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Greetings troublemakers... welcome to Trouble.

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My name is not important.

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Insurgencies are, by their very nature, chaotic events.

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They are attacks on the dominant order,

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waged by determined and mobilized groups of people

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intent on uprooting and destroying the established power structure

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by any means necessary.

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From the perspective of the political and economic elites

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who draw substantial benefit from the status quo,

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the unpredictable and tumultuous nature of insurgencies

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make them terrifying worst-case scenarios.

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To those in power, they constitute existential threats

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that must be carefully managed

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and avoided at all costs.

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Despite the sophisticated means of coercion

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and incredible capacity for violence that they wield,

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modern states are more precarious than they let on.

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Like fortresses built on sand,

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they are vulnerable to the seismic shifts

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of their internal contradictions and political fault lines.

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While anarchists have historically been

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at the forefront of critiques of the state,

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we are by no means alone in rejecting

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the illegitimate authority that they represent.

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Whether it's colonized nations fighting against foreign occupation,

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crowds of people rising up to topple dictators,

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or radicals struggling against the exploitation, oppression

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and ecological destruction of capitalist democracies

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... the desire for freedom is universal.

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Well aware of this, states seek to prop up their legitimacy

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by assuming the mantle of the protectors of freedom itself,

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and the guarantors of another universally-shared human trait,

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the desire for security.

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But on their own, these promises are not always enough,

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and so states have developed intricate systems of social control,

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aimed at proactively seeking out and destroying

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any potential challenge to their continued rule.

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This constant shaping of internal political dynamics

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forms the basis of counterinsurgency doctrine

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– a science that cuts to the very essence of state power itself.

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Over the next thirty minutes, we'll share the voices of several individuals

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as they explain the principles of counterinsurgency,

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how they’ve manifested in historical

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and contemporary strategies of state repression,

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and some of the ways that our movements can thwart these dynamics

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in order to challenge state legitimacy,

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spread treasonous thoughts,

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and all around just make a whole lot of trouble.

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Counterinsurgency is a specialized form of warfare

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waged by a state against its population.

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An insurgency is an organized revolt

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by people against an established authority.

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Most commonly throughout history it's an anti-colonial

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or anti-imperialist resistance movement.

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Counterinsurgency is the technical art of counterrevolution.

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At it's broadest, counterinsurgency refers to the whole range of activities

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that a state engages in to repress an uprising.

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Counterinsurgency is basically the constant war

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that states carry out in order to manage conflict

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and ensure the stability and continuity of governance.

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Counterinsurgency is designed to keep a movement

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which is at a formative stage, which is weak and vulnerable

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– they're designed to keep them at that stage and to be able to crush them.

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To make them lose legitimacy

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or keep them from getting any real legitimacy

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for their demands or their grievances.

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Under the counterinsurgency philosophy, conflict is permanent.

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Therefore state institutions need to always be the arbiters

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and the mediators of conflict.

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They therefore need the legitimacy to be seen as neutral arbiters.

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To be seen as the only ones with the resources

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or the capability to offer a solution to a problem.

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There's always a thing within counterinsurgency

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that it's always supposed to be operating within the rule of law

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and within a democratic context.

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At least that's sort of the modern counterinsurgency,

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is the ideal that the soldiers won't be out on the street.

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It won't be evidently a war.

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The objective is to maintain the level of conflict at the lowest levels.

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At levels of simple dissidence or non-violence.

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And not allow those conflicts to evolve to more insurrectional

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or revolutionary levels.

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As it has developed as a term of art in the military literature,

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it has come to refer to a specific approach

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- a specific philosophy as to how that is best done.

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And that approach is characterized

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less by a reliance on sheer coercive force,

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and more by the use of soft power

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– the shaping of social conditions,

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the co-optation of movement leaders into the state apparatus,

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and the offering of concessions and reforms

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to undercut popular support for the uprising.

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Former British military officer Frank Kitson,

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in a book called Low Intensity Operations,

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talks about the need to find and neutralize

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subversive elements in the population

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and to remove the masses from leadership of the subversive movement.

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And one of the key components of that is attaching

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parts of the resistance movement that engage in

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non-violent, civil disobedience-type of campaigns

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– attaching those types of elements to the state

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as a means of dividing the resistance movement

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and undermining the more radical or militant components.

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Big non-profit groups are responsible for subverting radical political change,

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and they play a big role in the counterinsurgency.

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Their goal is to channel people in directions

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that will not put them in the position of directly confronting the state.

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Basically counterinsurgency as a state philosophy arose

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as specialists working for the state,

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as state institutions analyzed their failures and weaknesses

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in the anti-colonial struggles of the 50's and 60's,

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and the particularly urban, and other domestic struggles

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within powerful colonizing states of the 60's and 70's.

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Back in the 60's and 70's, you had more of a revolutionary consciousness

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among many people in the United States.

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A lot of it was influenced by the revolutions that were actually

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– the armed revolutions –

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that were going on in Africa and South-East Asia at the time.

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They did not want these kinds of groups to ever exist again.

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They did not want groups like the Black Panther Party

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to ever be able to come into existence again.

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Counterinsurgency, because its a type of warfare,

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involves all the means of war

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– including political, economic, military, cultural and ideological

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as well as psychological measures.

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A huge part of counterinsurgency, it's about hearts and minds.

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That's what they say,

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but really it's not about actually offering people services

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or actually providing them with a better life.

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It's about saying that that's what you're doing,

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and repressing people to the point that their silence becomes consent

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for whatever kind of rule you decide is appropriate in that moment,

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as the sort of state or as the elite ruler.

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It's all about fear.

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It's about managing people through fear.

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And when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy-waggon,

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you just see them thrown in. Rough.

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I said please don't be too nice.

