The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Realpolitik #20 ｜ Colour Revolution in the USA with Mike Shelby

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. This is a special episode. I am

00:00:06.020 joined today by Mike Shelby, who is a veteran of the American army in the intelligence. He's

00:00:14.620 operated in Iraq and in Afghanistan, has a lot of experience in the field. He's also the founder

00:00:20.700 of Forward Observer. And over the last few years, he's really built himself up as a very astute

00:00:26.860 analyst of what the American left is doing, what Antifa is working on, the plans that they have to

00:00:33.780 try to disrupt the Trump administration. I want to talk to him about all of that. And I also want to

00:00:40.020 get some insights from him on how this applies to the United Kingdom and to other parts of the world

00:00:46.140 that are really seeing the same kind of leftist agitation that is intended to keep the far left

00:00:53.520 or the ideologues of the far left in power for as long as possible. Mike, thank you so much for

00:01:00.500 joining me. How are you? Hey, I'm doing well. Thank you for the opportunity. My pleasure. My pleasure.

00:01:07.100 I noticed you on X, you tweet on the gray zone, if I'm not mistaken. And you've had a bunch of insights

00:01:16.240 insights on what Antifa is and how it's operating. Every time we talk about this, the left claims that

00:01:24.280 actually Antifa is an idea, not an organization. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

00:01:33.880 Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's define what gray zone is. So there's outright war and outright peace.

00:01:40.620 And the gray zone is the space in between. So no one can say the United States is at outright war

00:01:47.080 with itself. We're definitely not at peace with ourselves. And so the gray zone is low-intensity

00:01:54.080 conflict. So these are forms of conflict or warfare that exist beneath the threshold of conventional war,

00:01:59.600 but above routine peaceful competition. And so we look at Antifa and the broader anti-fascist movement,

00:02:05.540 and it's an idea or in a concept, it's also highly organized. So it's not just an idea.

00:02:13.180 And they, at a minimum, you could say they're a violent social group. They view themselves as

00:02:18.320 revolutionaries and they talk about insurrectionary violence. And that's what they call their uprisings

00:02:24.600 from 20, you know, I mean, really kind of going back to 2015, all through 2021, you know, 2020 didn't

00:02:31.820 stop at the end of the year, continued on in some places into 2021. And so we've just seen this

00:02:37.080 most recent iteration of this insurrectionary violence that's ongoing in Portland. And so

00:02:42.900 that's where we are. And it is not a problem that's going to solve itself. They are, again,

00:02:50.140 a revolutionary group. So they win by toppling the US government.

00:02:55.360 Yeah. Yeah. When you look at Portland, you see a lot of evidence of them planning, of them having

00:03:03.940 proper cells, some leadership structures, a hierarchy, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean,

00:03:12.680 that sort of negates the point that they're just an idea, rather obviously. But their activity seems

00:03:20.500 to be, I mean, you see a lot of training in effect, and you kind of see the same tactics here in

00:03:28.580 Britain. You see them with the umbrellas, you see them with the Stonewall silence, you see them with 0.75

00:03:34.360 the very calculated, deliberate violence. And none of this is random. I mean, what is the... 2015 is

00:03:43.060 sort of when they burst into the scene, they burst onto the scene with the BLM or the initial stages of

00:03:49.360 BLM. Tell me a bit more about their way of thinking. Tell me a bit more about their training

00:03:55.920 and tell me a bit more about their financing. Sure. Well, I would say this is kind of the third

00:04:01.960 iteration of anarchist and socialist violence going back. The first iteration was in the United States,

00:04:08.880 at least, was back in the late 19-teens. And you had anarchist and socialist violence,

00:04:15.300 including they mailed basically a pipe bomb to the Attorney General Mitchell Palmer at the time.

00:04:22.080 And we deported thousands of them back to Europe. We just told these European countries,

00:04:27.180 we don't want your anarchist and socialist here, have them back. And the FBI, it took a while,

00:04:31.300 but the FBI finally defeated that iteration. And then probably a lot of people are familiar with

00:04:36.080 the 60s and into the 70s. That was the second iteration with like Students for Democratic Society

00:04:40.700 and the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, several others. Those finally

00:04:46.320 defeated. And now we're in the third iteration. So there is a doctrine here. These groups have

00:04:51.320 training doctrine like militaries have. They have a certain way of doing things. And there will be

00:04:57.720 localized adaptations, of course, but they have the zines that they publish and the articles that they

00:05:04.120 publish. They're fairly uniform in how they operate going down to the basic level of an Antifa group,

00:05:12.000 which is called an affinity group. And this is a group of, you know, 5, 10, 15 people somewhere

00:05:17.240 around there. And affinity groups can link together. You can be a member of several affinity groups.

