In his essay, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx famously described the French peasantry as a sack of potatoes. This was in response to calls from fellow socialists and anarchists to focus on radicalizing the peasants. At the time this was a big topic of debate among European radicals. One camp thought the peasants held great revolutionary potential as a class, while the other camp thought the urban workers were the only revolutionary class.
The title of the essay refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France, linking it to the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. In addition to the topic of the peasantry, Marx was discussing current events in the context of the history of revolution in France and the future of the socialist revolution. That last bit was the main concern of his intended audience of socialist radicals.
As far as the peasantry of France, Marx observed that they formed an enormous mass whose members lived in similar conditions but “without entering into manifold relations with each other.” As small independent farmers, “their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse.” These small farmers lived independent from one another, despite being organized into villages. In this way they were like a sack of potatoes.
What Marx was getting at was the sense of identity among these small landowners versus the sense of identity among the urban working class. Unlike the proletariat, the peasant had a sense of independence that defined his relationship with his fellow peasants and his relationship with the state and society. The peasants lacked the sense of togetherness and commiseration of the industrial workers, as they did their work as individuals for their own purposes.
There was something else that made the peasants a tough nut to crack as far as the socialist revolution was concerned. Because they owned something, they had something to lose, which made them risk adverse. Unlike the urban worker, the peasant was unwilling to break with tradition or custom. According to Marx, this is why they supported strong men like Napoleon Bonaparte and Louis-Napoléon. A strong state was good for their narrow interests.
This insight into identity has remained a part of Marxist thinking to this day. The post-Marx culturalists that now run the West are always scanning the fields for identity groups that they view as anti-democratic, which is just the modern way of saying counter revolutionary. People make the mistake of thinking individualism is the opposite of collectivism, but that is false. The real enemy of Marxist collectivism is the alternative identity group, rooted outside of economics.
Putting that aside, the Marxist understanding of the 19th century peasant is useful in this age for understanding the revolutionary potential of normie. Like the peasant, the suburban white guy remains a frustrating element in politics. He understands that he is under assault from inhuman forces but refuses to band together with his fellows in order to defend his interests. Instead, he spouts the morality of the enemy, while hoping a hero arrives to save him from the bad guys.
This was most obvious with Donald Trump. The bad guys clearly understood what Trump could represent, which is why they despised him. He could radicalize normie, they thought, and get him thinking collectively, but in a way that would oppose the interests of the narrow ruling elite. It is why they insisted he was Hitler, despite the absurdity of the claim. Like Hitler, they saw Trump as a radical alternative to the radical assault on normal society.
What Trump represented to normie was the low-risk savior. He would be their Napoleon, but he would not ask anything from them. They could continue to grill, watch sports and consume the cultural products of the regime, but Trump would make sure their small plot in the suburbs was safe. From the perspective of normie, Trump was the low-risk defense against the predation of the people they saw on their televisions burning down cities and assaulting people.
Like the 19th century French peasants Marx observed, the modern suburban peasant is atomized and isolated. He lives in a manufactured house. A dozen or so houses make his neighborhood. A hundred or so houses makes his development, always named after what was destroyed to build it. A collection of developments makes for a socio-economic zone important only to the people who sell them product. The suburban peasant is a potato in sack.
Unlike the French peasant, the suburban peasant has been stripped of his cultural, ethnic and moral identity. His church is the television and his traditions are limited to whatever he can manage among the strangers that make up his world. His spiritual fulfillment comes from playing make believe on-line. The 19th century French peasant had the stability of his environment. He stood where his ancestors stood. The modern peasant stands wherever he is told.
The main difference between the 19th century peasant and the modern suburban peasant is communications. The French peasant could go weeks or months without speaking to neighbors. The suburban peasant cannot go five minutes without information bombarding his senses. The same information storm intended to keep the suburban peasant suspended within a solution of information, often insulates him from his conditioning, resulting in radicalization.
Marx was right about the French peasants. They were never much use for the revolution, something the Bolsheviks would eventually learn as well. For the modern dissident, there may be some portion of the suburban peasantry that has radical potential, even if he is immune to direct radicalization. The phenomenon of normie going from zero to eleven on the radicalization scale after an incidental encounter with forbidden material is well known.
This subset of the suburban peasantry, the alternative to normie, is what the sociologist Donald Warren identified as the Middle American Radical in the book The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. These are people who defy conventional political framing, so they are often ignored. They are noticed when a Pat Buchanan, a Ross Perot or a Donald Trump comes along. It is why all efforts are made to funnel them back into the chute of conventional politics.
In the end, the portion of the suburban peasantry called normie will have little use for the cause, but there is a portion of the peasantry that has potential. They see the futility of trying to exercise power within the system, but they lack the structure to develop into an alternative moral order that challenges the system. The guy with the Gadsden flag on his house is a potato in a sack. The neighbor who reads old books and no longer has a cable sub is a normie with revolutionary potential.
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The Potatoes are eternal.
Don’t waste your time unless you’re willing to organize them as the Communists did; Conscription by Terror, discipline by death. Dissenters killed with more vigor than enemies.
In fairness they were very well trained, very serious, nearly every move well thought out. The Vietnamese war against the Americans may have been the finest and most competent mobilization of a nation in history, and the PAVN possibly the 20th Century’s finest Light Infantry.
The mobilization of the entire North was helped by incremental bombing;
The Vietnamese put a rifle in every man’s hand and told him to fire a shot at the plane. The physical effect was to make nap of earth or flying below 1500-2000 feet a tactical problem.
The effect on morale and mobilization was that every man took the positive step of firing a shot at the enemy, every boy saw his father shoot at the enemy, or his older brother.
Those fathers and brothers became heroes in their children’s eyes.
There’s no more effective mobilization in history, no more positive commitment than firing a gun.
That’s some potato farming!
I worked as an aide to Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire in 1992 and 1996, and was on the ground for most of his primary campaign against Dole et alia in 1996. I am now 55 years old and understand that there is no Middle American uprising to come, ever. My dalliance with populism is now akin to my interest in alternative music from the late 80s. What puzzles me at this stage in the journey is why men who were my age in 1990 were pushing this fantasy, when their own education and experience should have led them to conclude that it was utterly hopeless. They were writing op-eds for sacks of potatoes.
Was it your sense that they stole Iowa from Pat B? (Not to mention what they did to thwart Ron Paul). Hard to overcome inertia when someone’s fat thumb is on the scale.
“What Trump represented to normie was the low-risk savior. He would be their Napoleon, but he would not ask anything from them”
************************************************
that’s the ESSENTIAL point, Z.
That’s crazy, I haven’t realize it until you wrote it.
Our people is so degenerate, we hardly understand he is on both side. Look how many trumpers are fat, tatooed and ignorant.
OK, they are (by far) less degenerate than lefty people, but yes they are.
The essential point could be : “we don’t want to pay”
Alas, we should pay, both side, for the collective errors we made : eternal deficits have to be payed. Immigration have to be payed. Degeneracy have to be payed.
We were guilt to think electing populist leaders would pay.
We were guilt to ask them, Bolsonaro or Trump, to make a coup.
The truth is : there is not enough people behind to support the consequences of those coups.
Napoleon III could make it because he has a crazy massive support behind him. We don’t.
I am the man of the last sentence except I’ve never had a cable subscription. The radicalization will come when the radical middle realizes the violations against them has put them in a position where they have nothing to lose.
Baltasar Gracian, a Spanish philosopher, once said, “Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose”. It is true that if you compete with someone who has nothing to lose, you are sure to be defeated in that race. A person who has nothing to lose has no fear.
Show me the history of those with nothing to lose winning, or even fighting.
Its a myth.
They’re just trying to stay alive.
Never, not in Russia, Ireland, anywhere did losers band together and fight.
You need a part 2 to this essay. The plot twist is that suburbia was always a banker’s plot to dispossess the peasants from the governing cities. Fewer than 1% of workers in first world countries actually build houses for a living, but most of an average citizen’s after-tax income goes to the mortgage. Financial power keeps it this way.
It’s mass redlining. Conservatives who want to be able to afford a family life are excluded from the cities due to housing costs. The governing class consists of childless nihilist sex deviants, like the bankers who work 80-100 hour weeks who do not have families. Ebenezer Scrooge is running things, no matter who gets elected, and the “controlled opposition” is socialized housing populated by barbarians who form ghettos. It’s the official alternative to the current system.
The liberal likes things the way they are. The leftist calls the liberal’s bluff and actually wants the ghettos to rise up and eat the bankers. And the conservative is a miserable suburban griller whose only contact with the cities is through designated (therefore openly targeted) representatives with no actual power, and the telescreen.
