Communiques 101.

What is a communique ?

A communique is similar to that of a press release, a simple release of information to provide context or information on a recent event. They're not manifestos or meeting minutes or life stories, they're focused on being practical information outlets above all else. In the context of revolutionaries and radical action they are tool for distributing information. The revolutionary may want to share information after an action has been taken against the enemy, a change of strategic approach, or a general update. Communiques have been a frequent tool of revolutionary groups (particularly those operating underground) throughout history.

Why

Most importantly communiques help provide context and understanding during chaotic times. This context and information is critical to people who may be confused as to what's happening allowing radicals cut through the lies of the corporate lying press. If there is a unfiltered dissident voice associated with action that can be understand and digested then that helps grow support for the ideas and the action. For example if a revolutionary were to smash out the windows of a store hosting a pedophile grooming "Drag-queen story hour" event, or burn down a planned parenthood, or take more radical action against someone flooding white communities with opioids many average people (particularly conservatives) may entirely agree with the action if they can be told from the perspective of the radical and not the corporate press bemoaning hate crimes and terrorism. In the modern world with the rise of the internet as the primary communication and information system, it's easier than ever to use this powerful tool.

There are other useful aspects of communiques. They show other revolutionaries that there are other people who think + act like them and that should they also take action then that would not be just an isolated incident; those actions would be part of wave of revolutionaries striking back against a sick and disgusting system. This may seem minor to some, but this is how the fires of revolutionary action & ideas grow.

As a final note, some actions can absolutely speak for itself and a communique might not always be necessary. However a communique can always add more always improve this clarity, allow the radical to frame the action as opposed to the media, reach more people, and inspire more radicals.

Content of a Communique

The content of a communique is ultimately the decision of the group/person taking action. It is my personal opinion that you should use brevity, focusing on what happened and why. Long communiques will end up looking like unhinged schizophrenic manifestos, these don't make you look good and largely work to discredit yourself. Below are several communique types and what content they should focus on.

Typically you don't want to send any files such as pictures or video with your communique. These only put you in danger and the devices necesarry to take them (typically phones) should almost never be taken to an action. If you do choose to do send files, remove all metadata (Tails has an application for this) and take time to go through the content very carefully to see that there is nothing that could identify you or anyone else in the videos.

Claim of responsibility

These are the simplest type of communique, the basic principal is that an action has occurred and a revolutionary individual/group is taking responsibility for it. These should cover the who/what/when/where/why at the minimum and don't need to be more complex than that. Never include any information that could be used to identify you or put you in legal/criminal jeopardy. Below is a quick run-through of information to use.

• Who : Think carefully how you want to identify yourself or your group. It may not always be advisable to give yourself a name or pseudonym, as that can put a bigger target on your back. Using generic terms like 'Nationalists', 'Pro White Activists', 'Anti Pedophile Radicals', or 'Anti-communists' can be useful in limiting the information you provide. You additionally can change this term if you're doing multiple actions to remain even more anonymous and unconnected. This is a decision each individual/group should make.
• What : Simply state what the action was. Were windows were smashed out? A fire set? etc
• When : Simply state roughly when the action took place
• Where : Simply identifying the city, state, region, etc
• Why : This is often the most important part. Think carefully about what you say for your reasoning. Often it is useful to frame your action as a response to what your target has done. This is easy to digest for average people and will consistently get more people on your side. Whatever you should choose to say try to keep it to the point and focused on that of the target, going off on a tangent on an unrelated issue gets into not-useful manifesto territory.

Example

Nationalists in the Pacific Northwest took action against [TARGET] in [CITY], [STATE]. The action consisted of the [ACTION DETAILS] at [TARGET]. This action was done due to the [TARGET] ongoing involvement in [REASONING/ISSUE]. While the government and the fake politicians fail to act and protect our community from these filth, Nationalists can and will continue to act to defend our community and Nation.

