950 words
German translation here
What should White Nationalists expect from our leaders on the question of violence? I am writing this not as a leader, or a would-be leader, but as someone who would like to see some honest and credible leadership in the White Nationalist movement.
(1) The Illegitimate Question of Violence
In my previous article on this topic, I argued that real leadership on this issue requires intellectual honesty, political realism, and the adoption of a no kooks policy.
We will never attract intelligent and accomplished people to our cause if we expose them and their work to destruction by coddling kooks who might melt down and then go over to the enemy or simply go on a killing spree.
Here I want to argue that we should also expect moral strength and certainty from our leaders.
The recent discussions of violence have been provoked by the wholly manufactured attempt to link Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner to American Renaissance, followed by attempts—based upon no evidence whatsoever—to link Harold Covington’s Northwest Front to the bomb placed along the MLK Day parade route in Spokane, Washington (a bomb that was safely defused).
Jared Taylor’s response to the attack on American Renaissance was entirely appropriate. He pointed out that it had no basis in fact and that the characterizations of American Renaissance were incorrect. It was also appropriate for Harold Covington to respond to the attempts to smear him.
But I do not think it is appropriate for other White Nationalists to respond to such smears by protesting their own innocence and posting legalistic disclaimers of violence on their websites.
When people in our movement are falsely smeared as linked to terrorism, our first instinct should be to defend those who are attacked by pointing out the speciousness or groundlessness of the claims and the blatant anti-white bias in the media and law enforcement.
If, however, one’s first instinct is to say “I am against all violence,” that smacks of throwing the accused under the bus and covering one’s own ass. Protesting your innocence when you have not been accused of anything also smacks of a guilty conscience, which subtly concedes the legitimacy of the attack. That’s not leadership.
Rather than getting defensive, leaders should counter-attack.
One should never allow the enemy to control how an event is framed. If you allow the question “Do White Nationalists advocate violence?” to be posed by the enemy, it does not matter what your answer is. We lose either way.
The proper response is to change the question, to reframe the issue, and to put the enemy on trial: “Why do the media and law enforcement have a bias against racially conscious white people, such that they will run unsubstantiated smears linking us to violence committed by leftists like Loughner or unknown parties like the Spokane bomber?”
Anything less smacks of moral weakness and uncertainty.
(2) The Legitimate Question of Violence
The issue is complicated by the fact that violence is a legitimate topic for political theory and strategy, no matter who raises the question. But in the context of a hostile society, we should be the ones who raise the question and determine the parameters of debate, not axe-grinding middlebrow media demagogues.
As I see it, politics is about power, and power always reduces to violence or the credible threat of violence. Therefore, no credible political movement can renounce violence, for the renunciation of violence is tantamount to the renunciation of politics itself.
This is true even if one aspires merely to participate in a political system that seeks to govern force with law and provides legal procedures like election or impeachment to challenge and replace people in power. The law may provide for the orderly transfer of power, but what ensures that the people in power will respect the law rather than void elections they do not like and tear up constitutions they find too restrictive? Ultimately, it is fear of legal or extralegal retribution, i.e., violence.
There is, however, a politically realistic and intellectually honest argument against violence by White Nationalists. Yes, politics is about power, and power reduces to violence or the threat thereof. But what if it is too early for politics? Specifically, what if it is too late to reform the system and too early to replace it?
Then White Nationalists need to focus on metapolitics, specifically (1) the intellectual development and cultural propagation of our worldview and (2) building a White Nationalist community—a community that is wealthy, powerful, resilient, and dedicated to the perfection and empowerment of its members; a community that can aspire to be the foundation of a future White Republic.
This approach is valid even if the present system could be expected to remain strong for the foreseeable future. In that case, our community would simply have to become very big and very strong to mount a political challenge to the system.
But fortunately there is every reason to believe that the system is in steep and irreversible decline. Honestly, is there anything that White Nationalists could do to destroy the system better than its currents masters?
Well, I am sure that someone out there could think of something. But I am not sure I want to hasten the end of the United States. My greatest fear is that the system will collapse too soon, long before our community is powerful enough to create a white homeland.
We are few, scattered, voiceless, and powerless. The system is vast and powerful, but it is destroying itself. Time may be short, e.g., we may have only a few decades. So we need to focus our time, energy, and resources not on destroying the system but on creating an alternative.
