The purpose of this article is to make the linkages to Fourth Generation Warfare more explicit by demonstrating that Lind's 4GW strategy, Lind's conspiracy theory of "Political Correctness," and Samuel Francis's strategy of mobilizing "Middle American Radicals" are organizationally, strategically, and operationally linked. Closely intertwined with Lind and Francis is the strategizing and organizing of John Tanton, the godfather of the anti-immigration movement. Moreover, Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Patrick Buchanan's presidential campaigns are also organically linked.
The idea that the Republican Party believes that the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential holders and candidates are illegitimate is not unknown by scholars. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner Take All Politics, recently opined that there were "deeper forces at play" and then listed factors of secondary importance: the "spectacular growth of the 'outrage industry,'" gerrymandered districts favoring extreme candidates, and mobilizing their voter base by hyping "an existential threat to your way of life and to the nation itself."
Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, authors of It's Even Worse Than It Looks, believe the Republican Party has grown worse since 2012 because their broken promises to their electoral base have been "amplified by tribal media and social media." In their view, the problem began in 1994 when "Newt Gingrich delegitimized the Congress" which "began the populist conservative hatred of government."
But what escapes these scholars is the idea that what they measure in their studies is the result of a deliberate strategy of destruction. Even the "outrage industry" was not inevitable. Political polarization to the point that the Republican Party became an "insurgent outlier" that rejected "the legitimacy of its partisan opposition" was not inevitable.
For example, if, as Mann and Ornstein rightly observed that it was Newt Gingrich who was responsible for delegitimizing Congress which unleashed the "populist conservative hatred of government," why did Gingrich do it? One clue as to motivation was mentioned by David Grann in a 1997 article on Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind called "Robespierre Of The Right." Grann reported that before Gingrich had become Speaker of the House, that it was "Weyrich [that] had trained [Gingrich] years earlier at a campaign seminar in Milwaukee." In January 1996, Weyrich told the PBS Frontline interviewer that despite the fact that Weyrich and Gingrich analyzed problems from two very different perspectives, biblical versus political, and had some disagreements on policies, that "'we're right now traveling down the same freeway.'"
In other words, the Speaker of the House who initiated the delegitimization of Congress and thus unleashed the "populist conservative hatred of government" had been trained by the Christian Right leader responsible for the development of the strategy of Fourth Generation Warfare--the central aim of which is to delegitimize the federal government. And, this is the same Christian Right leader who developed and popularized the conspiracy theory of "Political Correctness" which aimed to delegitimize the hegemonic secular ideology of liberalism. Moreover, as we shall see below, Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation worked closely with white nationalist strategist for the militant anti-immigration movement, John Tanton, and worked closely with the "philosopher-general" of the white nationalist movement Samuel Francis.
The rise of Trump may have been assisted by all the developments mentioned by the scholars above and all the decisions made by Republican leaders in their pursuit of the racist Southern Strategy, but beneath all of these developments was a small group of men who were pursuing their own strategy--a Fourth Generation Warfare strategy--for their own ends and encouraging and using the Republican leadership to do their bidding. And, as noted below, when President George W. Bush decided to pursue comprehensive immigration reform in order to bring Latinos into the Republican Party, it was Tanton who helped create the Minuteman Project in the Arizona desert (see pages 23-38) to show that the federal government could not protect the American people and would derail comprehensive immigration reform. It was Samuel Francis who was the first right-wing talent scout to notice the potential of a citizens militia in Arizona to stop undocumented immigrants crossing the border in the pages of Tanton's The Social Contract Press and two years later identified Chris Simcox as the potential leader of an important border militia effort.
By the Spring of 2003, the Southern Poverty Law Center was reporting that Arizona ranchers, border militias, and neo-Nazis were collaborating. The SPLC also identified Chris Simcox as an emerging border militia leader on the basis of the same announcement Francis had brought to the attention of VDARE's readers one year earlier. The SPLC noted that neo-Nazis and other racists joined the proof-of-concept Minuteman Project in April 2005. By Fall of 2005, the SPLC reported that "more than 40 anti-immigrantion 'citizens border patrol' and 'internal vigilance' groups have formed since early May." Though plagued by a fundraising scandal, Simcox's follow-on group, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), was raising funds to erect "an 'Israeli-style' barrier 'based on the fences used in Gaza and the West Bank.'" At that time the MCDC also came under the effective control of the Free Congress Foundation through their front-man Alan Keyes.
By April 2006, after neo-Nazis and other white supremacists had joined the hard-line anti-immigration movement started by John Tanton, William S. Lind, and Samuel Francis, the Anti-Defamation League issued a report warning that rhetoric and acts of violence had created an atmosphere of an "Open Season" on immigrants. By September 2008, the ADL warned that extremist rhetoric was now pouring into the mainstream media and Congress. The ADL noted that "mainstream" anti-immigrant groups had links to extremist groups and described immigrants as "'third world invaders,'" that brought diseases to America, and depicted "immigrants as criminals, murderers, rapists, terrorists, and a danger to children and families."
The SPLC in early 2009 reported that these "ideas have gained currency in large part because talk radio and television news programs trusted by the public have provided a platform for racist extremist groups to spread their propaganda—fueling anger and hate against Latinos." The SPLC similarly reported that the "belief that immigrants are disease-carrying criminals bent on destroying the United States economy for their own selfish purposes would have previously been written off as the ranting of a xenophobe who needs to be kept away from any legitimate discussion of immigration policy." And yet these ideas were being communicated directly to Congress and the American public.
By the Spring of 2010, the SPLC reported that the number of border militias had dropped, but the anti-immigrant movement was now coalesced under the "largest hard-line nativist group, the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement (FIRE) Coalition." The FIRE also "launched The Patriot Coalition, an antigovernment outfit battling 'globalism,' 'socialism' and the 'loss of National Identity and Culture.'" A similarly named Patriots Coalition headed by a former MCDC official openly claimed that "'Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.'"
