Thoughts On The Current Crisis

Imagine you and a group of your friends produce what you think is a revolutionary way to improve the world. You are so sure it is a great idea, you and your buddies decide to overthrow the government so you can implement your idea. Now, even assuming your revolutionary idea is legitimate, that is a terrible way to go about changing the world. You and your band of nobodies lack the numbers and the moral authority to take over the government. The most likely result is you get arrested and locked away in a padded cell.

Now, a more rational way of putting your brilliant idea into action is for you and your group to go out and start telling people about it. In a prior age, this meant handing out fliers and knocking on doors to spread the good word. In the current age, you can start a social media campaign and create a YouTube channel, where you post informative videos on your brilliant ideas. Maybe someone with a big on-line following notices your efforts and joins the cause. Perhaps someone of importance gets interested in your ideas.

The point of raising awareness and getting people involved in your movement is to increase your numbers. One reason your plot to overthrow the state failed in the first paragraph is you lacked the numbers. If you get a million people to sign onto your cause, then you have a chance. Not only that, when it comes to changing minds, quantity has a quality of its own. People are much more open-minded to an idea that has a big following than one held by a tiny fringe group. Human beings are social animals.

On the other hand, numbers alone are not enough. Your revolution also failed because you still lack moral authority. In a country of 300 million, a million strong movement is still pretty small. The state will feel justified in using extreme force against you and your movement if they see you as a threat. Numbers are not the only reason you failed. The people in charge could operate in the knowledge that most people see them as the legitimate power in the country. Therefore, they can squash all threats.

Revolutions succeed because the prevailing order lost its moral authority. Even though the numbers that oppose them are small, the lack of moral authority means no one is willing to risk much to defend the status quo. The lack of legitimacy is why governments fall, religions collapse and cultures collapse. The Bolsheviks did not succeed because they had a better set of tactics or a plausible alternative. They toppled the Czar because the one thing everyone agreed upon is the old order had to go. Anything had to be better.

That means you and your band of revolutionaries does not really need a manifestly brilliant idea to change the world. If the prevailing orthodoxy has lost its legitimacy, even a mediocre alternative is enough. If you examine successful revolutions, the alternative on offer is usually quite vague and, in the end, totally impractical. It was more of a sunny vision, a promise of a better day, than a fully considered alternative moral order. It was just something that felt better than the discredited status quo.

The point of all this is that in the current crisis, the job of the dissident is to build numbers and delegitimize the prevailing order. When the alt-right got full of themselves and decided to it was time to start the revolution, they were squashed like a bug. The reason was they lacked the numbers, and they had done nothing to undermine the moral authority of the people in charge. To most white people, the riot in Charlottesville looked like a bunch of fringe weirdos making a nuisance of themselves. They deserved what they got.

Ultimately, revolutions that matter start with the small group and slowly grow into a larger group. That was true of the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, and the Iranian revolutionaries. It was true of the American revolutionaries. The small group grew into a larger group and then it became a sub-culture. Finally, it blossomed into a counter-culture that provided a home for the whole man, not just the revolutionary. Dissidents in America are in the sub-culture phase or possibly in the early phases of becoming a counter-culture.

Another aspect of successful revolutions is they are short on concrete ideas. Detailed plans can be analyzed and critiqued. Vague promises cannot. That is one reason Trump won in 2016. His promises sounded good, mostly because they lacked specificity. They were aspirations, not policies. That means the people spending their days working out the new legal code for the ethno-state are wasting their time. The timeless principles of today are just the rules instituted by the winners, after they won.

There are two recent examples American dissidents should study. The first is the Evangelical movement that started in the 1970’s as a response to the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. They had unassailable principles and specific policy goals that arose from those principles. They had great organic organizations, their churches. They had money and manpower. They also focused on one party, hoping to make the GOP the counter to the Left. By the 80’s, the Evangelicals were a powerful political force.

They also failed to accomplish any of their goals. Their top issue was abortion, specifically rolling back Roe. They lobbied hard to get their guys into office and on the bench so they could get that ruling overturned. They had zero success. In fact, it is hard to find any aspect of the culture war they were able to win. If you had told Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the 70’s that their efforts would still mean gay marriage and trannies stalking little boys in public toilets, they probably would have lost their faith entirely.

The reason they lost is they engaged the ruling class on their terms. The Evangelicals agreed to play by the rules set by the ruling class. This ultimately meant supporting the ruling class institutions, like the political rules and the party system. Those things are designed to preserve the current order. In effect, the Evangelicals agreed from the start to defend and support the prevailing order. It was inevitable that their efforts would only lead to more of the same because they agreed to all of the assumptions of the prevailing order.

Another useful example is the NRA. Starting around the same time as the Evangelicals entered politics, the NRA decided to change direction. They became apolitical, supporting only candidates that were pro-gun. They stopped arguing about the efficacy of gun control as a crime fighting tool and started arguing about gun culture as a vital part of American culture. The NRA shifted from political debates to moral debates and captured the high ground by linking gun rights to patriotism and basic America concepts of liberty.

This is why the fight over guns has been the one exception in the culture war. The Left tried hard to capture the high ground, usually by standing on the bodies of dead kids, but they failed because the NRA always fights to hold the moral high ground. They never conceded the premise or the moral framework of the debate. When the Left says they want guns off the streets because of the children, the NRA says they want guns in the hands of parents, so they can protect their children and themselves.

The lesson for our thing is to first understand where we are in the process. Our job right now is to grow our numbers by promoting our ideas. Part of doing that is taking every opportunity to undermine the other side’s moral authority. Just as important, it means developing a genuine alternative to the moral order. A counter-culture has its own ethos, which means its own media, its own language, and its own comedy. That last part is important because what we mock speaks directly to what we believe.

Revolutions feel like they happen overnight, but they are the culmination of a long process that starts before the vanguard is out of diapers. The 60’s radicals would never have existed without the Beatniks and the drug culture. The Jacobins would not have existed without the salon culture that had developed in Paris. Radical politics are born of a counter-culture that provides the basis of an alternative moral order. For there to be right-wing radicals tomorrow, we must build the right-wing counter-culture today.

111 thoughts on “Thoughts On The Current Crisis

  1. I just re-read this, Z, and I think it’s one of your most important things to date. Clear, concise, simply stated.
    Oh, to be able to express myself in such an easy manner! I’m definitely a bit jealous.