Report Back

This communique is a bit more complex and is primarily focused on speaking directly to other revolutionaries. The goal is to report back on an action telling the full story in detail to educate others on the action, so in turn they can incorporate that knowledge into their actions. Information that may be contained in a report back are things like how the action was planned, what the reasoning was, what roles for the action were (if it's a group action), how the action went, what mistakes were made, and finally what lessons were learned. This may take some reflection after an action and can be done in addition to a claim of responsibility.

Report backs are incredible useful tools to share in revolutionary circles. The basic reasoning is that planning and thinking about action are different than doing it. Getting others into thinking about th minutia of planning, acquiring necessary items, organizing people, and operating in a high risk environment is very useful. If you have important lessons or knowledge to share, it's worth the time to share it. As with claims of responsibility, never share any information that could identify you.

Declaration or Strategic change

This is more of a niche usage communique. It may come from established named groups that want to share a more general change unrelated to a specific action. This general change could describe a group forming or disbanding, a course-correction on actions, or a host of other strategic/group changes. While not in the internet age, the declaration of war from Robert Jay Mathews on Whidbey Island is an example of this. The declaration ended with these words.

Therefore, for Blood, Soil and Honor, and for the future of our children we commit ourselves to battle. Amen.

How to submit a Communique

This is a very important question as it may seem that there are a lot of options for how to send in a communique. It's absolutely stupid to put your safety and freedom on the line for an action, to plan and organize it carefully keeping tight opsec, only to be caught when sending in a claim of responsibility. To cut directly to the point, if you feel you cannot safely send in a communique, don't. Let the action speak for itself and leave it at that.

However it should be possible for anyone to safely and securely send in a communique, the privacy and security tools that exist out there today enable this. I intend to make that argument below. For starters there are four main pathways to sending in a communique, each has trade-offs. It is my opinion that web submission while using Tails/Tor is the safest and should be utilized above all other options. Below is a quick discussion of each.

Physical Mail

This likely the most dangerous and least impactful ways to send in a communique, but it could work. The basic premise is to write a communique on paper and mail to a location with a fake return address. From there only problems arise. Firstly, there are not really any right wing outlets with a physical address to send things to, meaning you'll have to send this to a mainstream outlet. As a result of this you're likely subjecting that letter to DNA, Fingerprint, and Handwriting analysis by the FBI (or other police agency). While it's possible to counter DNA, Fingerprint, and handwriting analysis it's not a great risk to take. On top of all of this the outlet is likely to not share the contents in full, or propagandize on top of it to blunt your message. Avoid using physical mail to send in a communique at all costs

Encrypted Apps

This may be a thought for many people who have used these apps before. The apps I'm talking about are largely Signal, Telegram, Session, Briar, Threema and so on. These apps use end to end encryption and may be thought of as secure. However there are some pretty critical downsides. For starters each of these apps is running on a Android (produced by Google) or IOS (produced by Apple) device. The security of these systems and willingness of these companies to work with the government should be a legitimate concern. Secondly the apps themselves should be a serious concern. For example with Telegram it's not clear what metadata they save on their servers, however they do give info (such as IP addresses) over to the government in cases of 'Terrorism'[1]. This means that if an outlet releases a communique that they received, the government could get warrants for their account and use metadata about who contacted them to isolate the revolutionary who sent in information as a target, even without seeing the message content. Governments can make additional use of push notifications to further isolate and identify people.

Beyond this issue of isolating the account responsible, if the person your sending it is compromised (either by being a honeypot or having been caught by authorities and forced to give over what they have) then you're putting yourself at risk. If you send in a communique, then that can be associated with your user ID on these apps, and they can begin looking for other places that user ID is active to try and capture who you may be. While you can get around this somewhat with the best apps and creating a one time use account for sending stuff in, there is a degree of risk that's elevated on mobile devices over other options such as Tails/Tor.

As a final note, there are better apps among those I listed. The best two are Briar and Session. This is because both require no information to sign-up (No phone number, no email, no paid key) meaning you can create a one time account for sending your communique. Additionally both apps use a form of onion routing, with Briar using Tor, and Session using its Oxen network which operates very similar to Tor. Both apps limit metadata and are decentralized with Briar being fully P2P and Session having independent nodes that operate the network doing so for a crypto reward. Additional steps for privacy with phones may include installing the de-googled Graphene OS (for Android devices), installing+using OrBot which is a Tor Proxy for Android/IOS devices, turning off push notifications within the apps, and installing apps from APK or FDroid repo (not the App Store) when using Android devices.

