Filmmaker Jason Russell and one of his props
1,380 words
Translations: Polish, Portuguese
The Kony 2012 viral campaign has generated a huge amount of interest. The video posted on Youtube has been viewed over 70 million times in less than a week.
This video is concerned with Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Uganda-based militia notorious for its kidnapping of children to act as soldiers or sex slaves. The charity Invisible Children released the film, Kony 2012, on March 5th with the aim of publicizing his crimes and encouraging mass protest. They hope to secure his arrest before the end of 2012.
The Kony 2012 campaign has already been massively successful in generating a staggering amount of publicity. It has effectively utilized and extended existing techniques of social networking and viral campaigning. And it has also been criticized for neo-colonialism. But there are other issues with the Kony 2012 campaign that should give serious pause for thought. These issues are to do with the emergent technologies of 5GW [Fifth Generation Warfare]. Is Kony 2012 a 5GW operation?
The 5GW model had its genesis in a paper published in the Marine Corps Gazette in 1989 entitled “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation.” In this paper, Lind et al. developed a model of modern warfare described in terms of four generations of evolutionary development. The first generation of modern warfare (1GW) was characterized by the use of line and column, and muskets. This generation was exemplified in the Napoleonic wars. The second generation (2GW) utilized more ruthless technology, e.g., machine guns and rifles, and was tactically more mobile. World War I represents the peak of 2GW. The third generation (3GW) was the dominant model for most of the remainder of the twentieth century. It attempted to bypass the enemy’s front line through infiltration and rapid movement, and again utilized more deadly technology such as tanks. It is characterized by blitzkrieg.
The article then argued that a fourth generation of warfare (4GW) was emerging. 4GW “seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ may disappear.” 4GW operatives will not necessarily be identifiable as combatants; instead they will blend into the enemies’ society until they strike. Obviously, the 9/11 attacks fit this model very well.
Since the publication of “The Changing Face of War” there have been attempts to update the generational model to include a fifth generation (5GW). In 5GW, the battlefield encompasses the entirety of social, political, ideological, scientific, economic and military spheres. It is possible, and in many respects desirable, for the combatants in 5GW to not know whom they are fighting, nor to even know that they are fighting. The full range of Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) technologies are expected to be deployed in 5GW, though in ways that will be highly unpredictable, and perhaps even invisible. A characteristic feature of 5GW is the manipulation of the context of the observers of conflict. Rather than focusing on the physical defeat of an enemy, 5GW recognizes the potential for new technologies to manipulate the belief systems of observers who may support or oppose conflict.
Is it possible that Kony 2012 is being used, perhaps even without the knowledge of the Invisible Children charity, to carry out a 5GW operation? There are reasons for suspecting that this might be the case.
One of the more potent weapons of this viral campaign is the focused targeting of ‘Culturemakers’ and ‘Policymakers’ who can be messaged directly through a slick interface on the same webpage as the video. The purpose of such messaging is to keep the campaign in the media spotlight through the Culturemakers, and to force the Policymakers into maintaining an American presence in Central Africa. As is stated in the video, Obama authorized 100 “American advisers” to be deployed to Central Africa to assist in the hunt for Kony. “It was the first time in history that the United States took that kind of action because the people demanded it. Not for self defense but because it was right.” Or, perhaps, because of the oil.
The discovery of oil in the Albertine Rift in Uganda might, to the cynically minded, provide an excellent reason for the deployment of American forces to Uganda. It is certainly expected to lead to conflict, and one possible outcome can be seen by looking at the oil fields of Nigeria.
The oil-rich Niger Delta has been the scene of perhaps the most successful 5GW campaign of the last decade. Henry Okah has been referred to as “one of the most important people alive today, a brilliant innovator in warfare. A true global guerrilla.” He is the mastermind behind the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), an organization dedicated to retaining a greater share of the oil wealth for Nigerians. In furtherance of this aim MEND have sabotaged oil fields, siphoned off oil, and taken oil workers hostage. These actions are all intended to make it difficult for Shell to continue its oil operations in the Delta. MEND have managed to curtail $29 billion of oil production by Shell.
