The Truly Scary Part of Minneapolis Protests

The protesting in Minneapolis is not a great thing for anyone, contrary to what some might think. Alex Pretti’s death was just the latest incident where someone who was involved ended up being killed by federal agents, though it’s the less clear-cut case of a justifiable shooting.

What’s clear, though, is that this is a very organized effort. The Signal chat that was used for coordination was exposed as involving none other than the LT. Governor of Minnesota, among others, and it illustrated just how coordinated it was.

For most of us, this is a little concerning, but not the end of the world.

Yet for some, it’s pretty clear that what we’re dealing with is something that should scare you even more.

Eric Schwalm is a retired Special Forces warrant officer, and what he sees is a level of coordination that is typical not for protests, but for insurgencies.

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters,…

— Eric Schwalm (@Schwalm5132) January 25, 2026

The post continues:

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.

This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.

The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.

I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.

Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.

We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.

Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. 
It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.

Now, where things go from here could be overstated. This could somehow de-escalate on its own, and this could be the anomaly.

But I wouldn’t bet money on that one if my life depended on it, and it kind of does. 

For a long time, many of us thought that if things got extra spicy here in the Land of the Free, if the Tree of Liberty needed rewatering, it would be because of gun confiscation. We drew our line in the sand, and we made it clear that it would be the spark that would flip the switch.

Author Larry Correia, though, noted that the right and the left are different when it comes to violence. The right is, in fact, a switch. It’s all or nothing, really.

The left is a dial, where it slowly ramps up until they’re full-on communist revolution or something of that sort. A lot of people roll their eyes at that idea, the thought that the American political left even could pop off like that, but take a look at what Schwalm is talking about for a moment. That’s a level of coordination that is an easy jumping-off point to something darker if they feel the need.

And it’s not like Trump can cave on this, either, because the moment he does, the mob knows they have the final say. Not the courts, not the Constitution itself, and not the voters, but the loud, horrifying mob.

Yet if he doesn’t, they may decide to escalate this until we get beyond that “kinetic threshold” mentioned above.

Keep your heads on a swivel, folks.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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