Part 3 could be an essay on certain Talmudic passages that highly encourage Jews to live in cities, by the way. But Scrooge doesn’t have to be Jewish.
You must drink a lot of very strong espresso, Z. Phenomenal, again. Gratia tibi Magister.
‘The guy with the Gadsden flag on his house is a potato in a sack. The neighbor who reads old books and no longer has a cable sub is a normie with revolutionary potential.’
C’est moi—the latter guy, a classical scholar in the endless stucco farms of Los Angeles….
Terrifying thought of the day:
Kamala currently appears to be a paragon of virtue compared to the Bidens and Pelosis.
More seriously, the World’s Richest Man has already bent the knee to the usual suspects over his Twitter plans.
Torba has stated he’ll shut Gab down before he kneels.
This was a brilliant essay! Old school.
I would just call everyone’s attention to the Vendee’ Revolt after the French Revolution. The peasants in those days did get quite riled up when the State attempted to destroy religion. The peasants didn’t care who was king but atheism was too far. So I think Marx oversimplified the peasant world view.
Perhaps there’s an issue today that might go to far for normies. Who knows? Perhaps Zman has thoughts on this. I used to think it was trannies.
Didn’t they all get slaughtered including their families?
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Post-covid, millions of ordinary people now have solid answers to the question, “I wonder who would denounce me to the Gestapo?” Uncomfortable, yes, but invaluable going forward.
Notable casualty of corona-chan: the “Who goes Nazi?” rhetorical game, greatly resurgent circa 2016.
Of course it held that you should fear and preemptively destroy 1) people who are already losers, and 2) the most normal people you know.
And of course that’s not who, given a unique chance to “go,” actually went.
Bygones!
The correct framing should be tens of thousands of ordinary people now have solid answers as to the tens of millions who would denounce them.
As an old guy who cut the cable and replaced it with old books decades ago, it’s nice to know I’m not just a spud.
A normie buddy of mine tried to convince me that I should put a magnetized flag sticker on my truck flying in the upsidedown distress orientation. I just politely declined because I thought it was fruitless to suggest that all he’ll do is attract the Eye of Sauron. Virtue signalling isn’t just a Leftist, woke think. The potatoes love them some symbols, too; and the list goes way beyond Gadsen flags and MAGA hats.
See the “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts and stickers. Yep – normie really owned the libs with that one.
Yep, and the stories abound wrt vandalism of such conservative labeled vehicles. Sort of like a “kick me” sticker from grade school days.
Wm. Briggs, statistician to the stars, calls this “Expertocracy”.
Why do school boards ignore parents, politicos ignore voters, mayors ignore crime, etc.?
Because they only listen to the “experts” above them- who are listening to “experts” above themselves, who listen to designated “authorities” and regime signallers above, on and on.
Any other response is social and professional death.
Limbic response, dopamine conditioning, status reinforcement? This is pure monkey barking, arboreal politics. It’s the only strong signal to get through the noise.
More obvious kabuki theater as the US tries to use the threat of an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia to nudge the Kingdom away from BRICS+ and back on-side:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/oil-spikes-pentagon-predicting-iran-attack-saudi-arabia-likely-48-hours
The additional angle is that the Dems would really benefit from some kind of rally around the flag moment for the midterms.
Wild Geese: Just saw this headline: “Biden to make a speech on dangers to democracy tonight . . . and undermining the faith in voting.”
So go ahead, folks. Keep voting because at least you picked the evil of two lessors. Or made the libs heads explode. Or registered your dissent. Or something, anything.
They WANT you to vote. It gives them and their system legitimacy. If that, alone, isn’t sufficient for you to realize voting is participating in their theater, then there’s really nothing more to say.
I intend to go to the polls, but only to make a mockery of those there. I’ll wear my “ULTRA MAGA” t-shirt and look to make deep eye contact with the Dem election judge onsite to terrify him/her that there are extreme MAGA people in their midst. Hopefully he/she won’t be able to sleep at night.
Then I’ll make snide comments in the open and eventually do a bunch of profane write-ins on my ballot.
Exactly. Even before I made my way to this side of the divide, I had already begun to understand this point at a young age. I learned very quickly that people who had IQs lower than a potted plant were able to wield the same amount of political power as I could. I also noticed how there were people in Washington who everyone knew were no good scum bags, yet they were re-elected for decades.
Voting is a sucker’s game, and it is exactly what keeps the system rolling. The idea that your vote matters is the most ridiculous concept ever.
I recently got an email from my company’s esteemed HR staff telling me that it is my duty to go out and vote and take part in the global discussion of social and economic issues. What the email really was saying was, “make sure you go out and vote Democrat! “Our Democracy” is at stake!”. It is absolutely appalling.
3g4me-
Precisely.
Getting as many suckers to the polls as possible is the most effective smokescreen there is for concealing their mass ballot harvesting, mail-in ballot, and electronic voting machine frauds.
Very solid point. Going after local police is a smaller part of this, I think.
(meant as reply to Reality Rules)
RE the “sack of potatoes” concept, there is a natural resistance in Homo Sapiens to crossing the group and becoming an exile. The trick for the DR is to show that the prevailing orthodoxy is neither prevailing nor an orthodoxy, in order to make marginally dissident thoughts more palatable to the average GrillerCon.
In my hood the best approach has been to show the highly negative impact of various woke ideologies on our local school, and how our school board has forced this Anti-Racist and Transgender ideology into the schools, with obvious negative effects on the student body.
With humor and a nudge I get people into a DR-accepting mindset.
It is what it is. You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, and you can’t turn a sack of potatoes into a box of fireworks.
We have to accept people’s limitations. I’ve noticed that conservative people find it hard to be pro-white. However, they refuse to be anti-white and are increasingly anti-anti-white. It’s better than nothing.
I was always interested at how COVID lockdowns and forced vax seemed to upset normal White people more than anything else. I would have much rather seen this much anger come out about open borders and anti-white racism, instead of vaccines (obviously the forced vaccines are evil but in the long run demographics matter more). Those who were discriminated against by the vax mandates are not forgiving and not forgetting, and are almost all still more furious than ever.
People will speak out when it is safe to do so. The attitude towards immigration in Canada is changing among the proles – they announced a target of 500,000 (almost all Indians) per year and even leftists are questioning the decision. Being “anti-immigrant” is still not ok, but saying “hey, we don’t have the infrastructure or doctors needed to import a city the size of “X” per year. Maybe we should cool it down” is actually acceptable now.
Maybe this means that unvaccinated people are the most fertile ground to have a chat about “our stuff”.
Most people are slow moving and cowardly sacks of potatoes but it is what it is.
The Ruling Class pays close attention to flashpoints. My take is it is concerned over Covid anger.
Unfortunately, If anything would have happened on that front it already would have.
The perpetrators are skating about without a care in the world and many got greatly rewarded. Can you name a single one out of the thousands who has suffered even in a real way from their actions by a third party (apart from the ones who are dropping dead from their own stupidity)?
B125: “I was always interested at how COVID lockdowns and forced vax seemed to upset normal White people more than anything else. I would have much rather seen this much anger come out about open borders and anti-white racism, instead of vaccines (obviously the forced vaccines are evil but in the long run demographics matter more).”
This to infinity.
the gates juice causes sterility and death. it’s just gradual about it .
“…you can’t turn a sack of potatoes into a box of fireworks.”
But with the right equipment (spud gun + hairspray/propellant), those taters make fine projectiles!
Wyatt the warner
” square peg into a round hole,”
Sometimes you can with a big enough hammer (and hammerer).
The following just struck me after reading the insightful comment and story about the anger over the Covid lockdown and the call for, “amnesty.” The amnesty is really a plea for mercy.
The revolution of 2020 has spawned some organized counter-movements that are tangible and can be pointed to:
– Home schooling; charter schooling; alternatives to PICs
– Moms for Liberty (fighting CRT and Trans Grooming)
– Various Covid/Vaxx lawsuit, gumshoe and litigation groups
– Organized law fighting anti-white discrimination WILL …
– There are surely others
Those already have institutional momentum, funding and a mass of motivated people willing to get into a fight. I think maintaining contact or being active in one of them is a good way to meet people with revolutionary fervor and mindset. Even if their goal is to use the system and reform, nobody understands better than them how far gone the system is. Many of them realize that in every one of them the anti-white racism is rampant and malignant.
Perhaps involvement that may make some meaningful change at the local level and also hook into people with the right mindset and access to an established organization is a way to build people. Of course, the small local group of like minded is a part of this. Looking to where new recruits who are confronting the enemy and thus understand it, and who value action above grillin’ and rootin’ and possibly even using their organizational structures is to be considered.