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Whether it's handing out speeding tickets,

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kicking in doors to execute search warrants,

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or putting down riots with batons, tear gas

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and other so-called “less-lethal” weaponry,

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police are the front-line shock troops of the state and capitalist class.

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They’re tasked with enforcing laws

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and meting out repression

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in order to keep domestic populations in line.

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Armed with a badge and a gun,

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and basked in the legitimacy of the state,

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police are granted a blank cheque to beat and even kill

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whoever they deem a threat to their authority

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… as long as the person on the receiving end is

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Black, Brown, queer, trans, and/or poor.

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Because they form the most visible face of state repression,

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cops are often seen as being synonymous with state power itself.

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And while they actually comprise only one small component

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of the broader state security apparatus,

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which itself makes up only one facet of

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the state’s sprawling bureaucracy

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... it’s fair to say that their historical development

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was of pivotal importance to the rise of modern states.

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Processes of state formation and consolidation

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have taken different paths in countries around the world,

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as they’ve had to account for different historical,

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geographical and socio-political factors.

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And while cops generally play the same repressive role everywhere,

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and are, without a doubt, all bastards

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… these national and regional distinctions have left imprints

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in the character of local police forces themselves.

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In the United States, for instance

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... given contemporary police officers' role as the enforcers

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of white supremacist terror in Black communities,

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it should not be surprising that they trace their origins

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to an earlier institution of racist social control

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– namely, slave patrols.

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[♫] WOOP WOOP! That's the sound of the police.

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WOOP WOOP! That's the sound of the beast! [♫]

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To understand slave patrols,

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it's important to understand the slow development of the state intervention

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in maintaining slave society,

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beginning with simply passing laws

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that would restrict the activities of the slaves.

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And then, laws on their own being insufficient,

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authorizing any adult white man to enforce those laws.

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But then the reliance on individual action proving insufficient,

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forming into this body called the slave patrols

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that were an off-shoot of the militia

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and worked as kind of a voluntary-compulsory organization,

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meaning that participation was mandatory,

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but it wasn't a professional outfit.

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That provided a way of making the entire white male population

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directly involved in maintaining slave society.

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As industrialization came to the south,

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and there were larger slave populations in southern cities,

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the slave patrols moved similarly into the city.

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And there they became professionalized

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and very quickly their duties expanded

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and they became a body that we would

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immediately recognize as a modern police force.

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[♫] Overseer! Overseer! Overseer – officer!

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Yeah officer from overseer!

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You need a little clarity?

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Check the similarity! [♫]

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And now 200 years later,

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the basic function of the police is largely the same.

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It's maintaining the stratified nature of the society,

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both in terms of race and class.

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White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter!

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If you look at the whole concept of white supremacy

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and how that fits into the counterinsurgency

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on a historical basis,

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of course the oldest terrorist organization in the United States,

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which is the Ku Klux Klan

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– that was a group that was founded right after the Civil War

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to inflict terror against the African people in the United States,

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who had been newly freed from slavery

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and who were beginning to try to organize.

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And as you move on into the 20th century

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and the Civil Rights Movement began to develop,

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the Klan and other groups would work alongside the police,

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whether it was local police or whether it was sheriffs departments.

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And they would work together to inflict terror

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to restrain the movement - the organizing against white supremacy.

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I think one of the big differences

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between police in Canada and police in the US

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is that the North-West Mounted Police

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were modeled after the Royal Irish Constabulary,

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which the British had set up in Ireland as a colonial police force.

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And they replicated this type of thing not only in Canada,

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but also in their colonies in India and Africa.

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Y'know, one of their main functions was to impose colonial law and order,

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and to extend the control of the state into these frontier regions.

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And that remains pretty much the role of the RCMP today across Canada.

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A lot of the critical infrastructure and transportation corridors,

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such as railways and highways,

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they pass through or very nearby Indigenous populations and reservations.

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Especially as you go further north in the country.

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So this type of situation creates a lot of vulnerabilities for Canada,

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and I think the state is very aware of this.

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And that's why it's so cautious in its repression of Indigenous social movements.

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A big wake up call was during the Oka Crisis of 1990,

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when you had widespread solidarity actions across the country,

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and you had sabotage actions being carried out

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against this type of infrastructure.

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So I think it's very clear to the state that this is the possible consequence

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if their repression leads to the widening of Indigenous resistance,

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and even to the beginning of actual insurgency.

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We try to use training dummies as much as we can for,

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like, the strikes and everything.

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But a lot of the pressure points you really gotta feel it on the human body.

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Repression is basically the attempts by the state to punish,

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and to enclose and to isolate – and therefore neutralize –

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threats to its authority.

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Recuperation are the attempts to integrate threats to authority.

254
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To redirect them towards non-threatening modes,

255
00:13:18,619 --> 00:13:22,278
or modes that even regenerate or modify state power

256
00:13:22,278 --> 00:13:27,669
in a way that makes states more able to respond to similar threats.

257
00:13:27,669 --> 00:13:30,194
And if you look at the 1950s and 1960s

258
00:13:30,194 --> 00:13:32,361
civil rights struggle in the United States,

259
00:13:32,361 --> 00:13:35,775
there's some really good examples because the government,

260
00:13:35,775 --> 00:13:38,055
especially the Kennedy administration,

261
00:13:38,055 --> 00:13:40,660
y'know they're having high-level meetings with Martin Luther King

262
00:13:40,660 --> 00:13:44,801
and all these other leaders of non-violent civil disobedience organizations.

263
00:13:44,801 --> 00:13:46,144
And then at the same time,

264
00:13:46,144 --> 00:13:51,060
they're carrying out repression against the more radical elements

265
00:13:51,060 --> 00:13:54,594
of the Black Civil Rights – which came the Black Liberation Movement,

266
00:13:54,594 --> 00:13:58,254
and which led into the FBI's counter-intelligence program, COINTELPRO.

