Failure Analysis: Charlottesville

Failure analysis is probably the most important component of progress in any area of human endeavor. Figuring out what went wrong, why it went wrong and then scheming how to prevent it from happening again, is how we move forward in business, science, technology and even social organization. After every election, the losing party goes through a period of self-examination in order to figure out why they lost. The old line about learning more from failure than success is true, as long as you actually learn something.

With Joe Biden launching his campaign in Charlottesville, now is a good time to examine the catastrophe of the Unite the Right rally in 2017. Now, the first thing to note that from the point of view of the Left, this was a great success. Almost two years on, it remains an emotional rallying point for all of the tribes in the fight against whiteness. It is why very old white man Joe Biden picked it for his campaign announcement. He wanted to let those tribes know that he is their man, despite his noticeable lack of vibrancy.

That is an important lesson of this event. Activism is always about rallying your side and depressing the other side. Everything else is secondary. Most of the dissident right is happy to forget about this event, while the Left has made it one of the key events in their narrative. Put the phrase “Unite the Right” into a search engine and you first get the Wikipedia page describing it as a rally by the worst people. An image search returns pics of Nazis and noble non-whites. For the Left, Charlottesville was a triumph.

That is the first lesson of the event. It was a failure. Many involved have yet to come to terms with that reality. Instead, they keep working to correct the record about what happened and who was responsible. This recent live stream by Richard Spencer is a good example. The fact that they keep thinking the facts matter says they still don’t understand what happened. To the Left, the facts are unimportant. What matters is they have martyrs and they have a bloody shirt to wave around.

Therein lies another lesson. For too many in dissident politics, this obsession with applying the blue pencil to the Left’s myth-making remains a liability. Conservatives have always fallen into this trap. While the Left is performing yet another morality tale, the Right is busy editing the script for accuracy. In politics, factual accuracy is only important if it advances the narrative. What matters, what always matters, is convincing the public that your version of reality is the most pleasing. The facts are just part of the set.

Beyond accepting that it was a disaster for our side, however you wish to define it, the question is why did it happen? Part of it was the people involved got caught up in the moment, so they stopped thinking. They really thought they were in one of those great periods of transition. Eric Striker actually makes that point in this episode of his podcast at around the 55-minute mark. Before the event, Spencer had posted his version of the Port Huron Statement. They thought the revolution was happening.

Another reason the event turned into a great piece of propaganda for the Left and a disaster for the Right is the organizers made the classic error of thinking the Left would abide by its own stated rules. This never happens, as the Left sees rules, laws and principles as conveniences that further their efforts. The laws are like the New York subway system. You get on and off as necessary. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. For the Left, winning is always the end. They will never let the rules get in the way.

Conservatives have been making this mistake for as long as anyone reading this has been alive. American right-wingers always assume the Left has practical, tangible motivations and that they will abide by their own rules. After all, conservatives have practical goals and always play by the rules. You’ll notice that all of those Virginia democrats caught up in the black face scandal are still in their jobs. Even the serial attacker, Justin Fairfax, is still in his job. In the fight with the Left, there are no rules.

One lesson many on the alt-right have learned from the event is that all the people flying the “pro-white” banner are not the same. Those older groups, what is often called White Nationalism 1.0, are incompatible with the modern movements. Those guys remain stuck in the past, determined to remain in a sub-culture that operates on the fringes. Many of them are simply crazy or violent. There’s no need to disavow these people, but if you’re going to build something new, you have to break free from the past.

Charlottesville is a great example of why outsider movements need to first build small, in real life organizations. Holding a big public rally looks cool and gets a lot of attention, but it also draws a lot of lunatics and weirdos. In person organizing, especially in small groups, allows for careful vetting. If Jason Kessler had to apprentice in a local group for a couple of years, he never could have talked people into his venture. The goofballs with the Hitler flags could never get in front of the cameras at an alt-right event.

That’s the most important lesson of Charlottesville. Every war is a media war. This low-grade civil war in the West is about imagery and narrative. In Charlottesville, the Right allowed the Left to control the production, so they could control the narrative and the imagery. Future activism must always confound the preferred narrative, thus putting the Left on the defensive. The media organs of the Left are big and powerful, but they are not nimble or adaptive. That can be used against them with clever activism.

This AIM action over the weekend is a great example. Those aging commies in the audience were ready to celebrate their edginess until a bunch of young guys turned up to heckle and mock them. Instead of trading made up stories about their days fighting the man, they were being mocked as the man. The subsequent news stories sound like something to come from the Soviet press in the old days. The only thing missing from the reports are the words “hooliganism” and “running dog lackeys.”

In time, the tank will run dry on Charlottesville and it will cease to be a bloody shirt for the Progressive mobs. The lessons though can never be forgotten by dissidents trying to build an alternative to the current order. Mistakes have consequences. One of those consequences must be shrewder leaders and better strategies. Otherwise, the dissident right will follow the conservatives into the same dead end. The difference is there will be no cushy think tank jobs waiting for the losers of this political fight.

198 thoughts on “Failure Analysis: Charlottesville

  1. The lack of leadership in the Dissident Right is the primary problem. A lot of these guys are probably plants. I have never seen a less impressive group.
    The enemy has the ability to install “leaders” by giving credibility to the dumbest or craziest people they can find.

  2. Just a quick white pill. Yes, it was a loss for our side. But many if not most have learned valuable lessons. The naïveté of our side was squashed. We realized that the system was far worse than even our cynical imaginations had believed. Many times, first contact with the enemy reveals their strengths and your weaknesses. The loss itself doesn’t matter if we learn the correct lessons and adapt. The men whose lives were destroyed by this event will be martyrs if we adjust our tactics and win. When we win, Charlottesville will be remembered the way the kasserine pass is. We lost but we learned and were strengthened by it. Keep on thinking about this Zman.

  3. Cville was a success in the same way a recon probe often is – yes some members of the scouting party may get winged, but if they reveal the location and strength of the enemy, the mission is deemed a success.

    And while this and other blogs point to the suggested need to move away from facts, dialectic – towards leftist-mirroring rhetoric, say heckling over FOIA requests and revelations ….. the key facts revealed by Cville remain vital even as the left’s minions disseminate their agitprop.

    It was the behavior or local law enforcement and elected officials – in real time and for all to see – that is the takeaway from Cville. And a tell to what may be expected from the LEO community, and government officials in Blue locales, down the road. Eyes, many eyes are WIDE OPEN now – no matter how many lies the left’s minions hurl up.

    I talk to so-called Normies that are getting more and more red-pilled by the month. I talk to young men, red-pilled by the bunch. These are problems for the left and its minions. Just as the emergence of Donald Trump threw aside the false ties that no longer bind Americans – the events at Cville put certain realities into the public realm.

    Some members of the scouting party did not make it back. That is the nature of war, just as reconnaissance is vital.

  4. As I recall, there were videos of the protesters complaining to the State Police that they were being corralled right into the arms of the leftists, to be attacked. I believe that there was even an audio of a trooper saying that they were just following orders. The deck certainly is stacked…

  5. Reality matters. For the most part, Progressives have two centers of power. The first are the tools of systemic indoctrination (mass media, education, popular culture); and they use this to infect the weak-minded with dependency and conformity. The second is control of domestic government force (lawfare, activist judiciary, LEOs); and they use this to punish or eliminate non-comformism. These are their main strengths. Do not fight on this turf. Focus on the brain and the body will wither.

  6. I’m reading How To Get Into The Real Ball Game of Politics Where You Live To Help President Donald J. Trump Make America Great Again, by Daniel Schultz. I know, I know – ridiculously long title, right?

    However, it contains some very practical lessons about how to highjack the GOP for our own purposes. It’s easier than you think, as there is a HUGE void at the local level of power. And, in the process, we could create those local alliances with others, and build a power base.

    I strongly recommend you read it – it’s on Kindle Unlimited, so the cost is primarily time. I’m going to be writing about it on Liberty’s Torch, over the course of the next week or so (depending on how I feel – I broke my leg 2 weeks ago, and it’s been sapping my energy).

  7. The AIM action in the bookstore is going to strike most middle-class Americans as immature and obnoxious behavior.

    Yeah, this sort of thing sorta, kinda works for the Left, but it also got Nixon, Reagan, and Trump elected when the normal folks got sick of Leftist hijinks.

    Tactics cannot be separated from goals: if you don’t want the results of the Left, it might not be a good idea to imitate their tactics.

    • I want the results of the Left. they took over the country.

      As far as the AIM action, it works because Roger and Stacy in suburbia never hear about it, but the hipster goofballs in liberal land do hear about it. Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.

      • It’s adopting one of Trump’s tactics, too. Misspell a word in a tweet and make the national news give the actual substance of the tweet national attention. Make the NyT report about how AIM wants good jobs and safe neighborhoods for white families, then let that message (and how terrible, TERRIBLE it is to want whites to have that) get spread to millions of underemployed whites living in Diversity.
        Also, nobody cares about boomer sensitivities anymore; there’s 4500 fewer of you every day. Your sensibilies prevented you from preserving even indoor plumbing, so enjoy Dr. Abdullah “taking care” of you, alone in your opiate-saturated effluence as you “die with dignity” just as you lost our civilization “with dignity.”

  8. I was at Charlottesville, I’ve always known exactly what happened.

    The governor of Virginia, with the mayor and vice-mayor, planned the whole thing before it occurred. I was standing within 30 feet of them as the state police staged to move to the attack, in full riot gear.

    I know about a lot more than that.

  9. Moldbug in 2007:

    The problem with white nationalism as a military or political strategy (of course there is no line between the two—if your goal is to capture the government, your goal is to capture the government) is that however much it may manage to fire up the [right], it fires up the [Progressives] ten times as much. Since the latter are the ruling class and hold the whip hand, white nationalism remains a losing strategy. Ouch! Taste the pain, kids.

