What really happened in Los Angeles in recent days? Was it really a ‘warzone’, as Trump and co called it?
And what are Trump and his people really playing at?
Let’s break these events down and try to answer those questions.
But first let’s talk about irony.
Because there’s an extraordinary irony in what’s been happening in Los Angeles.
And it’s the fact that it was always right-wing people who used to be zealously opposed to perceived overreach or tyranny by the Federal Government imposing its will over states.
For years, you heard right-wing commentators or conspiracy theorists talk about how the Federal Government would violate the autonomy of individual states and would some day send in armed military to enforce their will, etc.
If you got a dollar for every time someone like Alex Jones said something like that, for example, you might be a millionaire by now.
But that’s what President Trump has been doing with the National Guard and the marines: violating the autonomy of a state, using the military against civilians, and even threatening to arrest the state’s Governor.
And people on the Right are applauding it. The irony is almost delicious.
But recognition of such ironies – or hypocrisies – doesn’t come easily to these people.
Just as ironic is the twist of having Trump – of all people – calling protesters exercising their First Amendment rights ‘insurrectionists‘ and threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act.

To be clear, that’s the same Donald Trump who provoked the January 6th farce (and more recently pardoned all of its participants).
The levels of cognitive dissonance on display are, as usual, quite stunning.
Such as deploying masked men with no I.D or badges to carry out impromptu raids and arrest people… and then complaining about protesters covering their faces!
Permanent conspirator and all-round James Bond villain Steve Bannon bizarrely told the BBC that what was happening in L.A was part of “World War III”.
Uh, okay, Steve.
It also probably isn’t a coincidence that this situation flared up right after Elon Musk posted that tweet accusing Trump (very plausibly) of being in the Epstein files.
Distraction time, anyone?
Sure, let’s pretend there’s an ‘insurrection’ happening in a blue state by ‘foreign invaders’, and let’s send in the military.
It’s actually probably a lot worse than that – as we’ll get to. But it’s an accurate start-point, at least in terms of timing.
But let’s go back to the basics. What actually happened in L.A? And did it warrant such an extreme response from the President?
Well, the general consensus seems to be a firm ‘no’. Pretty much everyone in Los Angeles has said that these were small, largely peaceful protests and initially limited to a tiny area.
In fact, the approximate radius of the original gathering was barely two blocks. Even as the situation escalated – once the police, and later the military, showed up – the majority of Los Angeles was completely unaffected, with normal daily life and business carrying on.
The city was clearly not a ‘warzone’, nor did it need to be, in Trump’s words, ‘liberated’. There was nothing to ‘liberate’ it from.
Trump’s characterisation therefore of the situation in Los Angeles was false. In fact both Trump and the mainstream media mutually misrepresented the situation on the ground, exaggerating what was happening.
I’m Trump’s case it was for political purposes: in the media’s case it was probably to make for more compelling news coverage, though it might also have been to stir up more outrage.

Mayor Karen Bass had said simply that ‘nothing was happening here‘: essentially that the situation was minor and certainly didn’t warrant the President’s dramatic escalations.
A popular YouTube channel, Internet Today, posted a useful video explaining what the situation really was in downtown L.A: the channel’s hosts were both at the scene of these events, witnessing how things unfolded.
According to their account – and many others – there was no violence or criminal behaviour in the earlier protests at all. The problems only started when law enforcement showed up and began using tear-gas and rubber bullets.
And of course once Trump’s military personnel showed up, things got worse.
But the evidence suggests it was the extreme intervention – and not the protesters – that created the perceived unrest.
There’s certainly been the impression that Trump, the psychopath Stephen Miller and co, seized on the situation in order to manufacture a desired crisis. One in which the highly militaristic Law and Order presidency could flex its muscle.
At the street level, initial protesters were apparently upset about the excessive ICE raids and arrests, which had included raids on an elementary school and a graduation event.
It had also included the arrest and maltreatment of Labor leader David Huerta.
A mass arrest of migrant day-labourers by masked goons also triggered some local resistance – understandably.
Protests are a natural and legitimate response.
Riots and violence are a different matter. But where did one end and the other begin?
As usual now with such events, there’s an ambiguity about who’s who in these scenarios. There’s peaceful protesters and activists. And there’s violent rioters and professional agitators who seem to always hijack these things.
The initial protesters weren’t the ones setting fire to cars, throwing rocks, smashing windows, etc.
And, as has been the case in previous such flare-ups, there were tell-tale signs of orchestration: such as, reportedly, piles of bricks being neatly placed in the vicinity – possibly to goad rioters into using them.
Who places these stacks of bricks there? The same thing happened in the George Floyd protests – though it was later claimed they were left there by construction workers for a job.
And who are the agitators in general? How many of them are self-serving troublemakers or anarchists who just ‘want to watch the world burn’ (to quote the Joker in The Dark Knight) – and how many are actually paid provocateurs hired to create a situation?