The financing of MEND is miniscule in comparison, as it operates as a 5GW actor. Mercenaries are hired via text messaging for specific jobs, so the membership is nebulous. The publicity for MEND’s attacks is generated through e-mails to news outlets claiming responsibility; the organization itself remains invisible. This type of system-disruption is easily copied by sympathetic followers, so the arrest of Okah (in 2008) did not lead to the demise of MEND. Instead, Okah has provided a model of 5GW that enables otherwise unconnected groups to carry out actions in the name of MEND.
Whether or not oil-hungry American politicians were viewing Kony as a possible emulator of Okah’s tactics is a moot point. Displacing him will in any case serve the hidden tactical motive of establishing an American military presence in Uganda. This intervention should, on the face of it, have been extremely unpopular. Americans have mostly lost their appetite for foreign intervention, and the most vocal opponents are usually young college students. If there is a hidden 5GW component to Kony 2012 it is primarily aimed at mobilizing young, anti-imperialist liberals to compel the American government to reluctantly intervene in a foreign conflict.
Instead of the familiar model of intervention taking place and dragging on despite the inevitable attrition of public support, Invisible Children have provided an alternative model whereby intervention becomes first a non-governmental, moral question. As the video states, “because we couldn’t wait for institutions or governments to step in we did it ourselves with our time, talent and money.” By carrying out the role of non-partisan, humanitarian charity workers, Invisible Children have been able to garner a great deal of support for their actions, and it seems a very small step to then pressure the government to supply some “advisers” to assist their good work. By using the emergent technologies of social networking and viral campaigning it has been possible to achieve the perfect conflation of anti-war protest sentiment with American interventionism.
I suspect that the people who run Invisible Children are nothing but decent. As stated earlier, it is part of the 5GW model that actors in conflicts may not realize that they are engaged. Whilst I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Invisible Children, I am not stupid enough to extend the same courtesy to the American government.
The deployment of American military personnel in a country that has recently discovered oil is not mere serendipity. What we are witnessing is the manipulation of ‘protest’ in order to hide foreign policy intentions. The US government can quite honestly say that it has been forced to intervene in Uganda due to unprecedented popular support. The success of the Kony 2012 campaign suggests that this will be an area of increased interest to the US military. I do not pretend to know how this 5GW operation has become embedded within the Invisible Children charity but I have little doubt that this is what has happened. When we ask, “who benefits?” we usually find our culprit.
13 comments
Brilliant speculation–probably correct, IMHO.
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Lind is the preeminent military analyst of our time, on a par with Martin van Creveld. Both men are also students of Culture, and the power of control of the CULTURAL agenda is at the foundation of 5GW.
A moment of exquisite irony, as 5GE is exactly what the Frankfurt School and their supporters have been engaged in. Pre-Lind, we identified “warfare” with guns, ammo, brigades, division, and things that go “BOOM!” in the night.
We saw the matters of Form, and became intellectually entranced with the “glamor” of it. It was a perfect trap. People would debate the tactics of, say, the Kursk salient, and miss entirely the moral, cultural and intellectual foundations of how this situation came to be, and why it cvame to be.
So, the Adversary was playing 5GW all along. Even when they were involved in 4GW, it was always to shape the people and the agendas, and thus the outcome, so, no matter which “side” won, THEIR side prevailed.
This demonstrates the all-important philosophical foundations that tie into the metapolitical foundations.
Let’s quickly review this in microcosm with counter-currents, and Harold Covington’s Northwest Republic as an analytical model.
WN “thinking,” prior to counter-currents, defined itself in terms of what it was against. (Yes, there are a few exceptions, such as Rockwell and Sam Francis. Bear with me.)
At the philosophical level, the formal definition of the foundation of the metapolitical framework, WN thinking was essentially the manifestation of that adolescent framework, oppositional defiance. “We don’t LIKE them.” This made the identification error of identifying the map with the thing itself; “them” versus what they were truly representing.
One example of this in 5GW thinking? Bull Connor, turning fire hoses and police dogs on school children, with the national television cameras running the entire while. Connor took the bait, and totally discredited himself on the high ground of morality.
He attacked pawns, eminently expendable pawns. He focused on two squares of the chessboard, “Us,” and “Them.” He missed the larger view of the board altogether, and never bothered to identify the invisible chessmasters moving the pawns, and him taking the poisoned pawns to his political defeat. His political defeat was not the end of his cause; it was, however, the beginning of the end.
