In Defense of Gangs

^[1]2,241 words

Ever since I was a small child, I was fascinated by organized crime. Sure, what kid hasn’t dreamt of being a robber in the eternal conflict between cops and robbers, but there was a deeper connection there — I marveled at the organized, hierarchical, and methodical ways in which organized crime groups went about committing crime. And what crime at that — it’s one thing to plan a bank robbery, quite another to run a smuggling operation which lasts decades. I was familiar with the theory and practice of money laundering at age 8.

Now, part of it was due to the influence of my father, who had a similar interest in organized crime. He, however, had a better excuse for his morbid fascination: he was in criminal justice specializing in organized crime cases. In practice, this meant that any time precocious little Nicky Jeelvy would ask that perennial question which vexes parents across the world: “Daddy, whatcha doin’?” a lecture on the various clever ways in which mafiosi operate was forthcoming.

The former libertarian in me is quick to remember the Rothbardian quip of “The state is a gang of thieves writ large.” Yet that same libertarianism made me blind to the nature of the gang of thieves — I sometimes allowed myself the fantasy of considering gangsters free-market heroes setting their entrepreneurial sails to the wind of supply and demand, the law and state be damned. Al Capone is Andrew Carnegie with bigger balls. My father suffered from a similar myopia — he assumed that an organized crime entity is fundamentally an economic actor and that strangulating its resources can defeat it. What libertarians like to forget, what the public servants tasked with fighting organized crime tend to forget, is the symmetric property of algebra, that if a=b than b=a, or translated from nerdeese — that the gang of thieves is a state writ small. Or mathematically, for s-state, g-gang of thieves, then if s=g*x, then g=s/x, where x is the scale factor (writ large or small) of the organized group. This means that while there is an economic element to both the state and gang, the defining characteristic of both groups is the ability and willingness to use violence.

When looking closer at what an organized crime group does, we can draw various conclusions as to their primary source of money. Thus, we say that Al Capone ran liquor, the cartel smuggles drugs and migrants, the (((Russian))) mafya deals in guns and white slavery, and the CIA traffics heroin. But all of these groups don’t do that – they have people who do that for them. They’re running protection rackets on these illicit businesses. To get a better picture, let’s look at this ridiculous case of academics blaming lemons for the rise of the Sicilian mafia ^[2]. They do a good job of gathering the data, that yes, lemons as a cash crop attracted the mafia, but the rather sensational claim that lemons gave rise to the mafia misses the way the mafia was associated with the lemons. The mafiosi were running a protection racket on the lemon groves. Analogies are drawn to the cartels controlling lime production in Mexico and coca growing in Colombia, but the researchers and the journalists don’t seem to understand that power is the primary resource of gangs and that violence is a gang’s primary activity.

Power is the chief characteristic of the state as well. As libertarians are fond of pointing out, the state has no resources of its own — it taxes businesses and people to cover its expenses. Or to put it on a human scale, the state takes from he who has grown, by virtue of its greater might. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing — this tough guy who takes your shit, as they say on the street, might actively defend you against even bigger demons out there — gangs of thieves who’ve not deigned to remain stationary and tax. Crime offers us an analogy again — organized crime gangs will often crack down on lone criminals and lesser gangs who operate on their turf. A monopoly on the use of force is a wonderful thing to have, and force doesn’t brook plurality. If there are two or more gangs with overlapping territory, they fight over turf. If there are two or more states with overlapping territory, they fight a war. If a hegemonic state senses a threat to its sphere of influence from either a rival hegemon or a refractory nation seeking sovereignty, it fights a war, either directly, or through proxies. And there’s of course a special case, wherein a gang of men attain sufficient power to challenge and vex the state while simultaneously acting out on territory they control the role of a state — a civil war.

Power, or as they say on the street, muscle, is what makes a gang or a state function and rival power centers aren’t tolerated. We are, of course, talking about hard power centers here. Soft power centers such as companies, churches, families, unions and other corporate bodies aren’t threats to the state or the gang directly, though their influence can vex such powers. More often than not, soft power bows to hard power and the aforementioned types of organizations do the bidding of the state or gang, whoever pulls the strings and whoever has the bishop’s balls in a vice. Sometimes, the bishop or CEO will go mad with soft power and promptly get put in his place. For a cinematic example, see Moe Greene. For a real-life example, see the Avignon papacy.

Concentrated muscle is the chief skill of the gang/state. The ability to raise, attract, cultivate, organize, arm, motivate, and direct muscle is the stuff of leadership. Therefore, it’s important to understand not only the nature, but the source of muscle.

This article was conceived from a humorous exchange I had with my wife. I was being a rather naughty boy, and she threatened to tell my mother. I stuck out my tongue at her. Then my better half threatened to tell my grandfather. Believe me, friends, there’s not been in the history of coquetry a faster-vanishing grin, to be replaced by somber clouds and a heavy brow. Triumphantly, the wife exclaimed — “Aha! That’ll fix you! I’ll call the elder elephant to teach you manners!” referring of course to the tale of adolescent elephants who were raised by elephant cows alone running wild until the appearance of the bull elephants, who taught them manners ^[3]. Absent their elders, the adolescent elephants formed into violent gangs. As in human society, the sons of single mothers unleash hell on earth.

