The Socialist Playbook

The person, the individual, who one year is free and independent, is next year just a little more restricted. Then a little more, and a little more. Suddenly, overnight, he no longer is a person. He is a cog, being moved inexorably by the monolithic machinery of the State.
And not a shot is fired!
-- John Howland Snow

In the last century, several Democratic countries were converted to Socialism. Many have since moved back to Democracy and a free market economy with private property rights but at eminence cost and suffering.

To understand our enemy, we need to learn how they work and the tactics they use. Socialists have a method or playbook of how they go about converting countries from a functional Democracy to a Socialist state.

Of all of the countries that were converted to Socialism, Czechoslovakia stands out as one we can learn from and uncover the tactics used. Then we can look at our situation with open eyes and see just how we are being manipulated and set up.

Europe & World War 2

Directly after World War 2 ended, Europe lay in ruin and the people that survived the conflict were now in danger of starving to death, with widespread famine and most of the infrastructure destroyed.

World War 2 was a significant shift in battle lines between Democracy and Socialism. By 1950, less than 5 years after the war ended, Europe had been divided in half. Free-market Democray's in the West and Socialist states controlled by the Soviet Union in the East.

New Terms such as Cold War & Iron Curtain were becoming popular to describe the situation the world found itself in.

The Soviet Expansion

Stalin the Socialist Dictator of the Soviet Union used the destruction and chaos after the war to grab entire regions and refusing to withdraw its forces. He moved quickly to infiltrate governments and political parties across Eastern Europe and one by one they all became Soviet puppet states. Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Eastern Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia all turned Socialist.

The United States knew a week and destroyed Europe would be bad for them, and the rest of the world. So they tried to help through the Marshall Plan initiative. All the Western European countries accepted the help. The Eastern Socialist countries refused US assistance and instead turned to the Soviet Union.

Prosperous Czechoslovakia Before The War

Before World War 2 Czechoslovakia had fully embraced Democracy. In 1918 with the election of Tomáš G. Masaryk as president, who oversaw Czechoslovakia rapidly growing into an industrial powerhouse of central Europe. Life expectancy and income growth were some of the best in the world.

By the mid-1920s, Czechoslovakia's economic strength was unmatched in Europe, with its GDP per capita higher than Germany, France, Italy, and the U.K.

Masaryk resigned in December 1935 because of old age and poor health and was succeeded by another pro-democracy president Edvard Beneš. In 1938 Beneš went into exile in London at the start of World War 2 and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia's National Democratic Revolution

40 years of brutal Communist Party rule in Czechoslovakia so clearly demonstrate, communism was a tactic employed for the assumption of power, rather than a sincere belief.
-- Thomas R. Eddlem

After the war ended Edvard Beneš returned, and so the hard-working Czechoslovakian people went about putting their country back together. The rebuilding was rapid, and Czechoslovakia was able to escape the famine that was devastating most of Europe.

The progress, unfortunately, was short-lived as Klement Gottwald the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) announced in 1945 that their goal was Socialism through a Democratic National Revolution.

In February of 1948, the Communist plans were realised. In the space of a few short years, post-war Czechoslovakia went from a Democracy and an example to the rest of Europe, to a complete Communist-controlled Socialist state. All without a bloody and violent military revolution similar to what had been seen before.

The Leaked Handbook & Architect

The people of Czechoslovakia were manipulated into voting themselves into slavery.
Through targeted mass agitation, a free government was transformed into a totalitarian dictatorship, legally!
-- Thomas R. Eddlem froward of "And Not A Shot Is Fired"

Jan Kozak was a Communist strategist working for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during this time. As a Communist, he took on many high ranking roles. He was a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee, briefly a member of the Government Secretariat, and later the official historian for the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

Jan Kozak was an expert in all things Socialism and Communism. Using his expertise, sometime between 1950 and 1955 Kozak authored an internal report entitled "How Parliament Can Play a Revolutionary Part in the Transition to Socialism and the Role of the Popular Masses".

In the fall of 1957, Kozak's report was discussed in London as part of an internal Czechoslovak Communist Party strategy paper by Communist Czechoslovak delegates at an Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) conference.

We don't know how, but in January of 1961 Kozak's report got out. According to the original British publishers "by a mere coincidence, a copy of the report was secured". Once received Kozak's writings were quickly translated into English and published in February of 1961 by London's Independent Research Centre.

