We’re rapidly moving towards a Civil War.
I have believed this state of affairs was imminent for quite some time and I’ve mulled this post for nearly a year. I have thought for the last year we would eventually devolve into a national civil war. And this week there’s been a lot of hand wringing about left vs right tactics and organizations. It’s been pointed out the left has 50 years on us, support from the mainstream society, the media, academia, and commerce. If we try the same tactics were are crucified. If we form groups we are infiltrated with snitches. The left has funding sources that the right can’t even dream of.
Wah wah. I’m gonna talk about a group that faced far, far worse circumstances and overcame them to win a civil war and save a nation. Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The AUC, baby.
Forget everything you know about AUC. If you’re even aware of them you maybe think of them as some thug Latin American “paramilitary” force that trafficked drugs from Colombia into the United States and acted as a bully organization for rich landowners. Not to many Colombians. To them they’re heroes. Depends on who you talk to actually. But on novelas about the AUC, hot guys play the key roles. Think of those “Deplorables” memes based on “The Expendables” posters. If you could imagine the same classes of people that were Trump people are the people that praise the AUC. The left in Colombia, the journos in Colombia, the professors in Colombia, they hate ’em.
And I say clear your mind. Guess who wrote the narratives you have read about the AUC? The same people that have written narratives for forever. And their story about AUC is as wrong as anything you ever read.
Let me give you an recent example, those White Helmets in Syria. Search them and you’ll get all kinds of stories and images of them as some sort of heroic group of angels like this image printed in a Catholic journal showing them as a bunch of swell guys saving innocent kids from hospitals that those bastard Russians were bombing just to kill innocent kids because that fucker Assad is a fucker and that horrible Putin is a monster kid bomber, right?
Then we find out these photos are posed and that same little red haired white skinned girl in the photo kept showing up over and over in “bombing” after “bombing”. And we find out that those White Helmets have collected over $150,000,000 from duped western charities and are actually Al Qaeda.
Well, it’s something similar with AUC, or at least the story is a lot more complicated than what you have been led to believe.
AUC were the good guys and are the only reason that Colombia was able to defeat the FARC communist rebels in its Civil War. But who is gonna tell you that? The media, academia?
Take what you know now about the narrative building that goes on and project back. Much of the same variables and cultural types were in place in Colombia as they are here. A lot of those same things we face now were working for the Colombian left and against the Colombian right. Toss in leftist support in academia, journalism, government, then add the massive complication of billions of dollars in illegal drug money and you have a situation similar to the left today in America and the huge money gained by globalism.
What do you do when almost every cultural and societal aspect is stacked against you?
When the media, the international community, academia, half of the people, and a lot of those people are both stupid and rabid, are not only against you but see you as immoral?
When any action the left commits on you is justified, downplayed, now matter how violent?
When anything your side does, any response is THE WORST THING EVER?
When they applaud attacks on you, celebrate your death?
When the media is looking to pounce on you, even lie?
When they have control of organizations, political organs, courts?
When they are funded by a huge amount of corruptible money that can buy off anything, threaten or corrupt anyone, control entire industries, legal systems, cities, even regions?
You say Fuck Them. That’s what you do.
And that’s what this guy said, “Fuck them. They need to be more afraid of me and mine than I am of them and theirs.”
Carlos Castaño Gil. He was 15 when the communist rebels kidnapped his father. His older brother collected together enough for ransom and paid it. But then the amount was raised. “Sorry amigo, but you’re short.” Typical FARC tactic, bleed you and bleed you, then bleed you some more.
Carlos’ older brother Fidel told the rebels he could raise no more money, that was all they had and during the negotiations he lost his temper and shot back, ‘If I could get more money,’ he said, ‘it would be only to fight you.’ The guerrillas beat the father, tied him standing up to a tree, with a rope around his neck, and left him. When he finally collapsed he was strangled.
“What came from this was hatred,” Carlos said, “a hatred that could not be banished. We decided to fight the guerrillas. But we did not realize the magnitude of the enemy and what we had embarked the entire family on. [Until then] I had never fired a shot.”
Fidel, 30, and Carlos, then just 16, presented themselves to the local army unit, who were engaged in a constant battle against the FARC. For a year they helped lead the military through guerrilla areas. In 1982 sources told them that a FARC guerrilla, Conrado Ramirez, was in the nearby town of Segovia. Fidel alerted the authorities, but Ramirez was released for lack of evidence. As Ramirez left his hotel the next day, Fidel killed him.
That’s the point, “the lack of evidence” was due to the FARC having control over local authorities, either through fear or by placing people in positions of authority.
You will never defeat an illegal subversive force by legal means. Not one with the same sort of support that the left in America enjoys today, not one that will kill or do anything to win, and not one that will use your own rules and laws against you to limit your ability to fight. Not one with its supporters placed in key positions of all aspects of society.
But with one bullet, as Ramirez left his hotel to go out to party and drink aguadiente, Fidel insured that Ramirez was no longer a problem or a threat to Colombia.