00:05:22.420 And they go out and conduct direct action. So direct action for us in the military is like door

00:05:27.860 kicking. And they don't do that yet. But their direct action is direct intervention. So they'll go out

00:05:33.560 and do a black block demonstration and, or they'll go out and smash windows or start fires and just

00:05:39.800 engage in property destruction, arson, like, you know, sometimes there have been shootings here in

00:05:46.680 the United States as well, murders, homicides. And so this is why when you look at a black block 1.00

00:05:52.340 demonstration, they are fairly uniform, whether you're talking about one in Philadelphia or Portland

00:05:58.220 or Seattle or Dallas or wherever. So there is, I would say that's the first thing. There's a very

00:06:04.760 well-established training doctrine of how you do things there. It supports this theory that it is

00:06:10.240 very well organized and coordinated, especially at the lower levels.

00:06:14.220 And how influenced are they by things like seven rules for radicals and this kind of ideology that

00:06:19.460 tries to sort of, uh, keep the opponent of balance and how, how, how influenced are they by, by this

00:06:26.720 and how effective has it been really?

00:06:29.580 Well, I can't recall specifically them recommending rules for radicals, but it, it is in line with what 0.88

00:06:34.520 they want to do in terms of, of subversion and overthrowing the oppressors. You know, they want to

00:06:40.780 abolish police, abolish prisons, abolish capitalism, abolish all forms of hierarchy, which they say

00:06:45.920 is oppressive. Uh, so, but then they'll, they'll also promote manuals like, uh, Carlos, Carlos Marighella's

00:06:53.500 the, the mini manual of the urban gorilla. And it's, it's, it's really a proto insurgent movement,

00:07:00.060 uh, but very, very insurgent like, so that's the, uh, you know, there's a handful of other handbooks

00:07:06.520 that they will promote as well. And it's, it's all insurrectionary and insurgent type material.

00:07:11.440 Okay. Could you dig a little bit deeper into the, the sort of tactics that they use and

00:07:17.760 what is the purpose of these tactics? Like when they go and they sort of, um, surround

00:07:23.700 ICE vehicles, when they go and they try to burn down police stations, the objective is

00:07:29.560 genuinely the overthrow of the government and they think that will lead them on a path where

00:07:35.060 the government reacts and people radicalize or what exactly? Yeah. Well, there's a term that

00:07:42.120 it's thrown around in some, some areas called revolutionary rupture. And when we look back

00:07:47.620 to 2020, you know, they didn't happen in a vacuum and it didn't happen in its own. Uh,

00:07:52.000 that was the result. Uh, George Floyd of course was the, the trigger, but really that movement

00:07:57.960 had been building since 2015, at least 2015 is when I noticed them. And there was a white 0.98

00:08:03.760 nationalist by the name of Richard Spencer. And there were some, some other white nationalist

00:08:07.160 groups. This is kind of when the alt-right was rising in the United States. And so they

00:08:10.700 would go and directly confront them and go fight them in the streets and call and get

00:08:14.200 them de-platformed off of social media and call, uh, event venues where speeches were happening.

00:08:21.260 And early on, it was all about de-platforming and not giving any space to white nationalists

00:08:26.940 or to what eventually, you know, they would call fascists. And so that's kind of the,

00:08:30.560 still the bedrock is not giving space to any kind of fascist or right-wing organizing any

00:08:35.560 kind of reactionary style politics. And so, uh, you know, I would say that's, that's the

00:08:41.580 bedrock it. I'll be honest. I don't look at Antifa. Um, I don't actually think they're

00:08:46.620 a strategic threat to the United States. I don't think they're going to topple. I don't

00:08:51.500 think Antifa is going to topple the federal government, but they are a huge thorn in the

00:08:56.100 side of many locales. And this is something that they're trying to, they are trying to

00:09:01.260 build up to being a strategic threat. Like when we look at insurgencies, there's basically

