Washington DC 25 AUG 2023
The Great Race is On!
It’s the constitution -v- an anti-election/anti-peaceful transfer of power terrorist network backed by a brainwashed movement.
New research shows that as accountability grows, so does violent political extremism. In fact, the latter is “skyrocketing”.
When a panel of aspiring Presidents of the United States were asked if they would support a convicted felon, rapist, and man who openly ordered the public execution of an integral member of the continuity of government (and admitted to it afterwards) - all but 2 raised their hands - including the victim of that attempted assassination.
Saturation brainwashing continues to put America at risk. It is being used by the anti-democracy network and wider movement to complete the unfinished coup. The ONLY thing that has any chance of breaking this death-grip is a shocking series of doses of reality and accountability. The problem is unless the brainwashing system shows the consequences to the target population - the problem will never go away.
I am the State
Trump is putting the constitution (via the legal system) on trial in the media before it can put him on trial in the Courts. This high-stakes neck-and-neck competition will go down to the wire. There has been endless reporting of the indictments against Trump and none on Trump’s indictment of America. At least, not in the proper context. That indictment savages the constitution and all those responsible for the apolitical “administration” of “the state”: officeholders like judges, prosecutors, grand jurors, law enforcement officers, election administrators, Secretaries of State, and law makers at all levels of government. They are the conspirators! They are engaged in a complex, multi-faceted, coordinated series of conspiracies to deny the rightful Ruler of his power.
When Trump says something is “terrible for our nation” or “terrible for America” he means it’s terrible for him.1 In his mind, and among his devout followers, Trump is America. Therefore to criticize Trump, is to criticize America. “Patriots” know that America can do no wrong and any one who criticizes it is an enemy. The “Administrative state”, on the other hand, is waging an unjust and unfair war against the real America and must be stopped at all costs. In this framing, the rule of law becomes an act of lèse-majesté - the ultimate treason. And we all know the fate that awaits traitors, don’t we! Execution - the ultimate maga fetish.2
Once one understands that Trump is America - then the entire maga project is no longer a mad hatters tea party where ‘up is down’. It all falls neatly into place. His declaration that America is the greatest threat to western civilization and needs regime change - in addition to his intent to terminate the constitution and the rule of law — all of that refers to the enemy America - the “Administrative state” or “deep state” America. Not the Real America.
Trumpian Manichaeism becomes a simple choice between himself (good) and the “Administrative state” (evil). The Administrative state equates to the constitution and its administration by the Courts (and all other governmental bodies authorized by the founding law). Such an “artificial construction” must be opposed because it denies the “divine right” of Trump. This is not meant sarcastically. It explains the deep commitment of religious followers to Trump. He is, after all, cut from exactly the same cloth as tele-evangelists and shares the same methods and purpose - accumulation of influence, money, power and often, sexual conquest. Like Keith Raniere, Jim Jones and David Koresh.3
The Political Project
In a battle between good and evil, violence is justified. In fact, it will be considered imperative by both sides because each sees the other as evil.
In this context, it is necessary to ask, what is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? It’s simple - the cause. If one agrees with the cause, one is a freedom fighter and vice versa.
This fight is divided between two competing political ideas. On one side is the constitution. On the other, a man.
Centuries of war and political development culminated in the ideas underpinning America - like freedom and democracy - made manifest by the rule of law that aspires to treat all people equally. Opposed to the idea of government - ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’; is government ‘of a man, over a people, for the interest of that man and his cronies’.
That exists in Russia today and is kicking against America’s door right now. Some Americans behind the door are trying to pull it open to the tyranny of a minority of one. They are mostly oligarchs who use their wealth to manipulate popular opinion via ownership or cable or social media networks. They see their interests aligning with one man and his cronies. They believe they can control that man, despite considerable evidence to the contrary when he was in the Oval Office. Hope springs eternal among oligarchs it seems. See, they are just like us! Unlike us, they have no need for the people other than as wallets. The people must buy, and not be heard.
To achieve this reversal of centuries of political development - the termination of American exceptionalism and the return to the same disingenuous politics of other places and times - the man created a political project dedicated to himself and enforced, where necessary, by paramilitary thugs and the shameless sneers of an easily manipulated public. Supported by a vast propaganda machine marching in lock-step, the man created a movement in his image and set about undermining and destroying public institutions that enjoy the respect and trust of the nation. These institutions have to be eliminated because they constrain his powers. He has no need for checks and balances. They are a hinderance to obedience to his decisions about what is right for all.
