Counter-Currents
1,542 words
How should White Nationalists take part in American electoral politics?
In the long run, we want our ideas to be hegemonic, the common sense of the whole political system, upheld by all the political parties. We want white interests to be as sacrosanct as anti-racism, diversity, and globalization are to the major parties today. When all parties work to secure our interests, it doesn’t matter who wins elections, because whites can’t lose.
In the nearer term, we would like to see our ideas championed as the platform of a major political party that can actually win elections. Realistically, in the American context, that means replacing the Republican Party with a national populist party, or replacing the leadership of the Republicans with national populists.
In the still nearer term, I would like White Nationalists to become a voting bloc that is large and powerful enough to swing elections, so that politicians will actively court us and fear to cross us.
So how do we get there from here?
But maybe we’re already there. After all, aren’t some elections close enough for our votes to decide them? And don’t we already constitute a voting bloc?
That would depend on whether enough of our people to swing an election are voters in close districts. Do we know the answer to that question? Because if we don’t, then I don’t think we’re a voting bloc just yet, because we lack at least two important features of voting blocs: we don’t know who we are—and neither do the major parties.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here
A voting bloc is not just a set of people with shared political preferences. Such a group also has to be visible—visible to themselves, i.e., self-conscious, and visible to the society around them. White Nationalists definitely exist. White Nationalists definitely vote. But we don’t know how many of us there are, where we are, and how committed we are. We don’t have political organizations to gather such information or political leaders to muster the White Nationalist vote.
But if we don’t know who we are and what we can do, then the political parties don’t know it either, which means our votes don’t figure into their electoral calculations. We simply don’t matter.
But let’s say we were a real voting bloc. That still doesn’t give us power if we are so widely despised by the rest of the electorate that politicians can gain more votes by snubbing us than by courting us.
White Nationalists like to kid ourselves that we “memed Donald Trump into the White House.” But is that true? Isn’t it possible that the Alt Right cost Trump Republican votes and raised Democratic turnouts? Maybe. Maybe not. But until we can answer questions like that, we’re not really a serious voting bloc.
So if White Nationalists aren’t quite ready for politics, how do we prepare ourselves?
We must identify the necessary conditions for becoming a political force. Then we must assemble those conditions, to the best of our ability. We must begin with things that we can do right now, and we must prepare ourselves to do harder things in the future.
Let’s begin with the obvious. If White Nationalism is going to be a political force, we need more White Nationalists.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here
But even if we dramatically increase the numbers of White Nationalists, we will not gain power if we are opposed by even greater numbers. Therefore, in addition to greater numbers on our side, we need less opposition from our opponents, for instance by sowing division among them, by converting enemies into neutral parties, and by converting neutral parties into sympathizers who will uphold the legitimacy of our participation in politics.
We are closer to victory if we get more people fighting for us and fewer people fighting against us.
How do we achieve these two goals?
We need to change people’s minds. We need to convert enemies to neutrals, neutrals to sympathizers, and sympathizers to committed White Nationalists.
To change people’s minds, we need to know their minds. We need to understand the ideas and values of people who are already White Nationalists, and the ideas and values of people who might be converted to White Nationalism. Then we need to map out how to bring the latter into our camp. We also need to understand the ideas and values of our enemies, if we are to decrease their opposition to us. Armed with such knowledge, we could launch educational campaigns that would move us closer to our goals.
One could argue, of course, that we have been doing a pretty good job without such knowledge. Based simply on introspection and personal experience, a lot of us have become quite skilled at converting people. Furthermore, the rising traffic of various movement websites can be taken as testament to this success.
But how much of this rising traffic is due to our outreach, and how much of it is due simply to the problems endemic to multiculturalism and globalization? How much is rising white ethnocentrism due to our persuasive pull, as opposed to the system’s dystopian push? That is another question that we really need to answer if we are to become serious contenders for power.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s From Plato to Postmodernism here
To do a serious study of the public mind, we need to create an institution, staff it with people with the necessary skills, and fund their studies.
We also need some sort of institute to craft White Nationalist positions on public policy issues.
