THE WEAPONIZATION OF LIND'S FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE

I published a draft Chapter 10, "The Weaponization of Lind's Fourth Generation Warfare," on academia.edu.  The draft chapter can be found at:  https://www.academia.edu/27275737/PART_2_CHAPTER_10_WEAPONIZATION_OF_BOYD_MORAL_CONFLICT.pdf

Below are the Introduction and the Conclusion of the 111-page chapter.  Footnotes are in published paper.

UPDATE:  On page 10, it was the 1989 article, not the 1994 article, that laid out the basic principles for the Patriot militia that is discussed more fully in Chapter 17.

Introduction

Political stability depends upon two inter-dependent variables—legitimacy and effectiveness.  Legitimacy is an evaluative variable, while effectiveness is generally instrumental, though it too has an evaluative component.  Marty Lipset wrote that effectiveness meant “actual performance, the extent to which the system satisfies the basic functions of government as most of the population and such powerful groups within it as big business or the armed forces see them.”  On the other hand, legitimacy “involves the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.”  Groups “regard a political system as legitimate or illegitimate according to the way in which its values fit with theirs.”  Lipset also indicated that crises of legitimacy could have two causes: “the status of major conservative institutions is threatened during the period of structural change” or “all the major groups in the society do not have access to the political system in the transitional period, or at least as soon as they develop political demands.”  Major conservative groups included the military, churches, the civil service, the monarchy, and the aristocratic class.  Lipset noted that the place of churches in the United States was a settled matter: “In some, the United States, for example, the church was disestablished and accepted the fact.”

But, as demonstrated in Book I and throughout Book II, the broad Christian Right—Christian Reconstructionist, and biblically inerrant, pre-suppositionalist and dominionist types of fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, conservative Catholic and conservative Jewish religious segments, and the non-denominational New Apostolic Reformation—do not accept their status within their larger polity and do not believe that their conservative religious values, which they contend are “traditional Judeo-Christian values” that have existed for centuries preceding the actual constitutional founding of the present political system, and the values of what Lipset considered essential for political stability, the development of a “common ‘secular political culture’” are congruent with theirs or morally acceptable.  Intellectually, this current contemporary crisis of legitimacy rests upon two fundamental beliefs of the broad Christian Right: society must follow the laws of God as revealed in the Old Testament or face God’s wrath; and, Christians of a certain religious persuasion have a biblical duty to take dominion of all the major institutions of society and cultural niches and reconstruct them into conformity with God’s law.

As Frederick Clarkson so aptly summarized, the broad Christian Right’s attack is “rooted in struggles between advocates of democratic values and the established theocracies of 17th and 18th century colonial America.  Much of the contemporary Christian Right is looking back to what their religious and political ancestors lost when the Constitution was ratified—now they seek a different outcome…. For 350 years, the struggle has been about power, about beliefs, about the definition of what it is to be human.  It is about the definition of democracy and religious freedom, and how to avoid religious warfare.  These issues…are at the center of the country’s identity.”

In short, the Christian Right is attempting to provoke a severe crisis of legitimacy.  And, one of the major weapons of the Christian Right, following its own strategic doctrine of Fourth Generation Warfare, is Fox News, conservative talk radio, Christian broadcasting, and the conservative blogosphere.

....

Conclusion

The rhetoric of Fox News hosts and contributors and the rhetoric of conservative radio talk show hosts are in line with what one would expect to find with stage three of impositional fundamentalism, stage three of a crisis of legitimacy, or a cosmic war which has reached the stage of satanizing the enemy and positing the enemy as an existential threat.  In short, the rhetoric of the broad Christian Right and the rhetoric of the conservative media establishment or echo chamber are remarkably and dangerously similar.

Thus, not only should conservative talk radio be added, but as demonstrated throughout Book I, the broad Christian Right has been endeavoring to divide Americans along a false divide: conservative dominionist Christians (both in the religious and political senses) versus the ungodly, the demonic, and/or the satanic—meaning “liberal” Christians, non-dominionist conservative Christians who do not agree with them, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, other believers and spiritualists, and free thinkers, plus the scientifically literate, non-whites, those who advocate for reproductive rights and equal rights for women, those who advocate for civil rights and voting rights, and those who advocate civil rights for the LGBT communities.

Frederick Clarkson in his seminal 1997 book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy examined the rhetoric of Christian Reconstructionist strategists and theologians, Christian Right leaders, pastors linked to the Patriot militia, and various “stealth,” “infiltration,” and “deception” tactics and concluded that there is indeed a “war of aggression by the Christian Right against beliefs of which they do not approve and against the expression of those beliefs.”  Because much of this war is couched in religious language there is a tendency for progressive and Democratic analysts to not know how to respond without appearing vulnerable to charge, however spurious, of “‘religious bigotry.’”  Nevertheless, Clarkson observed that the Christian Right was “a political movement that sees demons where others sees citizens—a movement that characterizes religious, political and sexual diversity as demonic activity…If opponents are demons, then shooting people working in abortion clinics—or gays and lesbians—is not a matter of killing people, but ridding the world of evil.  Moreover, it is likely that the trend towards seeing people as demons, not just different, fosters the growing view among the Christian Right that religious warfare is on the horizon, if not already underway.”

Jean Hardisty, the executive director of Political Research Associates, wrote in the preface to Chip Berlet’s 1995 book Eyes Right! that “the right’s agenda—[is] the complete defeat of liberalism and the left, the silencing of progressive opinions, the restoration of Christian hegemony, and the re-marginalization of all cultures other than that of European Americans.”   And, in Hardisty’s own 1999 book Mobilizing Resentment she attributed the success of the Christian Right to a “well-funded and well-organized network of right-wing organizations working in collaboration; a conservative religious revitalization;…the strategic funding of individuals and institutions…[and] the careful planning for the long term” as among the factors to be taken into account.

Frank Cocozzelli at the start of his exhaustive series of reports at the Talk to Action website on the Opus Dei-linked “Catholic Right” concluded that “If the traditionalists’ logic were to become the basis of governance in our society, let alone that of the Catholic Church, both free thought and the common good would be marginalized…The obvious conclusion is that their narrow definition of proper religious behavior is a more useful tool to further create an American society free of thoughtful dissent than a path to a more virtuous life.  Unadulterated obedience appears to be the common themes in both the religious and secular spheres of radical movement conservatism.  And a citizenry that more easily submits to religious authority will be less likely to question governmental authority.”

