The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1209: What are the Radical Leftist Groups Planning? w/ Mike Shelby

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

72 MinutesPG-13Mike Shelby is a former Intelligence NCO & contractor.Mike joins Pete to talk about the information he gathers on the far-left activist groups in the US and explains what they are and may be planning.Gray Zone Research SubstackEarly Warning Network and PodcastMike on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show for the first time. Mike Shelby, how you doing, Mike? Hey, doing well, Pete. How are you?

Doing well, doing well. first time on the show, I always ask everybody to run down whatever they want to share from their background. Okay, sure. Yeah. I was an all-source intelligence analyst. I dropped out of college in 2003 and listed in 2004. And spent a few years in Iraq and Afghanistan as a soldier, went back as a contractor. And then I got out of that world because I got tired of deploying and I didn't like what I was doing. And then 2016 rolls around and I start seeing all these Trump supporters being attacked. I wasn't a Trump supporter at the time. But I just said, you know, this is not right that these innocent people are being attacked for their politics. And then I started looking into Antif and I was like, hey, I actually really hate these bastards.

And I said, look, I spent my entire adult life at that point or close to my entire adult life at that point tracking down insurgents. And I said, this is a proto insurgency in, you know, 2016, obviously in the 2020. And so I just started tracking all these far left groups and I made a business out of it, essentially. So you basically go in, you gain access to like a bunch of us a few years ago used to get like during 2020, indivisible emails, things like that. But you go even deeper. You'll even listen in on some of their conference calls. How do you get in there to do that?

Or is it just public? Well, it depends which type of left-wing group you're dealing with. A lot of that stuff does occur online. The far left, the revolutionary anarchist, that does not happen online as much. The progressive groups do do a lot of things out in the open. So, yeah, groups like Indivisible, it's pretty easy. Actually, I were just listening into one of their calls.

The Thursday afternoon call. But the, yeah, the Antifa types is, they're a lot more closed off. to have a security culture and it's, you know, for the most part, it's very difficult to track the internal communications of those groups. All right. So let's jump into this. I wanted Trump to win because I, well, first of all, I wanted the J-Sixers out. I also thought that it would buy us some time because I thought that if Kamala won, it would just be a continuation

of Biden, and it would just be more of the same and more targeting of people who have views that are antithetical to the regime. And, you know, one of the things, though, that, you know, you come to realize is that, you know, we live in a system, we live within a system where you get to vote every two to four years. and if that happens, if Trump gets elected and he doesn't seek to destroy these people in any way, shape, or form, I'm talking about financially, I'm talking about, you know, being like, okay, you can never have power again, taking, even taking away their wealth. I'm sorry, you know, I mean, this is how I've studied, all I need to do to study radical left groups is study the Spanish Civil War. And these people are well on their way to being like the anarchists and the communists that we're dealt with there. So if Trump doesn't destroy these people, they will be back. So what are you seeing?

I know you've said, you know, it's like don't expect 2020 to be like it, where there's going to be this insane color revolution. And you said 2024, this or 2025, this. summer, 2025. Don't expect it to be like 2020, but it could be. What are you seeing for the future? Well, I always like to consider a range of potential options. And maybe it's probably an edge case, but maybe there is a case where there is a uniter, not a divider. We'll call that a potential course of action or a potential future. The chance is not very high, but it's not zero. I think the the most likely outcome for, well, let me back up for a second. I'm talking about future elections here, right?

We're looking ahead to 2028 and Trump is, I mean, maybe he'll be on the ticket. I don't know. I doubt it. But I'm extremely entertained by all the talk. And so the question is going into 2020, are we going to have another 2020 or another what I think was a popular revolution? And so, you know, I look at that and I say, all right, if J.D. Vance loses or whoever the Republican is and you get a Kamala Harris or an AOC or whoever, it really doesn't matter, are all the political persecutions coming roaring right back? Obviously, they are. I think there's an edge case that maybe there's a uniter, not a divider that runs his president. That maybe we don't have that. but one of the things you talked about is the likelihood that we don't that it's it's not just

right-wing figures that get J-6ed or get unfairly prosecuted it's it's like mainstream more mainstream conservatives because I do think there there is an aspect where they said well we've we had we had the first Trump administration and We got through that. I think they essentially sold a 2020 election. And this is their version of never again. We can never allow these people to come close to the White House ever again. And so, you know, I think that pendulum swinging is someone's got to stop the pendulum swinging. So at any rate, going into 2028, I expect something like 2020 to be on the table. You have essentially a popular revolution that is coincided with the election. I don't think it's going to be this year.

I don't think it's going to be next year. I think they're setting up a general strike for 2028. I think that's our betting man at this point. That is kind of the next high watermark, which is not to say that things won't get rough this summer. I think they probably will. And into 2026, I think Democrats are likely to obviously take back the House. And we're going to see impeachment. We're going to see House investigations. And, you know, when these people say that that accountability is coming, that they're going to go after Trump supporters and all the people who enabled the Trump administration, they're obviously serious. So it's extremely just as someone who studies low intensity conflict, it's extremely concerning what's what's about to happen. So we've been sold this narrative about USAID defunding so many of these groups.

where are these groups getting their funding from? Like where does an indivisible get there? I'm only using them because they're a group that a lot of people may already know who they exist. Where are they getting their funding from? Where are these groups getting their funding from now? Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have receipts, but we know there are plenty of DNC backers who are funneling money into these protest groups. I think a lot of that stuff covers,

stuff on the expenses on the operational and organizing level. So logistics, websites, communications, obviously you have to have a staff. You have to pay a staff who's kind of the top of the pyramid, kind of command and control for these things. But a lot of this stuff is actually, I look at indivisible and I actually do think it's grassroots. It is volunteer activists that are organizing at the local level.

