Asymmetric Warfare 01: Mob Evolution - Protest

Considerations for modern protest

Watch the following footage from recent protests in Paris in these two tweets for a view of asymmetric warfare.

https://twitter.com/Demo2020cracy/status/1634577728014778369?s=20

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1653460670908645377?s=20

This shows you that the mob is ineffective when it comes out to seek political change because it can be physically bullied by a tiny minority. This is in spite of extensive experience in France of protest.

Here is a quick look at Hong Kong protests that highlights some methods, tools and tactics.

Dystopia is not something that still lies in the future. We live in it already. It is a fact of life, and it is a failing of the mob to recognise how late to the game the mob always is. The majority of citizens don’t know what the minority who determine the future through technology, law, policy, capital and force are doing until it is already done. Protest, therefore, is always too little too late, which means that it needs to be maximally effective when people resort to it.

This article aims to provide immediate food for thought about what the mob i.e. the 99% needs to consider right now about how it continues to behave in light of what has been and continues to be done to them.

Some of the 99% understand aspects of how serious the situation has become, and others have been directly subjected to state brutality in various forms. The majority are docile and distracted, as they are meant to be. Awake citizens have, at some point over the last 3 years, resorted to forms of protest. In some places, like France and Holland, these protests are ongoing. However, none of these protests have adopted the simple and necessary evolution of form and tactics that are appropriate for today’s environment.

Contained protest is zero threat & ineffective

If protest is “contained” it is ineffective. Containment includes:

• active management by the mob or the authorities to:

  • remain completely peaceful;

  • limit size or scope through any means (publicity, fear/consequences of attending, law etc);

• forms of surveillance in the moment or that persist in forms of gathered intelligence that informs the state;

• controlling the visibility of the protest to limit awareness among wider society.

Effectiveness of protest can be directly measured in policy outcomes. The anti-Covid/lockdown protests around the world, including the UK and Canada had zero effect on policy. This is despite over one million people in the UK marching in protest in London and other cities and greater numbers being involved in the Canadian Truckers Protest. Both of these protest efforts were effectively contained and protestors failed to employ methods that shielded them from the state’s power to hurt citizens.

The state renders protest ineffective through:

• lawfare - the use of all legal constructs to limit protest upfront or after the fact;

• surveillance - that monitors the mob in real time before, during and after protest, thereby providing the state with unprecedented power to subject citizens en masse or individually to lawfare;

• force - the various use of force to prevent or put down protest.

Simple steps to radically evolve the mob and increase effectiveness

A quick search for “riot control tactics” will turn up myriad knowledge resources, including this old PDF whose advice still stands. It will also tell you that exposure to riot control agents e.g. multiple forms of teargas can result in permanent tissue scarring (eyes, lungs) and that there are no antidotes for the agents the state uses against citizens. The only remedy to such agents is protection, then to exit the zone of effectiveness, dilute and/or remove the agent, and breathe oxygen.

Mob violence is not necessary to achieve an increase in the effectiveness of protest.

The mob must first demonstrate to the state that it understands, better than before, how the state contains protest. The mob must prove that it has defeated some of the state’s ability to contain protest. When it does this consistently, protest effectiveness will increase and result in, at first, escalation by the state, which is the proof that the mob’s evolution is working. Later, a measurable effect on policy may come and sooner than without mob evolution.

The mob must be fully cognisant of the visible and invisible containment and beat it on the day of any protest. Look at this image and consider the visible asymmetry that the mob must deal with in order to level up:

https://twitter.com/Demo2020cracy/status/1634577728014778369?s=20

Visible Asymmetries

A small number of security agents can effectively compete with and control a much larger mob because of:

• Hidden identity;

• Armour and shielding;

• Communications;

• Training, organisation and tactics;

• Multiple weapons;

• They visually and physically embody the power of the state in law.