  2. Evangelicals lost because “they engaged the ruling class on their terms.” Yep and yep. One thing admirable (enh) about Bolsheviks was their ruthlessness. Identify the blockage, remove the blockage by whatever means necessary.

  3. What counter-culture? The only thing the alt/dissident/radical right has going for it is crude racism/ethnic cleansing fantasies. Whining about “dumb wetbacks” will win you a few votes from the neo-nazi set but is not going to convince or convert anyone to your side. Look at the comments section of the post “high cost of cheap labor”. None of them even address the problem or suggest ways to get the issue out in the public sphere. It is all about “Pajeets” and “shitting in the streets”. Best of luck with that!. You are not going to win anyone to your side with deep insightful comments like these.

  4. “Imagine you and a group of your friends come up with what you think is a revolutionary way to improve the world”

    Tikkun Olam defined.

    • But, KAB, another difference between the NRA and the Evangelicals has been that, the PUSHBACK vs. the NRA has mostly been by a bunch of virtue-signalling SJWs, touted by the MSM, but without a really personal motive for commitment to the issue.
      I’ll bet ranch that most of these SJWs don’t REALLY fear, that they’re gonna get popped by someone legally owning a gun.
      The fear of legal guns is almost completely ABSTRACT.

      By contrast, the pushback vs. the Evangelicals has come from feminists, who’ve either themselves had an abortion, or KNOW someone who has. So the pro-choice pushback has been aided by real commitment, driven largely by feminists with a PERSONAL stake in that issue.
      Likewise with “gay rights” agitation, driven largely by tons of visceral stories, told by victims of wanton anti-gay hostility.

      The above aspects may help us assess the prognosis, for various aspects of our struggle vs. multiculturalism and globalism.
      As the SJWs continue to react to Trumpism in INFANTILE ways, their throwing these tantrums directly into the FACES of non-SJWs, day after day, can easily produce the kind of visceral reactions against them, analogous to the reactions of gays (and their friends) to wanton hostility at them.
      Such tantrums make non-SJWs more open to visceral stories about PoC street crimes, and other expressions of Hate for Honky, esp. to those non-SJWs who KNOW, or who’ve themselves been, victims of street crime (analogous to the feminists’ personal experiences with abortion.) .
      (Seeing as SJWs so often defend PoC street crimes against other PoCs, as stemming from an inherently “racist system”, we can argue that most or all PoC crimes are “protests” vs. the “white privilige” we’re accused of benefiting from.)
      And, our arguing that BLM hatred of cops is really hatred, of those who stand in the way of PoCs’ urges to “protest” our “white privilege”, via street crimes.

  5. Most excellent to steal a phrase from Ted and Bill’s adventure.

    It’s certainly doable. But who will build our version of the NRA, that’s the big question. So far the alt-right has been a dumpster fire when it comes to selecting organizers.

    If it were me. I’d pick Roger Stone’s brains on setting something up. The guy has seen the innards of political machines longer that most of have been alive.

    I’d also look at the French Partisan model of organization. That will be needed further down the line.

    Vetting will have to be a intrinsic part of it. Why? Because the moment the organization gets the attention of the elite(not the SJW’s), they will declare open warfare on us. They may be insane and evil but they know a threat when they see it.

    That’s what did in Earth First and most “militia” organizations just to name a few.

  6. Zman, what is your contribution? Falwell and co. might have bet wrong, but they put skin in the game. How nice it must be to sit safely, anonymously behind a keyboard decades later and take shots at the real world of failure and success.

    Never for a moment risking a damn thing.

    What then will be your legacy?

    • Announcing your real identity and beliefs is career suicide, which is nearly as harmful to our cause as physical suicide. We’re searching for the paths by which to advance our cause in the current repressive environment. We can’t even depend on the police to defend us at rallies where we have permits. Yes, the hour is getting late but it is not yet worthwhile to charge the machine gun turrets.

      • 1st, its not 1969. Public rallies are the height of stupid and mostly serve to reinforce the narrative

        Sometimes yes they are a moral boost, everyone likes seeing a little street violence on their side but as anything that will change policy? TThey are useless.

        Reality is if you ever plan to use said turrets you had better decide when that time is if ever because apparently so long as there are states with loose guns laws and not to onerous federal ones no one gives a shit about anything else.

        Legacy Americans better learn to cooperate because that inability to cooperate cost us a White nation, stable families, half our wages , public decency and damn near Christianity too.

        I mean seriously what is going to take?

        And yes I know President Trump. I’m grateful he’s in office. Its something and its an action.

        The problem is unless he breaks the deep state as soon as he and the people like him are gone from office= and people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez start win elections, and they will, you White man are going to the camps one by one or more likely are going to be taxed into oblivion.

        Its slavery one way or the other and if you don’t learn to stop being such and individual, you and everything you care about dies a horrible death.

        Read your Solzhenitsyn

        And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

        You aren’t fighting for you not at all , you may not live to see it but for the future so you best think about what kind of future you want for your charges or th other guys gets his.

        And trust me the Left thinks about its ideal future every day. So should you

        We have a reprieve and we need to use it wisely.

        Oh and a last point, if you don’t know what an implicitly White world would be like watch a Hallmark Movie and than some Forged in Fire. Its like that.

  7. I feel a little skeptical of the argument about the NRA. The way I see it is that we are in a paradoxical era. Why has laws about concealed carry increased while gun ownership has gone down? In a March 2015 post, Z wrote “When you shut your car off, the engine actually gets hotter for a few minutes before rapidly cooling down to air temperature.”

    I feel that in some ways, we are in that sort of “dueling trends” era. Eventually the fact that gun ownership has gone down is eventually going to catch up to politics. I’ve never been much of a gun guy anyways. I never came to this from a paleo or tradcon perspective but from more of a “skeptic community” perspective.

    • Gun ownership as a percentage of population … households? I’m not sure what the statistics really show, after a cursory look. Certainly, there seems to be some ideological spin to the interpretations, with the more LEFTY sites positing a measurable drop. However, I’m not sure this is an easy thing to quantify, short of going door to door, and even then, I’m not sure you would get an accurate count.