They're grabbing their friends. They're inviting people to meetings. And they say, look, we've got to be. build the people power. We have to build social power to stand up to the Trump administration. So, you know, like I said, I don't have receipts. I don't know exactly where they're getting their money from. There are plenty of left-wing billionaires and financiers who are happy to spend a little pocket change to facilitate these groups. But, you know, I look at the funding, and the funding is the least important part of these movements. The organizing is the most

important part. And that is, that's a problem they have solved. They do not have a problem organizing. That's the hardest part. Why is that? It doesn't seem like the right, Wayne can organize a church picnic. So what, how come they can organize? Well, they've just, they've had a longstanding practice. You know, I was reading through some, you know, we call it human infrastructure. I was looking through some organizing documents going back to the 60s and 70s. And you read through that stuff, that's the same exact stuff they've been, they're doing today,

the anti-Trump organizing, they've been doing this for decades. And if you want to go back to the first communist groups, go back to the Russian Revolution and then the communist, the establishment of the common intern and then communist politics in the United States starting in, I think, 1919 or so. They've just been doing it for 100 years and we haven't. I think that's, and then you can go back into the, oh, the right wing, rugged individualist. You know, we don't need a team. We're anti-collective and pro-individual.

And, you know, I think maybe a part of that just is a philosophy. or a worldview that is not inherently collective. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range.

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We're looking at all these. We're looking at these judges, these activist judges. I mean, they're not even activist judges. I mean, I just think that they're basically traitors. I mean, I'm reminded. It seems like the McCarthy time when you found, the time of McCarthy, when you found out, oh, this person literally answers to Moscow. Where's Congress? He has Congress.

Why is Congress not doing, why aren't they cementing anything? Why aren't they, executive orders can be turned over by the next president. All of this goes away in four years unless somehow it's put into law. I mean, and we know they'll ignore the law anyway, but at least, I mean, something, something that the normie can look at and go, hey, you know, what's going on? Where's Congress now? Well, I think part of it is some part of the Republican Party has obviously been captured. They're part of the establishment elite.

they're not part of the counter elite. Number one, number two, since you brought up into visible, you know, one of the things they constantly say is we need mass mobilization protests because it enables us to do two things. Number one,

it enables us to go after vulnerable Republicans. There are a lot of House and Senate seats where the left, the establishment left, the progressive left, is dumping in millions of dollars to unseat. And their message is pretty simple. If you go along with the Trump administration, you're going to lose your job in the next election. And I do think that scares Republicans.

The second thing is a very similar effect. They say the Democrat politicians look at these mass mobilization protests and they know that they have the grassroots behind them. And that encourages them to take more extreme action. This is something that Senator Chris Murphy said last month, Democrat from Connecticut. He said Democrat politicians have to take quote unquote exceptional tactics. And what he's talking about is being a lot more extreme and a lot more hard line against the Trump administration. And this is something that politicians cannot do on their own very well. But if they know they have their base behind them, they're far more likely to do that. I don't think a lot of these Republicans really feel like the base is behind them. At least I'm not seeing it.

And so I do think they're, I don't think discouraged is the right way. I'll say they're not sufficiently incentivized to go through and pass laws that will submit these changes rather than just having them rolled back in three and a half years. Well, if Republicans don't think the base will be behind them, I mean, considering that, like we said, the right can't organize. I mean, organizing on a street level is basically illegal for anyone, you know, left of like Bernie Sanders. So, I mean, it's kind of, it's easy to think that a left winger, a left winger, I don't even know what to call these people anymore. Left and right doesn't even, when everyone's in the same party, left and right just goes out the window. But it seems like the left, or let's call them the left, they, they know that their base will be behind them no matter what. They're not too worried about that group in the middle, the quote unquote undecided or independence, as long as they have that strong base.

But it seems like if you know that the right will not protest, if they do protest, you know, it's like, I remember there was an anti-war protest a couple of years. years ago in in Washington, D.C. that was set up by libertarians and some conservatives, and they invited communist to come with them and speak. If you're not going to at least gatekeep, if you're not going to at least be able to organize true protests, and you may not even be able to do that because they may shut it down quick because you're right wing. I mean, really, if you're a Republican politician, it really just seems like you're going through the motions and waiting for that $15,000 a month,

you know, pension. You know, I think another part of this is, have you seen all these polls come out recently? There was a poll, a survey from the PRI, I don't know, whoever they are, that's found some like 60% of Americans, say, quote, quote, Trump is a dictator whose power needs to be limited

before he destroys democracy or something like that. That was the question. They said 60% of respondents agreed with that. You go in and you look at the polling, the actual data there, and the poll itself is over a month old. And it was recently just published by Axios, I think yesterday the day before. And my first question is,

why did they sit on this for a month? Well, obviously to coincide with the first 100 days. I think there is a concerted effort, and you can call it information warfare, or a SIEOP. But I do think there's an active strategic messaging campaign against Republicans to convince them that the majority of Americans believe Trump is a dictator. And I think that dissuades them, I think that dissentivizes them from working

with the Trump administration to pass these policies, especially into law and Congress. And so I think it's a lot more insidious than just Republicans are in effective and the right can't organize. I think, you know, the right, I think, has been pretty famously, as you've kind of said, been disintegrated as a, as an organizing force or as a political social force. And so I, until we can solve that problem, until we can fix our own messaging problem and be resistant to those kinds of psychological or information operations, you know, to call it fifth gen warfare whatever until we can solve that problem i think we're just going to have continue to have these really pretty astounding limitations put on put on us well yeah i mean we even