267
00:13:58,254 --> 00:13:59,806
In addition to COINTELPRO,

268
00:13:59,806 --> 00:14:03,384
the FBI ran a program called the ghetto informant program.

269
00:14:03,384 --> 00:14:06,508
And the ghetto informant program is where they would get preachers,

270
00:14:06,508 --> 00:14:10,053
pastors of churches, teachers or whomever

271
00:14:10,053 --> 00:14:13,309
– they would try to get those people to be informants.

272
00:14:13,309 --> 00:14:15,785
Militarization and community policing are talked about

273
00:14:15,785 --> 00:14:19,485
as though they're these two separate alternatives.

274
00:14:19,485 --> 00:14:22,360
Two different ways that policing can develop.

275
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:24,543
But what the history shows

276
00:14:24,543 --> 00:14:28,533
is that they developed at exactly the same time,

277
00:14:28,533 --> 00:14:30,947
both in response to the crisis of the 60's.

278
00:14:30,947 --> 00:14:34,852
And generally developed alongside each other in the same cities

279
00:14:34,852 --> 00:14:36,757
- often with the same commanders in charge.

280
00:14:36,757 --> 00:14:41,609
Rather than seeing these as two separate and competing developments,

281
00:14:41,609 --> 00:14:44,603
it makes more sense to see them as complementary developments,

282
00:14:44,603 --> 00:14:49,197
each operating as one half of a domestic counterinsurgency strategy.

283
00:14:49,197 --> 00:14:52,762
The counter-intelligence program was designed to be hard-hitting.

284
00:14:52,762 --> 00:14:55,139
And designed to assassinate,

285
00:14:55,139 --> 00:14:59,243
designed to subvert and actually destroy organizations,

286
00:14:59,243 --> 00:15:03,184
whereas the ghetto informant program was designed

287
00:15:03,184 --> 00:15:06,110
to spy on the Black population at large,

288
00:15:06,110 --> 00:15:08,748
and to find out who it was, as they saw it,

289
00:15:08,748 --> 00:15:11,843
would be agitating for riots.

290
00:15:11,843 --> 00:15:16,152
All of that is pretty textbook counterinsurgency stuff.

291
00:15:16,152 --> 00:15:18,199
As we see it play out domestically,

292
00:15:18,199 --> 00:15:22,937
it has the political benefit of building legitimacy for the police,

293
00:15:22,937 --> 00:15:27,846
while at the same time the militarization preserves their capacity

294
00:15:27,846 --> 00:15:31,069
to come in hard when they do face actual resistance.

295
00:15:36,362 --> 00:15:38,132
The FBI's illicit program of surveillance,

296
00:15:38,132 --> 00:15:41,239
sabotage and assassination known as COINTELPRO

297
00:15:41,239 --> 00:15:43,460
was formally ended in April of 1971,

298
00:15:43,460 --> 00:15:46,477
after their covert activities were exposed by activists

299
00:15:46,477 --> 00:15:48,712
who broke into a Pennsylvania FBI field office

300
00:15:48,712 --> 00:15:51,966
and released troves of top-secret documents to the press.

301
00:15:51,966 --> 00:15:54,929
Just two months later, the Nixon administration launched the War on Drugs.

302
00:15:54,929 --> 00:15:58,946
America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.

303
00:15:58,946 --> 00:16:00,212
Pretty convenient, right?

304
00:16:00,212 --> 00:16:02,613
Any suggestion that the timing of these two events

305
00:16:02,613 --> 00:16:05,006
could be chalked up to simple coincidence was quashed

306
00:16:05,006 --> 00:16:08,015
by Richard Nixon's chief policy advisor, John Ehrlichman,

307
00:16:08,015 --> 00:16:10,329
who in a candid interview in 1994,

308
00:16:10,329 --> 00:16:12,571
admitted that the War on Drugs was a lie

309
00:16:12,571 --> 00:16:14,659
concocted to target anti-war leftists

310
00:16:14,659 --> 00:16:16,952
and Black communities for political repression.

311
00:16:16,952 --> 00:16:19,364
After Tricky Dick was dishonorably deposed...

312
00:16:19,364 --> 00:16:20,209
I'm not a crook!

313
00:16:25,299 --> 00:16:28,634
... subsequent Presidential administrations took the idea of the War on Drugs,

314
00:16:28,634 --> 00:16:30,098
greatly expanded its scope,

315
00:16:30,098 --> 00:16:33,389
and refined it into a potent tool for both domestic social control

316
00:16:33,389 --> 00:16:35,385
and imperialist foreign policy aims.

317
00:16:39,395 --> 00:16:43,392
It's hard to overstate the effect of the War on Drugs

318
00:16:43,392 --> 00:16:46,582
and its role in accelerating the development

319
00:16:46,582 --> 00:16:48,713
of counterinsurgency in American policing.

320
00:16:48,713 --> 00:16:51,471
Nixon launched the War on Drugs.

321
00:16:51,471 --> 00:16:54,633
And the War on Drugs was chemical warfare.

322
00:16:54,633 --> 00:16:57,969
A spreading of – at that time it was heroin –

323
00:16:57,969 --> 00:17:00,246
into the communities of colour.

324
00:17:00,246 --> 00:17:03,346
Black and Latino, poor communities of colour.

325
00:17:03,346 --> 00:17:04,958
They called it a War on Drugs,

326
00:17:04,958 --> 00:17:07,446
but they unleashed the drugs into the community,

327
00:17:07,446 --> 00:17:09,235
then they went into the communities

328
00:17:09,235 --> 00:17:12,607
and started arresting people for using the drugs.