In their 2013 book, Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto reported (page 167) that "From the beginning, the Tea Party movement absorbed much of the residual nativist sentiment in the wake of the decline of the Federal Immigration and Enforcement coalition (FIRE) and [John Tanton's] the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Tea Party organizations also sought to portray immigration as threat to America.... highlighting the victimization of Americans by illegal immigrants" in terms of job losses, business losses, and crimes linked to immigrants.
The mainstream media would be "shocked, shocked" by the spectacle of Donald Trump opening his presidential campaign with an all-out ideological and propaganda assault on Mexican immigrants using rhetoric that the mainstream media had helped circulate between 2005 and 2010.
The media have been flat-footed ever since Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign. He was alternatively a carnival barker, con man, reality television star looking to create a new television network, a political buffoon, a man without an ideology, or, a right-wing populist bully, a proto-fascist, or an outright fascist. Some saw in Donald Trump the echoes of George Wallace. His almost immediate support from white nationalists, white separatists, and white supremacists was astonishing to the media. And, then there is well-grounded empirical research that Trump's initial electoral base was strongly correlated with authoritarianism, racism (and here), white racial resentment, concerns about white identity, anti-Muslim feelings, and economic vulnerabilities.
Chauncey DeVega, a political commentator for Salon, noted that Trump is the logical outcome of a series of decisions made by Republican elites to appeal to white voters through code words and dog whistles to ramp up racial resentment for electoral gains. As DeVega put it, "The Republican Party is now the United States’ largest de facto white identity and white nationalist organization. This did not happen overnight. It took decades to accomplish. This outcome was also not an act of god. Nor was it an accident. The ascendance of Donald Trump, and the racist and nativist politics he represents, was a result of decisions made by elites and other policy makers within the Republican Party and broader conservative movement. This outcome was also enabled by the American news media."
He may be all of those. But, he is also a political candidate apparently following a political strategy rooted in Fourth Generation Warfare. Chauncey DeVega and Paul Rosenberg at Salon.com interviewed this author and Bruce Wilson, respectively, linking Donald Trump to Fourth Generation Warfare.
I told Chauncey DeVega, "Trump’s core policies are all consistent with Lind’s writings since 2005. Lind called for a Berlin-style wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, supported the Minutemen militia on the border, likened Latino and Muslim immigrants to invaders that had to be stopped, considered Muslim immigrants an imported cultural disease, and, if good immigrants came in, it was the destructive Black culture that turned them bad, and opposed Wall Street conservatives. Lind’s ideas have circulated throughout the right-wing for just over a decade. Trump is just telling the Republican base what they have already heard or read."
Bruce Wilson told Paul Rosenberg, "Trump advances core paleoconservative positions laid out in The Next Conservatism—rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism.... As far as Trump’s campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some of America’s most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government, interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that’s become dominant in the years since Reagan."
Wilson also told Rosenberg that the "Lind/Weyrich cultural Marxism/PC/multiculturalism conspiracy theory is radically anti-immigrant. Lind and Weyrich have especially targeted Muslim immigration.... With regards to the 'cultural Marxism' conspiracy theory, every time Donald Trump heaps scorn on 'political correctness,' whether by intent or not, he’s telling people who have encountered Lind’s conspiracy theory that he’s on board with the program—he knows who the enemies are." Wilson pointed out that Lind's conspiracy theory has been widely circulated throughout the right-wing. Patrick Buchanan's 2001 book, The Death of the West, featured a chapter on "Political Correctness" borrowed from Lind.
Bill Berkowitz reported that the Free Congress Foundation allowed the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) to widely distribute their video on Political Correctness into white nationalist and white supremacist organizations. Lind himself told a Holocaust-denial conference about the "Jewish" Marxists from the Frankfurt School who came to America to destroy Western civilization. Lind was also a guest on The Political Cesspool Internet radio show. He appeared on the show sometime between late 2007 and by May 12, 2008, when the WayBack Machine captured him (William Lind) on the Cesspool's list of "esteemed guests." David Holthouse noted in 2007 that The Political Cesspool "has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America. Its sponsors include the CCC and the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust denial organization. Its guest roster for 2007 reads like a "Who's Who" of the radical racist right."
Trump is a political candidate apparently also following a strategy, also rooted in Fourth Generation Warfare, put forth by the white nationalist Samuel Francis. Fourth Generation Warfare and a paleoconservative political platform go hand-in-hand, explained Bruce Wilson.
FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE
William S. Lind, formerly the Free Congress Foundation's director of cultural conservativism and main proponent of the foundation's conspiracy theory regarding "cultural Marxism" or "Political Correctness" espoused by "cultural Marxists," is also the Christian Right's premier political-military strategist and originator of the conceptualization of Fourth Generation Warfare. Lind's 1989 article in the U.S. Marine Corps Gazette, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," provided the principles that formed the blueprint for the nationwide Patriot militia that emerged in 1994. Lind's seminal 1989 article still informs serious debates about how to deal with al Qaeda and other non-state actors who believe they are in "legitimate war with western nation-states as well as with the secular leaning governments of nations in the Muslim world."
Lind's 1994 article, also in the U.S. Marine Corps Gazette, "Fourth Generation Warfare: Another Look," was much more ominous and threatening primarily because in an official Department of Defense publication Lind accused President Clinton (without naming him) of being a hostile opponent of "our Judeo-Christian culture." Lind argued that it was "cultural radicals" who were pushing a philosophy or ideology of "moral relativism, militant secularism, and sexual and social ‘liberation’" that he characterized as "cultural Marxism," "multiculturalism," or its most common nomenclature of "political correctness." Thus, those who supported reproductive rights, women's rights more broadly, and gay rights were enemies of "our Judeo-Christian culture." Lind told U.S. Marine Corps commanders and defense strategists, "Starting in the mid-1960s, we have thrown away the values, morals, and standards that define traditional Western culture. In part, this has been driven by cultural radicals, people who hate our Judeo-Christian culture."
Lind's 1994 article in the U.S. Marine Corps Gazette was itself an instrument of Fourth Generation Warfare in that Lind was delegitimizing those who believed in a secular, pluralistic government that expanded women's rights, reproductive rights, and gay rights. Lind's argument was entirely consistent with the Christian Right's political agenda of maintaining the primacy of rich, white, heterosexual, Christian men.
