askchapo

is significantly hindered by the fact it can't be tied with anti-imperial nationalism

This is true, and that means it throws your whole premise into irrelevance.

What were the revolutions that featured lengthy and bloody civil wars and guerrilla warfare? Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, Yugoslavia, etc.

What do all of these have in common? Invasion by a foreign colonizing (or fascist in Yugoslavia's case) power. Mass violence in every case is imposed by foreign powers. Usually, a liberal or fascist government in one part of the country disrupts national sovereignty with imperial support. The mass violence was not a result of revolutionary people against a reactionary government. Instead, conditions of mass violence and disruption were resolved through the organization, military competence, discipline, and development objectives of communist parties. They emerged as leaders out of extended periods of guerrilla warfare that predate the socialist revolution. The socialist revolution is an evolution of the anti-colonial (or anti-fascist) revolution.

The US is very different from any of the countries that underwent successful socialist revolutions, but it is obviously the closest in structure, scale, and internal organization to one: the Russian Empire into the USSR. What was the nature of the Russian Revolution? Were there years of guerrilla warfare? No. Was the military deployed against the people at large scale? No. Were there great battles between revolutionary forces and the state? No.

The February Revolution was a massive wave of strikes and protests that toppled the old government through mostly non-violent (but not peaceful!) disruption. The provisional government was established. At this point, the Bolsheviks were a minor party with 20 or 30 thousand members in a country of 140 million people. The provisional government fails to deliver on all the promises of the February Revolution and immediately backslides into all the problems of the Tzarist regime. The Bolshevikes are an opposition party who loudly decry the failures of the government and the reason - a refusal to break from capitalism and move to socialism. They explode in size and influence. Strikes break out everywhere, workers and soldiers form councils, factories are seized by the masses, and in October the Bolsheviks prepare for and call a single military action to seize the government. NOBODY DIES!

A revolution in the US will not look like China or Vietnam. It will look much, more like Russia. You will not need to fight the military. The Air Force will not bomb revolutionary cells in American cities. Guerrillas will not roam the hills ambushing military patrols.

In Russia, the Civil War came after the Bolsheviks had seized state power, and the Red Army was built as a state fighting force against insurrectionary reactionary forces backed by foreign powers.