Finally, we need a third institution, a political advocacy group that takes the first two groups’ findings and uses them to weld White Nationalists into a self-conscious voting bloc, while laying the foundations for longer-term aims like taking over or founding a political party and eventually establishing hegemony over the entire political system.
There is a word for formulating ideas and creating institutions necessary for the pursuit of political power. We call it “metapolitics.”
There’s another word for pursuing political power without taking care of the metapolitical conditions. We call it LARPing, meaning “live action role playing.” It is play acting.
When White Nationalists on Twitter declare, “We must punish Trump for betraying us” or take positions amounting to: “In order to own the imaginary fascist Trump, I will deliver the presidency to an actual Jewish communist, Sanders,” they are living in a fantasy world. Individually and as a group, we don’t have the power to do any of those things.
In a democratic election, it seldom matters one way or another how a given individual votes, or if he votes at all. After all, when was the last time that an important election was decided by one vote?
You can buy Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right here
Furthermore, as I argued above, White Nationalists have absolutely no idea if we could constitute a real swing vote in close races. And if we don’t know that, politicians can hardly be faulted for ignoring us. Beyond that, we are so widely despised, most politicians would calculate that they could gain more votes by spurning us rather than catering to us.
Some people think that we can gain real power by engaging in grandiose empty talk, because of the manosphere axiom “Fake it ’till you make it.” But that only works when hitting on drunken bimbos. We gain real power by assembling the real conditions of power.
Furthermore, empty talk actually undermines the pursuit of power, because it makes us look foolish, when currently the only real advantages we have in politics are speaking the truth about taboo subjects—multiculturalism, race, globalization, etc.—often in the face of overwhelming opposition, and the credibility we gain from doing that. We shouldn’t be so hasty to throw such advantages away.
Before White Nationalists constitute a real political force, we need to focus on metapolitics: creating institutions and communicating ideas. Thus we need to view electoral politics as a metapolitical opportunity. Our votes don’t really matter, but our ideas matter a great deal.
The eyes of the world will be fixed on the 2020 US Presidential election. In 2015, Donald Trump shattered the political establishment’s agreement never to compete on multiculturalism, immigration, globalization, and anything that touches on white identity politics, lest uncontrollable populist forces be unleased. In 2020, the establishment hopes it can defeat those forces by defeating Donald Trump. The 2020 election really will be a turning point for the USA.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Confessions of a Reluctant Hater here
The Left will make the election into a referendum on multiculturalism, race, immigration, and whether America has a future as a white nation. The mainstream Right will, as usual, surrender on all matters of principle. Trump will bluster, fudge, and flounder. White Nationalists—and the broader Dissident Right—will be the only articulate and consistent intellectual champions of nationalism, populism, and the legitimacy of white ethnic interests. These are arguments we can’t lose.
No matter what the outcome of the election, we can emerge as the champions of the more than sixty million mostly white people who voted for Trump in 2016 and may show up again in 2020. Thus we should comport ourselves accordingly.
It is fortunate that the 2020 election is a golden opportunity for presenting our ideas, since it is all we really can do right now. If we want our votes to matter someday, we need to start building the institutions necessary to turn truth into power.
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69 comments
I wonder if we would get results–change minds and garner new readers of dissident webzines–by distributing pamphlets. Consider two examples.
The very first significant First Amendment case to reach the US Supreme Court was Schenk v. The United States (1919, I think). Schenck mailed pamphlets decrying America’s involvement the Great War. He urged his fellow citizens not to support the war and to refuse military service; the war in Europe was none of our business, and we shouldn’t shoot up other people’s countries. He was charged under the Espionage Act (I may have gotten some of the details wrong; I’m too lazy to look up the case right now).
