and what you want. It is about what the enemy has in HIS head that matters. And it is especially about how you can influence his state of mind, or his organizational reactions and momentum, for your own purposes. Make a note to review your Lind and Che, and soon. Then come to the important realization that it is important to tell the truth as if it is a lie, speak lies as if they are the truth, and to hear those things which have not been said. And to not fear the ad-hominem. Lose that lily-whiteness just a little.
Put a different way, can you really fight for liberty if you are hell-bent on not being thought poorly-of by people you don't even know? If you are uncomfortable with using or reflecting the language of gays, druggies, Muslims or Marxists, how can you expect to pass the substantive gut-checks headed our way? Are you that afraid of being called a bad name by our enemies? Why have you given them this power?
With that in mind, let's look at this exercise from the perspective of the bad guys. Remember, like Maggie Thatcher said, they have to be right every time, and can't afford to let anything by or some of their own might evaporate. Got your DHS costume on? Good. Now listen.
1. The "purple rhinoceros" phrase was coined in the Boston area in the 1970s, and implies a certain level of gay and lesbian militancy. Coincidentally, I recently spent five months in the Boston area doing some work (and moving in New Hampshire Free State Project circles). The dullest DHS bot couldn't help but put those two data points together. Was Baugh up there generating contacts in the gay and lesbian community? Is he gay? Is he Muslim? Can we use either, or both, or insinuations of the same, to discredit him? Are there teams of unfortunate HIV victims recently converted to Islam moving into suicide bomber, or worse, sniper, positions even now? Are we spending enough effort in the gay and lesbian circles to detect potential threats from that quarter? Is the Free State Project somehow involved? How many gay Muslims are there, really? We need more data now!
2. The drug interpretation of that phrase is also interesting. Is there a connection between Jose Guerena and drug cartels? Are Mexican (or whatever) hit teams converging on Tucson? Is this an indication of the long-dreaded Muslim-assassin-drug-cartel link?
3. "Alpha two six"? "Six" is usually reserved for the commander of something, but what? Alpha Company, First Battalion (Marines)? Second Platoon, Alpha Company? What regiment? When? The ordering isn't right, either. Oh, and "Two" is often used for the intelligence officer, also. That can't be good, particularly when other sites are talking about targeting packages. Hmmm, does this mean the target intel phase has launched?
4. Each time one adds a search dimension, such as gays and marijuana, or any of the other possible interpretations, the computation and analysis efforts increase geometrically. That alone is suspect, especially when previously radicalized groups are implicated.
The list goes on. Each of these possible connections are absolutely absurd, in both my mind and yours. But your mind isn't the one that counts. And the bad guys who murder people in their homes can't take the chance of overlooking a potential threat axis. Ever.
Traffic analysis serves many purposes. I am very good at technology, and so who knows what I've been gleaning over the past couple of years from traffic headed my way? I've written some pretty outlandish stuff, as well as a lot of mundane, depending on any given reader's biases. I've called this "hitting the bell with a hammer and watching how it rings", but engineers call it system identification.
Here's what I've identified about the potential set of bad guys we may face. There are at least three major groups, probably representing many more specific law enforcement, intelligence or security organizations, involved in intelligence monitoring of my little circle (or cube) of the liberty community. The first group is populated by ignorant knuckle-draggers. These guys lack any sophistication whatsoever, and are living in the 1990s Tim McVeigh era. They are interested in a limited set of issues related to law-enforcement, or more particularly, law-provocation. Their techniques are rote, useful in the context of detecting and rounding up "git my gun" types, but are completely helpless and ineffective against the kind of thinker evolving among us.
The second group is more sophisticated, data-oriented, and attempt data-gathering and psychological warfare on a vast, automated scale. Some of the boneheads you encounter on the blogs are probably bots programmed to obfuscate and annoy, and are under the control of this group. These bots respond predictably to certain key words, apparently in an attempt to goad the meatware into saying something actionable or linkable. They (the bots and their own meatware) exhibit a certain weakness in over-utilization of "push-button psychology", and are blind to (or are incapable of coping with) the fact that true radicalization can make individuals work beyond their own personal weaknesses. Their field operators are intelligent and capable, but still rely on carefully scripted interactions and have difficulty acting "in character" in the moment. Beyond that, they're probably the ones making The List. This group is heavy into traffic analysis and sensor fusion. Hint, hint.
