Our country seems headed for a political crisis, with the enemies of Deplorable America making noises suggesting they are planning a post-election “Color Revolution”-type coup against Trump. As a long-time Russia-watcher, I suggest that the failed Soviet coup of 1991, and the collapse that it spurred on, is instructive.
The Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency, August, 1991
The key point that year came when Soviet military and security
units refused to move against Boris Yeltsin and his defenders. Could something
like that happen here, with Trump playing the Yeltsin role?
What yours truly has dubbed the globalist Blob has
been signaling for some time that it has no intention of yielding to
Trump come election day. Hillary Clinton, in her guise as the post-American Madam Defarge of the
present Cultural Revolution, h as even stated publicly that
Joe Biden should not concede the election to Trump “under any circumstances.” [Morning Greatness: Hillary Clinton Says Biden Should Not
Concede ‘Under Any Circumstances’, by Liz
Steele, AmGreatness.com, August 26, 2020]
Meanwhile, the Democrats, with help from rabid Never Trumpers
like Bill Kristoland David Frum, have
been “wargaming”
scenarios for preventing Trump from taking office should he win, developing
a plan for
what Trump has correctly described as “an
insurrection.” [The Billionaire Backers of
the ‘Insurrection’, by Julie Kelly, AmGreatness.com, Sep 14,
2020] The plan is to claim that Trump has stolen, or attempted to steal, the
election. “As far as our enemies are concerned,” as I wrote here last month,
“they are on the right side of history, and neither election law nor the
Constitution or any antiquated notions about fair play will stop them.” [Revolution and Resistance: How can elections continue?,
American Remnant, September 4, 2020]
The mail-in balloting plan plays into the Blob’s wargaming. If the
Democrats can’t swing the election their way by hook or crook, then the lengthy process of accounting for
all the mail-in ballots could be used as a means to sow confusion and chaos,
giving them room to maneuver in the aftermath of Election Day.
The Blob’s minions have been signaling their intention to drag out
the vote count. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer,
for example, declared on Face the Nation that her state would not be held to
any “artificial deadlines” for reporting election results. [MI Gov. Whitmer: No ‘Artificial Deadlines’ for Announcing
Election Results, by Jeff Poor, Breitbart,
October 11, 2020] In an example of the psychological projection characteristic
of Democrats, Whitmer further claimed that those who might want to expedite the
vote count had “political agendas.”
Meanwhile, the Blob’s militant wing has been circulating a plan
for post-election disruption. [READ: Left-wing Radicals Post Online Guide to
‘Disrupting’ the Country if Election is Close, by Joel
Pollak, Breitbart, October 12, 2020] A Leftist group calling itself ShutDownDC [Tweet them]
plans to prevent a Trump “coup”—more projection there—by
shutting down the country and forcing Trump out if the vote is too close to
call. The plan calls
for “sustained disruptive movements all over the country.” The militants also
state that they intend to demand that “no winner be announced until every vote
is counted.”
ShutDownDC further proclaims that it has no intention of allowing
the country to return to normal. The goal is to “dismantle” what it calls “interlocking
systems of oppression.”
This isn’t just about an election—it’s a blueprint for completing
the Left’s anti-American Cultural
Revolution.
In the chaos that appears increasingly likely after Election Day,
we may not even have a clear idea of what happened–-and, indeed, that may be
part of the Blob’s design.
In a recent segment on “Critical Race Theory” gaining traction at
the Pentagon, Tucker Carlson wondered just why the Left was so intent on
capturing the military.
My answer: the
Blob was contemplating the possibility of using the military as part of an
attempt to block a second Trump term.
It’s quite clear that the top military brass has been subject to
“the Great Awokening” and Trump Derangement Syndrome as much as the rest of the
federal bureaucracy. The military Establishment has steadfastly resisted
Trump’s inclination to disengage from foreign interventions. Moreover, the
Pentagon has also resisted Trump’s order to stop indoctrinating its personnel
in “Critical Race Theory.” [Trump’s Anti-Critical Race Theory Order is Necessary But
Insufficient, By Timon Cline,
AmGreatness.com, October 5, 2020]
In his book Rage, Bob
Woodward reports that
former Defense Secretary and retired Marine General James Mattis once commented
to then Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that “There may come a time
when we have to take collective action” against Trump, since Mattis deemed the
president “dangerous” and “unfit.” [Mattis told Coats Trump is ‘dangerous,’ ‘unfit’: Woodward
book, by Tal Axelrod, The Hill, September 9, 2020]
It’s likely that General Mattis’s view of Trump is widely shared
among top level military officers.
So how might the military figure into the Blob’s wargaming plans?
Peter van Buren has contemplated a post-election scenario in which a
“temporary” military government might be pitched as the only way to break an
electoral deadlock and end post-election disorder. [What if Trump Won’t Leave
The White House? The fearmongers are at it again, this time with their
mantle-holder Biden, warning of the coming dictatorship.,
American Conservative, June 30, 2020] Van Buren reminded us that Trump’s
opponents have never accepted his legitimacy, that “RussiaGate” was good
practice for them—good practice for a coup, that is—and that they are gearing
up for an all-out effort to dislodge him from the White House.