00:09:05.660 an X and a Y axis and the X axis, the vertical axis or vertical ties. And this is how deeply

00:09:11.060 embedded a, uh, say an affinity group or any kind of, um, insurgent group is embedded into

00:09:17.660 the local community. And in a lot of these places like Portland, Portland, there is substantial

00:09:22.380 support, maybe overwhelming support for Antifa. And that's one reason why many of them don't

00:09:28.520 get arrested. Or if they do get arrested, they may spend a night in jail, but charges are

00:09:32.260 dropped or they plead down. And so that, that kind of, uh, freedom of movement and freedom

00:09:37.940 of action have, have probably has a basis in the level of support that they have in these

00:09:42.260 communities. And then there are things called horizontal ties. And this is how tied into the,

00:09:46.960 they are to other chapters across the country. And so when you have an insurgent movement,

00:09:52.160 it has vertical ties and horizontal ties, we call it an integrated insurgency. And, uh,

00:09:58.620 Antifa is not an integrated insurgency, uh, at least not yet. So I think that is a huge,

00:10:03.760 it's a vulnerability for them and it just, it makes them strategically ineffective,

00:10:07.960 but really at a local level, they are a massive nuisance and a big problem, obviously. So any

00:10:13.880 big picture, I don't look at Antifa like a, like a, a strategy, a big picture, uh, strategic

00:10:19.960 threat, but certainly they're trying to be, they're trying to grow into that.

00:10:23.460 Right. Right.

00:10:24.020 Oh, so, and so at any rate, um, I, I think there's a, you know, they, ISIS called it propaganda

00:10:29.220 by deed and several other insurgent organizations have called it similar. Uh, but basically they

00:10:34.300 go out and when they go engage in these direct action demonstrations and, and arson and property

00:10:40.380 destruction, they look at that as a form of propaganda. And so they, they do that and they

00:10:44.200 try to build their movement. So that's one reason why they continue to go out, uh, because

00:10:48.580 they, it will make the news and they will reach people with their message and they hope to build

00:10:52.940 it. It's just not been incredibly popular outside of places like Portland and Seattle

00:10:57.440 and a handful of other cities.

00:10:59.960 What do you think are the odds of them succeeding and becoming a strategic threat? And can you

00:11:05.760 talk to me a little bit about their relationship with the rest of the democratic party? Because

00:11:10.860 I think that's really where a big part of the problem is.

00:11:14.180 Hmm. Well, what I see is the democratic party, they're, they're not necessarily flying the

00:11:21.120 same flag, but they're marching in the same direction. And I really view Antifa as basically

00:11:26.180 useful idiots. They've been a cudgel used by the Democrat party against conservatives and 1.00

00:11:30.980 against right-wing organizing. And it's been at some level mutually beneficial for them. Uh,

00:11:37.960 Antifa basically foot soldiers in a sense of the Democrat party. Uh, they're politically,

00:11:43.080 they are actually opposed to each other because Antifa is a, an abolitionist and revolutionary

00:11:47.680 movement. Right. Whereas you have the establishment Democrats, they are more reformers. They want to

00:11:54.240 take over the government and, and refashion it in their image. And Antifa does not want government

00:12:00.560 at all. So they are, you could say strange bedfellows. They share some goals, but really they're

00:12:05.560 diametrically opposed at the, at the big picture strategic level. But then it hasn't stopped

00:12:10.080 Antifa from being used as a cudgel, which is essentially what they are, the useful idiots. 1.00

00:12:16.140 That's how I see it. Right. And where do they fit into, um, where does BLM fit into this? 1.00

00:12:23.340 And yeah, let's, let's start with BLM. Where does BLM fit into this?

00:12:29.060 Yeah. Well, BLM is a, or Black Lives Matter, the movement for black lives. They are a,

00:12:35.100 a separate organization, also bedfellows or co-travelers, you would say. Um, BLM has not

00:12:40.920 been very active in the past couple of years, uh, really after 2020 or so. And there's been a few

00:12:48.000 reasons for that, uh, massive corruption in BLM. And so I, I do think their, their star has faded

00:12:54.180 just a little bit. They, a couple of years ago, they spent, I don't know how much, but it was the

00:12:58.240 millions of dollars, uh, to, to rebuild their website and rebrand and kind of put a, a fresh,

00:13:03.260 happy face on BLM. And it so far has not worked. They've also so far not been involved in any of

00:13:08.120 the national protests we've seen in this country. Uh, not very active that may change as we head

00:13:13.620 closer to the midterms and, and move into next year. Uh, our midterms are in 26. Yeah. And so,

00:13:20.000 uh, yeah, BLM, I, they are a, uh, a fellow traveler, but a separate organization. They advocate,

00:13:26.120 uh, very, very similar leftist style goals. Many of them are abolitionists as well.

