This Coming Leftist Coup Could Backfire—Like 1991 In Soviet Union
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 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 Kristol and 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.
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.
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.
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