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Military Awareness
Richard Barrett and James Discuss Military Use in Historical and Future Colonial and Civilian Settings
© 2020 James LaFond
JUN/8/20
[My comments are in brackets.]
Hello James,
Thank you so much for responding to my line of inquiry in “Where Western Warriors Wend: Parts 1 and 2.” This strange and sundry Christian does not mind your “dark heathen view of Modernity” at all, especially when it can be supported by facts.
It is the sad state of affairs that many dissident disseminators of doom are as intellectually stagnant as the Academic and Media establishments against which they spar, drawing from an “approved” pool of resources to make their “approved” predictions. As I have studied the various schools of striking and grappling over the last year, I have found that the hidebound mentality of “one strike, one kill” Martial Artists are very similar to these stagnant dissidents.
I can safely say that you do not fall into this category, either in your work in combatives or in your work on broad and deep trends of human nature.
[I think that scaled-up social systems tend to funnel us into such strife-inducing polarity.]
There seem to be four lines of response to my questioning that you give that are very interesting.
1. The Connections between the Operational outlooks of the major combatants in WWI and WWII
2. The Role of the Military, Law Enforcement, and Private Military Contractors in a future Orwellian scenario
3. The role of Film and Literature aimed at the Working Class in the Post-War landscape
4. The Strange and Twisted Logic by which the Alt-Right lives
The first two I shall answer grouped together below. The second two I shall answer in a separate response, as to my mind, these topics are quite vast.
Your connections between the Operational outlooks of the major combatants in WWI and WWII is spot on. From the time I was 10 to the time I was 14, I devoured everything I could get my hands on about WWII, as do most boys! But by the end of that period, I felt as if I strip-mined the topic of everything useful.
Those were the days of the release of the films like Defiance, Valkyrie, and Inglorious Bastards. Where Daniel Craig survived, Tom Cruise tried, and Brad Pitt and Eli Roth succeeded. To my mind, nothing much more could be said about the topic, in fact or historical fiction.
As such, I abandoned the study of WWII, and ten years later, with knowledge of WWI under my belt, I think you have connected the Operational pieces between the two wars perfectly.
The state of the British Army between the World Wars was atrocious indeed. It was a classic case of the winner resting on his laurels, thereby rusting on them. I discuss this in-depth in my second book, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War, as British Army interwar organization and doctrine not only negatively impacted their performance in WWII, but also in their performance of Counterinsurgency missions across the crumbling Empire.
It seems to me that the inter-war British Army adopted the worst policies of the defeated German Army in WWI, and scrapped the most successful policies that won them the war in the first place.
[This is a keen observation and it was not altogether senseless to imitate the army that would have fought them to a draw against the odds had not the U.S. intervened. Perhaps it falls into the category of fighting the last war, such as so many unsuccessful Civil War commanders aspiring to Napoleon’s methods after the introduction of the Minnie ball.]
The first of these was the Stormtrooper/Mainline division of labor I outlined the WWI Germans using in “Where Western Warriors Wend: Part 2”. This became in the British rubric Commandos/Regulars division of labor. In WWI and the Victorian Days, everyone was trained to what became “Commando” standards. By WWII, only select units were getting them, as were only select German Stormtrooper units in WWI.
The second of these was a fetishization of technology, and a rejection of the Cavalry tradition. The British in the inter-war years thought their mere adoption of tanks into the Armed Services was all that was necessary to victory—not their tactical or operational employment as armored, up-gunned cavalry.
In fact, what many people do not know is that the British Cavalry tradition up to and including WWI was not the hidebound, Napoleonic mass-charge affair as is portrayed in Steven Speilberg’s War Horse. In fact, the British Cavalry was the equivalent of the Special Operations Forces of the Victorian and Edwardian Era—in terms of both PT, Marksmanship, and Small Unit Tactics.
[Cavalry was a big part of the Russian front in both wars and the Revolution. In The Long Walk, the author describes a Polish cavalry force wiping out a German mortar section in Poland in 1939.]
If anything, I trace Victorian and Edwardian era British Infantry Regiments were the equivalent of our modern-day Green Beret Special Forces, while the Cavalry Regiments were the equivalent of our modern-day Delta Force operators.
This is covered in my first book, The Forgotten History of World War I: From The Dark Ages to 1939. An excellent introduction to this topic is Barthorp, Michael. The Old Contemptibles. London, England: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 1989. A scholarly work made accessible to lay readers that fits the WWI British Cavalry into the wider Army and period context is Sheffield, Gary. The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army. London, England: Aurum Press Limited. 2011. The authoritative scholarly work on this topic is Badsey, Stephen. Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880-1918. Oxfordshire, England: Routledge. 2008.