Proof that the Christian Right sought to maintain the dominance of rich, white, heterosexual, Christian men can be found in Lind's and William Marshner's 1987 book Cultural Conservativism which stood in stark opposition to "welfare rights, gay rights, and feminist rights" (page 2). They noted that "cultural radicalism....demands to eliminate 'sexism' and 'homophobia'...[and] the elimination of male aggressiveness...and the elimination of dogmatic religion" (page 6).
Lind's 1994 article also posited that "an entire people could be a military instrument; war by migration is no less effective today than it was against the Roman Empire, as both Haiti and Cuba recently reminded us." Lind specifically identified "the fastest-growing religion in the United States is Islam." Lind also argued that "Islam's thrust northward into Europe, the heartland of Western culture, is worth a closer look. Islamic immigration into France has been so massive as to reverse the verdict of the battle of Tours; southern France now has more mosques than churches. North African immigrants are now pouring similarly into Spain. In the Balkans, Moslem aid, including weapons and fighters, is flowing into Bosnia. Islamic states realize, as we do not, that the Bosnian Moslems are strategically on the offensive, beginning a new Islamic thrust toward the Danube."
Thus, Lind told his military audience that immigration, in this case Muslim immigration, was a threat to our national identity and culture. Moreover, his observation that Bosnia's Muslims were on the "strategic offensive" is not only factually incorrect, but he was endorsing their ethnic cleansing at the hands of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs.
But, its most threatening aspect was its warning that the "next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil." While Lind was attempting to posit that Fourth Generation Warfare was going to be waged by Muslim immigrants coming to the United States, in fact, the "next real war" was immediately waged by the Christian Right and the emerging Patriot militia to delegitimize President Clinton.
When Lind first explained Fourth Generation Warfare to a civilian audience in 2004, immigration as warfare was his major theme. He noted that "We now find ourselves facing the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam.... In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army." Starting in 2004, prior to the emergence of the Minutemen Project in April 2005, Lind would repeatedly emphasize that all non-white immigrants and gangs were a Fourth Generation Warfare threat--in France, in Europe, and in America.
At the heart of Fourth Generation Warfare is a competition for loyalty and legitimacy of the populace between a non-state actor and a state actor. As Lind explained to a non-military audience at antiwar.com in 2004, Fourth Generation War at its "core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state." Lind also stated, "America, with a closed political system...and a poisonous ideology of ‘multiculturalism,’ is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war—which is by far the most dangerous kind."
It is important to note a contradiction in Lind's 2004 antiwar.com article. On the one hand, non-white immigrants were the existential threat. On the other hand, the United States was vulnerable to a "home-grown" Fourth Generation Warfare threat. Immigrants are not "home-grown." While Lind did not identify the "home-grown" non-state actor waging 4GW in America, it is actually a conflict between the Christian Right and all those who support a secular, pluralistic, social and moral order that does not privilege white, rich, heterosexual, Christian males.
Lind tried to disguise this Christian Right threat by dissembling about gangs and immigrants. He was identifying gangs and immigrants as threats to the Christian Right and the right-wing, as well as America as a whole, while concealing that it was the Christian Right and the right-wing who were challenging the legitimacy of the federal government.
A moments reflection will reveal how racist and misleading his conception was. Why single out Latino gangs? Gangs are simply a subset of what scholars characterize as "transnational crime" or "organized crime." I was a contributor to the 792-page tome, Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty, that examined organized crime in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina (my article), and essentially nearly the entire planet. The volume covered human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, and even nuclear smuggling. There was no reason for Lind to specify Latino gangs as waging a particular kind of Fourth Generation Warfare. Latino gangs in Central and South America operated essentially like organized crime organizations and criminal networks elsewhere.
However, the reason why Lind concentrated on non-white gangs and non-white immigrants, and particularly Muslim immigrants, is that he was conducting Fourth Generation Warfare against the federal government. By calling attention to these 4GW threats, Lind was claiming that the federal government could not protect Americans--its primary function (law and order)--and was therefore calling into question its legitimacy. As Lind explained in his 1994 Gazette article, "One of the most important roles of the state is to protect its people. When it loses the ability (or perceived ability) to do that, it will lose the loyalty of the people. People’s loyalties will transfer to whatever organizations can protect them." The aim of Lind and others was to change perceptions regarding the federal government protecting citizens by employing rhetoric I called "soft" and "hard" ethnic cleansing.
LIND ON GANGS AND IMMIGRANTS
In October 2004, Lind suggested that the El Salvadorian gang, Mara Salvatrucha, "already waging low-level 4GW in the U.S.," was a candidate to transport an al Qaeda nuclear device into the United States. In late April 2005, just days after the emergence of the Minutemen Project, Lind wondered, "How long will it be before al Qaeda and other Islamic non-state forces make their own alliances with the drug gangs and people smugglers who are experts in getting across America’s southern border? Or use the excellent distribution systems the drug gangs have throughout the United States to smuggle something with a bigger bang than the best cocaine?"
In December 2004, just four months before the Minutemen Project emerged, Lind wrote On War #94 specifying the characteristics of a proper immigration policy. Lind called for "real reform" which meant "controlling our borders." Specifically, Lind recommended "we need to put in place something like the old East-West German border. Anyone trying to cross it unlawfully risks getting shot." Lind called for the "Immediate deportation of any non-citizen who commits a felony, along with all identifiable family members." Lind recommended the "Americanization of all immigrants...starting with English only." Lind would also restrict immigration at a rate "so that we do not take in more people than we can Americanize."
As Bruce Wilson noted in his Talk to Action article on Trump and Fourth Generation Warfare, Trump had proposed both a southern border wall and criticized Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish, suggesting that Trump favored an English-only policy.
When the Minutemen Project emerged, Lind accorded them sovereign status. Lind indicated that the El Salvadoran gang MS-13 had "reportedly...declared war on the Minutemen." Accordingly, Lind responded that "if it does happen, it will be an act of war, strategic in nature: MS-13 needs an open border, the Minutemen threaten to close the border, so MS-13 attacks them. That is not just crime, it is war. Yet if MS-13 does not attack the Minutemen, that too may be an act of war, and a highly sophisticated one."