      One set of numbers that I noted a few times was 43% of households in 1972 possessed, and 42% in 2017. OK, but how do we figure in the fact that our population was roughly, what, 190 million in 1970, versus 325 million-plus in 2017. Is the percent significant, or is it the raw numbers? What are we really asking? I don’t know. Indeed, can we even clearly state just what a household is now in 2018, with all the injected social and cultural chaos we’ve endured?

      And in this same time frame, we’ve experienced an invasion of tens of milliions of foreigners, many, or most, from countries without any tradition of firearms ownership (or freedom, for that matter). Most of these have been deposited in our urban centers, dramatically altering the culture and character of what was once a very different environment.

      In the past, places like the Bronx, or suburban Chicago, and countless other population centers and satellites, were home to working class Americans, many of whom would have owned firearms … especially after service in WWII, as would the elites in those days. Just look at the pictures of mid-20th century shooting clubs at urban high schools. Doesn’t exist now, there.

      Since that time, this more traditional urban population has been displaced by great numbers of immigrants, pink-haired / tattooed hipsters, tekkies, the criminal underclass, and upper-class sophisticates who have moved in to gentrify once blue collar neighborhoods that fell to blight in the 60s and 70s. With the exception of the criminals, most of these would never consider owning a firearm. Certainly, almost none would dream of military service.

      So where are the bulk of these households they are measuring?? In the cities, where people have likely had a real decline in ownership by percentage? Likely. Rural population has really only held steady, or fallen in some areas (Appalachia, for instance, or counties across the Great Plains).

      Certainly , the LEFT has worked for decades to bring about the conditions wherein the young males no longer take up firearms-related activities. And in this, computers and other technological distractions have admittedly seduced the many young males away from earlier, outdoor-centric activities.

      But I just don’t see that vastly increasing our population, and adding in huge numbers who have no use for and no history of firearms association could be interpreted to say that we are on a downward course toward an eventual dying out of America’s firearms traditions. In other words, I don’t think that adding on a huge layer of people who don’t own or use firearms, would in itself meaningly speak to the impending death of this facet of our cultural tradition … in spite of what our betters might want and be working to achieve. I suspect that in absolute numbers, gun ownership is holding steady, or perhaps increasing gently.

      Of course, in the absence of perceived need, less urgency to own and become proficient with is understandable. But if our vacation from history should end ….

      Anyway, just some thoughts on firearms ownership following tKK’s comment above. Thanks.

  8. Look at the devastation that Obama caused in just 8 years (as an example, he turned the DOJ and FBI into criminal organizations, which is no small feat), and remember that Hillary would likely have won if she wasn’t such an arrogant idiot. We could be circling the drain right now if not for the miracle of Trump. The long game of building a revolutionary movement is a fine idea right up until it’s not. Stalin, HItler, and Mao proved that mass murder is a pretty potent tool for countering such movements.

    • No small feat? No, the FBI tradition of crimes goes at least back to Waco, if not to J. Edgar.

  9. “Everyone” didn’t agree to topple the Tsar. A conspiracy of Communists and corrupt aristocrats did. And they were fought by the White Army, many of whom died for the “old order.”

    • Much as I appreciate Z and his material, he does seem sometimes to forget about the incalculable contribution to the downfall of humanity by the Communists and their wealthy elitist NWO backers.

      • Well noted. It’s fun, here on a friendly blog, to share notions and such about our “emergence” from the encircling disaster, fantasizing about our reclamation of the western project through words and gestures – ignoring the one ‘nuclear weapon’ that imposes a new order – willingness to die…

        Sure, it’s all that silly Christian nonsense that we laugh at, but still, when well-meaning emperors such as Decius and Aurelian and Diocletian tried to stamp it out, they failed, because their perplexing opponents were ready to die for what they believed, to choose death over mere existence in a slave empire they hated.

        We’re too sharp, too ironic, too ‘on top of things’ for that sort of stuff now.

        • Interesting comment …. a people who have nothing to lose, or who believe that in death they are really losing nothing, and are willing to fight right up to the end, are tremendously difficult to manage. Not sure I would say that our side now is generally willing to give their lives for their beliefs, but most of those I knew who placed themselves in positions of mortal peril this last go-round were of a certain type … I didn’t find that same sort of ethic widely evident when I had to spend some years briefing DC staffers, bureaucrats and politicos. Of course, one doesn’t encounter it frequently in the broader civiliian culture, either.

          Once, our people were somewhat willing, with proper training and leadership, to step from grounded landing craft and wade hundreds of yards through chest deep water into Japanese fire at places like Tarawa. I’ve spoken with them as old men, and asked them how they did this, and why. And think of our guys in the 101st and 82nd on the morning of 6 June ’44 — something like 14,000+ jumped, and (according to Ambrose), less than ten refused. Astounding, what we were, and were willing to do then. Willing to die, because ….

  10. You missed one very important characteristic of revolutions: they’re always fought and supported by leftists and move society farther left when successful.

    And you’re still wrong about gun ownership being a right-wing issue. There’s no moral imperative or logical reason for a right-wing government to allow it. The second amendment is a left-wing idea dating back to the left-wing American Revolution; it just happens to be “legacy left”, like many other libertarian ideas.

    It’s great that the NRA and millions of gun owners fight to protect this right. But it’s not an example of “right-wing” success in the culture war; it’s simply one of the slower-burning foundations of the old left, like free speech.

    • The Second Amendment is protection against Anarcho Tyranny. See Bacons Rebellion. Rich dudes purchase all of Eastern Virginia and arm Indians, forbid colonists to own weapons or defend themselves to force all East as feudal serfs on their land.

  11. Zman your analogy of the NRA’s changing its focus is an example of what the Right must learn to do in all occasions – make emotional rather than rational arguments. Everyone chooses based on emotion. Everyone. That’s why the Left is so persuasive and made so many strides in the culture. Just look at the advertising you’ve consumed over the last 10 or 50 years. Most ads, not all, are designed to elicit an emotional response. The Left has just copied this strategy for many, many years. Everything is an emotional argument: ‘for the children’, ‘grandma will starve without her social security”, ‘that’s not who we are’, etc. Tweedy conservatives counter the Left’s emotion with reason, and lose the argument most of the time. If we (collectively) make the voting populace feel better about adopting dissident right candidates and political platforms than the other guys, we’ll be unstoppable. This sounds facile, but it kinda’ boils down to a marketing problem.

