There’s a long tradition of describing the outlines of these regional cultures as they currently exist — Kevin Phillips’ 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority and Joel Garreau’s 1981 The Nine Nations of North America are classics of the genre — but it’s more interesting (and more illuminating) to look at their history. Where did these cultures come from, how did they get where they are, and why are they like that? That’s the approach David Hackett Fisher took in his 1989 classic, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, which traces the history of (you guessed it) four of them, but his attention is mostly on cultural continuity between the British homelands and new American settlements of each group,1 so he limits himself to the Eastern seaboard and ends with the American Revolution.2
Colin Woodard, by contrast, assigned himself the far more ambitious task of tracing the history of all America’s regional cultures, from their various foundings right up to the present, and he does about as good a job as anyone could with a mere 300 pages of text at his disposal: it’s necessarily condensed, but the notes are good and he does provide an excellent “Suggested Reading” essay at the end to point you towards thousands of pages worth of places to look when you inevitably want more of something. Intrigued by the brief discussion of the patchwork of regional cultures across Texas? There’s a book for that! Several, in fact.
Woodard divides the US into eleven distinctive regional cultures, which he calls “nations” because they share a common culture, language, experience, symbols, and values. For the period of earliest settlement this seems fairly uncontroversial — you don’t need to read a lot of American history to pick up on the profound cultural differences between, say, the Massachusetts townships that produced John Adams and the Virginia estates of aristocrats like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, let alone the backwoods shanties where Andrew Jackson grew up. As the number of immigrants increased, though (and this began quite early: several enormous waves of German immigrants meant that by 1755 Pennsylvania no longer had an English majority), it doesn’t seem immediately obvious that the original culture would continue to dominate.
Woodard’s response to this concern is twofold. First, he cites Wilbur Zelinsky’s Doctrine of First Effective Settlement to the effect that “[w]henever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been”. (The nation of New Netherland, founded by the Dutch in the area that is now greater New York City, is the paradigmatic example: both Zelinksy and Woodard argue that it has maintained its distinctively tolerant, mercantile, none-too-democratic character despite the fact that only about 0.2% of the population is now of Dutch descent.)3 But his second, and more convincing, approach is just to show you that the people who moved here in 1650 were like that and then in the 1830s their descendants moved there and kept being like that and, hey look, let’s check in on them today — yep, looks like they’re still like that. Even though between 1650 and now plenty of Germans (or Swedes or Italians or whoever) have joined the descendants of those earliest English settlers.
Most of the book is given over to the six nations — Yankeedom, New Netherland, the Midlands, Tidewater, the Deep South, and Greater Appalachia — that populated the original Thirteen Colonies and still occupy most of the country’s area. Told as the story of the distrust or open bloody conflicts between various peoples, American history takes on a ghastly new cast: have you ever heard of the Yankee-Pennamite Wars, fought between Connecticut settlers and bands of Scots-Irish guerillas over control of northern Pennsylvania? Or the brutal Revolution-era backcountry massacres committed not by the Continental Army or the redcoats but by warring groups of Appalachian militias? What about the fact that Pennsylvania’s commitment to the American cause was made possible only by a Congressionally-backed coup d’état that suspended habeas corpus, arrested anyone opposed to the war, made it illegal to speak or write in opposition to its decisions, and confiscated the property of anyone who suspected of disloyalty (if they weren’t executed outright)? Gosh, this is beginning to sound like, well, literally any other multiethnic empire in history. (It also offers some fascinating points of divergence for alternate history.)4
Jane Psmith, “REVIEW: American Nations, by Colin Woodard”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2024-02-19.
- Including plenty of Jane Psmith-bait like discussion of who was into boiling (the East Anglians who adopted coal early and moved to New England) vs. roasting (the rich of southern England who could afford wood and moved to the Chesapeake Bay), discussions of regional vernacular architecture, the distinctive sexual crimes each group obsessed about (bestiality in New England, illegitimacy in Chesapeake) and so on — I love this book.
