I’ve linked a piece below, by Erin Smith, who runs a program called the Contextual Insurgent Project and is titled “Case Study, Grant Park Assault”, which occurred In Chicago, July 20, 2020. It was an attempt to take down the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park.
I recommend the writer, the project, but especially Erin Smith’s approach to analysis, for her breakdown of the way Antifa and cohorts executed this plan stands right alongside how the way General Lee’s defeat of Burnside at Fredericksburg was taught…cold classical tactical analysis, not the touchy-feely or false bravado of video games, on the blackboards of West Point 55 years ago.
Her analysis was clinical. Moreover, it was from a younger person, which stands out far beyond my generation’s growingly cynical expectations, for we were losing hope. I showed it to my son, now 50 and an investigative scientist. He also was edified.
I recommend you go to Contextual Insurgent Project and sign up to receive more of their offerings, adding this group to your regular reading list; that is if you’re one of the few Americans who believe this enemy must be fought, and not simply complained about.
Then read Ms Smith review of Antifa tactical field expertise as of 2020 observed in the Grant Park Assault, for Antifa has come a long way since we first saw it in knee pants at Washington University in St Louis in 2010, where the Occupy nee Antifa Movement was first incubated.
It screams tactical analysis by boots on the ground, not butts on the cushion.
Although Ms Smith didn’t suggest any steps toward future interventions or solutions, I assume their Project leans toward finding some. And you know where I’ve always stood on the dark alley thesis of finding ways to blight their path, and in the 12 or so years we’d been reporting them they’ve grown in training and sophistication, so obvious, also financially.
You may recall, I’d been writing about “dark alley” tactics a long time, since before Obama, having learned a thing or two in old Soviet Bloc thru the 90s and early 2000’s…only recommending only misdemeanors, mostly painless…designed over the years to cause several classes of people, from petty bureaucrats, teachers and professors, to spoiled trust-fund bratlings which have fir in well with these Occupy-Antifa-trained groups.
This Grant Park assault suggest they have reached a level contest on a field of their choosing. But there are effective other ways, if the analysis is correct.
In 2011-12, when we saw Occupy emerge, and their methods of selecting cadres of individuals to take to the next level, we knew that hundreds of thousands of dollars, now probably millions, were behind their well integrated assault, from the use of “boot camp” enlistee- cannon fodder (seen often in Portland) to serve as decoys for better trained shock troops, to what we’re shown in Chicago in July as presented to us by Ms Smith.
From a piece I did in 2018, “The Audition for the Occupy and Antifa 2020 Edition has Begun”I I noted the genesis from the 60’s Anti-Vietnam War protests/riots to Occupy, thence to Charlottesville and Portland, via the financial auspices of several NGO’s who exist in a dark world where relatively few seem interested as to who their names might be.
That has been the general scheme of recruitment and operations for the Left since the 1800s, and it amazes me that so many of our honorable political class don’t know who these people really are, and look at them in entirely different, and more dangerously innocent ways.
If you don’t remember Occupy New York, 2011-2012, it is with us still, only a second edition, Occupy, the Sequel. It began as a “laboratory-designed” spontaneous counter-agent to the genuinely spontaneous Tea Party, who romped through the 2010 midterms like wild geese in winter, returning House control to the GOP.
In St Louis, at Washington University hundreds or even thousands of young people were invited to camp out, with the standard inducements, beer, sex and doobies, (Just as PJ O’Roark described his payments during the 60s protest) to attend seminars about how to set up tents in New York, Oakland, and several cities (mostly blue) around the county and engage in political activism at a level they’d never really considered. Many were genuinely jobless, while others had useless degrees in Underwater Basket Weaving at Denison.
I had friends all over the country watching these people, even listening in. They even ran a few field tests about various ways to blight their path, which we hoped some day to bottle.
The Occupy Movement was organized in four-levels; paid useful idiots, an enabling media, tactical and strategic leadership and financial backing; plus off-site planning, training and logistical support.
They largely succeeded, paid cadre scouring Occupy camps looking for “a few good men and women” who stood out, and then offers to be hired into further training in various branches of their activist plans.
My first piece at this site, VassarBushmills.com was “A Strategy Down a Dark Alley” which is still one of my most-read.
What I know is that with this sort of tactical expertise, and some understanding of history’s battle plans, with a little money thrown the Contextual Insurgent Project’s way, we can reverse the trend away from the would-be oligarchs. Think of the Peloponnesian War outcome if Athens had cellphones…from the god’s of course compared to these Hessian mercenaries and their distant money,
Antifa Chic
An avid workout addict, I’ve noticed during Covid mask-mania a handful of young men in the gym now wearing all black workout gear; toboggan, shirt, shoes and the ubiquitous all-black neck gaiter masks.
I can never know if these are coincidences but if Antifa-chic is a growing thing, it’s a cause for concern worry, for in the zeitgeist of the times, it’s as good as Uncle Sam Wants You recruiting poster.