The book made its way to America, where John Howland Snow wrote an introduction, and republished it under the title "And Not a Shot is Fired". In 1999 Robert Welch University Press revised and cleaning up the formatting, and a forward was added by Thomas R. Eddlem and republished a second time.

And Not a Shot is Fired

The significance of this leaked internal document meant only to be seen by high ranking members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party can not be overstated.

It provides insight into just how deliberate and strategic the Socialist pursuit for power is. Allowing for the review of events that lead to Czechoslovakia becoming Socialist, and to see the tactics, propaganda and manipulation of the public more clearly.

For the first time in history, we can see the world through the eyes of a Socialist and see how they think and how they work and measure and analyse the outcomes.

Ideology as a Tactic, Not a Belief

One thing was clear from Kozak's report. There was always only one goal for Socialists that was repeatedly stressed, seizing total power and control. There is no concern for the poor, they don't agonise over the conditions of the workers, power is the one and only goal.

All the Socialist ideology and promoted beliefs that philosophers like to debate are just tactics and propaganda used to convince and control the poor and working class.

Around the world revolutionaries, dictators and the power-hungry frequently promote Socialism. This is because all forms of Socialist, even Socialism under a parliamentary government, concentrates all power in the hands of the few people who run the state.

Socialism is about controlling wealth not sharing the wealth as we might be lead to believe.

The Giant Pincer Strategy

The primary strategy outlined by Kozak was described by Thomas Eddlem as a giant pincer strategy for transforming a democratic parliamentary system of government into a totalitarian dictatorship.

The pincer strategy applies pressure from 2 sides of society, described as "pressure from above" and "pressure from below".

Pressure From Above & Below

Socialist leaders would look to put pressure on parliament, government institutions and businesses by infiltrating leadership positions and making demands, calling for change and disrupting democratic proceedings. These tactics are described as "pressure from above" and are focused on publicly visible politics.

This pressure from above would often start with Socialist enabling legislation being suggested. At first, they carry no authority or legitimacy so they will look to set up agency through organised artificial pressures for authorities to recognise their demands. Only once the current leadership acknowledges their demands do they carry any weight and legitimacy.

These efforts will be strengthened and legitimised, through the appearance of popular support from the public, making it difficult to ignore. To achieve this they need footsoldiers on the ground, sometimes also referred to as Stormtroopers looking to intimidate, rally support and bully the opposition. These tactics are described as "pressure from below" and focus on the people.

Pressure from both sides looks to work together and re-enforce and legitimise each other. Grassroots support is used to whip up the appearance of popular support for legislative changes through strikes, rallies, petitions, treats and sometimes even sabotage.

Each legislative victory results in new demands to further centralise state power in the hands of the executive. This cycle is repeated until the opposition is completely powerless, silenced or liquidated.

In this way, a Democratic and representative government is piece by piece made authoritarian. Until nothing remains, but a powerless empty shell with all power concentrated in the hands of the executive branch of government, controlled by Socialists.

Tactics Outline

The strategy described by Jan Kozak in And Not a Shot is Fired can be grouped into 5 categories, each playing a different role and reinforcing each other and advancing the socialist agenda and goals.

1. Attack Cultural Groups

Any group of people that would speak out or oppose a Socialist take over, needs to be silenced or neutralised in some way. Any position of power is a target from religious groups and churches to schools and businesses. Primary targets will be any form of capitalism and wealth or institutions rooted in capitalism.

Mass media, trade unions, political parties, universities, foundations, any non-governmental institution of significant influence needs to be controlled, silenced or broken up.

Repeated public shaming and constant negative criticism, combined with threats of violence are used to bully critics into silence by alienating them in society. Whenever possible, it is good to get everyday people to do the job for you by creating rising cultural and racial tensions. The more rage and anger that can be manufactured in society the better, at its divides and distracts the public.

The agricultural industry is singled out as an industry that needs special attention. Traditionally throughout history, farmers are very conservative, independent and resistant to tyranny. Strong independent framing community acts as a counter-revolutionary force that needs to be attacked and threatened into submission. If possible any farming groups of power needs to be dismantled by taking their land away from them and leasing it back to them under state control.

2. Direct Democracy

Democracy is about every person having a voice and who runs a government. These processes and structures of Democracy can be used as a platform for control and manipulation. It's easy to manipulate many individuals, it's more difficult to manipulate a large group.

Direct Democracy is where ordinary people have a direct say in government. Socialism no longer needs to be through revolutions but will come through the ballot box.