Putting aside his nonsensical argument--a non-act of aggression is an act of war--the thrust of the article was to delegitimize the federal government, and, President George W. Bush. Lind made this clear in his opening paragraph: "With both political parties united in their desire to flood America with illegal immigrants, the efforts of the new Minutemen to defend our southern border are highly to be praised. Citizens acting when a corrupt government will not are signs of health in a republic; endless deference to government marks the replacement of citizens by mere subjects." Lind closed his praise of the Minutemen Project by noting that the Bush administration was pursuing "its suicidal insistence on open borders."
In April 2006, Lind equated what he claimed were "Islamic warriors" in France with undocumented immigrants in the United States. The article, "The Self-Proclaimed Other," described "Roving gangs of young Islamics, many of them black, have joined the festivities...to assault, beat, kick and rob them.... The Moslem hooligans—or should we say warriors?—attacking them will never give their primary loyalty to France. They are the Other by choice and by pride, not by economic or any other circumstances. No schools, no housing projects, no jobs programs will take their loyalty away from the Other."
On the other hand, in America, Lind claimed "a similar invading army took to our streets last week, demonstrating against any attempt to stem the invasion. Few of the flags they carried were American. What has to happen before the rest of us get the message?"
Lind's description of France may have been subconsciously influenced by the French anti-immigrant novel, The Camp of the Saints, published by the Free Congress Foundation's strategic partner, John Tanton's The Social Contract Press. The Southern Poverty Law Center described the novel as a "racist fantasy about an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.... Today, The Camp of the Saints is widely revered by American white supremacists and is a sort of anti-immigration analog to The Turner Diaries, the race war novel written by William Pierce, head of the neo-Nazi National Alliance."
Or, perhaps Lind was directly influenced by the Winter 2005-2006 article in The Social Contract Press which explicitly compared events in France to the racist French novel. The article was titled, "France’s Intifada Current Events Mirror 1973 French Novel."
In August 2007, Lind wrote an article, "Importing More Fourth Generation Warfare," in which "One of Fourth Generation war's more effective Trojan horses is refugees." Lind explained how presumably good Kurdish refugees were turned into Fourth Generation Warfare insurgents due to the "culturally disintegrated black community that have overwhelmed Hispanics and other immigrants." However, the strategic lesson Lind drew was to exclude all refugees: "In the real world, as opposed to the dream world of ‘multiculturalist’ ideologues, there is only one way to prevent refugees from other cultures from serving as Trojan horses for Fourth Generation war: do not admit the refugees. They are carrying a plague for which states have no cure. It may seem heartless to turn plague carriers away at the door, but it is also necessary to survival."
Trump's speech has been described as angry and dark, dystopian and desperate, apocalyptic, appealing to fear, a campaign of fear, a psychotic disorder, demagoguery, and America in crisis. But his remarks are entirely consistent with the tone and substance of Williams S. Lind's Fourth Generation Warfare writings. Key passages speak to the question of legitimacy, specifically that President Obama or Secretary Clinton, or the unnamed federal government have failed to protect citizens from undocumented murdering immigrants and Muslim terrorists.
Here are selected highlights from Trump's acceptance speech highlighting his emphasis on Fourth Generation Warfare themes related to immigrants and Muslims:
- "The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country."
- "The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead."
- "Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens."
- "The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources."
- "I’ve met Sarah’s beautiful family. But to this administration, their amazing daughter was just one more American life that wasn’t worth protecting. No more. One more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders."
- "Iraq is in chaos. Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West."
- "My plan will begin with safety at home–which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity without law and order."
- "The first task for our new Administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities."
- "In this race for the White House, I am the law And order candidate."
- "Lastly, and very importantly we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place."
- "I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people. Anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never will be."
- "On Monday, we heard from three parents whose children were killed by illegal immigrants Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and my friend Jamiel Shaw. They are just three brave representatives of many thousands."
- "Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more deeply than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border, which we can solve. We have to solve it."
- "Instead, my opponent wants Sanctuary Cities. But where was sanctuary for Kate Steinle? Where was sanctuary for the children of Mary Ann and Sabine and Jamiel? Where was sanctuary for all the other -- oh, it is so sad to even be talking about it because we can fix this problem so quickly -- Americans who have been so brutally murdered, and who have suffered so horribly?"
- "These wounded American families have been alone. But they are not alone any longer. Tonight, this candidate and this whole nation stand in their corner to support them, to send them our love, and to pledge in their honor that we will save countless more families from suffering and the same awful fate. We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities."
- "By ending catch-and-release on the border, we will stop the cycle of human smuggling and violence. Illegal border crossings will go down. We will stop it. It won't be happening very much anymore. Believe me. Peace will be restored. By enforcing the rules for the millions who overstay their visas, our laws will finally receive the respect they deserve."
- "Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied – and every politician who has denied them – to listen very closely to the words I am about to say. On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced."
- "My plan is the exact opposite of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of Hillary Clinton. Americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration. Communities want relief. Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan will overwhelm your schools and hospitals, further reduce your jobs and wages, and make it harder for recent immigrants to escape the tremendous cycle of poverty that they're going through right now and make it almost impossible to join the middle class."
Naturally, Trump's speech was compared to Nixon's 1968 speech, both of which focused on "law and order." But, there really is a vast difference between what Nixon said and what Trump said. John Nichols, writing at The Nation, quoted Nixon and Trump. Nixon said, "'When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness…then it’s time for new leadership for the United States of America.” Trump said, "'The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.'"
Nixon stated that it was "time for new leadership." In other words, however honorable the Democrats were, their policies were ineffective. The first thing Trump stated was to repeat a line from one of Lind's Fourth Generation Warfare articles: "The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens." Trump then said the Democratic leadership was "unworthy." "Unworthy" is an evaluative term. An unworthy person does not deserve respect or is worthless. Nixon's commentary is well within the bounds of normal democratic discourse of the circulation of elites. Trump is using the rhetoric of Fourth Generation Warfare.
