If you've been keeping up with the blog, you know I've been fascinated by some of the moves unfolding at the Pentagon and among the special operations community of late. As I noted recently, the post-election shakeup at the DoD resulted in the Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) effectively being made it's own branch of the armed forces; a veteran special operator who had never held a rank higher than colonel being made the acting Secretary of Defense; and one of General Michael T. Flynn's cronies being put in charge of all special operations forces AND military intelligence. This has led to some speculation that Flynn is essentially the de facto Secretary of Defense presently and some of his recent actions (more on that in a moment) have added credence to these claims.
The heart of the US special operations community is Fort Bragg, where both the US Army Special Forces (more commonly known as the "Green Berets") and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are garrisoned. Other significant units such as the 82nd Airborne are also housed there. In 2020 alone, Fort Bragg has witnessed a staggering amount of deaths among the military personnel. Whether this is somehow related to events unfolding in DC is debatable, but certainly adds an ominous subtext.
Also of interest was the sudden decision of the Pentagon to cease providing the CIA with special operators for it's counterterrorism operations. As was discussed here, such a move would be an utter disaster for the CIA.
From the onset of the Cold War up until 9/11, the CIA maintained total control over covert operations. But with the rise of JSOC in the twenty-first century, the CIA has increasingly been reduced to a supporting role. Even during its heyday in the Cold War, the CIA was always dependent on special operators (either "retired" or on loan from the Pentagon) to carry out it's operations in the field. With JSOC already usurping much of the CIA's control and intelligence functions in covert operations, being cut off from the military's elite forces with likely constitute deathblow for the CIA in covert operations (for more on this subject, see my Strange Tales of the Parapolitical).
With all of that out of the way, let us consider a few of the more compelling recent developments.
Divisions
As one of the most miserable years in the nation's history draws to a close, many Americans are still clinging to the notion that normalcy will return once Biden assumes office. Whether Biden will actually assume office is a matter we shall discuss below, but assuming the inauguration goes through, don't count on a honeymoon. Of any kind.
There's been a brewing, covert civil war within the Democratic Party between it's moderate (neo-liberal [read: Rockefeller Republican])and progressive wings for a while now. It nearly became overt in 2016, in the aftermath of the highly contested Democratic primary. Arguably the only thing that has kept it simmering (as opposed to boiling) for the last four years is the person of Donald J. Trump.
With Trump presumably out of the picture, the old tensions have rapidly begun to surface again. Most recently, Democrats in the House found themselves in a standoff over appointments to the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) had been pushing for a spot, but instead faced stiff pushback from her own party. Ultimately, she lost out on a spot on the influential committee to the much more conservative New Yorker Kathleen Rice. Nor was AOC the only progressive denied a spot on the committee.
AOC |
This is just latest in a series of setbacks for progressive in the aftermath of Biden's presumed victory. Already it is assumed the MAGA crowd will be out in force to protest Biden from day one --for the allegations surrounding his son; for the legitimacy of his presidency; for the role he played in spying on Trump's 2016 campaign; and a host other talking points. But at this rate, it may not be long before they are joined by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. No, these groups won't be protesting shoulder to shoulder anytime soon, but it's difficult to see anyone other than aging, white, "middle class" Baby Boomers still supporting Biden by the end of summer 2021.
Intrigues
And now for your Trump coup (or countercoup, if you prefer) update. The developments just keep getting juicier and juicier. In particular, the Pentagon has really been on a roll of late. After essentially telling the CIA to go fuck itself, days later the DoD opted to stop briefing Biden's transition team.
Most crucially, this means Biden's team will not receive intelligence reports from the DoD until at least the end of the year. While this may not normally be a major issue, with the proxy war between Israel and Iran once again heating up, it raises the prospect that a major conflict could break out with Biden and his team being totally out of the loop.
Whether Biden was ever in the loop is another question |
And I'm just talking about a foreign war, mind you. If, in theory, plans were being drawn up by branches of the military to prevent a Biden presidency, they would probably want the Pentagon to have as little contact with his team as possible during the run up.
Even more interesting was a meeting that took place on December 19th in the Oval Office. Sidney Powell was there, reportedly to discuss the prospect of Trump appointing her as a special council to investigate voter fraud in the 2020 elections.
Powell |
While it hasn't been definitively confirmed yet, most likely General Michael T. Flynn was also present at this meeting. And reportedly, Flynn's suggestion of deploying the military was discussed. Insider's insist that this option was shot down by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and other lovers of freedom.
Maybe it was. But this didn't stop Trump from taking to Twitter and calling for a massive protest on January 6.
In the grand scheme of things, that's a very interesting date to stage a protest on. It's a Wednesday for one, and precisely two weeks before the inauguration. It also happens to be the day the House and Senate count the Electoral College votes. It's also the day after the Georgia Senate runoff and potentially for the CIA to be stripped of its access to DoD special operators.
