By Brandon Smith

Whenever you delve into the modern history of internal national conflict you’re bound to come across post-crisis accounts from people who said “We never saw it coming…” or “The violence hit us from nowhere…” Generally speaking, these were the people who weren’t paying attention and they just happened to survive by sheer luck.

I think of this dynamic a lot these days. I see a large contingent of American society (perhaps 25% of the population) which has been radicalized or brainwashed beyond all reason or repair. These people (leftists) operate deep within a protective bubble of propaganda and zealotry; they function within a hive mind that does not deviate from the demands of their gatekeepers. They cannot be reasoned with, nor can they be satiated. They lust for power and the suffering of anyone who opposes them.

One can see an immediate difference between the sides. Conservatives are so independent we in-fight constantly. We might agree on basic values (even in this we sometimes argue), but in terms of policy and action we rarely shake hands.

For the political left, any disagreement with the majority leads to immediate ostracism. The hive mind does not tolerate individual rebellion. Only the gatekeepers can change the mindset or the mission of the mob.

It is strange then that this dichotomy has resulted in conservatives, with their values of liberty and independence, seeking order. Meanwhile leftists, in their Orwellian uniformity of thought, seek chaos and the deconstruction of civilization. You would think the relationship would be reversed, but this is the way it has always been.

Looking back on the events of the Bolshevik Revolution and the long list of Marxist disruptions in Europe following WWI, it should not have been at all surprising to Europeans that domestic conflict would erupt. It should not have been surprising that people would follow their natural inclination to rally around their founding heritage rather than submit to the cultural and moral relativism of the radical left.

Fascism was popular exactly because it offered shelter from the chaos and degeneracy of communism. The war and brutality that followed was seen as a balancing of the scales. Europeans wanted to ensure that the communists would never get a chance to wreak havoc again.

To be clear, both systems of governance are authoritarian and can lead to monstrous outcomes, but communism’s love for economic sabotage, mob actions and political violence are almost always a precursor to a fascist crackdown. The public does not embrace fascism in a vacuum, they must be compelled by an existential threat.

The question is, can communist subversion be defeated without using “authoritarian” measures? Is a constitutional republic equipped to deal with this kind of threat? When someone wages war on your society internally, is there a way to fight them while being civic minded? Probably not.

What we are witnessing in the US and Europe today is, in every way, a Marxist/Communist insurgency. It’s difficult to determine what stage we are at in this war. We have moved well beyond the stage of propaganda and mob influence into the realm of political violence, with multiple assassination attempts and terror attacks against civilian targets.

The gatekeepers for the woke communist movement are obviously Democrat politicians and media influencers. They have been consistently and actively encouraging mass hysteria and violence. They have used media spin to protect activist groups like Antifa, pretending that such organizations don’t exist. Whenever activists cause harm or death, the media and political leaders immediately move to defend that action as if it was justified.

When asked why Democrats are continuing down the path of militancy, their response is that Donald Trump is a “dictator and a fascist.” Yet, these same people can’t seem to come up with a single legitimate example of HOW Trump is acting like a dictator.

Deportations of illegal immigrants? Most countries on Earth have basic immigration laws and enforce them much more harshly than the Trump Administration does. Cuts to federal programs and employees? The President is perfectly within his power of office to reduce waste in the federal government. How about using the National Guard in US cities? Democrat leaders in those cities have aided violent activists, helping to disrupt ICE operations while threatening the lives of agents. If they don’t want the National Guard in their cities they should stop waging war on immigration officials.

From Trump’s remodeling of the White House ballroom to the US troops countering drug smugglers, everything Trump does is blown out of proportion by Democrats into an “end of democracy” scenario. Their useful-idiot followers then take these claims as permission to create even more turmoil.

The government shutdown in particular is becoming a nexus point for this agenda. The Senate needs only five Democrat votes to reopen the government with a clean funding bill, but Democrats refuse to see reason. Meanwhile, they are blaming Republicans for the consequences of the shutdown, specifically seeking public pain as leverage over conservatives.

Trump is already being held accountable for a prolonged shutdown of EBT. The Democrats know their audience well. They know that the free-stuff army is entitled, vicious and easy to manipulate.

I warned about this outcome at the beginning of the month; Democrats are fighting hard for the shutdown to continue because it creates greater fear in their constituency. However, if Republicans fold then Democrats will use the same threat of civil unrest over and over again. The government will be under their control even though they lost the elections.

Democrat rhetoric has been even worse than usual.  DNC Chair Ken Martin recently argued on MSNBC that:

“The Democratic Party’s job right now is to win elections. That’s our focus. But we may be nearing the moment where we are truly in a dictatorship and an authoritarian regime here has completely shredded the Constitution. Then elections don’t matter, and then the resistance looks completely different. And we may be nearing that moment.”

