Bill Hennessy Commentary: Assessing Antifa as a Military Strategist

 

by Bill Hennessy

 

If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal, we can flee from him.

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If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.

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Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

~ Sunzi, The Art of War (Public Domain Books)

Antifa activists regularly describe themselves in terms of a ‘defense force;’ but back in their ‘Occupy’ days, they were ‘the 99%’ and ‘revolutionaries;’ and before that, they were the ‘Black Bloc.’ Through it all, they were and are self-proclaimed ‘social justice warriors.’

So let’s take them at their word, and examine Antifa within a military construct – without the blinding rage and disgust they so richly deserve.

Pretend both Antifa and the wretched white supremacists in Charlottesville are neither good nor bad. Neither your enemy nor your ally. Make believe, instead, they are opposing feudal Chinese princes and their armies. Pretend Charlottesville is in black and white, grainy, long ago. Like stories in a fifth grader’s history book. Distant and small.

Neither faction can hurt you. You are protected by generations of history between you and those ancient combatants. You are safe and secure.

Now, look at Antifa’s tactics.

• First, Antifa’s political arm declares war on statues.
• Next, a certain element comes out of hiding to defend those statues.
• Then, Antifa swoops in for battle.
• The only death in the fray is a non-combatant (by all accounts to date) Antifa sympathizer, at the hands of Antifa’s enemy.
• In the aftermath, politicians and pundits side with Antifa, declaring their actions and motives noble and virtuous. Those politicians and pundits curse Antifa’s enemies, declaring the enemies evil and deserving of Antifa’s attacks.

Antifa followed up its Charlottesville victory with vicious attacks on non-combatants in Berkeley, California. In between, Antifa forces attacked an innocent man in Colorado. And Antifa terrorized Trump supporters in Seattle.

In each of these guerrilla attacks, Antifa indicated that it considers anyone with political views the conflict with their political views “fascists,” “white supremacists,” “Nazis,” or “KKK.”

To find Antifa’s strategy, we need to look at its growth from a higher view point. We have to see the alliances Antifa’s formed. Here are just a few of Antifa’s allies:

• Jake Tapper, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, and other CNN employees
• Numerous reporters and editors at the New York Times
• MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and others
• Senator Bernie Sanders
• Rep. Maxine Waters
• Many rank and file Democrats
• Senator John McCain
• Speaker Paul Ryan
• Mitt Romney
• Apple CEO Tim Cook
• Other powerful establishment Republicans

(Note: Nancy Pelosi has condemned, in writing, Antifa’s violence. Nancy’s on our side.)

Breitbart’s John Nolte explained on Breitbart’s daily SiriusXM show recently:

The media is part of the Antifa conspiracy because you can see it. You can see it across all media platforms: the ever-expanding definition of the ‘alt-right,’ the ever-expanding definition of ‘hate speech,’ the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling opposition to same-sex marriage ‘hate speech’ – which, by extension, labels the Christian church a hate group. As the media says ‘maybe it’s OK to commit violence against Nazis and the alt-right and haters,’ they’re also expanding the definition of the alt-right and hate to include traditional conservative views.

Antifa’s strategy is starting emerge. See it yet?

Alliances plus tactics give us an indication of an the strategy an army is pursuing. As Clausewitz wrote in On War:

Strategy has been defined as “the employment of the battle as the means toward the attainment of the object of War.”

So what is the object of Antifa’s war?

Attacks before and after Charlottesville hint at Antifa’s tactics: terrorism. But terrorism is not a strategy. Legally, terrorism is the use of violence or threat of violence to advance a political goal. But we still don’t know Antifa’s goal.

Or do we?

Antifa’s Charlotte tactics were brilliant. Straight out The Art of War. Antifa’s tactical battle went like this:

1. Assess your strength relative to the enemy’s.
2. Attack a place the enemy will be obliged to relieve.
3. Be assured of victory before the battle begins.

Sun Tsu couldn’t have designed a better battle.

The Battle of Charlotteville earned Antifa some of those important new allies: John McCain, Paul Ryan, and many other prominent Republicans.

By securing the support of prominent Republicans, Antifa was free to attack more sympathetic targets: peace activists, Christians, everyday conservatives. Back to that John Nolte interview on Breitbart:

One of the great undercovered stories during the whole Charlottesville episode was that the day after Charlottesville, in another city – I think it was Seattle – a bunch of Trump supporters held a rally, and Antifa also went over there and beat the hell out of those people, and shut them down. Those weren’t neo-Nazis. Those weren’t neo-Confederates. Those were just Trump supporters, and violence was used to shut them up and to stop it, and the media just doesn’t care.

And now we can start to see Antifa’s strategy. We can see its alliances. We can see its tactics. We can see it in Antifa’s progression.

We can see Antifa’s strategy in its allies’ words and actions, in the propaganda campaign. We can see Antifa’s strategy in the political tactic of declaring war on statues.

We can see Antifa’s strategy clearly.

Antifa has an end game.

Antifa has an alliance.

Antifa has a proven set of tactics.

Antifa’s strategy is identical to ISIS’s.

Antifa wants to give every American a choice:

1. Submit

or

2. Die

Like ISIS, Antifa wants to destroy icons representing freedom, progress, science, history. Like ISIS, Antifa wants the masses to fear their retribution. Like ISIS, Antifa wants to establish its own kind of caliphate in North America.

Maybe they don’t want an Islamic state. Probably not. But they’ll use Islamists to advance their strategy.

But that’s Antifa’s strategy: elimination of competing thoughts. Elimination of competing ideas. Elimination of competing ideologies. Elimination of competing statues.

And, like ISIS, Antifa justifies any means to achieve its end. Because few will stand up to terror. Very few.

As a student of military strategy, I admire what Antifa’s done. They’re close to establishing a state within a state, just as ISIS did in Iraq and Syria.They’ve won allies from their natural enemy: the party that supposedly stands for freedom, liberty, and the American way. It commands most of the major media and the leadership of both major political parties.

There is one major difference between ISIS and Antifa. And it’s a terrifying difference.

ISIS has a powerful enemy in the United States and its allies.

Antifa has no declared enemy. Disorganized, individual enemies, sure. But Antifa operates unopposed right now.

Will the Trump administration grow a pair and declare war on this domestic enemy? And, if not Trump, who?

 

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Bill Hennessy called for the first St. Louis Tea Party on February 21, 2009. He has been active ever since. Bill has written 5 books, the latest, Turning On Trump, is the moving story of his conversion from anti-Trump to staunch Trump supporter. Read more of Bill’s commentary at Hennessy’s View.