The Trump Terror Network
Terrorism is the “use of fear, threats, intimidation or violence to achieve political aims”. It can also be referred to as politically motivated violence / extremism. The term “Trump Terror Network” (TTN) was unpopular when first used on these pages. It was completely uncommon at the time to label maga as a fascist movement or to discuss their attempts to destroy the country as terrorism.
CWII did not deployed the term casually. The TTN posting came out in Feb of 2022 - a year after J6. It took 12 months for CWII to piece together the full story. By Jan 2022, CWII was confident in the assessment that Trump, and a network of lawyers and paramilitaries, had attempted to use illegal political maneuvers, and when those failed, outright violence, to stop and reverse the peaceful transfer of power. The intent of this political program was to install an unelected ruler in the White House.
That assessment was later confirmed over a year later by the findings of the remarkable J6C that based its research on the testimony of not just Republicans, but many who were part of the Trump inner circle, to include his Attorney General and his beloved daughter/Presidential adviser/Bagwoman.
To a national security policy wonk like CWII, it was quite clear that maga had been radicalized in the same way as al Qaeda (AQ) had wound up its supporters. That was not the only similarity. Maga and AQ shared the same aim of destroying America. While AQ might fly some planes into a building or set off the occasional bomb (even nuclear), there was simply no way it could make ~50% of the American public adherents of its doctrine and turn them into active, committed, fanatical weapons (stochastic, political or kinetic) against the constitution.
The TTN could. And has.
While the portion of the spectrum of TTN supporters ready and willing to take up arms might be infinitesimal, in a country of 350 million, that was always going to be a significant number. Under the right conditions, it could be a difficult problem to manage.
Most of maga are stuck at Phase I of the radicalization pathway. A very small minority at Phase II, and an unknown much smaller minority may be ready to launch an attack. Certainly, as we have seen with the USSS, national security institutions of government have been suborned by Trump. All have a maga base within them and some may experience some splintering of allegiance if a strong enough test presents itself.
Skyrocketing Threats
In the absence of facts or law with which to defend the attempted coup (and related crime sprees) in the Courts, the Trump Terror Network’s (TTN) only remaining strategy is to rely on constantly escalating stochastic terrorism in the hope that it will provoke violence and trigger a wider political and/or kinetic conflict that results in a compromise where the TTN escapes justice.
As absurd as that sounds to normies, that is the plan. It’s all they have left. Otherwise, Trump would have rushed to the Courts to clear his name before the election. Instead, he is attempting to provoke the Courts to jail him for contempt to add to his grievance narrative (ostensibly, in this instance, for denying him his “rights”) and further provoke his followers to violence. (Checks notes: there is no right to coup in the US Constitution).
According to new research and recent events, the stochastic terrorism strategy is paying dividends. In news that conforms to CWII’s predictions for 2023 issued in January, a new report by the University of Nebraska, Omaha, concludes that threats against federal officials have “skyrocketed in recent years”.
USA Today reports that
Last year, federal officials charged more people over public threats – against elected officials, law enforcement and judicial officials, educators and health care workers – than in any of the previous 10 years, according to research from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
These statistics do not tell the whole story because they exclude state and local law enforcement data. A further gap includes reported threats that maga law enforcement have ignored. Another major gap is unreported threats in all jurisdictions, that typically are several times the volume of recorded activity. The inference is the problem is likely several times worse than available data suggests. Seamus Hughes, an author of the study explains that
“Trend lines are going up — violent rhetoric is on the rise, and is unfortunately becoming normalized.
Stochastic terrorism has only gotten worse over 2023
Over the course of this year, CWII has tracked TTN stochastic terrorism efforts that have constantly escalated in ever more desperate attempts to get, and maintain, attention. As shown in this selection of 3 stories, stochastic escalation has risen from innuendo and suggestion by mainstream TTN members of Congress; to calls for executions of democrats by TTN propaganda outlets; to outright demands for civil war.
Anti-government sentiments are a maga mainstay. The TTN and its allies have successfully undermined trust and confidence in US institutions. The most glaring case being political attacks on the US military that has caused an unearned dramatic loss of public confidence in a very short time.
