Political Warfare Strategic Handbook

Political warfare

All power comes from perception. Guns alone confer no benefit. An armed man obeys a faction only because he perceives it is in his best interest and the correct course of action.

Organizations of strategic value

Whoever controls public perception controls the people. To this end, political warfare is won by the faction that controls all of the following key organizations:

Marketing departments of major companies

These departments collectively control an amount of money exceeding the GDP of entire nations. Whoever controls the advertising dollars can exert significant control over media and social media. Therefore, the marketing departments of major national and multi-national companies should be a high priority target.

Of secondary importance, advertisers help create a vision of the ideal society, whatever that ideal may be.
 

News media and social media

Both control what the population sees. Social media has the added benefit of controlling what the people can say. More importantly, social media collects data on the people (what they think, what makes them tick, what they like/dislike etc). This data is useful to make messaging more potent.

Entertainment media

Movies, shows, video games, music, books, and art... People identify with that which they love and enjoy.

Academic Institutions/ Public Schools

Many will pay a lot of money for the privilege of being taught what to think.

Think tanks/advocacy organizations

These institutions include legal firms, charitable organizations etc. They are useful for providing legitimacy and affirmation for those who are already supporters.
 

Tactics for Officers 

Officers are members of a faction who can rise quickly to positions of power.

If you are an officer, your primary objective is to infiltrate, then control the key organizations listed above. You must rise through the ranks while maintaining your cover, staffing all subordinate positions with loyalists along the way.

Never reveal your factional-affiliation, even if your faction has the upper hand. Failure to heed this warning will result in you becoming a target.

During the course of your employment, identify who is an enemy, who is an ally, and who is unknown. Anyone who supports the ideology or rhetoric of the opposing faction is potentially a threat who would do you harm. Support allies, but not at any cost – use your judgement. Subvert enemies, but pick your battles wisely. Only go after an enemy if he is likely to strike you first, or if he has the potential to rise to a position of power. Always provide a cover for your attacks. For example, go after enemies based on job performance, bad behavior, etc. This is nothing more than normal office politics, except you should target only enemies and never allies. It might be useful to befriend an enemy in order to find a vulnerability.

Take down enemies in positions of power, starting with the middle managers and working your way up. Dig for dirt, goad them into writing something stupid, build up a dossier that could be used against them later. Consider spreading rumors, or enticing the target into doing something corrupt. If possible, use their own faction's rhetoric against them and out them as a traitor so that they would attack their own. Whatever it takes, do it.

If external pressure is required, make use of social media smear campaigns to discredit your targets. Use the outrage as pretext to have the target demoted or fired so that you or one of your allies can take over.

Once you achieve control over your organization, you can now use your power to exert pressure on other organizations, making it easier for allies within these organizations to rise to power. For example, if you are in charge of your department's budget, do not procure services from known enemies. Instead, deal only with allies.

Tactics for foot soldiers

Conduct an honest assessment of your capabilities. Are you an officer capable of infiltrating an organization and rising to power? If not, then you are a foot soldier. This does not mean you are incapable, stupid or incompetent. It could simply mean you lack the willpower to force yourself to work a career that you would not enjoy.

If you are not employed in a high priority organization, then you should conduct yourself as you normally would. Keep quiet about your factional affiliation so as to avoid making yourself a target. Work, earn money, and covertly fund the champions and organizations who are openly fighting for your cause.

If you are employed in one of the high priority organizations but you are only capable of filling a menial role, identify any officers of your faction and follow his or her direction.

Actively participate in social media smear/boycott campaigns in order to put pressure on the enemy. Always do so anonymously, regardless of your faction's relative power. Never attack using your own faction's rhetoric, which would make your attacks easier to discredit. It is more effective to pose as members of the enemy faction in order to instigate factional infighting within the enemy faction. Never make any threats or other punishable offense towards the target. Always work within the system, find exploitable loopholes. Use the enemy's rhetoric, values and principles against them.

In general, when engaging online, it is more effective to make the enemy faction look bad by posing as one of them than by trying to argue for your own faction. People are not moved by reason. They are moved by emotion. Make them fear and hate the other side by convincing them you are a monster from the other side. If you manage to attract followers from the other side, even better. You can manipulate them into doing something stupid. Never pose as members of the opposing faction in physical space for the purpose of making them look bad as the risk of getting caught and facing real consequences is high. Only do so online, or if done in physical space, do it only to maintain your cover.