The evolution of the Republican Party into an anti-system party is supported by scholars from different political persuasions, almost noting the influence of the Christian Right on the party.
John Dean, the former White House counsel for President Nixon and a self-described “Goldwater conservative,” noted that the Republican Party had “incorporated…an undemocratic mentality into its governing philosophy” and that conservatives ruled “callously and ruthlessly.”  Dean’s 2007 book Broken Government detailed how “the conservative-based Republican Party in fact excels at everything in modern politics except governing the nation” and had “simply dismantled or ignored countless well-established processes found in the rules, customs, norms, traditions, laws, and constitutional mandates” in order to “destroy [the federal government] branch by branch.”   In his other 2007 book that was to have been co-authored with former Senator Barry Goldwater, Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean wrote that under the strong influence of “conservative authoritarianism” which dominates both the conservative movement and the Republican Party, that conservatism as a philosophy had “regressed to its earliest authoritarian roots” and was best described as “moralistic, negative, arrogant, condescending, self-righteous…[and] authoritarian.”

Kevin Phillips, a former leading political strategist for the Republican Party, observed in his 2006 book, American Theocracy, that the Republican Party’s coalition consisted of the oil, natural gas, and coal industries; the financial-industry complex that achieves wealth through the socialization of risk backed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System; the Christian Right which is driven by the dominionist Christian Reconstructionists; and, a neo-Confederate movement driven by the collaboration of pro-Confederacy southern heritage groups and the Christian Reconstructionists, as well as the domination of the region by the fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention which reinforces the cultural and political dimensions of the neo-Confederate movement.  As Phillips put it, the elections of 2000 and 2004 “mark the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in U.S. history.”  Phillips noted that state-level Republican parties “most conspicuously in the South and Southwest, endorsed so-called Christian-nation party platforms.  These unusual platforms, as yet nationally uncataloged, set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, the tenets of which range from using the Bible as a basis for domestic law to emphasizing religious schools and women’s subordination to men…. By 2001 theology…began to displace logic and realpolitik in official Washington, especially within the Republican Party.”  Theological positions determined social policy related to “birth, life, death, sex, health, medicine, marriage, and the role of the family,” as well as policy efforts by both the “Bush White House and the religious right to reduce the current separation between church and state.”

Thomas Frank’s 2008 book The Wrecking Crew detailed how the conservative Republican Party in Washington, D.C. enthralled with the free market has a guiding philosophy that views the “liberal state as a perversion.”  In power, the Republicans oppose the very idea of a “public interest,” declared “war on public workers,” “made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they wrecked established federal operations because they disagreed with them, and they deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis.  The ruination they wrought was thorough; it was a professional job.”


Sam Tanenhaus, a Burkean conservative, observed that the dominant strand of modern conservatism was Jacobin in that movement conservatives “routinely demonize government institutions” and are “revanchists committed to a counter-revolution.”  He complained that movement conservatism was based on orthodoxy which vigorously opposes compromise, whereas the Democratic Party’s governing principle is consensus which “implies compromise.”  According to Tanenhaus, conservatives “subordinate governance to politics and ideological certitude….Practically, this vision of orthodoxy amounts to war fought by other means.” He lamented that conservative “intellectuals and political leaders mounted a crusade against civil society—its traditions, its mores, its mutual obligations” while pursuing a “relentless drive for ideological purity.”

Mike Lofgren, a former Republican staffer in the U.S. Senate for twenty-eight years, complained that the Republican Party had been “increasingly under the influence of theocratic fundamentalists” and had become a “radical right-wing party” and an “oligarchy with a well-developed public relations strategy designed to soothe and anesthetize its followers with appeals to tradition, security, and family…”  Lofgren also echoed Dean when he wrote that the loss of American confidence in Congress is “the result of deliberate political engineering to make Americans lose faith in their government.”

Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice observed that conservatives were able to drive moderate Republicans out of the party, in part, due to their “funds beyond the wildest dreams of moderates” that created an “infrastructure of think tanks, publishing houses, media outlets, PACs, and pressure groups.”  Within the party, especially during Bush II’s presidency, the definition of an acceptable Republican narrowed considerably to the point where Goldwater “was accused of being a RINO” (Republican In Name Only).  Kabaservice noted that conservatives dominate the Republican Party and its infrastructure and are increasingly intolerant of ideological diversity.  He feared that if only the Democratic Party is orientated towards moderation, then “the consequences are likely to be dire [and] may prove toxic to government effectiveness and perhaps even to America’s social stability.”  Kabaservice concluded his study by noting that “[o]ne of the likeliest ways America might be destroyed would be if one of its two major parties were rendered dysfunctional, and yet this seemed to be the direction in which the GOP was heading…. Its leaders showed little interest in appealing to moderates, repudiating extremism, reaching out to new constituencies, or upholding the party’s legacy of civil rights and civil liberties.”   In other words, the Republican Party jeopardizes both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the federal government. 

And the bipartisan scholars, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, came to the very unwelcome but similar conclusion in their 2012 book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks that the “Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; un-persuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government.”  Mann and Ornstein suggested that in order to begin making the American political system functional, it was a necessary but not a sufficient condition to bring “the Republican Party back into the mainstream of American politics.”

Taken cumulatively, all of these ideas could be fit under Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab’s definition of extremism, which they also called monism: “Extremism is… monism.  And the operational heart of extremism is the repression of difference and dissent, the closing down of the market place of ideas.  More precisely, the operational essence of extremism, of monism, is the tendency to treat cleavage and ambivalence as illegitimate” [emphasis in original].  In discussing the moralism of the right-wing in 1970, Lipset and Raab noted that this moralism is “absolutistic by nature” and this “moralistic note is regularly associated with Christianity…. The use of Christianity to validate the moralism also provides an apocalyptic framework within which the absolutism itself is validated.”  Lipset and Raab also observed that “political moralism” not only recasts public policy issues as a “doctrinal struggle between good and evil,” but “historical moralism” is the “tendency to believe that human events are totally shaped by the supremacy of good intentions over bad at any given moment, or vice versa.”  In their analysis, the “conspiracy theory is an extension of historical moralism, peculiarly designed to legitimate the closing down of the ideational market place…. The conspiracy theory caps the model of monism and legitimates the forceful suppression of pluralism and pluralistic processes.”   Two crucial elements missing from their formulation is that the Christian Right increasingly believes that God accounts for everything good and bad that happens in the world, and, human history is actually a war between the forces of God and the forces of the Devil.