Jonathan Chait understood that Trump had gone much further than Patrick Buchanan or any other "law and order" candidate. Chait explained, "Here is the most nakedly revealing sentence in Trump’s speech, and the axis upon which most of his argument turns: 'The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than frankly I have ever seen.' Factually, this is preposterous.... But the imagined role of Obama as racial provocateur is the fantasy that holds Trump’s worldview together."
In short, Trump's entire worldview and vision for America is rooted in "othering" President Obama who favors undocumented immigrants and Muslim refugees--both bearers of Fourth Generation Warfare and existential threats to white Christian supremacy. Trump's full-throated support for the "birther" conspiracy theory was the first indication that Trump did not believe President Obama was the legitimate president and was fronting for white supremacy. These attacks--birtherism, othering President Obama, and casting Latino immigrants and Muslim refugees as rapists, murderers, and terrorists--are Fourth Generation Warfare attacks.
LIND ON THE ONE-PARTY ESTABLISHMENT
In early March 2006, Lind highlighted what distinguishes the paleoconservative brand from the dominant ideas of the Christian Right, namely, that the paleoconservatives saw the Democratic and Republican parties as an "Unholy Alliance" of the Establishment. There were the "Politically Correct Left" and the "Golden Calf-worshiping Right." The Left's "purpose is the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion." On the other hand, Lind characterized the "Wall Street Journal 'conservatives'" as people motivated by greed and "the kind of people who define 'conservatism' for the imposter Bush regime." These "Wall Street Journal 'conservatives'" were "'Pimps [who] ain't got no principles.'" In Lind's view, "The same Left-Right unholy alliance is what keeps our borders open to millions of illegal immigrants, our stores filled with products made in Third World countries and our police unable to profile on the basis of real indicators."
Two weeks later in March 2006, in an article called "Through the Postern Gate," meaning a hidden entrance in a fortification, Lind hammered the Establishment on being traitors--thus deliberately and openly delegitimizing them. Lind was explicit in his condemnation and delegitimization of the George W. Bush administration: "Our border defenses are weak at the physical level, and at the mental and moral levels as well. Those weaknesses are intended by the Washington Establishment and its unholy alliance of cultural Marxists and big business/cheap labor 'conservatives.'...Not only have Mexican drug gangs transferred their allegiance away from the state, so have America’s elites"[emphasis added].
In September 2008, Lind wrote that "if McCain is McBush, Obama appears to be O'Bush.... Here we see the central reality of American politics shining through the smoke and mirrors. America has a one-party system. That party is the Establishment Party, and its internal disagreements are minor."
In May 2009, Lind added that the open border between Mexico and the United States could allow a genetically engineered disease to cross the border. Lind suggested that the "'Globalist' ideology, which is shared by both political parties, rejects border controls as hostile to its vision of 'One World.' In a century when genetically engineered plagues will serve as weapons of mass destruction, that ideology may literally be the death of us."
Is it really any wonder why in Trump's acceptance speech the word "conservative" did not appear and the word "Republican" is only mentioned once, according to the Washington Post's annotated copy. The word "Republican" appears three times in his ad hoc comments when he stated he had garnered the most votes in Republican history and that as a Republican he appreciated the crowd clapping on protecting the LGBTQ from "the violence and oppression of a foreign ideology." In his prepared remarks he mentioned the word "Republican" only to distinguish his massive tax cut from the Democratic Party.
SAMUEL FRANCIS MOBILIZING MIDDLE CLASS RADICALS
William S. Lind, writing on behalf of the Christian Right's Free Congress Foundation, was not the only strategic thinker on the right-wing seeking to create a movement founded on the premise that the central strategic objective was to undermine the legitimacy of the federal government.
Samuel Francis, fired from his writing and editing job in 1995 at the Washington Times, in 1999 became the editor of the Citizen Informer, the newsletter of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. In the mid-1990s, he was chairman of the Americans for Immigration Control Foundation. He also wrote many articles that appeared in the Rockford Institute's Chronicles magazine.
In the mid-1990s William S. Lind and Samuel Francis, two leading strategists and thinkers, were on the same page regarding Fourth Generation Warfare and the idea that mass immigration from Mexico was an invasion and act of war. Lind operated through the Free Congress Foundation to influence the Christian Right. Francis operated through Americans for Immigration Reform, and later the Council of Conservative Citizens to influence the white nationalist and white supremacist movement. And both Lind and Francis were linked to the operational leader of the militant anti-immigration movement, white nationalist John Tanton.
The Southern Poverty Law Center in an article originally titled "The Puppeteer," stated that the "vast majority of American anti-immigration groups—more than a dozen in all—were either formed, led, or in other ways made possible through Tanton's efforts." The SPLC stated, "John Tanton can claim without exaggeration that he is the founding father of America's modern anti-immigration movement."
The Americans for Immigration Control in 1996 produced and distributed the video, Immigration: Making America Less Beautiful?. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the video "depicts a 'raging flood' of Latinos, Haitians and other immigrants—'the greatest wave of immigration the world has ever witnessed'—threatening America’s 'generally European' core with 'foreign domination.' In the video, Miami is a 'Third World nightmare' where 'illegal aliens' practice 'voodoo' and leave stinking 'human waste' in the streets." According to the One People's Project, the 1996 video "gave us the reconquista conspiracy theory that says Mexicans are crossing the border to reclaim the Southwestern part of the US for Mexico." Left unmentioned is that the plot of the video is similar to the French novel The Camp of the Saints.
The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that the national spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control, Phil Kent, was also the executive director of the Samuel Francis-led Americans for Immigration Control Foundation as well as on the board of ProEnglish, "the creation of John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement."