see the trope that people that i know people on my side of twitter that are promoting that um trump is the reason why the canadian elections went the way they did it's like and you can have the opinion that Trump influenced it. But when you look at the graph that showed that most of the people who were under, who were like in the zoomer and late millennial age ranges, they voted for, they voted basically, you know, we can't afford to buy a house. Let's do something about the economy. And then the boomers, and we don't even know what the insane amount of immigrants from the subcontinent vote there, that they voted to defeat Trump. Okay, so how do, I mean, if that's going to be, if we're getting the message here that,

oh, he's a dictator, and then we're getting the message that, oh, the reason why Canada went to the World Economic Forum's guy is because of Trump. I mean, if you can't win the, if you can't win the narrative war, you're, you're You're done. It's over. Well, this is something that the Trump administration is learning this lesson the hard way. I think they had a really good opportunity to explain to the American people what they were about to do. I don't think the average American wants to be beholden to China, but I don't think the Trump administration did a very good job of stating their case, saying,

we're going to do some things that are maybe unpopular for the short term, but your kids. are going to thank us for maintaining our national sovereignty. And I haven't heard that. I mean, maybe a handful of people. I think Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's done a good job of saying that to the CNBC crowd. But, and granted, I don't, you know,

I don't watch every Trump administration presser. But just as a luminous consumer of news, I have not heard the administration effectively make that case, and they should have. It goes back to the messaging war, which I think the Trump administration is losing. Yeah. Well, if this, if you're losing the messaging war, if there's a chance that they're going to lose the house in 2022. And if 2020, from 2022 to 2024, I mean, if in 2020, in 2026, why do I keep wanting to say I'm obsessed with the past?

if 2026 to 2028 is going to be just like 2016 to 2020 where Trump can't get anything done. And we'll talk about these judges in a second. What should we be on an individual level or a community level, what should we be doing? Well, these groups like indivisible, and you have to respect their hustle because they're, You know, they're putting in the low millions of protesters and activists out in the streets for these national days of protests and action. I would just look at what they're doing. And one thing they tell their people is all forms of power are local. You know, they say all politics is local.

So until we're organizing at the community level, like, you know, if you want to win a state level race, you have to organize a bunch of communities that get involved in and go out and get out the vote. and do all the things in a democracy. And so I really think it does come back to all forms of local power. If you want to change national level politics, I don't think that can be done very well. It can be guided maybe through what happens in D.C. But if you want any kind of cultural staying power, that's going to happen at the local level. And so until we can figure out what local organizing looks like, I mean, I think

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okay, they have it. They not only have it, but they have it at an activist level. When you look at it, it's like you can say, okay, the most radical, the most radical one. I'm not even saying like the most radical rightist can go and, you know, should or go take over a town. I'm talking about, like, maybe some strong right of center people be like, okay, this is our, town. This is what our town is going to look like. Is that, is that something that is just not in the right winger because they're so or the person conservative, you know, right of center, let's call it. Most people are just classical. And most people on the right are just classical liberals or even

liberals who think that the border should be closed. Do you think that that's just been bred out of them that you, that you want that? Do you think it's the whole thing of, oh, if you, if, if, people just leave me alone. I'll just leave them alone and not realizing that these are not the kind of, these are the people who are not going to leave you alone to the point of death. Well, that's a good question. And I think everyone's seen what I would say is the conventional wisdom on this, which is we have jobs and we have kids and we've got lives outside of politics. The left does not. We see that online all the time. It's a fair explanation and a fair point. I think there's a, last night I went to a meetup.

It was the young Republicans for my county. And there was a huge focus on politics. We talked about the huge focus on politics. And one of the things I brought up is that it's not just politics. We're actually dealing with three pillars here. You want to talk about power. It's not just political power. It's social power and it's also economic power.

And my county's Republican machine focuses on political power. They're not trying to build social or cultural power. They're not trying to explicitly build economic power. And you look at the left with the way they've indoctrinated, taking over the corporations and, you know, hiring all these indoctrinated workers and the marketing and the ad teams constantly pushing these social messages. I think they have, the left obviously does a great job of building social power and capturing economic power. Let's be honest, I don't think they build economic power themselves. I think they just capture it.

And we on the right, I mean, all my, and listen, the Republican Party, I'm like, I don't know, I don't go to their games, but like I'll watch them when they're on TV. Like, I'll cheer for them. It's not even really my, I don't even, I don't know, I vote Republican obviously, but it's not, I'm not like excited about the Republican Party. And one of the reasons why is because it's all politics. And no one's out there. I think very few people are out there.

trying to build social and economic power. But if you want to build a power machine, it cannot just be political. It's got to be social and economic as well. I think that's the real change that needs to happen on the right. And so many are caught up in ideological capture of free trade, which basically when you tear it all the way down, it's just basically globalism. We have to have the borders open.

or they buy into the trope that there's not enough people here to work. Maybe there isn't. I don't know. Or, you know, the whole thing about free trade. If you're not for free trade, you're a communist. Because the communists weren't for free trade. And every, I mean, you can see that fancied about, you know, tariffs are, tariffs are protectionists.