Effectively, the CIA could be stripped of its paramilitary arm on the same day the Georgia Senate race is decided, which will also resolve which party controls the US Senate. The next day, Trump will, in theory, have massive amounts of his MAGA supporters in DC as Congress confirms Biden as the president.
Is Flynn really the one controlling the DoD? |
So, there you have it. If a coup is in the works, it will probably get going some time around the 6th. All the ducks seem to be in a row.
Which is what makes this researcher believe that that transition from Trump to Biden will occur. There's been a build up all year for the election to devolve into street fighting. It hasn't occurred yet and most likely will not. It all has the air of the end of the world scenarios surround Y2K and 2012, which largely turned out to be nonevents.
This isn't to say that something isn't in the works. But at this point, I suspect the real disorder will come later in 2021, probably once the summer has set in and the public has been lulled into a sense of complacency over "normalcy" returning. Certainly, there are any number of would-be triggers looming: backlash from a lethal vaccine; Biden's sudden death; the Democratic party's internal civil war breaking out in the streets; new foreign wars; economic collapse; etc. It's not so much a matter of "if," but "when" at this point.
But most likely not January 6. Though a lot can certainly happen between now and then. That has certainly been the theme of 2020. And with that, I shall sign off for now.
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I think there's something planned for for 02/01/2021 there's a number of things predated to that in haystack of an info dump if anyone wants to dig with me I could send the whole pile.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested in taking a look. My email is kathari1349@hotmail.com.
DeleteHey dude. Thought I'd treat myself and shell out a measly 5 bucks for your extra pay per listen bonus podcasts. So far worth every cent. Have a great Christmas Steven, your work and authenticity just about keeps me sane in these crazy times.
ReplyDelete6/6 the Epiphany . Time to start reading Gibbons decline and fall. Looks like America is finally going to taste its own medicine. And it tastes terrible, as it includes Condor and Phoenix extract. What goes around comes around.... As Ash said- "You have my sympathy".... Not!
ReplyDeleteBefore commenting on the above, I would like to say that your site is the only one I visit anymore. It seems to me that the majority of other sites that address these issues are now all of the Alt-Right ("the Jews are behind everything") variety. Which I find not only tedious, but also so misleading as to be useless.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the above, though... I have to wonder if this shift, with JSOC becoming the main conductor of black ops, might have something to do with a gradual shift in CIA personnel and ideology over the decades since it was founded. Recall that in the days of Dulles and Angleton there was a strong Far Right clique at the center running things. I wonder if that has shifted over the years?
The Army Special Forces, however, has been a bastion of that ideology ever since it was founded; (I have posted here before about my conversations with a former Green Beret who filled me in on the amount of influence that former Waffen-SS members played in creating the G.B) And, from the info you have disclosed here, it looks like that ideology is likely still very present at Fort Bragg.
So, maybe the CIA has proven to less than tractable about such matters in recent years, and steps had to be taken to ensure that certain measures continue.
Just a thought. Thanks again for your work and insight.
Regarding the Alt/Far Right take on conspiracy theories... While I do find the ranting, raving, and scapegoating of Woke rhetoric offensive, few theorists are taking into account a facet of this situation that may be very significant.
ReplyDeleteIt has been well documented that as far back as the 1960s we had programs like COINTELPRO, and others. The purpose of these programs was to infiltrate dissident groups in the U.S. And, to discredit them. Either by making sure that the ideology endorsed was the most over-the-top and offensive possible, and/or to steer the groups toward a stance that actually would support the overall views of the planned police state.
I personally think that many of the most extreme positions being pushed by the ostensible Left in our current age were/are engineered by the Far Right, black ops crowd. I believe the relevant phrase is "managed or controlled opposition".
Recall what Joseph Goebbels once observed: "If the Jew didn't exist, we would have to invent him." While I do not dispute that there are genuine extremists on the Left, I also think that they are likely being manipulated into alarming the public, so that it will be easier to justify extreme measures to counter them.
This is a very perceptive comment. I got the impression that some of the various outrages of antifa and of the pro Trump people were staged provocations. The incident of "100% antifa" Michael Forest Reinoehl shooting a man at point blank in the chest was very suspicious and bore the stamp of a COINTRLPRO. Reinoehl looks very much the loose cannon type who could have been easily pushed into a homicidal act to discredit protesters, who by this time had well and truly worn out their welcome in downtown Portland (I know- I live there)
DeleteThank you for the feedback on this. What I have been focusing on lately is what I like to call the Weimar Effect; which is to say how much this country has come to resemble post WWI Germany; i.e. the so-called "Weimar Republic". Where you had no sense of normalcy or stability, and a seemingly endless array of divisive cultural and political groups tearing into each other.