329
00:17:12,607 --> 00:17:15,919
This chemical warfare, it has a historical parallel.

330
00:17:15,919 --> 00:17:18,570
After they killed the Indians here in this country,

331
00:17:18,570 --> 00:17:20,180
after the Indian Wars,

332
00:17:20,180 --> 00:17:22,901
then they turned around and gave them whiskey.

333
00:17:22,901 --> 00:17:26,823
And whiskey was an addictive drug that even to this very day

334
00:17:26,823 --> 00:17:30,330
is still destroying the lives of people in Native communities.

335
00:17:30,330 --> 00:17:32,481
So they gave them whiskey.

336
00:17:32,481 --> 00:17:34,941
Well they gave Black people,

337
00:17:34,941 --> 00:17:39,651
to put down the insurgency that erupted in the 1960's and 1970's,

338
00:17:39,651 --> 00:17:42,583
they gave them crack cocaine.

339
00:17:42,583 --> 00:17:46,395
This was deliberately done as the government's response

340
00:17:46,395 --> 00:17:48,629
to the Black Power movement,

341
00:17:48,629 --> 00:17:51,266
and all the other radical progressive movements.

342
00:17:51,266 --> 00:17:54,912
They wanted to make sure that none of this stuff ever happened again.

343
00:17:54,912 --> 00:17:57,847
And crack cocaine was distributed by people

344
00:17:57,847 --> 00:18:00,404
who were given the drugs by federal agents,

345
00:18:00,404 --> 00:18:03,375
and distributed to the urban market.

346
00:18:03,375 --> 00:18:06,561
And the effect of crack cocaine just destroyed

347
00:18:06,561 --> 00:18:09,561
numerous vibrant communities at the time.

348
00:18:09,561 --> 00:18:11,552
Communities where people had jobs

349
00:18:11,552 --> 00:18:14,682
... communities where people had social cohesion

350
00:18:14,945 --> 00:18:18,000
- well crack cocaine destroyed that.

351
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:21,206
And the federal government used the fact of the drug trade,

352
00:18:21,206 --> 00:18:22,471
that they created

353
00:18:22,471 --> 00:18:26,895
– they used that to then turn around and build a paramilitary policing force.

354
00:18:26,895 --> 00:18:29,124
It provided a handy pretext,

355
00:18:29,124 --> 00:18:32,502
with the stories of police being out-gunned by gangs

356
00:18:32,502 --> 00:18:34,419
and all that sort of thing.

357
00:18:34,419 --> 00:18:38,378
Beyond that, there's just the sheer demographic effect

358
00:18:38,378 --> 00:18:42,648
of the War on Drugs providing a mechanism for

359
00:18:42,648 --> 00:18:48,183
removing a large portion of the Black population,

360
00:18:48,183 --> 00:18:50,217
just from cities altogether

361
00:18:50,217 --> 00:18:52,334
and putting them in prisons for long periods of time.

362
00:18:52,334 --> 00:18:56,155
And then later normalizing the monitoring of those communities

363
00:18:56,155 --> 00:18:58,053
through probation and parole,

364
00:18:58,053 --> 00:19:01,553
and other sorts of community-based corrections.

365
00:19:01,553 --> 00:19:04,971
I think it's probably impossible to accurately estimate

366
00:19:04,971 --> 00:19:07,002
the damage that has done to those communities

367
00:19:07,002 --> 00:19:09,454
in terms of just sheerly fracturing them.

368
00:19:09,454 --> 00:19:12,909
We've gotta understand that there's a continual path

369
00:19:12,909 --> 00:19:17,593
leading from COINTELPRO to the War on Drugs.

370
00:19:17,593 --> 00:19:21,275
And then the War on Drugs, now we're at a new counterinsurgency.

371
00:19:25,271 --> 00:19:28,135
The War on Drugs everywhere is a US war.

372
00:19:28,135 --> 00:19:32,208
The US is the largest consumer of illegal narcotics in the world as a market.

373
00:19:32,208 --> 00:19:34,973
Almost half of the whole drug market is in the United States.

374
00:19:34,973 --> 00:19:38,253
The US has always been pushing the most radical,

375
00:19:38,253 --> 00:19:41,804
militaristic “solution” to the drug problem.

376
00:19:41,804 --> 00:19:46,399
The basis of the US drug war in the United States is the prison system.

377
00:19:46,399 --> 00:19:50,299
And in places like Mexico, in places like Central America, Columbia

378
00:19:50,299 --> 00:19:52,534
– it's massacre and it's enforced disappearance.

379
00:19:52,534 --> 00:19:55,571
And it's often based on social class.

380
00:19:55,571 --> 00:19:58,784
It's based on living in certain areas that are resource rich.

381
00:19:58,784 --> 00:20:03,221
It's based on the potential that those communities could be a threat.

382
00:20:03,221 --> 00:20:05,488
That's where again, that same pretext gets used.

383
00:20:05,488 --> 00:20:08,626
They're called narco traffickers, they're called drug dealers,

384
00:20:08,626 --> 00:20:11,571
and instead of being brought to jail

385
00:20:11,571 --> 00:20:13,621
... they're murdered in the street.

386
00:20:13,621 --> 00:20:15,368
I think what's happening in Mexico

387
00:20:15,368 --> 00:20:18,368
is a counterinsurgent war against the people,

388
00:20:18,368 --> 00:20:20,657
and I think in Mexico they've sort of

389
00:20:20,657 --> 00:20:23,017
expanded the idea of who the insurgent is

390
00:20:23,017 --> 00:20:25,591
to include basically the entire population.