Trump himself has declared his intent to suspend the constitution:
He has repeatedly called for violence against various figures. Perhaps the most notable example was the order to TTN foot soldiers to assassinate Jack Smith - “put the deranged sick puppet out to rest”:
This threat is of a piece with “stand back and stand by” and “will be wild”. His attempts to obfuscate his orders with word salad “tweets” might work on normies, but his paramilitaries know precisely what he is saying. As one of his terrorist followers told another pre-J6
In short, the Trump Terror Network (TTN) is running at fever pitch to try and save its leader from the slow arm of the law. They will stop at nothing. As the net tightens on Trump and his network, expect the calls to violence to become every more direct and frequent. Full-blown nazi propaganda techniques and messaging is now bring embraced by the TTN.
It can be hoped that there may be a “boy who cried wolf” effect and/or sheer fatigue at the constant political turmoil. However the problem is that normies experience these reactions while committed maga have yet to show any flagging in their fantastical devotion and craving for confirmation bias.
TTN paramilitary and political operations J6-Today
It is a useful exercise to try and pull together some examples of both paramilitary and political operators within the TTN. As these are now starting to be processed through the Courts, we can see the scale, organization, fanatical commitment, and resilience of these terrorists and their dedication to the cause. All of the paramilitaries shown below have killed for, or died, or been jailed for life in the service of, at the order of, and in obedience to, a man. A failed reality TV show host with terrible hair and perhaps the worst case of malignant sociopathic narcissism since his idol - Adolf Hitler.
TTN J6 Paramilitary Operations
Most well known are the J6 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers - many of whom are already serving 20-life for seditious conspiracy. In addition to these terrorists are members of the Michigan plot to assassinate Michigan Gov Whitmer, whom Trump had targeted for months.
Post J6 TTN Paramilitary Operations
In addition to the statistics included in the new study cited above, lone wolf terror attacks by Trump foot-soldiers are also up, with several high profile (thwarted or successful) attacks in recent months. Each of the attackers left a trail of public declarations of fealty to Trump along side their equally public threats to murder President Biden, Members of Congress, Federal Judges, Prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and grand jurors. All are considered legitimate targets by TTN due to their membership of the “Administrative state”. Or, in other words, support of the US Constitution.
This is just a sample of the recent operations of the TTN. It is far from a complete list. In order, those pictured above are: Abigail Jo Shry, Adam Bies, Ricky Shiffer, Craig Robertson, GA Grand Jury, Floyd Ray Roseberry, David DePape, Solomon Peña, and Cesar Sayoc.
TTN Political Operatives Under Arrest
The Leader of the TTN, disgraced, one term loser, ex-president, rapist, now criminal defendant, Donald Trump, has been arrested and charged 91 times in 4 different indictments. These are all criminal cases. His ongoing civil suits for, inter alia, rape related defamation (a second case after he was found guilty), continue. The federal cases have many “unindicted co-conpirators” and have only led to the arrest of a few bit players.
Only the sweeping Georgia RICO case has rounded up a significant portion of the leaders of the TTN who answered directly to Trump. However there still remains a gap between the Trump/Giuliani/Meadows layer and the Oath Keepers/Proud Boy leader layer inhabited by Trump-pardoned criminals Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Steve Bannon.
Behold the Leader and upper echelons of the the Trump Terrorist Network. They moved heaven and earth in their efforts to destroy the will of the people of the United States of America. They put into motion a series of political and paramilitary crimes sprees that came astonishingly close to reversing the results of an election and placing an unelected dictator in charge of the most powerful and well armed government in this history of the world. A man who was previously stopped from breaking NATO, shooting missiles into Mexico, nuking a hurricane, declaring martial law and shooting peaceful protestors.
He has made sure that if there is a next time, there will be no one to stop him acting instinctively, on whim, without thinking through any consequences or possibilities for blow back on the American people. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to his breathtaking incompetence, incuriosity, inability to understand rudimentary science, history, geography or psychology.
If this terrorist group is allowed to finish what it has started and achieve what Usama bin Laden could only dream about, not only America, but the world will enter a new medieval dark age of chaos and anarchy.
Update - 10 OCT 2023 - The Slow Burn Threatening Our Democracy:
Unless policymakers act, increasing threats to public officials will normalize political violence and stymie civic engagement and democratic processes.
The threat of domestic extremism has moved into a new phase, something best referred to as a slowly growing everyday insurgency, where an unprecedented number of disparate individuals motivated by similar underlying grievances seek to intimidate and coerce public officials.