Unfortunately, the British Army establishment threw this marvelous heritage away in the inter-war years, and it was picked up by the Germans, as you have noted. Indeed, in WWII the Germans found out that it was the Cavalry tactics and not the technology per-se that won the battles, as the Polish Cavalry destroyed 25% of the Panzer forces in 1939 using the Genghis Khanian tactics of encirclement you describe, much to the consternation of Heinz Gunderian et. al. Why these twin facts of WWI British Cavalry quality and WWII Polish Cavalry success is rarely if ever discussed in military history circles is beyond me.
[They looked at Forest’s victory at Bryce’s Crossroads as a clinic on mobile warfare.]
The point about the German Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s successful WWI East Africa campaign is one well noted indeed. In fact, he was the only German that came out looking good in my WWI book. Your bringing up of that point got me thinking...why was it that he reversed roles with the British in Africa, with him and his German cohorts respecting and cooperating with their native Askari troops, while the British troops fighting him seemed to abandon those same principles that built their African Empire?
[One factor might have been Nanibia and the Bantu connection. The German’s had been wiping out racial enemies of the Bantus in the Nanib.]
It led me to go back and consult an excellent source for this particular campaign, Chappel, Mike. The British Army in World War I (3): The Eastern Fronts. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing, 2005.
The answer is that the British sent all of their quality Imperial Operators with Africa experience to the Western Front, while they left the White Colonial Settlers of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nysaland to lead the native Askari troops to handle Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa. Why this matters requires some context on European Imperialism.
The great fallacy of the Postmodern critique of European Imperialism is that its practitioners were inherently racists. When you are the only White man in a country populated by Asians, Africans, or Arabs, you cannot treat them with contempt, because they will kill you. You have to get along and cooperate, as you are out-numbered 100,000 to 1, and you must do so without losing your dignity as a human being.
[I have had a number of Africa friends who have told me that in their homelands in Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana that white men were sought out as mediators in tribal disputes and had a reputation as being fair beyond racial or even individual self-interest.]
In Third World societies, strength is the only thing respected. If the observing inhabitants of said society see that that strength can be harnessed to their self-interest instead of their harm, one will be respected. If the outsider is dangerous but only if provoked, and peaceful if left alone, the outsider shall survive.
If I were to examine my own beliefs, I would say that this idea to me is the crux of the Western Warrior Way in its realist form. The Beowulfian Legend is the Western Warrior Way in its Mythic, Ideal Form. One could say that the realist view is the Western Warrior Way in its Howardian form, while the Beowulfian Legend is the Western Warrior Way in its Burroughsian form.
[Nicely made point—I like this.]
This idea in its realist form was the thesis of my second book All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War, and it seems to be the thesis of all of your works. The real world application of this historical fact was what drew me to your work in the first place.
The problem begins when many more of the outsiders begin to move into the formerly foreign territory. Safety comes in numbers, and the individual need to be dangerous decreases with the insurance policy of “there’s more of us than there are of them.” So does cooperation with the native inhabitants, One has the insidious luxury of treating them with contempt because one can fall back on the large numbers of one’s own group for protection.
This situation was what led to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, as British Officers, NCOs, and Enlisted Men began moving their families to the subcontinent in ever-larger numbers, lessening the need for them to “go native” to get along and creating an ever-widening rift between Britons and Indians. The same thing can be said of America’s expansion into the West.
[I particularly liked The Raj, a history of post 1857 British India, author forgotten.]
In fact, the same thing happened again from 2003-2006 in Iraq, as our guys in the “dance and prance” convoys you so accurately described, operationally obsessed with force protection, and always returning to the safety of the sprawling Forward Operating Bases at the end of such missions, did not see a need to “go native” with local Iraqis, thereby losing intelligence gathering opportunities to see who the terrorists actually were and who was actually planting the roadside bombs. This flawed approach was only rectified with the Surge in 2007, and what do you know? The show turned around! When we abandoned the “going native” Surge policy in 2011 for a State Department-induced “hands off” approach ensconced in the Baghdad Green Zone, it was back to square one. Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.
[I have noted in numerous wargames, that the machinery of Western War has retarded the great virtue of Аrуаn Nomad tradition in that armies tend to become dependent on road nets and then air transport. I suspect that this is very concerning to postmodern commanders tasked with all of these dirty little wars.]
