sometimes we can find ready-made tactics, where life is already resisting being ruled

https://twitter.com/lisaljensen/status/1351046887101624320?s=21

other times we must usher in methods from another world or another time as to bamboozle the state’s immune system

From Greece nine years ago, but somehow as relevant as ever.

“We are surrounded by the picturesque ruins of all explicitly political ideas: schools at which no one learns, families bereft of love, banks whose coffers are empty, armies that only lose wars and laws that are merely expressions of “anti-terrorist” paranoia. What does this mean for any kind of new politics—if “politics” is even a suitable word? This question must be answered because strangely enough, insurrection against the entire social order is increasingly the only option left on the table.”

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alex-trocchi-for-the-insurrection-to-succeed-we-must-first-destroy-ourselves

“...insurrectionary assemblies should differ in quality from any so-called “constituent” assembly that creates another state in embryo, and the more self-conscious insurrectionary elements should force out any signs of state collaboration or professional activism, although care should be taken to not impose a singular viewpoint—or worse, identity—on the assembly.”

In honor of MLK Day here’s his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” where he explains his both strategic and moral use non-violent disruptive action to support struggle for civil rights and a place at the negotiation table for black communities on a local and national level.

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

In light of failed the /pol/ attempt to instigate a trucker strike in support of Donald Trump and the very real Teamster strike underway in New York let’s take a moment to explore some potentialities here.

While the social aspect of struggles shouldn’t be ignored and is often a core feature of their power there is a power in blocking important logistical choke points for ‘the economy.’ There’s a reason miners’ struggle were some of the most impactful, they sat atop a critical energy source and exerted leverage over it. It is also not an accident that some of most currently militant and powerful unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the longshoremen’s ILWU.

We can also look to the airport shutdowns that fought Trump’s muslim ban as an example of logistics-aware struggle that flexed its power. We can also see this in the train-track blockades that swept Canada in defense of tribal sovereignty and against devastating resource extraction. There’s also the example of highway blockades that have used logistics disruption to bring attention to BLM and police brutal struggles. All these methods have effectively targeted logistics to achieve their aims.

Just something to mull over in the coming days.

In the text The 36 Stratagems this is called Borrow a corpse to resurrect the soul (借屍還魂, Jiè shī huán hún)
Take an institution, a technology, a method, or even an ideology that has been forgotten or discarded and appropriate it for one's own purposes.

Examples of this range from outdated eastern bloc radar picking up stealth bombers to black blocs bringing back drum lines for communication and morale.

The 36 Stratagems is a sort of folk counterpart to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War that has less to do with the virtue of generals and more to do with cunning ploys and phrases that help generate cunning praxis.

To read go to content section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems

If you watched Biden’s inauguration you may have noticed the red-coated flute players dressed in colonial attire. These are a recreation of the musicians that would play on the battlefield during the American Revolutionary War. They dressed brightly so they could be seen and on top of morale boosting they also signaled communications for maneuvers.

This style of on the field soldier musician has mostly died out and such musicians are reserved for parades, but in the 90s and 00s groups like the Infernal Noise Brigade replicated this tactic along side the black bloc at summit protests.

Morale patches can look cool, but do you really want to be more distinctive?

Deceiving the Sky also has a section on the 36 Strategies where they also discuss the game Go as an operational thinking figure.

A PDF for Deceiving the Sky can be found here:

Deceiving the Sky: Collective Experiments in Strategic Thinking

Go is a game that presents a large finitude of moves that suffice at replicating the large finitude of options in life and thus produce the same creative anxiety one has to fight through. Of course it has its limits in replication, but it also provides a thinking figure for the strength of formation shapes, lines of logistics, envelopment, and so on. It is considered a valuable thinking tool by ancient and cutting edge strategists.

Further reading on Go

Go as it relates to Mao’s protracted guerrilla war: https://senseis.xmp.net/?TheProtractedGame

Go as it relates to the 36 Stratagems: https://senseis.xmp.net/?TheThirtySixStratagemsAppliedToGo

What is operational thinking?

Operational thinking exists at the intersection of strategy and tactics. Operational thinking is also rooted in practice, in the operation as it comes into contact with reality.

Where tactics involve the immanent, are about smaller concrete actions, and often in a moment, strategy sees the big picture and over arching goals. Both are technically impossible to master. You can never totally make sense of chaotic unfolding situations just as there are always too many fundamental existential problems to generalize a grand strategy. This is why operational thinking is needed. To use strategic and tactical thinking in combination only to the extent that you maintain your operational efficacy.

No strategy survives first contact with reality, strategy must in part be emergent. Tactics can be successful in a moment, but without some grasp of a bigger picture you can be susceptible to higher lever manipulated or head towards a dead end. However, over-thinking any of this can also lead to paralysis and indecision that guarantees defeat.

The trick is to balance the courage needed to leap into action with the wisdom of how to act effectively. How to overcome the trembling anxiety that comes with creativity and free movement while also fighting smart and thus fighting well.

As Siddartha is alleged to have said to a pupil while watching a musician float by on the river, “if you pull a string too tight it snaps and if there’s too much slack it doesn’t play.”

In short, we intend to play some beautiful music.

“It is easy to hit a bird flying in a straight line.”
—B. Gracian

Snowball Fights as Revolutionary Practice

Footage of Russian protesters pelting riot cops with snow is making the rounds on here. A letter to Crimethinc points out: “One exciting emergent tactic has been snowball attacks on the police that have fostered confidence and maintained tension while also being an escalation people are comfortable with. If the point of an insurgency is to humiliate the authorities and motivate other partisans to take action, this is certainly a way to do so. In one video circulating on Telegram, you can even see a snowball attack escalating into an attack on a vehicle with a state license plate [reportedly, a vehicle potentially associated with the FSB, the hated Russian the Russian Federal Security Service]. We have seen revolt begin to bloom in these tactics, but, on the other hand, repression has come too.”