This is a pretty good example of WN “street activism.” Both sides make representations, one side looks like foolish attackers (NSM, KKK), and one side gets its Blue Cross/Blue Shield tested in the emergency room. A couple of well-recorded “Sieg Heils,” performed by gap-toothed, obses clowns, and any hope of moral legitimacy is gone. Again, seeing two squares of the chessboard, and those poorly, led to the defeat of those who claimed to be, and the media claimed they were, “White Nationalists.”
Meanwhile, the heirs of the Frankfurt School played PURE 5GW.
No metapolitical purpose, and no philosophy to build the Bridge from Here to There. No grand strategy, no strategy, no tactics, and no metapolitical/philosophical framework for any of this. “We” we reduced to simply REACTING to their ACTIONS; THEY chose the time, and the place, and the terms of battle. We reacted blindly, shadowboxing with yesterdays’s matters of Form, and no matter of Substance whatsoever.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PATHETIC, BITTER FAILURE IS ENOUGH.
If you aren’t aligned with the Metapolitical Project, in the temporal context of building a Racial Homeland, a Northwest Republic, you are simply, to quote Heath Ledger’s “Joker,” “Tonight’s Entertainment.”
Covington likes to use the example of the IRA, a group of stunningly inept actors, who beat the British Army to a draw. That is a stronger example than many realize, because, while their tactics were implemented with the clumsy ineptitude, their metapolitical strategy tied directly into a the fulfillment of a transcendental purpose – a union of Religion and Race. This worked for the Jews. It worked for the IRA. It will work or us, and all, I repeat, ALL we wish to accomplish can and MUST be done in an “apple-pie, strictly legal, sort of way.” (HT: Jim Giles)
This means framing ALL of our political issues in the framework of the Constitution.
This forces them to deal with us on universally acceptable, universally respected, terms.
And that is a start.
The Constitution – OUR Prime Symbol for 5GW.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Lind is the preeminent military analyst of our time, on a par with Martin van Creveld. Both men are also students of Culture, and the power of control of the CULTURAL agenda is at the foundation of 5GW. A moment of exquisite irony, as 5GE is exactly what the Frankfurt School and their supporters have been engaged in. Pre-Lind, we identified “warfare” with guns, ammo, brigades, division, and things that go “BOOM!” in the night. We saw the matters of Form, and became intellectually entranced with the “glamor” of it. It was a perfect trap. People would debate the tactics of, say, the Kursk salient, and miss entirely the moral, cultural and intellectual foundations of how this situation came to be, and why it came to be. So, the Adversary was playing 5GW all along. Even when they were involved in 4GW, it was always to shape the people and the agendas, and thus the outcome, so, no matter which “side” won, THEIR side prevailed. This demonstrates the all-important philosophical foundations that tie into the metapolitical foundations.
Let’s quickly review this in microcosm with counter-currents, and Harold Covington’s Northwest Republic as an analytical model. WN “thinking,” prior to counter-currents, defined itself in terms of what it was against. (Yes, there are a few exceptions, such as Rockwell and Sam Francis. Bear with me.) At the philosophical level, the formal definition of the foundation of the metapolitical framework, WN thinking was essentially the manifestation of that adolescent framework, oppositional defiance. “We don’t LIKE them.” This made the identification error of identifying the map with the thing itself; “them” versus what they were truly representing.
One example of this in 5GW thinking?
Bull Connor, turning fire hoses and police dogs on school children, with the national television cameras running the entire while. Connor took the bait, and totally discredited himself on the high ground of morality. He attacked pawns, eminently expendable pawns. He focused on two squares of the chessboard, “Us,” and “Them.” He missed the larger view of the board altogether, and never bothered to identify the invisible chessmasters moving the pawns, and him taking the poisoned pawns to his political defeat. His political defeat was not the end of his cause; it was, however, the beginning of the end.
This is a pretty good example of WN “street activism.” Both sides make representations, one side looks like foolish attackers (NSM, KKK), and one side gets its Blue Cross/Blue Shield tested in the emergency room. A couple of well-recorded “Sieg Heils,” performed by gap-toothed, obses clowns, and any hope of moral legitimacy is gone. Again, seeing two squares of the chessboard, and those poorly, led to the defeat of those who claimed to be, and the media claimed they were, “White Nationalists.”