First, more than 500 individuals were charged in federal court in the past 10 years for making threats against public officials. Second, more than half of them did not express an explicit ideological motivation. Third, of those who displayed an ideological bent, it tended to be anti-government and/or racist in nature. Fourth, most individuals charged for making threats—70 percent in our data set—had a criminal background. A significant number of them were repeat offenders—known as “serial threateners”—who had been arrested previously for a similar crime but with a different victim.
US Capitol Police stats on threats to members of congress:
9,625 in 2021
8,613 in 2020
6,955 in 2019
5,206 in 2018
3,939 in 2017
Update - 10 OCT 2023 - The FBI Categorize Extreme Maga as Domestic Terrorists
CWII: Finally the system has woken up to the threat of the TTN.
The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers.
CWII: Maga of course will complain this is the deep state targeting them.
According to the FBI, the number of domestic terrorism-related open cases grew by 357 percent from 1,981 in fiscal year 2013 to 9,049 in fiscal year 2021, a number that has been widely quoted in the media as evidence of a widespread domestic terror threat. The FBI also says the number of FBI domestic violent extremism and domestic terrorism investigations has more than doubled since the spring of 2020—to approximately 2,700 investigations at the end of fiscal year 2022, another marker that's been widely quoted.
The FBI’s official definition of AGAAVE ("anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism") was recently changed to "furtherance of political and/or social agendas."
Accordingly,
Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists
In October 2022 the FBI
created a new subcategory—"AGAAVE-Other"—of those who were a threat but do not fit into its anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen groups. Introduced without any announcement, and reported here for the first time, the new classification is officially defined as "domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined, such as individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party."
"What other name could we use?" asks one FBI officer who spoke with Newsweek, and who defends what he says is merely a record-keeping change in response to Congressional pressure to track things better. "Obviously if Democratic Party supporters resort to violence, it [AGAAVE-Other] would apply to them as well. It doesn't matter that there is a low likelihood of that. So yes, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan."
Another senior intelligence official who requested anonymity told Newsweek, "We've crossed the Rubicon." In emailed responses to questions, he said, "Trump's army constitutes the greatest threat of violence domestically...politically...that's the reality and the problem set.”
CWII: Its about time.
Some of Trump's Republican allies in Congress have called for the FBI to be defunded over such accusations and the prosecution of Trump supporters over the January 6 attack. The fight over the FBI is in itself helping to stoke the political temperature ahead of the 2024 election.
TTN knows the threat against it comes from the government it tried to violently overturn.
Update - 27 SEP 2023 - As Trump Prosecutions Move Forward, Threats and Concerns Increase
In April, before federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Trump, one survey showed that 4.5 percent of American adults agreed with the idea that the use of force was “justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Just two months later, after the first federal indictment of Mr. Trump, that figure surged to 7 percent.
The F.B.I., which has seen the number of threats against its personnel and facilities surge since its agents carried out the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, in August 2022, subsequently created a special unit to deal with the threats. A U.S. official said threats since then have risen more than 300 percent, in part because the identities of employees, and information about them, are being spread online.
The threats are sometimes too vague to rise to the level of pursuing a criminal investigation, and hate speech enjoys some First Amendment protections, often making prosecutions difficult. But the Justice Department has charged more than a half dozen people with making threats.
This has had its own consequences: In the past 13 months, F.B.I. agents confronting individuals suspected of making threats have shot and fatally wounded two people, including one in Utah who was armed and had threatened, before President Biden’s planned visit to the area, to kill him.
The day before the threatening call last month to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s chambers in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING FOR YOU!” (A Texas woman was later charged with making the call.)
Mr. Smith — whom Mr. Trump has described as “a thug” and “deranged” — has been a particular target of violent threats, and his office is on pace to spend $8 million to $10 million on protective details for him, his family and senior staff members, according to officials.
Next time you listen to him speak, every time he talks about what’s good or bad for “America” - substitute the word “me”. That is a surefire way to really understand him. Also look at how many times he says the word “me”.
This narrative explains why maga is so obsessed with executions for treason. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?” Trump 2019.
A wonderful illustration of the brainwashing that has taken place in society is this meme.
Thanks you know I had a mental note to add her and got side tracked. Thanks for the reminder. Those two deserve top billing, I completely agree. And thanks! I appreciate the compliment.
"Behold the Leader and upper echelons of the the Trump Terrorist Network". ~ Missing only Ginni Thomas!
Seriously, I admire your committment to explain all this.