Election Violence - A Primer

Some quick thoughts

Phil Hands, The Wisconsin State Journal @PhilHands

Washington DC 6 NOV 2022

If it was not for Mike Pence, Brad Raffensperger, Rusty Bowers, the leadership of the DOJ, some in the White House Counsel Office, some federal judges, and a handful of others, America would already be in a fascist dictatorship delivered by a violent overthrow of democracy. We narrowly avoided the public execution of top leaders of the continuity of government, the loss of a nuclear football to a raging mob, a mass hostage event in a building with over 500 rooms to be cleared, and a mass shootout between fascists and law enforcement - or those elements of LE that were not supporting the coup.

As this sub stack has reported over the years since, fascists have learned from that narrow miss and have instituted a comprehensive political and paramilitary campaign to ensure they will be successful next time.

Its next time.

Following Bannon’s bottom-up Leninist / Vietnam communist village shadow government system, they have systematically intimidated, scared away, and replaced local election officials, Secretaries of State, up to national political positions, with apparatchiks who will say the fascists won. The now famous “I will win the election and accept that outcome” is a rote response in fascists circles. It is their iron clad promise that they will rule all elections in their favor. So the incredible voter participation in this election will likely be irrelevant to the outcome. They have also stacked the court to ensure all legal challenges are ruled in their favor - including the reversal on appeal of any conviction of their golden calf in the lame duck Biden period (assuming Biden is allowed to stay in place).

Fascist logic is as follows: they believe what right wing media has told them without question - that the 2020 election was stolen. This justifies all future actual election theft in their name. The fact there is no evidenced of this claim is irrelevant. The fascists have entered the mass psychosis phase.

The blunt use of violent imagery by elected representatives has been an essential part of normalizing and pre-justifying the violence to come. The fascists have been careful to turn policy differences into a religious war of good versus evil. This enables normal people to transition from arguments, to threats, to actual violence. If you follow the news, you have seen this collapse of norms of civilized behavior really accelerate in the past 2 years. This is not an accident. It has been planned and executed as a matter of fascist policy. It's part of the ‘lessons learned’ from J6. Now 4.5 million Americans are primed and ready to kill other Americans.

Half of the country believes there will be civil war “in the next few years”. A slightly lower number, 40% believe that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy”.

When will the violence start?

Civil War II’s best estimate for how things will unfold is as follows:

Scenario assumption: The US Senate stays Dem but the House swings hard to the right. If both houses somehow manage to stay blue then a different fascist approach would likely unfold arising from fascist states.

This illustration of how things might unfold is not comprehensive or exact. It is presented as a quick illustration of one possible scenario, out of many. No doubt twists and turns will not go exactly as outlined - perfection of prediction is not the point. The objective is to alert members of the public to the seriousness of the threat and the kinds of things that the fascists have been loudly telling us they intend to do.

There will continue to be paramilitary and political actives aimed at installing a permanent fascist regime.

Paramilitary activity could follow a path similar to this

• The intimidation of the past few weeks will continue and intensify on Election Day. There is likely to be some sporadic violence. But the main event will come after results start to come in.

• Fascist leaders everywhere will demand all counts stop on election day, blocking blue postal ballots.

• They will declare themselves victors and warn any resistance to the “correct outcome of the election” will be met with “appropriate election integrity security measures”.

• Pro-democracy people will protest on a scale likely to exceed the George Floyd protests.

• This response will be painted in fascist media as an attempted coup based in ‘lawlessness and chaos’ threatening to overthrow ‘democracy’, justifying a massive violent crackdown - particularly in red jurisdictions. State police and the national guard will be sent into the streets to quell protects. This will further inflame protestors and result in further escalation, ending in the use of live ammunition.

• Martial law will be declared in red jurisdictions and preclude normal election counting, effectively ensuring a red outcome.

• Law enforcement will turn a blind eye to red hat “security patrols”. They will ride around in pickup trucks, flying Trump flags, shooting minorities and anyone they suspect of being pro-democracy - like they did in the past except this time it will be 5.56mm not paintball pellets.

