Counterinsurgency Machine - by Dylan Rodríguez (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A groundbreaking analysis of how universities, nonprofits, and philanthropy do the state's work of curtailing left-wing activism.

In this fiery polemic, political theorist Dylan Rodríguez addresses the phenomenon he calls "the counterinsurgency machine," a formal and informal coalition of institutions that temper revolutionary movements. Counterinsurgency, a tool of military warfare that aims to quell enemy forces while bolstering the legitimacy of the dominant power, has since the mid twentieth century crept beyond the limits of official state power into venues of civil society, applying the tools of war in defense of racial capitalism. Tracing the legacy of counterinsurgency from colonial control through the development of the US military's Counterinsurgency Field Manual and the FBI's COINTELPRO, this book shows how counter-revolutionary efforts are increasingly channeled through progressive, liberal, and left-oriented "social justice" actors, both unwittingly and opportunistically. Through a series of case studies, Rodríguez explores how contemporary counterinsurgency relies on an ensemble of universities, nonprofits, philanthropic foundations, and advocacy campaigns to infiltrate and redirect autonomous and abolitionist efforts, including student support for Palestine and movements against police violence.

Like The Revolution Will Not Be Funded before it, which identified the workings of the nonprofit industrial complex in collusion with the state, Counterinsurgency Machine elaborates how a similar logic runs through an array of cultural organizations, despite their stated goals. This timely, paradigm-shifting text is a critical field guide for movement activists and academics.

Review Quotes

"In a moment when the facade of liberalism is crumbling under the coercive force of colonial, racial supremacy it has helped obscure, Dylan Rodríguez provides the insight of how we got here. Liberal counterinsurgency has allowed for righteous protest while preserving the infrastructure of domination inherent to a civilizational logic. Written in the tradition of Black radical thinkers and revolutionaries, Counterinsurgency Machine, urges us to agitate for new worlds of our own making and to settle for nothing less." --Noura Erakat, professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick and author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine

"Dylan Rodríguez's analysis of counterinsurgency brings together critiques of legal reform, academia, nonprofitization, co-optation, and other technologies of pacification into an incisive framework for rooting out the liberal demands for reconciliation that relentlessly undermine and neutralize our resistance efforts and legitimize our opponents. Rodríguez shows how mainstream discourses about resisting fascism actually invest in maintaining liberal state formations that shore up ecocidal racial capitalism. This book marks a new turn in the study of counterinsurgency, opening urgently needed possibilities for fighting back, at a moment when this could not be more necessary. This is the exact book we need right now and will influence everything I write from now on." --Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid

"In richly articulated and unapologetic prose, Rodríguez exposes the deadly mythology of reformism, lucidly illustrating how liberalism has played a central role in pacifying rebellion and ushering in the fascistic crises of the present. This is a necessary book for our times, making clear that only a revolutionary shift can bring an end to the 500 year war against earthly life." --Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present

"Counterinsurgency Machine is an indispensable excavation of the manifold ways 'progressivism' upholds imperialist interests. Dylan Rodríguez forcefully elucidates Black liberation, anticolonial revolution, and abolition as the only means through which real power and life-sustaining resources can be wrested from the clutches of the death-dealers peddling human immiseration." --Charisse Burden-Stelly, author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States

"This text offers much more than a critical reading of the US military's counterinsurgency curriculum. Through forceful prose that pulls no punches, it martials a theoretical assault on that which counterinsurgency arose to defend: the decadent project of Western Civilization. And perhaps more urgently, it shows how counterinsurgency logics infiltrate the movements and even the vocabularies of those who struggle against it. A must read." --Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

About the Author

Dylan Rodríguez is a parent, scholar, political educator, and collaborative organizer who has participated in a wide variety of insurgent, radical, and autonomous projects since the 1990s. Dylan is the author of four books, including White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award. He is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Riverside.