This is how Wikipedia describes the resistance movement during World War II,
During World War II, resistance movements operated in German-occupied Europe by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.
The Underground used guns and bombs. They killed Nazi soldiers and they sabotaged bridges. They spied for the Allies. Their heroic contribution to victory has been described in books and depicted in movies.
This is how Wikipedia defines unconventional warfare:
Unconventional warfare (UW) is broadly defined as "military and quasi-military operations other than conventional warfare"[1] and may use covert forces or actions such as subversion, diversion, sabotage, espionage, biowarfare, sanctions, propaganda or guerrilla warfare. This is typically done to avoid escalation into conventional warfare as well as international conventions.
This is from an article about how the Viet Cong employed various tactics in geurrilla warfare.
The tactics of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War exemplify innovative approaches to guerrilla warfare. Their methods not only challenged conventional military strategies but also highlighted the significance of adaptability in overcoming technologically superior forces.
Through a combination of psychological warfare, intelligence operations, and an intricate network of tunnels, the Viet Cong achieved notable successes against their adversaries. Understanding these tactics provides valuable insights into the broader military history of Asia.
Trump would like nothing better than to have an excuse to declare a national emergency so he could use the military against protesters. One way to assure he’d do this would be to have even one person even bring a firearm to a protest, let alone use it. Those who organize protests must make absolutely certain that they emphasize that the protest must be peaceful and that any lawbreaking like vandalizing buildings is unacceptable. Even then, they risk having a Trump supporter pretending to be anti-Trump do something illegal or violent.
When Trump incited his Jan. 6th insurrection he used the word peacefully only once. Here it is in the context of the long speech during which he did his best to rile up his audience. (you can read the transcript here).
Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
When any of us use terms like guerrilla warfare, or even terms like resistance, we have to preface them by peaceful. Trump wants to depict his enemies as potentially violent. He was given the gift that kept giving right up to the ballot box when someone shot at him, and later someone was caught trying to shoot him. He’s depicted immigrants as dangerous. Thom Homan got the message and at least on one occasion had his ICE agents use flash bang grenades when approaching a residence to make arrests. Of course this was televised. The message being sent was that whoever they were arresting were dangerous.
Many unconventional tactics used successfully in actual warfare can be adapted to be used nonviolently to, if not thwart, at least slow down and impede Trump’s assault on democracy.
In Europe and South Vietnam most of the population cooperated with the resistance because they supported them. They let them hide from the Nazis and the South Vietnamese and American soldiers. We are not so lucky here to have a majority. Half of the citizens support Trump and MAGA. But crucially the other half doesn’t. But then we literally don’t have to hide from Nazis in crawl spaces in our houses.
Consider the following tactics used by the Underground and undogs as they challenged superior forces.
Propaganda .
Thas to be used far more effectively than it has been so far. The legacy media is aptly named. It reminds me of the well known website Legacy.com which has probably millions of obituaries on it. It has to be used to report the unvarnished truth about how Trump is destroying Democracy and document both the pain he is inflicting on people and his failures to keep his promises. They must report on his lunatic proposals for ehat they are, the proposals doomed to failure coming from a lunatic. In order to reach the MAGA world high profile members the resistance have to appear on Fox News and any other right-wing media that will have them. These venues are chasing ratings and I expect they would welcome people like Jamie Raskin and Hakeem Jeffries, two of the resistances’s best spokespersons, on their shows. We have to be honest when we look at people like Adam Schiff who is fine on MSNBC where he conveys intelligence, but not the rip your throat out machismo that gets the attention of the MAGAs.
The resistance is playing catch-up in the use of social media and alternative media. Websites like the liberal HUFFPOST have had their comment section innundated by MAGA trolls. Liberals can go on MAGA websites and do the same thing. They can try this on X until their account is suspened. They can even sign up to Truth Social using, as I recommend, a burner phone and a new email address unattached to their regular email, and post there until they get banned.