391
00:20:25,591 --> 00:20:29,318
Even just the idea that people are living in different ways,

392
00:20:29,318 --> 00:20:32,062
that they have assemblies, that they're living on collective land,

393
00:20:32,062 --> 00:20:34,887
that they're organizing in some way... even just with their neighbours

394
00:20:34,887 --> 00:20:38,539
– all of those things are seen as threats to the dominant order.

395
00:20:38,539 --> 00:20:40,860
And in Mexico they're being dealt with through a kind of

396
00:20:40,860 --> 00:20:43,577
counterinsurgency that is extremely violent.

397
00:20:43,577 --> 00:20:46,159
The Merida Initiative started in 2008,

398
00:20:46,159 --> 00:20:49,868
and it's a multi-billion dollar plan funded by the United States

399
00:20:49,868 --> 00:20:54,159
to finance the militarization, essentially,

400
00:20:54,159 --> 00:20:56,149
of the War on Drugs in Mexico.

401
00:20:56,149 --> 00:20:59,846
So when the drug war started in 2006, there were 4,000 federal police.

402
00:20:59,846 --> 00:21:03,866
Now there's 40,000, and they're deployed together with the army

403
00:21:03,866 --> 00:21:06,789
to different cities to "fight the War on Drugs."

404
00:21:06,789 --> 00:21:09,650
And what we see time after time in these different regions

405
00:21:09,650 --> 00:21:12,373
where federal police and soldiers are deployed together,

406
00:21:12,373 --> 00:21:14,768
is a spike in homicide rates,

407
00:21:14,768 --> 00:21:18,308
a spike in violence, a spike in disappearances

408
00:21:18,308 --> 00:21:21,222
– and again, enacted against the population at large.

409
00:21:21,222 --> 00:21:23,112
We're told that it's one drug cartel

410
00:21:23,112 --> 00:21:25,083
sending a message to another drug cartel.

411
00:21:25,083 --> 00:21:26,999
But when, y'know, in your town

412
00:21:26,999 --> 00:21:30,494
there's a bunch of beheaded bodies in the central square

413
00:21:30,494 --> 00:21:31,949
– that's a message to the whole town.

414
00:21:31,949 --> 00:21:34,810
What the militarization of prohibition has really done

415
00:21:34,810 --> 00:21:37,822
- because it's a militarized strategy to enforce prohibition -

416
00:21:37,822 --> 00:21:40,106
is it has meant that the folks who are

417
00:21:40,106 --> 00:21:43,596
moving these products also militarize.

418
00:21:43,596 --> 00:21:45,971
And that's kind of a paramilitary process.

419
00:21:45,971 --> 00:21:49,085
In Mexico these groups aren't explicitly political groups,

420
00:21:49,085 --> 00:21:53,197
but it's clear that they often work closely with other parts

421
00:21:53,197 --> 00:21:56,557
of the same state apparatus that's fighting them.

422
00:21:56,557 --> 00:21:58,417
So like, say the federal police come in

423
00:21:58,417 --> 00:22:00,140
and they crack down on the Sinaloa cartel

424
00:22:00,140 --> 00:22:02,375
... okay, the Sinaloa cartel goes and they start working with

425
00:22:02,375 --> 00:22:05,100
state-level police officers, whatever it is.

426
00:22:05,100 --> 00:22:06,941
So people in these strategic areas,

427
00:22:06,941 --> 00:22:10,015
just regular folks trying to get on with their lives,

428
00:22:10,015 --> 00:22:12,900
they're the ones who are being picked up and disappeared.

429
00:22:12,900 --> 00:22:14,489
They're the ones who are being massacred.

430
00:22:14,489 --> 00:22:17,831
They're the ones who are paying, actually, with their lives for this war.

431
00:22:17,831 --> 00:22:20,143
And so when you take that kind of step back

432
00:22:20,143 --> 00:22:22,173
and you see it on a bit more of a macro level,

433
00:22:22,173 --> 00:22:25,051
it's very clear that what's happening is a war against the people.

434
00:22:25,051 --> 00:22:28,421
And the whole idea of the state fighting drug cartels

435
00:22:28,421 --> 00:22:33,240
is a big charade, basically to justify militarization, paramilitarization

436
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,452
and a war against the population.

437
00:22:40,247 --> 00:22:42,648
States go to incredible lengths to study our movements.

438
00:22:42,648 --> 00:22:45,695
Dozens of federal security and intelligence agencies,

439
00:22:45,695 --> 00:22:48,049
and an untold number of private contractors

440
00:22:48,049 --> 00:22:50,612
are constantly combing over our social media posts,

441
00:22:50,612 --> 00:22:53,658
mapping out our networks and probing them for vulnerabilities.

442
00:22:53,658 --> 00:22:56,050
Analysts churn over a never-ending stream

443
00:22:56,050 --> 00:22:58,289
of risk assessments and policy suggestions,

444
00:22:58,289 --> 00:23:01,767
covering a vast array of possible contingency plans.

445
00:23:01,767 --> 00:23:05,108
Each year, billions of dollars are spent keeping tabs on dissent,

446
00:23:05,108 --> 00:23:08,165
infiltrating our organizations and training local police forces

447
00:23:08,165 --> 00:23:09,419
in riot suppression

448
00:23:09,419 --> 00:23:11,584
and community engagement tactics.

449
00:23:11,584 --> 00:23:13,662
No matter how powerful states are,

450
00:23:13,662 --> 00:23:16,494
and no matter how vast the scale of resources they're able to marshal

451
00:23:16,494 --> 00:23:18,821
towards maintaining and expanding their power

452
00:23:18,821 --> 00:23:20,361
... they still view us as threats.

453
00:23:20,361 --> 00:23:21,668
And why shouldn't they?

454
00:23:21,668 --> 00:23:23,782
States are collective illusions.