And if there are paid agitators, who are they working for? Who’s agenda are they facilitating?
Right-wing commentators obviously claim these are rabid Leftists, being weaponised by the Democrats.
Which is possible. I imagine there’s been lots of online chatter about George Soros.
Though the Democrats and most Democrat-aligned groups have been notably passive since this second MAGA presidency began, staging very little opposition to the administration.
They seem to have consented to a highly questionable election in November, as examined here. And they went along entirely with the assassination hoax (see here, here and here).
Essentially, there’s been practically no political opposition since November. Which doesn’t rule out some kind of orchestration from the political opposition.
But really, there’s just as much motive for the current administration to insert agitators into the mix to stir up trouble and create the desired situation – especially since Trump, Miller and co were so obviously trying to manufacture this alleged ‘warzone’ in the first place.
It’s all somewhat ambiguous. It could even be a confusing mixture of all those things – both sides conspiring to trigger a desired event, albeit for different reasons.
The reality, however, seems to be that these violent rioters were a tiny minority.
Naturally though, the administration and the media were hyper-focused on these images. Obviously it’s more dramatic to show burning cars than to show peaceful protesters.
Also, the thing about the Waymo cars being set on fire – those vehicles (which are driverless cars owned by Google) are essentially mobile surveillance systems that have been illegally used by the LAPD to spy on people. Gizmodo had an article abut this back in April.
So, when multiple Waymo cars were showing up to the protest area, some people were presumably suspicious.
Not that I’m excusing vandalism: but the idea that people were setting fire to random vehicles is a misrepresentation – they were attacking those Google vehicles specifically and for a reason.
What’s not ambiguous, however, is this Trump-led administration’s over-enthusiasm for militarisation and excessive control.
And it would not be overly imaginative to think that the administration is using (or has even partly manufactured this L.A situation) in order to test the waters again and gage how easy or difficult it would be to do things like deploy the military against citizens, override state authority, or even establish Martial Law.
It’s probably no coincidence that Trump’s North Korea style military parade is happening this coming weekend.
This is the same Trump administration that is now rolling out the CIA-funded, Peter Thiel owned ‘Palantir‘ surveillance system. A clearly Orwellian tool of mass oppression that Trump’s supporters are cheering on.
Those reportedly masked agents who keep showing up to arrest illegal immigrants and who often provide no identification could be around for a long time to come: sure, today they’re rounding up immigrants, but next year or the year after that they could be going after other targets entirely.
The President has already spoken of deploying “troops everywhere” (as in all across America): as if he’s egging on the opposition, encouraging further unrest.
Deploying US marines to deal with domestic protesters when, as most reasonable observers have said, the local police and state authorities could’ve handled the situation themselves, is something that reeks of deliberate overreach for ulterior purposes.
Again, testing the waters or setting the stage. Seeing how much can be gotten away with – and taking notes for the future.
This kind of action in L.A is also perfectly aligned with the expansion of presidential powers envisioned by Project 2025.
Remember, this is the same felon who tried to subvert democracy in 2020 in order to stay in power – and was perfectly happy to risk a Civil War in the process.
Manufacturing a crisis, violating the law, and waging war on citizens, is just another bit of cynical theater: another part of the script, another scene in the movie.
Steve Bannon calling the L.A situation part of ‘World War III’ is obviously part of the deliberate exaggeration and manufacturing – unless he’s just a senile old man at this point (which is entirely possible).
And again, I have to keep coming back to the masked agents. *Why* are they masked?


If they’re ICE agents carrying out legitimate arrests of illegal immigrants or criminals, why do they need to be masked? And why do they so often refuse to identify their agency or show credentials?
And it makes me wonder, as I said already, if they’re going to be used for other purposes in the future. As in not just rounding up migrant workers.
The immigrants might simply be the initial pretext – the cynical test-run just to normalise the idea of masked and unidentified agents of the government targeting whoever they want and rounding up problematic individuals in the dead of night.
Palantir has already been involved in these ICE raids and operations, by the way: so the interlinked control system is clearly being developed fast under this second Trump administration.
In conclusion, what’s happened in Los Angeles appears to be that a simple, small protest was seized on by Trump and his reality-TV government in order to create a sought-after sense of crisis and conflict.
And crucially, a false pretext for Trump to invade a blue state with the military – and to thus put things back into a ‘Civil War’ type paradigm. The fact that he claimed L.A was being ‘liberated’ was a particularly extraordinary use of language – clearly designed to imply a state of war.
What has happened in L.A is probably setting the precedents for things to come.
The fact that Trump has just made his celebratory speech about the L.A fiasco specifically at Fort Bragg isn’t insignificant: Fort Bragg was highly significant in the 2020 insurrection, coup or conspiracy (or whatever we’re calling it now) shit show, as was examined in detail here.
A long game is being played. But certainly, manufacturing this scripted narrative of ‘insurrection’ and ‘warzones’ is going to create the right conditions for future states of emergency, Martial Law, and possibly the cancellation of future elections – allowing certain people and factions an avenue for seizing permanent power.
The Trump movement’s original attempt to seize illegitimate power (back in 2020) failed. The next attempt is evidently in the making right now.
There was no ‘warzone’ in Los Angeles: and no ‘liberation’. It’s engineered crisis and manufactured theater.