    The problem is that our enemies have power, and we don’t. In an actual democracy, you can get substantial power by mob agitation. But in government like ours, you can’t. You have to capture the actual ruling organs: the education system (particularly the universities), the courts, the media, and the bureaucracy. Notice anything in common about those? Yeah: none of them respond to voting at all Indeed the most critical parts are not even formally part of the state..

    • This has also been said about Trump’s tweets, and I think it’s a similar problem. He’s pretty good at firing up his base, but in the process he also fires up the left. And then, when he fails to deliver, he demoralizes his base while firing up the left *even more*. That’s not how you win a morale war, which is essentially every war.

  10. A quick look at any discussion of Charlottesville on the left reveals why the events there have attained such mythic status and continue to resonate:

    1. As a preface, a literal Nazi, Trump, seized control of America from Hillary Clinton with the help of Vladmir Putin; Trump is Putin’s butt boy – which is not a homophobic slur when directed at Trump;

    2. Emboldened by Trump and as a prelude to a complete Nazi takeover, literal Nazis, white supremacists and Trump voters were marching in the street of Charlottesville to defend and protect the memory of the Confederacy, white slaveholders, the KKK and other evil racists wishing to reimpose slavery and imprison gays, secretly;

    3. Brave and diverse members of the resistance to Trump, including people of color, and representing all that is good, learned of the Nazi plans and bravely and boldly crushed them after days of hand-to-hand combat waged in the streets against overwhelming odds;

    4. Proof of the ferociousness of this fight is that the memories of fallen martyrs, like Heather Heyer, can never ever be forgotten:

    https://www.sitinmovement.org/events/heather-heyer/

    (btw, don’t call Heather fat, or notice that she’s a grown woman with dyed pink hair.)

    5. The fight against Trump and literal Nazi Trump voters must never stop, and these literal Nazis will have to be fought again in 2020.

    This synopsis isn’t an exaggeration. You’re not dealing with people who have any capacity to parse or analyse actual events. Their only interest is in inventing psycho-dramas in which they star in the roles of both victims and heroes – which Charlottesville supplied in spades – and the mere mention of which can now be used as a call to arms to justify any action no matter how extreme or ridiculous. And if you have any doubts about this, simply recall that these are the same people, members of the American elite prominent among them, who have believed for over two years with all their distorted, broken little hearts and minds that the Trump Russia conspiracy was real and that Mueller was going to arrest Trump for treason. Any day.

  11. I met Kessler at AmRen right before Charlottesville. I planned a trip to hit AmRen and then the rally. I decided against it. It was the right call, but I still feel sorry I didn’t go.

    I don’t disagree that Charlottesville was a clusterfuck, but I also don’t believe we can stay anon online forever. I guess in the short-term we should try to network, but let’s not believe the GOPe line that only Democrats get out in the streets. That possibility should be in the back of your minds. The situation isn’t bad enough for people to go there–yet. Maybe it will take a collapse of some sort. If the alternative is being ground into dust I’ll take the fight.

    Today the oppression is still somewhat soft (a lesson learned–never go full Bolshevik if you don’t have to). I hate the thought that the slow grind method will succeed where the CultMarx left has failed before.

  12. Just got back from the NRA convention. A typical example of what I wrote about below is Dana Loesch. Extremely angry creature, very easy target. Does damage every time she opens her mouth. Seen as a “bright star” by many in the NRA.

  13. The left welcomes the thoroughly insane, knowing they can label them “right wing” if they go off-script. The dissident right tries to pretend they don’t have to police these types with predictable results. Expect more of the same.

  14. Trust Diversity? WHY??

    Why Trust Diversity?

    We are a Low Trust Society Now. Thank Diversity.

    Buy Diversity? Sell Trust.

  15. Derivative topic, and I know Z Man hates this one, but I looked up the speaker at the book promotion event: Jonathan Metzl, a Jewish professor, who was promoting a book called “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland.”

    So it’s not “free” trade policies, mass third world immigration or endless imperial wars after all. What ails white America is “resentment.” Go figure!

    He followed up the incident with this opinion piece at the Imperial Post:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-talk-about-being-white-in-america/2019/04/29/20aed83a-6a9b-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html?utm_term=.0d8dd263187c

    …which included, among many Leftist cliches, the following:

    “For too long, many white Americans have avoided this conversation, and we’ve done so for a reason: We don’t have to see the color white.”

    Yep: “Dear fellow white people.”

    What happened to him couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I only wish we could repeat it at every public event that he holds.

  16. Personally, I think the AR made a crucial error with its “decentralized activism” (a la GG) premise. They believed that because this “works” for groups like Antifa and ISIS, it would work for them, because having no leaders to attack means the media can’t attack your movement at all.

    They should have listened to the NRXers: these groups aren’t truly waging guerilla warfare, they’re backed by actors who are very powerful and very good at covering their tracks. That means you can’t imitate them with no budget and no structure.

    Far from wanting no leaders, what the right needs is better leaders. Smart people like Stephen Miller and the Federalist Society and alpha men like Trump who can tank for them, so to speak. Most of these individuals have lots of real-world experience outside the political realm, and huge support networks; anyone who wants to take their case straight to “the people” from day one is probably either a lunatic or a charlatan.

    • “Smart people like Stephen Miller and the Federalist Society” are the reason we have our current problems and these problems follow directly from their beliefs in civic nationalism, blank statism, and colorblindness. The truth is that tribal affiliations are far more powerful than purported shared values like liberty or fairness. Until white people stop being fooled by the other tribes claiming to share our values then our subjugation will worsen.

  17. Z-man – this is your best. Bookmark this and keep piledriving these lessons-learned As far as I’m concerned this essay is THE answer to Alinsky tactics.

    Still, I’m troubled by this sentence: “What matters, what always matters, is convincing the public that your version of reality is the most pleasing.” I concur wholeheartedly, but the ramifications of this means that true-truth, objective truth, is dead. And if you’re a truth-lover in a culture where objective reality is dead, there’s really no other solution other than laying low, becoming the gray-man, and quietly cultivating like-minded networks. My worldview – and the worldview of most dissident rightists – is manifestly NOT a pleasing reality to the majority. So if our worldview can’t win on its truthful merits, and it can’t win because it’s not the most pleasing, then … what? I think that means that we dissidents need to actively unplug from mainstream culture (particularly in the education realm) and develop a separate, parallel, underground culture. This means disengaging from the unwinnable culture wars, but my hope for the future is in cultivating a strong remnant who can pick up the pieces after the eventual SHTF. Everyone here is saying the same thing – “this won’t end well.” I’m not even sure we should try to persuade “normies” any longer … too late for that folks, time to build the ark.

    • The American Left did not win on their truthful merits. We accept the reality of hbd. On a similar note, part of my conversion from libertarianism was the realization that despite their few good ideas, they assumed that everyone is fundamentally a straight white guy with an IQ of at least 100. Quite a few people are weak. Quite a few people are stupid. Plenty of us are average. Few of us have the requisite intelligence, courage, and curiosity, to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

      Accept these facts and their implications. Namely that most people will go along to get along. They will accept whatever feels best. They will act in their perceived self-interest. Plan accordingly.

  18. Skokie was forced to let real, non LARPing Nazis march. Even the most dyed in the wool Boomer CivNat is susceptible to ‘I don’t agree with what you say but defend your right to say it’.
    An aggressive AG, the ‘Kingpin’ looking fellow perhaps, might have gone after the state and local PDs and governments for intentionally setting and lighting that powder keg (and thrown in a wrongful death suit for the fat girl for good measure).
    They’ve done it when the browns have rioted.

  19. Also, contrast Cville with advances into enemy strongholds that worked, namely Portland and Berkeley. You do not hear the American Left talking about those incidents. The most iconic images you saw on YouTube were the following.

    1. Nathan Damigo decking Moldilocks (after she swung on him), a hairy porn star who posted her intent to disrupt the rally and collect Nazi scalps.

    2. Based Stickman, nuff said.

    3. Rufio Panman who while unarmed knocked out a baton wielding commie after said commie was courageously beating a guy on the ground.

    4. Antifa running from a smaller force.

    There were plenty of Dissident Right folks and sympathizers there. There were limited overt racial appeals and no Swastikas, depriving the media of an easy target. The overt cause was free speech which the American Left had weaponized against us back in the 60’s and 70’s. Hard for them to fight back without forfeiting the moral high ground and being cast as anti-American.

    They called our guys Nazis anyway but guess what? Your average normie Republican gets called a Nazi all the time and will tune it out unless given a reason not to.

      • You are missing the point. Even if the guys at Cville had knocked out every other Communist, they would have scored a victory on the tactical and physical levels sure. On the mental level, they would have been emboldened to overextend even worse the next time.

        On the moral level, the death of Heather Heyer and the Swastikas gave the victory to the American Left and would have allowed them to still craft the same narrative while justifying an even greater response to the clear and present danger the “nahtzees” posed.

        On the strategic level, even a victory like this would isolated the victors from broader support among the independents and normie Republicans. Victories disconnected from longterm goals might as well be defeats.

  20. The first lesson of Charlottesville is if you buy a Fed Perry Polo to fit into a group, you have already marinated yourself in group think, the way some Antifa has to buy a black hoodie.

    The second lesson of Charlottesville is that citronella torches are for patios and not to be carried around the streets.

    The third lesson of Charlottesville is that nearly all of our institutions from media to government, to Fortune 500 monoliths are stone dead, and stone dead institutions run on lies and bullshit. They can shape public opinion as they please. If you still watch cable news you’re part of the problem, because you’re already giving them an audience to begin with. You fight Pravda by not subscribing in the first place.

    I’m a firm believer in boycotting. I have a boycott list a mile long, media outlets being first on the list, that includes everything from Gillette razors to Starbucks.

  21. You win by moving miles down the road in the direction you want, a few feet at a time. There is no magic leap that takes you from here to there.

