The hot new trend in right-wing commentary is to argue that expressions of concern about Donald Trump stealing the election add up to an effort to start a "color revolution" in the United States, similar to rebellions that have arisen in former Soviet bloc nations. The belief on the right is that the uprisings in former Russian satellites were ginned up by a sinister cabal of left-leaning globalists; right-wingers argue that when we say it might require force to remove Trump from office if he's legitimitely defeated, we're saying it because we want to use force. In August, Michael Brendan Dougherty argued this for National Review, and now we have Miranda Devine of the New York Post making a similar assertion, under the headline "Antifa Riots May Be Part of Democrat Power Grab."

Whether or not all rioters are Democrat voters, they increasingly are associated with Biden’s campaign in the minds of voters who fear violence is coming to their suburb.

This rolling campaign of anti-police street violence is killing Biden’s bid for the presidency — just look at private polling in crucial swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where law and order has become a decisive issue.

(We can't "look at private polling," Miranda, because, y'know, it's private. If you have access to some numbers that The Liberal Media Won't Talk About, given that you're a journalist and all, why don't you share them? Of course, she doesn't.)

So why don’t Democrat leaders do more to condemn the violence and call for calm?

To understand their inaction, you need to step back and see street violence as one element of a coordinated “playbook” to dislodge President Trump, regardless of the outcome of the election.

This is the thesis of political theorist Dr. Darren Beattie, a former Duke University professor and White House official.

The playbook is straight from the strategies the US government has deployed in so-called “Color Revolutions” in Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine or Belarus, to remove “authoritarian” leaders deemed to be hostile to American interests.

In a series of articles at Revolver.news, Beattie lays out a compelling comparison between Deep State efforts to remove President Trump and techniques used by the State Department, covert agencies and allied NGOs to influence, or overturn, elections in foreign countries.

BLM-Antifa’s “mostly peaceful protests” are America’s version of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, where civil unrest was fomented on the streets to oust a Kremlin-backed authoritarian.

In an interview, Beattie noted “strong parallels” between “color revolutions” overseas and the “sustained coordinated coup against Trump” — from the Russia collusion hoax to his impeachment over Ukraine.

“The very same regime change professionals ... assigned to overthrow ‘authoritarians’ in Eastern Europe are the ones running this operation against Trump. It is the same playbook run by the same people.”

The Color Revolution playbook starts by creating the narrative of an authoritarian, illegitimate leader. Then you foment unrest on the streets, aimed at provoking an authoritarian crackdown which can be used to mobilize further unrest.

You undermine people’s faith in the election process, setting up a contested outcome which turns into street fighting.

At the same time, you wage relentless “lawfare” to contest ballots. Ultimately the military may be called upon to dislodge the incumbent.

One of the biggest conspiracy theories on the right -- it's almost at a QAnon level of looniness -- is that left-wing radicals (and self-styled anarchists who just like to break stuff) are working hand in glove with the party of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Buttigieg, Chris Dodd, Ed Rendell, and so on. We have enough trouble getting Bernie supporters to say that Trump is worse than Biden. We've lost two presidential elections this century because lefties thought it was extremely cool not to vote Democratic. Do these right-wingers seriously believe that Biden/Harris operatives are coordinating strategy with the Black Bloc?

They do, or at least their audience does.

Meanwhile, who are the folks who believe in this Conspiracy So Vast?

Miranda Devine, the author of this piece, came to New York, like many writers for the Murdoch press, from Australia, where she really made a name for herself.

In 2002, Devine opined in the Sydney Morning Herald that the racial element of the Sydney gang rapes had been "airbrushed" out of the media coverage of the events. She stated that the victims alleged that prosecutors had intentionally "censored" their official statements to remove any mention of racially sensitive material.... Devine has also been accused by the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald of promoting the white genocide conspiracy theory and described as pivotal in popularising the concept within Australian politics.... Referring to white South African refugees as "oppressed white, Christian, industrious, rugby and cricket-playing Commonwealth cousins", she has claimed they would "integrate seamlessly" with European Australians.

And her source, Darren Beattie? He left a White House speechwriting job when it was leaned that he'd delivered an address to a white nationalist conference, then was hired as a speechwriting consultant by Congressman Matt Gaetz, who then improperly sent $28,000 to a limited liability company linked to Beattie, in violation of House ethics rules. But it's Beattie's racism that stands out.

Beattie maintains an active presence on Twitter, where he frequently amplifies 21-year old commentator Nick Fuentes and other leading voices of the White nationalist America First/groyper movement....

Fuentes and his ‘America First’ program ... is notorious for thinly-veiled warnings of ‘White genocide’ and demographic replacement, virulent racism and antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and other staples of White nationalist ideology. Fuentes, for his part, has called Beattie “brilliant”, “honorable” and “a solid guy”....

Beattie, much like the America First movement, tends to signal core White nationalist claims that white people in the U.S. are being ‘replaced’ by conspiratorial elites, while strategically downplaying an explicit embrace of White identity politics.

At times, however, the mask slips. “If white people are targeted as a group,” Beattie claimed on June 23, “they must learn to defend themselves as a group.” ...

Beattie has excoriated protesters as “bio-defectives”, citing the theory of Bio-Leninism, a supremacist doctrine, developed by the racist neoreactionary movement, which asserts that biologically inferior social groups use progressive movements to self-organize into a societal elite, usurping power from groups that would otherwise constitute their natural superiors. The theorist behind Bio-Leninism, known as Spandrell, believes these bio-superiors to be White, Christian and male, stating in 2018 that “if Progressivism were to fail,” the social groups Beattie called bio-defectives would “be back picking cotton, or barefoot in the kitchen, or freezing in the shtetl.” Echoing theories of elite domination of Whites, Beattie retweeted far-right investor Adam Townsend’s claim on July 15 that with diversity and inclusion initiatives in industries like tech, “elites want to strip Whites of their economic, political and social capital, as they are the only opposing force that can displace them.” ...

To advance conspiracies of an elite Left takeover, Beattie samples from the tropes of white nationalist antisemitism, a surprising fact given that Beattie is himself Jewish. “When America takes a knee,” he said on June 7, “Soros takes a bow” ...

These are the folks who think we have a massive conspiracy in the works. I think they're projecting a mirror image of their own fantasies of white counterrevolution.

(Hat tip: Paul Canning.)

Published with permission of No More Mister Nice Blog