In this way platforms of Democracy can be used as weapons against itself. The more desperate, angry and vulnerable people's votes and voices you control, the stronger your position. This is combined with using democratic processes and platforms to frustrate and publicly ambush your political enemies.

3. Gun Control & Monopoly On Force

Any conflict, even in political conflict, you want your opposition as helpless as possible. The threat of violence is a great equalizer when both parties have weapons. The term "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) is where all parties are respected out of fear.

With Socialist totalitarian dictatorships, if you can disarm the general public and prevent any form of legal gun ownership, you reduce the risk of counter-revolutionary resistance. At the same time if you can arm yourself directly or indirectly through control of the police or military force's you make your opposition feel helpless and isolated.

When you disarm the public and your opposition, violent protests start to be a real force of strength that bully people into silence. Large scale legal gun ownership prevents political parties from side-lining the law and parliament or seizing control through force.

Genocide and mass killing of people does not happen when the public is well-armed, and Socialist know this.

4. Popularise Socialist Demands

To a Socialist like Kozak, all cultural and governmental institutions constitute battlefields. Hover, Socialist have a problem in that they often do not have the numbers to win an election through normal democratic processes.

To solve this, Socialists need to make themselves seem bigger and the issues that drive their agenda seem like they are popular among the people. In time you get the general public to drive the agenda for you.

To achieve this, you use every opportunity to make out like everybody in the country is seeking some form of change. The rights of the workers, the rights of the poor or some form of structural reforms. Any agenda that you can make popular with the people or seam popular, even if it is fake makes your position seem more powerful and legitimate.

A large scale march of people calling for nationalization or workers fighting against capitalist oppression. Constant calling for a change of some kind, in the media, making your demands seem like it is what the people want.

It does not matter if people call you out as a liar. The constant repeating of the lie over time convinces more and more people, growing your support.

5. Activation

At some point, the constant pressure reaches a point where the Socialists will look to complete their take over. They feel their position is strong enough and that they can take over, and nobody will be able to stop them. This referred to as the activation step.

Trade unions are often looked at to trigger the change over through rallies and protests to pressure leaders and businesses into giving into demands.

Ideally, if you can get the people to activate for you rather than you doing it yourself allows you to gain power without any negative impact on your image or legal position. There is also less direct liability or blame from the fallout that follows.

This action step is most often perceived as a sudden large scale takeover, but it does not need to be. There can be constant small activations taking place focused on a specific issue, or it can be one big move to take control.

Understanding The Playbook

When looking to understand the Socialist playbook, one important aspect to understand is that the playbook can be applied in any situation, big or small and many can be combined into larger strategies.

These tactics from 1 to 5 can be employed to take over a single small strategic institution like a University and this can then also be part of a larger plan.

In this way, multiple smaller playbook inspired plans can be playing out together as part of larger playbook inspired strategies. There does not need to be one master plan and one strategy but rather multiple strategies re-enforcing each other and all working towards one common goal of complete power and control.

ANC Playbook: Lessons For South Africa

As we review the main tactics employed and promoted by the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia documented and outlined in Jan Kozak report. We can also assess our own experience under ANC rule and the Socialist tactics used against our Democracy.

The correlations are very scary as we can see the same tactics and events playing out in our country decades later.

Race As A Weapon

The rainbow nation of different race groups working together weakens the Socialist position. However, the ANC had to seem willing to reconcile in the early days of our Democracy, and could not start to use the tactic of creating conflict between race groups until sufficient time had passed.

As time passed more and more manufactured rage would be orchestrated, creating rising racial tension. Sometimes existing racial tensions are amplified and sometimes racial tensions are manufactured where there was none.

Does it make sense that there is more racial tension today in the media than at the height of Apartheid? Or does it make more sense that peoples differences are being used against them to create tensions between cultures and racial groups?

Media Control & War Of Words

In the modern world, there are two main sides to the media. The formal media is the traditional news media that revolves around a business of some kind. Then the informal media is created by the public, in the form of social media, blogs and personal websites.

Social media can be manipulated into a frenzy or bullied into silence, from fake Twitter accounts or used to orchestrated attacks on a business or person. Social media is a battleground and socialists have no problem paying people full time to run multiple fake social media profiles and spread fake news and fuel rage.

Formal media control is far less public and subtle, with slow stead control through legal ownership and pressure to withdraw advertising or government funding. Over time, more and more the independence of our media institutions are being eroded. Many mainstream media institutions that once were very outspoken against the ANC government, today are meek puppets. To see how vital formal media is in politics, we can look at examples in the form of Gupta owned ANN7 at the height of state capture.