His conviction was upheld (but later, in effect, overturned; see below) in the case that formed an important part of First Amendment judicial doctrine. In Schenck, Holmes used the “clear and present danger” standard along with the supporting example of falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. However, in the next significant case, Whitney v. California, the Court in effect corrected itself and distinguished between advocacy and incitement. Since Whitney (a Communist) didn’t raise a First Amendment defense the Court couldn’t reverse Schenck; however, it stated, in effect, that it had been wrong in Schenck, since Schenck’s actions constituted advocacy of ideas rather than incitement, contrary to Holmes in his majority opinion. Schenck’s actions couldn’t constitute incitement because he wasn’t, in effect, throwing a match on a puddle of gasoline; he wasn’t inciting a mob. His readers had time to read and think about the ideas in the pamphlets. So, Holmes’ judicial principle of clear and present danger is a good one, but it does not apply to Schenk’s advocacy of dissident ideas. Advocacy of ideas, however unpopular or “offensive,” is protected speech.
All of which means that Schenck’s actions produced a permanent effect on Constitutional law: all he did was to mail some powerfully argued pamphlets.
Example 2: the American colonists who agitated against England’s tyrannical actions prior to the War of Independence. They distributed pamphlets, among other things, which were very influential in changing minds and forging alliances.
Would any of this apply in Clown World USA? I don’t see why not. Direct marketers purchase address lists, and so can we.
Of those who can be converted to our ideas, some of them have never encountered our ideas. Search engines steer people away from dissident websites. But a pamphlet sent by mail won’t be blocked by anyone.
I think it would be great if perhaps 1,000 people across the country (readers of CC, AmRen, etc.) were to take it upon themselves to pay for address lists, stuff envelopes, and mail pamphlets that expressed our pleas. An eloquent spokesman should write the pamphlet(s), someone like GJ or JT.
Does this proposal have any merit?
I think the internet has largely made printed pamphlets obsolete, and online censorship is not so severe that people cannot find our sites with a little effort.
I disagree. You are speaking like a true intellectual, one who simply doesn’t realize how unbelievably unintellectual the average person is. Most people DO NOT CARE to investigate our ideas. That already implies a certain degree of intellectuality and curiosity. People who are interested in things are often passionately interested in them; people uninterested, not at all interested. I have no idea who won the World Series (it’s over, right?), nor who will be in the Super Bowl. I just don’t care. How many Americans would find me incomprehensible?
Our problem (and to be fair, that of the US communists before us; ie, this isn’t only a problem of dissident rightists, but of all dissidents) is that most people don’t care all that much about politics, let alone about things like the “long run effects of present policies on white survival.” Most whites just aren’t going to make their way to CC, and once here, would find themselves bewildered (as I sometimes still do – and I was already reading AR in the early 90s!).
What is needed is to condense/simplify the main points of WNManifesto into a single page on this website so that it can be easily downloaded and printed. Or conversely, have single page fact sheets on WHITE POPULATION DECLINE, RACE AND CRIME, RACE AND WELFARE USE, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION INJUSTICES, DEMOGRAPHY AND VOTING, etc. And then let “lone wolves” make masses of xeroxed copies and go out as they want and distribute them. I think that would be very effective in increasing pro-white awareness.
Look up the Hundred Handers on Twitter They mention CC on their material. Not quite pamphlets, but it fills a similar role. Showing people too scared to do a “racist” websearch where to find out more.
Prior to maybe 2015 I completely refused to search out anything like that. In my mind it was cruel and evil and full of fat ugly dumb hillbillies. Clearly my views were gathered by the propaganda around me.
I can’t quite describe the feeling when I thought to search Daily Stormer or something but it was like an uncomfortable anxiety gnawing at my brain as if I knew I was committing an atrocity. And even as I slowly searched out such things over time I always had to return from it and black it out in my mind. I only ever did it when I read some absurd article about white privilege or how white males are evil. I felt betrayed and hurt, I suppose, and was driven to the dissidents instead of seeking it out.
It took me years to be comfortable to discuss these things and Trump largely attacking PC culture was likely a reason I felt vindicated when doing so.
The amount of mental anguish and ideological superstructures people have built up against White Nationalist views . . . is incredible. Propaganda works all too well, especially the most insidious and subversive.
Hundred Handers looks like a great idea, thanks for pointing them out.
We need to create as much content as we can on the internet, for it to be there for those already in the loop and those who seek it. However, with YouTube censorship and Google search manipulation, it seems the high water mark of using Youtube and search engines to “feed” traffic here and to similar sites passed its high water mark. It may even get worse.
