Counter-Currents
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Occupy Wall Street: Big Money & No Ideas
Greg Johnson
804 words
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Occupy Wall Street
I have been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement with great interest. The organizers, of course, want to “get money out of politics.” Ironically, they can get that message out because they have stacks of money behind them. George Soros, whose head would surely be on a pike if there were a genuine left wing revolution against the oligarchy, is one of Occupy Wall Street’s financial backers through his sponsorship of Adbusters.
I am convinced that Occupy Wall Street is not about changing the system. It is not about building up steam behind a concrete agenda for reform. Instead, it is about preserving the system by letting off steam that might otherwise be channeled into real change. Occupy Wall Street is taking a great deal of existing discontent with the oligarchy and then simply wasting it by diffusing it in unfocused activism.
The only way to focus popular discontent and activism toward real change is through a determinate ideology and concrete goals. But Occupy Wall Street has no real ideology at all. Just vague complaints about capitalism. And Occupy Wall Street has no concrete goals at all . . . beyond Occupying Wall Street and spawning copycat protests elsewhere.
John Robb has been making interesting observations about the “open source” nature of Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street has certain basic rules, one of which makes it difficult or impossible for anyone to take over the protests and use them to support any specific ideology or set of policies. This openness has allowed people to inject all sorts of competing ideologies into the protests. But it also prevents any particular ideology or leader from becoming dominant.
Given that the protestors are overwhelmingly white, Occupy Wall Street does provide opportunities for White Nationalists. There is nothing to prevent us from getting our ideas into the mix. However, there is no reason to think that our ideas will make any headway given the basic nature of the protests. A far more promising angle is for us to ponder how to frame an open-source protest movement that would serve our purposes rather than the establishment’s.
It all comes down to the power of ideas, the ability to fundamentally “frame” a debate, a movement, or a whole society and worldview. I am convinced that the framers of Occupy Wall Street know very well how shaky the present system is. They know how much popular discontent there is. And they are terrified that somebody will come along and “frame” the situation and focus the discontent in a way that leads to fundamental change. Thus they wish to diffuse this discontent harmlessly by throwing big money behind an intellectually vacuous and unfocused protest movement that is now degenerating (as planned) into anarcho-leftist street theater.
We New Rightists, of course, know how to frame the current economic crisis and focus popular discontent toward real change. We know who is responsible and what their game is. And we have a real alternative, a Third Way. Beyond left and right, socialism and capitalism, is nationalism. Whether you call it National Socialism or National Capitalism, Social Credit, Corporatism, Distributism, or Producer Capitalism versus Finance Capitalism, the Third Way boils down to this: we believe in private property broadly distributed, the moral rights of producers to the fruits of their labor, an end to usury and other forms of financial parasitism, and economic regulations to make sure that private interests (in low wages and open borders, for instance) do not conflict with the interest of the nation.
Imagine if we could get that message out there.
We have all the right ideas. For an overview, see Kerry Bolton’s articles on Counter-Currents. But we don’t have the money to get these ideas to our people.
Instead, we have the utterly grotesque spectacle of White Nationalists sending money to Ron Paul, a libertarian individualist whose only possible objection to Jewish media power would be if the checks did not clear. And Ron Paul is the best politician the system will tolerate.
Let’s get serious.
Greg Johnson
Editor
15 comments
This is a re-run of the manner by which the Establishment jacked up the New Left . My just-published book ‘Revolution from above’ (London: Arktos Media Ltd, 2011) fully documents how protest is co-opted or created by the ‘system’, in accordance with what Spengler observed: ‘there is no leftist movement that does not operate in the interests of Money…’
Nice piece Greg. I’m glad to hear you telling the truth about the pathetic Ron Paul movement.
Spot on Greg! Well put.
The above quote is another example of why we should support C-C; it dispels the mass stupidity among us and promotes ideas of actual substance.
This isn’t that complicated though! How come more “WN” don’t get this??
I think I hit the same rut as you did Greg. I first thaught that there would be something different about this, but obviously, as you explain, it is generaly strategized as a dissent killer.
In the Occupy Wall Street journal there is even an article that states: “the important thing about these protests is not to change things, it is to get people to participate.” I almost died on this one.
I always get my hopes up to quickly.
Movements such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are sometimes regarded as safety valves for the system. I think the question should be posed as to what degree such groups in general have been set up or co-opted as safety valves through design, and to what degree they effectively function as safety valves because their leaders and members are politically ignorant, irresolute, and incompetent. I believe that the latter is the greater problem.
Genuine opposition to the system is destined to be rare when, as Jacques Ellul aptly remarked, “all facets of political activity as we know it today are a kaleidoscope of interlocking illusions.”
Simulacra of opposition movements can be created by spontaneous generation from below as well as cynical manipulation from above. Many people who are discontented with the system retain its illusions. They are still governed by the system even when they protest against it. They might snarl occasionally at their masters, but they will never attack them. They have been well domesticated.
White Republican in blockquote, emphasis added in bold:
I can think of many – far too many – self-identified “White nationlist” organizations that would meet this description.
And, as to “their leaders and members (being) politically ignorant, irresolute, and incompetent,” my God, but volumes could be written on that topic. Not that I have any one particular organization in mind, or anything. No, sadly, I have far too many in mind.