AUC grew, and the story of how it grew is the theme of this series of posts. It grew because it had the backing of the “gente bien”, the “good people” of Colombia who wanted prosperity, safe towns, law and order. Its goals aligned with the goals of the Army, the police, the business community, and the legitimate government of Colombia, and the same sort of people who back Trump, normal, sane everyday people. Carlos Castaño, and many others like him, realized it would take “extra measures” to achieve the desired ends and the government of Colombia was limited in its ability to perform those measures.
That's why I've always said, "You can paint me as 'Satan' before
the world, but the question that sooner or later will have to be
put on the balance is: - "What consequences generated what that has
led to Castaño?", that is the important thing. It only comforts me
that I did not start this war, and the Autodefensas are the
legitimate daughters of the guerrillas in Colombia.
Little by little I have been creating a new universal concept. An
illegal army that in the year 2001 is not paramilitary, nor
paragovernment ("para" meaning "along side" or "instead of"). It
defends the system and the state with weapons that takes away some
state authority because it replaces it in several areas, but does
not oppose it. It asks for Justice and is in turn outside the law.
It's a kind of group - Parastatal. Nobody taught me this and if it
has been prospering is because it is so!
This summer Colombia signed a peace accord with FARC, basically a surrender, an end to a conflict that began in 1948. But in 2002, the fate of the country hung in the balance. As Alavaro Uribbe was being inaugurated as president, mortars were launched from the mountainsides above Bogota down onto the proceedings. To many Colombians this signed peace was a consequence generated by the actions of Carlos Castaño.
“Robin Kirk is the Faculty Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute and is a founding member of the Pauli Murray Project, an initiative of the center that seeks to use the legacy of this Durham daughter to examine the region’s past of slavery, segregation and continuing economic inequality.”
That text is straight off the Duke University for page for Robin Kirk. She wrote what is probably the most widely read book by westerners about the Colombian Civil War. She worked for Human Rights Watch at the time she wrote it. She’s sitting in that cushy chair at Duke because she wrote it.
She tried to write would appear to be balanced account of the war but she couldn’t. The sentence from the Duke site tells you why she couldn’t. She was, more or less, a spy for the Blue Tribe. She wasn’t employed by the CIA but that made little difference.
You can bet the “human rights” violations she noted were more about things the Colombian Army or the AUC did. She was there to create fear in the minds of Colombian officials. Any report she created could impact foreign aid and trade with the U.S.A or Europe and it led to a paralysis in the Colombia government in its prosecution of the war.
Her book, A Fate Worse Than Death, tried to detail the Colombian public as “between a rock and a hard spot”. Pressure from FARC on one side and then pressure of “paramilitaries” or “narcos” on the other. The title refers to “the fear of doing nothing”, meaning brave human rights people in Colombia would risk death to document human rights violations. But the majority, especially the government, were in sort of a paralysis caused by corruption from drug money and civil war.
Carlos harbored no such allusion. People had a choice. And their choices AUC gave them would have as dire a consequence as those that not cooperating with the insurgents would entail.
Here’s an example. In one region, cattle theft was rampant. FARC had gone to butchers and told them to process the stolen cattle so FARC could sell the meat or face the consequences. FARC even paid them. The thefts were crushing local cattle ranchers and their employees, banks that had loaned money to the ranchers, distributors dependent on the cattle, suppliers to ranchers. Money was used to further fund FARC activities in the region which involved killing people and inflicting more harm.
AUC went to the butchers and said “Stop it or we will kill you.” And they killed some that didn’t. Some fled, faced with an untenable set of consequences. But the thefts ended because FARC no longer was able to get the cattle processed. Carlos, when challenged said, “Those butchers had a choice. They could continue as before or do the right thing. Their choices were harming others.”
Of course, Human Rights Watch wrote it up as an atrocity committed by AUC on innocent civilians. Media worded it as “AUC kills innocent butchers to protect the profits of wealthy ranchers.”
AUC was notorious for posting lists of names with the heading, “The following people are invited to their funerals”. When there was a corrupt judge, public official, corrupt politician, narco, businessman that aided FARC, they made the list. If there was a dishonest journalist printing things that aided FARC, they made the list. If there university professors involved in activities that aided the FARC they made the list.
This might have seemed a violation of humans rights to you before, but now imagine what you know, imagine journalists that deliberately act in completely dishonest manners. Or judges that totally overstep their bounds in rendering decisions deliberately designed to harm you or aid the left. Imagine judges that are allowing known killers to avoid prosecution, that are released back onto the street, knowing damn well they will return to activities detrimental to people. Imagine non-profits that collect money then use that money to fund riots or lawfare specifically to injure you or dispossess you. Imagine professors that deliberately teach subject matter that they intend to be disruptive to you, that literately promotes your dispossession and even your genocide. Or politicians that receive bribes to act in manners, to pass laws, to block actions, all specifically designed to impact you negatively.
Am I advocating we form death squads and take out judges? No. But what I will detail is how AUC started from a small band, in the most hostile area, in the most difficult of times, organized, got funded, and became an army of 25,000 ….
And saved a country.
Fame's Blond 