Physical flyers and such cannot be censored. Since they are in the “real world,” they create perceptions nationalists are “everywhere” and normalize our ideas. Pound for pound, it seems to be more effective that /pol stuff or even intellectual articles in our corners. This is why the media cannot help kvetching every time Its Okay to Be White or AmRen posters hit a school.
I have a vision of simply, catchy, colored postcard or index card sized flyers. These could maybe have “based” quotes from Lincoln or some Founding father, and then links to dissident sites. (This would channel peoples’ deep, latent patriotism straight into our hands–much more practical that outright mincing the Founders or enlightenment stuff for their flaws.) Maybe some can simply have graphs of demographic projections, black-white IQ bell curves, or images like “1950 vs 2050.” Messages that shock and are instantly understandable to the average person.
These would be hung on doors, put on windshields. Media attention would multiply their impact. These could even be physically handed out in high-traffic areas. On the Las Vegas strip, i saw a guy at a busy escalator juncture outdoors who hands out Lyft/Uber affiliate discount business cards. That’s just what he does. He could easily contact 5,000 people a night; a brave Patriot willing to risk insults and mild assaults could do the same.
Such 4 x 6 flyers might cost 5 to 8 cents each, but they would be high quality. AIM would honestly probably have more an impact if it switched from being a social club that does media stunts every now and then to using their physical networks to distribute flyers or pamphlets. it could also mostly be anonymous, independent people like Hundred Handers that do this.
“As anyone who truly understands this world already knows, the most critical information is transmitted to mass consciousness via symbolism.”
I read this somewhere and wrote it down.
Any old fashioned advertising needs no more than a few words and a great symbol.
I think the idea of pamphlets has some merit. True, our websites exist, but doesn’t one already need to be pursuing these ideas to happen upon these sites? Sorry, but just not that many mainstreamers link to CC or vdare, unfortunately. And what about the real segment of humanity that is not plugged into the internet 24/7? They still exist. We would need to put our heads together to figure out what are the appropriate slogans for which segments of the community. What alienates people and what piques their curiosity? Prefab fliers could be created by the various websites that could easily be printed off by anyone with a minimum of resources. Needless to say, anyone distributing fliers would need to be pretty immune to doxxing, as they would attract strong hostility and social pressure, maybe even be physically attacked. That’s probably the true reason nobody does it. Keep in mind that would be a major leap in involvement, but it may be a brilliant idea, to actually go low tech!
The National Alliance grew to be quite large, and is still fairly significant, through mostly newsletters and snail mail. WLP was in his waning years when the internet finally provided him a platform, and he relied more on the newsletter, public access cable
TV, and shortwave or AM radio media than anything else for growth.
The problem is, he was trying to influence an older generation for whom these mediums were the norm and accessible. We’re not going to accomplish much by mailing letters to retired boomers and nursing home residents, and millennials hardly use snail mail, listen to short wave, or watch public access TV.
I will tell you one way that might work, however…
There are spammers using mobile technology to send spam text messages to phones to get their attention. They even use bots to do it. There has to be come kind of reward for this, or else they wouldn’t do it.
People generally don’t like unwanted texts, but if you framed it in a way that isn’t immediately threatening, and only gave them spoon fed WN info, an SMS message with WN friendly content might be worth trying.
It might have a header like “tired of the government threatening your gun rights? Click here for more info on why gun control is happening”
Then a link to a wayback machine page archive where arguments about minority voters being mostly democrat and pro gun control. It would have to be an archive page to prevent censoring.
Just an idea. I know we have hacker types in the movement. Like Weev.
I mean, even Daily Stormer has archived content on wayback
https://web.archive.org/web/20160123190020/http://www.dailystormer.com/
Exactly. And if we mail them, doxxing won’t happen. What’s the USPS going to do if people call to complain about receiving “racist”pamphlets? I’ll answer with an old joke: What do the USPS and Kinney Shoes have in common? 300,000 black loafers. The postal system doesn’t have a dweeb army of censors like big tech does. Low tech could be a great addition to our toolbox. Think of how “It’s OK To Be White” posters trigger the Left and gain media attention. But pamphlets mailed to private residencies en masse . . . It makes my liver quiver.