- Incidentally, if you’ve only read Scott Alexander’s review of Albion’s Seed, do yourself a favor and read the actual book. Yes, Scott gives a perfectly cromulent summary of the main points, but it’s a such gloriously rich book, full of so many stories and details and painting such a picture of each of the peoples and places it treats, that settling for the summary is like reading the Wikipedia article about The Godfather instead of just watching the darn movie.
- Yes, there is a book for this, and it’s apparently Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World, which I have not read and don’t particularly plan to.
- Off the top of my head:
- The Deep South tried to get the United States to conquer and colonize Cuba and much of the Caribbean coast of Central America as future slave states;
- There were a wide variety of other secession movements in the run-up to the Civil War, including a suggestion that New York City should become an independent city-state that was taken seriously enough for the Herald to publish details of the governing structure of the Hanseatic League;
- In 1784 the residents of what is now eastern Tennessee formed the sovereign State of Franklin, which banned lawyers, doctors, and clergymen from running for office and accepted apple brandy, animal skins, and tobacco as legal tender. They were two votes away from being accepted as a state by the Continental Congress.
February 27, 2026
QotD: American cultural regions
February 6, 2026
Star Trek: The Maquis
Feral Historian
Published 3 Oct 2025Whether you see the Maquis as a great story thread, a break from Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek, or a missed opportunity; the story of Federation colonists cut loose for political expediency is one of the most interesting elements of 1990s Trek both for what it shows and what it merely implies.
00:00 Intro
02:19 Learning Curve
09:11 Self-Image
16:00 Turning Point
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January 27, 2026
Minneapolis – protest, insurrection, or massive distraction?
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Eric Schwalm talks about the organized nature of the Minneapolis protests and points out how much work it takes to set up and run:
“No Kings, No ICE” protest on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 23 January, 2026.
Photo by Myotus via Wikimedia Commons.
As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops — both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations — I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.
What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest”. It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.
Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction — or worse.
This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.
The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers — complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal — you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.
I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.
Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.
We either recognize what we’re actually looking at — or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.
Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.
On his Substack, Glenn Reynolds points out that the “protests” are serving to distract attention away from state and local officials’ role in enabling massive fraud rings in Minnesota which reportedly scored billions of federal dollars for phantom organizations:
This image depicts a similar action by the Trusts at the turn of the last century. (Library of Congress).
The squid was frightened, so we got the ink: Increasingly violent “protests”-cum-riots explicitly aimed at blocking ICE operations with the stated goal of forcing federal authorities out of Minnesota entirely, while generating maximum media attention.
These are not spontaneous uprisings of the aggrieved, but organized actions featuring out-of-state actors and organizations, detailed training programs for demonstrators, and large amounts of intentionally murky funding from organizations like Indivisible, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and others.
They’re coordinating their anti-ICE operations — identifying, chasing and blocking agents to keep them from arresting illegal-immigrant criminals — through highly organized chat groups on Signal, a secure communications platform, Fox News reported.
And Minnesota government officials are proudly touting their involvement in this coordination.
Sen. Bernie Sanders made much of Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s role in a fundraising email this weekend, praising her for “playing a key role in mobilizing grassroots opposition to Trumpism”.
That’s making these often violent, deliberately obstructive demonstrations look less like a civil rights sit-in and more like a government-backed insurrection.
Tragically, this aggressive and confrontational strategy has produced martyrs who can now be exploited for political purposes.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” Fox News’ Asra Nomani posted Monday.
The death of Alex Pretti, the armed demonstrator who got into a fatal tussle with ICE agents Saturday, “is a real and devastating tragedy, and there are several investigations appropriately occurring into the circumstances behind his killing”.
But also, “A far-left organizing network put Pretti in harm’s way and then turned him into a martyr … to sow the perception of chaos in America”.
Whatever investigators determine about how Pretti’s death unfolded, the fact remains that a cynical and corrupt political machine has fostered for its own purposes a situation that’s dangerous for its own supporters, and for the political future of our nation.
January 23, 2026
Canadian schizophrenia: “Resist US aggression!” but also “Disarm law-abiding civilians!”