White Colonial Capitalism

All Socialist see capitalism as the enemy standing in the way of their power and centralised control. Capitalism can't function without private property rights, and Socialism can't exist with private property rights. Capitalism and Socialism are like oil and water, and at the centre of this conflict is the human right for people to own property.

Even though there has been a rapid increase in black-owned businesses since our Democracy was first formed, the majority of black South Africans are still living in poverty. All evidence of why the black majority are still poor points to a failure of the ANC to empower the people. Not because white business owners have prevented it.

Apartheid and any form of white business ownership are set up as a platform for the ANC to distract people from government failings and create false enemies of the poor black majority.

The ANC government will blame Apartheid and the Constitution, pointing at white-owned wealth as the cause for why people are suffering. Calling for the people to give the ANC more power to fix problems they are the root cause of. Capitalists or the wealthy non-politically aligned are branded anti-poor, and redistribution of wealth popularised and promoted as pro-poor.

Government ownership or custodian of all wealth, through expropriation and nationalisations, is promoted as being the will of the people, and something the majority want. All while corrupt self-enrichment by government officials and ANC members is at an all-time high.

Nationalisation

There seems to be a call for nationalisation of an industry or organisation, almost every week currently in South Africa.

Socialists are after power, and to get that power, they need to control organisations, businesses and private property. The more they control, the more power they have. The more power they have, the more money they can control for themselves.

Nationalisation is central to all Socialist governments and is never about the poor or helping the people, or doing what's best for the country. It is about power and money, and the Socialist doesn't want to pay for this power out of their own pockets.

For nationalisation to take place requires private property rights to be removed from our constitution. Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) is the ultimate form of nationalisation, where people's rights and way out of poverty are stolen from them and taken from them by the government.

Legislative Paralysis & Control

If you can't nationalise businesses and control them directly, then the next best step is to control through legislation. This is where people and businesses are forced to do things that help the Socialist agenda or force compliance.

The simplest form is making a business require a licence or permit to operate. This then becomes a control point, where if a business steps out of line their ability to trade and earn a living could be revoked or result in costly delays of renewals.

Taking the control a step further, where the state controls the price of goods such as medicine, making that business less competitive and having no control of their own products. Then if the government wanted to destroy an industry, they can set the price too low, or increase levies and taxes to the point the business can no longer operate.

Similar to the mafia protection extortion scams, BEE and legislation are used to force businesses to hand over part ownership to be able to trade and compete normally. This ownership does not benefit the poor but rather mostly ANC political elite, giving them more power and control over private property.

As an example, NHI is in effect nationalisation through legislation and might not require a constitutional amendment.

Currently, several of these Socialist laws and regulations have been passed. All causing massive amounts of destruction to our economy. However, there are countless more that are in the works or were unsuccessful and are being revised to make a comeback.

Dis-empowerment

Control comes in many forms. One type of control Socialists are very good at is controlling people, either through propaganda and fear or through some sort of dependency on the state.

Socialist do not like having a strong independent population. They prefer a week and powerless country of people that either have to ask permission to do things or are reliant on social grants and welfare for survival. The more citizens are reliant on the government for everyday life the more power and control the government has over the people.

Active dis-empowerment takes many forms, one very sinister form is through land reform. Where instead of giving people the land that goes through the process of reform, the government takes ownership of it, calling it custodianship. Then the land is leased back to the people, so the people don't own anything and government holding onto control. If the people do not support the Socialist agenda or speak out, the red ants are deployed, and the people lose their homes, businesses and land for the second time. Once during Apartheid and again under ANC Socialist rule.

At election time miss information and propaganda around social grants is very powerful. Telling people that if you vote for the opposition, they will take away your social grants, and if you vote ANC we will give you more.

In this way, the people are disempowered to vote or support who they think is best to rule the country. Instead, fear is used to control peoples choices. This fear is then leveraged through a dependency on the government, making the poor majority slaves to the government and their social grants.

Legal Gun Ownership

A special form of control and dis-empowerment is disguised as gun control, where the government wants to outlaw legal gun ownership and label it for the greater public good.

There have been many attempts to reduce legal gun ownership in South Africa. With laws that make legal gun ownership more difficult. When this was not delivering the results they wanted, the Socialists resorted to sabotage of the gun licensing and renewal system with the idea that when a gun licence expires that firearm becomes illegal and needs to be handed over to the police.