    The Left has an entitlement mentality, and is also paranoid, looking for MAGA hats under their beds. Play to their paranoia, and threaten their sense of entitlement. Easy and fun! Mock them and tease them in small pamphlets, stickers, and bits of graffiti and incidental bathroom wall type scribblings. Make them uncomfortable to go into a public toilet because they might find triggering words written there. Hell, write “MAGA” inside the rolled up toilet paper, and roll it back up for future discovery. Make them feel like they need to hold it until they get home. “Traffic tickets” in the parking lot. Fake ad “stuffers” in the morning paper. “YT” scribbled in marking pen on the signs at the dog park (its “dog park week” at Z). Sharpie “MAGA” or “YT” on the snail shells and throw those guys in their yards, it’s snail season right now. Even if the snails die, the shells will still be there. The possibilities are endless. Make those people wig out, it’s what they want to do anyway, so give them reasons that will make the normies giggle. Imagine what people will really think when the guy at the gathering complains about “MAGA” written on his garden pests. He is going to be sitting at the window, like a cat, looking for the perpetrators. How much fun is that? What is he going to do in return? There is no good comeback with a Sharpie, anything to say, written on anything, from the left.

  22. Joe Biden is running on a “Hate Traditional Whitey” platform and the mostly-White Firefighters Union bought it hook, line, and sinker.

    Whites, like Republicans, don’t fight. Whites are gonna deserve what’s coming.

    • May I adjust that last sentence? Stupid, lazy, screen-addicted, Kool-Aid drinking, gun abhorring, over-educated beyond commensurate IQ, sit-on-their-ass, androgynous “whites are gonna deserve what’s coming.”

  23. When we stand up, leftists attack us. When we stand down, they attack each other. If we disappeared from their sight entirely, they would fill mass graves with the bodies of their fellow leftists. It’s happened before.

    I read that scores of Charlottesville police officers have quit since UTR. With no right-wingers around, leftists hate on cops instead, and prevent them from doing anything to restore public order. Homeless junkies have a right to leave feces and used needles on the sidewalk, dammit!

    • Moldbug pointed out that the only society that’s successfully conserved itself hasn’t tried protesting, voting, or fighting. They’re… the Amish. Hard for me to wrap my head around.

      • Our goals are slightly different from the Amish though. We eventually want our own country, not just to pay the Danegeld and be left alone in exchange for keeping our heads down and be absorbed into the Borg in the end anyway.

        • We do want political power. However, there’s something to be learned from them. The Left draws energy from fighting us. They need a boogeyman to keep their biolenin alliance together. The Amish are ten times more the evil, white, Christian, patriarchs than we are, but strangely, are left alone. Polygamous offshoots of the LDS church are still living in compounds in the desert and only bothered (I think) when they molest children. You want the Handmaid’s Tale? Its cousin can be found, but the Left never mentions it.

          We want political power, but we need a nation to rule first. Trump has political power, but no one to help him rule, so he’s not as effectual.

          The Amish have a nation, right under the nose of the Left, while avoiding assimilation for hundreds of years. How do we do that, while also maintaining a border?

          • The Amish have that nation only so long as those in power deign to let them have it. Sure, they have successfully conserved what they have. They will not advance or expand.

            There is much to be said for the Amish way of life, they are literally in the world but not of it. Their way of life is unsustainable though on a national and international scale. Being technologically backwards is no way to run a nation, especially when surrounded by those who hate you and would loot you to support their clown world.

            The solution is to mimic successful insurgents and dissidents adapted to our own situation.

          • I’m not gonna argue with you that we shouldn’t be the Amish or that they’re 100% vulnerable. However, they are expanding in numbers and territory.

            The Amish might be able to help us know why some insurgencies succeeded and some failed. For instance, Vietnam was successful, in part because the US were unsure and divided. The Civil War didn’t work, because the South tried to beat the North in its strengths. If I remember correctly, Algeria successfully rebelled from France by baiting France into riling the population up, while France wasn’t 100% committed.

            The Left is more than just confident and committed to fighting a right wing insurgency. It dreams of it. It slobbers at the thought of slaughtering millions of white people. It wants nothing more than to punch a Nazi. That means if suddenly a militia of 100k tricorn-hat-wearing men stormed every federal building, the Left would send in soldiers with the rules of engagement that sounded like “slaughter”, instead of what we have had in Afghanistan/Iraq. If that led of civilians massacred, then it might help our cause. Or the media might ignore it.

            Contrast that with 330k Amish who paddle their children in schools that teach using the Bible, as they have for hundreds of years.

            Regardless, how can we mimic their successes, while using technology?

            How do we create communities that repel outsiders without making them feel threatened?

            How do we create communities that have the same values?

      • The Amish have the strength of their convictions. A willingness to do without, a stubborn refusal to conform and no fear of martyrdom are unbeatable. This is also called determination.

        The right, even the dissident right, are not determined. We’re too comfortable and don’t want to give that up. Not yet, anyway.

  24. What is the Dissident Right’s long term goal? I read a lot about organization, strategy and tactics, but the intended result seems to be at best ill-defined.

    • I bet it’s because we’re still getting Leftism out of our beliefs and aren’t ready yet to face what it looks like to not be last decade’s radicals.

      I tried to have a conversation about how society would look if everyone agreed that we’re not all equal, men/women, races, etc. The conclusion was, some kind of aristocracy. How would you sell that (or something similar) to people who have only just given up “Go back to the Constitution” or “Dems are the real racists”?

      • It would look like today but without leftism. We have something like aristocrats now, we call them globalists. Imagine if we had patriotic aristocrats.

    • I agree completely. I keep getting smacked around here for making the factual point that changing demographics are now baked into the cake and cannot be unwound at this point in time. In the absence of dissolution of the US there is not going to be a white majority in the nation ever again. Any appeal that is explictly race-based is doomed to fail based on demographics alone.

      IMO, this calls for an appeal to cultural arguments. For example, pointing out inconvenient truths such as the fact that Liberia’s Constitution is a near replica of the US Constitution, yet Liberia is a lawless hellhole is an effective way to make people consider the possibility that Constitutions are pieces of paper, while institutions are cultural.

      • Facts don’t change normie minds. You have to win their confidence, then they’ll agree with pretty much whatever you say.

      • You “keep getting smacked around” because you keep repeating this drivel. Culture is DOWNSTREAM from genetics – i.e. RACE MATTERS. You are essentially recommending civic nationalism and claiming it’s a new and radical idea. I have frequently made comments about demographics (i.e. as much as I seethe about the hordes crossing the border, they ultimately don’t matter because more than 50% of all “American” k-12 schoolchildren are already non-White) but that does not mean that one acquiesces to genocide via miscegenation and moderation. This is ultimately about separation to ensure White survival.

        • The fact that culture is downstream of genetics is precisely the point of my comment. Screeching RACE MATTERS and calling for a white ethnostate is going to get you nowhere. Pointing out that Liberia and the US share a Constitution that is substantially the same forces people to confront the genetics issue indirectly.

      • I would point out that the areas of highest minority / immigrant population are extremely concentrated population sinks. Next census may tell a different story, but current information reflects that area-wise, much of America remains more or less unchanged in this regard …. excepting urban areas. There are more rural areas that have experienced Hispanic population growth percentage wise over the past decades, certainly … mostly due to agricultural manpower needs. But for the most part, the growth of Asian, subcontinent and Muslim peoples seems to be accruing in highly confined areas. I was astounded at a CostCo in Richmond — again, anecdotal. Probably 50+% Asian (mainly Chinese) and Indian, 25% Middle Eastern, with the rest split between white and black. (I did a count in my head.) The first three groups were obviously educated professionals. The other two, not so much.

        In these conversations across the nation we talk as if the situation is uniform across our land.

  25. What matters, what always matters, is convincing the public that your version of reality is the most pleasing. The facts are just part of the set.
    That right there is truth and if the right understood that simple truth then maybe they could start being more effective…

  26. Lets examine this from a strict military perspective. Charlottesville was an advance into enemy territory. But it was an advance with inferior and flawed intelligence in the face of a prepared enemy with superior numbers and control of the terrain. It was a kind of political dien bien phu. The planners were unaware that the local university was Berkeley East. They ignored the lessons of berkeley 2 and berkeley 3 where the police stood down. There was no elite support, no legal support put into place and poor communications between the ralliers and the local authorities.

    The planners were using Clausewitzian thinking common to the right..forcing a grand confrontation that will lead to a Big Change. But that wont work when one side is vastly more powerful.

    What we need is a Maoist frame of thinking. That means you put in the work to establish your networks, create propaganda, build safebases and all the infrastructure of resistance. Then you start to expand.

    • I was just thinking along similar lines. Cville was not just an advance into enemy territory, it was an overt advance that stayed too long. Had they withdrawn after the spontaneous torchlight parade, the effect would have been analogous to the Doolittle raid on Japan. Little effect on the tactical, and physical levels, but potent on the mental level.

      • The torchlight parade would have been an unexpected swarm and retreat attack, classic insurgency tactics. Big regular parades in occupied territory are the equivalent of set piece battles..these work in the enemies favour. Hit and run attacks to build confidence and experience are the way forward for now. This translates to flashmob rallies, swift disruptions, trolling and even memes. I would argue that most organising should be covert, done with small cellular groups or 4-5 people and focus on getting into positions of authority. It doesnt matter what position it is, any position is good..even the local dog catcher. Building an network within the power structure will make it easier in the future to perform more activism. Once in a position of power, the focus should be on excluding enemies and bringing in more people on our side.

    • There was one benefit from Cville for our side: the overreaction and continued overreaction by our enemies. Though it drove us into the catacombs our numbers at least in sentiment and awareness have swelled thanks to the behavior of our enemies.

  27. Progressivism is just the political face of parasitism, which is the underlying malady. A growing cohort of the world’s human population has been seduced by the easy life into a creeping dependency on government for all their basic needs. In exchange, they only need to acquire the habit of PC conformity. Not a bad deal, because work is hard and blood-sucking is so much easier.

    What this means is that Progressives are not deluded, misguided, or otherwise redeemable via persuasion. They are tethered to parasitism by existential imperative. They cannot change, no matter how hard anyone tries. Eventually, the productive and the parasitic must clash, and only one model of humanity can prevail.