DeleteContrary to what many people think, the Nazis were very well aware that they owed their existence and success to the state of chaos that ensued in this period. All through the time that they were in power, they were carrying out research on the dynamics of this process, and figuring out how to re-create it other milieus.
As to Antifa, there has been more than one researcher, such as Alex Constantine, who have kept a close eye on the phenomenon of managed opposition. I think that while only a few of these groups are being directly managed by the Far Right, many of them are certainly being covertly manipulated.
And, it's not like this is a new phenomenon. Remember how many examples we have had of this in the past. Donald DeFreeze's identity as “Field Marshal Cinque Mtume”, and the entirety of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army were a C.I.A. engineered phenomenon. And, Oswald's Left-Wing affiliations were likewise an Agency construct.
Recluse can you do a post on your take on Covid please? It seems like some type of Op to me... multiple parties/countries seem to benefit... But if its intentional then it had a source... any ideas?
ReplyDeleteI too, would like to hear your opinions on this, Recluse.
DeleteI'll try my best, but I have a lot of fires in the oven at present. This topic was discussed a bit on The Farm's " Dark Winter " episode.
Delete-Recluse
A quick dash of something I've been writing seems germaine: Regarding the commandos taking over the military, this is really the culmination of an ongoing trend in military affairs: Toward the end of WW1, Britain and Germany had separately discovered that small teams of highly trained men using sabotage tactics could inflict damage all out of proportion to their numbers when deployed against the mass armies of the day. In the following war, these ideas were honed and married to more advanced weaponry. The intelligence services who had been assigned the direction of such teams could hardly fail to notice that they had in hand a new and formidable kind of weapon. The temptation to go rogue was naturally irresistable. Germans like Skorzeny naturally went mercenary right away, as they had been made stateless by the destruction of their homeland. The throw weight of one of these 'Seal' or 'Marine Recon' or 'Spetnaz' detachements with access to support by orbital directed energy weapons and similar black budget toys- not to mention pre-planned media hoaxes is equal to entire armies of the 1880-1980 period. Just as modern automated modes of production made the inustrial proletariat obsolete, the advances in military affairs makes the average man useless as a soldier as well. People sense this and it's not a wonder people read about things like 'Great Reset' and naturally assume it means 'culling the herd'.
ReplyDeleteAnd, thank you for the input on this as well. I had also wondered if advances in warfare technology and methodology might have something to do with it.
DeleteA clear understanding of how this kind of manipulation can be managed can be had by reading some of what Preparata set down in "The Ideology of Tyranny". In that book he focuses on the introduction of Georges Bataille's ideas into the post-WWII Left via Foucault. Now, if you follow this line of thought, and backtrack a little to examine Bataille and his Acephale group, what you see is how much the ideology inculcated into the Left resembles the "Blood and Soil" mysticism of the Volkisch groups in Germany.
ReplyDeleteIf you take the time to acquire and read the writings of Bataille, and his Acephale group one thing becomes evident. Which is that most of what is put forth as the purpose and ideology of this group is separated from Nazism/Fascism by nothing more than questions of race and cultural aesthetics. The core of their ideas, (exaltation of the irrational, ritualized violence, etc.), are virtually identical to the darkest portions of Volkisch doctrines.
The only thing that made Acephale different from groups such as the Thule or Vril societies was the racial, cultural, and aesthetic focus.
In other words, Bataille and his peers wanted to engineer changes in society and government that were almost identical to those of the Will-to-Power ethos of the inner adepts that built Nazism. But, they wanted those changes to be accomplished according to a slightly different aesthetic principle. And, most of all, they wanted the changes to be spearheaded by the French nation.
In my opinion, the shift from traditional Marxist ideas toward what is called "cultural Marxism" (Identity Politics, etc.), is a symptom of the introduction of the Bataille/Foucault ideology into the Left.
ReplyDeleteI guess my point on this issue about ideology is this. If you can determine the axioms by which a discussion is framed, then you can, to an extent, control the outcome of the debate. It doesn't matter if specific predicates (such as supposed "Aryan superiority") are adhered to initially. If you can get the public into the position of speaking in terms of the underlying axioms, you can manipulate them a lot more efficiently.
ReplyDeleteI have two Millennial roommates, and I am frequently amazed at how little they understand about the way that essential axioms of Identity Politics echo thoughts from the metaphysical presuppositions of the esoteric Right.
For instance, the whole notion of gender identity being a continuum rather than a binary division. This idea was a core belief of persons such as Otto Weininger, whose political views were decidedly to the Right. And, if you dig into the ideology of the Volkisch groups, (not the propaganda they sold to the public, but their Inner Order concepts), you will find the same motif.