Meanwhile, the heirs of the Frankfurt School played PURE 5GW. They always won. We didn’t.
No metapolitical purpose, and no philosophy to build the Bridge from Here to There. No grand strategy, no strategy, no tactics, and no metapolitical/philosophical framework for any of this. “We” were reduced to simply REACTING to their ACTIONS; THEY chose the time, and the place, and the terms of battle. We reacted blindly, shadowboxing with yesterday’s matters of Form, and no matter of Substance whatsoever.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PATHETIC, BITTER FAILURE IS ENOUGH.
If you aren’t aligned with the Metapolitical Project, in the temporal context of building a Racial Homeland, a Northwest Republic, you are simply, to quote Heath Ledger’s “Joker,” “Tonight’s Entertainment.” Covington likes to use the example of the IRA, a group of stunningly inept actors, who beat the British Army to a draw. That is a stronger example than many realize, because, while their tactics were implemented with breathtaking ineptitude, their metapolitical strategy tied directly into a the fulfillment of a transcendental purpose – a union of Religion and Race.
This worked for the Jews. It worked for the IRA. It will work for us.
All, I repeat, ALL we wish to accomplish can and MUST be done in an “apple-pie, strictly legal, sort of way.” (HT: Jim Giles) This means framing ALL of our political issues in the framework of the Constitution. This forces them to deal with us on universally acceptable, universally respected, terms. And that is a start.
The Constitution – OUR Prime Symbol for 5GW.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
The Constitution may well be our most potent weapon here in the USA. It’s what the flag represents. What would happen if every issue were framed with the question: ” Is this constitutional?”
hhhmmm that could really work….. I have a small pocket size Constitution. I think I’ll start taking that with wherever I go.
I’ve been thinking of translating Roger Mucchielli’s La subversion (Paris: C.L.C., 1976), or writing something based upon this book, for it’s a very interesting work concerning subversion as a weapon of modern warfare. I’m not sure which course I should take — both are troublesome — but I believe that the ideas of this book ought to developed, popularized, and weaponized.
Mucchielli’s book effectively addresses subversion in terms of social psychology. This makes it extremely relevant to fourth and fifth generation warfare.
Theories of social psychology can have practical applications. Indeed, ideas from Mucchielli’s Psychologie de la publicité et de la propagande were reportedly weaponized in Rwanda to incite Hutus to butcher Tutsis.
Mucchielli wrote:
“A radical change seems to have taken place for around twenty years: a new conception of international warfare has little by little blurred the traditional conception, and in this new form of warfare, subversion has become the principal weapon. In effect, today’s strategy of total warfare excludes the recourse to armed international intervention: instead of engaging soldiers on the frontiers of the nation to conquer, one generates, in the interior of this state, and through the action of trained subversive agents, a process of disintegration of authority, while small groups of partisans, presented as ‘coming from the people itself’ and ‘spontaneously’ formed, enter a new type of struggle on the ground with the declared intention of starting a ‘revolutionary war of liberation,’ and with, in fact, the intention of accelerating the process of disintegration of the state in the targeted country, then of taking power.
“The classic conception used subversion and psychological warfare as devices of war among others during times of hostilities, which were stopped at their end. The states of today, inhibited by this archaic distinction, have not understood that psychological warfare has broken the classic distinction between war and peace. It is an unconventional war, foreign to the norms of international law and the known laws of war. It is a total war, which disconcerts the jurists and which pursues its objectives without interference from their codes. As Mégret says: ‘The classic distinction between peace and war would be, from that moment, put in check by psychological warfare . . . freed from barriers of time, place, and conventions, an immaterial force and, from this fact, elusive, susceptible to all incarnations and all metamorphoses.’ (La guerre psychologique [Paris: PUF, 1963], p. 20.)
“The goal of war remains the same — territorial expansion and occupation of another country, or the installation of an allied or submissive government within this country — but the means have changed.”
In some respects, Mucchielli’s view resemble William S. Lind’s view that war “seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ may disappear.”
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
White Republican in blockquote:
A summary outline would be perfect. A good title?
“New Rules for the New West.”
Subtitle: “From Conquered, to Conquerors, in Fourteen Words”
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Perhaps the best approach for me to take with Roger Mucchielli’s La subversion would be to write a work designed to (1) summarize and popularize Mucchielli’s ideas, (2) generate interest in and discussion of these ideas, (3) address the directions in which they could be developed, and (4) identify resources for their development (this could involve preparing an annotated bibliography).