  28. Seriously, I barely remember this incident. Is this really all that vivid to anyone except the lunatic Left, which is like a heat-seeking missile forever in search of something to splat itself against and explode?

    I couldn’t see it as that big a deal, even at the time. All I took away from it was that Vox Day absolutely panicked and backpedalled as fast as he could, despite all the hitherto bumptious talk of “We don’t care!” It’s not as if this was the first time Nazi imagery had cropped up in alt-right circles. For months, there was a fad for “Aren’t we naughty?” playing with Nazi memes, all the way up to anti-Jewish oven jokes. Then, suddenly, things had gone too far! It made me glad I’d never committed to a bunch of people who had no idea where to draw boundary lines until they found themselves stranded on the far side of them.

  29. The AIM strategy of singing a song that is in the Leftist canon but fit the protest was brilliant.

    Unfortunately, the dissident right has no margin for error or bad luck. The left can do almost anything and get away with it. That is the only reason I don’t blame the people at Charlottesville. No matter what the right does on a large scale, it will set itself up for failure because, if nothing else, the police, media and courts will be on the side of the communist thugs attacking the right.

  30. “Failure analysis is probably the most important component of progress in any area of human endeavor.”

    That’s probaby true. It is certainly also one of the least fun

  31. there is one god thing to come out of charlvlle , until that is was somewhat plausible to believe ANTIFA were left wing nut jobs , but that clearly showed that they were coordinated and directed by major players on the other side. It is also clear that the establishment will free them in court. Even in the face of video evidence.

  32. The recommended video I had at the SF Gate story about the AIM protest was an uncritical presentation of a group called “pantless people take over BART.” Only a completely degenerated society would promote a group like this and denigrate AIM.
    Even with your good recommendations, it will be very difficult to change the narrative with the public while they continue to rely on traditional media sources for information.

    • ” it will be very difficult to change the narrative with the public while they continue to rely on traditional media sources for information. ”

      In spite of the low approval rating of the media, the majority are not yet willing to concede that the media are political hacks led by a tribe that hates Heritage Americans

  33. There is a saying in the manosphere. “The medium is the message.” Applying that to the Dissident Right gives us a way forward.

    No skinheads, no KKK, no Swastikas. They cause people’s brains to shut off. The Alternative Right was initially effective because the image was clean-cut intelligent white men. We need more of The Golden One (excellent YouTuber) and less of the Romper Stomper look.

    Do volunteer work for and network with whites in your area. It may not be as fun as punching commies but in the long run, our people will get the message that only their fellow whites care about them. As ethnic nationalists, we have to love and care for our own. That is just as important as ranting on the internet.

    • Amen on that…That is why I advocate to build Communities because it takes care of a lot of the problems and offers quite a few solutions…

      • The old clubs have been building community for a long time, yes we should start there for face-to-face. Invite each other. Have fun doing good things, because by damn, that IS who WE are.

        Plus, I’m going to go Steal That Book!

  34. You know those catchy chants the Left has? This is a silly idea, but I’ve wondered what it would happen if at a right-rally, we chant those back at them. Probably be a bit confusing, but I wonder if it might take some of the wind out of their sails. A little bit of the opposite of making them feel they’re fighting the Nazis.
    I used to think the Right should gather and do a trash pick-up or clean up graffiti. But then some right-wing biker gang did that and nobody cared, not even our media people.

  35. how can people not see Richard spencer is controlled opposition? google heilgate. HE invited MSM to an alt right event before it had been branded neo naz . then , with the attendees not worried about their ID coming out , gets up front of the group and sig heils for the press. Unsuspecting normies who attended are doxed and fired because they are on camera. That allowed the press to brand the whole event as Nazi’s. No flags needed. trump has disavow the alt right .
    Then he and and the other ” leaders ” take their group into liberal controlled Charlottesville , at the mercy of terry McAuliffe , Clintons Dirty deed doer , and gets that whole disaster inflicted on them .
    he also appears in Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, looking and talking every bit the Hollywood neo Nazi . https://www.dineshdsouza.com/news/what-does-richard-spencer-really-believe/
    I don’t know who is paying him , but he has earned his money. he has done more damage to the non-cuck right than the mainstream media and antifa combined . he is a one man wrecking crew . SPLC will probably put his statue in their lobby a MVP award.

  36. Being a keyboard warrior and never risking anything in meatspace is a more certain way to fail.

    This is why I will not criticize Richard Spencer.

    20 years from now, I am certain most of the rest of the “dissident movement” will have nothing to show except for a few internet articles and YouTube videos.

    • That’s the standard WN 1.0 response, that many alt-right people adopted. It’s a good way to fail, if that’s what you’re into. “We have to run headlong into the machine gun nest like lunatics” is the motto of those guys. Like all lunatics, there is no reasoning with them, which is why it was a mistake for the alt-right to try and ally with them.

      • Consider also that we win more converts by counterexample than the efforts of any organization, or the charisma of any spokesman. The Kavanaugh hearings and the burning of Notre Dame moved more normies rightward than anything any of us have said or done. Triggering the Left’s insanity spirals, as it lashes out in anxiety trying to stomp out dissent, does more for us than anything else.

        FWIW, I’m glad we’re talking about tactics.

        • An example I used on Paul Ramsey’s show was how the Khmer Rouge used American bombing raids as recruiting tools. They knew they could not take on their enemy straight up. That was hopeless. Instead, they made themselves elusive, baiting their enemy to attack indiscriminately. Then the Khmer operatives would bring their version of the normies to see the damage. Put another way, they used the other side’s actions to confirm their narrative.

          Obviously, we are not guerrilla fighters hiding in a jungle from the colonialists, but it is a useful lesson about tactics.

          • Agreed totally. Our side needs to think long and hard about messaging and organizing to move the mind of the normie (‘winning’), implementable at the ground level in decentralized, practical ways under the protective shield of anonymity.

            Standing up think tanks is the wrong direction. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense seems much better.

      • As the Marines described the Japanese army in WWII, tactically dramatic. In other words, it looks glorious and ends in failure.

      • When your opponents stop bombing you and go Kamikaze – you know you’re winning.

  37. Why are there no dissident right think tanks? We should start at least one think tank in imitation of neocon models, perhaps. Why are their think tanks so successful? Where does the majority of their funding emanate from? It seems like we could get enough funding for at least one.

    • They have a smallish number of donors with deep pockets. How many people do we know on our side with deep pockets?

      • Further, what would we gain by standing up a think tank? What practical good would be achieved?

        • What is the difference between a think tank and a blog?

          Provided said think tank is mature and doesn’t use slurs or too much internet jargon, it would provide a portal into dissident thought for normies. The non stop progressive pearl clutching would keep that dissident thought in the mainstream, or at least adjacent to it, every time a lefty “can’t evens” a blog gets a new reader. Imagine if Z and others got together and contributed normie friendly content that got mainstream media attention.

          • Good idea, but “mainstream” will *never* support ZMan or Vox Day or traditionalRIGHT or anybody even remotely like us. And by “mainstream” I mean Limbaugh and FOX and the rest. They will never do it. Ne-vah.

          • I think Zman had a post on this very recently. It’s a PR thing. The cloud people purchase think tanks, who put out pro-cloud people stories/studies/polls, which the MSM then cites as proof that the cloud people’s position is supported and legitimate. It’s a necessity/of use only for someone in power, which is manifestly NOT us.

      • Hmmm, small anonymous groups with a required financial commitment, the funds strictly remaining local and variously liquid, so if concentration of funds is necessary it won’t or can’t be subject to any legal or commercial restrictions, real or future.
        A secondary way of vetting commitment?

        • Unwashed: Or a great way to get a Federal indictment of everyone involved? Detailed financial records, necessary to track who has ‘bought in’ and thus implement your idea, are just “please arrest these people” lists. Thanks but no thanks.

    • The think tank I would consider dissident right, or paleoconservative, that’s been around since the late 80’s is the Rockford Institute. They publish Chronicles magazine. They featured Sam Francis essays, (not his newspaper columns) along with Paul Gottfried, Pat Buchanan, and I believe youtuber (Luke Ford’s show) Kevin Michael Grace wrote a few pieces, along with many others. They’re still around, but not very prominent these days. They’ve always struggled with funding.

    • The idea that think tanks help spearhead nascent movements is a really tempting and really massive lie.

      Think tanks are often presented as independent investigators of the unique and avant-garde, but in reality they are more like the R&D departments for the mainstream political culture. The mainstream culture sets the budget and the scope of inquiry, and then think tanks set out to prove that a mainstream philosophy can be repackaged to the populace and policymakers in more interesting ways.

      The Dissident Right certainly needs its own thinkers (and it has already accumulated a deep bench for its relatively short life cycle), but setting up a think tank is premature in our existing environment.

    • Any dissident right think tank will be targeted for infiltration and destroyed from within by leftist infiltrators. Entryism has destroyed even such organizations as the Roman Catholic church.

  38. The Left needs a strawman against which to organize and energize itself. When they don’t have one, they broaden definitions until they get one. Handing them this is a huge mistake. Most forms of public engagement give the Left exactly what they need; we have to learn that this conflict is asymmetric. We’re not the SEALS, we’re the goatherds. We must read from a different playbook.

    Everyone is talking about overt organizations. Anonymity is our greatest weapon. If they can’t detect, isolate, and destroy us while we operate, then they look and remain weak. This is why “Its OK to be White,” the NPC meme, and the Learn to Code refrain were effective.

    Building on Zman’s emphasis for private, face to face gatherings, we should operate on a decentralized model, disseminating red-pills over the internet, converting trustworthy friends in meatspace, allowing the grassroots to organize and bubble up. Think Fight Club, Islam or the Yellow Vests. Its impossible to decapitate a movement that has neither a Church nor a Pope.

    • Don’t forget traditional local community organizations who have an aging membership. They have resources and an already established network.
      Excluding some forms of monkey wrenching we souldn’t interact with the anti-whites at all. Putting all of our energy into IRL organizing should have been the lesson of Cville. Build our organizations until we have sizable, coordinated, ready to act numbers.

