Resisting a (hypothetical) tyrannical US President.

 WIP

This is how I would go about resisting a Fascist takeover in the US- it is of course hypothetical, as such a thing would never happen, and there will never be reason to organise resistance against armed suppression and tyranny. I am a military historian, and I will be mixing the insights of Ma Tse-Tsung, Giap, and the French analysing them, with my own studies. Guerilla is a weapon that a nation or populace inferior in arms and military equipment may employ against a more powerful aggressor nation or the military of their own if governed by tyranny.
When there is some sort of (perceived or actual) repression, the ground is ripe for a reaction. Sometimes and somewhere that reaction will be militant. The course of action thereafter can be divided into phases.


Mao uses the following:

1. Arousing and organizing the people.
2. Achieving internal unification politically.
3. Establishing bases.
4. Equipping forces.
5. Recovering national strength.
6. Destroying enemy's national strength.
7. Regaining lost territories.
Practically, Ho Chi Min and Giap organized this into five phases:


1. Propagandists and agitators start a subterranean work in the population. They are attentive to and receptive of dissatisfaction with the legal authorities (those imposed by the reigning system, it may be the occupation authorities as well, but we will refer to them as legal authorities hereafter) and the pervading social conditions.
Their primary task is recognisance and they are thus careful not to call attention to themselves by revolutionary rhetoric. Instead, they can start discussion groups and clubs, for example, where their ideas can be debated and discussed.

2. In the current late modern information society, Social Media plays a crucial role in this. Discussion groups or pages on Facebook can serve as a fertile recruiting ground by the agitators under false identities and profiles (but better done than the Russian obvious ones from IRA). If one were (hypothetically) trying to organise resistance against a (hypothetical of course) Fascist takeover in the US, groups like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Democrats would be ripe recruiting grounds, but both have so many followers that it would take a lot of work to find potential actual resisters there (though an AI looking through comments could do it), so smaller and more focused groups are better suited to lay the groundwork. There are already veterans groups in defence of democracy and against certain politicians and policies, and here actual armed activists should be easy to find (if one was interested in that). Also look for actual members of the armed forces who has not forgotten their oath to the Constitution to defend against all enemies within and without. It is important that these are kept separate from the non-military networks, and ideally they continue to serve while keeping a very low profile with regards to their opinions, but for now no one is to act, merely talk and donate money via safe transfers such as PaySafe that banks and authorities cannot track.

2. When these agitators has ensured local support and found suitable recruits they start to organise activists in groups on Telegram, Discord or similar safe communications platforms. Still merely for debate, but now for subjects that the authorities deem illegal. In order to enter, one most be vouched for by at least two members. Mao advices doing it according to age, profession or interests, it does not matter as long as they are organised. These groups have the task of surveying each-other and the individuals in them, in the political work and are themselves surveyed by committees. The goal of this organisation is to enmesh the individual tightly in a network of parallel hierarchies. Or rather new hierarchies organised and depending on the rebels/partisans/freedom fighters/resistance. One hierarchy is territorial; starting with the family, city block, farm etc. and is subject to various levels of a hierarchy topped by the rebels' provincial government. Another hierarchy is based on the above organisations, it incorporates male and female youth groups, mother's groups, peasant organisations, workers' organisation and any conceivable organisation the rebels can think of organising their subjects in. The imperative is that no one escapes being spun into the new parallel hierarchies where the territorial one "crosses" an organisational one surveying it that it itself surveys. To engage and organise the individual politically and generally and to ensure that there is always an eye kept on it in every aspect of its life. There is a parallel to the religious hierarchy governing the life of “Faithful” Moslems, and the various political organisations based on Sharia they are part of. But also family and clan organisation and the code of (dis)honour upheld by slander and snitching. No one in the Middle- East is free of it, and it is a very strong and successful social control. That is what must be attained to gain control of the population in the areas you wish to control secretly.
That is totalitarianism, however, and we fight for democracy, so we must do something else. The resistance still needs to be organised and controlled somehow though, so we need to find a different way. Interests and capabilities is a possible way. And from there, actual activists can be siphoned into suitable groups; finances, cybersecurity and hacking, information, intelligence, logistics, combat, etc. for each geographical area to carry out that task. All these needs to be organised in small cells of no more than ten people, where they know no one from any other groups. Only the group leader and second-in-command know their superior, and one colleague from another group. The combat groups also start building secret stashes of weapons while logistics stashes weapons, explosives and materials for making explosives.