We have to take a long view, know where to look for people who see what we see and may conclude what we conclude and be cold and calculating. Build institutions within institutions and movements within movements.
The confrontations of the governors with the federal government over Covid restrictions were quite real. Bussing the “immigrants” to Blue States are theater, albeit pretty effective theater, but going toe to toe over Covid was a very positive development. I suspect that unsettled the Regime more than we realize.
The confrontation will severely escalate when the governors enforce federal immigration law. Forcing the Regime Elite to ship out the migrants after performative virtue signalling is one thing.
Forcing the regime to come in and prevent states from building walls, and enforcing immigration law is another. The states will have to act in open defiance of federal courts and law enforcement. It will force the regime to not just admit it will not enforce the law, but that it is willing to crush local jurisdictions that oppose its lawlessness.
It is interesting to see if Lake wins if she and Abbot have the stones to make such bold moves to openly and intelligently assume the duties that the federal government is abandoning.
What I wouldn’t do to see Mayorkas quartered, lit on fire and hung for treason.
If people think it’s okay to send immigrants to their doorstep, they are quite aware it could be pitchforks or worse next time. That’s how a cheap political stunt accidentally exposed something. That is why so much is being made with the Paul Pelosi incident as well. They believed they were effectively insulated from the consequences and they’re finding out that’s very much not the case.
You seem to be under the delusion that the Paul Pelosi fiasco was somehow the result of the Pelosi’s political views and actions, rather than a Grindr date gone bad.
Not even Grindr. Depape’s day job was a drug addiction therapist… and Paul Pelosi had that infamous DUI just a few months previous.
Caveat, Depape was a ‘drug addiction therapist’ in the sense of advocating an illegal Mexican hallucinogen while running the Jerry Garcia Clinic for homeless youth because the founder was convicted of sex crimes last year… but maybe Nancy had tried those fancy detox clinics for celebrities and as usual, they didn’t work.
I agree it wasn’t political. She thought Depape could help Paul’s drug addiction or at least wouldn’t talk, and that was true. It was Paul who called the cops after a hallucinogenic ‘therapy session’ turned into rape. And Depape wasn’t happy when the cops arrived. “Where’s Nancy, my employer? She’ll clear this up.” But then it went viral.
My theory, anyway.
As the Deep State has – rightly – identified anger over the Coof Tyranny as a flashpoint, one does have to expect Their usual techniques of infiltration and instigation of illegalities to be in play. Keep the weather eye out for those glowies working to get you to sign on to their schemes leading to your entrapment.
Absolutely. It will be interesting to see if one of the very few uncontrolled opposition representatives tries to emasculate the emergency acts and require reviews before they can be sustained. A MoC who does that may be whacked by the police state apparatus.
The Covid amnesty article was simply the Bolshevik anaconda recognizing it temporarily needs to relax its coils.
I opt for it being a mistaken effort to lower the temperature through trying to make a non-apology apology, and to try to have that suffice.
I.e.; “Well, all of us Covidian zealots really meant well, but we sometimes acted in haste (due to the End of the World panic that, you know, just happened…), but all of you non-compliant deplorable sons of bitches who, after all, drove this hostile dynamic really need to own your part in all this ill will, but we Covidian Loons will be big about this and let you off this hook of your own devising. Deal, compadres?”
All that was determined by this insulting offer was just how enduringly hated the Covidian Zealots have become worldwide. And if, indeed, the effects of the jab are as bad as some are expecting, it’ll only get worse.
Hello, my name is Mr C and I’m a potato.
Hi Mr C. We’re here if you want to talk.
Something that should give us hope is how tiny all successful revolutionary groups have been. The Bolsheviks were a tiny minority within the Russian socialist movement, but the Russian socialist movement was itself tiny. I forget what party card number defined a “March violet” after the Gleichschaltung, but it was pretty damn low. The last “best guess” I saw on the numbers in the American Revolution was something like 15% hardcore revolutionaries, with the Colonial equivalent of normie supporting whatever side had military forces in the area (at least until it was pretty obvious the Revolutionaries were about to win, and even then open support hardly cracked 50% IIRC). If you count the Confederacy as a successful revolutionary movement — and I do, since they succeeded at least in seceding — it’s even smaller; more than a few “Confederate” states had to rig their secession conventions as blatantly as the Dems rigged the 2020 primaries.
Normie gets with the program when the preference cascade is overwhelming and obvious… but it doesn’t take but a tiny minority to get that cascade started.
Given the right leadership and right organization, you need 20%. What we call the Left in America is 20% of white people. They control everything, with some notable help.
Why 20 percent since every previous one was much lower?
Those are best guesses on the historical numbers. I’d buy 20%, simply because you need sufficient numbers to make The Regime have legit doubts about calling out their security forces. The point is, it’s not a huge number.
Dunno. The Bolsheviks were, what, two to three percent of the revolutionaries? That seems to be a pretty settled high mark. I suspect the Regime will deploy security forces regardless of how large a group is. This one is as brutal as its counterpart in Beijing. It is quite doubtful it is as effective, of course.
True Wild Geese we can’t offer anything in response. Not everyone is loyal to money above all else. In fact, those who can be bought, may not be who you want on your side in the long haul. I suspect that many of those going over and getting paid value the payment less than the action.
Jack Dobson –
The larger percentage that is in the security forces, the smaller percentage at large you need. The Regime knows this, thus the first days of the revolution’s stand down and the ongoing SWM purge.
There is no way around having people in the SFs to pull off Regime Change successfully. You need either a mass mutiny in the form of a coordinated walk-off that requires mass solidarity, or a bunch of people on the inside who are grinning and bearing it in the short run, but making their own plans for the long run.
Very solid point. I suspect this is the reason for the attempted emasculation of local police, too.
SFs?
As in Special Forces?
There are multiple anecdotes floating around the regime is paying those guys $4-5k a day to be on the front lines in Ukraine.
What can our side offer in response?
Sorry it wasn’t clear. I was shorthanding security forces as SFs. To be even more clear, I understood Jack Dobson’s use of the term to mean any legal armed force from any military branch to any type of law enforcement.
If that isn’t what you meant JD, that is what I meant. Though the military is the most crucial unit.
The Russian Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly (((russian))).
“The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.” – David Francis, American ambassador to Russia at the time of the Revolution
I’ve read numerous sources that state that well over 90% of the original communist delegates were (((russian))) while a mere handful were actual Russian nationals.
I.A. Kurganov- in now de-classified KGB files- stated that (((communists))) were responsible for the deaths of 66 million Russians in the 20th century.
Considering the attempted genocide of the Russian people at the hands of the (((communists))), the wholesale theft, plunder, and extermination of the upper classes and successful agrarians (a class of people known as kulaks- basically Russia’s country-folk), and their bloodthirsty international aspirations… It should leave little to ponder considering how the German people voted for National Socialism as the only thing protecting them from the looming spectre of mass Marxist death.
National Socialism was their only chance of survival. Hitler and Himmler (despite both being Jewish according to German racial law) were the German people’s only hope after the starvation, decadence and ruin of the Weimar years, where (((germans))) ran the country into the ground for the first time.
Hitler and Himmler literally passed a law exempting themselves from the anti-Jewish policies of National Socialist Germany, so they were each at least 1/4 jew. Hitler and Himmler are very Jewish-sounding last names.
Hitler, in particular, was a master of realpolitik, and named his movement National Socialism, not because it was left-wing or marxist in any respect, but rather because the clamor for economic justice was so strong among the German people after crippling sanctions of the treaty of Versailles, that no political party could have any hope of winning without making some minor appeal to socialism- as indicated by the Communist party polling the strongest at the time.
National Socialism was indeed socialist, but it was Nationalist FIRST, and socialism only for the German people. It was NOT a left-wing movement in any sense, and those were the the gist of the Fuhrer’s words. It was a firmly right-wing movement, from start to finish, as can be read about in Mein Kampf.
Really tired of hearing know-nothing blowhards talkin out the side of their necks about how left-wing the Nazis were. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were an extremely right-wing, NATIONALIST form of government that subsidized the lives of the German people heavily and improved their quality of life with “socialism”. It was more Fascist if anything, and even more anti-communist than that.
It gets worse. I could go on.
Off-hinger. Dude.
Your last sentence is right on.
But the rest is a mess.
‘Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’
National-Socialist in German…BEFORE THE WORD ‘GERMAN’. German, like English (derived from German) is syntactic. Word order matters… a lot. National / Socialist / German / Workers / Party. This was a Nationalist group of Socialists, who were German. They were economically and structurally on the way way way economic Left (‘socialism only for the German people’?…dude, that’s called *socialism*, which is Leftist!).