So do I.
The larger question is, “What do we DO about this?”
I’ve been considering this question as of late. “They’ have “big money, and no ideas.” WE have no money, and big ideas. To make them better ideas, they must work better than the other ideas. They do, we just need the opportunity to make it so.
That leads us to the idea of the political solider, always acting, like the Wall Street Occupiers, in an “apple-pie, strictly-legal, sort of way.” (HT: Jim Giles) It might be useful to have a look at how the NF became undercut, and replaced by the Safe Opposition, the BNP.
The self-identified “99ers” want to “Occupy Wall Street.”
Might it be better for us to build from the ground up, mycelium style, as David Eden Lane and Robert Mathews wanted to, by transforming Main Street into something more effective for us, under the rubric “Own OUR Own – On OUR Main Street!” Might this be part of the economic foundation of the New Nation, with credit unions replacing banks (credit unions CAN make small business loans, by the way), and new economic structures to support new social institutions?
The Tea Party (phase II) and Occupy Wall Street do act as “safety valves” for the System. Might our entities be forming lifeboat communities, with resilience being the measure of effectiveness, as the counterpoint to efficiency? “Lifeboats,” for us, instead of “safety valves,” for them? Is there a project that could act as a temporal bridge to our metapolitical order?
Yes.
A Mr. Harold Covington has written at length on such a project.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Do we have the solutions for the current economic crisis? I think the answer is yes and no. On our side, I think there is general sympathy for the positions Greg Johnson has summarized — “private property broadly distributed, the moral rights of producers to the fruits of their labor, an end to usury and other forms of financial parasitism, and economic regulations to make sure that private interests (in low wages and open borders, for instance) do not conflict with the interest of the nation” — but we are not as articulate as we ought to be on these matters. As nationalists, we might hold the title to these positions, but possession is ultimately a matter of occupancy and use. In these matters we need (1) a more modern body of doctrine and media, and (2) greater activity and resourcefulness in communicating our message.
Greg should have added ecological sustainability to his list of nationalist positions on economics. I’m surprised that he overlooked it. The ideas of Herman E. Daly on “steady-state economics” and Serge Latouche on “décroissance” might be worth looking at in this connection. As Kenneth Boulding is said to have remarked, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
In Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Professor [Carroll] Quigley wrote:
“The argument that the two [political] parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so the that American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
“One of Professor Quigley’s most shocking revelations,” wrote Dr. Monteith,
“was the fact that the American Communist Party was partly financed by J. P. Morgan and Company…. J. P. Morgan and his associates financed the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, conservative groups, liberal organizations, communist groups and anti-communist organizations. Thus we should not be surprised to learn that someone purchased Professor Quigley’s publisher and destroyed the plates to the first half of his book so it couldn’t be reprinted.”
“We New Rightists (…) have a real alternative, a Third Way. Beyond left and right, socialism and capitalism, is nationalism.”
You cannot call yourself a New Rightist and say that you are beyond left and right !
“economic regulations to make sure that private interests (in low wages and open borders, for instance) do not conflict with the interest of the nation”
It’s true that we need economic regulations to prevent private interests from overriding collective interests. Another important principle is that we want economic prosperity for ourselves and our posterity, not for third-world invaders.
What we usually hear from both pro-White and anti-White activists is that big business is largely responsible for mass immigration. It is argued that big business is trying to maximize its profits. My own opinion is that it would be profitable for a big firm to employ undeclared workers at lower wages if no one else was doing it. But it doesn’t follow that mass immigration from low IQ countries is good for big business. In fact, the economic regulations that are needed to protect the interest of the nation will also protect big business against the third-worldization of the country.
The “New Right” label has been chosen or accepted for want of something better. The writers and organizations of European New Right generally do not use this label or use it with reservations. It seems to have been effectively imposed on the GRECE, the founding organization of the European New Right, in the late 1970s. It may have stuck due to the absence of an alternative name. The GRECE does not seem to have had a name for its own doctrine. Naming the New Right after one particular thinker or one organizing principle seems inappropriate in view of the range and complexity of its doctrine.
As Greg Johnson notes, the North American New Right is modeled on the European New Right. The term “New Right” is used to identify this relationship rather than to describe its ideas.
The “New Right” label may be misleading or restrictive in more than one sense. Not only does it refer to an ideological and political dichotomy that it rejects, the New Right is not a monolithic movement, and there are hybrid forms of the New Right. The ideas of the New Right can and have been combined with those of revolutionary nationalism. I think that such a combination is appropriate, indeed imperative, in North America and elsewhere.
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Armor in blockquote:
Good point.
Consider that both “Left” and “Right” are, in White Republican’s framework, simulacra, artificial formulations that act to place artificial limits on discussions, and thus frame political activity within safe limits, for the System.
A “New Right” would thus be a REAL “Right,” in terms of political effectiveness, and that would certainly be something new, rightfully welcome, and rightfully so.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Dead Wrong! Just sitting aside and writing intellectual articles and regurgitating ideologies alone would accomplish nothing. Regardless of who is behind OWS or George Soros financing it there is no reason one cannot hijack this movement and direct it in the desirable direction. Please if you are not able to create a movement of this dimension, at least don’t be an obstacle and stop hindering it.
Well give it a try then and let us know how it works out for you.
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