We see this phenomena happening time and time again throughout history. So essentially in the WWI East Africa Theater of Operations, you had Britons who had grown up with large numbers of fellow Britons in the “White Dominions” of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nysaland, and because of it they didn’t feel the need to respect and cooperate with the native Askari troops. Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck and company didn’t have such luxury, and so they turned the force multiplier methods of Clive, Gordon, and Kitchener against the Empire which had originally perfected them.
[This helps explain the phenomenon that I really only know through light reading and war gaming.]

Now to the second point, the Role of the Military, Law Enforcement, and Private Military Contractors in a future Orwellian scenario. This is a question I have been working very hard to answer for the last four years, and it is one you have recently touched upon in your post entitled “What Are Your Thoughts on the Minneapolis Riots? A Question from the Rebel Yell’s Henry Mencken”.
Here is what I think it will look like:
I do not think that the Special Operations Forces, Regular Military Units, and Law Enforcement Officers will be used against average Americans as they are presently constituted.
Why?
Because the demographic from which all these units are drawn are primarily White, Working Class, Blue Collar guys. This is the community that is aptly described by the Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government Justin Gest as being placed in a Leftist-induced “Political Hospice.” Gest summarized the Leftist end goal for this group quite well: “These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?”
[So far, Thomas Chittum has been right. So I will fall back on him and suggest that racial division in the military will be a factor here. He predicts racial polarization within law enforcement and the military. I have friends who have already experienced this in current law enforcement. In fact, many white military men have been murdered by black military men in the military setting overseas. A friend of mine’s uncle had his throat slit by three Bantu marines in Okinawa. I suspect that these elite Military units will only be deployed to avenge the killing of law enforcement officers. I also expect that such units will be scrubbed of men from the race and region being targeted. Also, in Baltimore, I have noticed that same race police on civilian violence is the rule, with white cops going nuts on white civilians and black cops going hard on black civilians.]
The Left cannot have operators from this demographic constitute their security forces because, as the Journalist Neil Munro reports in a 2017 Breitbart Article entitled “‘Political Hospice’ is the ‘Way Forward’ for White Working Class, Says WashPo Editor”:
“The party’s coalition includes environmentalists, lawyers, Latinos, hippies, and electric-car drivers, Gest said, adding ‘there are many people in there who like the privileged status that the Democratic Party gives to certain ethnic groups.’ For the party to welcome the white working class, he added, it would be ‘cheapening’ the privileges given to others.” ( .
This situation is one that almost without exception, nearly every Iraq and Afghanistan combat vet I consider personal friends recognizes. They have no ideological loyalty to a system of Anarcho-Tyranny.
[Richard, I guarantee, that white working class soldier, who are presented with a battery of my anti-Americans quotes taken out of context and then told that I am a “supremacist” of some kind and that I am plotting against this nation would eagerly slaughter me. These men will be fed lies, just like the entire U.S. military was led into battle based on the lies of the 1965? Tonkin Resolution in Vietnam, charges of babies being killed in Kuwait in 1991 and of WMDs in 2003. In Iraq, all of which were false. Please keep in mind that white nationalists have twice tried to kill me for employing black workers, even though we were the same race and class. The larger point is, a conservative American will tend to believe that Anarcho-Tyranny is an accident of poor governance, not an operating system, for he believes that his government is good. He will deny anarcho-tyranny exists and kill the crackpot who claims it does. Latinos and blacks are strong components of line military units and will be selected into racially homogenous special units to put down white unrest. If the get jacked up, then you will have Spec ops units avenge fellow military men by traitor whites. I don’t want you to believe this, just remember that I said it when it happens a decade from now and I’m long gone.]
If this is the case, then what would be the composition of the Military, Law Enforcement, and Private Military Contractors in a future Orwellian scenario?
[I love what you wrote behind—this is ideal. I think I’ll use it in a science fiction story! Actually, I did this in Ghost Snatcher, with the Portland Social Justice Academy acting as a culture war indoctrination center. You realize, that your scenario is scarier than mine! Again, everything Chittum predicted has happened on schedule, and he was assuming that military men would end up on both sides of the Civil War and your concept here fits.]