Ethnically they were Right-Nationalist. Hence their disldain of Poles, Slavs, French, and Jews. So in the ways that matter most to the Left…they were well to the Left. Not the Right. Left-Fascism is what every well-read reasonable historian calls them. The Nazis went after the German Communists because they were the competition! They were not Nationalist ENOUGH for the NASDAP.
The rest—you betray having not read the original sources….at ALL. Back to school. You don’t have to be right-wing to be nationalist, though Hitler’s nationalism WAS rightist. But his ECONOMIC system of Fascism is absolutely non-conservative/right as we would now understand the terms. Muddled argument=bad thinking. Make distinctions for clarity. You sound like you’re saying the Republicans are Nazis.
If only the Republicans could be so ruthlessly efficient in their ‘conservatism’….
I read every single article and comment here. And yours are good! But this one is off the rails wrong in significant ways.
The word “kulak” means “landlord.” (((Bolshevik))) propagandists depicted every rural Ukrainian family with a tiny hut and a single cow as greedy landlords who were obstructing the Revolution by their reluctance to turn over their cattle and all their crops to the All-Russian Executive Committee like good little Marxist-Leninists.
The tone of the propaganda also had ethnic and religious overtones. Russians and Ukrainians are of distinctly different racial stock, speak different languages, and have never liked one another much–to put it mildly. Prior to the Revolution the Ukrainian aristocracy and middle class, back when it was the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, were mostly Catholic rather than Orthodox. The poor independent farmers getting all their food confiscated at bayonet point generally weren’t, but (((the Tribe))) have never been ones to let facts get in their way.
Incidentally, I’m still astounded that so many of the Code Pink types are so vocal in their support of the Ukrainians, a White Christian people fighting for blood and soil. Thirty years ago more than a few of the exact same people with Ukrainian flags in their Twitter handles were telling us that the USSR was a legitimate sovereign state that wasn’t really using force to crush “illegal” secession movements, even though those “neonazis” had it coming. “Just like Abraham Lincoln,” one of them told me in 1991, even as Soviet troops were driving tanks over the bodies of pro-independence protesters in the streets of Kaunas and Tblisi. The West, they insisted, should refrain from putting any kind of pressure on the poor misunderstood Russians, who just wanted peace and had every moral right do pretty much anything they wanted to their neighbors because they had “saved the world from Hitler.” It boggles my wee tiny childlike mind, it does.
Hell, Napoleon came into power with minimal support (but, more importantly, minimal opposition). He Who Must Not Be Named came into power with a minority backing and the powers that were dismissed him as a flash in the pan. Radicalizing normies is not just difficult, it’s pretty much unnecessary because they care far more about what they have than what the have-nots don’t have. As long as you can placate normies better than you’re opponents, taking power doesn’t require near the backing most would assume.
To your references to the Bolsheviks and the Confederacy, I add our Founding Fathers and Germany’s National Socialists.
The successful strategy for secession or revolution seems to be vanguardism, a disciplined group of capable radicals. Normie just gets out of their way and accepts what follows.
2 weeks to flatten the curve.
Stay home, stay safe!
Follow the science.
Wear a mask.
Take the jab.
Most fair and open election ever.
“Normie just gets out of their way and accepts what follows.”
Seems like there’s some kind of universal Pareto principle baked into reality.
The unreachable “Normie” provides stability to the system. Imagine if “Joe Six Pack” was prone to start trouble or even think for himself. We would be in a constant state of chaos and a lot of the important stuff just wouldn’t get done. They keep the water flowing, the lights on, highways and bridges repaired, keeping all the machines running and the food and goods moving along the supply chain. Above all, “Normie” wants stability. He wants his pickup truck, his wife, his home, his kids, his job and the occasional BBQ. As long as he has these things, or at least access to them, he will keep his head down and his mouth closed.
The Left wants to make his pickup unaffordable, faulty and inconvenient.
The Left wants to turn his wife into a raving harridan who makes his domestic life a living hell.
The Left wants to convert his children into deranged deviants and confiscate them if he objects.
The Left wants to evict him from his home and enclose him in a rental property surrounded by the very Hutus he wishes to avoid.
The Left wants to “globalize” his job–or give it to a stupid, incompetent negro–and force him into something menial.
The Left wants to compose his brisket of crickets.
…and for the coup de gras:
The left wants you to say thank you very much, may I have another.
Nice timing and rhythm. The capstone: “The Left wants to compose his brisket of crickets,” laugh out loud funny. But so sadly true.
BTW, what dolt gave this a Thumbs Down?
You are right that the normie just wants to live his life and be left alone. However, we are lucky that the left and their masters have no intention of leaving the normie alone.
That is what makes the fight over degeneracy and anti white hate in schools interesting. The left is flagrantly trying to destroy normie’s kids and get them to hate their normie parents. While it is easy for many whites to carefully ignore the impact of immigration (at least if they live in white areas) and black crime, it is harder to ignore what happens with your kids.
Worth noting that the fight over schools, like the one over abortion, is mainly led by women. Normie men might post a complaint or go out and buy a gun but won’t do anything. It has been left to the women to fight back.
CNBC is now openly orgasming over Chinese Covid Communism:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-cnbcs-jim-cramer-goes-bizarre-pro-china-covid-lockdown-vaccine-propaganda-rant
“It’s so great that all the Covid controls allow the state to track people so easily.”
I can’t help but believe there is some kabuki going on between D.C. and Beijing. Apparently the CIA/WEF installed a Beijing puppet in Sao Paulo last night. This certainly contradicts the rhetoric that indicates D.C. hostility toward China.
There’s much going on in this regard we do not see and there may in fact be a schism in the Regime over it.
It just to set up a new cold war. As fake as the last.
I am surprised people do not recognize orwell’s observations of the permanent opposition’s usefulness within that structure.
“I am surprised people do not recognize Orwell’s observations of the permanent opposition’s usefulness within that structure.”
This x 1000. St. Eric Blair.
Jack-
I very much agree.
Putin backing down on the grain ships is another tell this is all just so much pro wrestling.
I think Tom Luongo’s take that the JPow Fed is secretly nationalist is pure copium.
Re JPow: I don’t recall CEO’s ever being as pushy about rates. If he actually slows the free money train, there is something afoot with him. Thus far he has just tapped the brakes.
Well, I do agree with Greg Mannarino’s point the central banks are using interest rates as a macguffin to distract from the exponential growth in the money supply that is leading to a fiat currency crisis.
Luongo seems like a fake to me.
I have caught him on other people’s podcasts and he sounds like a fraud.
Trumpton-
I think Luongo’s heart is in the right place.
I also think he’s completely kidding himself that the Fed doesn’t already have backroom deals, made at conferences and country clubs, in place with Davos.
I think that Chase CEO Jaime Dimon’s recent comment about investors not caring about ESG was merely another vector of pressure release for the plebes.
Let’s see if Putin gets what he wanted. I understand the West succeeded in stopping Russian exports despite the agreement by threats to the shippers: Insurance cancellation, legal action against companies etc. His “withdrawal” was aimed as much at stopping that and enabling Russian grain and fertilizer exports as it was security concerns.
Let’s see where we are om a few weeks (if there’s any Ukraine left then).
Sterling writing, Z. I especially liked:
“A hundred or so houses makes his development, always named after what was destroyed to build it”
So true.
I don’t put much stock in opinion polls given their purpose isn’t to gauge sentiment but to shape it, but the right/wrong track results have been consistently horrible for years. A subset of Normies who have self-radicalized have done so in response to losing their livelihoods over the Covid farce and to a lesser degree the Floyd riots. As I responded to someone above, this may be the motive behind the Establishment’s call for a Covid overreaction armistice. The anti-fragile ones among them have the potential to go kinetic, and very well may be dangerous enough to be counter-productive. Let’s list them as High Wrong Track. Most Normies are Low Wrong Track, but there are many balls in the air that could move them into a less potentially explosive High Wrong Track mode. Whether they take the next step in this direction depends on circumstances.
I cannot help but notice polling about the Ukraine war, for example, has all but disappeared. I’m singling that out because of the previous profusion of blue and yellow flags and sloganeering that paid tribute to the Ukrainians. If the Regime cannot keep Normies and Grillers onboard with a war effort for an extended period any longer, it speaks to the fragility of the Regime. Polling easily can be manipulated but not when opinion has shifted sufficiently in a direction contrary to the desired results.