455
00:23:23,782 --> 00:23:26,329
The social, economic and political hierarchies

456
00:23:26,329 --> 00:23:28,453
that keep the many ruled by the few are

457
00:23:28,453 --> 00:23:30,083
built on a foundation of fear,

458
00:23:30,083 --> 00:23:30,947
loyalty

459
00:23:30,947 --> 00:23:32,066
and internal division.

460
00:23:32,066 --> 00:23:34,353
If these supporting pillars were ever to be removed,

461
00:23:34,353 --> 00:23:36,989
the whole house of cards would come crashing down.

462
00:23:39,349 --> 00:23:42,628
States have invested a lot of resources

463
00:23:42,628 --> 00:23:45,693
into understanding how insurgencies arise,

464
00:23:45,693 --> 00:23:47,584
understanding how uprisings succeed,

465
00:23:47,584 --> 00:23:49,543
understanding how states fail,

466
00:23:49,543 --> 00:23:51,690
and then working to counteract that.

467
00:23:51,690 --> 00:23:53,774
And I think we can learn from some of their insights,

468
00:23:53,774 --> 00:23:57,879
even as we are counteracting their operations.

469
00:23:57,879 --> 00:24:00,805
I think it's very important to understand,

470
00:24:00,805 --> 00:24:02,313
and to have some knowledge of

471
00:24:02,313 --> 00:24:04,933
how counterinsurgency operations are carried out,

472
00:24:04,933 --> 00:24:08,037
because that's how you can better defend yourselves against them.

473
00:24:08,037 --> 00:24:10,404
The more that we can spread awareness

474
00:24:10,404 --> 00:24:12,794
of counterinsurgency beyond anarchist circles,

475
00:24:12,794 --> 00:24:15,763
the more people will understand the methods we use,

476
00:24:15,763 --> 00:24:20,234
why we choose antagonistic and combative methods vis-a-vis the state.

477
00:24:20,234 --> 00:24:22,754
Because once you understand that states organize

478
00:24:22,754 --> 00:24:24,599
according to a philosophy of counterinsurgency,

479
00:24:24,599 --> 00:24:27,721
people understand that the state views them as their enemy,

480
00:24:27,721 --> 00:24:29,471
or as their potential enemy.

481
00:24:29,471 --> 00:24:33,054
And so people understand that when we talk about social war,

482
00:24:33,054 --> 00:24:35,470
it's not because we like war or we like violence,

483
00:24:35,470 --> 00:24:37,376
but because the state started the social war.

484
00:24:37,376 --> 00:24:39,162
The existence of the state is a social war,

485
00:24:39,162 --> 00:24:41,114
it's constant warfare against all of us.

486
00:24:41,114 --> 00:24:44,439
In order to defeat the enemy's plans,

487
00:24:44,439 --> 00:24:46,424
we have to understand them.

488
00:24:46,424 --> 00:24:49,147
And we have to do political education

489
00:24:49,147 --> 00:24:51,808
on a large scale about government repression.

490
00:24:51,808 --> 00:24:55,371
But even more than that, we have to design our movements

491
00:24:55,371 --> 00:24:57,928
to be able to withstand government repression,

492
00:24:57,928 --> 00:25:02,318
to be able to withstand all manner of secret police activity.

493
00:25:02,318 --> 00:25:03,828
Specifically within anarchist circles,

494
00:25:03,828 --> 00:25:05,938
if we encourage more nuanced understandings

495
00:25:05,938 --> 00:25:07,695
of how counterinsurgency works,

496
00:25:07,695 --> 00:25:11,227
it will certainly help identify recuperation

497
00:25:11,227 --> 00:25:13,421
and how not to fall into that trap.

498
00:25:13,421 --> 00:25:16,837
And it will also help us improve our anti-repressive strategies.

499
00:25:16,837 --> 00:25:19,921
Especially at the point that we realize that repression

500
00:25:19,921 --> 00:25:22,551
is primarily a mechanism for isolating people,

501
00:25:22,551 --> 00:25:25,024
then we'll begin to put more importance

502
00:25:25,024 --> 00:25:27,884
on creating broader social relationships,

503
00:25:27,884 --> 00:25:31,754
avoiding isolation and certainly giving up on strategies

504
00:25:31,754 --> 00:25:33,949
that basically amount to self-isolation.

505
00:25:33,949 --> 00:25:38,132
Still some of the best resources for this are our adversaries'.

506
00:25:38,132 --> 00:25:41,787
A lot of the RAND Corporation research on counterinsurgency

507
00:25:41,787 --> 00:25:43,908
is available on their website.

508
00:25:43,908 --> 00:25:48,658
The US Army Field Manual, FM-324, is widely available.

509
00:25:48,658 --> 00:25:50,773
All of that is worth looking at directly as well.

510
00:25:50,773 --> 00:25:55,241
A very important counterinsurgency campaign that people can learn from

511
00:25:55,241 --> 00:25:59,150
is the FBI's COINTELPRO operations in the United States

512
00:25:59,150 --> 00:26:01,518
during the 1950's to early 1970's,

513
00:26:01,518 --> 00:26:03,503
because I think these are the types of tactics

514
00:26:03,503 --> 00:26:06,183
that are being used against resistance movements today.

515
00:26:06,183 --> 00:26:09,108
That was a radical period in the 1960's and 70's,

516
00:26:09,108 --> 00:26:12,561
and so they used that heavy-handed repression.

517
00:26:12,561 --> 00:26:13,817
That was an illegal program.

518
00:26:13,817 --> 00:26:17,531
But the same kind of repression, if not even worse,

519
00:26:17,531 --> 00:26:20,638
now is being used – and it's legal.

520
00:26:20,638 --> 00:26:22,948
Under the so-called PATRIOT Act first,

521
00:26:22,948 --> 00:26:25,720
and now under other forms of legislation

522
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,603
that allows the police and state agencies

523
00:26:28,603 --> 00:26:30,553
to spy on the population at large.