And that's what, you know, isolationist countries do, things like that. But, you know. I think the biggest problem is it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, it seems to me like the left, they're willing to come together in a big tent kind of way just to keep power, just so that power keeps flowing from their side. And whatever the right is, is so fractioned off, is factional because of, you, ideology whether it be pro-free markets whether it be pro-Israel whether it be anti-Islam whether it be this of that and everything it just you you have one

group who's like no I'm not going to you know how can we be America first if you know we let another country basically run our foreign policy or whatever it just seems like if they concentrated on power and lost the idea the ideological baggage with it, that would just be the biggest start because it seems like the left doesn't have that. The left is willing to become whatever it has to become in order to keep power. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. I see a lot of infighting on the left, though. The Bernie and the AOC crowd versus the Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi wing, the establishment versus the Democratic Socialist wing, the progressive.

versus the Democrat Socialists, the left liberal split within the Democratic Party. I don't know. I look at DSA, Democratic Socials of America, and, you know, they're talking about abandoning the Democrat Party. So,

I don't know. I think there's just a lot of infighting on the left, and maybe it's not seen. Like, I read these guys. I watch videos all day about these guys. I maybe they do vote in lockstep but they're getting tired of it

I'll tell you that the left liberal alliance within the Democratic Party I think is shaky and you know we'll we'll see Democrat is Social

South America DSA they're running 10 candidates not as Democrat in the midterms they're running 10 House candidates not as Democrats

but as independents so I maybe there is somewhat of a party split coming up, I don't know. But does that make them more dangerous? If they feel like a coalition, if they feel like some of their power and some of their numbers could be falling away, or they have to push it,

they have to push people out because they're just too far to the left, say the DSA can be insane with some of the, I mean, I think Jackabet magazine, I mean, come on. Does that make them more dangerous? Does that make them want it more because, you know, they see that there's something that is falling away at that point? I think what they have realized is that DSA will never be a national level party unless they're a local party first. And so they, there's been a lot of discussion and maybe debate within the various DSA factions, the caucuses, the various caucuses of DSA.

and they're talking about abandoning electoral politics at the national level and trying to go all in and submit a foothold, build a strategic base at the local level. And, you know, it's maybe there are a handful of other kind of far-left parties like the Party for Socialism and Liberation that they're also competing with. But I think we probably have been towards this. I think the end, if you want to look at this as like a tournament bracket, I think we're going to end up in the championship between the populist left and the populist right in this country. I don't know when, almost certainly be within my lifetime, if it could be in the next four years. So I think at some point, I mean, you look at all the, yeah, they're young progressives,

but you look at the Democrat Party, and there's a lot like the Republican Party, they're old. And so the question is, who are they replaced with? And Hakeem Jeffries is, he's not a far left guy, he's a progressive, he's an establishment elite type of guy. and I think what will probably happen is you get these parochial type groups on the left and they hold political power at a local level and they use that as a strategic base. And maybe they take over a region of a state and maybe they take over a state eventually. I don't know. I guess it defines how you define dangerous.

Well, yeah, one of the things that you do talk about is, it seems like the right is thinking that these groups are going to go hot. It's almost like they want them to go hot, which is something you don't want. I mean, look at what 2020 brought. But that is something that you have to think about, is that if it does start going into a populist direction, you know, on both sides. if both sides are just as populism, and it's not radical enough for these people. I mean, we haven't even talked about, you know, Antifa yet.

But if it's not radical enough for these people, what could they possibly do? And, you know, if DSA decides they want to go to the political route, wants to go to political route, okay, fine. That doesn't mean that they're going, that means they're probably going to want to stay away from groups like that. But there are going to be groups like, I mean, Antifa is, they take breaks.

They disappear for a while. They never stop talking, but they disappear for a while, and you don't see them. But eventually, and especially if the last 100 days, have told anybody anything,

they're going to be back soon. So, I mean, how do we, you know, how do you see that playing out as far as when it comes to violence?

Because I think that's what, I think people are, I think Republicans are fine with losing. As long as they have a seat at the table, as long as they're there, as long as they're getting a paycheck, they can make a living doing this, doing whatever it is that they do, whether it be politics, whether it be commentary or whatever. But it doesn't seem there are groups out there on the left who are all about tearing this down. So when do you see, what do you see to be a catalyst where that could reintroduce itself? Well, I look at these groups like Antifa and the various affinity groups across the country. They're true revolutionaries.

They view themselves as revolutionaries. They're working towards revolution. You look at the establishment elite, especially within the mainstream Democrats. And they are reformers. They don't want to topple the government. They want to take it over and run the government. And then you get these far left groups that are revolutionaries. And they want to abolish their anti-government.

They want to abolish the government. They want to abolish police, abolish prisons, abolish all forms of hierarchy. And so I look at that and I say, these two people are natural bedfellows in that they hate everything to the right of Bernie Sanders. But really, they have competing interests on a strategic level. The establishment elite want to run the country.

they want control of government. The far left does not. They want to overturn everything and abolish the government. So then you get into this situation where Antiva is really nothing more than a cudgel that the establishment elite use. They used it against a Trump administration. They used it against right-wing groups like right-wing organizers, right-wing events and rallies that we saw from 2016 through, you know, 2020, obviously. So the question is, when will the establishment elite want to use their cudgel again? And it's, okay, obviously this year, you know, looking through all the Mayday events that are coming up.

This is the first Mayday that I can recall in the past several years, probably since like 2021 maybe, was actually a risk of Antifa Black Block forming, like Black Block demonstrations. So I think we are getting there. When you look at Antifa, one of the biggest reasons why they have been inactive. It's like, you know, I've followed them since 2016. And it's like in 2021, someone just flipped a switch. And they, there were sporadic events. You know, there's been like a couple of campaigns where they've been active.

But nothing sustained, nothing widespread. It's been extremely localized. It's been extremely short term. and so in order for them to operate, there has to be some level of support there. And for the past few years, there's not been support. They're on election night in Seattle. There was a black block demonstration. And it ended when police made five arrests.

They went through and arrested five of these people because the black block demonstrators were arrested for graffiti, vandalism. And so they're just had the Mike Day, who was the Portland Police Chief or Portland Police Bureau Chief, said in May 2024 that they had essentially adopted counterinsurgency tactics against the Rose City Antifa, all the various Antifa groups in and around Portland. And he said there was a national, there was an information sharing, basically a center for lessons learned, sharing their best practices for law enforcement, a, agencies across the country. And they have all adopted, I think, kind of these, more or less, you read what they're doing. And it's like, hey, that kind of actually sounds like counter-insurgency to me. And so I think there's just been this huge coordinated effort. And no one has been kneeling for Black Lives Matter anymore. No one has been kneeling for Palestine. City leaders are not giving anyone room to riot.