That tale is the favorite of civnats in explaining away racial differences in crime rates. Ya see, it’s because the blacks’ fathers are gone that they turn to crime. Checkmate, racists! Of course, that blacks have a greater propensity to abandon their children is not touched upon. Oh, and gangs are obviously bad, right?

Wrong.

What I suspect goes on the mind of a fatherless adolescent, whether elephant or man, is that it craves structure, a hierarchy, a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose. A gang provides all four. But what of the adolescent with a father? Does he not crave those same things? And if so, why doesn’t he join a gang? Well, who says he doesn’t? He joins his father’s gang, which in the contemporary West is civilized society — that which exists in the shadow of a state. Absent a father, or a significantly strong male influence, a young man has no way of being initiated into the structure of society, he has no sponsor and mentor to guide him through the various degrees. He is outside of the society, milling about with the foreigners and women in that great, sticky amorphous goop which constitutes they who aren’t part of the club. Now, women, that’s just the way they like it — they can hack it. Men, on the other hand, need a brotherhood. Absent acceptance into the lodge of their fathers, they form their own clubs. They form the state writ small — a gang of thieves. Gangs are important. As the meme goes, individually we are weak twigs, but together we form a mighty faggot.

^[4]

Something as simple as cleaning out the garbage from the basement is a nigh-impossible task for a man acting alone, but add a sidekick, and the heroics of hygiene commence. More important still is companionship. Set two or more men to working a single task and sooner or later, they’re gonna start busting balls — and they’ll be closer than brothers for it. Where I come from, there’s always a guy riding shotgun in public buses. He’s the bus driver’s buddy, and his job is to shoot the shit with the bus driver, and his payment is free transportation, often for shady wheeling and dealing around town. Life’s tough when there’s no one to talk to. For a man shut out of the official hierarchy, out of the big gang, life is a lonely place and he is exposed to the whims of the world.

I’ve often been annoyed by cuckservatives and civnats bellyaching about rap “glorifying gang culture.” Now, don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty wrong with rap, if you accept your own whiteness. It’s dull and repetitive, it unlocks energies best left hidden, it’s pathetically lowbrow, lower than all but the lowest whites, it doesn’t even begin to unlock the great universe of music, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, insofar as one is black. Rap is an authentic expression of blackness.

Gangs, for their part, aren’t bad either. They are the basic form of male self-organization and those things we derisively call gangs are “bad” insofar as they stand opposed to the biggest gang of them all — the state. How typical of cucks to find that there are white people victimized by black gangs, and then condemn gangs as such.

But gangs are tools — young men bring the muscle and leaders direct, organize and marshal the muscle and all attendant resources which muscle requires.

And here we come to our own current situation. Some of us have lost our fathers for various reasons and we are denied entry into the big gang. But increasingly, we are shut out of the big gang for the very simple reason that the big gang doesn’t want our kind. And by kind I mean race and nationality.

Well, what did you expect? You don’t get to be a mafioso if you’re not of Sicilian descent, and you don’t get to pull the levers of power if you’re not of any of the approved ethnicities. Even mind-boggling cuckery isn’t enough to mollify the anti-white censors, as the white, male Democrats in the US are finding out. Not even the levers of power — you don’t get to be anywhere and not bow your head to diversity. How long before a white janitor is out on his ass for questioning globohomo dogma?

When the big gang itself is compromised, when its values are against our survival, we no longer owe it allegiance, even though our fathers may implore us to join. No matter the admonition of the bull elephants, we have to run wild for now. Our fathers had good-+-+ lives in the shadow of a somewhat sympathetic state, whereas we can only languish under the rainbow-colored boot of multiracial democracy. A parallel from organized crime: it’s one thing to sell olive oil under the watchful eye of Don Vito Genovese, quite another to shake in your boots as bloodthirsty blacks and Hispanics devour entire neighborhoods, flood cities with drugs, and steal everything that isn’t nailed down.

We, as the melancholic in me is fond of pointing out, will not have the good life ^[5]. We white elephants running wild, we are incorrigible because we know it. No wife, no children, no house is forthcoming if we behave. So, why behave? Elder elephants be damned, we won’t go quietly into the night. Our trunks arrayed in Roman salutes, we’ll rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Before I get accused of anything untoward, no, this is not a call for forming a violent armed gang to overthrow the state. But it is a call for forming a männerbund. Reach out to fellow travelers in your area, convert friends and family. At the very least, you’ll have people ready to help you move, clean out your basement, pave your driveway, haul your laundry across town and fix your wife’s computer on a Sunday night. And make no mistake, the turd neareth, ever so certainly, the fan. Pretty soon, the last vestiges of the big gang’s protection against the elements and enemies will disappear and you’ll find yourself in need of an organization both fraternal and military to protect you and yours. You need muscle. Start pumping iron. And more importantly, surround yourself with muscle.

And who knows? Leadership is a skill that can be learned, and the best teacher of leadership is adversity. In this crazy day and age, you, my dear reader-friend, might end up being the capo di tutti capi, the boss of the White Elephant Mafia.

 

^[6]