Severin-
DeleteYour discussion is excellent. I would argue that much of what is presently described as "cultural Marxism" is in fact postmodernism, which Bataille and Foucault very much fall under the rubric of. And if one is to go back far enough with postmodernism, one inevitably finds Dadaism. And of course, Dadaism was also instrumental in the rise of fascism. So ultimately, the "far left" and the far right are both drinking deeply of the same source in the twenty-first century. This rather obvious when you look at someone like Nick Land, who considers Bataille to be a huge influence.
Re: the CIA. I think that's very much the case in terms of the shifting politics. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA kind of in the center, between the State Department and the Pentagon, which was also much more rightwing on the whole during that era. But I think in the post-Casey years, when the OSS Old Boys finally began to die off, there was a re-orientation within the CIA. A lot of it probably had to do with the broader changes in the Ivy Leagues and Wall Street, where the CIA has historically recruited heavily from. Conversely, most special operators are still largely drawn from the flyover states.
Basically, not unlike the divide we currently see all the time in broader American society.
-Recluse
"...drinking deeply of the same source..." Perfect way to put it. And, one of the reasons why I don't chose a side in the current cultural wars. What would it matter?
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, Nick Land is the perfect example. I encountered his book "The Thirst for Annihilation" at a time when I had no context for it. Long before I began to dig into para-politics, etc. But, his book got me looking at Bataille. And, much later, I began to sort out the connections in all of this.
Thank you, by the way, for your excellent posts on the CCRU, and Mark Fisher, et alia. Really helped me fill in some missing pieces.
"Solve et coagula", right? This is what I mean by the Weimar Effect.
ReplyDeleteWhat people are missing about the consequences of the postmodern assertions about identity, gender and otherwise, is that the forceful deconstruction of traditional models is not going to do anything other than intensify the tendency of people on the Right to re-affirm a distinct identity. Even if both sides accept that identity is an arbitrary construct, this does not mean that peaceful coexistence is going to be the result. As we have seen, rather the opposite occurs. Nothing remains but to choose the identity you want to affirm, and do so by violence and oppression if need be.
In trying to explain to one of my roommates what I see as the difference between Nazism/Fascism and more conventional Right Wing ideology, I turned to something from Dr. Who; (she's a long-time fan.) I pointed to an episode where the Daleks bio-engineered a new Uber-Dalek. And, it turned out that this creation was so pure, that it no longer recognized its creators as being Dalek.
Which is how I see the advent of Nazism and Fascism. While it is true that these movements share some common goals with more traditional conservatism, they still were and are genuinely revolutionary movements. The alliances they struck with organizations like the Catholic Church were matters of convenience. Like the Uber-Dalek in Dr. Who, the Nazis had already decided that many, if not all, of the traditional forms of conservatism had proved too weak to defend the core ideals of the Right. And, had Hitler won the war, those organizations would have been either slowly undermined and phased out, and/or directly assaulted.
And, regarding the Catholic Church's alliance with Mussolini and Hitler, there is another aspect that has been overlooked. It's to be found by paying attention to the character of Eugenio Pacelli, aka Pope Pius 12th. And, how he handled his interactions with the Fascist and Nazis.
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, he was doing what the Church had always done; playing a careful waiting game, supporting them up to a point, without publicly committing to too much support. But, I also think that Pius was looking at another option. One that, if the Nazis had won the war, would have changed the status and nature of the Church drastically.
He could not have been unaware of what the post-war plans of the Nazis were; he could not have missed the fact that had Hitler won, the Church's days would also have been numbered. I believe that Pius had already made plans for far-ranging changes in the structure and ideology of the Church to bring it into alignment with the New World Order that the Nazis would establish.
Read a book called "Hitler's Holy Relics". Therein you will find an interesting possibility. That Pius may have struck a secret deal with Hitler, to crown him as a new Holy Roman Emperor. I think that maybe he had an agreement with Hitler. If the Church would lend its support to Hitler as a divinely inspired leader, and agree to re-align the Church structure and ideology to reflect this, it would be allowed to continue to exist.
In the case of the smaller fascist style states, (Romania under the Iron Guard, Croatia under the Ustasha), we saw members of the clergy taking an active hand in genocidal matters.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, no official record of these activities being ordered or sanctioned by the Vatican. But, once again, I regard it as literally impossible that Pius did not know about them. (The Church had been experts in intel matters at a time when England had not even coalesced into a nation.)
I wonder if these activities were a kind of experiment? A way for Pius to gauge the degree of support he might have from clergy and laity if he moved forward with his changes. And, to determine the degree to which fascist style personalities could be manipulated by the Church.
And finally, one should take into account Pacelli's familial background. He came from a long line of "Black Nobility", and was the nuncio to the German Empire (Kaiser Reich), for a large portion of his clerical career.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he might have had some Norman ancestry..? And, if he did... well, Recluse you made the observation yourself about the Viking proclivity for founding secret societies. I wonder what kind of ties and loyalties he might have had to occult doctrines and organizations?