The Field Manual
Six Rules to Understand What’s Happening
This isn’t opinion. It’s observation.
These are the rules now. If you don’t understand them, nothing else will make sense.
Every essay, timeline, document, or dossier on this site connects back to these six truths.
They are not predictions. They are descriptions.
1. Power doesn’t follow rules. It rewrites them.
Authoritarians don’t break the system. They become the system.
They don’t fight legitimacy—they redefine it, until propaganda becomes policy and obedience becomes truth.
Laws, norms, institutions, even language itself—everything is retooled to serve power, not constrain it.
2. Institutions don’t collapse. They comply.
Most institutions aren’t defeated—they surrender.
Not out of fear, but calculation. They stay silent, hedge their bets, adjust their mission, and wait for someone else to act.
Self-preservation always wins—unless someone forces them to choose otherwise.
3. Truth doesn’t die. It drowns.
Lies don’t need to replace facts. They just bury them.
Flood the zone. Distort the language. Collapse the signal into noise.
Once reality becomes negotiable, the strongest narrative wins—and power decides what’s real.
4. Violence isn’t the failure of politics. It is the politics.
The state doesn’t just hold power. It decides whose violence is allowed.
Some threats are prosecuted. Others are protected. Terror becomes tactical. Punishment becomes governance.
Authoritarians don’t denounce violence—they delegate it.
5. Fascism doesn’t come marching. It comes marketing.
It doesn’t demand submission. It sells grievance, identity, and salvation.
People don’t surrender their freedom. They trade it—for belonging, for revenge, for a story where they’re the hero.
Collapse becomes a product. And it sells.
6. The lie works because people prefer silence to truth.
Authoritarianism doesn’t rise because everyone believes it.
It rises because enough people stop caring what’s true.
They go quiet, look away, follow orders, protect their comfort, or tell themselves it’s not their problem.
It’s not the fanatics who make fascism possible. It’s the bystanders.
These rules are not theoretical. They’ve already been tested.