Another aspect of propaganda involves publicizing all the division in the Republican Party. Each time a Republican takes a stand against a Trump policy this must be noted. For example, the public needs to see more stories like this on CNN:
Psychological warefare
This is related to using propaganda effectively. It involves recongizing two things. One involves exploiting the vulnerabilities in Trump’s personality. He is notorious for his reactivity. While Trump tries to distract with his craziness, he is just as easily distracted. He makes exploitable errors on a regular basis. A good example was how he made the DC plane crash all about him. Even today he turned the National Prayer Breakfast into a poltical rant. (See 'Christian Nationalism, y'all': Internet mocks Trump's 'heresies at prayer breakfast') These incidents should be publicized by the non-MAGA media.
The other aspect of psycholgical warfare is using it to gradually get through to those Trump supporters who haven’t been totally brainwashed. This involves but isn’t limited to tryng to instill empathy for those who Trump is hurting and spotlighting how his policies are hurting them. Trump supports should be reminded of all of his broken promises.
Subversion
This can be done by Democrats in Congress. There are ways they can throw molasses in the GOP’s gears which won’t grind the Republican juggernaut to a halt but it will slow it down. See “How Senate Democrats Can Delay & Defy Trump's Agenda with Procedural Hardball” from Indivisble.
Excerpt:
Trump’s blitzkrieg power-grab begs a question: what, if anything, can congressional Democrats in the minority do? Are they powerless? Republicans in the Senate love to act like their majority gives them unchecked power—but it doesn’t. The rules of the Senate are designed to protect the rights of the minority, and Democrats have tools at their disposal to grind Senate business to a halt if Republicans try to ram through Trump’s extremist agenda. The three biggest weapons? Blanket opposition, quorum calls,and blocking unanimous consent—parliamentary guerrilla tactics that can slow, stall, and obstruct at every turn.
Diversion
Trump, as I wrote about yesterday, is doing this already. This is related to subversion. When done effectively subversion forces the Trump and the GOP to pay attention. Trump throws out annexing Greenland and Gaza and owns a long news cycle. For example, Rep. Al Green announced that he plans to file an impeachment bill against Trump. It is doomed to failure. Even senior House Democrats are brushing it off. But it is still a diversion and while not headline news, will be covered. More importantly, it may lead Al Green, who is described as a bombastic back bencher, into someone MAGA media wants to have on their shows.
Protests
Losing the Vietnam War was the primary reason for the American defeat and withdrawal, however leading up to that, the massive anti-war protest movement made country and its leaders ready to get the hell out of there. Added to the growing number of American casualties, LBJ had to have been relieved when that last helicopter left Saigon. Those of us old enough remember the chant “hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today.”
Above, LBJ and Robert McNamara from LBJ and the VietNam War.
Donald Trump and Musk stopping USAID funding is killing kids. Unforunately there’s no resonant rhyme the resistance can use to highlight this psychopathic cruelty. “Hey, hey, Trump and Musk, how many kids did you kill today” doesn’t have a ring to it, but we should use it anyway.
There’s one major weapon in the resistance armory tthat the World War II underground, the Viet Cong, and the anti-war movement didn’t have:
The Courts
Lawsuits are already being used to challenge the illegal moves being employed to enable Trump to become a dictator. His birthright citizenship executive order has been derailed by two court rulings. There are numerous lawsuits about his firings of Civil Service employees. There are suits about the effort to go after DEI hires and what Musk is doing at the Treasury Department and other attempts to steamroll over the law. Individualscansue too. For example the Defense Department backed down when a transgender soldier sue and the court seeming inclined to take their side (Article).Trumo and Musk have become lawsuit lightening rods.
As these lawsuits work their way through the court system, some are likely to make their way to the Supreme Court. This is where the rubber will meet the road. None of these suits charge Trump himself with doing something illegal. The court has already ruled that Trump is above the law in this respect. If lower courts rule aganst what Trunp has done and the suits reach the Supreme Court, they have to decide whether or not what he did was constitutional. It will be the ultimate test as to whether the right-wingers on the court are totally in the bag for Trump, or actually believe in. the Constitution.