Direct mail could have a role. The only drawback is that with paper and ink and postage, we are looking at a cost of at least 50 cents per mailing.
If we get high quality marketing lists, this could be very worth it. If the mailings appear to be simple money-grubbing that political campaigns and charities always mail, people will tune them out, skim, and shred them. Our mailings should be entirely about spreading ideas and winning minds; I think stuffing the envolope with important graphs and entry-level articles by Jared Taylor or Greg Johnson would be perfect.
CC, VDARE, or AmRen should seriously consider launching this. They might want to raise specific donations to be earmarked for mail outreach, and keep donors updated with the number of unique mailings they have done.
I love it! I live close to the 9th wealthiest community in the US (it’s in a Deep South state), with 20,000 people of which 98% are white and, I’ll bet, even closer to 100& white for homeowners. If I were to focus on sending the mailings only to that area, I might not have to purchase mailing lists: I could simply record every address from online real estate maps. So, by your calculation that would cost $1,000. Maybe I could halve that number and mail to every other address there. I’ll bet some of the mailings would get shared. Unfortunately, most of the Jews in my state live in this area, so they would get alerted. However, the potential of finding large donors would make this approach tempting. And while there would be more DEMs than in the general population of this red state, the general population of the larger cities contains many blacks and Mexicans. I guess each person would determine the area he wants to cover; we’d just have to make sure we didn’t double cover any areas and waste money. The question is whether this would be more cost effective than direct donations to our sites/organizations.
I think we have to hold our noses and register Republican and vote Trump in November, or we will be smothered in virulent hostility for the next 4 to 8 years, if any one of these insane candidates on the Left gets elected. Look at their extreme reaction just a few days ago to the small demonstration in Virginia, where the gun-toters were actually very peaceful, though heavily armed. From the press reports of ‘White Nationalists’ and ‘White Supremacists’ — the two terms being used interchangeably by the leftist press and which issue we definitely need to address clearly — ‘threatening’ the peacefully-gathered opposing group (Antifa et al.), we were vilified as violent neo-Nazis. This rhetoric has to be addressed nationally before we can ever ‘gather peacefully’ to create a political presence.
TL;DR: Greg Johnson wants us to ignore Trump’a failures, hold our noses, and vote for him in the general election anyway.
Not because he’s /our guy/, but out of an Esoteric Trumpism.
The outwards manifestation of Trump’s policies being far less important than the metaphysical implications and symbolism— I.e. Trump as a Jungian archetype, similar to his classification of Hitler as a manifestation of Woton.
We could perhaps look at Trump as a manifestation of the popular conception of the Egyptian deity Kek, a chaotic trickster that sows disorder and breaks, or as representing The Tower, a Major Arcana card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck.
Look up the card and imagine Trump as akin to the bolt of lighting that strikes the skyscraper and brings a it’s demise.
Is this an accurate assessment of your essay and path forward as you foresee if?
I am not writing for Greg, but it seems to me that you have missed the point.
WN need to be clearly identified as a voting group that politicians will want to pander to0. And it needs somebody to proclaim for which candidate to vote. It does not matter if that is Trump or Sanders. The point is to form a BLOCK that politicians (neither party) can ignore.
Personally I do not doubt that the democrats have made themselves completely unelectable for WNs in the next round.
You need to actually read the essay.
The institutions Greg lists could be set up before the election. There would be a lot of appetite to help from volunteers, if sympathetic creators send out the call.
Each workstream would need an appointed (ideally salaried) project manager. VDare and AmRen have full-time staff. Perhaps VDare could second someone to manage the polling workstream and AmRen someone to manage the policy one. Polling can be done cheaply through Amazon MTurk.
The political advocacy group sounds like AIM.