  12. I didn’t mean to single out Evangelicals in my previous comment, its only that it was one of the examples that Z gave.

    What about this: The vast majority of women actually want abortion to be available (even the “conservative” ones want it to be there if their daughters get knocked-up by their “fuck you dad” black boyfriends), and the vast majority of men are ambivalent about abortion and really only see it as a women’s issue vs. The majority of men see gun rights as a hill to die on (due at least in part to the NRA) and at least a simple majority of women are ambivalent at best about gun rights.

    So the Evangelical’s failure wasn’t just because they played by the rules/couldn’t capture the moral high ground, but because they didn’t have majority, or at least a strong plurality of either gender on their side to begin with.

    If the majority of women ever actually get a firm opinion on the issue its gonna go anti-gun, and then bye-bye 2nd Amendment.

  13. The great moral issue should be how rich these asshole politicians get just by being in government!

  14. ZMan, thanks for another clear essay. Since you are mapping the road to recovery, maybe at some point you can focus on coalitions and tents.

  15. “The NRA shifted from political debates, to moral debates and captured the high ground by linking gun rights to patriotism and basic America concepts of liberty.”

    So what should the Evangelicals have said about abortion, if “Abortion is murder” isn’t a convincing moral argument?

    Is “Any immigration generally means fewer opportunities for and increased social burdens on your children” a moral argument or a political one, or both? If that’s not a persuasive argument to curtail immigration what would be?

    • While illogical, there are people that believe abortion is murder, but still remains a choice that should not override “bodily autonomy”. These same people will turn around and condemn any attempt by a male to avoid child support.

      Evangelicals are steeped in consumerism and individualism, even though they have the highest white fertility outside of the LDS they suffer high attrition to secularism. Their leaders are charlatans and grifters, and they now are moving in the cuck direction (see: Russel Moore)

      • So, why is it ‘illogical’ to believe that abortion is murder?

        I’m just asking for the logic here. Murder is ‘A’, Abortion is ‘Not-A’.

        Explain your position, using the known tenets of logic.

        Thanks!

    • Although it may not sound like it here, I’d rather disagree with an Evangelical acquaintance than most others. I’ve never been challenged to a second argument with an anti-abortion Evangelical. If I believed abortion was murder I would believe all the women who had one should be sent to prison for an undetermined term, and we should assign to the FBI or to police anti-abortion units, just as we do with every other form of crime, none more serious than murder. Abortion “rights” are the storm troops of the Prog into the minds of their droids.

      • James, indeed: “If I believed abortion was murder, I would believe all the women who had one should be sent to prison for an undetermined term”, or be subject to the DEATH penalty.
        I’ll bet that many, maybe most, pro-lifers dare not push that, because they know that abortion LAWS wouldn’t have consequences IDENTICAL to (1st, or even 3rd, degree) murder laws.
        They know that 1) the total human circumstances of abortion are so much more MITIGATING, than those of the typical (1st, or 3rd, degree) murder, and 2) any effective policing for abortion laws (to be at all effective) would likely require a draconian level of SURVEILLANCE power, for the FBI or other cops.
        (I knew a doctor, whose devout Catholicism didn’t stop him from connecting surgeons with pre-Roe pregnant women. Like Huck Finn, about “Ni**er Jim”, his view was “OK, I guess that I’ll end up in hell!”)
        Where at least some pro-choicers become SICKENING, is when they push abortion as something to be celebrated, or when they denounce pro-lifers as utterly “sexist”.
        (If lefties ever learn to lay off their ad hominem habit, they’ll be rather more appealing to smart undecideds.)

        By contrast, enforcement of, say, immigration laws, has been successfully implemented for millennia, e.g. via such (non-INTRUSIVE) means as the Great Wall of China.
        (If foreigners considered that Wall “intrusive”, too bad!)

        • Another contrast between immigration laws, and abortion laws, is that the ‘openness” of enforcement mechanisms of immigration laws makes naked favoritism HARDER to get away with, whereas the “espionage” needed to enforce abortion laws well-nigh guarantees, that they’ll be selectively enforced.
          Of course, if players in the system work to undermine enforcement, all such laws will be jokes.

  16. You people will never be successful. The People do not want racism, do not want white supremacy, do not want poor government. We are growing in numbers and you are diminishing. We will bash you out of political life. Consider that Pat Buchanan was mainstream 30 years ago. Where is he now? Demographic change means that you WILL be held accountable.

    • People make their judgements in about 10 seconds flat, based on two or three things that have meaning to them, and do so in a very intuitive fashion without much rational reasoning, and the rest of it from that point on is just reinforcement of the conclusions they have already made.

      “Diversity”, “multiculturalism”, and such things have the odor of failure, and of stealing from the average person to give to some other unworthy person. Normies are thinking these things now, no matter how loud and aggressive you proggies get. You have lost the narrative. Trump is the result, but he is not the reason for all of this. The reason for it is that the average person sees nothing good for their lives in the things the Left has wrought for them. Trannies in the girls bathrooms and Antifa breaking windows is not what people want in their lives. You have cozied up to all of that stuff, whether you know it or not, and the average person is giving you a big “F-U”, whether they openly express it or not. You have no idea.

      • While we hate to feed the trolls around here, Mr. Bilson is correct in stating that we will not get an ethnostate through popular will alone. He is wrong about who will be held accountable for the failure of the present system. (Look in the mirror bud) As Dutch observes, normie white opinion is stating to become racially aware, but that only takes things so far… The big change occurs when the extremely powerful and wealthy decide that the status quo sucks. As Moldbug observed, places like Detroit are bad for business. Our present system has evolved from an agrarian economic model based upon small owners. We have passed through the industrial age, and entered a really strange period of history based on debt expansion and accelerating consumer spending (growth). Of course the standard of living has been falling since 1974, but things have been good for the 1%. What happens when that changes? What if the elite decide that all of the diversity is a liability?

        • Going back to Karl Horst’s comment about Switzerland, the elite there have made things very comfortable for themselves by eliminating diversity and demanding very specific cultural and behavioral attributes from their “lessers”. The Swiss model may yet be the one that prevails over time.