18 comments
Good points Greg. The White western world is rotting from within, from many causes, as we well know. We are witnessing an historical process of self destruction playing out in slow motion, but, at an ever more accelerating pace. It’s hard to say when, what or where the breaking point will be, (and this is something that we certainly discuss and speculate about), but as of now, we are woefully unprepared for it. Building a White ideological community and leadership cadre is currently the only alternative that we have. We do have revolutionary new tools now, like the Internet. One word, one sentence, one article, one book, one individual at a time is how this battle has to be fought at the present. Eventually an historical opportunity will transpire, and we can’t permit ourselves to be on the losing side of it.
My sister recently gave birth (to a very white baby), and she immediately ran into problems with predatory insurance and hospital billing companies. After paying a few odd thousand dollars out of pocket, she called me to discuss the matter. My advice: now that she has a cub, it’s time to act like a mama lioness. The lioness doesn’t think twice about ripping into her prey – she does it out of necessity. My sister had an attorney write a few letters threatening legal action, and the matter was rapidly settled.
The question is not one of violence or non-violence. The question is what kind of men and women we should be – predators or prey. Humans are naturally predatory, but we (esp. we Europeans) have been convinced otherwise. Predators kill out of necessity – not out of wantonness. It has nothing to do with action, and everything to do with attitude. The problematic ones are those with an identity conflict (prey clothed as predators or vice versa).
In The Social Contract, Robert Ardrey defines a few terms:
“Recourse to Webster’s Dictionary I normally regard as that dullest of devices occurring only when debate has exhausted all more stimulating plays and the players themselves are exhausted. Yet perhaps with a sigh we should begin with the dictionary and get done with it. In its distinction of meanings, Webster testifies that ‘aggressive implies the disposition to dominate, sometimes by indifference to others’ rights, but now, more often, by determined, forceful prosecution of one’s ends.’ And if we turn to ‘violent’ we shall find: ‘Moving, acting, or characterized by physical force, especially by extreme and sudden or by unjust or improper force.’ With a shade more ambiguity, Webster offers for the noun ‘aggression’ the definition: ‘A first or unprovoked attack, or act of hostility; also the practice of attack or encroachment.’
“Aggression, then, places emphasis on primary, unprovoked impulse, but leaves the question of force open. What is aggressive is the disposition to dominate, to seek one’s ends whether or not by forceful means; what is violent consists exclusively of those actions characterized by physical force. When Lorenz writes of aggression, he considers the innate (unprovoked) drive to dominate. . . .”
“In this inquiry I shall attempt to discriminate as clearly as possible among three categories of conflict: There is aggressiveness, arising from the competition of beings without which natural selection could not take place. There is violence, that form of aggressiveness which employs or effectively threatens the use of physical force. And there is war, that particular form of organized violence taking place between groups. ”
http://www.ditext.com/ardrey/8.html
I think that today we need to exercise the maximum of aggression (“the disposition to dominate, to seek one’s ends whether or not by forceful means”) and the minimum of violence (“the use of physical force”).
Consider the declining power of the BNP as a indication where the seeking of “the paste-jewel of middle-class respectability” (ht: Alex Linder).
http://vdare.com/gabb/110119_mill.htm
I think the NF would have been much more forthright in their policies than the BNP, and yet, the BNP seems to have gained little for all of their forswearing the more forthright positions, and policies, of the NF.
With that as a framework for the assertiveness versus aggressiveness range of dynamic responses, let’s look a bit more closely at the issue.
Greg Johnson wrote:
I think there is an alternative argument against the forthright advocacy of the use of violence.
With all respect, such discussions must be placed in the framework of legitimate elf-defense.
The advocacy of violence without such judicious framing opens one to the painful fact that there are far too many among us – particularly among the newly economically and politically dispossessed – who praise the injudicious use of force, and, remarkably, end up as the most ineffective among us, as residents of Federal Correctional Institutions.
I am not arguing against the legitimate use of force for self-defense, in the framework of the extant legal system.
I am arguing that unrestrained support of the idea of the use of violence, in the abstract, opens to doors to expanding that discussion, leading to incarceration.
Again, go to Edgar Steele’s website, and download the mp3 of “Let’s Get Small.” Also, download the transcript of the program.
See the wise and judicious framing of the issue of advocacy of violence, no matter how ephemeral, using the example of Matt Hale, and note how little evidence was needed to insure Hale spends the rest of his days surrounded by concrete – thick concrete, at that.
Dr. David Duke spoke most clearly about this. I quoted him elsewhere on this website, but, again, just to assist one and all, let me remind you that Dr. Duke advises one and all that when a man advocates the use of force – violence – immediately refute him, tell him you do not what he is talking about, and tell him if he continues, you will go to the police.