      This coming election is going to ratchet up tensions a lot to our benefit. The D primaries are going to de evolve into who hates YT the most.

      Because of what Trump represents in the minds of our enemies, the main theme of the general election will be “4 legs good 2 legs bad”. Violence will be an almost daily feature as things come down to the wire. The post-election will probably be even worse. After this, any whites still fence sitting or pretending things are salvageable isn’t worth worrying about.

      The Sub-Rosa approach to organizing would drive the mob into attacking anything white. They wouldn’t know who’s who: white = guilty of something. Many are already reacting this way. Let’s help them along.

      • The left is great at taking over community organizations then spreading their rot. We need to do the same plus start our own to build community without being obvious about our long term goals.

        We need to move normies away from the concept that the only answer is to buy guns.

  39. An obstacle is that leftism, because of its nature and doctrines, systematically selects for sociopathy, while rightism systematically attracts principled people.

    Older political divisions–regional, say–would leave two sides with roughly the same sociopath-to-principled bell curves. But now one party’s bell curve is loaded up on the sociopath side, the other on the principled side.

    We have what you might call the Principles Problem, a fundamental dilemma of our thing. Which is, people who are more naturally principled have to in effect stop being themselves in order to win, while the unprincipled can just continue to do what comes natural.

    But I think we can do it. We just have to remind our guys that we’re in a literal war for survival–a fourth generation war, but no less a war for that–and that being in a war gives you license to do what you need to do.

    • Babe, agreed. But you need to write a training manual for such ala “Steal This Book” by Abbie Hoffman. That’s my frustration here. I agree in spirit with Z-man, but I am at a loss as where/how to effectively start the process of resistance. Seems we get a lot of “what not to do”—such as “blue pencil”, don’t bother with organized protest ala Charlottesville, forget about winning through the political process, etc.

      In short, I feel that I am being told that all my natural inclinations (decent, moral, ethical inclinations built over a lifetime of experience) are insufficient—even counterproductive to the stated goal. This seems somewhat black pilling, although I know it’s not meant to be such. Nonetheless, after reading these postings, I’m more often confused, frustrated, and more than happy to forget about the whole matter and enjoy the time I have left and “the devil take the hindmost”.

      Perhaps the answer is right in front of me, but I’m too dense to understand, I can accept that, but I would like to progress.

      • The number one thing people need to start doing is meeting with one another in the real world. The AIM guys are not just for college guys. I know of older guys in these local groups. Once you meet some others, normal networking takes hold. I know of a few campaigns where /ourguys/ volunteered and used it to recruit new people into their local group.

        Local, informal groups is where heresy starts. “How about next week we get together and plant cards in that shitlib bookstore?”

        Let a hundred flowers blossom.

      • “In short, I feel that I am being told that all my natural inclinations (decent, moral, ethical inclinations built over a lifetime of experience) are insufficient—even counterproductive to the stated goal.”

        This, I think, is absolutely correct. The game (or war) we’re contesting is not a moral one. We cannot play the game, the risk of becoming an amoral might-makes-right sociopath is real, but we must resist. To organize and act publicly is to play by the rules so we can’t do that. I think ours has to be a private rebellion; an insulated counter culture. We need IRL groups that reflect blog comment sections ( but with more vetting) with the goal of mutual support while we wait for the dominant culture to weaken and the pendulum of human nature to swing our way.

        Not being able to “do something” can be frustrating, but we have to play a long game. Like Rome, progressive hegemony wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be overturned in a day, either. Enjoy the time you have left, but don’t “forget about the whole matter”, just live you life aware of reality. That’s the ultimate rebellion.

        • I understand, I really do. What I meant to convey is not that my former inclinations are right/moral/correct and need to be adhered to by others, but that I have no framework of understanding behavior *outside* of these parameters—even though I agree that such change is probably necessary for success (what the hell, we’ve done everything else). I think we all can agree that this is one of the problems with “normies”.

          I chose these words carefully. The Abbie Hoffman book is a how to manual for anarchists, a thousand and one ways to fuck over the system by breaking it and/or it’s rules. A training manual for moron losers of the time and amusing reading for a normie college student as I was.

          And that’s just the point. Small groups of like thinking (and vetted) cells of individuals do what? OK, I get it. We’re asked as a group here to be the new12 Apostles writ large. Gather more disciples, who gather more disciples, who… You get the point. And yes, eventually they were wildly successful.

          I understand the comment on playing the long game, but it perhaps takes a more imaginative mind than mine to see how the future will unfold. Such is my limitation, freely admitted.

          In the meantime, I will do my best, as I have for some time now to speak heresy to potential converts. Funny thing is, I really don’t get much disagreement wrt big picture items, only about how to approach the situation—hence the request for a how to book of action items.

          • Compsci: a very good point, which I have struggled with too. I think the answer is or is close to what Zman said: local involvement. Go join your local/county GOP (or if you’re urban, libertarian group) and talk to people who seem like /our guys/, and keep going till you have a network. Go to your local gun events. Go to your local social clubs, join an Elks lodge, or whatever. Church events, if that’s your thing.
            But MRV is right, you also need to be “in the know” from participating places like here. Having someone to talk to is pointless if you have nothing to talk about.

      • I see that Z-Man has already replied, and I do agree with what he has written, but I’d just add that you are *already* doing what is necessary at this stage: Reading, discussing, remaining aware and informed and up to date.

        Look, we–that is to say the whole world–are facing a currency-crisis-cum-debt-crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the world. And it is already underway and cannot now be stopped. It won’t affect the whole world until the end stages, but will move eastward (from Europe) around the globe until it gets to us. At that point, the whole world will be affected.

        Nor is that all that is happening to the whole world. Climate change is real; it’s just not man-made. We have already entered another (cyclical) Grand Solar Minimum (this one called the Eddy GSM), and global cooling is already measurably underway–with catastrophic crop failures already in Thailand, Brazil, Germany, and Spain, just to mention a few off the top of my head. Food prices will skyrocket–and so will interest rates. There will be famines and pandemics brought about by malnutrition and population migrations (yes, more of those).

        There’s an abundance of info on the GSM out there. Even NASA has finally admitted it on their website.

        Point is this: What you are doing NOW is the right thing–keep yourself informed and aware. TALK to people. When the opportunity comes for concerted action, nobody will have to tell you; you will know it.

        Be ready. “For you know neither the day nor the hour.”

  40. A lot of the alt-right or extreme right or whoever, act is such a dumb manner, you often wonder, are they that stupid? Or are they on the other side? And then, you wonder how many “secret agents” were in that Alt-right march, trying to stir something up? We now know that many of those 1960’s KKK members, were actually FBI agents!

    • That one guy who was photographed with the Nazi flag, with the creases like it was just unpacked out of a box, nobody to this day knows who he is. It’s not surprising at all if he was planted there. Why wouldn’t they?

    • in recent efforts in Canada, gov’t (spy) infiltration of “extreme right” groups occasionally reached 50%

  41. Demographics are changing so fast, and Team Brown is going to vote Dem, along with the cat-lady white women, and the soyboys and tattooed, blue hair young girls, and leftist college professors. Nothing can be done to convince those people, no matter how much Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens point out Dems R the Real Racists and full of hypocrisy.

    The Clown World strategy, as a way to mock and ridicule the left, seems like an good effort to get normal Dems, which there are still a lot of, to abandon their party. Something like Charlottesville, with all the unappealing Nazi imagery and torches, is about the least effective way to get normies to jump ship. Selling the image of Dems as weirdos, idiots, and perverts is a better idea, like this series of videos by Poseidon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBCUdaksODc

  42. It’s tempting to write off the mistakes of Charlottesville as stemming from naïveté, however, it is clear from Spencer’s recent remarks that he hasn’t learned anything from the debacle.

    • I vaguely remember one of the organizers being a recent convert, who’d voted for Obama twice. Sounds fishy, in addition to dumb.

      • That was Jason Kessler. He seemed to come from out of nowhere to organize the event. And now you don’t hear about him much.

      • That does deserve to be pointed out. I’m not one to scream “false flag,” but it felt odd. It was also odd to see all the fresh-out-of-the-package Nazi and Confederate flags, some carried by guys who looked a bit too clean-cut, if you know what I mean. So I would not be surprised if it included agent provocateurs and FBI agents. All political demonstrations include nuts, and the bad luck was that one of them killed a woman and thus gave a martyr to the side that sees killer Nazis everywhere.

        • It was also odd to see all the fresh-out-of-the-package Nazi and Confederate flags…

          There was exactly 1 guy with a Nazi flag at UTR (flag was brand new with fold creases, as you note). He didn’t seem to be with or know anyone.

          He also showed up at a save-the-statue rally in another state a few months prior. There’s video of him trying to provoke counter-protestors by theatrically flashing the OK sign at them, like he learned how to play “right wing agitator” by studying Cerno’s twitter.

          Retard or fed? Hard to say which is more likely.

        • ‘and the bad luck was that one of them killed a woman and thus gave a martyr to the side that sees killer Nazis everywhere.”

          Just to be autistic,Fields didn’t actually hit Heyer, he hit a car that hit a van that rolled into her as she walked by. Cause of death was heart attack, if I recall. His conviction for first degree murder is kangaroo court bull shit.

          • She was a land whale who smoked menthols, so I suspect she was an early death waiting to happen.

          • Nonsense.

            You can see her head over the roof of the Challenger just before Fields struck her. She suffered a crushed chest and a torn aorta.

            The “heart attack” nonsense came from what her mother said immediately after. Evidently she misunderstood what she’d been told of her saughter’s injuries.

    • I’ve tried to live by “no enemies to the right” but he makes that harder then it should be more often than he should. He’s always struck me as one of those guys who is more interested in being the leader of something than achieving a group’s objectives. Call it leadership for the sake of leadership or call it attention-whoring. IIRC, he started off in normie right-wing politics. I don’t know the guy, and he’s had his good moments, but he’s always struck me as a climber, wanna-be Thought Leader. Rapidly becoming Yesterday’s Man in any case

      • Yeah, Spencer seems to be turning into the William F. Buckley of the alt-right. These days, he mostly seems interested in fawning over left-wing politicians and attacking the people who can actually help him out.