This is where organised resistance to the legal authorities starts spreading, a process referred to by the French as "pourrissement" (rot/rotting); as a subterranean network of spies and agitators starts spreading and channel dissatisfied elements into the movement while they assert pressure- economical and physical pressure (by violence)- on the authorities' supporters. The resistance cannot use terror to intimidate neutrals to join, but must make sure to hit only legal targets. It must act righteously and not stoop to the enemy’s standard. The harsh reprisals a tyranny will enable, will drive neutrals to the resistance anyway. And while protests are already taking place in the US as I write, those might be premature. It is during this, stage 2, that they should really be organised, strikes is also an effective tool. Those authorities that will often only discover the ripples on the surface of the water created by the dissidents at this stage (the guerrilla thrive, struggle and live in the population like the fish does in the sea as aptly described by Mao "The people are the sea and the guerrilla fighter the fish"). The ripples being the various signs of discontent and lacking support of the authorities.
This, then, suddenly places the authorities in a struggle to maintain authority and governing, as the rebel network, organisation and hierarchy will have supplanted legal rule in many places and compete with them in many others. Further, the rebels are now able to escalate the number of agitators, saboteurs and strike teams from their safe bases; i.e., the havens of safety where their rule has totally supplanted the legal one.


3. Armed gangs are raised for smaller actions such as ambushes on government patrols and raids on isolated police posts. The agitation, sabotage and targeted murders started in the last phase is stepped up in intensity and the latter proves itself the most powerful tool in the rebels’ arsenal. The armed resistance and murders challenges the authorities' ability to govern and protect the population- and showcasing that inability to do so; while assassination of the authorities local representatives and selected supporters (or perceived such) will have the same effect with the added benefit that it will make people hesitate to support authorities or accept working for them. Attacks on symbols of the enemy and his ideology is important in this phase as well; be it the American Embassy in Saigon, ancient monuments in Palmyra, World Trade Centre, a night club, or if the tyrant were to hypothetically own hotels, or his right-hand-man a chain of car dealerships, such could be targets as well. As democratic freedom fighters the resistance would have to make sure there are no civilian casualties in such attacks. It is imperative that the training of such armed groups are carried out in secret in remote and/or safe locations, and that they leave phones at home (or follow Karl Karsada’s advice on phone safety here). Loyal officers of the armed forces organise their units of soldiers loyal to the cause, and feed what information they can safely do, to the resistance.


4. Ambushes, sabotage, assassinations of armed forces and police, and other guerrilla actions force the legal authorities to wholly give up on certain areas where the rebels can subsequently create their own provisional governments and further step up the work to mobilise the population and achieve international recognition. Powers of friendly disposition towards the rebels can be in the van of such recognition and the campaign to recognise them; and can now supply them with arms etc. and a regular rebel army can now be created. In the current struggle obviously, areas of Nigeria, Pakistan, Sahel, Yemen, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan are outside of government control locally, the resistance can do the same in areas of the US. Blue states would be a good starting point as they are already in opposition to a hypothetical GOP tyrant. Local loyal National Guard and other units join the rebellion in their area, further providing weapons and expertise.


5. The last phase of the rebellion is a general, all-out offensive against the weakened authorities who are now ready for the death-knell. Loyal units in the still-occupied areas change sides to weaken the authorities even more.


The rebel movement will be freely able to switch back and forth between the various phases and the individual struggle is too complicated and sophisticated to be covered by such a generalised model. However, it can provide a framework for the individual struggle to be studied within.


It is of great importance to recognise some aspects of guerrilla.
There is no difference between soldier and civilian in such a struggle. To differentiate would weaken the movement by taking away assets and resources from it, Mao says "Considering the revolutionary war as a whole, the operations of the people's guerrillas and those of the main forces of the Red Army complement each other like a man's right arm and left arm, and if we had only the main forces of the Red Army without the people's guerrillas, we would be like a warrior with only one arm".[2] The struggle is also not about territory as in classical warfare but rather concerns the mind of the people. Even the regular forces of the movement must hence have a fourfold task to accomplish; to serve as political and military education (and conditioning) for the soldier and administrator, to create and spread propaganda in the population, to serve as a tool for exerting pressure on the opposition and, lastly; as a tool for warfare. Concurrently, tasks usually undertaken by the military; intelligence gathering and logistics, are performed by the civilian sector. However, the border between soldier and civilian is permeable; a teenager can throw stones at soldiers and a young mother is ideal for smuggling explosives. All while this is going on a struggle for support in the neutral population as well as internationally is undertaken in order to mobilise support for you and weaken the backing of his struggle. Internationally there is so little love for the US and no one likes the (hypothetical) Tyrant, so the resistance will have much sympathy that can be translated to support already as it starts. Generally the repressor/legal authority will be weakened to such an extent before the final blow in phase 5 that the outcome of that is already given.