I generally view Normie as a lost cause, but as things stand now a spark could set off a sufficient number to at least get an armistice on their terms on a select few items. Normie is conservative in the sense of personality and lifestyle, and a rational actor in that regard. If he gets angry, it is a watershed moment.
Normie isn’t a lost cause, he’s the wrong tool. Trying to get political power by appealing to normies is like trying to slice a cake with a light bulb. It’s a category error.
Political power is ultimately wielded by bureaucrats, particularly the heads of regulatory agencies; controlling them is a function of bribery. If you want to make political changes, at least in the current state, you need to focus on altering the upper management of federal and state bureaucracies. Haranguing normie doesn’t accomplish that. Getting, for example, “Dr.” Fauci fired does. If your political affiliations don’t have the clout to make the request (let alone have it honored), you’re wasting your time.
Hrmmmmmmm.
I know these guys don’t play well to dissidents… but even stopped clocks are right twice a day. I am watching that Jordan Peterson podcast on OyTube with Newt Gingrich and they make similar points to Z’s. I liked Reagan, Trump, and Newt… and under better circumstances, in a better world, such men would still be relevant.
Normie is starting to catch on. He can’t grill anymore because Greta Toonberg says it is harmful to the environMINT, and some other jew wants him to eat bugs. Sportzball is now run by killer apes and jews. When he goes to work, the HR fatties, vibrants, and the other flunkies make his life miserable. Twitter and Bookface are chitlib mine fields. (I don’t get that Twitter current thing at all – why would anyone want to go back? The people running it today are the same pustules, for the most part, that always ran it. It’s a great place to be if you are an idiot that wants to get doxxed or cancelled. Blab is First Amendment all the way, the lunatics and geniuses are all entertaining – and the rude jokes are worth the trip alone! But… like battered wives… so many dissidents desperately want to get back on Twitter…? It’s lunacy!)
Blab would be a great place for dissidents to gather, IMHO. They are the answer to Globohomo and the rest of us need to emulate their example.
Got off Blab after they got that guy in Pennsylvania arrested for posting that he hoped that Federal agents would die. Fediverse, if it’s allowed to exist, will be the future social media of dissidents; don’t have to worry about the admin turning you in to The Man when you are the admin.
Jordan Peterson will always have my respect for sacrificing his university job because he refused use the tranny pronouns that he was ordered to use. Respect.
Nonetheless, he has specifically said that his goal is to prevent the radicalization of young men. He also champions individuality over group consciousness, which in practical terms means that whites never organize.
The guys you mentioned want to preserve our current system at all costs. They want to drive over the cliff of white dispossession at the speed limit while the progressives want to floor it.
It reminds me of the Republicans that I knew in coastal California. They were willing to begrudgingly accept the left’s entire social program of homosexuality and enforced diversity but they just wanted that program to include low taxes.
Petersen… yeah, maybe. He is a classical liberal and always will be. Race realities are beyond him even though they are staring the unbiased scientific mind in the eye.
Newt? Far much less so. He is fully on board with a metric tonne of basic dissident thought. But he too is a man of his times. If he and Z were ever to sit together on a podcast, I would pay good money to watch it. A lot of current dissident thought is predicated on classical conservatism. Men like Newt still have a lot to contribute … IF you’re willing to listen to him, accept his limitations and keep him in perspective.
Peterson didn’t sacrifice anything. He was already raking in millions from the Wash Your Penis book, so quitting his university position had no effect on his well-being.
Right-wingers don’t sacrifice for the cause, they whine about being cancelled by the left and channel the sympathy they recieve to sell books or male enhancement vitamins. The closest thing the right ever had to self-sacrifice was The Unabomber and possibly Jesus.
I read half or so of the “12 rules…” Was there indeed a chapter on wash your penis?
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I think, ultimately, the barrier is the scale and the scope of the evil that must be confronted. I don’t think people have the courage to confront that the implications of the ideology and the actions being taken to implement it, are profoundly evil. They didn’t sign up for a heroic journey. They signed up for being a potato in a sack. To acknowledge that evil is to confront it. For once it is acknowledged, it must be dealt with. That requires giving up the meaningless and future less existence as a potato in a sack.
It is the youth who will act. For even if they have something to lose, they will have much more to gain. Our efforts are best spent helping young men form and develop the strength and wisdom from which to properly act than to try and shake Normie from the spell of the end zone dance.
“The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”
Everyone (not just normie) becomes radicalized when they’ve gone 3 days without a meal. And that’s what it takes to get the fat asses off the couch and do something rather than yak-yak-yak about doing something. High-minded parsing of sociological cohorts is fun for the PhD dissertation, but not really useful when people are starving and ready to fight for their next meal, whatever it takes. And the only words they will listen to are the ones that promise them more meals going forward. That is the reality of macro-scale motivation. And it’s wired in the genes.
Which is why the collapse is so important to implementing real change. It not only supplies the visceral motivation, but the fog of chaos enables definitive action to arise and make a difference. The Ukraine (and large parts of Europe) are about to undergo this change in motivation this winter. That will be your window into the future right here in River City.
We might be returning to a pre monogamy culture, where 20% of males have 80% of the women. There is revolutionary potential in this, the coming Incel Rebellion. The Chinese landlords had big harems, and the first thing Mao did he would chase the landlords off and marry the women off among the Red Army. The turmoil in Islamic countries is the same thing, lots of sexless males running around creating instability.
I don’t follow it that much, but I am occasionally shocked by the vehemence with which incels are demonized in the popular media. They must be afraid of something.
In a rational society, it would be recognized as a legitimate societal problem in need of addressing, instead of painting every sad sack incel as a disgusting weirdo who’s one Twitter post away from a mass shooting.
It is the women in Iran creating the instability just as it is in the States.
Because the same forces over there use the same techniques as over here.
Focus on the women and children (but i repeat myself) as the drivers of destabilization.
You can see that pattern used int he west very successfully.
I’ve been worried about Neo-Polygamy for years now.
{1-Man}/{1-Woman} monogamy is the defining biological characteristic of the White race.
To the best of my knowledge [of classical anthropology], no other race ever achieved anything even remotely resembling greater European monogamy.
The Frankfurt School is hell bent upon destroying White Christian monogamy, and replacing it instead with hyper-polygamist orientalistic harems of concubines [not all of which will necessarily even be biological females].
“The Frankfurt School is hell bent upon destroying White Christian monogamy,”
It has prevailed on that prong.
I didn’t look up the claim, but Steve Sailer had noted that the Chinese had been doing monogamy for thousands of years which was why (as he theorized) they were always so prone to hitting the Malthusian limit of their land .
Yeah, except that the Emperor having a thousand concubines in the Forbidden City [and several tens of thousands of eunuchs, castrated so as to prevent them from even possibly being able to impregnate the concubines] kinda lays waste to that particular theory.
There has been some speculation that the men of the Far North [the “Norsemen”] might have been practicing polygamy, and that that might be what caused the excess Norsemen to leave home, and become “Berserkers”, who murdered husbands & sons and kidnapped wives & daughters throughout much of coastal Europe [from Scotland all the way down to Italy].
But that’s just speculation – I don’t know that there is any firm archaeological evidence in favor of Norse polygamy, circa, say, 800 AD to 1200 AD.
A disturbingly large percentage of all mid-Asian men carry very similar [if not identical] Y-Chromosomes, and there’s a field of thought which holds that they all have a common ancestor, named “Genghis Khan”.
Wikipedia has an entire article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan
In 2003, the guesstimate was that Genghis Khan had at least 16 million MALE descendants [and God only knows how many female descendants].
except that the Emperor having a thousand concubines in the Forbidden City kinda lays waste to that particular theory
—
Not necessarily, they were pretty good a self-slaughter through organized (civil) warfare for quite some time too. There’s really nothing in present-day Chinese culture that suggests a longing for the “good old days of polygamy” the way there is with the Mormons which makes me suspect that it never extended beyond the dedicated brothels for the uber-wealthy.
The Frankfurt School has about as much power as the KKK. The powerful people subverting Western culture and civilization are postmodernists, not critical theorists.
(((Postmodernists))) and (((critical theorists))), eh? What could these groups possibly have in common? What could possibly connect these ideologies? I suppose it’s just one of those eternal mysteries.
It’s not either/or.
The guy with the Gadsen flag is the one you want to hand the flyer or send the podcast to.
Vegetius: Strongly disagree. The guy with the Gadsden flag is the same as the guy who begins comments with “We the People” or “We need to elect people who follow the Constitution.” I spend too much time scanning YT videos and comments – lots of how-tos/prepper/financial videos – and you’d think you were reading Breitbart or Ace of Spades comments. The usual “we shall not be divided” and “We must all pray for salvation” and “OMG I cannot convince my kids/parents/friends to prep so I’m buying for them and don’t forget my 3 dogs/cats on a special diet.”