The third group is clearly extra-governmental, or at least extra-our-government. The likelihood of this group being a foreign intelligence agency is very high. It is far less likely that it is a private organization (as in the shadow government concept). This group is interested in steering liberty-movement conversations in a particular direction, including breeding specific kinds of conflict between the government types and the populace. They are also highly effective at inflating single-issue hostilities and driving wedges among various interest groups in the liberty sphere. They have their own stable of highly effective bots. As an interesting tidbit, this is probably the same group, although likely not the same individuals, which has infiltrated American nuclear weapons labs at a high level. These guys are very intelligent and very capable far out of proportion to the level of talent willing to work for (American) government rates. They are true believers in their cause. But, they have a critical weakness which we can exploit, as we'll discuss in the future.
All three groups appear to be acting along different axes. Although the interest areas of the first two overlap, their objectives are only accidentally aligned, if ever. Think bureaucratic competition. Not surprisingly, the third group feeds data (or "leads", in marketing terms) to the first two when it suits their interests, particularly with regard to "nodes" in the LibertySphere which represent a threat to their cause. This third group also publicly promotes, or markets, specific nodes within the liberty community when these have the potential to serve a useful propaganda role aligned with their cause.
And true to form, each of these groups reacted as desired and expected, including the expected traffic pulse and content, to that article. Thanks, guys. I couldn't do it without you.
Beyond that, there are also echoes of a fourth group. These may be the trans-nationalists Gardenserf writes about. If so, they are very careful about leaving any trails. I seem to attract hardly any of their attention.
But, of course, I can't prove any of this. Nor would I try if I could, because to do so would reveal sources and methods. Besides, we aren't making a jury case, are we?
Now, having said all that so far, let me make some absolute statements:
1. If there ever is a go-code, I won't be the one giving it. I'm a total nobody just trying to sell some books and get some name recognition to increase sales.
2. If there is ever a go-code, it probably won't be so blatant. Or have so many possible interpretations. Or be likely to offend the lily-whites. Even something like "Papa Romeo Alpha Two Six" is too obvious, isn't it?
3. A go-code is more likely to be how something is said, rather than what is said. Or how one says something. Even if "nigh on incomprehensible."
4. A go-code is even more likely to be hidden as data within porn somewhere. Or in a Facebook picture. And visible only by those who know what they are doing. And what they are looking for. Imagine all the whirring government computers now analyzing titties for threats.
5. Another possible go-code channel is web ads. Maybe one of those "President slaps wife, you too can save on insurance" kind of things. I've even advertised "Starving the Monkeys" on foxnews.com, so it is certainly do-able. Web venues are hurting for revenue these days, they'll probably run it cheap, and "it" is just about anything.
6. A go-code is not likely to have an immediate effect. Good meals take time to prepare.
7. An actual go-code is unlikely to follow a series of previous de-sensitizing gibberish which leads nowhere meaningful.
8. I misspell stuf all the time. Doesn't mean a thing.
9. I spoke second at the 2010 Liberty Forum in New Hampshire. Catherine Bleish spoke first. Her topic was her visits to DHS fusion centers. I learned nothing about locations, personnel or techniques from that event, nor from her, nor from my recent New Hampshire stay.
10. I am not in contact with former Marines or Naval Academy classmates with whom I have served and who now hold key positions. Even if so, they certainly wouldn't tell me anything about their work.
11. Monitoring me is a complete waste of effort that could better be spent looking elsewhere. But have at it, fellas, that just helps starve the monkeys faster.
