Trump resistance? A 1940s US sabotage manual goes viral

US President Donald Trump speaks with the world's richest man Elon Musk in Texas, US, on November 19, 2024.

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, tens of thousands of people have downloaded the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual”, a guide written by a US intelligence agent in 1944 to help the allied resistance during World War II. Its newfound popularity comes amid an emerging grassroots opposition to waves of executive orders from the new president.

The first time Donald Trump was elected US president in 2017, George Orwell’s dystopian thriller “1984” made a surprise return to the top of bestseller lists as readers discovered a new appetite for the novel that examines how a totalitarian government’s use of “double speak” fatally erodes the concept of truth.

Eight years later, Trump’s return to the White House has ignited interest in another decades-old publication, this time from the non-fiction aisle.

The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” was produced in 1944 by the US Office of Strategic Service (OSS) – predecessor to the CIA – and on February 1 became the most popular book on Project Gutenberg, the world’s biggest platform for downloading open-source free and public domain ebooks.

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In short, the guide is “good for training you to become incompetent at work”, Willmetts says.


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