I have no flags on my house and no bumper stickers on my car. The only time I was stupid enough to put a political sign in my yard was 2008. Gadsden flag types think voting out the school board will show ‘them’ that the voters are in charge, but remains convinced his kids’ teaches and textbooks are just fine.
Keep is secret, keep it safe, until the knives are out.
The knives never come out.
“The only time I was stupid enough to put a political sign in my yard was 2008.”
For me it was 2012. So embarrassing. It was after that I learned that voting just shuffles the order of the regime spokespeople. Do you want Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden or Gore/McCain/Obama/Trump? Would anything be different if every election of the last 50 years was flipped the other way? It would have had zero impact on the oligopoly running things behind the scenes.
I have no solution and will still vote next week, if for no other reason than to swap out the ugly actors pretending to run things, to a slightly less odious cast. I can’t quite buy into Zman’s theory that abstaining will undercut the legitimacy of the ruling class. They don’t care what the participation rate is. But either approach doesn’t change anything. Black pill, ugh.
Agree with you 3g4me. Was doing some training a coupe weeks ago with a pretty big group. Lotta Gadsden/WeThePeople types there. Take lunch, talk about stuff. Vote harder, guise.
Finally, I can’t take it: “Democracy can always be expected to produce exactly these results.”
“Hey, man. We’re a constitutional republic and don’t you forget it!”
“No, you live in an oligarchy run by sadists who tell you we have a democracy. You tell yourselves you live in a constitutional republic because you have to find a way to cope.”
“Who let this weirdo in?”
I despair.
Someone at Free Republic today linked to the following vidya:
“There Goes the Neighborhood”
4.1 MB
https://tinyurl.com/y9zr9kzb
That approach is something we can all adopt.
Low budget, low tech, humorous, ridicules all the correct people, barely noticeable effect on throughput [at 4.1MB, trivially easy to attach to an email or an iPh@g txt].
The voice work & the sound effects are the important thing; you only need the shiny sparkly graphics to catch the attention of the brain-dead NPCs.
We don’t need billions of dollars from George Soros to produce that sort of propagandizing entertainment.
We just need your time & your sweat equity & your sense of humor.
Plus an excellent voice and some silly goofy sound effects.
Anyone here chez Z – other than possibly any deaf or blind followers of Z, God bless their deaf or blind hearts – ANYONE here chez Z can contribute to that kind of samizdat comedy.
[And, heck, the deaf folk can work on the graphics, and the blind folk can work on the sound effects.]
Remember, TPTB are not scared of you attacking them physically [they’ve got an entire Praetorian Guard of oath-breaking pension-fellating Jordan v. The City of New London knuckleheaded traitors to defend their physical corpora].
What they’re terrified of is you LAUGHING at them.
Always remember that [pretty much by definition] the Kool Kidz do the laughing, and [again, pretty much by definition], the loserz provide the punchlines for the jokes.
OBLIGATORY POST-SCRIPT: When laughing at our fellow man, we must always keep in mind the warning of Matthew 5:22
http://www.bartleby.com/108/40/5.html#22
This is what makes humor very difficult for Christians.
Unlike the other tribes, we have to couch our jokes very carefully & responsibly & mercifully.
Very well put. It is always difficult for a Christian to balance the confrontation of evil with loving thy neighbor. Evil has no such constraints.
Col. 4:6 Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.
I’m not doing so well with that admonishment.
My dissident friend and I have spent the last year attempting to radicalize our normie friends, with whom we share considerable religious and social bonds. We thought the odds were good: all these guys attend a couple of parishes that probably put them on a watch list, send their kids to a couple private schools that also land them on a watch list, collect their tradwives and multiply like old-school Catholics. Trump supporters, all; in profound disagreement with the culture.
So, we – mostly my associate, tbh – did all the doings. Monthly lunches with the guys, some drinks, some cards, some firearms training. Planting seeds, man. “You know, we aren’t going to vote our way out of all this.” “The lunacy you are seeing is the only possible result of a democratic system.” Do you have any idea what Paul Revere was doing in the months before his famous ride?”
Complete failure. BTFO, as they say.
Normie Friend: Man those surgeons who do sex reassignment surgery on minors should be arrested!
Me: They should be hanging from lamp posts.
Normie Friend: Whoa! Hold on, pal. There’s a process.
Normie can’t be radicalized.
> Me: They should be hanging from lamp posts.
Gotten a few to bite their lips and keep silent with comments with that, which usually means “I agree, but am not willing to say it yet”. Whenever normie politics is discussed, the rule of thumb is to take it to the next level with a pithy line that will stick in their mind. My go-to is the “our children are going to be a hated minority” line. Strikes them with complete terror.
The reason your efforts fail is social proof. Your targets are surrounded by people they know, trust and who agree with the conditioning. Most likely, they talk about you and your buddy as the weirdos in their life they tolerate. In effect, your efforts serve to reinforce their conditioning.
This is why the first step for dissidents is in creating social groups. Imagine you and your buddy talking about some group you belong to around the normie friend. He will be curious and you tell him it is a social club for dissidents. No hard sell, just a casual explanation.
The next time you meet, you make another reference to it to see if he is still curious. If so, then maybe you ask if he wanted to check it out and see if he likes it. iIf not, then you know he is another potato in the sack.
Dissidents lack the social organizations to attract those spuds who might want to escape the bag.
Yep, it’s about creating an alternative and (very cautiously) letting those who wish to join come over to our side.
Planting seeds can only go so far. You have to offer an alternative – and exclude them from that alternative if they start trying to water it down.
I have to say that living in the belly of the beast, I’ve been stymied to create an alternative group. The DC area – even in the outer burbs – isn’t exactly fertile ground for the DR.
Citizen: “Planting seeds can only go so far. You have to offer an alternative – and exclude them from that alternative if they start trying to water it down.”
This. And this is also what will cause most to fail – that shying away from enforcing boundaries and limits and excluding people. That publicly inculcated American peculiarity on including everyone, on allowing everyone to have a say.
It’s like those people who constantly pick up strays (animals and people) in their lives. Their compassion constantly overpowers their common sense and self interest.
Offering an alternative is the rub. There is a chasm between saying they should be swinging from lamp posts and actually doing it. The Muslim approach of brutally striking and making examples of specific targets works well for people who don’t have anything to lose. Normie has a lot to lose.
This potato metaphor may have legs. Soon to be a meme?
Only among the Irish.
Also, potatoes with legs 😉 :
https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4099/4750262469_6ab3fa1554_b.jpg
If the house is on fire, do you really have the luxury of ample time to conduct grassroots organizing? Perhaps you succeed in forming a new dissident club, but then go outside, look around you, and notice that the neighborhood has burned down and bodies are strewn all over the place. You inherit wasteland a day late and a dollar short.
In that wasteland, the group is going to be *especially* important.
Back in the manosphere days there were attempts to actually do meetups that weren’t just “pay me to tell you to dress like a magician” seminars. The antifas and feminists were extremely aggressive about attacking these things at every opportunity to the point that you couldn’t announce the location until the day of, and even then by the end of the evening folks would be getting jumped as they left.
Nowadays, after the summer of St. Floyd, we know that these “leftist radicals” get their marching orders and organization from the regime. So there’s clearly a policy by the regime to prevent any sort of social organization that would potentially lead to the formation of any kind of counter-elite or legitimate dissident movement.
Remember they put this kind of pressure on a movement composed of sexually frustrated nerds being manipulated by charlatans. It was never going to turn into anything serious, but it still looked like a threat to the regime by simply disagreeing with the “respect women” catechism.
There is a process.
A process to the global communist world state wherein your total being is state property.
“Normie can’t be radicalized.” Here’s where I trot out the old NAXALT line. I get frustrated with some of my normie-con friends, but here and there, I have success.
Trump was a good jumping-off point, revealing that they don’t have to stick with mainstream GOP/Neocon thought. If they support Trump, there’s a chance to move them beyond MAGA-land onto our side of the river.
What is their opinion on the Ukraine war? There seems to be a fair number of people who fall into the category you are describing who are ok with dumping endless money into Ukraine and think Putin is a monster.
Barnard: Ukraine is a good dividing line. So was reaction to Covid. Just recall all the commenters here who found that people they would have sworn were lifelong, trusted ‘dissident’ friends turned their backs because of The Science.