This is a major problem as I see it:
Single issue politics are rarely, if ever, enough to impassion enough people to vote a certain way. With some few exceptions, and these exceptions happen to be some of the main issues that “normies” vote on…
1) Pro life/choice. As irrelevant or even antithetical as the pro-life position is to many WNs, and I get the arguments as to why WNs shouldn’t care about this issue, it is one of the few issues that normies feel passionate about, and importantly, the FEMALE VOTERS feel passionate about it (ie just as many mothers are pro life as single middle aged cat women are pro choice). We alienate a LOT of potential white female votes by being tone deaf on that issue
Which brings me to
2) Gender-centric politics have almost guaranteed that white people will never be able to unify as a voting block in one party, because this is the glue that binds the leftist coalition most… animosity between white men and white women.
And I’ll be honest… I am a WN, but I am also very very very concerned about the state of white male/female relations and the destruction of the family unit. In fact, i would say that this is more of an immediate concern to me than racial displacement, and I see no way to fix it. As each generation of fatherless white children perpetuate and expand that problem, it will only get worse.
And I know what tribe is largely to blame for the sexual revolutions of the 60s that disintegrated the family, but by this point the problem is self perpetuating and expanding, and the source of the problem has almost become irrelevant. I also blame technology and capitalism as much as anything else. Not in a pro-communist sort of way, but in a “love of money is the root of all evil” sort of way. It’s a complicated problem and it vexes me to no end.
3) another important single issue is the gun control issue. I’ve seen mocking content being released about the Virginia rally, and trust me, I get it…. but again, it is tone deaf to start mocking constitutionalists too hard, even if they are shitlibs on every other issue. Especially to mock an issue that is most certainly of concern to WNs. In a society where we are already in the political ghetto, we don’t want to be on the side of being disarmed too. And I feel like some people in our circles don’t properly embrace the issue.
I believe our ideas can change things and we should never give up. I’m passionate about that. But I think we really need to work harder at not alienating our own selves by ostracizing people who are somewhat our allies but who aren’t as passionate about the immigration problem.
I say this as someone who even wrote a mocking submission about Charlie Kirk.
Ultimately 2 party politics have always destroyed the ideas that challenge it because of this. Look at Libertarianism. Say what you will about it, and I’ve said plenty, at least it started out as a challenge to conventional politics.
Pro life/choice.
Trump said he’d be attending the big annual March for Life Rally in Washington, DC today, Jan. 24th, noon to 4:00 PM. This is an anti-abortion event.
The number of Americans who support abortion in all or most cases has climbed up 61%, according to the Pew Research Center. A majority of Americans say they’re likely to vote for political candidates who believe abortion should be outlawed after the first three months of pregnancy, according to a new Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/march-for-life-2020-trump-to-become-first-president-to-speak-in-person-at-washington-anti-abortion-rally-2020-01-22/
I would argue that the majority of married *white* women (who are mothers) are still pro-life, with some being somewhere in that gray area where they don’t want to outright outlaw abortion, but they don’t want it to be taken so lightly that it is used as a primary means of birth control or that someone should be able to do it right up until their due date.
Most white women vote GOP, and these are usually the married mothers. Unfortunately, that demographic is heavily weighted by older boomer women and not so much by the young. I believe one of the primary reasons these women vote GOP is because of the generally pro-life stance that GOP politicians still endorse.
My personal opinion on abortion is muddied. I am personally repulsed by anyone who would kill a healthy unborn child, but I can understand preventing an unhealthy birth. In general, I think women who lackadaisically think abortion is a fundamental right are monsters of modernity. There are intellectual reasons to not be against abortion as a whole, but it is entirely unnatural for women to hate children so much. Being childless through most of their fertile years is breeding the most narcissistic and selfish generation of women in the history of mankind. The rot and decay of our society is everywhere.
So politically, it is my opinion that we, as white advocates, should recognize that the natural order of things is for women to love children, and that being politically “for” a practice that so liberally disassociates women from their natural and instinctive roles as human beings is just as damaging as demographic displacement. At the very least, we should be neutral on the issue and not repulse the majority of white voters with rhetoric that they perceive as coming from the same lips as those who espouse antiwhite rhetoric.