          • Yes, it cannot be stressed too much, Swiss government is county government, federalism on steroids. People can and do relocate a couple kilometers away to exit obnoxious policies of their canton–like taxes–or threaten to in order to be taken seriously, which they are. Imagine trying to import section 8 housing there. Making a path impossible is the only way to prevent progressives progressing. We can dream. They are not immune to self-destruction–women’s suffrage was established, canton by cannon, from the 1970’s to 1990 something. Gun control is on the minds of women in the most well armed population on earth.

    • LOL.

      Way back in 2008 while sitting at the lunch table one of my flaming lefty co-workers asked: ” Who does everybody want to win the election?”

      Most of the guys I was sitting with were pretty conservative, so they said shit like “McCain” or “Romney”. One guy said he’d vote for the Green candidate whoever the hell that was.

      I said: ” I hope Obama wins the election”.

      He perked right up and said in a really hopeful voice (lefties are dumb):

      ” Why is that!? ”

      I said: ” Well the way I figure it is that Obama getting elected will completely destroy the Democrat party by sending them off into a tailspin – and as a side benefit he’ll destroy liberalism in this country too”.

      Then I went back to eating my sandwich. When I looked up he was walking away. My friend Bob was laughing hysterically. He said that lefty had turned 10 shades of red , the veins in his neck were bulging out – and he was obviously psychotic level pissed. ” I’ve never seen him so mad” is what Bob said.

      That was 2008. Now it’s 2018. If you do a Google search for “Obama destroyed the Democrat party” you get about 14,900,000 results.

      Lefties don’t pay attention. That is a given. Lefties don’t understand how shit works. That is a given.

      I’ll take your post as evidence of that. Get back to me in 10 years and we’ll see if you know what the fuck you’re talking about.

      I’m betting NOT.

    • Noah Smith is probably correct in the short run–at least when it comes to the USA. America has a long tradition of accepting immigrants. Until recently most immigrants were European; however, blacks have been part of America for a long time. Do we really think that a majority is going to rise up and reject Mexicans when that same majority has made allowances for black dysfunction for over 200 years? While almost all of us know a successful black person, black dysfunction is generally much worse than Hispanic. Face it–most Mexicans that you meet are pretty nice. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to buy some time, so that the various ethnostates can become a reality in the future.

      • “Most Mexicans that you meet are pretty nice” That whites are inclined to be accepting of Hispanics is a major problem because whites are blind to the fact that Hispanics are significantly more tribal, unintelligent, and violent than whites. Like all tribal people, Hispanics want to be ruled by their own and they will often forgive the crimes of their own against outgroups. Our short sighted agreeableness will kill us.

        The major reason that Mexico has the problems is has is that is it filled with Mexicans.

        • “The major reason that [Country X] has the problems it has is that is filled with [inhabitants of Country X].”

          An incisive and useful point.

          • I concede that my statement may sound like a tautology, but it is not. It contradicts the idea that people in dirthole countries can come to our land in large numbers and not import the character of the countries that they left.

    • We do ourselves no help with our reputation for boorishness and violence, that so easily plays into the hands of the media that hates us. The economy is also “good”, and the rioting by BLM from ’14-’16 has been dropped down the memory hole. Come back when taxes are hiked in the 2020s to bail out the entitlements.

      • We won the election thanks to promising to bring back manufacturing, and a low turnout of black Dems. Public hostility to immigration peaked in 2010 and has declined ever since. We lost on immigration when we didn’t take the Senate in ’10, and before thanks to Gingrich/Armey/DeLay in ’94.

  17. Let’s face it, that’s one reason Trump won in 2016. His promises sounded good, mostly because they lacked specificity. They were aspirations, not policies.

    And yet, ironically, Trump’s promises were more specific than those of any of his opponents.

  18. I agree, the gun control fight has been a success. 30 years ago, concealed carry was a rarity in most states, whereas today, most states are must issue. This animation is marvelous and illustrates the changes over the years: http://www.hni.com/concealed-carry-resources-for-employers/concealed-carry-animated-map

    And surprisingly, the liberal 9th Circuit made a ruling against California’s magazine confiscation attempt with some pretty based language. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/ninth-circuit-protects-gun-rights-california/

    • More accurately, 3 of the 15 judges on the 9th circuit heard the case, and 2 of the 3 ruled that. They just got lucky in which judges they drew. When it goes en banc, the full 9th will surely overturn. (And then on to SCOTUS)

      • Don’t be so sure about that. I think part of the reason for the ruling was to make sure that case never makes it in front of SCOTUS for them to make a firm ruling on it.

  19. Zman, please clarify your assessment of the NRA’s success.
    At one place, you say “They stopped arguing about the efficacy of gun control as a crime fighting tool, and started arguing about gun culture as a vital part of American culture. The NRA shifted from political debates, to moral debates, and captured the high ground, by linking gun rights to patriotism and basic America concepts of liberty.”
    Just below that, you say “the NRA says they wants guns in the hands of parents, so they can PROTECT their children and themselves.”

    Obviously, this means protecting from crime, and has no clear relation to patriotism.
    One can say that protection from crime has a moral dimension, but I see this “protection” message as having a local, PRACTICAL basis, the essence being “so, lefties, you just expect L.A.’s Koreans to just sit there, the next time the cops withdraw from the hood, as it’s being pillaged by the purported supporters of the next Rodney King?”
    So, it may be better to emphasize the “practical”, rather that the anti-abortion crowd’s “moral”, bases.
    And, the basic America concepts of liberty did help much here. The NRA was opposing an expansion of gov’t power, the pro-lifers were seeking an expansion of gov’t power. As the distrust of G-men (e.g. the FBI) gets more respectable (e.g. as folks learn more about the railroading of Ge. Flynn), the NRA view will get even more respect, and the pro-life view will have an even tougher road to hoe.
    I’d advise the religious Right to ease up on abortion, and join up with the manoshere, in its attacks on rigged divorce courts, and in the Dan Quayle-ish attacks on feminists’ demands for the “right” to the combo of 1) gov’t cheese, and 2) the skanks’ power to have unilateral custody and “PRIVACY” (to let “their” kids be abused by their latest carousel-ride alpha).