Trump/Maga types are far too prone to gushingly support magic minorities like Walker in Georgia because Trump endorsed him. My friend who used to worship the Constitution no longer does – but she’s never met a conspiracy/outlier theory she didn’t instantly endorse (just texted something about a dream of a meteor).
Most people are idiots. Everyone grows old but very few actually grow up. The voter pool is middle school with beer bellies and grey hair. The myth that age equals wisdom is as pernicious as the idea the average normie will become aware.
“Trump/Maga types are far too prone to gushingly support magic minorities like Walker in Georgia because Trump endorsed him.”
It is a tough realization that Alinsky tactics, like using minorities against the Left, simply don’t work with people who have no principles, and who will break every rule they lay down for us if it helps them move the ball a yard further downfield. It is beyond frustrating to watch normies play “Lucy and the football” by expecting the Left to be consistent and fair.
Alinsky’s rules are solely for the “radical” children of the ruling class, operating in and *under* its favor, securing its posterity. He never said anything that’s of use to any real dissident.
Leftists don’t read him (or anyone). True believers always spotted him as a fake. You probably can’t find any left/lib/etc. under 60 who knows anything about him. His name lives on as a normie-con shibboleth.
DLS: Sent this to a friend the other week:
https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/227772062c25a04e.jpeg
You can’t overwhelm the commanding voice of the media.
Its a matter of authority representation. The media is the great and powerful Oz beamed into the 50inch TV 5 feet from their face. It is in the music and billboards that surround them in public.
It is repetitive social dopamine conditioning through the pocket moloch.
It is sensory immersion.
You are just some guy they know.
.The NPC brain chooses authority figures for message signals. This is the angle that requires working on.
Personal interaction is mostly ineffective.
I’m pretty certain Britain had this as well: the constant images of Chinese women eating bat soup played almost on loop to convince the NPC’s this was the source of the virus. It was blatant propaganda and worked. Over here, not sure about there, at the outset there were lots of analogies to the Spanish Flu outbreak. I think some almost jumped the gun but all that has been disappeared, of course.
The only was to deal with the propaganda organs are to silence them or to compete successfully with them. I’m not sure if or how that can be done since State force will be used to keep them going and paramount.
Donald Warren’s book about the Middle American Radical (MARs) is the basis of Samuel Francis’ book “Revolution from the Middle.” It’s a small paperback and is a collection of essays from Francis’ “Principalities and Powers” column in Chronicles magazine from the early to mid-nineties. This little book sells for $3,500 right now on Amazon. Used copies are $500.
The appeal to MARs is the blueprint used for Pat Buchanan’s run for president, when he and Francis spent a lot of time together talking strategy. Pat used to mention “peasants with pitchforks” a lot back then.
Even though Rush Limbaugh ignored Sam Francis when Sam was alive, Rush did read one of his pieces when Trump was running for president, noting that Sam’s strategy of appealing to Middle Americans is exactly what Trump was doing.
If only Rush would’ve publicized Sam’s work years earlier, but of course, Sam was kept out of mainstream conservative circles because of his crimethink on race and for his continuous criticism of the GOP, which he called the Stupid Party.
Rush Limbaugh revealed in one of his later shows that none of the people who should be punished such as Hillary Clinton would ever be punished and his purpose and the purpose of his show was to encourage Americans to vote our way out of this mess.
Rush as he was dying in some of his last shows began to bring up the name of Sam Francis.
Too late.
Rush Limbaugh was the high water mark of civic nationalism.
Something new is coming.
Wolf: And how’d that strategizing work out for Buchanan? And, so far as I know, Buchanan is still preaching the same thing he used to, still awaiting some mythical middle America to awaken.
3g4me: Did you miss the results of the 2016 election where Trump appealed to MARs?
For Buchanan, maybe it was too early. He did scare the shit out of the establishment, which went on an all-out demonization campaign to knock him out, especially after he won New Hampshire, right before the Arizona primary.
“The neighbor who reads old books and no longer has a cable sub is a normie with revolutionary potential.”
I’ve long thought that it’s not a firearms collection, public and paltry political donations, or wearing an “I voted” sticker every Election Day that would flag me as a very, very bad thinker.
It’s the well worn book collection that should raise alarms. (TheZman’s Essential knowledge link on the top a good place to start, if you dare)
Same here. I have an older, well-worn copy of “The seven pillars of wisdom” from our friend T.E. Lawrence. It sits in a book case in my living room and a few months ago the father of one of my daughters friends came over to pick her up. While he was waiting for her to collect her things, his eyes began taking note of what was in the case and made mention of the book. “You enjoy reading the classics?” he asked and I told him that it depends on what they are. I went on to add that I go out of my way to purchase classics that were printed before 1950, as anytime you see the words “revised edition” on line means that the reason why you want the book in the first place has been edited out, or changed.
His eyebrows shot up, “Really?” he asked, I told him of this group called The Jolly Roger Society that crusades against rewriting existing literature and he wondered out loud why someone would do such a thing. “Indeed. Why would someone do something like that?” I could see the gears working and he again asked what the name of the society was, so a seed was planted there. Whether or not something blossoms is another story, for all I know this guy went and tried to sandbag the group.
Re The Jolly Roger Society you mentioned–I’m not really finding it on Swisscows. https://thejollysociety.com/ perhaps?
On that topic, and to toot my own horn a bit, time permitting I’ve been looking for classics to read (note I work full time and have 3 young boys, so not much me time!)
I finally got through War and Peace after over a year. Looking for a next book, the opportunity arose in that my 5th grader had to pick a 200+ page book to read and write a report. As we discussed what to read, it dawned on me that “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” would be a great read for both of us. I recalled reading it when I was about the same age, and I figured the boy would be into it since he was familiar with “Tom Sawyer Island” at Disney (yes, I know).
So we are both reading it together and discussing it as we go. I of course made sure to procure unabridged, unrevised editions.
And now we are set up to eventually read the sequel together too.
“The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik van Loon. Short chapters and has hand drawn illustrations. Written for gradeschoolers 100 years ago.
Substantially better than my son’s current AP European History textbook.
Unfortunately, nothing short of an existential black swan event that upends everything is going to change the current trajectory. It could happen as it seems there all sorts of things that could go dramatically wrong, although it certainly wouldn’t make for happy times. As Z mentioned, most are too comfortable in their lives to even dream about upsetting the proverbial apple cart.
One of the biggest compensations, should it come to pass, would be the punishment those who have promoted and allowed the civilizational destruction of our societies, cultures and morality throughout the west.
One positive development is there is still a furious contingent of the population that has not forgotten the lockdowns, and still wants blood. It has the properties of an old blood feud now, which is far different than the usual pattern of getting an outrage of the day then forgetting it next week. It’s a slow burning fuel smart people can use.
A notable post over at Zerohedge on the reaction against the Atlantic Magazine plea for amnesty for all of the catastrophically bad, even hateful crap from the Covidians – “Hey, we were all just thrown off a bit, so let’s just get over it, mkay?” Nope, not a chance.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/you-murderous-hypocrites-outrage-ensues-after-atlantic-suggests-amnesty-pandemic
Well worth a read. Open the video links, check out the white-hot hostility to the effrontery of this plea in the comments under these videos. Nope, after all of the damage, after all of the compelled compliance with the wishes of evil dictatorial fiats hyper-empowered by you boot-licking Covidians, you don’t get to just skate. So, yeah, grist for the mill.
Supplementary view: Oster is a sacrificial lamb, taking one for their team. Her article is a lightening rod to attract attention one way and to divert it away from other issues like that Red Tsunami, Hunter, etc.
Jersey: Saw mention of that odious Atlantic piece at Western Rifle Shooters first, before Zerohedge picked it up, so kudos to them. Yes, those that suffered under the lockdowns/masks/forcedvax represent more fertile soil than the Trumptards. There may be some intersection on the Venn Diagram but the overlap can be quite narrow.
BTW, 3g4me, I want to thank you for calling my attention to the Western Rifle Shooters
site. I visit it every day now, learning new things with every pass.
Respect,
JJ
I’ve noticed this as well, Chet. It may be the reason behind the recent Establishment calls for a Covid overreaction armistice, which reeks of hubris. There is a substantial portion of the populace who want payback. It frightens even me to consider the tens of thousands of anti-fragile people who lost their livelihoods and have nothing to lose. Any of us could be at the wrong place at the right time when one of them goes kinetic. You can add to the Covid fury a lot of seething rage over the Floyd riots although it isn’t as pervasive.
But nothing will come of this. The Atlantic article will fade, no one will be fired, and the five minutes of hate will pass. Articles like The Atlantic serve to make normie think they are winning, just like the election. The hotter the burn the shorter the length.