In 1996, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation broadcast John Tanton's Borderline anti-immigrant television show on the National Empowerment Television. Borderline featured white nationalists Samuel Francis, Jared Taylor (editor of American Renaissance), and nativist leaders from Tanton's Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA. On one show, Francis described immigration from Mexico in terms Lind could have used--an invasion and political war--and in a manner that Trump did use. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "The topic of the day was, in McAlpin’s words, 'the relentless march against our border—is it immigration or colonization?' The question was purely rhetorical for McAlpin, who later in the show asserted that Mexico has been 'acting very much like a colonial power.' Francis very much agreed. 'This is actually a process of political warfare,' Francis opined. 'They encourage immigration to the North, get rid of who they don’t want and create a political lobby in this country as a kind of political bludgeon against the United States'" [emphasis added].
Another Borderline show in August 1996, hosted by one of John Tanton's executives at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Dan Stein, interviewed Peter Brimelow, author of Alien Nation. Brimelow's discussion of immigration and America's elites would years later be echoed by William S. Lind in his discussion of Wall Street Journal conservatives. On the show, "Stein asked Brimelow whether 'America’s social and economic elites seem to be writing off the whole idea of the nation-state.' He added: 'If they shift their loyalty from the nation-state, what are they loyal to?' Brimelow argued that these same elites are creating the 'greatest transformation of any independent state in history' by bringing in 'new minority groups that did not exist before.' Brimelow considered these elites to be 'treasonous,' people who 'hate our traditional culture and they see immigration as a weapon to help destroy it.' 'Are they really patriots?' Brimelow asked."
Leonard Zeskind described Francis in his Blood and Politics (page 288-9) as the "philosopher-general" of the Right who produced "genuine intellectual products" and possessed a "prodigious intellect." In a 1996 article, Zeskind noted that Samuel Francis at an American Renaissance meeting clearly elevated discussion of the strategic situation facing white nationalists. Francis, Zeskind observed, "turned everybody’s attention to the danger a step or two up. Political, economic and cultural elites were 'actively anti-American,' he said. Corporate CEOs were driving wages down to the level of Third World countries and 'doing everything they can to actually abolish the culture and civilization and the very population that created the nation and civilization' through increased non-white immigration."
Francis clearly was in-tune with Lind (or vice versa) in terms of Fourth Generation Warfare. Zeskind (page 327) quoted from a Francis essay that had appeared earlier in Chronicles but was published in 1997 in Francis's book Revolution From the Middle. In his essay, "Culture and Power," Francis wrote: "'When I call for the overthrow of the dominant authorities that threaten our culture...it involves the almost total redistribution of power in American society--the displacement of the incumbent governing and cultural elites, the dismantlement of their apparatus of domination, the delegitimization of their political formulas and ideologies...'" [emphasis added].
In May 1991, Francis published a seminal essay, "Beautiful Losers: The Failure of American Conservatism," in the Rockford Institute's Chronicles. The essay highlighted Francis's deep dissatisfaction with the conservative movement, including Weyrich's "cultural conservatism" that he saw as neo-conservatism supporting the existing "regime." Francis argued that "political action in a cultural power vacuum will be largely futile." Francis called for "the reclamation of cultural power, the patient elaboration of an alternative culture within but against the regime--within the belly of the beast but indigestible by it."
In his "Beautiful Losers" essay Francis recommended a new strategy for the Right, one that challenged the "regime," which included both conservatives and liberals. Francis recommended that "a new American right must recognize that its values and goals lie outside and against the establishment and that its natural allies are not in Manhattan, New Haven, and Washington but in the increasingly alienated and threatened strata of Middle America. The strategy of the right should be to enhance the polarization of Middle Americans from the incumbent regime..."
Operationally, Francis recommended organizing the grassroots in order to raise their consciousness about their exploitation by the elites and provide them a way to resist. Accordingly, "a Middle American Right should begin working in and with schools, churches, clubs, women's groups, youth organizations, civic and professional associations, the military and police forces, and even in the much dreaded labor unions to create a radicalized Middle American consciousness that can perceive the ways in which exploitation of the middle classes is institutionalized and understand how it can be resisted."
Zeskind pointed out Francis's heavy reliance upon the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and commented (page 328) that "Francis believed that the dispossession of the white majority was legitimized by the widespread acceptance of concepts such as egalitarianism. This was the meaning of ideological hegemony in this context. As a result, a war of ideas had to be fought and the notion of egalitarianism itself had to be attacked."
The criticism of Weyrich's cultural conservatism and the need for political and cultural assaults on the ruling elites may have encouraged or influenced Weyrich and Lind to develop their theory of "Political Correctness" or "cultural Marxism" which identified German Jewish Marxists leading an all-out ideological assault on our "traditional Judeo-Christian culture." As Paul Weyrich plainly put it in his February 1999 letter published in Christianity Today: "But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the United States is becoming an ideological state. The ideology of Political Correctness, which openly calls for the destruction of our traditional culture.... Those who came up with Political Correctness, which we more accurately call “Cultural Marxism,” did so in a deliberate fashion.... Suffice it to say that the United States is very close to becoming a state totally dominated by an alien ideology, an ideology bitterly hostile to Western culture."
The Weyrich-Lind "Political Correctness" propaganda campaign must have been exactly what Samuel Francis wanted. In the 2000 or 2001 time frame, when Francis was the editor of the Council of Conservative Citizen's Informer newsletter, the CCC took the Free Congress Foundation's videotape, Political Correctness: The Dirty Little Secret, and with minor editing re-issued it as Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School Story. The CCC videotape migrated to the League of the South, American Free Press, Americans for Immigration Control, and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture--all key information nodes for the right-wing. Moreover, in Patrick Buchanan's 2002 book, Death of the West, which Samuel Francis edited, William S. Lind was credited as an important influence and Buchanan included a chapter, "The Frankfurt School Comes to America."
By 2000, Francis pronounced that paleoconservatives were a full fledged Fourth Generation Warfare insurgency in America.
In his essay, "Beyond Conservatism: The Resistance Takes Shape," Francis declared that "paleos increasingly reject the legitimacy of the current system of rule in the United States, increasingly perceive the falseness of its claims to be a representative political order, and increasingly anatomize and unmask its political and cultural pretensions—the "two-party system" (which is really one part}'), the "free-enterprise" economy (which is really a highly regulated and oligopolistic economy fused with the bureaucratic state), the "open society)" (which is open to no one but its own defenders and apologists), the "Judeo-Christian tradition" (which is neither Judaic nor Christian), "tolerance" and "diversity" (which are in fact merely licenses for the demonization and even the physical brutalization of white. Christian, heterosexual males and their traditional institutions and values), "global democracy" (which slaughters en masse or starves to death entire civilian populations that have never even thought about harming the United States or its citizens), and a dozen other impious frauds built into the regime and its public formulas" [emphasis added].