        I think Spencer and the alt-right have largely had their moment. There seems to have been an expectation that the alt-right would evolve into some kind of political institution, but I’ve never seen that as their role. Their job was simply to make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention, and get people talking about white identity politics. Which they did. Nothing else about them matters.

        The alt-right were never a revolution in themselves, they were simply the first brick through the window.

  43. Here’s another lesson. Doing nothing is better than doing something stupid and counter-productive.

  44. Cville was a necessary failure.

    Before Trump no one thought we were going to politic our way out of our problems. Trump gets elected and the Alt Right begins holding what were essentially campaign rallies. Cville was a kick in the teeth that brought people back from fantasyland. At least most of them.

    After the initial shock, whites waking up to our collective long term problems has grown and grown. This was inevitable. Put the subject on the table and people begin to pay attention.

    Most of this growth probably has very little to do with what we’ve done. The ongoing holy war waged by our enemies in reaction to Cville has been a great gift and we are still reaping dividends. The coming election will only accelerate things.

    Joe can campaign as the man on the right side of history. The whites he is appealing to we don’t need. We don’t need everyone.

    Raise the level of conflict and biology will do the sorting.

      • There is no way that we are ever going to attract a comfortable majority. At least 1/3 of whites (I mean the men, women don’t matter) will never see it our way no matter how bad things get.

        We need a plurality of men who agree and are willing to act. The costs of keeping us around will be too steep and too disruptive for our enemies. They will agree to separate things go south. Most of our tribe will simply flow with the events. We are herd animals after all.

        When we get to that fracture point, those of our tribe who choose clown world will be doing us an enormous favor.

        The hope that we can save all of the race or that there won’t be some very serious internal conflicts is a misguided one.

        • I guess I look at things from a Political view. Saying that women and Urban whites don’t matter seems like a losing battle and a lost battle in 10 years according to demographics.

        • Check out the June 2018 issue of the Atlantic re the 25% tipping point for minority viewpoints to become mainstream. Very achievable number, particularly if we don’t purity spiral into fascist paganism. The actual Muslim population in many old school Islamic polities was minority, sometimes 20%. Robert Spencer hits on this a lot, they preferred to have lots of jizya payers & fewer true believers. That 20%+ just has to hold the line.

        • By most estimates, about 1/3-2/5 of the American colonists supported the Revolutionary War. A much smaller percentage, 3% was actively engaged in the fighting. Then at the Constitutional Convention, the delegates were only tasked with reforming the Articles of Confederation. They exceeded their mandate, wrote a new constitution, and presented it as fait accompli to their states to vote on. The idea that you need a majority is a myth written by the descendants of the winners to justify thrmselves.

          Women follow winners. Plenty of French women slept with the Germans. Lots of French women enthusiastically “thanked” the GI’s.

    • That really was the right move. Before the event, I was making this point, so it is not a matter of 20/20 hindsight. That really rustled the Left. They did not see that coming.

      That’s another lesson. The Left has a mental model for their bogeymen. If the bogeyman does not play the role cast for him, it frightens the Left the right way. They shrink back, not knowing what to do. You see that with the AIM action at Poetry and Prose. It rattled the Left in the same way those “It’s OK To Be White” signs rattle the Left.

      • The left sure talks a lot about the KKK and Nazis. Never mind that they both barely exist, even though the left needs them to exist and be a threat.

      • Enoch on TDS said recently we should “be the bogeyman” the Left fears most, but in context he clearly meant you know who. Thanks, Z, for helping me see that trap – for all that those guys do great work except for that one big issue, he’s asking us to play the devil in their morality play. There’s a time and place for the re-revision of German history, but it’s a dead end, net negative for “our thing” today.

        • This seems to be the hardest thing for our side to grasp. We keep insisting the other side is acting rationally, but that is never the case. The Left is a religion. A weird religion for sure, but a religion nonetheless. To keep playing the role in their morality play is a lethal mistake.

      • The sticker thing is good ground-level stuff. The privacy of the engagement with the sticker’s content, but also a reminder of the physical presence of the poster. Good for young guys who want a next step beyond memeing. Breaking out of the algorithmed ghettos of Twitter & YouTube. The unhinged reaction of the shitlibs. I want to see them everywhere. Gotta keep going with that.

        • Exactly. The closeness is what really does the trick. Imagine the shitlib flipping through a book at their favorite shitlib hangout and out falls a card with a dangerous idea printed on it. They look around, scared that one of their coreligionists might think they planted the card. or worse, the person who panted is watching them. It’s great psyops.

          • If you can get close enough and avoid getting caught, slip dangerous idea cards into shitlib bags and rucksacks. Plenty of lulz there, especially if other shitlibs find them.

        • Got my IOKTBW biz cards done up soon after reading (here, I think) about this great suggestion.
          Thanks again for bringing it up again.

      • When you travel, keep a Sharpie pen in your pocket. Whenever you go to the john, write “It’s OK to be white” somewhere in the restroom before you leave.

      • I think the “It’s OK to be White” signs were the greatest meme possible, one of the greats of all time. Everybody freaked the fuck out, and it was literally the mildest version of “I don’t deserve to be actively persecuted”. If it really was OK to be white it never would have gotten off the ground. That’s the way forward. Larping as the guys our forefathers defeated in war was always a profound mixture of retardation and some genuine evil.

        • I think a lot of those retards took the 4chan/kek/meme-ery a little too literally. I still get a belly laugh at all the “1488”s plastered all over the place, scares the gullible and mesmerizes the dolts.

      • On a related tangent, the first time I responded to a progressives demand for citations on an opinion, with a dead simple “No!”, was incredibly devastating to said prog. I took that strategy from them theirselves.
        And if ever asked for an apology of any kind, ask them what for and make them spiral into details without any intention on your part to give any apology or explanation.
        Wach the magic.

    • That would have played wonderfully upon the fears of the American Left. They are constantly terrified of the big bad “nahtzees” under the bed.

      It would have proved that the Dissident Right is capable of organizing public demonstrations with the resistance being incapable of mobilizing fast enough to intercept.

    • I’ll admit, the optics of the event were terrible as a whole, but how to avoid?
      I agree with you Z-man, but what I saw and understood (and I can be corrected here) was that for every asshole/crazy “rightest”—you know those loser morons in a Nazi uniform—there certainly was an AntiFa in a mask with a weapon. But of course the “news” only filmed the wannabe Nazi losers of the group.

      I also note that the Nazi losers set up camp (protest) away from the other “normal” folk trying to express themselves wrt the issue at hand. So how does one express oneself and keep out the riprap trying to gain publicity for themselves by attaching to your cause? I also don’t rule out that these rightest losers are some sort of plant at these events as well to discredit such.

      • As Z-man said, it starts with tight vetting.

        Next though, whatever is done, it has to be lightning raids. You get in, do your damage, and leave. Holding a two day event is an invitation to a pitched battle where the establishment has all of the advantages.

        The other thing is we really need to start identifying the opposition leadership at the local level. Knowing who is in charge is always important.

        • That would seem to work with flash or illegal protests, but of a larger scale such protest requires permitting and perhaps more organization/time for travel and assembly. This might keep them smallish and infrequent. Still newsworthy perhaps, but MSM is not our friend. Seems an ideal way for them to paint us as small and extreme. This is not to detract from individualistic efforts like the “It’s OK to be White Flyers”, but for demonstrating strength…?

          • A great demo of strength would be something along the lines of the (original) movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” But I admit that organizing something like a power shutdown to a city for an hour or so would be hard to manage. But imagine the reaction!

          • After establishing many small anonymous groups and gaining the sympathy of normies, a Western or White-Out would also be devestating. Lotta work but watta goal!

          • “. Seems an ideal way for them to paint us as small and extreme. ”

            What if there were 50 small, coordinated rallies all across the country on the same day?

          • This might keep them smallish and infrequent.

            But small and infrequent is a winning strategy. Sudden, seemingly spontaneous, unpredictable demos give us the advantage.

            Antifa doesn’t have reflexes quick enough to respond to them the way they can to a long-planned, publicized demo. Any potential sympathizers among the normies can draw their own conclusions before the Left reacts. The Lying Media don’t have the resources to cover many small events like they can mass protests.

            This is guerilla warfare. We meet them head-on, we lose. We strike unpredictably, in-and-out, we win.

          • It would seem that legal/ permitted protest aren’t the best way to go.
            For example, do the Yellow Vests in France apply for permits? Does antifa? Do soccer hooligans? Yet all are of a flash mob variety, and also to be reckoned with by virtue of their formations.

          • If you’re going to make the assertion that your enemies control the organizations that would give you those permits – why would you assume that an organized protest is a good idea in the first place ?

            So you go and apply for a permit for some “White people are ok too” rally. They’d likely have to allow it – as long as no overt rules were being broken. But you can rest assured that as soon as the permit is submitted – some left winger working in said permitting organization – is going to alerting all their comrades as to what is coming.

            You have instantly lost all element of surprise – and given your enemies a whole bunch of prior notice which they will use to plan against you.

            Much better to just do “off the books” operations like coordinate “It’s ok to be white” poster blitzes or pamphlet drops.

            As somebody already pointed out: Sabo has mastered this stuff.

          • “It’s OK to be White” banners do not have to be an individualistic effort.

            Some sort of underground campaign to put the signs up in as many places as possible on a given day – would surely send the lefties for a loop if they woke up that day and found “It’s OK to be white!” banners hanging from the highway overpass on the way to work, pasted to the lampposts ALL OVER their blue city, sitting on their desk at work in the size of a business card – and showing up in random spam email when they got home and checked the AOL account.

            Where did this all come from!? …….. all the shoahvision channels would scream…….

            It would be all the more effective if nobody know how it all got there – like one of those MIT pranks that happens overnight.

            But this time it happened ALL OVER the entire country.

