“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
-Charles De Gaulle
October 27, 2025 — Until recently, the red political network was only capable of:
- Waging online warfare (mostly using maneuver-based psychological warfare) to disrupt and distract the blue tribal network’s institutional power.
- Mobilizing, occasionally, to put a political figure in power or push back against aggressive encroachment from the blue tribe.
- Fighting with each other over minor issues.
In other words, until recently, the red network was a loose, decentralized network with tribal aspirations, but it lacked the element needed to turn it into a real tribe, an existential enemy.
That has changed.
Empathy Triggers and Tribalization
It changed when three widely shared videos emerged on social media. In quick succession, we saw:
- Lola’s last stand. “Stay away from my sister, she’s only twelve.”
- Iryna’s grisly murder on the train. “I got that white girl.”
- Charlie Kirk’s public assassination. “He deserved it.”
These videos (empathy triggers) weren’t just rage bait. They were empathy triggers that tribalized millions of people, one by one at first, and then suddenly, all at once, through a process that worked like this;
- A video showing raw footage of a person being victimized (threatened, murdered, or assassinated) turns up on social media. The video resonates because it makes tangible many of the network’s narratives (illegal immigrants are a danger, serial criminals are running amok, and blue tribe activist groups are violent threats).
- Instead of reacting with sympathy, viewers make an empathetic connection with the victim. They model the pain and the anguish the victim is experiencing inside their minds and bodies. They feel it viscerally, and despite never having met the victim before, they form a deep bond. A bond similar to a daughter, a sister, or a brother.
- This connection immediately sparks a surge of rage at the attacker, and the experience transforms them. They see the attacker as a representative of a enemy they oppose, and that threat is real, immediate, and dire (evil). They then rapidly form a tribal bond with others who share the same enemy.
How Tribalism Transforms
The emergence of an existential threat will change the way the red networked tribe operates. It;
- Unifies the networked tribe, providing it with the cohesion and mutual trust necessary for sustained group action and decision-making.
- Allows the tribe to wage moral warfare (good vs. evil) like the blue networked tribe does, rather than engaging in the disruptive maneuver warfare (rapidly changing direction, distraction, uncertainty, etc.) it had previously employed.
- It enables the mobilization of people and resources at levels far beyond what has been seen before from the right (the UK’s “Unite the Kingdom” march is a notable example of that, and also an example of how networked tribalism can transcend borders).
Networked Nationalism
Networked tribalism was only made possible due to the decline of nationalism in Western countries. Here’s why;
- Over decades, the US and the EU waged a war on nationalism to replace it with globalism. However, they didn’t understand what they were doing.
- They didn’t understand that tribalism is one of the three core layers of social decision-making (along with bureaucracy and markets). Eliminating nationalism didn’t mean that tribalism disappeared. It can’t go away; it simply shifted to different groups.
- They also didn’t understand that although tribalism can be dangerous, it also provides crucial benefits to society — from cohesion to mutual trust to institutional loyalty. A society without tribalism is unable to act cohesively or trust each other. Institutions don’t function, nobody trusts each other, and mutually beneficial outcomes are scarce.
When nationalism faded, tribal thinking migrated.
- Resurgent tribalism first emerged in groups based on race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. It energized them. They created and flew their own flag. Promoted their own version of history, demanded their own holidays, and pushed laws that specifically benefited them.
- When social networking emerged, many of these groups rapidly adopted the new medium, and it changed them for the worse. Networked tribalism works differently from traditional tribalism. In traditional tribalism, the group is held together by ‘why we are better together,’ ‘what we’ve overcome,’ and ‘where we are headed.’ Networked tribalism needs the opposite: ‘this is our enemy.’
- Eventually, networked tribalism combined these other identities into two distinct factions: the Red and the Blue tribes. The results speak for themselves. Now that the red tribe has an existential enemy, the war is about to enter a new phase.
What this Means
We are now in a high-risk phase of networked social evolution.
- On the current trajectory, online and offline tribal warfare, with events that range from assassinations to riots to sabotage, is inevitable. Worse still, with both sides waging moral warfare (good versus evil), there is no middle ground, rendering compromise impossible.
- To avoid this, the government could step in to crack down on illegal immigrants, serial criminality, and activist blue cells to slow the ramp in extrajudicial violence from the red tribe. This would reduce the chance we see a rapid escalation in tit for tat violence. However, to do this, it would need to designate many activist groups as terrorist entities and pursue them with the degree of vigor we saw with Islamic radicals after 9/11.
- If that happens, we’ll also see the government move to create blacklists of people who support these groups online (for example, celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk), in the same way we saw lists of J6 participants, making it possible to put restrictions on their behavior in the future, entrap them in honeypots for violence, deny them licenses/security clearances, and block their access to loans. Of course, if the government changes hands in three years, we can expect to see the same thing done to members of the red tribe.
If one or the other tribe gains power permanently, it could transform itself into a new form of networked nationalism. However, it will be raw, aggressive, and ruthless. Taming networked tribalism won’t be easy, and the costs will be high.
John Robb
Global Guerillas & Grey Swan Investment Fraternity
P.S. from Addison: Ahead of this week’s Grey Swan Live! with John Robb, we’ll review some of his recent writings. Today focused on how Robb views America’s political parties as a series of competing tribal networks. We’ll take a look at events in the Middle East and the latest developments in warfare this week, too.
John is a regular contributor to Grey Swan Investment Fraternity and the author of Brace New War. If you’re a paid-up reader, you can review his analysis of Antifa, Terrorism and Political Warfare in the October issue of the Grey Swan Bulletin.
Mr. Robb’s our go-to expert for exploring the geopolitics of the Trump administration’s tariff strategy, understanding Gaza, the global intifada and the ongoing standoff in Ukraine. We also look to Robb, in his work as a consultant to the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, to keep abreast of innovations at the forefront of the rapidly developing technical future of warfare.
With the markets rallying on positive news of a U.S.-China trade deal today, John can point us to the next global hotspots – and some of the more attractive investment opportunities that may be off the radar with traders happily blowing the AI bubble.
If you’d like, you can drop your most pressing questions right here: Feedback@GreySwanFraternity.