Returning to a topic I’ve been mocking all week on the socials, in The Line, Matt Gurney gently suggests to the Canadian government that it’s just not reasonable to expect Canadian civilians to wage some kind of fierce guerilla war against a feared American invasion while actively disarming Canadians who legally own guns:
A lot has happened, is the thing. A lot is still happening. And it all seems to be happening faster.
But it’s still worth slowing things down just a little bit when the news stories arrive in particularly baffling sequences. Consider just two you may have seen this week: Canada is thinking about fighting an insurgency in case the Americans invade us, and Canada is also working hard to disarm its civilian population. Can I just interject here a moment and suggest that these goals are at odds? That this might be a stupid way of doing things? That the Canadian federal right hand would be shocked and appalled to discover what the left hand was doing?
Let’s take a minute and set up the insurgency thing. It comes from an article published this week in The Globe and Mail. Canadian soldiers are not frantically digging trenches quite yet. The overall consensus is that a U.S. invasion of Canada is unlikely. But clearly, the current trajectory of U.S. geopolitics has shifted the prospect from “batshit crazy” to “it would be weird but we should probably think about it”. So the military is thinking about it — it’s now a contingency being considered, just like the military plans for natural disasters or less bizarre military scenarios, like a war requiring a mobilization or an attack by a terror group or hostile nation on Canadian soil.
And what is the military thinking? Allow me to quote from the Globe:
The two senior government officials said military planners are modelling a U.S. invasion from the south, expecting American forces to overcome Canada’s strategic positions on land and at sea within a week and possibly as quickly as two days.
Canada does not have the number of military personnel or the sophisticated equipment needed to fend off a conventional American attack, they said. So, the military envisions unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics.
One of the officials said the model includes tactics used by the Afghan mujahedeen in their hit-and-run attacks on Russian soldiers during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War. These were the same tactics employed by the Taliban in their 20-year war against the U.S. and allied forces that included Canada. Many of the 158 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 were struck by improvised explosive devices or IEDs.
Mmm. This yogurt is tasty.
Let me say three things here: first, I can confirm some of the Globe‘s reporting via my own sources. I know for a fact that members of the Canadian Armed Forces are talking, in a very conceptual, high-level way, about what an insurgency against an invader could and would look like in Canada. I do not know of any serious plans or preparations. But discussions? Absolutely. Second, the plan above, in very vague terms, is probably about correct, in terms of how the Canadian population could resist an invader. The actual shooting war would be over almost immediately — the U.S.’s military advantage would be overwhelming. I think two days is optimistic, frankly. I’m not sure it would take much more than two hours to smash any meaningful military resistance.
So, longer term insurgency against a larger and more advanced force would be the only real option, and in that kind of fight, we’d have some real advantages. We’d be a tougher nut to crack, in many ways, than either Iraq or Afghanistan.
But only if we don’t hobble ourselves first. And this brings us to the third point I’d like to make: did you notice the part about “armed civilians”? Because I sure did.
Civilians, sometimes augmented by experienced military personnel in technical and leadership roles, are always the backbone of an insurgency. They have to be. Insurgencies are hit-and-run affairs, and you can’t do that if you’re driving a tank back to a base. In order to be effective, the population must be armed, or somehow have the means to arm itself. Not to be cute, but the resistance being armed is a necessary precondition for a successful armed resistance.
And we are disarming ourselves.
For the record, Canada and the US have historically had plans to defend against one another even at times we’ve otherwise been very peaceful and friendly. About a year ago, Big Serge suggested updates to the old US “War Plan Red” scenario invasion of Canada:
The country’s political and economic center of gravity is the urban corridor from Toronto to Montreal, but a significant share of the Canadian Army is dispersed, with large garrisons in Quebec, Halifax, and the western provinces. Only handful of brigades are garrisoned in the critical theater.
Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the old US War Plan Red for a military invasion of Canada.
The war will be won quickly and decisively, without massive destruction of Canadian cities, if American forces can establish blocking positions to isolate the urban corridor from peripheral Canadian garrisons. In this maneuver scheme, we utilize highly mobile elements including 1st Cavalry Division and airborne forces to block the highways into Toronto, while an eastern screening group isolates the urban centers from reinforcements scrambling in from Quebec.