These are useful steps forward for security but the reality is that not many (any?) right wing outlets use Briar or Session making them kind of useless if you want to send something in. Avoid using encrypted apps for sending in a communique

Email

A common problem listed with the first two methods is that there aren't a lot of outlets offering these communication systems (physical addresses or safe anonymous messaging apps), so an immediate thought is to use email. Email is one of the oldest and most popular technical communication systems that exists. There are some problems though.

The biggest problem is creating a truly anonymous email account. This means one that's new and unconnected to any other activity in the past and in the future. Reusing an existing account can be used to link you to other services and put you in danger. Additionally once a communique has been sent from an email never reuse that email for anything as it could be monitored.

For an email to be truly anonymous you must be able to create it without providing any information to the service, and do so while 100% on the Tor Browser (read the Tor post to understand why using Tor is important). You may think this would be easy, but almost all email services, even the 'secure/private/encrypted' ones are going to be asking for a recovery email or phone number if you're trying to create an account over Tor. Services like Protonmail demand this information and as such cannot be safely used, they have handed this registration information over to authorities before. There may be other providers that allow 100% private sign-up on the Tor Browser without any additional information (phone, backup email, etc) but these services change sign-up settings over time, meaning any recommendation at the time of writing this may or may not be useful. Services you can try with include Tutanota, Mailbox.org, Skiff.com, and Cyberfear.com.

Once you've sent in a communique, never reuse the email for anything. It's ideal to be using Tor on the Tails operating system for the most secure usage, this is a operating system specifically designed for being 100% secure and anonymous having the Tor network to hide your IP integrated within the basic connectivity of the OS.

In conclusion as to email, Avoid unless you can make a 100% secure email account completely on Tor. Never reuse email addresses.

Web submission

As stressed several times when talking about email, you need to be using Tor to be secure. So the final option is based on using Tor, minus the email, a web/browser based submission that requires no login, no sign-up, no phone number, and no email. This leaves the near zero information that even the people who you're submitting to could use to identify you (beyond the content of your communique). The safest web submissions are done to a hidden service (a Tor website running on a .onion address) as not even an IP of an exit node will be available and all data will be encrypted with the site's public key in transit. While not as secure a submission to a standard clearnet website (eg .com/.net/.org) is still very secure for the user as long as Tor is used.

The most popular implementation of this is an application called SecureDrop. It's a webserver that runs on the darknet (a .onion address) and encrypts all files and messages with the owner's public key. There is no login to SecureDrop, but you get a codename, so that you can continue messaging and clarify any information, the codename functions as a username/password. SecureDrop is what the industry standard within media is for allowing whistle blowers and others with extreme security needs. Every major media outlet in the world has a securedrop instance[2]. The downside is that it's unlikely that any outlet on that directory of SecureDrop instances will publish your communique in full due to their worldview.

National Radical's submission page located at Contact is the best known option for Nationalists to submit a communique (and get it published) currently. The National Radical submission page follows model of SecureDrop, with a codename for chat submissions and the use of PGP. There are some differences however.

1. National Radical uses a JavaScript library called OpenPGP JS to encrypt data on the client side (in the browser) as opposed to the SecureDrop approach of encrypting data on the server side. This change is intended to protect users from even the most extreme security situation, where an adversary has taken control of NR's server contents or cloned what's there. Even in this extreme situation the contents are being encrypted on the local machine of whoever is submitting and are unreadable to the adversary. The code for this JavaScript encryption is readily available when viewing the source of each page, being pretty to easy to read for anyone with any coding experience. As a result of the use of OpenPGP JS, in addition to the code name there is a password to decrypt the private key so a user can encrypt/decrypt messages in the browser.