I conjecture that the future officer corps will be composed of rich, White Collar Caucasians, indoctrinated in war colleges with Postmodernist Ideology composed of Critical Race Studies, Gender Studies, and Post-Orientalism Studies. This is already happening, and its details and dangers were outlined in great detail as early as 2007 in Ralph Peters’ article “Learning to Lose” published in the July/August 2007 edition of The American Interest ( . I can confirm its truth, as one of my closest friends and mentors was military faculty at a prestigious military university, and told me the same story everyday for nearly two years.
[I coach a man who did not reenlist because of the gender studies being forced in his military branch.]
This system of education will not create Western Warriors in the mold of old, but instead, will create War Managers, bean counters—more Lt. Col. Alexander Vindmans, less Lt. Col. Mike Flynns. They will be political commissars policing for ideological loyalty, not tactical and operational success. Think more Lavrentiy Beria and less Georgi Zhuokov.
[Yes, agreed. But recall that the lousy army managers of the Union defeated the winning war-leaders of the Confederacy purely through industrial output and numbers of troops. In the end, what matters is who controls the navy and the airforce.]
But just who will be the Legionnaires that these illustrious Centurions will lead?
The Enlisted Men of this new force will be filled with Immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in a “Green Card Army Scheme” that was originally proposed by the eminent historian and Council for Foreign Relations Fellow Max Boot during the height of the Iraq War in 2005 and again in 2008, along the model of the French Foriegn Legion. (see and also for citations).
[Lots of Puerto Ricans!]
The original idea for this program was to give incentives to guys who had necessary language and operational skills in overseas environments to help us win in Iraq, at a time when the only people we could recruit were the Bough Bergdahls and Bradley Mannings of America.
[I would say that the original excuse for the program was opportunity but the reason for bringing homos in is to serve as spies against patriot soldiers and for bringing Latinos in the reason is the same as having African cops in Baltimore, New York and Minneapolis, which is to shoot us in the alley.]
However, in the future, this “Citizenship for Service” scheme will not be used to fight Islamist terrorists or “Americanize Immigrants” into Western Cultural Mores through Western Warrior Discpline. What then would their operational and tactical training and behavior look like?
[Since U.S. judges have upheld Islamic men’s rights to beat and rape American women and children in multiple states, I assume that Sharia militias will be achieve soon in the U.S., before 2030.]
Look no further than the Pakistani and Bangladeshi UN Peacekeepers, who prior to 2 years ago were the leading UN Peacekeeping contributors (that coveted spot was swept by the Chinese in 2018). These Peacekeepers wear the Western NATO uniforms and gear, and you can round up a few to pose nice for the pictures, but in reality they are all ill-disciplined Third World rabble more interested in boozing, raping, doping, and human trafficking than tactical professional development and execution. As such, their operational employment would be to hold large swaths of occupied territory and terrorizing its ill-armed local inhabitants into submission.
[Yes, Nigerian U.N. troops in Liberia just raped children on the beach. They will do it here too, as soon as sweeping reforms are made by the next president.]
If the Legionnaires would be of such low quality, who then would be the striking arm, the elite Praetorian Guard of this dismal post-apocalyptic future?
This then is where the Private Military Contractors come in—but not in the way that you would think. When the term PMC is brought up, images of Erik Prince and Blackwater abound. But alas, America is not the only one to field such PMCs.
[I’m thinking mostly Latino PMCs in the U.S.]
The authorities of the future will not use American-based groups like Blackwater in their current composition, as they are drawn from former SOF, Military, and Law Enforcement operators who are from the politically unreliable White Working Class of the Blue Collar heartland. Instead, these Private Military Contractors will come from China.
[Dude, Chink PMCs in America! I love it. I never ought of this. It makes sense though. Expect me to use it in fiction.]
In the same way the British seconded British Army officers like Col. Charles “Chinese” Gordon of the Royal Engineers to the Imperial Chinese Army in the 1860s, or Maj. Horatio Kitchener of the Royal Engineers was seconded as a commissioned officer in the Egyptian Army in the 1880s, so the Chinese are doing the same thing today. They have done so with Police Contractors in Italy, South Africa, and there are unconfirmed rumors that some have even sprawled their probing tentacles into Australia and California (See the Italy reference here , the South Africa reference here, , and the Australian and California rumors here, .
This has historical precedent, as the Bolsheviks primarily employed Serbians and Chinese in their internal security services in Russia during the 1920s and 1930s, as they had no historic loyalty or emotional baggage associated with Russia and its people.