I just think the underlying conditions for Antifa direct action have not been there. And they've, And that's one reason why we haven't seen them. With all the talk about Trump's a dictator and we have to do more and we've got to escalate and, you know, protests don't work now. We have to move to direct action. Now we're getting into the period where I think some of these Antiva groups could actually start to reorganize and be let off the leash again. I think obviously we'll see it for May Day. and then I threw the summer, I don't see why we wouldn't see it. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest.

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So when you bring up like Trump basically arresting judges or, you know, just basically kicking judges off the bench, you will see some people, you know, on the right be like, you know, you'll, I'll tell them, okay, he does that, these groups that we're talking about, and so, you know, all these groups, that's an activation switch for them. Whoever is informing them is going to use that as an activation switch. And people are like, yeah, that's where we have to get to. That's, you know, put a little Nickland Accelerationism in there and be like, yeah, that's what we need. Do you think that that's why Trump isn't really moving forward in unmasse to try to get rid of these judges? I mean, the judges are insane.

I mean, if it's true that 30 to 40% of the judges in the D.C. court, in the D.C. district, we're born in another country. I mean, we're basically infiltrate. I mean, we don't have a country. We don't have a country at all at this point. As far as I'm concerned, you can't look at it and tell me that we have a country because we don't have a, you know, especially under this world order, you have to have a constitution in order to be considered, really to be considered part of the post-war order.

And we don't have a constitution anymore, and we don't have judges who are even born here. And not to mention, sure, politicians that are in charge or the elites behind them may want people who weren't born in the United States to be judges. But what does that say about the people who weren't born here who'd want to be judges? So, I mean, we're, well, to go back to the question, do you think that may be one? one of the reasons why Trump isn't activating so quickly on getting rid of some of these judges because he knows that the potential for street violence is there. And he's not willing to crack down on it while he wasn't willing to crack down on it in 2020. Well, I think a large part of that has to do with who is advising the president.

Earlier this week, there was an executive order in one of the sections in the executive order directed the Department of Justice, so Attorney General Pambonty. and Secretary of Defense, Pete HECSF, I think it gave them 90 days to identify, forget the exact term. It was something like excess military national security assets, basically telling them identify with National Guard, active component, military, whatever, personnel, equipment, training opportunities, whatever,

to be, that could be used for domestic security. And that didn't get a lot of press. The left wing has been covered. Left wing media has been covering it a lot. And so their, I will just tell you, their conclusion is that the president is serious about invoking the Insurrection Act. And they see this as Trump effectively telling

the Attorney General in Department of Justice, or DOJ and the DOD, to identify personnel or units or equipment or whatever or law enforcement training opportunities to get ready for this. That's how they're taking it. President Trump has previously threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. This is not something that if he invokes it this year, we're going to live under the Insurrection Act for the rest of his term.

I think it would be a trigger. I think it would be, it would greatly accelerate a domestic conflict. And I'm not talking about like 1861 type civil. war. But, you know, popular revolution, Euro-May Don, Arab Springs, you know, whatever they're going to call the American Spring, a color revolution. Terrorism can't, terrorism, obviously. So I, not just against the federal government, but I think against Trump's prominent Trump supporter as they look at enablers. So I think the Trump administration's in a precarious situation where you, I think Trump's just dealing with a popular revolution. I think, I think, Trump's just dealing with a popular revolution.

I think this is something they're going to launch in in 2008. Obviously, there are going to be periods of acceleration, but I think invoking the Insurrection Act is going to make things worse, not better. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person.

So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. I mean, are we looking at like possible posse comitados? I mean, what is that, what would that even look like? I mean, are we looking at what's the, it just completely escapes my mind right now, the law that keeps U.S. troops off of, off of American soil. Yeah, Posse Comitatis Act.

Basically, the military cannot, basically military has to be in a supporting role. It's called MACDIS, military assistance to civil disturbances. They have to report to like a state governor or civilian leadership. It cannot be military leadership.

They'll be martial law. Yeah, I mean, it's not like they weren't in charge in the LA riots or, I mean, even, even, um, April 21st, 1993 at Waco. They were directing everything there, but the, um, yeah. Yeah. So paper reality will differ from the, from the ground reality, sure.

Yeah. So how, again, for people who, you know, are just living their lives, but who are openly, you know, have had Trump signs. And they're in areas where it's kind of mixed, where you're, your neighbor might have a Bernie Sanders sign or you have no idea who I mean how does how would one think about their personal I mean I always say you know when it comes to organization you have to start personally you get your own house in order and you figure out which where your neighbor's at then you figure out where people in your town is that and it has to work out from there it has to you know

you can't it's hard to even think about wanting to organize when your house is, you know, in shambles. So, I mean, how would people even start to consider preparing for what would, to me, if he was to, if he was to invoke the insurrection, if he was to, we're looking at a greater escalation of violence than what we saw in 2020, I think we're looking more along the lines of what we saw in, in Wisconsin, and what was the name of the town with, uh, just going right off, just, the cow written house town. The Canote, the Kenosha. Yeah, Kenosha. Yeah, I mean, where you, where, you know, CNN is reporting as everything was burning in the background and gone out, it's

just, you know, we got, we got some protests going on here. Um, how do people even start preparing for that. Well, when you look, so low intensity conflict is an umbrella term that covers everything from violent social movements on the lower level up to terrorism campaigns, guerrilla warfare, insurgency, popular revolutions or color revolutions. And so that's opposed to high intensity conflict like World War II or Ukraine, Russia. We're not talking about tanks and bombers, but we're talking about something above routine peaceful. It's not just political warfare between Democrats and Republicans. It is an actual form of warfare. And it's kept beneath the threshold of conventional war for lots of reasons.