MIDDLE AMERICAN RADICALS AND 4GW
University of Michigan sociologist Donald Warren first identified Middle American Radicals (MARs) in his 1976 book The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. Middle American Radicals had no specific "objective" location in the social structure. Income, education, and occupation--normal indicators of socio-economic status or class-level--did not distinguish Middle American Radicals from others sharing those status indicators. However, at least 80% of MARs had a high school diploma or less and 40% were skilled or semi-skilled workers (pages 27-8)--two categories of workers who would eventually be devastated by deindustrialization and the demise of private sector trade unions.
In Warren's 1972 survey (page 26), 17% of the MARs were between 21 and 29 years of age, while 22% were between 30 and 39 years of age. In 2016, these two age cohorts would be between 65 and 73 years of age and 74 and 83 years of age, respectively. According to Demos policy analyst Sean McElwee, the January 2016 American National Election Study indicated that "23 percent of Trump's supporters were older than 70," 66% of Trump's supporters "had not completed a 2 or 4 year degree," and 14% had not completed high school. The 2016 data suggest that one segment of Trump's early foundational base was drawn from those MARs identified in 1976, especially since support for Trump increased as levels of racial animus and racial resentment increased.
MARs were neither Left nor Right. Warren pointed out (page 1) that MARs favor "keeping many social reforms...such as medicare, aid to education and social security." MARs were also significantly more likely than other whites to support the federal government guaranteeing everyone a job (68%), interfering in the economy if it works (62%), providing federal aid to local schools (59%), and price controls (55%).
Decades later, Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson reported in their 2012 book, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, that about half of Tea Party supporters relied upon Social Security and Medicare and more than 60% thought those programs were beneficial. Skocpol and Williamson also found, based on their field surveys, that "Tea Party people know that Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' programs are government-managed, expensive, and funded with taxes. It is just that they distinguish these programs, which they feel recipients have 'earned,' from other social benefits, which they feel unnecessarily run up expenses, or might run up public costs in the future--placing a burden on hardworking taxpayers to make payments to freeloaders who have not earned public support" (page 60). As we shall see below, this Tea Party viewpoint is entirely consistent with the viewpoint of Middle American Radicals discovered 40 years ago.
Middle American Radicals were identified through a unique ideology in which their local neighborhoods were viewed as under threat from elites working with non-whites to redress the past wrongs of racism. Opposition to school busing was the most visible manifestation, as was resistance to Black middle class families trying to move into their white neighborhoods.
Middle American Radicals were also significantly more dissatisfied than four other white social groups in the study. They were more alienated from the national government, welfare agencies, corporations, local government, and local schools (page 69). Warren's analysis indicated their top three complaints about these institutions were that they did not "follow clear-cut policies," did not "treat people with respect," and did not "pay attention to what people like me want" (page 76). It was not their size or complexity, but how they dealt with Middle American Radicals that alienated them. And, 59% of MARs believed "my views don't get fair treatment on television" (page 80).
Their "distinctive alienation" was in the idea that the "'rich give in to the demands of the poor, and the middle income people have to pay the bill'" (page 21). Sixty percent of MARs thought that statement was "very true" and an additional 30% thought it was true. The other four social groups in the study were at least 40 percentage lower in support.
Warren explained (page 3), "The MAR consistently sees an unholy alliance growing between the liberal and minority establishment at his expense.... The burden falls on his shoulders to carry out the 'social experiment' rather than on the affluent suburbanite or on the welfare poor. The Middle American Radical sees the government--local to national--allied simultaneously with minority and idealistic doctrines against his own interests and social survival."
Race was at the center of this Middle American Radical worldview. Nearly 80% of MARs believed that "too many people think society owes them a living" and 53% of MARs believed that whites had "no responsibility" to "make up for wrongs done to Blacks in the past" (pages 50-1). MARs were also more likely to believe that race and law and order were the most important problems facing the country (pages 52-3). And, 65% of MARs believed that urban riots were caused by "agitators" compared to 44% of Low Income and Average Middle whites (page 232).
MARs were also more likely to support direct action to address a social wrong, as long as the group undertaking the action were not Black. For example, 41% of MARs would support taxpayers shutting down a legislative session over taxes; 27% would support workers blocking entrance to a plant; 19% would support a group of women picketing a magazine to stop publication; but only 9% would support Blacks setting up a picket line to block entrance to a plant to protest discrimination (page 105).
What also made MARs unique is that they had a consciousness of white racial and ethnic identity. When asked which type of group they felt a "special closeness," 68% of MARs answered "race"--significantly higher than the other four groups in the study (page 97). When asked how they identified themselves in terms of a group, MARs were much more likely to identify as a racial or ethnic group (48%), a similar proportion to Blacks (50%) and Chicanos (59%) (page 100). Only 35% of other white respondents identified as a racial or ethnic group. Warren suggested the "emphasis which MARs place on ethnic and racial ties...is to view it as yet another new group consciousness."
In February 1996, Francis published in Chronicles a detailed exposition of how Patrick Buchanan's political campaign with its clear break with Republican "free-market and free trade" policies and support for culture war issues "places him firmly on the side of Middle Americans more clearly than any other political figure in the country today." Buchanan opposed NAFTA, GATT, and the World Trade Organization, as well as the bailout of Mexico. Francis explained that the "Ruling Class" was driven by its economic interests to support globalization--"the managed destruction of the nation, its sovereignty, its culture, and its people."