          • Compsci: you confuse numbers with strength. The organization, planning, coordination, training, control, and proper tactics used to execute well-documented and then properly publicized publicity stunts demonstrates a much more terrifying opponent than a large number of fat NEETs wearing German nationalist garb that get btfo’d on national TV. Think 4th generation warfare, not 1st gen.

        • Identifying local leadership should be done anyway, for when (not if) things go kinetic. Local “reporters,” far left professors, local DNC party apparatchiks, local activists, the list is long.

        • I always found it amusing that the LARPers playing at being Sturm Abteilung were completely unable to follow their heros’ literal description.

      • You have to work on the assumption that anyone waving swastikas and zeig-heiling is either an agent provocateur or an undercover cop. Avoid like plague. Much of the time you will turn out to be right anyway.

        • better than that, carry around a stencil and a couple of cans of paint, and hold any nazi larpers still long enough to paint “antifa provacateur” or some such on their jacket or somewhere. 2 or 3 episodes of mass tagging them would cure it.

  45. I fell for UTR like I fell for the Tea Party – we were the revolution and it was in progress, Americans taking to the streets to take back their country. I think UTR finally cured me of this naivete. Z hits the right notes here – street protests are the Left’s forte in America. A large portion of Right-sympathetic Americans disdain protest culture in general (“we have day jobs” etc). Worse yet, the other side now owns both the media and the cops. In Woke America, dissident Right street protesters = Tiananmen Tank Guy. I’m taking tactical advice more from Z and Greg Johnson at Counter-Currents and less from Hunter Wallace et al nowadays (though Hunter seems to have learned the lessons, to his credit). As much as Ted Beale grates on my nerves personality-wise, I have to admit he’s another dissident who has helped me understand the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. Z’s been “right all along” on the futility of autistically harping on double-standards ala Sailer, the Townhall crowd, etc. Thanks to all the above for helping cut the Gordian knot of logic & process worship. I felt the power of rhetoric and narrrative as an amateur meme-er in 2016 but you guys have helped me to understand the mechanics and overcome the conditioning against “being like Lefty” at all costs.

    • The UTR got permits, and coordinated with police to make this event secure. In the end the police betrayed them, and practically set up the chaos that happened.

      It’s fashionable today, for both Left and Right, to compare current America with the Weimar Republik. I think those comparisons are way overblown. However, additionally there is a fundamental difference. In Weimar, the institutions, especially Justice and Education, were on the Right. Today in America, those same institutions are controlled by the Left. We can’t forget that, or ever trust them. In drawing comparisons, we need to remember that we are not like the Right in Weimar; we are in the same position as the Reds in Weimar.

      • The UTR got permits, and coordinated with police to make this event secure. In the end the police betrayed them, and practically set up the chaos that happened.

        That’s another good lesson. In the end, the cops will protect their interests first, which means protecting their paychecks and pensions. If their bosses say “fire” they will open fire. No matter how sympathetic they may appear, they will not sacrifice for your cause. That does not mean cops are evil. It just means they are risk adverse, like most everyone else. The cops in Charlottesville may have hated what they were doing, but they were not going to lose their jobs over it.

        • Good point, look at the way the Minneapolis PD has worked to protect Mohammed Noor for shooting Justine Damond. Most police testimony had to be forced and it shows zero introspection or admission any errors were made, by Noor or the MPD. One of the flaws of the public employee pension system is that they will always fight to protect the pension.

          • It’s worth remembering that ALL pension funds in the world are going down. Ten-plus years of zero-interest rates have bankrupted several already, and the others are on the ropes. Socialism is dying right in front of us because the governments of the world cannot keep the promises they made on these pension funds. The figures don’t lie. The final crisis is already underway, but unnoticed my Joe Sixpack. Doesn’t matter. These pensions are going away. Socialism’s death will not be quick or painless, and it will take a lot of things and people with it when it goes. But go it shall.

        • Maybe the Charlottesville debacle was not such a bad thing in the longer term if for no other reason than a most valuable lesson was learned which otherwise would not have been learned or even exposed. Every cloud…..

        • Over the three days that encompassed UTR, (torch march, Sat. catastrophe, aftermath), I watched 26 hours of various uploaded live streams. By Sunday evening, I began rewatching the more salient parts, especially those dealing with the police interactions w/both the left & the right. It became obvious that most of the national guard were EXTREMELY uncomfortable by what they were doing, some even had open shame on their faces.
          They forcibly attacked our guys peacefully standing in the park, anyway, often times quite violently.
          That’s when I knew for sure just how any future attempts of public action would go.

  46. Charlottesville was a case of a guerrilla movement mis-timing its advance into stage two. As a result, the guerrilla movement lost bases and was, arguably, shattered.

    The strategy needed is the same as a first stage Mao-style guerilla movement, but with non-violent tactics. Hit hard and hit fast before the occupying power can muster a response and NEVER get caught in an open fight.

    Build bases of support from rural citizens in rural places. State capture is the process of supplanting government functions with your own institutions. With the hinterland being abandoned by Democrats and religion failing, a white nationalist food drive could blossom into such a institution. The Democrats incubate their politicians in local school boards, the Dissident Right could do the same thing.

    Ideas are cheap though, and action is expensive.

    • Anecdotal observation: Driving weekend last on less-traveled road through remote and rural southern Virginia heading westbound toward the Blue Ridge. Heavy evidence of civic nationalist tradition here — older, neatly-kept houses from era circa 1890s to 1920s; obsessively trimmed grass (so many riding mowers); working class lifestyles, small farm steads; much evidence of hunting, gun ownership and military service; American flags at a large number of these places …. many on free-standing poles. And a surprising number of Confederate battle flags were being flown alone or in concert with the stars and stripes. My friend who transplanted here many years ago says that those Confederate flags went up in large numbers after Charlottesville, and they have stayed up.

      Been traveling through this part of rural America for the past six months or so. Spend time exploring the more rural counties interspersed with intermittent trips to the state capital. Talked to residents in stores and gas stations; watched the people at their work and looked hard at those in the urban areas. There is a clear line of demarcation, and it’s growing stronger, I sense. Something is going on out here — I’ve seen it in rural, mountainous PA, where I have visited frequently these last months (and where I spent much of youth). Saw something of the same in the rural areas of the plains states where I traveled last month, and have heard it from those long acquaintences I left behind in the now lost western state that was my home for many decades.

      One thing I noted in the small hamlets i’ve looked at in southern VA, up along the Shenandoah Valley and in Pennsylvania’s mountainous interior — Ruritan clubas are doing well: buildings are well maintained, parking lots have vehicles in them, and one had a big sign for concealed carry classes. VFW and Legion halls and volunteer fire departments are also quite active. There are crab feeds, holiday meals, gun raffles and other events. Especially farther south, lots of folks are wearing Mossy Oak shirts and jackets.

      This suggests to me that there is a large, quiet population that sees something different from that our betters are forcing on us, and that wants something else. What we need is the vision, a plan, creative leadership and a solid yeomanry to run the local branches. Aside: Dissing the CivNats is probably a losing COA — I know as I’m one of them … just disillusioned. They are legion.

      • “A vision and a plan.”
        Is there a way to express our ideals in such a way that doesn’t scare the civnat, while also not embracing anything Leftist? Perhaps, “Free men aren’t equal. Equal men aren’t free.”
        We might not want to run around saying blacks and whites can’t live together peacefully, but we don’t want to let anyone think we’re color blind.

        • I just don’t know. I assume there is — some combination of message, delivery and supporting imagery/mythos. I just don’t have that gift for the turn of a phrase, so I have not been able to turn up the pithy construction. Wracking my brain, though. Yes to your last — it’s 60/30 population breakout where I’m paused at now. At least for now — greased by old Southern manners and a belief in courtesy — it’s working. Who knows if any pressure is applied, or if the LEFT is able to fully set this thing ablaze.

        • I think it depends on whom you are speaking to at a given moment. If a stranger in passing–at a gas station or grocery store–you might indeed use “Free men are not equal, and equal men are not free” if your interlocutor seems able to understand what that means without an explanation. If not, then don’t say it. It’s just a stranger crossing your path.

          But it’s when you are talking to somebody you know–at least a little bit–and have talked to before, if only once; someone with whom you have some degree of rapport; some degree of trust. Once someone has learned that you are easy to talk to and a genial, friendly sort, and not some lunatic fanatic, then you can say things like, “Well, we probably aren’t going to be able to hold on to civic nationalism, given the situation.” So you don’t outright dis CN, but you make a deliberately vague and rueful statement about its lack of viability in the current situation. That will require the other person to ask what you mean. Then, feeling the atmosphere of that moment, you can say, “Well, I don’t want to get into it now because I doubt I could explain it to you” (rather than “you wouldn’t understand”). Or if the moment seems right, you can say point blank, “Well, we’ve got racial politics now, whether anybody knows it or likes it or not. It’s like war or rape: It doesn’t require the agreement of both parties to start it. It can be decided by only one ‘side,’ and that has already happened, so we white folks are in it whether we want to be or not, and that’s the simple truth.” The discussion will arise naturally and unavoidably at that point because these civnats know the score, but they continue to cling to what is familiar and safe rather than admit the truth aloud.

          So you don’t dis civ-nattery, but you present the truth to civnats in a way that does not dis them. And it’s better if you can maneuver them into asking you about it. So you don’t come across as preachy or fanatic.

        • Bob, here’s a repeat of a comment I made yesterday. It’s a good starting point. It will appeal to your friends’ sense of fairness. This is the exact opposite of what the Left has been teaching and doing for years, as they have abused people’s desire to be fair:

          IF something is moral for one group to do or believe for themselves, then it is moral for all groups to do and believe for themselves.

      • Pertaining to your last sentence. Talking to some I feel like I’m talking to a mirror image leftist, where if you’re not a communist you must be nazi. In this case, unless I’m full blown white supremacist and “name the Jew” than I must be a CivNat cuck. The reddest areas of Italy became the blackest in the 20s, red to brown in Germany as well. The choices can’t be “race is everything(left)” or “race is everything(‘right’)”.