Consistent with Lipset and Raab’s observation that extremism was an effort towards monism—the reduction of the intellectual space to one theology/ideology, the political space to one party, and the social space to one dominant racial group—John George and Laird Wilcox in their review of the literature on extremism reported 22 “traits or behaviors” that made up an extremist “style” which was completely independent of the content of their views and location on the ideological spectrum including: character assassination; inadequate proof of assertions; viewing opponents as essentially evil; having a Manichean worldview of a contest between absolute good and evil; advocating censorship or repression of opponents; using argument by intimidation; assuming a moral superiority over opponents; doomsday thinking; emphasizing emotions rather than reason and logical analysis; the use of supernatural rationales for beliefs and actions; and, a belief in far-reaching conspiracy theories.”   This extremist style is readily apparent and more prevalent throughout the broad right-wing, including some in the Republican Party, than on the left-wing in American politics.

Now, my conclusion on the prevalence of the “extremist style” could be biased and wrong.  But, the political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler have shown that authoritarianism—the very psychological concept that John Dean attributed to the current incarnation of conservatism—is prevalent in the Republican Party and correlated with conservative Christianity.  And, the “extremist style” is consistent with authoritarianism.  Their measure of authoritarianism has no ideological content to contaminate it.  Rather, it is based upon values that parents prefer in child rearing: “independence versus respect for elders, obedience versus self-reliance, curiosity versus good manners, and being considerate versus being well behaved.”  They found that authoritarianism is correlated quite strongly with a low need for cognition, low factual political knowledge, the high need for order and an aversion to ambiguity, a low degree of political tolerance for out-groups, and, racial resentment of African Americans.  They found that evangelical Protestants were more likely to be authoritarians, as were those who attended church weekly or more, from the South, from rural areas or small towns, and those with a high school degree or less.  They also found that Republican Party elites adopted public policy issues related to race, law and order, feminism and family structure, and American militarism that enabled the two political parties to sort out their members according to authoritarianism.  This did not mean that all Republicans were authoritarians or that all Democrats were non-authoritarians.  Authoritarianism is not a fringe phenomenon.  Authoritarianism had large independent effects in predicting opposition to gay rights, civil liberties related to the war on terrorism, and, the use of military force in foreign relations.

Jonathan Weiler has written that the Republican Party suffers from two major defects: its base and its public policies appeal to authoritarianism, and the base and the Party suffer from an epistemological break with reality.

On authoritarianism as the core of the base of the Republican Party Weiler wrote: “One party, the GOP, has attracted, at its base, a large subset of individuals with a greater tendency to see the world in black and white terms, rather than in shades of gray, colored by greater suspicion of people who look and sound different and grounded in the conviction that hand-wringing and hesitating in the face of clear, categorical threats to well-being is a recipe for disaster.”   And, Republican Party elites structure public policy preferences to appeal to these authoritarians: “Specifically, the Republican Party base has come to be dominated by authoritarian core whose worldview is deeply informed by emotional antipathy both to out-groups and, perhaps more fundamentally, to uncertainty and complexity…. But perhaps more than ever before, Republican policy proposals are now almost entirely reducible to these same interconnected antipathies.”

And, the Republican Party’s authoritarian elites and base are engaged in a war against reality.  As Weiler put it, “The American right, increasingly dominated by an authoritarian worldview that is highly averse to diversity, difference and complexity has created a self-contained information environment to nurture and buttress that worldview.  And its favored public figures are, in response, gravitating toward increasingly wacky and extreme ideas about how the challenges we face and what should be done about them.  It’s made for great ratings for FOX and extravagant riches for Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and the like.  But it's a dead end for thinking seriously and cogently about reality.”

And, echoing other political scientists who have reported how the extremism of the Republican Party threatens the stability of the political system, Weiler wrote: “The growing contempt of large swaths of the American right for science, facts, probability theory—for the most basic understandings of truth as it’s been established across the enlightenment era makes the possibility of finding any common ground for solving problems in the real world a near-impossibility.”

America’s political, economic and social systems today are under assault from within by a Republican Party beholden to and enthralled by a conservative Christian movement linked to armed paramilitary groups holding correlated theological and ideological beliefs that are authoritarian.  By almost any definition, the broad right-wing is extremist in the sense that it is opposed to any sort of compromise and believes that differing political and economic ideas and organizations are illegitimate, if not evil, and that the vast majority of Americans are evil and unwanted.

Almost all of this was foreseen in a prescient book, Holy Terror, written in 1982 by two experts on communications, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, who examined hundreds of tapes, transcripts, books, tracts, notes, letters and press clippings in their investigation of the “unprecedented” “mental and emotional manipulation” of a “new and potentially destructive pattern of communication.”  Written before the explosion of conservative talk radio and Fox News and the Internet—which broadcast messages consistent with the Christian Right messages—and the even greater growth and penetration of conservative think tanks which also support Christian Right messages, Conway and Siegelman wrote in Holy Terror: “In our view, the assault on secular society by the fundamentalist right constitutes such a threat [the seizure of power]…. The fundamentalist right model may be the most comprehensive of all, comprising classic elements of total propaganda: a mammoth mass-communications network, a tightly coordinated political machine, a fiercely independent education system—all predicated for the first time, on the deep structure of religion and suffused to grassroots levels through a coalescence of separatist churches, Bible studies, para-church and missionary organizations.  Its expressed objectives…to Christianize the nation, to fill all government positions with ‘Bible-believing’ Christians, to gain ascendancy over the national media, to have fundamentalist beliefs taught as science in public schools, to dictate the meaning of life, and, ultimately, to convert every person on earth.”