I have to disagree, Eloi. There is a substantial number of very angry people who suffered losses. That’s a small subset, for certain, but a potentially fertile one (and perhaps a dangerous and counter-productive one). The vast majority of Normies will do as you wrote but this subset is real and not going away.
Yes, ironically, the material uplifting of the peasant has made our rulers more powerful. The peasant has something to lose.
Revolutions are started by the upper middle class, which, today, has more to lose than at any other time in history. Hard to radicalize someone so comfortable.
But it is happening, albeit slowly. Getting berated at work and in the media takes it toll. Also, our rulers are inept and thus are grinding down the system. These two forces will erode the moral and physical underpinning of the system over time.
Even though our normal, everyday friends and neighbors aren’t hitting the streets yet, there have been a lot of recent protests in a short period of time. The yellow vests in France, Jan 6, truckers in Canada, farmers in the Netherlands, and now election protestors in Brazil.
What happens if the current talk about diesel fuel running short is true?
The yellow vests were disbanded and beaten, the Jan 6 were locked up, the trucker had their assets seized, the farmer were roundly ignored, and the protests in Brazil are simply the nonsense that occurs all the time in that toilet bowl.
My point isn’t that the protests have had success, but that there’s growing unrest, which might escalate, causing normie to get off the couch.
Trucker protests had a huge impact in Canada. The fallout is still continuing today as the government is now testifying about why they used the “emergency act”.
They got crushed at the end but only after achieving what they needed to, which was an end to most provincial mandates, and more importantly, letting everyone know they aren’t alone in how they feel. They undid years of COVID conditioning.
Citizen: The trick is getting that slow burning anger channeled into a productive alternative direction. Prime example – the Sailer commenter Physicist who always trumpets his scientific credentials and patents and who considers his oriental wife and hapa children the quintessential Americans. Apparently his genius children didn’t get admitted to the university of their choice – IQ/race/legacy credentials notwithstanding.
His comments are now angrier against the woke but equally passionate about civnattery and libertardianism versus eeevil kommies.
Someone who miscegenates can never be converted, their only “dissident” option is going to be clutching the constitution like a security blanket. A true ethno-nationalist society wouldn’t permit little Ping Pong to grade-grub his way into a position of authority and privilege over whites, so the only thing daddy can say is “muh bill of rights”.
“The 19th century French peasant had the stability of his environment. He stood where his ancestors stood. The modern peasant stands wherever he is told.”
This is the best rhetorical line in this solid piece. And it makes a profound but unsettling point. Namely, that much of what we consider(ed) the glories of American societal life—its mobility, its liberation from inherited forms, e.g.—may in retrospect have been grave errors. Once the “capital” of elder tradition has been spent, devalued, ridiculed, the dehumanizing effects of rootlessness become apparent, and unbearable.
The “modern” idea that parents live out their elder years far distant from their children, that people abandon and never revisit the buried bones of their ancestors, would be seen in other times (and maybe will be again) as grossly unnatural and contrary to human flourishing.
What is seen as “liberation” or “independence” turns out, in practice, to be a way to atomize, isolate, and thus control the individual. “Stand where you’re told,” indeed.
Yes, but you can now consoom product at record rates, far exceeding medieval kings. Just a few taps or clicks and product is promptly delivered to your pods. Worth it, right?
I don’t post fanboy comments often Mr. Z, but this article was excellent! Insightful! A way of looking at things I had not considered.
This analogy is a good one, but no analogy is perfect, and this one breaks down when you realize that both the guy with the Gadsden flag and the guy reading old books (hopefully) have kids, meaning those kids have to be educated. Do they send the kids to the schools? Then (like a normie I know) they will learn about the teacher who noticed a girl pretending to be a cat during recess, and brought in a litterbox the next day and told the girl she was a furry. Potato or potential revolutionary is going to have the same deep limbic evolutionary response to such attacks on their children.
Does the potato or potential revolutionary decide to homeschool their child? Then they’re already at war with the system, whether or not they want to be or know they are. They’ll quickly see the chasm between their healthy child and the unhealthy children going to the brick and mortar mills and will realize they cannot return to the fold.
Also, our elite is way more detached from reality than even the Ancien Regime. If Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal quote is true, at least she understood that both cake and bread had to come from somewhere. Our current rulers are trying to make it illegal to farm (especially in Europe) and making war on the international supply chain that allows us to eat three meals a day. The Greens in Germany—in response to Germans trying to heat their houses with firewood—have said that wood will also produce too much carbon dioxide because the forests aren’t being replenished at a sustainable rate. In other words, the message coming from the top is: Die, Starve. Even the Society for Voluntary Extinction doesn’t go that far; they just say don’t have children. If the rabble don’t revolt and Annalena Baerbock doesn’t meet the National Razor soon, then the German spirit is truly and totally dead. Actually, I take that back: the Germans had decapitation, not the guillotine, when they had capital punishment. But her head on a pike outside Brandenburg Tor would be a beautiful sight.
> Potato or potential revolutionary is going to have the same deep limbic evolutionary response to such attacks on their children.
One of my old conservative friends explained that his daughter one day came home and told him she thought she was trans. This was after another girl in the school came out as bi and her parents had a meltdown. Instead of at least explaining the deranged mindset of the people trying to indoctrinate her, he more or less shrugged and said that’s the way of things now, as much as he disagreed. Luckily she dropped it later.
The truth is he is a doctor in the area, and was afraid any pushback would cost him his status with fellow doctors. Most parents will sacrifice their kids to avoid social ostracization, double so if they have a left-leaning spouse who can take them to the woodshed for social points.
Parents will back a counter-elite when it is sufficiently safe, they will not risk going to jail though.
Chet: Very sad and very true. One of my husband’s coworkers has had the same thing happen – and daughter hasn’t dropped it. The Average Joe will sacrifice his children before he challenges the status quo. And his wife will be quick to lead the parade of being a trans parent. She’ll revel in the social status.
I can’t stand to watch TV anymore, I could take the poor quality of football today but I cannot stomach the commercials, I read more now days, maybe not always old books but articles and books non the less.
I still have sympathy for normie and his condition but I hold out little hope that he will do anything but vote, grill, and watch sportsball.
My TV sports consumption was already way down, but the final push to stop watching was having a child not wanting our kids to see the degenerate commercials they run on TV. We have very much limited what our young kids have watched for children’s programming too. Most of those shows have worked in globohomo propaganda into them now.
Throw the TV out its a poison. As with all poisons even small amounts tend to build up over time.
Try reading out as a family in the evenings. Its surprisingly enjoyable and the kids like the engagement.
Once you start, you also realize many older fiction books were written in a way that the language was structured around reading aloud in many cases.
I seldom get the chance to read out loud to others, but sometimes I do it just for my own enjoyment and benefit.
You are spot on in understanding that much, mostly older, literature was composed with the shared experience in mind of public, or family reading aloud.
Poetry in particular benefits from vocalization, and as someone who has a substantial musical background, this draws upon my appreciation for the rhythmical/metrical element, not to mention the music of the word choices themselves. Ezra Pound was right to point to the musical confluence of Provençal poetry and musical performance by the troubadours and jongleurs, and its profound influence on later Western European poesy.
(That being said, the author, Robert Briffault, made a solid case in his book, The Troubadours, that there was a substantial influence on the troubadours from the Arabic Zajal poetic tradition in Moorish Iberia, both in terms of subject matter, as well as in poetic forms. Interesting book, which relates the high art of southern France to contemporary cultural developments and events, particularly the devastating impact of the Albigensian Crusade on that culture zone.)
Chaucer in its original Middle English, after some effort invested in learning the different rules for pronunciation and sentence structures, is a wonderful experience to try to capture. It doesn’t hurt to have some German when it comes to comprehension and grammatical forms, as there are numerous cognates, some of which have fallen out of usage in more recent English.
A personal favorite of mine is the opening 30 some lines of John Keats’ poem, Endymion Book 1. It fairly begs to be intoned…
https://poets.org/poem/endymion-book-i-thing-beauty-joy-ever
So much beauty, so little time are we each alloted in which to glory in it; and now, all of our Western cultural legacy, the outpourings of our peoples’ noblest spirits, is under threat of extinguishment.
So it is well established now that normie is not the secret ingredient for revolution, but then who or what is? The suburban white male will hop on the train to revolution if they have the potential, but who or what is the force that drives and creates it?
Putin sends money, guns, and advisors to foment revolution. Not kidding.
Accept allies wherever you find them. We may need them all one day.
Amen. We need at this time to be expansive, not subtractive. Look at the disagreements within this group, yet we come back everyday to read and discuss and the goals remain the same. It can be done.