Proving my near-Nostradamus-level ability to foresee the future, I remarked that “As to why Trump would want to invade a frozen failed state on the brink of bankruptcy, even Big Serge doesn’t have an answer”. Now, of course, the biggest risk to US security would come from Canadian “snowbirds” in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, who may be prone to driving their motor homes or golf carts to attack ICE and US Border Patrol facilities before the Bingo games start at 8.
January 22, 2026
QotD: Higher education
No; I came to the conclusion that the cause of the revolutionary guerrilla movements was the expansion of tertiary education in countries where it had not long before been the province only of the elite, largely, though never entirely, hereditary. (For the poor, gifted, and ambitious, the army was the route to social ascension.)
Tertiary education, however, was expanded with comparative suddenness. Before it was expanded, those who had it, being few, were more or less guaranteed important roles in the economy and government. They had already drawn a winning ticket in the lottery of life. Not surprisingly, a false syllogism insinuated itself into the minds of the newly educated: If the rich were educated and important, then being educated would make you rich and important. Again not surprisingly, this turned out not to be the case. If you turn out thousands of lawyers, for example, the remuneration of their work, if they find any, will be reduced and they will be disappointed in their hopes and expectations. They become angry, bitter, and disaffected, believing themselves not to be valued at their inestimable worth. They and their ilk became the middle ranks of the guerrillas (the very uppermost reaches being filled mainly by the narcissistic, spoiled sprigs of the upper classes). Only revolution would acquire for them the positions of influence and importance to which they felt that their education entitled them, and which such education had always entitled people to in the past.
Is it possible that Latin America was not so much in the rear as in the forefront of this modern social development (the case of Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path of Peru, was a pure culture of this phenomenon)? Is it not possible that we in our societies have duped tens of millions of young people into believing that the prolongation of their formal education would lead them inexorably into the sunny uplands of power, importance, wealth, and influence, when in fact many a PhD finds himself obliged to do work that he could have done when he was 16? No one likes to think that he has been duped, however (it takes two for fraud to be committed, after all), so he looks around for some other cause of his bitter disappointment. It isn’t ignoramuses who are pulling down the statues, but ignoramuses who think that they have been educated.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Bees With Degrees”, Taki’s Magazine, 2020-07-02.
Update, 24 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
January 7, 2026
The Korean War Week 81: Ridgway Admits the UN is Little Threat! – January 6, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 6 Jan 2026The year may have changed, familiar faces come and go, but some things remain the same. The POW issue continues to dominate and frustrate armistice talks, the fear of an expanded war in Asia re-emerges, and the snow remains cold. The war found no end and no pause in either 1950 or 1951, but third time’s the charm, surely?
00:00 Intro
00:29 Recap
01:24 Britain and the US
06:49 The US Proposal
10:57 The Slave Trade?
12:12 Summary
13:35 Conclusion
(more…)
December 31, 2025
The Korean War Week 80: Empty Lines and Guerrillas: X-mas ’51 in Korea! – December 30, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 30 Dec 2025It’s Christmas, 1951, and though peace on earth and goodwill to all men might have a general appeal, peace seems as far away as ever in Korea. There are, though, no large scale offensives being planned at the moment, as the frozen winter grips Korea and the peace talks drag on and on. However, just because the war between armies is quiet, doesn’t mean Korea is; anti-guerrilla operations claim lives by the thousands, and the general drudgery of the war also takes thousands of lives on both sides each and every month. Christmas in Korea is grim.
00:00 Intro
00:27 Recap
00:49 POW Lists
02:25 New Offensive
05:29 Fighting the Guerrillas
07:20 Casualty Numbers
09:04 Boatner and the 23rd
11:54 Inspections and China
13:27 Summary
13:59 Conclusion
(more…)
December 16, 2025
The Battle of Algiers: France’s “Victory” That Lost the War – W2W 057
TimeGhost History
Published 14 Dec 2025In the mid-1950s, what Paris insists on calling a “police operation” in Algeria, steadily sparks into a full-scale war that exposes the fragility of the French Republic itself. As the FLN launches coordinated attacks, the army responds with mass arrests, torture, and collective punishment, drawing the military deeper into politics. The Battle of Algiers becomes a laboratory of counterinsurgency, even as public opinion fractures at home and successive governments collapse under the strain. By the decade’s end, the conflict has eroded faith in France’s imperial mission and helped trigger the fall of the Fourth Republic, proving that Algeria was not just a colonial war, but a crisis of the French state.