Anticipating the findings of Lakoff, Mooney and others, and the practitioners Weyrich, Gingrich and others, they wrote: “In their attacks on homosexuals, feminists, Communists, liberals and members of minority religions…[the] fundamentalist right leaders fuel hatred and prejudice.  In their use of symbols and code words such as ‘pro-life,’ ‘conservative’ and ‘secular humanism,’ in their adoption of fetus emblems and attempts to usurp the banner of the American flag, they play on intense and automatic emotional responses.”

And, their 1982 book captured in essence what the Christian Right would call their dominionist Seven Mountains campaign and Joel’s Army, and be expressed most clearly in the Coalition on Revival’s outline of a strategy for conquest and dominion (see Chapter 11): “And in their myth of the all-powerful Super-Christian, they ordain the ‘saved’ fundamentalist as a being beyond sin, possessing eternal life, inerrant truth, magically at one with the indwelling supernatural Jesus—and now singularly qualified to hold office.”  They noted that this Super-Christian “may be the most potent mythical image of modern time…. It appeals, not only to the ancient religious images that continue to hold sway over most Americans, but to modern themes of morality and patriotism, to the urge to surrender in the face of overwhelming change and complexity, and to untapped spiritual and psychic potentials many Americans are reaching to explore.”

Colonel Doner who helped mid-wife the Coalition on Revival and shape the Christian Right’s strategy later claimed in his 2012 book, Christian Jihad: “Christian conservatives, long the dominant wing of the Republican Party, are increasingly falling under the spell of theocratic utopianism with its goal of establishing ‘God’s law’ as the law of the land…. Some even call it a second civil war…. [for] Control of our culture…. Culture is nothing less that defining our national identity—our values and purpose as a people.”

As this chapter has documented, the strategies of the Free Congress Foundation—Fourth Generation Warfare and the New Traditionalist Movement—have openly declared the contestation of the morality and legitimacy of the current secular political order with the sole objective being the destruction of the present secular political order.  Fox News, with its roots in the Coors-Weyrich Television News Inc. (TVN), and conservative talk radio represent the weaponization of Fourth Generation Warfare.  Lind was correct when he told a U.S. Marine Corps and Department of Defense audience in 1994: “The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil.”  We have now seen the real body count and the real effects.

Footnotes in published article.

FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE AT THE RNC

This is the comment I posted at Chauncey DeVega's Indomitable website as an observation on his article, "Summoning Lucifer and God at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland."

Begin Comment:

I would not say this is the end of the Republican Party, per se. Adele Stan has a great article in The American Prospect on the conservative old guard--Schlafly and Viguerie--supporting Trump because they view him as the imperfect wrecking ball who can complete their life's work--to drive the Establishment out of the GOP and make it into a right-wing populist party.

We witnessed tonight Trump humiliating Cruz inside the GOP convention on prime time. Trump delegitimized Cruz's brand of theocracy and trickle down economics with his own muscular policies. Evangelicals are flocking to Trump because he is a strong man, an authoritarian father figure (Lakoff), and rich (prosperity gospel personified).

Trump has captured the nativist movement and made anti-immigration the centerpiece of his campaign.  Indeed, he is actually waging a Fourth Generation Warfare campaign and using its associated political platform, according to Bruce Wilson. Sheriff David Clarke's prime time speech was a wet sloppy kiss to the Patriot militia and Richard Mack's CSPOA. White nationalists are wetting their pants and getting thrills up their legs by Trump promoting a white racial identity or consciousness. Clarke and Guiliani have delegitimized Black Lives Matter and turned them into a domestic terrorist group. Even our own Florida AG has advocated putting Hillary Clinton in prison, a theme first pushed by the delegates and ramped up by Chris Christie.

In sum, we are witnessing Fourth Generation Warfare, the central aim is to undermine the legitimacy of your enemy. Hillary Clinton is not only "crooked," she is a traitor. By extension, Obama is a traitor and all Democrats are traitors.

Black Lives Matter are domestic terrorists. By extension, Black folks who voice their anger and take to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights are terrorists. Logically, since speech is now terrorism, Blacks folks are neither afforded nor entitled to any self-protection. If you cannot use words in self-defense, then what can you use? I would humbly submit that young readers consult Ida B. Wells and familiarize yourselves with the Deacons for Defense and Justice. They are being demonized.

All Muslims are also domestic terrorists. Of course, since many Muslims are also Black, and one cannot tell a Black Muslim from a Black non-Muslim, then all Blacks are terrorists. They are routinely demonized.

Ditto for Latinos and brown-skinned immigrants. They are all potential "rapists" and "drug mules." By logical extension, when they protest for immigrant rights, they too are domestic terrorists. They are routinely scapegoated and demonized.

VP candidate Pence--but nearly all in the GOP convention--are rabid haters of the LGBTQ. When they protest in furtherance of protecting the LGBTQ from discrimination, they too are domestic terrorists. They are routinely demonized.

There is an importance to demonization that goes beyond dehumanizing. The process of demonization is closely linked by scholarship to delegitimization--political and cultural--and to the idea of cosmic war--the end all battle of good vs evil, but really God vs Satan. Thus, Carson's linking Clinton to Lucifer had a special import for conservative evangelical Christians.

And, I will add one further happy thought. The process of scapegoating, demonizing, delegitimizing, and evoking a cosmic war are all preludes to genocide or ethnic cleansing. Since 2005, the right-wing has been peddling what I call "soft" and "hard" genocide into the mainstream. "Soft" genocide is now fully inside the GOP.

In Kill the Messenger: The Media's Role in the Fate of the World, Maria Armoudian, explained that the propaganda campaign in Germany succeeded due to four factors: "dire social and economic conditions...a simple but corrosive web of misinformation, emotional appeals, and a pervasive and authoritarian message and ideology" (page 57).

Armoudian also explained what she called the "genocidal frame" which consists of "static, dehumanizing, or evil depictions; blame for serious sociopolitical problems; a 'grand' cause that requires the elimination of the 'bad guys;' and a 'kill-or-be-killed' dichotomy." She added, "Under conditions of hardship and with a single, dominant message, the genocidal frame, when widely believed, can convince populations to support or, at least, turn a blind eye to the elimination of 'the others' for the sake of rescuing their 'own' community" (page 279).

