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Prelude To A Second Civil War?

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Saturday, Sep 27, 2025 - 4:46
John Brown and (Tr)Antifa
John Brown and (Tr)Antifa 

From Bleeding Kansas to "Bleeding Transas"

“Create no-go zones for federal forces.” — an Antifa call-to-action highlighted by Mike Benz

Framing the moment

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and a string of attacks on ICE facilities, Eric Raymond sketched three possible futures for what comes next; he warned that one path looks like a simmering civil war—the Bosnia template more than Fort Sumter (link). Many readers dismissed the idea of an urban insurgency as unrealistic under modern conditions.

But the militants themselves plainly think it’s workable—and they’re organizing accordingly.

The playbook—stated out loud

As Mike Benz documented, Antifa-aligned sites have openly urged supporters to “so utterly terrorize ICE that federal agents are physically afraid to enter a city.” If an analogous statement appeared on a Proud Boys site about the FBI, everyone around it would be under indictment by nightfall (link). The attached clipping captures the doctrine in bumper-sticker form:

“Create no-go zones for federal forces.”
If ICE agents hesitate to enter certain areas without backing from police, National Guard, and Marines, that will limit their operations…

This isn’t just edgy sloganeering. Eric Schwalm, a former U.S. Army Special Forces instructor, flagged that it maps onto the Area Command Complex (Resistance Forces) template from SF doctrine—i.e., real irregular-warfare tradecraft, not cosplay (link).

Why cities? Communist theory adapted to blue strongholds

Raymond again: classic Communist revolutionary guidance is “fight where you’re strong and the state is weak (or sympathetic)”—historically rural sanctuaries, but with notable exceptions (e.g., Russia’s urban hubs in 1917). In 2025 America, the natural sanctuary is large, blue-run coastal cities where local officials can provide de-facto cover. That’s the terrain advantage.

“Bleeding Kansas” before Fort Sumter

As Auron MacIntyre notes, America’s last civil war didn’t begin with uniforms and battle flags; it started with territorial skirmishing—the proxy fights over whether new states would be free or slave. Settlers poured into Kansas to tip the vote; antagonism escalated into random killings and raids long before Sumter (link). We remember it as Bleeding Kansas.

The analogy is uncomfortable because it fits. Today’s sparks differ—anti-ICE militancy, self-styled “antifascism,” and ideologically motivated attacks—but the pattern rhymes: decentralized violence, tolerated sanctuaries, and rising appetite for “no-go” confrontation with the federal government.

He called it early: “Bleeding Transas” (Apr 3, 2023)

Back in April 2023, The Prudentialist argued that the transgender policy front would function as a fracture line akin to slavery’s in the 1850s—stoking irregular warfare and moral absolutism that tears at the American soul. He dubbed the emergent phase “Bleeding Transas.” A few highlights from that essay (link):

  • He revisited Bleeding Kansas—from the Pottawatomie Massacre to the Sacking of Lawrence—to show how dozens of killings preceded the mass slaughter of the 1860s.

  • He forecast that the trans issue—already framed in language of “liberation” and “abolition”—would escalate conflict, accelerated by armed activism (e.g., groups like “Rainbow Reload”) and celebratory rhetoric after atrocities.

  • His core claim: these dynamics would produce more violence over time, because both sides view the stakes as existential and non-negotiable.

Agree or not, he was early—and the last month’s cascade of attacks has made the argument feel less theoretical.

Where this heads if nothing changes

Put the pieces together:

  • An explicit strategy to terrorize federal agents out of urban jurisdictions (Benz).

  • A doctrinally coherent model for resistance area commands in cities (Schwalm).

  • A revolutionary logic—fight on home turf with local cover—that maps to today’s blue urban enclaves (Raymond).

  • A historically grounded warning that civil wars often start as dispersed, “random” political murders and raids, not as set-piece battles (MacIntyre).

  • And an early conceptual frame—“Bleeding Transas”—that predicted today’s mood and methods (Prudentialist, 2023).

We’re not at Fort Sumter. But we’re well into a territorial-skirmish phase where local safe havens, selective enforcement, and ideologically motivated violence raise the odds of a drawn-out urban insurgency.

What to watch next (signals, not vibes)

  • Municipal non-cooperation hardening into practical no-go zones (explicit or tacit).

  • Target selection shifting further toward federal nodes (ICE/Marshals/courthouses) and soft federal contractors.

  • Doctrine diffusion—more militants parroting area-command language and TTPs.

  • Interjurisdictional clashes when state or federal actors attempt to reassert access in blue-city sanctuaries.

If the point of “no-go” doctrine is to make the cost of entry prohibitive, the response problem is obvious: either cede ground or raise the cost of sanctuary. Historically, muddling through between those poles tends to lengthen the ugly middle.

If When a Crackdown Comes

When I started writing this post, I had "If" in the section header above. Then I saw this post by Trump's senior advisor and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller: 

"JTTF" refers to the  Joint Terrorism Task Force, and "NSPM-7" refers to  the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7. So, it looks like the crackdown is happening. 

As I noted in my recent trade alert, if the Trump administration decided to crack down on urban crime, the resources required would be substantial.

A crackdown on leftist political violence requires the same infrastructure as tackling endemic urban crime: more prison beds to house those arrested, and more mental hospital beds to handle the psychiatric component that runs through much of this movement. Without that build-out, any “no-go zone” strategy will leave enforcement bottlenecked—raids that can’t result in long-term incapacitation, prosecutions without detention capacity, and arrests that cycle back into the same urban enclaves.

In other words, cracking down on Antifa requires state capacity, not just tactical raids. And capacity is expensive. That means more revenues for the three companies we highlighted above. 

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