If he continues, Go To The Police.
That leads us to the larger lesson of Matt Hale.
It just might be that the focus of the law in this area will shift from “I did not do wrong” to “I did not do right.”
The legal burdens will shift FROM the State, to “prove our innocents,” TO us, to prove that we fulfilled what could become an affirmative duty.
To those who say this could not happen here, I ask you to consider where Matt Hale would be today, if he had followed to sagacious advice of Dr. Duke.
A word to the wise is sufficient.
Of course, I know that no one here is advocating the injudicious, unmeasured threat or use of force, but I see what might be a a clear, bright line slowly developing, which will only be seen by many when it is too late.
A useful formulation is that of Harold Covington, who advocates the legitimate use of force in self-defense, while not necessarily foregoing the idea that this may take the form of “violence,” to be used ONLY in a strictly legal manner, for the purposes of legitimate self-defense.
Greg Johnson continue:
That is the statement of painfully gained wisdom, and ties in with the commentary on the BNP I linked to.
By studying Ludovici, Nietzsche, and the writing of the leadership of the NSDAP Cultural Moment, we can see the outlines of the clear, bright lines that must be actively crossed for us to create of our lives the living foundations for those who are to come.
By being better men, we can build better relationships, better associations, and, in time, a much better world for our posterity.
Start where you are, and start with your self.
It’s a very good place to start!
As for the soft gelding of the BNP, remember:
We can learn from this.
“The proper response is to change the question, to reframe the issue, and to put the enemy on trial: “Why do the media and law enforcement have a bias against racially conscious white people, such that they will run unsubstantiated smears linking us to violence committed by leftists like Loughner or unknown parties like the Spokane bomber?””
Much too much. Don’t ask a question, it invites one of their snotty answers.
Just say, “You’re obviously mentally sick with hatred for white people, and you need psychological help.”
Or, “You just proved you are full of hate for white people.”
One further point tying the assertiveness/aggressiveness continuum to the idea of effectiveness in the furtherance of the metapolitical project.
Note that those who proclaimed themselves as “White Nationalists” and adopted the use of force to fulfill their ends – “The Order” comes to mind, as well as numerous inept stretwalkers – all came to less than glorious ends.
Remember that David Lane said if he had it to do over, he would have formed organizations, and communities, in the furtherance of the White Nationalist agenda – which was, pre-Covington, poorly defined.
That is a good part of the problem – we have always implicitly accepted the Opposition’s definitions of who we were, and what we should look like. All too many of us adopted the dress codes of certain groups with the NSDAP Cultural Moment, which Rockwell was the first to use, and the first to disavow, arguing they had met their purpose. The time had come to shift to the organic leadership models of dress and behavior – tools for effectiveness.
Let’s tie this into the metapolitical project, and the importance of effectiveness.
Every advocate and practitioner of violence in the service of aggression on our side has come to horrible ends. This track records – bitter failure – should serve as a reminder to all. They had, effectively, been co-opted by those who controlled the pictures they saw, and the words they heard – incessant, targeted “suggestions” worthy of Bernays himself.
Where we win is with better ideas, better Ideals, and a consistent message, consistently told over all media, carried forward into our lives.
The best way to defeat the opposition is to create the opposition, and control it.
Temporal politics shows this to be true with the Tea Party – from organic entity to manufactured tool.
Can we think of another example?
Look at the BNP – for some reason, many on our side seem to look at the BNP as a model for us to engage the status quo in a political party.
Questions:
(1) Could the BNP have been formed, in part, to neutralize the dynamic forces that led to the NF?
(2) Could the NF had succeeded if it had focused on itself as a metapolitical project?
(3) Could such attempts here critically endanger the metapolitical project?
Can the talk of “violence” that has developed carry within it the seed of our political neutralization, and potential destruction?
I mention this just because it can seem very tempting to speak of the inappropriate use of violence, and then, quite inadvertantly, shifting to the advocacy of violence, even when you think it is “covered under the First Amendment of the Constitution.”
There will always be someone trying to shift the focus from assertiveness to aggressiveness, and then from aggressivness to violence – inappropriate, foolish, and, incidentally, illegal.
We must never allow them the opportunity to define us to their satisfaction.
Again, think of all of those White Nationalists who took the bait, and engaged in the inappropriate – not to say illegal – use of “violence,” as defined by the courts before which they appeared.
What do they have to show for it?
How can we do better – much better?
We can learn from this.