As Chauncey wrote, this "stopped being funny months ago."

All the pieces are moving on the chessboard. You can be like the blowhards on MSNBC or the chattering chipmunks on CNN and laugh and gape at the spectacle, or, you can start connecting the dots. As William S. Lind, the originator of Fourth Generation Warfare predicted, the "next real war" has indeed come to American soil and you, dear reader, are the enemy.

The Corporate, ALEC, ALC, Christian Right, and Militia Land Grab—Burns, Oregon in Strategic Perspective

When armed white militiamen seized and occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on January 2^nd the federal government and the American people became ensnared in another armed confrontation that stretches back to Ruby Ridge and Waco.  The right-wing retaliation for those events was the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, including 19 daycare children, injured 650 people, and damaged around 300 buildings.  Since then, the Patriot militia movement has warned the federal government that any more unnecessary loss of life from confrontations like Ruby Ridge and Waco will be met with force.  As one of the Patriot militia’s leading Fourth Generation Warfare practitioners, Mike Vanderboegh, head of the III Percenters, repeatedly states, “‘No More Free Wacos.’”

Given those stakes, it is incumbent to look beyond the immediate issues—did the Hammond family receive fair legal treatment from the federal government and the right to graze cattle on the Wildlife Refuge—and examine the deep strategic background.  While the Bundy insurgents may not articulate that strategic background in a coherent fashion, they are nonetheless participants in this strategic conflict.  Moreover, by not examining the deeper strategic ideas and concepts, the main drivers of this confrontation are obscured and omitted from analysis.

In other words, without a strategic analysis we omit the Republican Party, the Christian Right, the American Lands Exchange Council, the American Lands Council, the State Policy Network, Americans for Prosperity, and myriad oil, gas, coal, diamond, gold, and timber companies and billionaires who have a huge financial stake in seeing that the strategy is successfully carried out.

The first background strategy of the Christian Right and its armed wing, the Patriot militia, is Fourth Generation Warfare.  The central objective of Fourth Generation Warfare—a strategy and type of warfare developed by the Christian Right’s leading political-military theorist, William S. Lind, formerly the director of Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, in two U.S. Marine Corps Gazette articles (1989 and 1994)—is for a non-state actor to contest and undermine the legitimacy of the central government, in this case, the federal government, while also contesting and removing the central state’s monopoly on the use of force through the formation of its militias.

The second background strategy is the transfer of hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands containing hundreds of trillions of dollars of mineral wealth owned by the American people, first to western states who lack the financial and expertise resources to manage these lands, and subsequently to the gas, oil, coal, precious metal mining, and timber companies, and individual billionaires.

The elasticity of the concept of “county supremacy” allows and fosters communications and collaborations between different movement segments.  But, it also means something different.  To the Christian Right and its corporate allies in the American Legislative Exchange Council, “county supremacy” means that county governments can seize federal lands and put them under county regulations, and, that the local county sheriff can interfere with or block federal law enforcement actions within the county outside of federal lands.  It also means, consistent with the Christian Reconstructionist doctrine of the lesser civil magistrate, that these public officials, from the governor to the county sheriff, are responsible for interposing themselves or nullifying federal laws thought to be either ungodly or unconstitutional or a combination of both.

The Christian Reconstructionists, the strategic innovators and drivers of the Christian Right, developed the idea of the county as a fundamental and vital unit of government as early as 1963.  The John Birch Society, in its support of white supremacy in the 1950s and 1960s, advocated supporting the local sheriff in order to oppose what they viewed as the communist-inspired civil rights movement.  Latter Day Saints president Ezra Taft Benson and LDS W. Cleon Skousen author/activist placed heavy emphasis upon the county as a fundamental and critical element of government.  Both were linked to the John Birch Society.  It was the Christian Reconstructionists who in the 1980s developed the idea that “lesser civil magistrates,” that is, public officials from the governor on down had the biblical duty to interpose themselves and lead any resistance against federal tyranny.  In 1990, the Christian Right’s Coalition on Revival through the latter’s National Coordinating Council promulgated the strategic objectives of electing Christians at the county level of government, including sheriff’s offices, and creating alternative Christian courts and militias under the authority of the local sheriff (see also Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility, pages 103 and 148).

If we go back to the antecedents of the Patriot militias in the 1990s, what is most striking, but overlooked by progressive analysts, is that both the Wise Use movement and the County Supremacy movement were created by, promoted by, and influenced by the mainstream of the Republican Party—including leading thinkers of the Reagan administration, the National Rifle Association, the Christian Right, and oil, gas, coal, mining, and timber companies and various trade associations.

David Helvarg’s exhaustive study published by the Sierra Club, The War Against the Greens, documented that the Wise Use movement’s network of power brokers included a bevy of organizations linked to Paul Weyrich—the Free Congress Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council—and the Moon-financed Washington Times which provided extensive propaganda support, the Koch-funded Cato Institute, the Moon-funded Science and Environmental Policy Project, the Koch-funded Federalist Society, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Washington Legal Foundation, and nineteen other “pro-business ‘public interest’ law firms…providing the anti-green movement with tens of millions of dollars in free legal services.  The firm’s directors coordinate strategy through an annual meeting sponsored by the Heritage Foundation.”  The movement itself was funded by numerous trade associations and corporations in farming, livestock, logging, mining, and petroleum (pages 128, 129, 66, 136, 127, 22, and Chapter 1, “Inside the Beltway”).  The County Supremacy movement, likewise, could be linked back to specific lawyers who had formerly worked for the Reagan administration and to key organizers of the Wise Use movement.

Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez in the latest edition of the journal Democracy noted that the ideological assault on the federal government is a three-pronged attack by the 50-state network of “think tanks” belonging to the State Policy Network, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.  A progressive analysis that ignores the billions of dollars of ideological infrastructure created by the Christian Right and funded by billionaires and corporations engaged in an all-out assault on the federal government, as well as the Christian Right’s Fourth Generation Warfare strategy, is to invite strategic defeat.