• Fascists will call for law and order, using the ‘unrest’ as ‘proof’ that pro-democracy forces cant be trusted and must be extinguished at all costs.

Extreme end of the spectrum

• Less likely - but at his point who knows - the pro-Trump US Secret Service faction (which could be as high as 50% of the force) moves to put Biden and Harris under house arrest pending trial and execution.

• A similar faction in the FBI or other LE organizations move on the Attorney General, J6C members and blue congressional leaders.

• The US military then has a difficult decision - does it intervene? Can it trust its special operating forces (best suited for the likely mission set against the events described above) not to side with the fascists?

• The White House will turn into a modern day Waco standoff - with defenders armed with surface to air missiles, counter drone tech, and heavy small arms. Even for Seal Team VI and/or Delta it will be a hardened target. A lot of blood will be spilled and blamed on pro-democracy ‘extremists’.

• If successful, these moves will be directed at halting all legal efforts to hold Trump accountable for his crime sprees and putting the fascists in power under ‘emergency’ conditions.

• It is likely they have a list of federal judges who defied Trump who will be targeted for intimidation.

• Show trials will be held in the QAnon mold, followed by public executions of traitors - this has all been pre-justified.

• Trump will be crowned President for life.

Politically

• If the extreme end of paramilitary activities does not result in the Presidency being arrested, the same objective will consume political activities of the fascists.

• MTG will push Kevin McCarthy to one side either initially or soon thereafter. She will install the lunatic QAnon caucus as leadership.

• Regular business of Congress will be suspended under emergency measures and all efforts devoted to gaining control of the Senate in order to crush the “enemy” (note - not opposition).

• They will challenge Senate election outcomes in key states in order to gain a majority in the Senate to force through their radical agenda. The filibuster will be terminated.

• They will use a complaint court to achieve this outcome. Threats and intimidation will attend these activities.

• Senate election results will be reversed in just enough states to hand control of the legislature to the fascists.

• They will start “traitor” show trials of Biden, Harris, J6 members, Pelosi and other leaders, and the AG.

• They will rapidly enact their agenda - from bodily autonomy to terminating all social welfare programs to defunding foreign policy. Whether there is a President Biden to veto or not remains a matter of how their other activities progress. Its possible the chaos is so great at this point that legislation becomes irrelevant.

Economically

• They will default on the debt just to prove their power.

• The markets will crash.

• If you think inflation, gas prices, recession and unemployment are bad now.. go get the popcorn.

Internationally

• Just as Ukraine is about to win the war, the fascists from the party of Ronald Reagan will hand victory to the genocidal dictator in the Kremlin.

• If Putin uses a nuclear weapon, the fascists will do all they can to prevent the US from getting involved (much will depend on how far they have got with plans for Biden, Harris and the rest of the continuity of government - their targets last time).

• Putin will move against the Baltics.

• NATO will be on its own with US European command in chaos and/or split.

• Nuclear deterrence of Putin will fall to Britain and/or France. British political chaos suggests they will not be in the right place to exercise world leadership. President Macron will be so positioned. The question will boil down to this - having always assumed that any real nuclear deterrence will default to the US - will France be in a position mentally, politically, strategically to forcefully deter Russia and risk annihilation to prevent Ukraine from extinction? The US has a nuclear umbrella concept (unconvincing to this author, especially in a post cold war setting) but France does not. Would it adopt one in the course of the chaos that would flow from a coup in the US?

• China will invade Taiwan.

• Japan, Australia and India would then face interesting challenges regarding support of Taiwan or falling back to prepare to defend themselves individually or collectively. Would they hold together politically or be carved off piecemeal by Russia and China?

• Fascist copy-cat coups will happen across the world.

• The remaining democracies will not be strong enough to form a coalition of the willing and invade to restore order in neighboring states let alone the US.

• It would be Europe in 1940 except in this scenario America and the Soviet Union side with Hitler.

There is no coming back from that.