    • So, feminists, we’ll let you abort some kids, but once you pop any kids out, SOCIETY calls the shots, unless you are legally committed to SHARING power over the kid(s), e.g. in a marriage with someone who society deems trustworthy (to OVERSEE your riding the carousel in the kids’ presence).
      And, if you bug out of that marriage, SOCIETY has the right to take custody of kids, until you find another RESPONSIBLE partner.
      Take it or leave it!

    • The NRA won largely by not listening to people who told them to cuck on guns. So I don’t listen to people who tell me to cuck on abortion. Or anything.

      Cucking doesn’t work. Cucking doesn’t win. No cucking. On anything. Ever.

  20. We’ll know we are on the cusp of victory when a man can make a living as a stand-up comedian working the Silver Spring, Roswell, Vestavia Hills circuit.

  21. The legitimacy angle hits on my biggest fear about Trump. My second-biggest fear about him is that he’ll fail to Make America Great Again- but my biggest fear is that he’ll succeed. What I mean is that he’ll manage to fix a fundamentally dysfunctional and immoral system just enough to keep it going for another few decades by delivering it a fresh injection of competence and legitimacy. This is essentially what happened in China after Mao died – Deng Xiaoping was smart and flexible enough that he managed to right the ship of Chinese communism in a way that Gorbachev (whose reform program was simply too little, too late) wasn’t able to. The result is that things got better to the point that when Tiananmen Square happened in 1989, people didn’t feel desperate enough to take up the cause and topple the system. The protests were crushed, and the Communist Party of China has stayed in power to this day.

    So what happens if Trump really *is* able to Drain the Swamp and Make America Great Again? Or at least, drain it enough and make it great enough again to give 50 extra years of life to a system that really doesn’t deserve it?

    • From a purely self-interested perspective, if Trump’s efforts add another 50 years to the system, you and I could presumably enjoy peace for the remainder of our natural lives. Then again, that peace could come at the expense of our dignity. There are costs and benefits if the establishment persists, just as there are costs and benefits if it crashes. A collapse may be inevitable and necessary. It will exact a toll nonetheless. Eluding that toll might be preferable, though neither you nor I will likely have much choice on that matter.

      • We need to think more multi-generationally. I don’t want “peace in our time” at the expense of my progeny. A collapse (economic and/or political) would be cataclysmic now, but imagine how much more painful if we allow it so metastasize another 50 years.

    • AD, I don’t understand why you say there is a legitimacy issue with Trump.

      And … a few decades worth of fixing the current system would provide needed time for the dissident opposition to mature and strengthen.

      We might be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps with the fixing and strengthening, along with the persistence and patience mentioned above, the result would turn out to be acceptable in itself.

    • I wouldn’t worry. Once Trump leaves, the Left will reverse everything in their first year. The thing is Trump has not signed any meaningful legislation, just some EO’s which can be reversed by the next POTUS.

      He’s totally abandoned the Wall and immigration enforcement.

      He’s done nothing to clean the swamp. He just twits like a teenager while the DOJ and FBI have gone rogue and a bunch Obama criminals run free and mock him every day.

      He doesn’t even have the nerve to strip those ex-Obama admin goons of their security clearances.

    • “My second-biggest fear about him is that he’ll fail to Make America Great Again- but my biggest fear is that he’ll succeed.” Thanks Chesterton. Here’s something a bit more straight forward: Change takes time.

  22. As usual, Zman makes excellent points. Two virtues that demand special emphasis when considering these matters are PERSISTENCE and PATIENCE. The counter culture most likely to win is the one that, wittingly or unwittingly, demonstrates the best timing. Right now certain elements of the so-called alt right are planning another “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and one in D.C. as well. Have these clowns learned nothing? They have not accrued enough explicit public support to justify such actions. They are setting themselves up to get pummeled by political officials and the propaganda machine all over again. Fool me once… These would-be activists lack PATIENCE. They want everything in the immediate moment. A more realistic outlook would benefit them and their movement. “Hope” is a four-letter word and a concept that can easily lead folks down a primrose path of destruction. Truth is impossible to escape. And the truth is that the dissident right needs to build its numbers tremendously before engaging in rallies/protests. But it’s largely a movement of youth — and youth have a tendency to prefer haste.

    • A reasonable argument in the abstract, but I think the contrary can also be reasonably argued. The problem with wjkathman’s thesis is that time is not on our side.

      While the alt-culture is patiently and persistently working to build its numbers, cult-Marx is moving ahead with a steam roller. A mere five years ago, the transsexual world was a tiny fringe that could be ignored. Now it’s in your face. Then, the Left at least maintained a facade of observing the civilized political traditions. Now it’s celebrities photographed in mock beheadings of the President. Et cetera.

      I agree it’s important to learn from mistakes made at demos such as Charlottesville, but the lesson isn’t to retreat from the field and leave it to the occupiers. It’s to have better-planned events defying the Establishment. Of course demonstrations are only one dimension of the struggle. Efforts at friendly persuasion are fine, but the homoglobalist juggernaut isn’t going to wait until every Joe Sixpack sees the light.

      The devil-spawn Soros bots march and shout and wave signs because they get more mileage out of it than they lose. Traditionalists, patriots, and alt-culturists need to take tactical pointers from them. And invent and test new tactics as well.

      • You’re right about time not being on our side. Just mark me down as skeptical regarding the efficacy of public demonstrations in general — particularly when the other side controls the megaphone. The type of people we need to convince are not those typically impressed by a well-staged rally. We need folks who can see clearly through all the pozzed bullshit of modern society and who value reason and substance over style and histrionics. Granted, there may not be enough people who fit that description to make for a significant cultural movement. Suffice it to say, the problems we face are complicated and multi-layered. It is easy to despair which will obviously improve nothing. At least people like you and I are willing to brainstorm. Peace!

        • True, what we face is complicated and multi-layered. And our strategy needs to be multi-layered as well. Thanks (sincerely) for your contribution.

  23. You have to give credit where it’s due and frankly, the Swiss probably have the most democratic form of government going. Not that it’s better than anyone else, but it seems like they are always voting on one thing or another. But with just over 7-million people, I suspect it’s just a lot easier to manage.

    Just a few years ago, they raised a petition to ban minarets from being built in the country. The Swiss people then voted democratically to ban them, and that was it. Of course it could be put back up again in the future, but that’s really how it should work – changing with the times as it were.