12. It is impossible to get fractious factions defractionated toward a common goal.
Which brings us back to the lily-whites. If you allow yourself to be drawn away for something so petty as your prejudices, you will lose. And will deserve to become mired in this hell of your own creation. Consider this. Even in a society in which it is illegal to photograph police, prostitutes will always know a few. And drug-dealers or other black market types will likely own at least one or two. You've heard this point made by others; I'm not going to belabor it. Suffice it to say that one day you will need to stand shoulder to shoulder with some currently unsavory friends.
Understand that the word "moral" in that Lind quote means "morale" more than it does "religious doctrine". Or in other words, what is right, rather than righteous.
Interestingly, many, but certainly not all, of the same lily-whites who disdain forming alliances with undesirables are perfectly willing to condone torture as a national policy, so long as they don't have to get their hands dirty personally. I'll take a little Inquisition with our Holy War, please, and thank you very much. Yes, my lily-white friends, your souls are pure. Get over your hypocrisy and prejudices.
One of your lily-white prejudices, or false gods, in your terms, is fantasizing about the nobility of the average policeman. I'll write about that in more detail in the future, also. There are many in the LibertySphere who think that it is important to placate the police, lest they turn more feral than they already are.
This is why Oathkeepers is so appealing, it plays on your deep desire to believe in that nobility, because the alternative is too frightening and depressing. And that reality is that one day your widow may get an Oathkeepers shirt of her very own, too, when some of them show up for a photo-op while she sobs on- and off-camera. That will help her bunches. But what did we expect the Oathkeepers could actually do, really? Or would do, other than give us emotional release against reality?
Oathkeepers and I agree, for different reasons, that the police aren't your enemy. But they aren't your friend, nor will they ever be. They are merely a tool, nothing more. Right now, the police are the tool of the enemy, because you have been trained to think a certain way, and to not even see the enemy behind the tool. More importantly, they are a weapon that you can use, if you are willing to learn how. The first step is to understand that. The second step is to follow the advice in the previous article, and stop shedding tears when certain things happen.
Next, read your Che (PDF), and understand him, the man, and not just his words. Watching "The Motorcycle Diaries", the fictionalized account of his youthful tour of South America, is another path to understanding the parallel unfolding before our eyes today here in the North. Failing to do so for a higher moral purpose, such as not learning from (or about) a highly successful and influential Marxist, could very easily get you killed for nothing other than deliberate ignorance. Che himself died in Bolivia because he failed to follow his own advice. Figure out why, and you will understand why so many establishment rightists don't want you to even speak his name.
The above, (understand, harden and learn) are things you can do right now. Today. You simply have to will yourself to do so. Arctic Patriot asks us to resist by any means necessary. I'm not even asking for that much. Are you willing to do even the most benign and simple things to resist?
Our current nightmare didn't just happen, and it wasn't the Judgment of God. It was simply an act of economic terrorism perpetrated by evil men. The recent accelerating over-reach of police and the courts is merely the hardening gate which protects those evil men from you and me, and which has protected evil from good for most of our nation's history. Recognize this, harden your heart and be prepared to tarnish your lily-whiteness, your badge of impotency.
Your time will come. Even for you lily-whites, for you will also one day lose your whiteness, whether by choice or by necessity. The difference matters not in the end.
In the future, I'm going to talk more about what you, any of you, can do. That time, at least, has come. These won't be fanciful ideas such as "move to the country, buy four vehicles and a multi-fuel generator, then live a comfortable Little House on the Mountain existence courtesy of your book royalties." Thanks to the engineered real-estate crash, most of us can't move to even take another job, if one existed. Most of us are now trapped in subdivisions, and are scared shitless about what will happen to our families when it hits the fan. No, these things we will discuss are far more practical. Some of them take guts, but none of them are illegal. Yet. But some of them are the equivalent of playing dirty. So, do you love liberty enough to focus on the enemy's mind for a change, instead of your own? Do you love liberty enough to forget your own impotence, and instead focus on his fear?
This is what 4GW is all about: getting inside the heads of our enemies, and using them to accomplish our objectives. Feel the swell of pride and courage inside which comes from action, and dedicate yourself to this. Your time is coming.