In low-intensity conflict, we have to remember that we're talking about a very small fraction, overall, a very small fraction, actively engaging in low-intensity conflict. Typically, when we look at them for the past 50-70 years, we're really looking at less than 1%, almost always a fraction of 1% that's actively engaged. And you say, well, we've got a country of 300 plus million people. You know, that's still 3 million fighters. You know, that's a lot. And it is.

So that's the first thing I would look at is what's my actual risk? Do I live in an area that, as you say, maybe it's close politically. Maybe there are competing political activist groups. So that would be my first consideration is what level of protests are you seeing in your area? And, you know, what's the potential for more extreme elements? Like, if you live near a college campus with active communist groups, which are most college campuses, then, yeah, you are at a much higher risk of that. You know, I think the average person probably does not have a huge risk of,

of like being targeted by organized political violence. But coming out in your car's keyed or your tires are popped, I think that's far more likely than, you know, you being assassinated, walking out your front door. So those are some of the things I would look at. And listen, it's hard to say where this thing is going. But, you know, the left, they do not want a conflict to rise to the level of like actual armed conflict.

There's a reason, you know, Gene Sharp wrote, this book, back in the, he wrote several editions of it, but it goes back to like the, at least the 90s, maybe the 70s. It's called from dictatorship

to democracy, and it is about taking down governments through predominantly nonviolent means. So building social power, the use of civil disobedience, undermining a government's

legitimacy, capacity, and authority. Those are the three pillars of a government. A government has to be legitimate. If you're President Trump, you have to be acutely aware of anything that you do that can undermine your own legitimacy, unless Trump's just going off the deep end and then he doesn't have to care about it.

The second pillar is capacity, or authority, authority means that people follow your laws. And then finally, capacity, you have to have the manpower and the resources. So this is something that even if Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, if he has defense leaders, if he has generals or colonels or DoD personnel, or DOJ, whoever. He's got to have the people to do this. If they refuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, guess what? You don't have one. So if you're the left, you have to start looking for, they're already looking at these ways. You have to look for ways to undermine the

legitimacy of the Trump administration or the federal government, undermine the authority by not following the laws and encouraging other people to, quote unquote, be ungovernable, do not follow the laws, and undermine that capacity. Because a piece of paper is a piece of paper. You got to have the people and the money and the resources to actually implement what you want to do. And so I think that is by far the most likely scenario. If we do get into some revolutionary, you know, it's funny, George Soros back in 2020, talked about the United States being in a revolutionary environment. We're obviously going to be in one. Again, I think we're in the beginning of one again. And so that is what I expect. I don't expect, you know, something on the

order of like 1861. It's going to be a popular revolution. We know what they look like. We know the hallmarks. We know all the things to look for. So I think it's going to be predominantly nonviolent attacking those three pillars of the federal government. With the goal of not toppling the federal government per se, but forcing the Trump administration from office, just like we've seen these color revolutions force presidents and dictators and whoever else country's rulers out of office for, I don't know, there's 20 different cases or something like that. I think that's probably what we're looking at.

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What have you heard about whether the judges, to go back to the judges, is there anything in play to basically deal with this? Because the way I look at it is you, the regime wins. The regime has been in power for the life. last hundred years wins if these judges aren't removed because you just you've set it up so that basically the the executive can't be an executive everything has to run through I mean um what what what was it who just some judge said that anyone you wanted to deport you had to have deportation orders on now which basically makes which makes deporting you know I remember I think J.D. Vance said on the All-N podcast, he just mentioned like 10 million.

It's like, okay, if you're doing that, you're not, it's going to take you, you know, 25 years to deport, you know, 10 million people. So what does he do about these judges? Do you, have you heard anything? What are they expecting? Well, our, our view is that Trump has already pretty much just been defying the courts, but very quietly. He hasn't made a big deal out of it. He hasn't flaunted it. But, you know, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration has to, quote, facilitate the return of this Abrago Garcia guy. What's the Trump administration done?

Nothing. So I think they do want to, they obviously want to force Trump into a constitutional crisis where Trump at some point openly violates or takes some sort of punitive action against a judge. And I think they pretty much got their. case with this Wisconsin, the county level circuit court judge. But I look at that as more of an accelerant than a trigger. I think if you're the Trump administration, listen, I don't know. I'm kind of getting outside my realm here with all this judicial stuff. But I think the Trump administration is, I think their current outlook is, look, we just, we continue to do whatever

we think we need to do, and we let the Supreme Court rule on it. where there may be a snowball's chance in hell of the Supreme Court ruling, you know, that the Trump administration can do these things. But there was just a court order against the Alien Enemy's Act that Trump cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to deport these people either. So I don't know. They're obviously trying to force him into some. Trump's problem here,

Trump's real problem is his legitimacy. And if he defies the courts that has looked on by the average American, as an illegitimate action. And so the Trump administration's challenges, they have to convince the people that this is a legitimate action. And if they can't do that, Trump's screwed. All right.