    Even in Germany, which is stuck with a Parliament that is based on the willingness of coalition parties, who don’t always see eye-to-eye, to get anything done, it still seems like a worn out system that’s not really working. On top of that, the EU is simply all that magnified even more so. In many ways, American government and European governments are no longer functioning to serve it’s people, but to serve and promote the systems they’ve created whether they work or not.

    As you stated in your podcast last week, Rome collapsed because it expanded farther than it could effectively govern and/or control. While modern nation states can’t physically expand outward past fixed borders, internal expansion with massive immigration is probably resulting in the same effect.

    Perhaps the West is just too big for any president, chancellor or PM to rule effectively. And it’s supporting bureaucratic establishments simply can’t function as they were originally intended. The concept your founding fathers came up with was brilliant, Ini fact Germany copied much of it in their post-war constitution.

    But I suspect the crisis you describe is simply the results of an outdated model of government showing us that it’s reached it’s physical limits. The question now is, what’s there to replace it?

    • The Swiss have always been very particular about who gets to migrate or live there. To me, that seems a primary reason for why their system works so well.

    • What the Swiss have is local government. The rest of us need to decentralize. In the United States that would mean empowering the county governments and disempowering the state and federal governments. Make the counties into sovereign cantons.

      Maybe something similar could be done in Germany.

      • Absolutely. As far as we go these days is the “red state-blue state” choice in some matters of taxation and things like gun regulations. Push the government power down to the local level, both to give people choices, and also to minimize the bad effects of the inevitable corruption that will show up in certain jurisdictions.

        • Yes … But I think that’s what the founders did in the beginning. It’s just that the elites and monied interests, coupled with the indeological power-sekers, figured out over time that that was no way for them to pile up power, wealth, and importance for themselves. It’s a sad thing that we here reflexively propose this (I do too), when it’s actually the condition that’s supposed to exist — that fuzzy “… promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty …” clause — they just took that and ran as far as they could from original intent.

          And we’d have to have some big protections on liberty, or else that same human propensity for enforced Utopia would soon crawl back from the muck.

    • “But with just over 7-million people, I suspect it’s just a lot easier to manage.” To the contrary, this is the only way to manage a large republic. Ease has nothing to do with it. Manageability does.

  24. This is why strategies like Mark Levin’s Article V Convention remain fantasy. Without a new moral authority it would merely become an opportunity to further embed cultural Marxism into the COTUS itself.

    • The evidence is abundant that some parts of the country desire a much more leftist brand of politics. It would be wise of us to allow places like New York and California to adopt socialism, on the condition that the rural portions of those states are split off. Internal migration could also be restricted, or at the very least the franchise. Decentralization is an alternative to either Dictatorship or Deportation.

      • Use the Escape from New York model. Wall off Manhattan or some other large geographical area. Instead of criminals just throw the leftists, progs, and sodomites in there. Leave us alone.

        There’s another wall I can get behind.

        • Regrettably as I said yesterday, the left sees us as heretics that must be given no quarter. The threat of “Nazi Nukes” would also appear in any serious partition debate. And we’d be paying a “white privilege” alimony to the successor blue countries. The Orania town in South Africa receives its autonomy at the price of paying taxes and not receiving public services.

      • I’ve been stressing this to all of the “conservatives” I know for quite some time, subtly and sometimes right in their faces – especially when they’re being particularly stupid about the issue………..

        I do not believe that the socialism and outright Marxism that the lefties want funds itself. Like a virus or a parasite – it needs a host to feed from or it dies. I know this sounds like a platitude – but if you really delve into the machinations of the lefties and their cloud pod-people supporters – you find instance after instance after instance where the “system” was manipulated to funnel money into those who support them ideologically.

        Black Lives Matter is really good contemporary example – since you know damn well those idiots have not funded themselves. The Antifah movement is yet another one. There’s been a bunch of people out there on the “right” side of things doing yeoman’s work digging into the stuff behind the scenes and pointing out there’s obviously some big money behind this shit – because people are getting PAID to be there – and they’re getting bussed around to different so-called protests rallies.

        And these two are just examples of fringe elements. Then you have all the money coming DIRECTLY from the government to support all sorts of left wing causes.

        But yet – for pretty much my entire life – I’ve been berated by so called “law and order conservatives” that I need to pay my taxes and send my kids to get corrupted in the public schools and salute the flag and respect my “fellow citizens” – even though most of those fellow citizens would deposit me into a ditch if they had half a chance.

        I realize that ideology and all that are critical – but so is some ground game. And when you can’t even get it thru people’s heads that their hard work is going to fund their enemies – I think you’re going to have a REALLY hard time moving the ball forward just thru getting them on the same page ideologically.

        Most people put money first in their lives. This is why I think the funding question is one of the crucial issues. If you can’t get people to pull their head out of their ass and realize they being financially raped to support their enemies – then I don’t even know where to start with the rest of it.

        The fact of the matter is: an Army runs on it’s stomach. And somebody has to pay for the food. The American Revolution ran into just this problem – and it almost scuttled the ship before it ever really sailed into battle. In the early stages of the revolution – many of the militia were farmers ,and would simply get up and go home when it was time to bring in the crops. I’ve seen a lot of bitching and moaning by people about how maybe they weren’t committed enough or some such other ignorant shit – but the reality of the time was: no farms, no food = no eating = no winning.

        The same sort of reality holds true in the present day. At least for many of us on the right. There are far too many on the left where it does NOT hold true. If we’re going to win – then we have to somehow make it so that it IS true. Ideological games cannot be a payday. People have to pay a price for their commitment – we need to make this happen to the left somehow.

      • County by county — The American Free Counties Movement … (I’m not good at the snappy names, that’s the LEFT’s strong suit.) Looking county by county, you’ll see there’s a pretty strong, and stark demarcation between those that are “American,” and those that house people and a culture that are …. whatever they are …. Not-American.

    • Yeah, I’ve always looked at that as just another bit of subversion. On the one hand, it focuses people on a fantastical future, rather than what’s happening now. On the other hand, it anoints the people currently in charge as moral actors you should trust to reform the system that created them.