By all means, WN’s should go on the offensive when the left launches their predictable and scurrilous attacks against us following acts of political violence. To declare that, aw shucks, we’re just a bunch of beer swilling, war eagling white chumps who watch sports and just happen to love our race but harbor no ill intent towards anyone, is totally lame.
The anti-white left resorts to spin and blaming the victims and so should we. When Omar Thornton murdered eight white people in cold blood, the media painted Thornton not as a murderous black bigot, but as an innocent man driven to violence by racist white co-workers.
Indeed, we must get more aggressive and employ the same tactics as the left in situations like these. This means when there’s an act of violence committed by a genuine white racialist we blame the multicultural paradigm and anti-white bigotry that is so prevalent in America. We use the incident as an opportunity to drive home the point that America is becoming so inhospitable to the average white person that violence is the only way some people can deal with the prospect of dispossession.
Mr. Dithers:
You observed:
In reply, I can only observe that we should first deal with the issue of white “dispossession” – actually, White Genocide – by asking what would a much better country look like, for us, as a Homeland for our racial kinsmen.
Moving purposefully in the direction of a better future for us and, specifically, our prosperity, is a project -a metapolitical project – worthy of us, at our best.
An important distinction to remember is this:
Your solution is reactive.
THE solution is proactive.
Rather than wait – helplessly – for Bad Things to happen, and then try to use them as propaganda opportunities, how much better to create a place where those Bad Things could not happen, because the bad people would not be there?
The use of violence, the indiscrimate and inappropriate use of force, is usually a response of the impotence of the violent person; seeing themselves as helpless in the face of worngdoing, they gain power – the illusion of power – for one brief, violent moment. They are then neutralized by the State, one way or another, as the State enforces its monopoly on the use of force within its boundaries.
Please reread that last sentence, and think of Matt Hale, or several others we both could name.
To REACT with the inappropriate use of force is the trap set before us by our enemies, who are waiting for us to step into their framing of a situation, to our permanent detriment.
We must adopt the long view of events; we must develop a metapolitical focus.
The absence of this helps to explain why Pierce was at his best when he addressed metapolitical issues, and at his worst when his relationship with The Order compromised his effectiveness.
Remember, those who advocate the inappropriate use of force, the words of David Lane, who said if he had it to do over, he would have formed White organizations, and White mutual aid and support networks.
In time, of course, particularly with Robert Mathews, he could have led formation of a political counterweight to the status quo, and even, in time, a new racial Homeland. I suspect he would have been the second to support the Northwest Republic, following Covington’s example.
I keep returning to Harold Covington because he recognizes that one solution – one metasolution, if you will – encompassess all workable solutions to all of the problems our race faces, a solution that can be created by people like Robert Mathews, acting like people named Mahatma Ghandi.
Ghandi, as the living embodiment of Ghandi’s Truth, overcame the amasssed power of the British Empire.
At all points he, and Robert Mathews, were moved by one certainty:
We’re Going To WIN.
We can learn from that.
I never advocated the inappropriate use of force or reckless violence. My point is that we cannot control the actions of others and, on rare occasions, one from our ranks may violently lash out owing to an overwhelming sense of frustration and hopelessness.
When this happens we must be ready and willing to go on the attack and place blame on this dirty rotten, anti-white system we languish under. We don’t have land of our own yet, and until we do we must adapt ourselves to living behind enemy lines in what used to be our country.
In further reply to Mr. Dithers:
You wrote:
In reply:
I think I see a clear, bright line between the metapolitical project’s possible response to the situation you describe, and yours, which resembles a classic Leftist response.
The people on our side who act out inappropriately, even violently, have accomplished nothing for us, save disrepute. Even when they have adopted the form of political revolutionaries, they always had the substance of ineptitude, and retreat to the forms that served us yesterday, and are not remotely applicable to today.
When you blame someone for your shortcomings, you are giving them the power – the effectiveness – that is rightfully yours. This immaturity is appropriate in the child, and very misplaced in the adult.
What we see in this case is not maturity, but a revolt against maturity, something like adolescent oppositional defiance, with none of the redeeming promise the adolescent offers.
Look at the examples of violence that those who claim to adopt our philosophy have used. Such people are more of a threat to themselves than they are to others, but are usually reduced to ineffective signage, and impotent actions.
They are not feared, they are not respected; sadly, they are mocked and scorned, and rightfully so.
How much better if they took the feelings of helplessness that are the foundation of their anger, and, transforming the heat of anger into the light of Insight, transformed them into tools of effectiveness, leading by example and creating a better life for themselves, and defining that life as the living foundation of a new nation, today, and a better world, in time?
Much better, indeed.
We can learn from this.