Identity

The mob must remove and obfuscate each individual member’s identity. This helps render an invisible asymmetry (surveillance) ineffective. This is easy to do. The mob must adopt a standard look or dress code to make it maximally difficult to identify individuals. For example:

Armour & Shielding

It is legal for citizens to wear forms of armour that increase the mob’s resilience at protest. Examples of readily available and effective armour include motorcycle/motocross armoured clothing, various forms of helmet, gas tight eye protection and filtration masks. More specialised forms of armour can be found legally in many forms, including ex military equipment. It is also possible to make cheap and effective armour via both simple and sophisticated means, many of which can be found on YouTube University.

Despite the state employing Less Than Lethal means of riot control, it is no secret that LTL weapons can have permanent and life-changing effects. US police are known to target LTL rounds in all forms at the eyes, face and head, which can cause permanent blindness, disfigurement and head injury. Effective eye protection should be considered essential (which is actually dirt cheap - skip to the end; $1 safety glasses provided equal or better eye impact protection than anything more expensive).

Communications

Mobile phones are a tool of the state and an invisible form of containment. Protestor groups should consider compact walkie talkies and burner phones containing minimal numbers and no personal data (see surveillance below). Comms is also about pre-agreed plans, which can include routes, and various rendezvous points along the way with specific timings to ensure your group, if separated in a sea of people who all look almost the same, will be capable of continuously regrouping without speaking to each other. RVs outside of the protest area/route will be useful for escape/termination conditions.

Training, organisation and tactics

Protestors should understand their fundamental rights in their locale, what the state agents can, cannot and must do, and try to be reasonably aware of what to expect. It is up to protest organisers to determine what is appropriate and for whom. Many citizens will never, ever evolve fully, but many might come to understand the value of a standard look and the abandonment of personal devices. Just these two things alone are a step change in citizen organisation and behaviour that sends a powerful message about how the mob has begun to evolve.

Tactics are beyond the scope of this article.

Weapons

The internet is full of information about weapons and they are out of scope of this article.

What is of interest to pass on is something remarkably simple that has been used effectively throughout history and recently by Les Gilet Jaunes to defeat police kettling and containment tactics. Protestors simply pelted police with their own urine and faeces and in doing so managed to break police lines and spirit. This is an incredibly basic, difficult to prosecute method, and everyone has ammo. All that is required is a suitable container and a means of launching. This could take the form of ziplock or sandwich bags, waterbombs, and catapults or just a normal throw. French police apparently couldn’t endure being pelted with shit and piss and this sometimes allowed protestors to break out of kettling areas and caused police morale to break, with some reported resignations due to stress and humiliation. A creative imagination could easily further advance these tactics.

Another tool is paint. Bombarding someone with the right kind of paint renders them blind, uncomfortable and can damage or impair equipment. Paint is also an effective anti-surveillance tool when turned against camera gear and vehicles. There are many ways to deliver paint, now even spanning drones with liquid spray capability.

Lawfare

Protest becomes far more effective when the perpetrators cannot be identified, detained and prosecuted, all of which are required in order for the state to use the power of law against citizens. When the mob consciously, demonstrably decreases the chances the state can effectively use law, the mob’s threat and therefore protest effectiveness increases.

EDIT: This protestor has apparently been charged with offences 15 months after the event.

https://twitter.com/therobprimo1/status/1653399191127834627

Invisible Asymmetry - Surveillance

It is the surveillance system that is the biggest asymmetrical advantage the state wields. To combat this, one must assume all devices are compromised and work for the state. Surveillance enables the state to know and act before, during or after a protest, on targeted individuals or groups who serve to scare the wider mob.

Organise off a device that is not tied to you by payment method, subscriptions and accounts. Buy a second-hand device with cash, disable or block its cameras and mic, use specific anonymous accounts and VPN & TOR technologies and other encryption to communicate minimally with trusted other identities.

Never carry a personal device when engaging in protest. Only carry a simple burner phone with removable battery that contains minimal numbers. If you need essential numbers e.g. relatives and a lawyer, write them on your skin on the inside of your arms or legs, for example. This way, if arrested, you will not depend upon your confiscated possessions to call the right person. Only turn on the burner at key or essential moments, to avoid and minimise location tracking. Such a burner phone is the only way to use a mobile while minimising all of the compromise methods applied to devices, including the little known IMSI catcher, which is employed by every state in the world and can literally suck data off your devices without you ever knowing.