Obama, Comey And Eric Holder In The White House
Van Buren further noted that Joe Biden, who has claimed that it is
Trump who “is going to try and steal this election,” has also stated quite
plainly that if Trump refuses to leave the White House, he is “absolutely
convinced” that the military would “escort him from the White House with great
dispatch.” [Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From the White House if
He Refuses to Leave, by Julie Ross, Daily
Beast, June 11, 2020]
It’s worth mentioning that van Buren is not a Trump supporter, was
a career foreign service officer, and is an honest man, an Iraq war
whistleblower who wrote an excellent book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds
of the Iraqi People, on his experiences in that
country. I reviewed it here). He
does not believe that a Pentagon-backed coup is merely “paperback thriller
material.” It’s a plausible scenario.
Nevertheless, an attempt to use the military to block Trump’s
re-election could result in the coup plotters stepping into a trap of their own
making.
This is what happened in the failed 1991 coup attempt in the
Soviet Union.
On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a
treaty that would have decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political
opponents in the Soviet leadership arrested the father of perestroika at
his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the Soviet State Committee on the State of
Emergency was in charge.
The conspiracy against Gorbachev had been organized by KGB
Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov and six other top
level political and security officials. They were alarmed by Gorbachev’s
reforms, which had already loosed centrifugal forces in the USSR that
threatened the power of the Communist party and the Soviet apparatus.
But within three days, the coup attempt collapsed.
Boris Yeltsin at the Russian White House, August 19, 1991.
The coup collapsed because of resistance by then-Russian
Federation President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters, and the refusal of elite
military and security units to move against them.
On August 19, Muscovites gathered at the Russian “White House,”
the seat of Russia’s parliament in central Moscow, and erected barriers around
it. Boris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to address the crowd. Yeltsin condemned
the State Emergency Committee as an unlawful gang of coup plotters and called
for military and security forces not to support the “Gang Of Eight.”
Major Sergey Yevdokimov, a battalion commander in the Tamanskaya
Division, had already declared his loyalty to Yeltsin (hence the tank on which
Yeltsin made his historic stand). Yevdokimov later said that early on he
had decided that
he would not fire on any Russian citizens. As his battalion approached the
“White House,” one of Yeltsin’s supporters climbed on Yevdokimov’s tank and
asked him to come over to their side. The major made his
historically-significant choice, setting in motion events that would help
thwart the coup.
KGB special forces units never appeared at the scene. When the
planned assault on the Russian “White House” (“Operation Thunder”) failed to
materialize after a brief skirmish, it was clear that the coup was over. This
was quickly followed by the collapse of the Communist party and the Soviet
administrative apparatus; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
That was an enormous surprise to the
majority of Western Kremlinologists at the time.
Of course, the situation in the U.S. today is not exactly
analogous. For starters, Trump is operating in a hostile environment (“the
Swamp”) dominated and controlled by his enemies. The generals are not on his
side. It seems unlikely that a large group of citizens from the DC area would
quickly materialize to support Trump against some sort of military-backed coup.
It’s possible, however, that Trump may not even be in Washington
when a coup is set in motion. This would leave him an opportunity to do what he
does best—hold mass rallies to fire up his support base in “Deplorable” areas
of the country.
Both “red” and “blue” areas across the country are already effectively separating,
threatening secession from the United States and practicing nullification. The
as yet inchoate Middle American resistance has shown it is capable of fighting
back. [Organizing Middle American
Resistance: Who Will Take the Next Step?, American Remnant, July
31, 2020]
If general disorder and a deadlock over the elections acts as a
cover to deploy military units, it raises the same question Soviet officers and
men were faced with in August 1991: Would the “boots on the ground” obey
orders?
Trump may be disliked by top-level officers. But my sense is that
he is popular with the rank-and-file. What if a significant number of them
refused to obey a clearly illegal order? It may take only one Major Yevdokimov
refusing unlawful orders for the whole plot to unravel.
The Deplorables have good reason to think the Blob will rig or
otherwise reverse the election results. The past four years have already taught
them that. And the Blob’s Main Stream Media arm has been hard at it selling the
Narrative of Trump stealing the election. The Democrats’ base appears
to be ready and willing to accept drastic measures against Trump and the Middle
Americans they loathe.
The potential for a seismic political crisis is clear.
What we are witnessing is what I’ve called “the end of politics.”
[Chronicles, May 2019] American elections are becoming
more like the zero-sum games they are in the undeveloped world—and were to some
extent in pre-modern Britain.
A post-election crisis, especially a force majeure situation
precipitated by military intervention, would accelerate the centrifugal forces
already at work in the United States.
The failure of a coup attempt could do to the Democrats’
“Coalition of the Fringes” what the failure of the August coup did to the
Communists in the USSR—opening up room to maneuver for
what I call the American Remnant and VDARE.com calls the Historic American
Nation.
Given the circumstances, with the demographic ring closing in,
that may be a providential outcome.
Wayne Allensworth is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine.
He is the author of The Russian Question:
Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia , and
a novel, Field of Blood. He
writes at American Remnant.
https://www.unz.com/article/this-coming-leftist-coup-could-backfire-like-1991-in-soviet-union/