Bob Mathews was advocating the Northwest as a White bastion in 1982. If you are from the western US, it makes some sense.
Covington didn’t start advocating a “Northwest Republic” until after he lost Williams v. Covington in 1998 and then had to leave North Carolina to avoid being jailed for contempt of court. Until then Covington was advocating the Carolinas as a White homeland.
So you see, Covington is a latecomer to the Northwest migration idea and he only adopted it because it fit his personal circumstances. If your personal circumstances are different (if you are not a fugitive from justice in your native state) then I suggest you adopt a different plan.
“… Pierce was … his worst when his relationship with The Order compromised his effectiveness.”
What in hell is that supposed to mean?
A SHORT answer, please.
Yes, brilliant. That is exactly right. It is a shame that America has become so hostile to white people that some of our more sensitive souls are driven to lash out at the system in senseless acts of wildcat violence. We need to get a summit together of responsible media people and get them to vow to stop this climate of anti-white hate.
I fail to see what is wrong with the position that says, “No we do not advocate violence, but we are prepared to use it if threatened and at the appropriate time and place.” Let our enemies know we have the means and the will to act, by any method required, and then move on to more immediate projects. Preparation is key.
WG’s comment is worthy of further comment.
WG wrote:
In reply, it seems this is the topic our enemies wish us to talk about, in the hope that someone may goad one (or more!) us into advocating the injudicious, inappropriate, and possibly illegal use of force.
You are right to observe “Preparation is key,” but that preparation must be in the legitimate use of self-defense.
Nothing stops us from doing this, in the one area where we do have control, our daily lives.
All manner of excellent exercise regimes are available, and really good martial arts training is avaialable, as well. I advocate this as part of recapturing the Vital Masculine, the mindset of conquest.
As to telling one and all of the elaborate fantasies all too many of us have of hoping for justice in the legal system following their use of force, all we do is reveal how ineffective we are in this area.
Look at the history of our streetwalkers, and how they ended up in emergency rooms, defending themselves to the law enforcement community.
Look at The Order – thoroughly infiltrated, and “tolerated” until they were decisively neutralized.
The metapolitical project will develop over lifetimes, and our lifetime would be well spent meeting our duties in the fulfillment of this singularly great purpose.
Don’t worry about the use of violence.
Focus on solid, safe, and very legal self-defense.
And, as always, remember the sound advice of Dr. David Duke on this issue.
Here are two quick hints you are being set up in such discussions.
One, Metzger’s Rule – if someone advocates you perform an act of violence, ask yourself why he wants you to do what he won’t do.
Two, act at all times as if cameras were on you, the recorders were running, and everything you did and said would be played back before a jury of your peers – at best, the people you went to high school with, and at worst, people who will have been exposed to weeks and months of mass media making your name synonymous with “hate-filled bigotry,” and a love of the indiscrimate use of force that would easily allow you to commit what you will -repeat – WILL – be accused of.
It is useful to acquaint yourself with the limits of lawful self-defense, before you are expensively instructed in this by the local state’s attorney.
After all, as you so astutely observed, “Preparation is key.” You DO have the business card of the attorney you will call when you are facing arrest, of course.
Consider well the examples of Matt Hale, The Order, and others we all know of.
We can learn from this.
I think you are forgetting the context here. We are talking about violence as a political tactic. Of course all individuals need to be prepared to defend themselves if attacked. But that is a different issue than violence as a political tactic undertaken by the White Nationalist movement.
“Former radical Goddess of Agriculture,” doesn’t the name say it all… Somebody who may have dabbled in the garden and then decided to pay someone to do it or just sell Monsanto genetic modified seeds…? So how long should residents of the Gulf be sprayed with toxic poisons, until they are all dead? Yes. Obviously, White American’s have given up. They should NEVER pick up their arms to prevent their children from cancer. Oh, and how high should food prices and other commodities increase, until we all starve? And how many more “free trade treaties” should be signed? How many more people should be put out of work? I suppose the “scientists” working overtime for $300/hr to claim the Gulf of Mexico water is safe are the real stand up professionals- the type WN should work overtime to attract!~ Real stand up professionals taking the world into their own hands (WOW) and making a real success of themselves. Or perhaps WN want to attract the type of troops over in Iraq who sprayed depleted uranium onto defenceless people now giving birth to atrocities(SEXY-POWER).
I would never support a movement that attracted or seeks actively to support this type of calibre of people. Kook? Kooks who hurt whom? What WN kook ever poisoned and destroyed so many? I do not have the time to go on but I could.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.