524
00:26:30,553 --> 00:26:33,153
Including spying on dissident organizations.

525
00:26:33,153 --> 00:26:37,134
Intelligence-gathering is probably the single most important part

526
00:26:37,134 --> 00:26:39,122
of a counterinsurgency campaign,

527
00:26:39,122 --> 00:26:40,462
because without intelligence

528
00:26:40,462 --> 00:26:43,954
the state doesn't know who the organizers of resistance are,

529
00:26:43,954 --> 00:26:47,716
where they are, what their plans are, or how to combat them.

530
00:26:47,716 --> 00:26:49,769
The tools around counter-surveillance,

531
00:26:49,769 --> 00:26:51,921
the tools around anonymity,

532
00:26:51,921 --> 00:26:54,800
and making sure that you're protecting yourself

533
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:57,601
and that you're protecting your comrades from state surveillance

534
00:26:57,601 --> 00:26:59,319
... that stuff's really important.

535
00:26:59,319 --> 00:27:03,505
Obviously, y'know, not snitching and not talking to police officers,

536
00:27:03,505 --> 00:27:06,707
all that basic stuff - I mean, those are our weapons.

537
00:27:06,707 --> 00:27:08,752
We have to figure out how

538
00:27:08,752 --> 00:27:12,652
to build a movement to fight fascism in this period.

539
00:27:12,652 --> 00:27:14,291
In the United State particularly.

540
00:27:14,291 --> 00:27:17,136
And we have to begin to develop movements

541
00:27:17,136 --> 00:27:20,136
that are not just "left" movements.

542
00:27:20,136 --> 00:27:23,399
We have, y'know, people who will go on the streets

543
00:27:23,399 --> 00:27:28,059
and engage toe-to-toe, fist-to-fist combat with the alt-right,

544
00:27:28,059 --> 00:27:30,229
the neo-nazis, and neo-fascists

545
00:27:30,229 --> 00:27:32,899
on the streets and in various protests.

546
00:27:32,899 --> 00:27:35,248
And this kind of resistance is still needed.

547
00:27:35,248 --> 00:27:36,936
But this is a kind of resistance

548
00:27:36,936 --> 00:27:40,616
that is not going to organize masses of people.

549
00:27:40,616 --> 00:27:42,161
Everyday people in the communities,

550
00:27:42,161 --> 00:27:46,430
they identify that as being more of a kind of leftist movement.

551
00:27:46,430 --> 00:27:48,710
And most people in our communities, everyday communities,

552
00:27:48,710 --> 00:27:49,795
are not leftists.

553
00:27:49,795 --> 00:27:53,600
It's just amazing that no one was shot and killed in Charlottesville.

554
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,022
And we can't say that that's not gonna happen

555
00:27:56,022 --> 00:27:58,136
in other demonstrations that they put together.

556
00:27:58,136 --> 00:27:59,843
But they're not the primary threat.

557
00:27:59,843 --> 00:28:02,034
We're getting past the time when you could just say

558
00:28:02,034 --> 00:28:04,073
that the task to defeat fascism is just to get out

559
00:28:04,073 --> 00:28:05,449
and punch nazis in the face.

560
00:28:05,449 --> 00:28:08,209
They're in office now. They're running the state.

561
00:28:08,209 --> 00:28:09,872
So we have to go to another level.

562
00:28:09,872 --> 00:28:11,987
We need to build a broader-based movement.

563
00:28:11,987 --> 00:28:14,504
We need to bring in peoples of colour and communities of colour.

564
00:28:14,504 --> 00:28:16,006
We need to bring in the women's movement.

565
00:28:16,006 --> 00:28:18,031
We need to bring in all the forces that are necessary

566
00:28:18,031 --> 00:28:19,535
to overthrow the entire system.

567
00:28:19,535 --> 00:28:21,450
Our task is still a revolutionary task.

568
00:28:21,450 --> 00:28:25,618
We have to change the society that creates fascism in the first place.

569
00:28:25,618 --> 00:28:27,212
We have to overthrow capitalism.

570
00:28:27,212 --> 00:28:29,232
Looking at it from our adversary's perspective,

571
00:28:29,232 --> 00:28:32,773
their authority is in some ways very fragile.

572
00:28:32,773 --> 00:28:34,353
And from their perspective,

573
00:28:34,353 --> 00:28:36,462
the crucial thing that they need to maintain

574
00:28:36,462 --> 00:28:37,875
is the sense of legitimacy.

575
00:28:37,875 --> 00:28:40,682
The sense that the population trusts them.

576
00:28:40,682 --> 00:28:42,491
The sense that the population supports them.

577
00:28:42,491 --> 00:28:46,095
The sense that when they issue demands, that people will respond.

578
00:28:46,095 --> 00:28:48,608
And we can reverse-engineer that

579
00:28:48,608 --> 00:28:51,551
and see from what they feel like they need to protect,

580
00:28:51,551 --> 00:28:52,738
where they're fragile.

581
00:28:52,738 --> 00:28:55,641
And that sense of legitimacy seems to be something

582
00:28:55,641 --> 00:28:58,289
that popular movements are very good at damaging,

583
00:28:58,289 --> 00:29:00,402
even with far fewer resources.

584
00:29:00,402 --> 00:29:04,040
And so the good news of all this is that

585
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,610
the place where they feel themselves most vulnerable

586
00:29:06,610 --> 00:29:10,553
is actually the thing that we are best positioned to hurt

587
00:29:10,553 --> 00:29:12,542
– which is their sense of public support.

588
00:29:12,542 --> 00:29:14,534
They want our cooperation.

589
00:29:14,534 --> 00:29:16,769
That's what this whole thing is about.