00:13:32.980 Meaning that they want to abolish police and abolish prisons and it's, it's social justice

00:13:38.240 and economic justice. Uh, and I, I would, I would not, I would say they hold hands in general

00:13:48.160 with the left, but, uh, they are very much their own entity and they're looking out for

00:13:52.880 their interests and not anyone else's. Right. Right. And so the protests targeting ICE,

00:13:58.880 I mean, if, when I look at those protests, um, they don't all seem to be Antifa. Some of them

00:14:05.620 seem to be just various Hispanic groups that are reacting in their own neighborhoods. Uh, some of 1.00

00:14:12.880 them seem to be a lot of horrible liberals, white liberals. Um, talk to me about the ICE protests and 0.99

00:14:20.860 talk to me about the, the, the, the, the issues around that please. And then maybe we can move to

00:14:26.420 some of the shootings that have taken place from sort of, uh, the shootings targeting ICE and your

00:14:33.100 view on how organized or centralized the actual armed violence is. Sure. So yeah, there, it's a broad

00:14:43.500 coalition. And when we, when we say the left in this country, I think a lot of people think the left

00:14:48.380 is a monolith and it's not, there are a lot of different groups and, uh, overlapping goals and,

00:14:53.700 and some are diametrically opposed to each other. So broadly, I break it up into more or less the

00:14:59.020 revolutionary left versus the establishment left. So when we look at these anti-Hist protests,

00:15:03.800 it is a coalition and you have places like Los Angeles where there are pro-Hispanic groups,

00:15:08.280 anti-immigration enforcement, pro-immigration, pro-Latino groups, or they call themselves Chicano or

00:15:15.780 whatever they're going to call themselves, but they pretty much, they are, you know, they say

00:15:19.680 everyone's a blood and soil nationalist, um, you know, at the heart of it. Um, these people at least,

00:15:25.420 so they're very much advocating for, you know, they say La Raza, like the race, there's actually

00:15:30.060 a special interest group called La Raza. And so there are a lot of those groups out here, like the

00:15:34.700 Brown Berets are, they're kind of the more or less a paramilitary Latino group. So you, you do have a

00:15:40.440 faction of them and then you do have Antifa and kind of the militant left. And then you do also

00:15:47.540 have this very much establishment movement. And there's one group in particular here in this

00:15:52.580 country, they're called Indivisible. And they are the country's largest protest organizing group.

00:15:58.860 They're kind of the, the, the big umbrella that's bringing all these various groups together into

00:16:05.800 these national days of protest. And we've had, we have had several, just a couple of weeks ago,

00:16:09.940 they, on the 18th of October, they claimed that they got 7 million protesters mobilized. I doubt,

00:16:18.520 I doubt it was 7 million. That's the no Kings protest. Correct. Yes. Yeah. No Kings 2.0. So

00:16:23.820 there was one back in June that was no Kings one and then two. And then apparently the next one,

00:16:28.300 there may be scheduling for March of next year of 2026. So yeah. And, and there, that's more of

00:16:35.040 an establishment type group, establishment Democrat, progressive type group. And who's leading it?

00:16:43.440 Well, they have two co-executive directors, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. And there's,

00:16:48.680 they have a lot of institutional backing, Soros money, millions and millions of dollars. And so that's,

00:16:55.480 that's just, and just real quick, they say that they say themselves that they are not leaders,

00:17:01.360 which, which may be technically true. What they're trying to do is train leaders at the local level.

00:17:05.720 So I don't look at Indivisible and say, this is a one organization. It's really an organization of

00:17:11.140 2000 plus local chapters of Indivisible. And so they are trying to push down the leadership and logistics

00:17:19.160 and even some of the financing down to the local level. So this is not just one group. It's like 2000 groups.

00:17:26.160 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 10, 2025

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #20 ｜ Colour Revolution in the USA with Mike Shelby

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