Political Violence: We've Spotted Our First Usage Of The Term "Direct Action"

 Huzzah!

Something's up. As noted in June 2020:

The community organizers and students of political science among our readers will recognize the 'ol Action directe, perhaps accompanied by a bit of Thomas Carlyle’s whiff of grapeshot describing the end of the French Revolution, this time round.

And going back to 2007's " "International Day of Direct Action Against Climate Change and the G8" this language has a specific meaning:

...From the French version of Wikipedia: Action directe (AD) est un groupe clandestin (aux influences anarchistes et communistes...)

From Wikipedia: Action Directe was a French Maoist/Marxist-Leninist militant group which committed a series of assassinations and violent attacks in France between 1979 and 1987....

Well, on August 8 The Poor People's Campaign "Season of Nonviolent Moral Direct Action to Save Our Democracy - July 12 - August 8, 2021" wraps up and we begin prepping for October 15's "General Labor Strike Planned Across US".

Those broadsheets for the general strike make no mention of non-violence and in fact have the potential to get nasty.

 

Something has changed in the political mood over the last couple months.

 

Finally, in June 27's "Why Turkey is Important" I went on a bit of a ramble (ramble? Moi?) riffing off of the ZeroHedge headline "A US civil war is now on the table as new alliances form" and exited with this:

One thing to keep an eye on is the use of the word "ungovernable" in the U.S. Here's GoogleTrends (web searches) since 2004:

 

We are now at the highest level of searches since Trump's inauguration.

So keep your head on a swivel, you don't want to miss the 'action'. 

Huzzah!