Not only did the Christian Right form the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but ALEC became the main driver of the Sagebrush Rebellion II and the current Sagebrush Rebellion III.  David Helvarg (The War Against the Greens) pointed out that the original Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s gained the “support of the Cattlemen’s Association, Farm Bureau Federation, oil and gas industry, coal industry, NRA [National Rifle Association], and western sports groups.”  Then Utah Senator Orrin Hatch claimed the federal government was “‘waging war on the West,’” while then Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt “called the rebellion ‘a land grab in thin disguise’” (pages 64-5).

During the April 2014 confrontation between the Bundy insurgents and the Bureau of Land Management, William Jasper, a writer for the John Birch Society’s New American, wrote an article with a familiar title, “War on the West: Why More Bundy Standoffs Are Coming,” advocating “decentralizing, and dramatically downsizing (and then abolishing) many of these agencies and returning the land to the states and the people.”

But, it is a land grab.  The Republican National Committee, mouthing the words of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s front group, the American Lands Council headed by Utah state representative Ken Ivory, which promotes the transfer of federal lands to the western states, stated in its resolution that “‘there is more than $150 trillion in mineral value locked up in federally controlled land.’”  That $150 trillion belongs to the American people, not oil, gas, coal, diamond, gold, and timber companies, or billionaires.

The American Lands Council issued a statement distancing itself from the confrontation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, but insisted that the real issue was the transfer of federal lands to the states and then to the private sector.  The ALC wrote that their policy “centered on transferring federally controlled public lands to the more responsive and accountable state and local governments so the American people can tend our environment locally, thoughtfully, and with common sense.”

In summary, what are these militia insurgencies about?

One, consistent with the principles of Fourth Generation Warfare, they are about delegitimizing the federal government by asserting that its ownership of western lands is unconstitutional and that its management practices and enforcement of all applicable federal laws are tyrannical and must be resisted by state and local officials, most importantly governors and county sheriffs.

Two, it is about transferring hundreds of millions of acres and hundreds of trillions of dollars of mineral wealth into the hands of billionaires and corporations.

How the Right-Wing Organizes From the National to Local Levels of Operations

Introduction

Why does the right-wing appear to out-organize the left-wing?  What have they done to be so successful, especially with the advent of the Tea Party movement?

The purpose of this post is to provide a brief explanation based on my six years of reading their literature, especially their documents laying out their Fourth Generation Warfare strategy, reading the history and secondary literature on right-wing movements, and putting all this data into a political-warfare framework.  Where necessary, I may link to other articles that provide more substantive information.  But, in general, this post is based on my six years of observing and examining their operations.

National Level of Strategy and Operational Campaigns

The key to understanding why the right-wing successfully organizes in the Tea Party era starts in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s when the essential core structure of the Christian Right was established.

The core strategists of the Christian Right, who were surprisingly, for the most part, either Catholic (Paul Weyrich) or Jewish (Howard Phillips), had to find a way to overcome the schism between evangelical and other non-mainstream Protestants and the Catholics.

Sara Diamond in her book, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (p. 61), and John G. Turner in his, Bill Bright and the Campus Crusade for Christ (pp. 191-2) noted that the April 1980 "Washington for Jesus" rally signified that theological differences between fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, Pentecostals, and Baptists could be overcome by identifying existential threats to the nation and, by implication, to themselves as Christians.  Those threats ostensibly were abortion rights, homosexual rights, and the absence of sectarian Protestant prayer in the public schools.  The national steering committee of the religious rally--several months before Ronald Reagan won the presidency--combined secular goals (reduce government spending) with religious goals (oppose abortion and gay rights) and giving the entire agenda a religious justification--to prevent God's wrath from befalling the nation.

That was one public face of the Christian Right.

The other public face of the Christian Right was Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority.

The widespread misconception, especially in the media and among some progressive analysts, is that the Moral Majority's underlying issue that brought the organization into existence was opposition to abortion.  This is simply not true.  Jerry Falwell and other Protestant ministers were in the forefront of opposing the integration of public schools.  Catholic schools in the southern states were integrating, while public schools were being forced, either through federal pressure or court suits, to integrate.

The response of some southern state legislatures and Protestant denominations was to form private Christian academies and other types of private schools--the origin of the current school voucher and charter school efforts.  The federal government saw through this racist smokescreen of private Christian academies and began using the federal Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of these segregated private academies.  Thus, the IRS earned the enmity of the right-wing not necessarily because of high taxes but because it was the federal agency that could cost white supremacists real money.

Thus, the preservation of white supremacy was at the core of the formation of the Christian Right's Moral Majority--the main political mobilizing vehicle in the 1980s.  When the Moral Majority foundered, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition became the main organizing vehicle.  The mobilizing vehicles have become more diffuse, with groups like the Koch-funded Americans For Prosperity and the Steve Forbes-linked FreedomWorks becoming ideological and financial boosters of the Tea Party movement.

Beneath the surface of the Christian Right in the 1980s were four other developments that still play a significant role in the success of the right-wing.

Centralized Planning, Decentralized Execution

First, the core strategists of the Christian Right formed the Council for National Policy.  The purpose of this secretive organization is to bring together strategists and conservative/Christian funding sources to execute at the local level campaigns against whatever target they believe can be portrayed as an existential threat to Christians and their way of life.

One example among many is the 1993 effort of the Christian Right to deprive any person of "homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation" living and working in Colorado of legal protections from discrimination.  The Christian Right's Council for National Policy, working with local groups in Colorado, attempted to pass Amendment 2 to the state of Colorado's Constitution.  The late Jean Hardisty, founder of Political Research Associates, noted in her 1993 article "Constructing Homophobia" that in the 1980s at least 15 national organizations came together to plan centrally and then execute decentrally at the local level a strategy focused on the "Gay Agenda" and the "Gay Threat" to the American family and way of life.  Hardisty also noted in her book, Mobilizing Resentment (p. 114), that when Christian Right organizations communicated with the faithful that they stressed "the religious principles undergirding their anti-homosexual politics" but when addressing mainstream audiences they used secular sounding language like the "'the defense of the family.'"