Do as much as you can to be and remain unidentifiable, including payment transactions and location evidence left in any kind of register. Hide your looks. Avoid cameras. A movement may dedicate resources to actually deliberately compromising cameras physically (see paint).

The increase in effectiveness

Now, that tiny minority of well armed and armoured, trained stated agents are no longer facing down a large number of unprotected citizens. In effect, they would be outnumbered by people who look like them - armoured, unidentifiable and possibly armed with highly unconventional weapons that may not be illegal. The state agents may have little chance of wielding the law effectively against the vast majority of the evolved mob and, if tactics and tools are sufficiently evolved, the state agents may not even be able to detain many of the mob at all. All of this represents the mob’s evolution that directly diminishes the state’s power.

It is at this point, when the state sees this evolution and change in asymmetry that may cause a degree of escalation up to its resource limits. Any attempt by the state to increase its level of violence works in favour of the wider mob as it shows the state for what it has always been - the enforcer of policy. On a numbers basis, it doesn’t take many mobs to overwhelm state capability (see UK riots 2011).

There is an idea that “they can’t jail us all”. This is true, but naïve. The state doesn’t need to jail more than a few. Law is weaponised in two basic ways.

First, individuals are targeted and made examples of through various means that all amount to forms of show trial. The worst in recent history being that of Julian Assange. Making an example of one man is all it takes for the EU and USA to tell all of its 800m+ citizens that if you speak out against your state and expose truth, you will be killed through any illegal means that your state feels like employing. Make no mistake, nothing in the way Assange has been pursued, “prosecuted” or publicised is legal, right or accurate. Assange’s public persecution is effective in suppressing - mentally and actually - huge amounts of human will and spirit (which is why citizens must free him before he dies in captivity). This idea of the state publicly targeting individuals is ancient but it still works.

Second, there is the judicial process that is increasingly biased in favour of the state via draconian legislative changes that remove rights and increase state power. Two things make this approach effective: the lack of the means of an effective defence as a result of state corruption of the judicial process; the deliberately high cost of legal action that debilitates any normal citizen when mounting an effective defence. Again, Julian Assange is a perfect case in point. Three countries - Sweden, UK, USA - have perverted their own judicial systems and employed their state surveillance in illegal ways to destroy him. The USA has zero jurisdiction over Assange yet it is the one orchestrating his capture, detention, and drawn out punishment and potential execution. The UK and Sweden have both employed gross abuses of their own legal processes as well as state intelligence and judicial personnel to capture, detain and torture Assange.

Across the pond, anyone keeping up with January 6th prosecutions will be aware of a litany of corruption at the heart of the USA, directed at citizens. Yet again, the FBI, CIA, big tech, media and Congress (AKA the deep state) have lied and engaged in corrupt and false prosecutions while spinning totally unreal narratives in order to wield political control in totalitarian fashion.

The UK’s legal process and judiciary is equally corrupt (see Julian Assange) and has just announced further curtailment to protest rights, with no meaningful way for citizens to affect draconian changes in law:

https://twitter.com/SuellaBraverman/status/1653413081161125889?s=20

Avoidance is better than mitigation

If the act of protest exposes citizens to the risk of physical harm, surveillance and corrupt lawfare, one should first focus on how citizens avoid then mitigate these risks when exercising their rights. Being detained and dealing with the aftermath should always, always be considered an avoidable last resort, although a plan for that should be prepped in advance as well, and the mob can help itself through weight of numbers and collective resources applied to those unlucky enough to be detained.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

Life for the majority of citizens isn’t going to get better. It’s guaranteed to get worse on the grounds of rights, economics, finance and medicine. Governments across the Western world continue to work in lockstep to pursue known, published anti-human policies. Those who understand this and seek to stand up for their rights and object should prepare effectively so that when they act, they are maximally effective. The time to prepare is not the day before a protest.

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