Translating the work would be problematic. I’m not up to producing a translation which is fluid, accurate, and complete, and nobody else is likely to translate it. The work also has several limitations:
First, its ideas require more detailed examination and elaboration.
What Pierre Hassner wrote in his review of Mucchielli’s Le mythe de la cité idéale is applicable to La subversion: “One is tempted to think that the ambitions of the author have been somewhat excessive, that the personal philosophy he presents is a little narrow, that his references and vocabulary are somewhat labored and disordered. But the reading of his work remains stimulating and provides a number of valuable indications.”
Second, because it was written in the context of France in the 1970s, it is somewhat dated and many of its references require explanation.
Third, some of the views expressed and positions taken are questionable. For example, Mucchielli uncritically accepted the received opinion that “democracy” is a good thing rather than an agent and vector of subversion (as has been said, “the system is not in crisis, the system is the crisis”).
Adapting the work would also be problematic. I’m not up to discussing and developing its ideas with genuine knowledge and authority. There is so much to do here. As I commented last year, the ideas of the work have several potential applications:
First, they can help us understand the subversion that is conducted by the establishment. Although Mucchielli focused on subversion conducted by foreign states against other states, and by groups within a state hostile to the state, his ideas can also be applied to subversion conducted by the state against its own people. Mucchielli explained, in terms of social psychology, how minorities can effectively paralyze majorities.
Second, they can help us understand the methods used in the “colored revolutions.”
Third, they can be applied to fourth and fifth generation warfare.
Fourth, they can be applied to contestation below the level of armed struggle.
Developing ideas so that they are truly practical, and effectively disseminating such ideas, is a very difficult task. This is the kind of work that one has to live with if one takes it seriously. It requires constant painstaking intellectual and literary work. I know my limitations, and I think my role here should be that of a middleman or intermediary. This is a modest role to play in the transmission and development of ideas, but it can be an important one. While I’m not an intellectual or a writer, I think I can identify works and ideas worthy of wider circulation.
If I write a work performing the functions I’ve listed above, I will at least have provided a good starting point for others for studying, developing, and applying Mucchielli’s ideas.
A good title for a work would be “The Culture of Contestation.” We need a culture that inspires, guides, and supports political struggle.
“I’m not an intellectual or a writer . . .”
You appear to be both.
This is from the “Six Rules for White Advocacy ” thread, which is linked to in the “Whites Can Learn So Much From Marion Hughes” thread.
With Bowden’s ideas and presentation as a model for public speaking in the absence of formal debate, we seem to have the beginning of something useful going forward.
If we are ever to become engaged in practical politics, effective politics, this would seem to be an excellent framework to frame analysis and discussions.
The temporal bridge, of course, remains our own nation, our own State, a Northwest Republic. Let that be be the softly mentioned touchstone for our endeavors.
I really should work on exploring how a “culture of contestation” can be created among White nationalists. It seems that I have a few ideas, intuitions, and leads on this subject worth following up (to be sure, my thinking is largely derivative, and I make no claim to being an original thinker).
A culture of contestation requires the creation of a social base, a political ideology and culture, and a political organisation and infrastructure. It requires the conception of politics — at once sublime and elemental — which Rodolphe Lussac outlines in his article “Why Are We Political Soldiers?”
As I’ve previously indicated, I’m thinking of ideology and culture in fairly broad terms, and not simply in intellectual or literary terms. I believe we need to account for how White nationalism is understood and articulated by White nationalists in general, to raise the level of knowledge and skill with which White nationalists express their ideas, and to fashion White nationalist discourse for optimal effectiveness. This concern with popularizing White nationalism shouldn’t be a matter of “dumbing down” White nationalism but rather of establishing the strongest and broadest foundations of White nationalism.
This is clearly a massive task. Perhaps the best approach would be to assemble a toolkit rather than create a system, to borrow a metaphor from a review of Jon Elster’s Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences: “Instead of trying to build a Grand Theory which explains all of social life, we should try to build explanations of particular phenomena from the nuts and bolts we have lying around.”
Well, that’s a whole new can of worms inside the primary can of worms. I’ve linked to this here:
Kony 2012 at EX-ARMY
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.