An occupying power can provoke premature revolt to identify and decapitate resistance

Evidence

If the English believed that a great insurrectional movement was being prepared, destined to annihilate their present strategic superiority (which consists, in a certain sense, in their ability to manoeuvre through control of the internal lines of communication, and to concentrate their forces at the “sporadically” most dangerous spot) by mass suffocation—i.e. by compelling them to spread out their forces over a theatre of war which had simultaneously become generalised—then it would suit them to provoke a premature outbreak of the Indian fighting forces, in order to identify them and decapitate the general movement. … It is thus evident that in these forms of mixed struggle—fundamentally of a military character, but mainly fought on the political plane (though in fact every political struggle always has a military substratum)—the use of commando squads requires an original tactical development, for which the experience of war can only provide a stimulus, and not a model. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 879

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the anti-colonial strategy debates in later Islamophobia readings around how imperial powers preempt and co-opt resistance movements; also evokes the general strike/revolt provocation logic in Gramsci’s own war of position analysis. — connects to: Extractive theft without basic infrastructure delivery provokes rebellion — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 113; A spontaneous uprising can surprise the ruling class only once before it fails — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 98; Revolutionary mobilization arises when state demands exceed citizens’ willingness to comply — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1063