[The Ever-Victorious Army under Gordon was something else. Imagine Chinese hive soldiers mass-raping hipster women in Seattle and Portland! I’m really getting optimistic over the future, Richard. What you are suggesting as PMC possibilities is borne out again and again in ancient history: Sudanese blacks killing Egyptians for the Pharaohs, Scythians policing Athenians for Athens, German legions raping and pillaging in Italy, Hessians enforcing anglo on anglo rule, and of course the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia employing Indians as Christian slave catchers.]
Finally, each ethnic and religious group will have its own militias, unaccountable to the law, and used as force multipliers of a tyrannical state. This too has historical precedence, as Julie Mazzei writes in her book, Death Squads or Self Defense Forces: How Paramilitary Groups Emerge and Challenge Democracy in Latin America.
Her work explains how Conservatives villagers in Columbia organized their own militias forces against the Communist FARC guerrillas and their drug cartel backers in the 1980s-2000s. These militias were key to establishing governmental control over Columbia. They cooperated very closely with our 7th Special Forces Group and the DEA, and ultimately were the foot soldiers that broke the back of the FARC insurgency.
Julie Mazzei writes that the Colombian militias needed 3 things to get on their feet, these three things being ex-Military personnel to provide leadership and training in Physical Fitness, Marksmanship,and Small Unit Tactics; financial assistance from business tycoons to pay the troops & buy weapons & equipment; and political support of a faction of the government to prevent the criminalization of these groups, and if that fails, to make enforcement against these groups a low priority.
This is something we are already seeing in the United States with Islamist domination of the Muslim immigration community here. In our very own United States, in the heart of Brooklyn, Islamists have set up armed "self-defense" and "community patrol" organizations tasked with "cleaning up crime." There organized and disciplined with complete command structures, and armed to the teeth ( . This was how the PLO gained power among Sunni communities in Lebanon in the 1970s, and how Hezbollah gained power among Shia communities in the same place in the 1980s.
A preview of what this will descend into is provided by Greece, where Stavros Balaskas, vice president of the Greek Federation of Police Officers, said on April 6 of this year that: "[T]he neighborhood has... platoons, companies, battalions, Kalashnikovs. I don't know any more if we, as a police force, have the political mandate to clear the area. This region is a matter for the army now” ( .
I predict that within 10 years in Europe, groups like this will be the norm. Within 20-50 years in America, groups like this will be the norm.
Such is my prediction for an Anarcho-Tyrannical Future. Do not let my former positive rhetoric dissuade you from my clear-eyed analysis. What is is what is, and because of such, I am a firm believer in focusing on what I can control, not on what I can’t. It’s the only way for anybody to keep from losing their mind.
[Great analysis and thanks so much for the current examples. This has been very exiting reading—I love this stuff.]
Furthermore, I can tell you this: your work, whether virtual, in print, or in person, is indeed “spreading the oil spot” of Western Warrior Culture, providing many men adrift with constructive guidance on how to be men—men who otherwise might turn their confusion created by Modernity to destructive and self-abasing ends.
I may be new around here, but I read your work because, indeed, you do “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” as Psalms 82:3 so aptly says.
Keep on keeping on, brother. This Quarantine will end yet.
Sincerely,
Richard Barrett

Richard, thank you so much for your kind words and your patience for dealing with an asshole like me. And, for the record, I never Kwaranteened, but spread plague from the back of my pale horse out of the snowy hinterlands!
For the record, since this will not be posted until after I leave New Jersey, the government does reverse 911 calls here. The lady I am staying with gets a load, strident, male computer message every day declaring ow many new cordova minus cases are afflicting the body mediacratic every fucking day! It sounds like Solomon Kane waking you every morning and reminding you that the Devil yet paws at your door with his long claws!
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Don Quotays     Jun 23, 2020

This sort of reasoned discourse is one reason I visit daily.

Thoughts:

Chittum.... man was a genius. The only thing he got wrong as of today is gun control. From memory we should have been on very serious restrictions, whereas in real life ownership has exploded for the last two decades.

Military.... from the Whiskey Rebellion to Katrina, the US Military has not hesitated to fire on US civilians whenever ordered to do so, regardless of race, class or creed. However, they all belonged to a culture on the way up or at the pinnacle. Not true today unless one is blind.

Corona-chan.... this has, IMHO, triggered the long feared economic implosion, globally. Everyone, including China, will be very busy domestically. Unless TPTB trigger global war to scapegoat others for their failures. We will see. I'd say avoid high value target areas.h
James     Jun 28, 2020

Amen.
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