590
00:29:16,769 --> 00:29:18,934
The key thing we can do against counterinsurgency

591
00:29:18,934 --> 00:29:21,423
is not share information with them,

592
00:29:21,423 --> 00:29:24,333
cooperate to the least extent possible with the state

593
00:29:24,333 --> 00:29:27,687
– especially in terms of the criminalization of other people.

594
00:29:27,687 --> 00:29:31,072
And keep our relationships with our friends, with our comrades,

595
00:29:31,072 --> 00:29:33,443
but also with our neighbours, to the extent possible.

596
00:29:33,443 --> 00:29:36,580
To other people in our community, folks we met at a Trouble screening.

597
00:29:36,580 --> 00:29:39,332
Really keep those relationships strong and have each others' back.

598
00:29:39,332 --> 00:29:41,483
That's our best weapon. That's all we've got.

599
00:29:41,483 --> 00:29:43,253
People are deploying new strategies,

600
00:29:43,253 --> 00:29:45,999
looking for new terrains of struggle and conflict,

601
00:29:45,999 --> 00:29:48,343
and as always, the story hasn't come to its end.

602
00:29:53,471 --> 00:29:57,398
As the world continues into a period of sustained and ever-deepening crisis,

603
00:29:57,398 --> 00:30:00,470
new counterinsurgency strategies are being developed and deployed

604
00:30:00,470 --> 00:30:02,246
in countries around the globe.

605
00:30:02,246 --> 00:30:03,618
Overlapping catastrophes,

606
00:30:03,618 --> 00:30:06,346
fueled by the destructive effects of neoliberal capitalism,

607
00:30:06,346 --> 00:30:07,282
climate change,

608
00:30:07,282 --> 00:30:08,258
devastating wars

609
00:30:08,258 --> 00:30:10,032
and surging levels of global inequality

610
00:30:10,032 --> 00:30:14,101
are culminating in historically-unprecedented levels of human migration.

611
00:30:14,101 --> 00:30:17,271
This is feeding into a rise of xenophobic reaction,

612
00:30:17,271 --> 00:30:19,502
whereby states and far-right media outlets

613
00:30:19,502 --> 00:30:21,336
are redirecting popular discontent

614
00:30:21,336 --> 00:30:23,816
towards targeted and already-oppressed groups.

615
00:30:23,816 --> 00:30:25,235
These are dangerous times,

616
00:30:25,235 --> 00:30:27,101
which require serious reflection

617
00:30:27,101 --> 00:30:29,938
and committed action on the part of revolutionaries.

618
00:30:29,938 --> 00:30:30,995
So at this point,

619
00:30:30,995 --> 00:30:34,089
we’d like to remind you that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups,

620
00:30:34,089 --> 00:30:37,983
and to be used as a resource to promote discussion and collective organizing.

621
00:30:37,983 --> 00:30:40,302
Think that anarchists and other anti-capitalists in your town

622
00:30:40,302 --> 00:30:41,566
need to start upping their game?

623
00:30:41,566 --> 00:30:43,439
Consider getting together with some comrades,

624
00:30:43,439 --> 00:30:46,363
screening this film and discussing what steps you can take

625
00:30:46,363 --> 00:30:48,840
to collectively prepare yourselves to better anticipate

626
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:52,457
and resist state strategies of repression and recuperation.

627
00:30:52,457 --> 00:30:55,419
Interested in running regular screenings of Trouble at your campus,

628
00:30:55,419 --> 00:30:58,984
infoshop, community center, or even just at your home with friends?

629
00:30:58,984 --> 00:31:00,365
Become a Trouble-Maker!

630
00:31:00,365 --> 00:31:03,462
For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up with an advanced copy of the show,

631
00:31:03,462 --> 00:31:05,947
and a screening kit featuring additional resources

632
00:31:05,947 --> 00:31:08,589
and some questions you can use to get a discussion going.

633
00:31:08,589 --> 00:31:11,676
If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries!

634
00:31:11,676 --> 00:31:15,333
You can stream and/or download all of our content for free off our website:

635
00:31:17,653 --> 00:31:21,013
If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics, or just want to get in touch,

636
00:31:21,013 --> 00:31:24,713
drop us a line at trouble@sub.media.

637
00:31:24,713 --> 00:31:27,121
This month we've kicked off a large-scale fundraiser

638
00:31:27,121 --> 00:31:30,775
aimed at expanding subMedia, and increasing our monthly video output.

639
00:31:30,775 --> 00:31:32,410
If we can reach our fundraising goals,

640
00:31:32,410 --> 00:31:34,849
we plan on bringing the Stimulator back out of retirement,

641
00:31:34,849 --> 00:31:36,794
in order to unleash him on the alt-right trolls

642
00:31:36,794 --> 00:31:38,865
who got our paypal account shut down.

643
00:31:38,865 --> 00:31:42,969
If you like Trouble, hate the alt-right, and want to see more subMedia content,

644
00:31:42,969 --> 00:31:47,925
please consider going to sub.media/donate and becoming a monthly sustainer.

645
00:31:47,925 --> 00:31:50,765
As always, we’re excited to see that people have been

646
00:31:50,765 --> 00:31:52,429
supporting and screening our work,

647
00:31:52,429 --> 00:31:55,384
and we wanna give a big shout out to new Troublemaker chapters

648
00:31:55,384 --> 00:31:59,328
in London, Kitchener, Kingston, Halifax, and Tampa.

649
00:31:59,328 --> 00:32:02,503
This episode would not have been possible without the generous support

650
00:32:02,503 --> 00:32:05,468
of Brianna, Anonymous, Jodi, and Naber.

651
00:32:05,468 --> 00:32:07,867
Now get out there, and make some trouble!