This week’s news is dominated, once again, with reports of violent demonstrations against the Trump administration. We have seen violent demonstrations before, but something new has been added that is profoundly significant. It is the rhetoric of civil war and revolution.

The organizations spouting civil-war rhetoric are following a playbook taken from the writings of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Communist Party. It is a rhetoric that demonizes all enemies as ‘capitalist exploiters’ (in America, where there still is a latent affinity to capitalism, the word ‘Fascism’ is preferred.) and calls for an overthrow of the government. Followers are not supposed to think about what would replace it but, for those who are curious, the answer is a ‘socialist’ government responsive, not to big business, but to the people.

You may think that, boisterous as these demonstrators are, and although they can draw a few thousand youngsters to their events, they are but a tiny fraction of the population and could never pose a serious threat to any government. But how wrong you would be.

Major political changes always are achieved by minorities. All revolutions are the work of less than three percent of the population, and the American Revolution was no exception. It’s not how many people there are, but how well organized they are and where they are. If the three percenters are influential in a nation’s power centers (political parties, government agencies, courts, military, schools, activist groups, labor unions, etc.), then the odds are in their favor. The masses will follow the winners.

When you look at the rag-tag bunch carrying placards and shouting obscenities, you may be comforted thinking that they have no influence in the real power centers, but be mindful that street theater is only half the picture. Classic communist strategy involves, not one, but two types of revolution. The first is by force and violence (they call it a war of national liberation), but the other is political and peaceful (what they call a proletarian revolution).

The two are designed to work together, one from the bottom (masses in the streets) and the other from the top (agents inside government waiting for an excuse to introduce legislation that will move the nation closer to the Leninist ideal. The strategy is, not to conquer in one fell swoop, but to do so by a series of steps, each one seen by the public as a necessary compromise to end the violence.

In 1969, I delivered a lecture on this subject, entitled More Deadly than War. That was in the day when I was hanging out at the communist book store in Los Angeles doing research on collectivism, so I was loaded with communist publications to illustrate my message. The presentation was recorded on black-and-white film, released in VHS format, and then forgotten. Someone put it on YouTube about five years ago so, when we created our Reality Zone YouTube channel last year, we copied it to that collection.

It has been almost fifty years since I gave much thought to that lecture so, when I started to write this commentary, I decided to watch it again to see what I said. Frankly, I was blown away by how every point applies directly to what is happening today.

If you are interested in my analysis, here is the video:

https://needtoknow.news/