Mel White, a closeted gay clergyman who ghostwrite books wrote for Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell, observed in his own book, Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tells Us To Deny Gay Equality (p. xi), that it is "beginning to look like the goals and values of the 'perverse segment' [Christian Right] have been passed from the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition to the Tea Party movement."

Strategic Theorists, Operational Planners, Funding Sources Together

Second, the core strategists of the Christian Right were successful in putting together conservative business and Christian funding sources to create a five billion dollar infrastructure of national level think tanks (the Heritage Foundation), secular-sounding, libertarian-orientated State Policy Network think tanks in virtually every state, and very similar religious-oriented, libertarian-orientated think tanks in many states, but linked to one or more religious para-church organizations.

And, that does not even begin to consider the Information Warfare infrastructure that includes Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and conservative talk radio led by Rush Limbaugh and others.

And, it does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by corporations on lobbying and political contributions to Republican and Democratic politicians, as well as conservative/Christian businessmen contributing a billion dollars every election period to dark money, Koch-linked vehicles distributing even more money to Christian Right and Tea Party groups promoting opposition to womens' rights, LGBTQ rights, and labor rights.

Strategy of Offensive Destruction

Third, a very small religious group of Christian Reconstructionists formulated a Fourth Generation Warfare strategy with the central objective of destroying the secular, pluralistic, multicultural United States and replacing it with a government and constitution in which biblical law trumps all human-made laws.  We know the public face of the Christian Reconstructionists' strategy from its Coalition on Revival documents.

We need not review every one of their 17 World View documents and 42 Articles of the Essentials of a Christian World View.  From their A Manifesto for the Christian Church, a body of work produced by 500 theologians and scholars, it is clear that the Christian Right and their supporters advocate nothing less than the destruction of the current United States by placing every human institution under the authority of their interpretation of the Bible:  "We affirm that the Bible is not only for God's statements to us regarding religion...but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the spheres of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science.  All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible."

From that statement, one can derive virtually every Christian Right and "secular" right-wing movement since the mid-1980s fighting against: civil rights; womens' rights; LGBTQ rights, labor rights; voting rights; environmental protection; progressive taxes; and, the separation of church and state, as well as many other issues.

And, one can see that the Christian Right has, more or less, been constantly on the strategic offensive since the mid-1980s, except for some periods when they have sought to regroup and recalibrate their strategy, operational campaigns, tactics, organizational structure, network development, and technological sophistication. And, conversely, progressives (or left-wing) have been on the strategic defensive, always being under withering propaganda attacks and defending whatever gains they have achieved since the 1950s.

Common Narrative Structure With Multiple Variations

Fourth, the Christian Right developed an ideological narrative with several variants that could be borrowed and adapted by the various segments of the right-wing.

Jean Hardisty wrote that the Christian Right had tapped into an atavistic, emotional, anger--where most people make decisions, according to George Lakoff, who wrote in The Political Mind that 98 percent of our thinking is non-rational.  Hardisty wrote that right-wing social movements are "built on a backlash fueled by anger—in the form of resentment, spite, vengeance, envy, loss, and bitterness over declining status....his social anger is also fed by the current religious revitalization, economic contraction and race resentment....and directed toward the targets of liberals, feminists, people of color (especially through stereotyping of welfare recipients, criminals, immigrants, and drug users), and lesbians and gay men, all perceived to be the beneficiaries of liberal social change."

The other part of the right-wing narrative that is especially adaptive is the idea of the New World Order.  While the particular villains vary according to which version of the New World Order conspiracy theory is being peddled, stripped down to its essentials, the narrative is one of secret American elites conspiring with globalists or internationalists to destroy American sovereignty; these American elites, who promote the "anti-Christian" ideology of secular humanism, conspire with or manipulate the lower classes (read non-whites) to extort through force (read taxes) the income of the middle class (read whites).

Chip Berlet, a respected analyst of right-wing populist movements, described this right-wing populist ideology of "producerism":  ""Right-wing demagogues reach out to this supposedly beleaguered white middle class of 'producers' and encourage them to see themselves as being inexorably squeezed by parasitic traitors above and below. The rage is directed upwards against a caricature of the conspiratorial “faceless bureaucrats,” “banksters” and “plutocrats” rather than challenging an unfair economic system run on behalf of the wealthy and corporate interests."

Chip Berlet and Margaret Quigley in their 1995 article, "Theocracy and White Supremacy" for the book Eyes Right! (pp. 34-5, edited by Berlet), quoted from Pat Robertson's 1992 book, The New World Order.  Robertson at the time was the head of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network:  “‘There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.  How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshippers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?’”  And, Paul Weyrich, one of the architects of the Christian Right claimed the struggle was “between those ‘who worship in churches and those who desecrate them.’”

In 1992, pastor John Hagee, who would become America's leader of the Christian Zionist movement within the Christian Right--a movement which supports right-wing Israeli governments and advocates hardline, anti-Islam (pro-war) and anti-Palestinian policies--tied the New World Order conspiracy theory to global environmental policies.  This version of the conspiracy theory would also be found in the (Christian) Patriot militia movement of the 1990s, and later emerge during the Obama administration as opposition to the United Nations' Agenda21 program.

In a 1992 sermon uncovered by Talk to Action researcher Bruce Wilson, Hagee stated:  "'I have discovered, from a great number of sources, an environmental juggernaut that has come together and married the New World Order crowd and the occultists who have the objective to control the United States economy through environmental concerns, and laws that they have passed, and will pass.'"

Rachel Tabachnick, another respected researcher at Talk to Action, noted that the New World Order conspiracy theory came in secular and religious versions.  The religious version was tied to the Protestant concept of the "End Times."  She noted the "remarkable similarities between the New World Order conspiracy of white supremacist groups and that of Christian Zionist end times prophecy."  Tabachnick observed that "the storylines are indeed parallel and sometimes almost identical."

In other words, the most ardent Christian supporters of Israel and the most ardent haters of Jews, promoted and distributed a common narrative to their respective followers even though they superficially disagreed on the status of Jews in America and the world.