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December 6, 2025
G150: Swiss Silenced Guerrilla Anti-Materiel Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Jul 2025The G150 is a rifle specifically assembled by and for the Swiss P-26 organization: a very secretive stay-behind group intended to fight foreign occupiers of Switzerland. It was one of a series of such organizations that began with a concern during World War Two the Germany might invade, and continued during the Cold War with the threat of Soviet occupation in the aftermath of nuclear war. The P-26 group specifically was formed in 1981, and disbanded in 1991 under a cloud of controversy over its political leanings.
P-26 was armed with an assortment of weapons ideal for guerrilla warfare, including P210 pistols and suppressed MP5 submachine guns. The G150 rifle was intended to be a very quiet rifle for destroying enemy materiel like radar systems, fuel tanks, parked aircraft, and the like. About 250 were made using commercial JP Sauer actions, SIG 540 like pistol grips and folding stocks, and very large two-part suppressors. They were chambered for the .41 Remington Magnum revolver cartridge, loaded with a 408-grain subsonic bullet. The scopes were adjustable from 4-6 power (yes, 4-6: it;s a weird choice) and had BDC elevation turrets adjustable out to 200 meters.
Only three G150 rifles are known today, although the remainder may still be in some deep military storage in Switzerland. Many thanks to the anonymous viewer who arranged access to this one for me to film! To see another perspective on one of the other known examples, I recommend Bloke on the Range’s video:
• BotR Exclusive! Swiss 10.4mm G150 subsonic…
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December 1, 2025
Why Uncle Sam entered the Vietnam War – W2W 055
TimeGhost History
Published 30 Nov 2025The Vietnam War didn’t begin with American boots on the ground. It began with a promise — and a break. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Geneva Accords split Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led the North. In the South, Ngo Dinh Diem struggled to hold a fragile new state together while armed sects, crime syndicates, and political rivals challenged his rule. Washington saw Vietnam as the next battleground of the Cold War, and threw its support behind Diem — believing he could stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
But as elections for reunification approached, tensions rose. Diem refused the vote. The North rebuilt. The South descended into repression, unrest, and quiet rebellion. Former Viet Minh fighters slipped into the shadows. Secret networks formed. Targeted killings began. By 1958, the storm clouds of a new war gathered — one the United States could no longer afford to ignore.
This episode explores how the U.S. found itself pulled into Vietnam, how Diem rose to power, why the reunification election collapsed, how American aid reshaped the South, and how the first sparks of insurgency ignited a conflict that would define a generation.
Join us as we trace the origins of a war long before the Marines landed at Da Nang — to understand why Uncle Sam entered the Vietnam War in the first place.
(more…)
November 26, 2025
The Korean War Week 75: Insurgency Behind The Lines! – November 25, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Nov 2025While there is no battle action this week, there is still a lot of fighting, as the UN forces must constantly watch their backs against the thousands of guerrillas in the hills of South Korea. At the truce talks, the Communist side accepts the UN proposal for a demarcation line — Item 2 on the agenda — but for it to be valid the other three items remaining on the agenda must be dealt with within 30 days, which seems very optimistic to most. There is also the question of post-armistice inspections teams; are they a good idea? Or will they simply provide the other side with much-needed actionable intelligence?