So if Trump does, if he decides that he's going to do this, the legal way, almost certainly the left comes back into power at some point. And we've already talked about this. That's the first thing I mentioned is they get back into power. they are going to be, I don't think it's going to be the, oh, you know, we're going to be putting old

people in jail for, for praying at, you know, at abortion clinics and everything. I mean, I think it would just, that a lot of people will be targeted, whether it would be using the IRS, whether it would be going into their background, whether it be, I mean, anything, you know, they had that book, three felonies a day from 20 years ago. I mean, you could basically find something on anyone. I mean, how much longer can that last? How much longer can the left be allowed to get back in charge without, you know, I'm of the opinion, and I know this is not a, when I say this, a lot of people just can't fathom it

because they just think that either we're beyond it or, you know, we're too technologically advanced or is it i'm of the opinion that there's going to be a hot war one day on the on the on american soil and not something widespread like the whole south was from you know 61 to 65 but the there's going to be pockets of like rifle people have rifles and they're going yeah they're going to have grenade launchers and they're the the state the regime is going to back one group against is going to back one group against another it just doesn't seem like with the way we're going where the left gets elected imports 10 million illegals 15 million illegals the right gets elected they deport 100,000 it just doesn't seem like we have a country and it's I don't know that it's going to be the right

who's going to initiate violence but you know some people on the quote unquote right are going to say something or plan something or do something that's going to set off the left and the regime and I mean I hope I kind of hope it's in my lifetime so that that can get out of the way so that you know, the future can be a little bit brighter and, you know, I'll, I'll deal with that. But it just seems like that's a foregone conclusion if these people regain power and keep, are allowed to keep regaining power because all they do is expand it once they get it. Well, I think it is unsustainable. Frankly, I think if you're, and again, we're on the left, it's not a monolith. We're really talking about kind of the mainstream establishment left.

and then we're talking about the revolutionary far left. And if you're the establishment left, I think you have to take back control without killing the host. And the problem is if we do get into a domestic conflict, then you've got to worry about international investors. You've got to worry about treasuries, treasury sell-offs, failed bond auctions because nobody's buying treasuries. Who in the world is going to buy a third of your treasury bond

when you're on the verge of a civil war or you know or you could be in a you could be locked in a long-term conflict and then we've got to worry about well I say worry you know then the government's going to be worried about how to how do you fund itself if if industry and and the economy is diminished or in some cases shut down your tax revenues disappear what are you going to do historically governments print money and so and now you've got to worry about inflation you got to worry about dollars. And so I just, I'm not very optimistic. I try to be realistic, but I'm not very optimistic about the future. And a lot of my, what I say, realistic is informed by history. And history is just not that optimistic regarding where the United States

is in this cycle and probably what we're going to live through. This is, we're kind of talking about worst case scenario. And there's, you know, lots of people talk about black swans. I don't know what a white swan would be. Maybe we have a white swan. I don't know. I doubt it. But I agree with you. I think we're headed to a bad place and it's not just going to be bad politically and socially. It's going to be bad economically and bad financially and monetarily. We are, you know, if you listen to Ray Dalio, he talks about short-term debt cycles and long-term debt cycles and we're at the long-term debt cycle at the end of a long-term debt cycle. I think there's a case to be made that we are at the end of imperial history, or we're at the end of an imperial cycle,

the American Empire is. And then we're probably, you know, you look at the average age of a currency as a world reserve currency. We're nearing the end of that age of the dollar being the world reserve. There's no competitor on the horizon right now. But, you know, this is not sustainable. I think international investors are starting to look at this. So my whole point is, This is not just going to be a domestic conflict. This is like House of Cards coming down scenario because nothing in our culture is sustainable right now. And so, yeah, I agree. I think we probably will.

I mean, then we got to solve the problem of Medicare and Medicaid. And that's not a 2030s problem. That's a 2020s problem. That's going to be a huge political driver in the 2028 election. It may be the only, maybe the primary for boomers, maybe the primary driver of electoral turnout, right? Who are you voting for? The guy that's going to save Medicare and Social Security,

the guy that's going to kill it. Which is all, which is, I'm saying all this to say, it's going to get real messy. It's already complex. It's even going to get even more complex from here. And I do think we're probably headed towards a domestic conflict by the end of the decade. Employers, rewarding your staff.

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Visit OptionsCard.I.E. today. Yeah, and if people are voting on just basically voting their wallet, which is a lot of what's just happened in the last, especially since the 70s, well then, you know, all the social, all those issues go out the window. And, you know, we don't know where we're going. And there's really no foundation, no moral foundation.

Everything would just be basically, would be based off of what the government can pay for on what you can afford. And that really does open up the, um, open up the possibility that, more, you know,

socialistically financialized kind of, you know, if MMT, if MMT gets in there, I mean, we're, that's, that's the way you solve those,

you solve those problems about, oh, if there is a domestic conflict, how do you pay people? Well, we got MMT. And, you know, at that point,

you're basically telling, how worried are you about your bond rating? You can just keep print, you're sort of, it would flip the whole philosophy of how finance works and the mechanisms of how finance works basically destroys Wall Street. Wall Street is kind of irrelevant

if that kind of thing happens, even with there's like a CBDC because they're not, I mean, this is I don't think it's going to happen as quickly as some people thought it was going to. I think Trump is probably the delay. He just hit a delay. But the way it's going, especially if these people, you know, if the regime gets back in charge, especially with some of the things that, like the tech billionaires were really worried about and why they went over to Trump,

which was mostly by what some of the, some of the things coming out of the Kamala camp about, you know, taxing unrealized capital gains and things like that. I mean, we're just down, we're down a road where it's like, you know,

really people need to start thinking about growing their own food. Yeah, you've got to be as self-sufficient as possible. And that's not even to, we haven't even talked about global trade and the end, you know, maybe then, probably the end of globalism and,

you know, by, Japan and the Philippines seem to think we will, and maybe by the end of the decade. We get 20% of our imports from China, roughly 40% from the Indo-Pacific, another 20% from Europe. What happens when that breaks down? I mean, we're talking about not having the things we need to maintain a civilization. So I think we will go backwards for a while. Let me just say this one other thing, too.

