Rhizome: Guerrilla Media, Swarming and Asymmetric Politics in the 21st Century

Jeff Vail

Philosopher Philip Bobbitt, in his seminal work “The Shield of Achilles”, proposed that the 20th century was defined by the ideological conflicts between socialism, fascism and capitalism. These competing ideologies purported to offer the hierarchal control structure most suited to meeting the needs of the people. In the course of this conflict, asymmetric warfare—the use of non-hierarchal structures to successfully confront hierarchy—was refined. The conflicts of the 20th century forged current theories of rhizome—the name for non-hierarchal, asymmetrical and networked patterns of organization. Empowered by a revolution in communication technology and the spread of democratic freedoms, the conflicts of the 21st century will be defined not by past political ideologies, but by a much more fundamental, structural conflict: hierarchy vs. rhizome.

Rhizome structures, swarming media and asymmetric politics will not be a means to support or improve a centralized, hierarchal democracy—they will be an alternative to it.

Many groups that seek change have yet to identify hierarchy itself as the root cause of their problem or cause, but are already beginning to realize that rhizome is the solution. Movements as diverse as American Progressives, al-Qa’ida and the “New Bolivarians” are already consciously adopting some rhizome elements to their actions. As theoretical knowledge and systems understanding improves, this conflict will become more clearly defined along the lines of hierarchy vs. rhizome.

Rhizome has a long history of application within military theory, but its use as a non-violent political tool is still rapidly developing. Rhizome tactics such as swarming have been used successfully at the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and less successfully by protesters at the Republican National Convention in 2004 (link). A methodology of decentralized “leaderless resistance” first formalized by white supremacists is now being used with some success by the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Rhizome tactics have found notable success in economics as well, with rural communities using localization policies, increasing distributed power generation, the spread of farmers’ markets and an increased focus on “slow food” and regional cuisine.

But despite recent successes, the value of rhizome structure and strategies continues to be constrained by a failure to frame conflicts in clear “hierarchy vs. rhizome” terms. Political activists seeking to use rhizome concepts to improve a hierarchal structure such as America’s hierarchal democracy will ultimately fail. Similarly, the protestors at the Republican National Convention were effectively controlled by police because they failed to identify their purpose—and frame their tactics—in terms of rhizome pattern and structure. The OODA Loop suggests that the victorious party is the one that can more quickly Observe lessons learned from past conflict, Orient themselves to identify their shortcomings in light of these lessons, Decide on a course of action to address identified shortcomings and then put those decisions into Action. The failure of the protestors at the RNC was largely their failure to evolve their doctrine as quickly as the NYPD was able to evolve theirs. It appears that neither side explicitly framed their efforts in terms of hierarchy vs. rhizome, but had the protesters done so they would have been better able to access the existing body of knowledge provided by the rhizome “Doctrine Network”, consisting itself of rhizomatic nodes such as http://www.globalguerrillas.com/ and http://www.jeffvail.net/ .