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:45 Recap
01:08 Guerilla Actions
03:19 Hanley’s Numbers
05:37 The Demarcation Line
08:04 Inspection Teams
10:36 Ridgway’s Opinion
12:06 The Agenda
12:48 Summary
13:04 Conclusion
13:57 Call to Action
(more…)
November 24, 2025
Algeria: France’s War It Refused to Name – W2W 054
TimeGhost History
Published 23 Nov 2025This episode tracks how the doctrine “Algeria is France” — departments, settler power, and forced assimilation — breeds dispossession, mass violence, and a new Algerian nationalism: from conquest and the Sétif massacres to the FLN’s launch in 1954 and Philippeville in 1955. As Paris doubles its forces and passes Special Powers, Suez intertwines with the war, bombings in Algiers begin, and Lacoste hands police powers to General Massu — opening the Battle of Algiers and a system of torture.
(more…)
November 21, 2025
“You too can be a Tactical Espionage Dollar-Store Hobo for less than $1000”
At Anarchonomicon, Kulak is at it again … this time it’s a long, long post about how to manage “James Bond tricks” without a “James Bond budget”.
I have now seen 5+ different spy films, In which a CIA or MI6 spy has to breach a chainlink fence. An ordinary chainlink fence.
There’s barb or razor wire up top that prevents our hero from just climbing it … So he or she has to breach it. And on FIVE SEPARATE OCCASIONS … I have seen the goofiest inventions in the world come out. $10,000 super-spy wrist watches with hidden lasers in them, super-secret hairpins with scissors in them made of magic cutting alloys, aerosol sprays that instantly oxidize and rust out a massive section of solid steel fencing (don’t breathe that spray) allowing the spy to just push out a Wile E. Coyote style hole of fencing …
Completely over-designed over-specific insanity that’d cost thousands of dollars, and would basically instantly betray the CIA or MI6 was behind the breach …
Of course no sane human being would ever use those techniques even if they existed. The one semi-plausible breech I’ve seen is in Fight Club Ed Norton and Brad Pitt toss a rug over the razor wire surrounding a medical facility so they can climb the fence … but even this strikes me as profoundly unideal … Would you really want to PLAN on risking nasty lacerations climbing OVER razor wire? That seems more like a desperate break-out trick. Not a Break-in trick.
Of course this is all insane because BREACHING A FENCE is maybe the most SOLVED problem out there, 80% of people reading this already have the tools to do it.
You just use wirecutters or a multitool. Ideally creating a single vertical slit so you can crawl through without the breach being visible unless you look very closely. (be sure to fold the slit back as you crawl so you don’t cut yourself on the jagged edges.
Often the crappiest $15 Chinese Multi-tool is up for the task (although test it out on a random fence on a walk before you gamble on it).
(Note that a “Leatherman” is just a good make of multitool, and outperforms even larger wire-cutters … Your cheepo crappy surplus multi-tool will take more elbow grease (if it works, test it))
Almost everything on the pop-culture side of the tactical world is like this … There’s an obsession with ultra-expensive James Bond scifi inventions that double as a luxury brand to match your tuxedo … When in reality the cheapest rusty junk from your granddad’s tool shed probably gives you vastly more capability.
And even In the world of prepping, tacticool influences, camping, modern combat, and all matters “survival”, “guerilla”, and “outdoors adventure” there’s an intense focus on expensive kit.
All your favorite influencers are sponsored by various product sellers, and half the reason people watch them is for the vicarious or personal thrill of collecting expensive Gucci kit and showing off their rare or designer rifles and Military Artifacts.
Most will assemble load-outs, rigs, and rifles, far less as a preparation for disaster or war, or an exercise in capability expansion, and more as an artistic expression, fashion statement, or historical exercise … Whether they will admit it or not most of the people who buy Yugoslavian combat webbing, or archaic experimental 80s rifles meant for an upcoming war in the scifi future of 2005 have more in common with historical reenactors than they might care to admit … They just chose wars that didn’t happen towards the end of the cold war, instead of The American Revolution, 1812, or the Civil War.
It’s astrology for boys!
As such one could be forgiven for believing that the great wars of the 21st century to come, and the Urban Battlefield that much of the world is quickly becoming, is a “pay to win” combat-zone. And that unless one has close to 100,000 dollars for body Armour, thermal vision, night vision, precision optics, gucci rifles, and all manner of overpriced gadgets and gizmos that they are simply screwed in any 21st century conflict.