One of the real problems of 2020, those riots and the protests would not have been as big. if we didn't have a recession and we didn't have the COVID lockdowns that put people out of work and all of a sudden you don't go to work Wednesday morning. You don't have class Wednesday morning because you're doing online or whatever your college is closed. And you have stimulus money. You got walking around money. Of course you're going to go out and riot all Tuesday night.

If we do have a, if we have a domestic conflict that actually puts a lot of people out of work, that's going to be a lot of people resorting to criminal behavior as well. And I hate to be like a doomer. And I try to be even keel and just recognize the worst case scenario is rarely the most likely. But, you know, I think this could get very ugly, very quick. So all that's to say, you know, high youth unemployment is a universal warning indicator for civil unrest.

And so if we do have a period where maybe AI and robots, maybe that does eventually lead to, like 40% job loss. I'm talking about like neo-Luddite movements and lots of young people with nothing to do and they realize they don't have a future where they realize their future is not going to be what they wanted it to be. And what do these young people do? So I just, you know, people talk about these industrial revolutions. They always generate internal conflict.

And so, yeah, what is this the fourth industrial revolution we're in now or something like that? And then you got the fourth turning and all these other kind of long-term, indicators. And I think I don't see a reason why they're not all ending at roughly the same time or overlapping at roughly the same time, like this in the next decade. Yeah. Yeah. I think people, they're one of the biggest problems that we have is that basically because of the civic nationalist religion, we think that you elect the right person and they can fix everything. And really the only way that, you know,

and I hate to say it, the only way that you even attempt to start fixing something in this country is if you get elected, left wing or right wing, and you basically become a dictator and start tearing things down. I mean, it just doesn't seem like there's, like, change. And I'm talking about change that you may like, or you may now.

I was saying all throughout last year, I think left wing or right left or right wing authoritarianism is in our future. And I know which one I prefer, but I'm prepared for both. So, yeah. Yeah, life just sucks under authoritarianism because you get all these, you get all these controls. And they more often than not, they destroy the economy. They may fix some social issues. Maybe they paper over.

Sometimes they make social issues even worse. But life is not good under authoritarianism. There was a book that came out in, I like, probably 2017, I think called How Democracies Die. Have you heard of that book? Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, Ziblatte and Levinsky. I, you know, I read it with an open mind.

I actually thought it was a really good book. These are two lefty professors, and they wrote a book about how democratic systems end in authoritarianism. It was actually a really good book. but they talked about all these cases where you have these right-wing authoritarians rise up and take control of a country and become dictators. And I just thought, man, that's so weird. Why, you know, for no reason at all?

You know, why would they do that? And so I started reading, so I started, you know, reading about the history of all these, what's the guy that said, now the rest of the story, Paul Harvey. Okay, now the rest of the story, the rest of that book, I started going back through and reading the history of what it's a foot race between communists and, you know, fascists or whatever you want to call them. And it's not like fascists just arise out of nothing. I think fascism is a reactionary response to communism if you go back and actually read history. It's like, well, what are they reacting to? They're reacting to communism. And so this was not a case where you just have these right wing authoritarian and say, you know what? It's Sunday morning. I'm going to take this place over. It is, we have to take power to stop the communist from taking power. That is something that these people who are so intellectually dishonest, they always talk about right-wing authoritarianism,

and they never talk about that being a response to left-wing authoritarianism, which is the history of the past 100-plus years. So I agree. I think we are in a foot race towards that as well. And, you know, with $37 trillion in national debt, we got $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities. lots of people are getting a haircut, lots of money is going to be printed in the future. We're on track for a conflict. This is not something that a country can just get over.

I don't think without actually fighting it out for a future. Because what happens is you have the vision of this country, and you have two visions, and they're diametrically opposing. This is a zero-sum game. If one side wins, the other side will lose. and I just, I look at the fracture of the elites, and this is something that Peter Turchin and put in a Jack Goldstone, a lot of other people talk about, a fracturing of elites between the elites and counter elites,

and I think that it has what has happened. And something that Jack Goldstone points out, it's just very fascinating. A lot of people think revolutions are bottom up. It's like peasants and pitchforks. Now, what happens is you have a fracturing of elites, and the elites decide to go to war, and you have the peasant and the merchant class and the middle class,

line up behind the side that they that they favor that that is promising them the best vision of the future i think that's where we're at and that leads to state breakdown civil war yeah it always seems like the the elites side with the quote unquote lower class to fight the middle the high low versus the middle and the middle is the ones and the middle are the ones that are actually the productive class the ones that know how to run a water treatment plant and things like that And then, so if you get that, if you get that, and we've had that, we've had it without, without too much violence. But it's started. And all that has to do is just go a little bit more radical.

And then, you know, infrastructure, you have infrastructure issues, which historically you've seen it. Yeah. Anyway, Mike, I'll let you go. Tell everybody where they can find your work. Yeah, well, thanks. I'm, I'm pretty active on Twitter slash X at Grayzone Intel, Gray with an A. And then I also write a substack. I write sit reps on what's going on with the far left and what I'm reading about in terms of like revolutions and civil wars throughout history that I think we can learn from. And the substack is grayzone research.substack.com. Somebody will probably want to know. Isn't there another outfit called the gray zone?

Gray zone, are you affiliated with them? Yeah, there is the gray zone and I have zero affiliation with them. Yeah, I chose gray zone because it's the space between war and peace. It's the area of low-intensity conflict, but no, I have nothing to do with the gray zone. I'm sure a lot of people are very happy to hear that right now. Thank you very much. Love to have you on again in the future to continue, especially to get updates if things start getting, you know, start progressing. Take care. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.