Conservatives, who supported globalization had basically transformed themselves into the Left. More importantly, it was the anti-statist ideology of the conservatives and libertarians that directly threatened the well-being of Middle Americans. Francis explained that the post-WW II middle class was essentially an affluent proletariat dependent upon government programs: "Middle Americans, emerging from the ruins of the old independent middle and working classes, found conservative, libertarian, and pro-business Republican ideology and rhetoric irrelevant, distasteful, and even threatening to their own socioeconomic interests. The post-World War II middle class was in reality an affluent proletariat, economically dependent on the federal government through labor codes, housing loans, educational programs, defense contracts, and health and unemployment benefits. All variations of conservative doctrine rejected these as illegitimate extensions of the state and boasted of plans to abolish most of them..."
On the other hand, the Left lost Middle Americans due to their "social and cultural radicalism."
Buchanan, thus, addressed the needs of Middle Americans directly. He rejected the free-market and free-trade ideology of the dominant conservatives and appealed to Middle Americans on the basis that they alone represented the "both the economic core of the nation through their labor and productive skills as well as the culturally defining core that sustains the identity of the nation itself." Buchanan rejected cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Leonard Zeskind in 1996 noted that Samuel Francis's analysis was ahead of its time. Zeskind observed, "Sam Francis, on the other hand, turned everybody’s attention to the danger a step or two up. Political, economic and cultural elites were 'actively anti-American,' he said. Corporate CEOs were driving wages down to the level of Third World countries and 'doing everything they can to actually abolish the culture and civilization and the very population that created the nation and civilization' through increased non-white immigration."
In the same article Zeskind opined, "Francis’ analysis of U.S. racial nationalism replaces Marx’ internationalist proletariat with a nationalist white middle class as the agency of change. His friend Pat Buchanan would lead a revolutionary transitional government. An unknown Lenin is presumably still waiting in the wings" [emphasis added].
Interestingly, the Rockford Institute's website where Samuel Francis's 1996 article is available is adorned with a picture of Patrick Buchanan and a picture of Donald Trump.
TRUMP'S APPEAL TO MIDDLE AMERICAN RADICALS
In his acceptance speech, Trump hammered the Democrats and the elites on their trade policies and its effects on incomes:
- "Nearly 4-in-10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58 percent of African-American youth are now not employed. Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago. Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely. Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000."
- "The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponent, is that our plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect—the respect that we deserve."
- "That is because these interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit. Believe me, it's for their benefit. Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does."
- "She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. That is why Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change. Never, ever! My message is that things have to change – and they have to change right now. Every day I wake up determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been ignored, neglected and abandoned."
- "I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country. And they are forgotten, but they're not going to be forgotten long. People who work hard but no longer have a voice."
- "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders – he never had a chance. But his supporters will join our movement, because we will fix his biggest single issue: trade deals that strip our country of our jobs and strip us of our wealth as a country. Millions of Democrats will join our movement, because we are going to fix the system so it works justly for each and every American."
- "My plan is the exact opposite of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of Hillary Clinton. Americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration. Communities want relief. Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan will overwhelm your schools and hospitals, further reduce your jobs and wages, and make it harder for recent immigrants to escape the tremendous cycle of poverty that they're going through right now and make it almost impossible to join the middle class."
- "I have a different vision for our workers. It begins with a new, fair trade policy that protects our jobs and stands up to countries that cheat of which there are many."
- "I have made billions of dollars in business making deals – now I’m going to make our country rich again. Using the richest people in the world, which our country has, I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements. America has lost nearly-one third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997, following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton."
- "Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country -- or, frankly, any other country. Never again. I am going to bring our jobs back to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Michigan and all of America – and I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences. Not going to happen anymore."
- "My opponent, on the other hand, has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying our middle class. She supported NAFTA, and she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization – another one of her husband’s colossal mistakes and disasters. She supported the job- killing trade deal with South Korea. She has supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments and it's not going to happen."
- "I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence. I will never, ever sign bad trade deals. America fist, again! America first!"
- "Our horrible trade agreements with China and many others, will be totally renegotiated. That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America – and we’ll walk away if we don’t get that kind of a deal."
CONCLUSION
Fourth Generation Warfare can be an idea-based or religion-based non-state actor who contests the legitimacy of a central state. The central objective is to create conditions that stress individuals and groups to the point that they withdraw their support from the government. The basic function of the state is to provide protection to citizens, both from external threat and internal threats such as crime or rebellion.
The right-wing, as personified by William S. Lind, John Tanton, and Samuel Francis, representing three different segments of the right-wing--Christian Right, anti-immigrant, and white nationalist--have jointly collaborated organizationally, strategically, and operationally in conducting Fourth Generation Warfare.
One key aspect of this 4GW assault has been to characterize large-scale immigration as a mode of war and existential cultural and physical threats to traditional Americans and their "traditional culture." Lind and Francis have argued that political and economic elites have encouraged mass immigration because they are traitors. To defend America and its "traditional Judeo-Christian culture" they have sought to portray America's elites as having imposed a "foreign ideology" of "Political Correctness" that threatens the primacy of white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual males. Lind and Francis have both used the framework of Middle American Radicals--that liberal elites conspire with non-whites to the detriment of whites. Buchanan and Trump use this framework to appeal to white voters.
Patrick Buchanan was arguably the first presidential candidate to knowingly and wittingly carry Fourth Generation Warfare ideas into the political arena. It appears Donald Trump is the second such candidate to carry Fourth Generation Warfare ideas into the political arena.
Eleanor Clift, who debated Buchanan for a decade, wrote an article in January 2016 titled, "Patrick Buchanan: Donald Trump Stole My Playbook." According to Clift, "For good or for ill, Trump has mainstreamed and normalized what shocked the political class a quarter century ago, taking Buchanan’s ideas and transforming them into a potentially winning hand in November.... He credits Trump with coming to the same understanding he did to abandon the free trade, pro-immigration policies of the party elites.... The undercurrent of racist appeals that Buchanan attributes to 'ethno-nationalism' is out in the open with Trump, who flaunts his disdain for political correctness as a pillar of his campaign. The demographic change that Buchanan warned about has come to fruition in the age of Obama, adding urgency to Trump’s appeal to working class white America."
Let us hope that Trump does not win, and, if he does, that he is not the Lenin Leonard Zeskind thought might be coming.