        • Yes …. they’re often not particularly discerning. That was part of their strength. they just believed, and still do. It worked when we were a 90% culture … it allowed us to do tremendous things. Now, perhaps, it’s a liability.

          They don’t want to let go. They can’t. Legacy America was something they either actively loved, or at least were so comfortable with that they could conceive of nothing else. They were taught something, and that’s the was it was — now and forever; Amen.

          One can’t really blame them. It’s asking a lot to expect them to make the leap. And yes, I know they stand to lose it all if they keep clinging to the railing as the thing runs aground. I had many people working for me for many years, in constantly evolving circumstances, in a fluid organization within a supposedly rigid structure, and doing risky things. Most people really can’t see second and third-order effects; they can’t see around corners, and they don’t want their comfortable world or reality disturbed. They will suffer much, and deny even more, to keep from accepting something they don’t want to see.

          Real leadership is rare now. Great men seem to have been killed off, or indoctrinated out of existence. Where is our Cincinnatus? Our Fabius Maximus? I saw none in my many years in the military, and that was looking up to the 2 and 3-star levels. They are just not there.

          I don’t think they’re there for us now, certainly not in “conservative” circles — perhaps they’re all either hiding out, or long since moved on to dying their hair and running chrome bolts through their genetalia. But without the leaders ….

          An aside that is kind of germane — a very wise friend of mine once said of the dearth of real leaders in the military: “All the good general officers get out of the Army as lieutenant colonels.”

          Took me a day or so for the impact of what he was saying to really hit me … wow.

          • Wow. We were typing at the same time–and saying the same things. Civnats can’t let go of the familiar; they can’t admit the truth out loud, even though they know the truth quite well.

          • Yes, I think they do know.

            I do believe that there are many, many more of them who are aware of the gravity of the situation than this group might realize, and certainly many more than the left wants to acknowledge. As I said, I’m one of them by nature. I travel to the places they inhabit (more comfortable there than among many of those colleagues with whom I passed my professional life). I drive the back roads, go to the un-sexy places, seek them out, tease out opinions. They answer me I think because they see I’m sympathetic, and I have certain markers that are attached to things they respect (though I was no one important).

            Since retirement some years ago from my primary endeavor, I’ve watched them. I came from an organization stuffed full of self-serving, shallow and ambitious rat-b@stards. I had known that for years. But at least those people were not overtly “Anti-American”, self-serving, shallow etc etc. I was stunned when I stepped from that world, where I’d been completely consumed by my responsibiities for the previous dozen years. I hadn’t really seen what was going on outside. The bulk of the people I saw in my now dramatically transformed home town of 35 yrs were unrecognizeable to me — like aliens. So I began to watch, and ask questions.

            I am heartbroken at what’s happened to our nation, our culture and our people. But I also have been surprised at the level of resistance, or recalcitrance, I’ve seen among the “normies” out there. Many are doing things; they’re just not talking about it. They may not understand what’s going on, but they know it’s not good. Many might not be prone to sophisticated analysis or able to absorb finely constructed explanations, but they know that their world is being deconstructed.

            They can’t themselves lay out a well-crafted or subtle picture of the problem — often preferring more simple explanations — but they seem to be trying to dissapate anxiety by doing things like buying firearms, or building a food cache. Just look at the FBI national background check monthly stats over the last 20 years. It’s enough to scare the daylights out of our LEFTist …. countrymen. This is them — normies — who are driving those stats.

            The problem is, they are limited in how much they can get their minds around the scope of the problem. There is a basic conflict at the heart of the problem they just can’t resolve.

            The forces of their own government have been arrayed against them and what they hold dear (yes, the Constitution and all that) — law enforcement, federal agencies, the universities. But to them, those are THEIR organizations — especially the military and law enforcement. They man those entities, give their lives to them, and now are faced with the prospect that government bodies co-opted by the left might, can and do now use those formerly respected organs against them, their precious symbols or traditions, or directly against their interests.

            IRS (well, OK, maybe not so much), FBI, Obama DOJ, local LEOs (Portland, Berkeley, etc. They just can’t resolve it in their minds OR in the public sphere, so they buy more ammo, go to their kids’ baseball games, wait and hope. But I think they make up more of the population than is apparent. The question becomes in part …. just what will they do?

          • PS: If one says “nothing”, which it often seems, he just might be wrong. They did vote for Trump.

      • We have been ruled by the Quaker-Puritan alliance for a long time. Thanksgiving, city on the hill, the ideological nation, all these ideas are from the english settlers of Yankeedom. America was founded by two types of people, the men founding religious Zion in a new land and British subjects who wanted to live as they had for thousands of years but in the plenty of the new world. These two worlds demarcate at Maryland-Pennsylvania, but it has fluctuated north and south, east and west since the 17th century.

        We need a new vision of America that embraces Jamestown and not Massachusett’s Bay.

        • Good luck with that. Those fanatics will have to be physically suppressed. The 48ers they imported from Europe were a good fit for their level of fanaticism. They walk among us.

        • Same wise friend I reference above quoted G.K. Chesterton the other morning on daily walk: “Puritans pour righteous indignation into all the wrong things.”

          This friend is a recognized SME on aspects of America’s founding, and on founders. He affirms that we now live under Puritanism run amok. Interestingly, he’s also recognized for insight on propaganda and ‘pre-wwII German culture.’

          • Here I always thought the Bible Belters were the phony moral authority… nothings more disturbing than a Babtist explaing the world as they see it…

      • Great post! Extremely valuable. Good, clear, practical thinking. Thought-provoking. Many thanks!

      • Dissing CivNats is less important than reforming them into something effective while utterly cutting out the cucked ‘leadership’ that has proven completely incapable.

      • Not totally OT….I like John River’s suggestion to fly an old style Betsy Ross flag, the one with 13 stars. Already got one, it’s going up on flag day.

  47. Another excellent article by Z-man. The dissident Right should copy the dominant Left by embracing the “flexibility” of rules and principles. Winning is the only principle that ultimately matters. Large public protests are unlikely to succeed because the Left owns that platform. But there are smaller acts of insurrection — the “It’s okay to be white” fliers, for instance — that can make inroads and incite the other side into spasms of self-defeating hysteria. The Internet remains our safest battleground for the time being, regardless of all the censorship. Forget about fighting fair. Fight smart instead.

    • The standard response-trope would be “it’s not worth winning at the cost of your soul,” “becoming the enemy” blah-blah. It’s a slippery slope fallacy. We can and must draw lines and dig in our heels where appropriate when balancing between winning at all costs and muh principles. The more I look at history from the D-Right perspective, the more I see how Americans are uniquely susceptible to “all or nothing” moral arguments and their slippery slopes. I blame post-medieval “Judeo-Christianity,” Protestantism, the Tribe and the Second Founding, among other things, but binary moralism is definitely “our thing” in America – especially in contrast to Europeans. Rather than maintaining a balance on a spectrum between two poles (ala Fitzgerald’s “two opposed ideas at once”) we’ve been trained to go hard for one of the goalposts. Unlearning that is a priority.

      • This reminds me of the opening of the old movie The Last Boy Scout.

        During the game, a player on one team pulls a gun out of his uni and literally starts shooting players on the other team.

        “Conservatives” are like players on the other team who, after the opponent has shot several of them, continue to follow the rules about no holding, no blocking below the waist, etc.

        They don’t realize that when the player on the other team is literally shooting you, you don’t have to play by the rules any more.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW4Y6mpCXgQ

        • Just remember that when the corporate media report on the incident, they will conveniently leave out the part where the player on the other team starts shooting first. Obviously, this raises an interesting question.

        • Because–to put it bluntly–they are stupid and because they share with leftists the immutable characteristic of being *totally* self-unaware. I have had some success in getting them to lapse into what I hope is a thoughtful silence–at least they fall silent when I say this–by saying that the left is “totally committed to total victory.”

      • Yes, the Conservative Incorporated Right always acts as if they are talking about the Ten Commandments or some eternal moral rectitude when they talk about “Principles”, but in almost all cases, it turns out that the “principles” are something that was not considered immoral until the Left or the Neocons (but I repeat myself) declared it as such less than twenty years ago, like “Thou Shalt Not Question Free Trade”, or “The Market Is Always Right”, or “Thou Shalt Not Question The Blank Slate”. As for things actually prohibited by traditional morality, such as murder, adultery, and sodomy, they seem pretty accepting. Who exactly is “becoming the enemy” here?

        • Yep. One of the immutable characteristics that “conservatives” invariably share with leftists is that they are *totally* self-unaware. TOTALLY. It’s almost as though they don’t live inside their own bodies; that their “minds” are in storage somewhere. They simply can NOT see or hear themselves.

      • Seems to me that trying to persuade the normies and boomercons to fight diry is every bit as futile and emotionally draining as trying to persuade the lefties to play nicely and follow the rules. Maybe it’s time to accept the things that you can’t change and muster the courage to tackle the things that you can change.

        • I don’t know that the “normies” have to fight dirty. I think they just have to fight …. within whatever parameters / limitations might constrain (and define) them as a group. The key is for them to be brought to an understanding of the nature of the threat we face — for them to see who and what constitutes the real threat to what they hold dear. Like at Cowpens — don’t demand of them what they can’t give. We have to get them to see, understand the urgency, and then to deliver whatever they can to our overall effort … a la General Daniel Morgan with the militia.

          • My 5x grandfather was 57 years old at Saratoga. But was also an experienced militia officer from the F&I War. You are right, they didn’t stand and fight in the line, but effectively harassed the British flanks in the style learned on the frontier. Everyone needs to figure out the thing they can do. Quietly and effectively.

  48. “While the Left is performing yet another morality tale, the Right is busy editing the script for accuracy. In politics, factual accuracy is only important if it advances the narrative.”

    Perhaps this is one of the most important things to understand, and one of the hardest things to explain to normies. This relates as well to Zman’s previously stated point that principles are for winners; they materialize ex post facto.

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