  25. Our society tends to be influenced by those who are the loudest and most obnoxious. Black Lives Matter is an obvious example. ABATE, a motorcyclist’s rights organization, is a less obvious one. ABATE has succeeded in repealing helmet laws in many states at the same time that our ruling elite and the insurance lobby wished to make helmets mandatory, or just ban motorcycles completely. The NRA has a very vocal and dedicated minority who are stalwart. Same for gay rights, trans rights, etc. What are the goals of the dissident right, and how might we organize a highly vocal and obnoxious minority in support of a goal or two?

    I was involved in an effort to create a small traditionalist school in a St. Louis suburb. The effort failed. The school was great, but many people realized that the public schools a couple exits further away from the city were also pretty good. For most parents it made more sense to self segregate into a new neighborhood where the house prices were appreciating, and take advantage of the good schools. I’d love to see a dissident right movement to expand the home schooling movement into a quality schools movement (meaning schools are free to kick out the bad apples–no questions asked) , but this seems unlikely.

    Our goals on the dissident right are to create accountable hierarchy through rule of law, and to create societal commons. These goals are not easy to attain through appeals to individualism.

    • Generating and promoting our own ideas is not mutually exclusive to knocking the other side. It’s not either-or.

      That said, what I took from Z’s essay is this:

      “[Trump’s promises] were aspirations, not policies. That means the people spending their days working out the new legal code for the ethno-state are wasting their time.” Or for any new state, I’d say.

      … and

      “Our job right now is to grow our numbers by promoting about our ideas. Part of doing that is taking every opportunity to undermine the other side’s moral authority.”

      Suppose I say to my neighbor, “Ed, I think we need to create an accountable hierarchy through rule of law and to create a societal commons. How does that sound, Ed?” Likely response: “Uh, yeah, sure, whatever.” … as Ed backs away.

      Anyone reading this can imagine a dozen ways the current moral authority can be criticized in a way that will resonate with and engage a neighbor.

      So yes, perhaps we need to create an accountable hierarchy through rule of law and create a societal commons. But trying to convince people of the need for this is not what will bring it about.

      • Exactly. How do you fix a problem caused by democracy and individualism by appealing for more democracy and individualism? Ed just wants stuff, and an easy life. There are a few areas where Ed may be motivated. The anti-immigration movement is starting to get some traction. Ed likes to have a job.

        • The most salient argument against immigration is the environment, housing costs are the second most. California is actually well suited to this argument, but the GOP is dominated by fossil fuel interests and real estate developers. Hard to square the circle of housing costs and NIMBYism before a Dem does. CA is actually 30% foreign-born.

    • Another thought … “Our society tends to be influenced by those who are the loudest and most obnoxious. Black Lives Matter is an obvious example.”

      Have they influenced the political middle toward, or away from their position?

      Presence is important. Obnoxious presence — I’m not so sure.

    • Oy vey! Right on cue at the end of the nihilistic screed, the Statue Of Emma Lazarus and a certain tribe show up to make sure you feel guilty and learn to blame Trump for anything you can name. Points deducted, however, for failing to demand impeachment.

    • Chances are the arrogant asshole that wrote that has “uninsured driver” coverage on his auto policy. Spit.

    • The writer, Alan Vervaeke, lives in Gilford, NH. Demographics there are:
      White 97%
      Black 0%
      Hispanic 1%
      Asian 2%
      https://censusreporter.org/profiles/97000US3303180-gilford-school-district-nh/

      Keep this in mind as Alan makes fun of the supposedly non-existent migrant invasion. Little does he realize what the people of color have in store for useful white idiots like him and his offspring. He should come to L.A. and experience our demographics: 29% White, 8% Black, 11% Asian and 49% Hispanic. Alan also conveniently does not touch on the fact that the taxes generated by us “slothful, fat” U.S. citizens are what support the survival of these peasants in our country, which would otherwise be unaffordable to them, making it impossible to stay here. Turn off the tax-dollar spigots for all migrant and “refugee” programs!

      • One could believe that level of naivete if the year was 1965 or 1986. The writer clearly wants to turn NH into the globohomo paradise he presumably left. It’s the Stephen Colbert mindset where one signals so hard against your own people via snark acting as moral outrage.

        The liberal (classical,social, neo) mindset is more interested in screwing the Right even at the cost of itself. Pathological altruism indeed.

        https://twitter.com/MaxduPreez/status/1019174604017979393

        • LOL, it’s not #MiddleClassProblems he’s experiencing, it’s #BlackProblems. What a fool.

          • Max is no fool, he’s been stabbing his people in the back longer then I’ve been alive. He’s the number 1 shitlib in that country. He’s done great damage to any notion of self-determination. And that is our future.

    • I’ve read Z’s article here twice and comments, including the longish ones. I hate to say it. I do hate to say it and you hate to hear it. But how could one begin to even engage the present terminal culture? How could moral authority be won within the context of the mentality of “pussy hats”? Present-day leftism isn’t a thought process, it’s mental illness. I know I’m a party-pooper but where we’re headed is “Mad Max”, so keep loading magazines.

      • I believe a big part of what will happen is simple attrition. Us on the right will continue to withdraw from present society, and bring some along. With or inevitable success by comparison, and the lefts continued inability to reproduce itself, we will grow while they decline. This trend will continue unless our side allows itself to become corrupted, or are overtaken by other traditionalists societies on this continent, maybe muslems or Chinese, if they are able to continue to colonize us. Of course the Amerindians are a possibility, but I personally believe less likely because of their civilizational incompetence without the help of the competent. Just my 2 cents.

        • ronehjr wrote, “I believe a big part of what will happen is simple attrition” – So I know I might be a simpleton but when the food trucks stop rolling to the inner cities… We all live in some degree of a bubble of core expectation that because it’s been that way since we were born that life will go on as-is regardless of the politics that come-and-go… hmmm…

      • The last 50 years or so of multi-cultural worship is an aberration of history. It may collapse under its own idiocy. In many ways things got worse over my lifetime but I notice a few changes. For the last 30 years or so nobody was aloud to mention the sky high black crime rate. Network news wasn’t going to mention it, and neither were 90% of the newspapers. Now people talk about it mostly since BLM became an obnoxious movement.

        I grew up in a world where you were expected to trust the news, and nobody would point out black crime without saying it’s because of poverty. Kids today will grow up in a world where racial crime data is known, and where major news outlets hold no authority. It’s possible the next generation will come to conclusions that are the opposite of the elites plans. If they haven’t already.

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