Be smart when trying to persuade a friend or family member to join your faction. First, ask yourself how likely they are to harm you if they happen to be a member of the enemy faction. If it's highly likely, break off all ties. Do not tell them why you no longer have them in your life. If they genuinely care about you and would not harm you, then it is worthwhile to attempt to persuade them. There are various theories on persuasion – read up on these.

If you are somebody who has little to lose, as in you are unemployed and have no family to support, you are free to participate in street protests and various demonstrations when the need for this arises. Keep protests peaceful as violent protests achieve little and do much harm to your faction. The purpose of protest is to create the impression that your faction has widespread support. People who have not picked a side tend to side with the majority consensus, hence it is important not to allow the enemy faction to dominate in the real world. Officers are not free to expose themselves in the physical world, so it falls upon the foot soldiers with nothing to lose to maintain a physical presence. A small contingent of boots-on-the-ground professional activists is all that is needed. This will require a certain level of organization and funding.

Tactics for Entrepreneurs and Creatives

First, never discourage your children from pursuing a career in the arts. Support them in this endeavor, or else they will rebel against you and express their distaste for you and your faction through their art. Develop a loving relationship, and they will honor you through their art.

If you are an artist, by all means, create your art, and do a good job. Nobody likes a preachy artist or overt propaganda. Keep it subtle. Keep it tasteful.

For entrepreneurs, find a way to support these artists. Create media companies. Create social media companies. Create schools. If your faction does not currently control any of the priority organizations, then it is up to you, the entrepreneur, to create alternative organizations.

Tactics for Champions

Champions are those who fight in the open as public personalities. Your role is to set the narrative, articulate the ideological framework, and promote it. If officers flag a high-value target, draw attention to the target by calling out the bad behavior. Do not make a direct call to action unless it is socially acceptable to do so.

Champions play a crucial role in recruitment. Only you, the champion, have the reach needed to arouse passions and to move sympathetic members of the public to enlist. Champions must relentlessly remind the public of what is at stake. What are the consequences of failure? Highlight examples of what the enemy has done to punish those sympathetic to your faction. In fact, the majority of your messaging should be about oppression at the hands of the enemy, and how this will continue to escalate. If your enemies openly declare their evil intentions, use it against them, and use it to drive recruitment. Nothing will drive people to your cause like the fear of persecution, and outrage over oppression.

Never attack members of your own faction, even if they have done something wrong, no matter how bad this transgression may be. You will gain nothing from this if your enemies are waging political warfare against you. In fact, it will make you look weak to the foot soldiers, and it will make you look weak to the unaligned public. Attacking your own would severely damage your recruitment drive because people will see that you do not have their backs if they make a mistake, and there will be mistakes. The officers and soldiers must know that you are loyal to them, and in return they will show loyalty to you and your faction.

When your faction is under attack for perceived wrongdoing, parry the attack and follow up with a riposte. Go on the offensive. Point out hypocrisy. Turn the outrage against your foes. If your faction takes casualties, use this as evidence of the enemy's tyranny and hammer home the oppression narrative to drive even more recruitment. You will gain nothing by fighting defensively. The unaligned members of the public will not see any admission of guilt or excuse-making as a sign of good character. Why? Because they will see only the admission of guilt or excuse-making, and nothing else about you. Use the spotlight and intense scrutiny to draw attention to your enemy's faults instead.

Character Assassinations

Enemy officers and champions are prime targets. Your faction's officers should identify the targets and find dirt on them. Champions draw attention to the targets. Foot soldiers engage in smear/outrage campaigns, and mass flagging/reporting using whatever means available. Officers use this as pretext to oust the target, thereby securing a position of power.

Do not hesitate to call up a target's place of employment to express your moral outrage. If they do business anywhere, you should also campaign there. The pressure must be unrelenting. Do not hesitate to call out the target's family members and apply pressure there.