In a separate article, Tabachnick reported that the New World Order conspiracy theory in the form of a "End Times" narrative was spread by Christian Right propagandists in the Prophecy Club into the Patriot militia movement and by Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches the Department of Defense's chaplains who are certified to preach by the group.

Christian nationalist Ron Paul (yes, the faux-libertarian) and other allies in the Christian Right and Patriot movement made opposition to the New World Order and the United Nations' Agenda21 a featured part of their nearly decade-long Freedom21 conferences that preceded the emergence of the Patriot militia under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

On the front page of the Freedom21 website the group explains its opposition to the United Nations, environmental sustainability, and Agenda21:  "Freedom21 began in 1999 when its predecessor, the Environmental Conservation Organization, asked the leaders of about a dozen other organizations to assemble in Washington, DC.  The purpose of the meeting was to develop a new strategy to counter the explosion of new laws and regulations that ignored private property rights and individual freedom. The meeting was hosted by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow [the leading anti-environmental Christian Right coalition].  The group quickly agreed that the President’s [Clinton] Council on Sustainable Development, working to implement the recommendations set forth in Agenda 21, was a major source of the freedom-eroding policies being implemented by the government."

The Southern Poverty Law Center's report on the 2008 Freedom21 conference featured the Texas chapter of Eagle Forum, "a hard-line Christian Right organization," which actually led the successful fight to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment; the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party's presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin, the "anti-'New World Order' American Policy Center, the anti-United Nations Sovereignty International, one of the founders of the Freedom21 annual conference; Jerome Corsi who would emerge as a leading "birther" conspiracy theorist attempting to delegitimize President Obama; the John Birch Society; and the gun rights absolutist and militia promoter Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America.

The New World Order and its variant, opposition to the United Nations' Agenda21, is a potent mobilization vehicle that appeals to Tea Party groups across the country:  to mobilize the Tea Party movement in general; the East Bay Tea Party in the San Francisco Bay Area; the Gaston Tea Party in North Carolina; publicized in the Tea Party Tribune; publicized as the number one threat to America by the Tea Party Nation; the Central Valley Tea Party in California; spread by Fox News and into the national Republican Party; endorsed by candidate now Senator Ted Cruz from Texas; considered by legislatures in Tennessee, Georgia, and Oklahoma; defeated consideration of a $285,000 planning document for Horizon 2025 in Baldwin County, Alabama; Laverkin, Utah, as well as the Utah Republican Party advocating U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations; and, denunciation of Agenda21 by the Republican National Committee.

Conclusion

The Christian Right, the Patriot militia, and the Tea Party movement appear successful in organizing at the local level due to four principal factors and two corollaries.

Leaving aside the enormous financial resources poured into their organizational structures and Information Warfare apparatus, the two fundamental elements of their success are: (1) overcoming theological differences to allow different denominations to cooperate in a religious-political movement; and, (2) developing a common narrative, with allowances for variations for different audiences, so that the broad right-wing movement--from the Republican Party, to the Christian Right, to the Tea Party movement, to Patriot militia, to the white supremacist Hard Right--all share a common set of ideas, enemies, and courses of action.

First, at the substructure of the Christian Right is an enormous infrastructure of ideologically-committed think tanks serving "secular" libertarian adherents and Christian libertarians.  The libertarian economic ideas, common to both the "secular" and the Christian wings, are identical with the exception that the Christian wing grounds their libertarian economic ideas in the Bible.  Even the "secular" sounding Heritage Foundation incorporates religious ideas and values into its propaganda campaigns.

Second, again, at the substructure level of the Christian Right is the enormous Information Warfare apparatus in the forms of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and Christian radio and television networks.

Third, at the superstructure level of the Christian Right, since the 1980s the Christian Right has overcome whatever theological differences exist between fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, Pentecostals, and Baptists to make them pragmatic collaborators in bringing about the Kingdom on earth.  While not explicitly saying so, they are ideological Christian Reconstructionists.

Related to this religious collaboration is the spread of religious networks to mobilize pastors and adherents alike.  These entities have names such as a named state "Renewal Project" or "Patriot Pastors" network or "spiritual warriors" or "prayer warriors."  These have implicit and explicit political functions to mobilize pastors and adherents against specified targets of a propaganda campaign, be it reproductive rights, labor rights, civil rights, voting rights, or LGBTQ rights.

Fourth, at the superstructure level, the Christian Right, the John Birch Society, the Patriot militia, and the Tea Party movement are joined in the theological, ideological, and political struggle against the New World Order and its variant, the United Nations' Agenda21, though there are other variants.

Again, opposition to the New World Order and Agenda21 allows a diverse collection of groups at the local level--Christian Right groups like Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, a militia-linked group like Oath Keepers, Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty and other Ron Paul groups, and Tea Party groups to collaborate to undermine federal, state and local governments.

It is an almost seamless and interactive network that operate on multiple levels--national, state and local; operate through different dimensions--secular and religious; operate using different organizational forms--centralized groups and diffuse secular and religious networks; and, all are supported by an enormous Information Warfare infrastructure operating through religious and secular networks.

All of these efforts affect the Republican Party at the national, state and local levels; indeed, many Republican leaders openly support these movements and seek to enact their agenda.

FIRST POST OF BLOG

The blog is called 4GWDOTDOTDOT.  The term 4GW refers to Fourth Generation Warfare.  The term DOTDOTDOT refers to connecting the dots.  Prior to this blog, I wrote at the defunct politicalchili website.  That website was destroyed by perpetrators unknown, though I had written at least a dozen articles on Ron Paul and the Tea Party movement that were not flattering.

Though not flattering, everything I wrote was documented and sourced with footnotes.  I will continue that practice here.  I am currently writing a book with the tentative title The Christian Right's Fourth Generation Warfare in America.  Actually, I have written so much that I will divide the three parts into three books.

I am a former civilian strategic intelligence analyst with the Department of the Army's Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center (ITAC).  I am a former civilian senior intelligence analyst with the U.S. European Command's Joint Analysis Center.  I hold a PhD from Stanford University.  As I am trying to finish Book II and revise and update Book III, posting here will be slow and/or delayed.  Book III was actually previously published at politicalchili.com.  It needs updating and editing.