Crisis is here, and chaos is coming. I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, but reading Curzio Malaparte’s Coup d’Etat: The Technique of Revolution may lead to a change of ways.
This book, banned, long neglected and out of print, is a practical guide to seizing control of the State.
It shows that revolution is a technique. Along with everything else in the technological society, sudden political change turns out to have nothing whatsoever to do with the awakening of the masses to their own best interests - but relies on a method refined to produce a standard result.
This is the first post in a series on the crisis in the Liberal state. It will treat subjects such as Locke’s Right to Revolution, which inspired the French and American revolts, as well as revisiting the arguments of Isaiah Berlin and John Gray to show how our states are no longer liberal nor democratic.
In fact, they are not even legitimate. This final question, as we shall see, has nothing to do with elections. Nor does today’s subject - the overthrowing of the Government - have much to do with politicians and their palaces.
How to Overthrow the Government
Malaparte, who assisted Mussolini in his coup d’etat, opens his “Revolution for Dummies” book with a study of the Russian revolution.
Even the Bolsheviks believed in the nonsense of mass mobilisation of “the people”. So much so that the party, including Lenin and Stalin themselves, almost aborted the successful insurrection designed according to the technique of revolution.
This was done by Trotsky, who in one day seized the power centres of the Russian state, and in several had secured a complete coup d’etat.
“I have disorganisation on my side” said Trotsky to the Soviets, who maintained that without a mass movement the revolution was impossible.
Trotsky disagreed. He said chaos was “my general strike”. He was right. He started the Russian revolution with an insurrection composed of a thousand men.
The Technique of the Coup D’Etat
So how do you overthrow the government? According to Malaparte, you do not attack the government at all. You seize control of state power.
In 1917 Russia this meant the post offices - communications centres - the main railway stations, the power stations and the public utilities. With no comms, electricity, gas, transport or escape from the administrative capital, the government is isolated and is powerless.
I would argue this has become less complicated these days. Most things are digital, are therefore vulnerable, and power is in this sense far more centralised.
It is obvious where a dedicated coup d’etat should concentrate its energies.
What is more, the police, soldiers and servants of the state are not war veterans and men of iron. Many of them are not even men. The people you are supposed to fear are a pale shadow of the last men of the West, whose light began to fade into rainbow suicide around the 1990s.
This policy of punishing the wise, the prudent, the strong and the independent became the policy of the Liberal state under lockdown.
It has replaced the competent with the compliant.
Whilst this means the ruin of our institutions, it also means they are severely incapacitated to act against any organised challenge to their enfeebling ideology of death.
The best are on the margins now.
The best belong to us.
The Myth of Revolution
“Revolution” is not real. It is a fairytale told to waste the lives of those hopeful of change in a futile project of mass awakening.
No revolution has ever succeeded by these means. The Jacobins of France, the Bonapartes, the Bolsheviks, Castro, the Maoists, Mussolini along with all the recent coups across the Sahel in Africa show the population as a prop. Stage managed into place, to celebrate a new performance of power, their presence is an effect of a well rehearsed cause.
What is needed is a small group of technicians, disciplined men and a competent leadership.
Trotsky triumphed with a thousand. Castro started with a dozen or so.
The myth of revolution is a romantic fantasy, a yarn spun by the powerful to keep the powerless enchanted by impossible dreams. The people never wake up. They are always led, and they always follow whoever turns up to lead them. This is the nature of political power, whose popular legitimacy is a charade. There is only who is in charge, now, there are no fine words which make this right or wrong.
After all, we are supposed to live in a paradise of consumer choice. Why can we not simply choose another product? The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is neither British nor elected. The President of the US is in power because Obama put him there. The game is rigged by people you will never meet. Let’s not pretend this democracy is anything more than a sideshow.
But power is more than mere performance. It is real, and it relies on the ability to translate words into action. This action is not a spectator sport.
Our state is impotent. It has lost its meaning, no one believes in its stories anymore. It has all the channels but no audience. What is more, it has promoted policies of discrimination preferring non-white race, sexual perversion and vaccine status over competence.
This has pushed the brilliant, the talented, even the capable out of our institutions, making them increasingly useless. The law, the uniformed services, the state and corporate bureaucracies - these places increasingly resemble an asylum for the rejects of any sane society.
These mentally and morally limited mediocrities are the people who run things now.
Refuse the invitation of the enemy and their policies of suicide.
If we cannot beat them we deserve everything we get.
Stalin helped create the myth of the revolution of the masses - to paralyse them, and therefore protect himself from another coup d’etat. It is from his defeat of another revolution on the tenth anniversary of that of 1917 that the counter-technique of the coup d’etat was crafted.
The only component which survives is the most powerful: the anaesthetic myth of mass revolt.
This idea of revolution - that it happens only when all decide at once that it should - is a lie.
It is told by the powerful to preserve themselves, and to mislead the otherwise mighty into wasting their time until they die of exasperation with a people who will never shake off their chains.
As Malaparte points out, Trotsky was about to overthrow Stalin using the same technique he had employed in the October Revolution of 1917. Trotsky’s aim was to seize control of the State, not the government and its palaces and police.
He was halted by Stalin’s memory of this method.
Ten years after his successful insurrection, Trotsky set out again to capture the power centres of the state with a thousand men. He failed, this time, because Stalin had staffed all the post offices, telecommunications centres, railway stations and strategic points with his own troops.
This was a lesson that could be learned “by the middle classes of Europe”, said Malaparte. If it had been learned by the governments of the West, it has now been forgotten, along with everything else of practical use.
All they know now is how to lie, and no one is listening any more.
The Technique of Insurrection
Power survives today only through propaganda. Seize the memes of production, and the State will follow. Our governments are thieves, liars and cowards. They will scatter in the face of a determined and organised revolt. Again, what is needed is
Disciplined leadership
Clear purpose
Trained technicians
Experienced footsoldiers in small numbers
Money
Do not wait for an “awakening”. This is a lullaby for those who might stir to action. It is a dream from which the dreamers will never wake up. A replacement for the simple technique of the coup d’etat, the fantasy of revolution transports all those who would change the world to never never land. This is why it never happens. Almost never.
Chaos is coming and with it the golden opportunity for change. There is never a perfect time for a coup d’etat. Trotsky himself said there was never a bad time for it, either.
That said, “bad times” are the best of times for the coup d’etat. What time is it now?
Trotsky also said that insurrection is like striking a paralysed man. With this type of invisible attack the western state will be revealed for what it truly is - a sick parody of power, a state of sickness in mind and body politic. Our system is a malady in need of a remedy.
The medicine is at hand. There is a method against the madness.
What is more, it is a natural right - and a Liberal one - as we shall see in the next part.
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Great "How To". Seize the memes of production, comrade.
This is very interesting. Thank you!
Given the options (in a strictly hypothetical thought exercise) between a system that *did* require a revolt of the masses vs. a small organized force battling clown world; it would seem the latter has a better chance of a civilized outcome (at least with a well armed US citizenry).
After some considerable searching I found what appears to be an intact copy of Coup D'etat on archive.org. Can I post a link?