While engaging in smear/outrage campaigns, never use your own faction's rhetoric to attack targets. In fact, your factional affiliation must not even be implied. If people know which faction the attack is coming from, it will be easier to dismiss the attack. Also, this will be used by the enemy faction to drive recruitment. Instead, use the enemy's rhetoric against the targets, paint them as traitors, get them to eat their own. Do not hesitate to target unaligned members of the public using this tactic. This will have the added benefit of not only removing the target from power, thereby paving way for your own faction to take over, but it has the potential side effect of turning the target into an ardent ally.

Protecting against character assassinations

If you are the target of a character assassination, never admit wrongdoing, never apologize. Go on the attack. Bring this to the attention of a champion. Champions must draw attention to the friendly target and express support. Foot soldiers must show support and go on the offensive by pointing out hypocrisy. Worst case scenario, this feeds into the narrative that your faction is being persecuted, and this can be used to drive recruitment.

If you find that a friendly officer or champion is accused of being a turncoat, you must stop and assess the situation. Could this be instigated by the enemy to get you to attack your own? If the transgression is real, is it of importance? Is the target still useful to your faction? If the transgression is minor, and the target is still an important ally, do not attack. Defend.

In general, if your faction's ideological beliefs are, for the most part, consistent and grounded in reality, it would be more difficult to drive a wedge between coalitions. As Champions are responsible for setting the narrative, it is their responsibility to ensure that the values and principles that they set forth do not contain contradictions that can be used to split the faction.
 

Telling friend from foe

How to tell if a coworker or potential new hire is a friend, foe or unaligned? Here are some things to consider:

Always check their social media posts. If they express any of the rhetoric of the enemy faction, assume they are foe. If they lack social media, or their social media contains no ideological content, then you must dig further.

Ask them open-ended questions that allude to the political landscape. If they confidently express the enemy rhetoric and the enemy faction is dominant, it is safer to assume they are a foe. If they confidently express the rhetoric of your faction and the enemy faction is dominant, they are highly likely to be of your faction. If they express neutral opinions or appear hesitant in their answer and the enemy faction is dominant, they are likely scared because they are sympathetic to your faction.

If your faction is dominant and they express the enemy rhetoric, they are almost certainly of the enemy faction. If your faction is dominant and they express the rhetoric of your faction, you cannot be sure that is their real opinion. If your faction is dominant and they express neutral opinions or appear unsure, then they are likely scared and are sympathetic to the enemy faction.

Given the above, you are better off keeping your affiliations hidden and remaining neutral. Wait for others to reveal their affiliations first. Don't pose as a member of the enemy faction in real life using your real identity as this paints you as a target by friendly forces. If asked about your affiliations, whether directly or indirectly, maintain neutrality, even if this makes you suspect. People won't know for sure what to make of you, which is what you want. This gives you control over when and to whom you reveal your affiliations.

Your faction should have a system to help identify members. This is beyond the scope of this article. A potential strategy would be to make obscure references that only other members of your faction would know. These are constantly changing, and the enemy will eventually decode older references. As such, it is important to keep up to date with the latest cultural artifacts arising from your faction. It would also be useful to create false code in order to misdirect the enemy, and cause the enemy to identify innocuous phrases and gestures as 'dog whistles'.

Sometimes it is possible to identify friend vs foe simply by observing the lifestyle choices of the individual you are assessing.

In general, it is easier to identify foes in an environment where the enemy faction is dominant because their members would be able to express their opinions more confidently. As such, if your faction is dominant, it is important to resist the temptation to talk openly about your views. In fact, always maintain the illusion that your organization is open to all factions. Those who unwittingly reveal themselves as enemies should be targeted. Always mask the true motive behind the targeting so as to not break the illusion to the others.

If you genuinely wish to create an environment where all factions can coexist, you must be certain that the people you have allowed into your organization are not enemy agents despite expressing enemy rhetoric. This is a big risk and this project is likely to fail, especially if the political warfare has already escalated past the point of no return. 

What is the point of no return? When blood has been shed and lives have been destroyed. If you cannot bring yourself to forgive the enemy for these transgressions, do not expect forgiveness in return. You must fight until one side has complete and total control with zero room for dissent and zero chance of retribution. Relent, and the cycle of political warfare will begin all over again.