Senator Chuck Schumer also made provocative statements calling for “resistance” against Trump:

“This is tyranny. This is what happens in dictatorships… I don’t care if you’re Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, moderate – people should be forcefully rising up against this…”

In an odd and obviously inciting discussion on MSNBC, Joy Reid and Jasmine Crockett sent out multiple signals to leftists, barely disguising their intent:

Joy Reid: “We’re in a moment where the MAGA crowd is armed to the teeth, and they’re not shy about it. So, everybody needs to pick up a weapon – whether it’s a vote, a protest sign, or whatever it takes – because this isn’t just politics anymore; it’s survival.”

Jasmine Crockett: “Absolutely, Joy. This is a war, this isn’t a battle. We’re talking about the soul of this country, about whether democracy survives or gets crushed under fascism. And yeah, we need to arm ourselves with everything we’ve got—truth, turnout, and tenacity. The other side declared war on us long ago.”

Numerous Democrats across social media are announcing, in no uncertain terms, that they want conservatives dead and Trump allies humiliated or eliminated. When they return to a government majority and get power back, they say conservatives are going to pay a terrible price for daring to oppose them.

But if we’re living under a fascist regime as they assert, then how could they possibly expect to return to government power? If elections are still an option, then leftists must not be too serious about their claims of fascism.

A perfect example is the New York mayor’s race, which is is going much like I predicted months ago.  Zohran Mamdani (a champagne socialist/communist with wealthy parents) is holding a steep lead in polling over all other candidates. As I noted when the race began, Mamdani is the natural end game of the political left – A combination of all the groups that hate western civilization, concentrated into a single man.

Democrats are doubling down.  Mamdani proudly mentioned this in a recent campaign speech, arguing that the correct path of Democrats is to blindly charge forward. In other words, they should not self reflect on their long list of failures, but dive headfirst into radical chaos.

Prominent Democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders are openly endorsing Mamdani. Like it or not, this is the course that their party is taking, which means violent conflict is inevitable.  If Dems are being honest in their rhetoric to “get revenge” on conservatives once they return to power (there’s no reason to think they are joking), then the rules of survival dictate that leftists can never be allowed to return to power.

If Democrat leaders continue on the path of disrupting deportations of illegals and threatening immigration officials, then Americans will increasingly support National Guard intervention. The public may even support the arrest of those same politicians.

If leftists incite mass violence over the loss of SNAP benefits, the gatekeepers will have to be arrested or removed from the country. One can question the constitutionality of the reaction, but the path that led us to this is undeniable. Leftists are provoking these responses; they are making peaceful resolution impossible.

They have gone so far over the top in their behavior, I have to ask: Are they doing this on purpose to trigger a civil war, or an authoritarian response? Do they really believe they will be able to use national instability as a weapon to get what they want?

My long running theory ever since Trump ran for office in 2016 is that he represents a perfect scapegoat for a leftist/globalist induced collapse of the US. In fact, for many years I have posited that if real conservatives and patriots (not Neo-Cons) ever gained legitimate government power, the elites would simply crash the system around our ears and make it look like it was our fault.

This plan seems to be unfolding right now. Progressive gatekeepers are using far-left activists as cannon fodder to induce a crisis, or a domestic war.

Think about the Bolshevik Revolution: The gatekeepers spurred a revolution of the poor and the working class, yet Lenin and Trotsky both came from upper-middle class wealth (like Mamdani). Hell, Karl Marx came from an upper middle-class family and married into his wife’s riches. When his debts and refusal to work a steady job caught up with him, he lived off the money of rich benefactors.

The gatekeepers of the left rarely share the struggles of the downtrodden workers they purport to represent, they only use the working class and the poor as tools to gain power and destroy their ideological enemies.

This is what Democrat leaders are doing with the mentally ill rabble they have accumulated. They are aiming the naive and unhinged horde at the guts of the country and they are hoping to create enough mayhem that Trump, conservatives, nationalists, all of us get blamed for the uncompromising response that follows.

Maybe they are hoping that in the process, conservatives will haphazardly jump on the bandwagon of totalitarianism; that we will look like the villains. I think the progressives are underestimating the average American’s resolve to see order restored. Playing the victim may not help them garner much public empathy this time.

It’s hard to say what the end result will be, but I’m finding it difficult to see an outcome that doesn’t include considerable conflict and, unfortunately, bloodshed. And, to be frank, most of it is likely to befall the leftist side. For the sake of their own self preservation, I hope they realize they’re only being used to further an agenda, and their gatekeepers don’t actually care what happens to them in the end.