This is not the case. Indeed in some cases it is almost the opposite: given how mass surveillance defines the modern battlefield, there’s a lot of kit I wouldn’t want to use just for risk of dropping it and the Glowies tracking down the only 10-20 people who’ve ordered Czechoslovakian Mag-Pouches via NSA copies of online transaction records, or by just calling the 3 sellers who ever had them.
Put simply Skill, knowledge, resourcefulness, and a more than abundant paranoia are more overpowered than almost anytime since the neolithic period … Basic resourcefulness, daring, courage, B-Grade high-school shop-class craftiness, low level chemistry knowledge, basic boy-scout skills, physical fitness (tall order I know), and a nigh primitivist obsession with the pre-computer way of doing things … Is sufficient to achieve a shocking level of capability and inflict an extraordinary level of damage in any near-future conflict, tyrannical regime, or low intensity resistance.
The most important kit in any future conflict isn’t free. But it is near free.
Available at shockingly low prices from dollar-, convenience-, hardware-, surplus-, grocery-stores, and pawn shops … The necessary equipment and capabilities to fight a high impact Guerilla Campaign are available in almost any town of 20,000 almost anywhere in the western world.
Sadly in spite of being largely legal throughout most of the US and not a few odd other countries (assuming one navigates the proper tax stamps and legal statements) I will not be presenting a guide on how to manufacture black-powder, explosives, firearms, or more exotic weaponry … This is all largely trivially covered by Chemistry Youtube in a level of detail I could never hope to match and with a level of responsibility and maturity far beyond my juvenile imagination, and with a level of expertise and experience I cannot pretend to … Seriously! Chemistry/explosive Youtube is really cool, Some of this stuff is should be taught in schools, so historically relevant and useful is it.
If one Navigates to my Earlier “Warlord’s Reading List” you’ll find many listed works (not least published by the US, Canadian, British, and Swiss Governments) that give detailed guides to the manufacture of explosives, chemical weapons, rocket weapons, improvised firearms, homemade flamethrowers, etc … All from other publishers that I can gesture at without exposing me to legal risk and most of them largely available online in PDF form, or from Amazon, and sometimes from the governments themselves.
November 17, 2025
Cyprus on Fire: The 3-Way War That Broke an Empire – W2W 053
TimeGhost History
Published 16 Nov 2025Cyprus, 1950s–60s. An island divided between Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, and the British Empire becomes the battleground for one of the Cold War’s most explosive regional crises. What begins as a struggle for independence soon spirals into a three-way conflict of nationalism, colonial strategy, and clashing identities — with Archbishop Makarios III, paramilitary groups, Athens, Ankara, and London all pulling in different directions.
In this episode of War 2 War, we uncover how Cyprus became:
- A central front in the decline of the British Empire
- A stage for espionage, guerrilla warfare, and political assassinations
- A diplomatic nightmare for NATO
- A struggle where UN peacekeepers become critical to preventing total collapse
- A conflict whose consequences still shape Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean today
We’ll trace the rise of EOKA, the reaction in the Turkish Cypriot community, the impossible balancing act of Makarios III, and how superpower pressure from the USA and USSR escalated an already volatile situation.
This is the hidden story of how one island’s crisis reshaped the politics of an entire region — and marked the end of Britain as a global imperial power.
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September 14, 2025
“When must we kill them?”
On the social media platform previously known as Twitter, Tom Kratman provides an excerpt from The Care and Feeding of Your Right Wing Death Squad:
Reposting this seems apropos:
The Care and Feeding of Your Right Wing Death Squad, Chapter 32 Copyright © 2025, Tom Kratman, Harry Kitchener
“When must we kill them?”
That question was asked recently by a leftist student, one Nicholas Decker, from George Mason University. It’s a very interesting question, and one that most, and perhaps all, hard leftists in the United States are contemplating. Indeed, we see now, from an NCRI / Rutgers survey, that something over half of leftists believe that assassinating Trump would be justified, and nearly half think the same thing about Musk.