Legal gun ownership is a significant problem for the ANC because many of their plans people will resist, and they don't want the people to be armed when they start with their more radical strategies.

One of the most sinister of these strategies that Socialist like to employ, but is a lot more difficult when the people are armed. Is to do something knowing it breaks the law or infringes on peoples rights in the hope that there will be little to no resistance. Legal resistance is ignored and you can push forward regardless, using force when the people are powerless to fight back.

From outlawing people or private security carrying firearms for self-defence to the prevention and frustration of private gun ownership. They are all methods of creating a meek and powerless population that can be intimidated and bullied.

Mass Agitation

The one thing Socialist do very well is to create issues where there were none. Then getting portions of the population to argue and fight over these issues for them, preferably aggressively and violently.

Mass Agitation is the ultimate bully tactic if you want something to happen, but there is little chance of it ever happening when you follow normal processes. So instead you rent a crowd of people, this can be on social media through fake accounts or by making promises and offering food parcels to the poor unemployed to protest. Paying MK military veterans is an ANC favourite using taxpayers money to rent a crowd.

The ultimate form of mass agitation is when it cant be traced back to you, and you go through a proxy in the form of another political party, a union or a student council. The EFF are often proxies for the SACP that can say and do things far more extreme than what the ANC can but serves the same agenda.

South Africa's Fees Must Fall was one of the best examples of mass agitation being used to drive an agenda. The students were proxies to a Socialist agenda looking to control and weaken institutions that could be used as a platform of resistance and at the same time create state-dependent leverage over the youth.

Manufactured Crises

Many of these tactics work together, where one tactic is used to make possible or legitimatise another tactic. These would be your enabling tactics, and one of the most successful enable tactic is to create a crisis and use it to justify a response or legal change.

Land reform and land hunger are manufactured crises currently play out in our country. The current narrative is that land reform has failed, and it will take several lifetimes if we continuing using the current method and processes. The people are getting restless and impatient sometimes described as land hunger.

All this has been manufactured and is the ANC's own making. What many see as incompetence and poor performance is actually a very carefully crafted and deliberate strategy.

The land reform process is very slow because the ANC's has deliberately sabotaged the process. Propaganda and negative media has been used to inflate numbers, and leverage a very emotive issue to create a perception of land hunger. Promoting that more radical steps need to be taken and that expropriation without compensation (EWC) is the will of the people and the only way forward.

When the poor that the ANC claim are so hungry for land were polled and asked what is most important to them. Consistently jobs have been top of the list with land reform way down the list often last. With only being a high priority for a very small minority.

Land reform is a very important issue in South Africa. The narrative around it and the perceived crisis has largely been manufactured, and are being leveraged to justify constitutional changes, to serve the Socialist agenda.

More On Guns & Democracy

Guns have become a deeply divisive topic with many believing that the fewer guns normal ordinary people have, the safer society will be. This may be a worthwhile discussion to have in mature free democracies, but that is not our situation.

Many people don't understand the US people's right to bear arms, many see it as being gun-crazy and the root cause of their mass shootings.

The US exists today because ordinary people took up arms against an oppressive government and won their freedom. This history combined with the right to stand up for yourself is taught in schools and become a part of peoples identity. The US's obsession with gun ownership is not gun craziness but rather peoples talisman to their freedom over government oppression.

The single biggest problem with gun control is that when you concentrate the right to own a firearm in the hands of the state and that state becomes a totalitarian dictatorship. You have a situation where the state can bully the people any way they want, and the people are powerless to prevent it or defend themselves.

The call for increased legal gun control should always come from the people and never from the state. When a government is pushing for outlawing legal firearm ownership, this should be a red flag and viewed as a move against Democracy.

Nothing New But So Important

The theories and tactics of "pressure from above" and "pressure from below" to acquire power, as explained by Kozak is not new to the world. Some believe the first to propose such tactics was the lesser-known Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci.

We have seen these tactics used throughout the world in different ways. The difficulty is always recognising them in the moment and actively working to prevent them from destroying Democracies.

What makes documents such as "And not a shot was fired" and the writings of people like Gramsci and Kozak important is that they are the school books that we can use to measure history and study to better fight Socialism.

Kozak's leaked report provides a unique opportunity to study events in Czechoslovakia with the Communist playbook as a guide. These are the equivalent of having the teachers notes and study guide with you while writing an exam. With interpretation and understanding being the most difficult challenge ahead.

We can allow Socialists to steal our future, or we can seek to understand their tactics and oppose and neutralise their power.