2. National Radical has a 'single message' feature. This means there is no code-name, it's a single message with no ability for admins to reply. This is useful particularly for less technical users who may not feel as safe with a code name or password.

3. National Radical does not have a file upload component. They have established a process for obtaining and viewing files should someone be offering files that are of interest to NR admins. That process uses end to end encrypted methods and services that are established and secure.

NOTE: if there are other options that arise (other blogs or radical websites) NR admins have will add an addendum here discussing the other options that exists and what trade-offs it provides. It's always good to have a degree of decentralization with radical politics, as such the more radical websites/blogs there are, the better.

The safest option for submitting a communique is to a Tor Hidden service website, while using the Tor Browser on the Tails Operating system. For Nationalists, National Radical is the current best option for this

When to submit a communique

After

The timing of a communique only really matters if it's taking credit for an action. When a communique is taking responsibility for an action, outlets (such as NR) will have to determine if it's reliable and therefore worth publishing. If an outlet receives a claim on an extremely high profile action that's on the front page of every newspaper they'll have to make a tough decision if they should believe and publish the content or not. Factors such as communication history, activity within the region, and proof (if any) provided will impact this decision. With this in mind, the best time to submit a claim of responsibility is shortly after an action, ideally before it has hit the news. Following an action after you've gotten out safely and burned or otherwise destroyed all clothing/weapons/tools you brought would be the best time to send in a claim. This requires the forethought to download & install Tails, make sure you understand how to use it, and find an outlet prior to an action.

Before

There is an alternative to this. The basic premise is to write up a simple claim before the action. To then encrypt this data with a symmetric encryption method (AES for example) with a very strong password and then send the encrypted text to an outlet of choice. This text will be unreadable by the outlet without the password. If the action is successful, when it is safe send the outlet the decryption password to the claim, and a more thought out message if desired. The outlet will then know your claim is 100% legitmate due to the timing. If the action is unsuccessful or sharing a claim might put one in danger, then they just never send the password, all the outlet has then is a blob of unbreakable encrypted text.

An example of a AES encryption website tool is at https://avychanna.github.io/AES-Cryptojs/index.html. This code is in JavaScript and sends no data to the server. You can load the page and then turn off your Wifi/Internet and it will still work the same. Make sure you use Tails/Tor if doing for real.

Below is an example of this process, it may be useful to follow along with the encryption tool linked if you're not understanding this process.

1) Radical is planning an action against SOMETHING

2) Radical writes up a claim and encrypts using AES. Example Message : planning an action on SOMETHING on 1/1/2024

3) Radical creates a long secure password and saves password on an encrypted device (eg Tails persistent storage). Example Password : my_secret_password_1234567890

4) Radical submits encrypted text to selected outlet, stating only to save the message for later. Example Encrypted message : U2FsdGVkX19Mks5kxdPig0TIFXrw63Cvo79PKpRF3H2C1jCIWlIyBoSNcl7oQufIohjS0Jl9J6Hf6lw1YUAHKQ==

5) Outlet has a blob of unreadable text they can do nothing with.

6a) Action is successful. When 100% safe, using Tails/Tor radical sends password (my_secret_password_1234567890) and what encryption tool/method was used. Radical tells outlet to decrypt message they sent on the specific date and adds any additional info to their communique. Outlet decrypts the message they got before the action and can now very confidently publish claim.

6b) Action is unsuccessful or unsafe to take credit for. Radical never sends password. Nothing is published by outlet, as they know nothing.

Conclusion

Communiques are a useful tool for radicals and revolutionaries to distribute information outside the bounds on the occupied media. When used correctly they're a practical tool that should be to the point and information dense, without sharing any information that could identify the revolutionary. Avoid turning communiques into manifestos and deranged rants. The safest method to submit a communique is through web submission while using the Tor browser on the Tails operating system, all other methods are inferior with some putting the revolutionary in serious risk.

Reference

[1] What the Feds can get from each messaging app - https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2021/12/heres-what-data-the-fbi-can-get-from-whatsapp-imessage-signal-telegram-and-more

[2] Directory of mainstream SecureDrop addresses - https://securedrop.org/directory/