Note, here, that this was of all people identifying as left of center. I would suggest that this means that almost nobody who is slightly left of center would agree with that and nearly everybody who is far left of center agrees with that. And if we needed any more proof, just contemplate the number of would be groupies moistening their panties over murderer Luigi Mangione, as pointed out by former New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz.
Why do they think so or why are they wondering about it? It’s actually more understandable than most on the right and perhaps even many on the left would understand. They’re wondering about it because, with the destruction of the Deep State, with so many billionaires turning against the left and – horrrors! – no longer letting the left wing narrative control online and legacy media political discourse, with no prospect of the kind of money being shunted from the taxpayer, through the Federal Government, to left wing NGOs to help swing elections, they do not really think there is any serious prospect of the left ever winning a national election again or, at least, not in their lifetimes. And they may be right about that.
With James Carville telling the Democrats to give the boot to the gender and woke ideologues, the identity politics losers, the little boy penis choppers and little girl breast destroyers and vagina removers; they see themselves being marginalized, losing their influence, and losing their dream, forever. And this seems fairly likely. With no possibility, once Trump gets finished deporting all the illegals, of turning just enough of those illegals into client voters to swing elections just enough for control, they think that leftism will be hopeless in the United States. And they’re probably right about that. With the Communist factories of higher education being broken to the will of the right, with Gramsci’s / Rudi Dutschke’s “Long March Through the Institutions” being walked back, and quickly, they’re thinking about it and wondering about it because leftism is dead in the United States, a corpse just awaiting burial.
So, though the point of this entire exercise in the Right Wing Death Squad has been to convince the left to chill out, FFS, it seems that certain key point bear repeating.
1. Urban Guerilla movements invariably succeed in creating the kind of oppressive government that they believe will infuriate the people and lead to a general uprising. Those governments then proceed to exterminate the Urban Guerillas and all their supporters, and do so to general popular applause.
2. The armed forces, barring some political generals and morally cowardly colonels, hate you and everything about you. Posse Comitatus is only a law, not something in the constitution that would require going through the difficult process of amendment. Change the law – and do but note who has control of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court (so that constitutional grounds could not be manufactured to create an objection to getting rid of the law) – and the military would be very happy to round you all up. And you’re completely, incompetently, incapable of resisting this.
3. Moreover, though you have a few people with some military experience and training, the key word there is “few”. Yes, yes, I know that, since Vietnam, the left has been obsessed with the inner city black cannon fodder meme, but it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. Conversely, the white working class and conservative populations at large – to the limited extent these categories may differ – are replete with people with a lot of military training and experience and they hate you, too. They also have most of the guns. Your side has fairly few, in comparison, and little skill in using what you do have, alone or in groups.
4. You also fundamentally misunderstand the difference between your approach to violence – as a rheostat to be turned up or down, to suit – with the right’s – which is an on-off switch marked “peace and good feelings” on the one hand, and “kill every one of them” on the other.
You know all those terrible things you and your pals like to say about right wing, especially but not always white, Americans? Well, we know you don’t really believe those things because if you did you would be afraid ever to leave your mom’s basement. But you really ought to try to grasp this; sometimes those things are true.
Although our purpose with this project has been to try to get you to save yourselves, still, one cannot help but look forward to the prospect of young Mr. Decker finding this out.
So, if you were to succeed in killing the president, you will get Vance. Vance will have a mandate, in that case, to obliterate you. If he fails to carry out that mandate then genuine Right Wing Death Squads will take up the slack. No trial, no due process at all; they will proceed to obliterate you and every safe harbor and supporter you have, and often in creatively disgusting ways.
Amusingly enough, your only safety, in such a case, would be in being sent to some variant on El Salvador’s CECOT. I could see the population of El Salvador roughly doubling in the course of a few years as millions of American leftists find out just how grim a Latin American prison can be.
But, seriously, why would they or anybody waste the money when you could as easily just become an unfortunate statistic? Were I betting on it, I’d bet that few of you see a flight – or even half a flight – to El Salvador, but that many of you would have a long last moment staring down into a ditch you had just been forced to dig while a man with a pistol walks up behind you.
So the answer to young Mr. Decker’s question, “When must we kill them?” is “When you want to die.”
