Right-Wing Leninists and the Electrical Grid

On Friday the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for information on whoever attacked three electrical substations in North Carolina last month. That makes nine verified gun attacks on electrical substations over the past three months, the others in South Carolina and Oregon. Everyone assumes these are done by "right wing terrorists," since 13 people associated with far right or racist organizations have been convicted of attacks on energy targets since 2016. But what are they trying to accomplish? People talk about "accelerationism," a sort of Leninist doctrine of making things worse to bring on the revolution faster:

“The goal is to create chaos, to spread confusion and damage systems that are vital to the U.S.,” said Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism and a co-author of the study.

In February 2022, three men pleaded guilty to federal charges connected to a planned attack on substations after they had “conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression,” the Justice Department said.

That same month, a Department of Homeland Security bulletin warned that domestic violent extremists had recently aspired to disrupt electrical and communications systems as “a means to create chaos and advance ideological goals.”

But thunderstorms, hurricanes, and wildfires already make thousands of attacks on the electrical grid every year, so adding a few more seems like a totally lame way to go about undermining civilization. Squirrels do much more damage than terrorists; the map at CyberSquirrel1.com shows 17 squirrel attacks in North Carolina in 2019 alone. Consider that most  of Ukraine still has electricity despite months of Russian missile attacks. Knocking out an electrical grid for more than a few hours is a hard thing to do.

I imagine the people shooting at transformers are enacting a fantasy of rebellion in a relatively safe and easy way, but I'm open to other suggestions. 

On the other hand, one convicted substation shooter in Utah was some sort of anti-capitalist eco-fanatic, which makes a little more sense. Maybe the two groups will join, forming the "Off the Grid Anti-Social Alliance." There's a plot for a satirical novel. It would focus on two guys, one from each faction; imagine the arguments they would have as they drive from state to state, searching for targets.