Even among women who support abortion, their support is far more restrictive than what is being promoted today. Most women who are pro-choice view it as something that should occur very early in the pregnancy, be exceedingly rare, and should NOT be subsidized by the taxpayers or encouraged in any way. Even pro-choice women are squeamish at second- or late-term abortion, and would not oppose, for example, some kind of governing body which would assure a child is not being aborted frivolously, but only for very serious birth defect or the life of the mother.
Or to put it another way, MOST pro-choice women are “$#!t or get off the pot.” Not “lets kill the baby because my boyfriend broke up with me.”
Having escaped BC Canada, which has become void of sovereigntarian air, I have taken refuge on the Ozark Plateau, which is predominantly white [approximately 94% – my County is 97.5% white]. The air here is very fresh by comparison! I am working off this quote by Buckminster Fuller, “You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller. To accomplish this, I am using the book “Restoring America One County At A Time” by Dr. Joel McDurmon [https://www.theamericanview.com/store/products/restoring-america-one-county-at-a-time-dr-joel-mcdurmon/]. The long term plan is to convince people of the truth of the Fuller quote and create “mass white emigration” from those States having the least white population. The Plateau encompasses 52,000 square miles [33,500,00 acres] and, with proper management and sufficient influx of White Nationalists, could become a self-reliant white nation, separate and independent of the surrounding States. I fully support the idea of an initial meta political undertaking to educate the white population in general, but, in addition to that, I propose the Ozark Plateau as the first target for creation of a White Nationalist Homeland, one County at a time.
The Ozarks are also well-placed strategically from a “prepper” standpoint to weather all manner of societal “storms”, as are other areas of the country. Read the preppers” Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd Edition” by Joel M. Skousen. One of the factors it considers is proximity to population centers, percentage of African-Americans and other minorities, etc.
Thanks for that. I’ve read Skousen and many others discussing the coming Earth changes.
“If White Nationalism is going to be a political force, we need more White Nationalists.”
This seems circular: without any visible WN there is no flag for WN’s to rally around, or that attracts WN’s.
“We need to change people’s minds.”
I have come to the conclusion that this is impossible. People have to change their own mind.
I would replace this with: We have to offer future dissidents a place to go to when they discover they were betrayed by the mainstream politicians. In addition we have to create a movement that creates envy, or at least admiration, so that people are self-motivated to come to us.
“One could argue, of course, that we have been doing a pretty good job without such knowledge.”
Yes, CC is doing quite nicely imo. Probably because it offers a place for people to go to when they are looking for alternatives.
With my machiavellian hat on, I would guess that any party that wants to become politically active and have a chance of success needs 3 fractions:
1) Ideological (think tank). This is the (hidden?) force behind the organization
2) A large political mass: This is the main (visible) body
3) A “secret police” that keeps (2) together and ensures that (1) stays in control
Without (1) and (3) in place, it’s like herding cats.
Of course this flies in the face of today’s liberal ethos… but then, history is written by the winners.
Btw: (3) is phrased a little awkward for brevity, to convey the intention. It does not have to be nefarious! there are other (more liberal) ways.
As an addendum to the long comment I just posted:
The conventional line between “right wing” and “left wing” politics in America especially and in the west generally has been so twisted since WW2, that it is going to be very difficult to have any influence in the Republican Party (which I agree is the most broadly compatible with WN, or at least partially redeemable) without holding our nose on certain issues.
I agree for instance that environmental concerns are truthfully the natural domain of the ”right”, but in the modern paradigm where leftists have stolen that issue, and where there are legitimate reasons for right wingers to be suspicious of motives insofar as how leftists frame environmentalism, we probably need to just go with the flow on that one right now. I don’t think it’s worth fighting with nominally “conservative” normies about. We can hold a somewhat neutral POV on that one and not invite suspicion.
You see, the problem is that the nature of the “neo-con” GOP causes a glaring juxtaposition with the dissident right on issues like this, where the dissident right almost comes across as leftist. There are a lot of issues like that. Even our racial concerns come across as leftist to the less thinking normie, because they see democrats as racist BECAUSE their identity policies are anti-white and thus racist to the person who sees racism for what it TRULY is, (forget the nonsense of privilege and power being the main drivers of racism). As long as racism is considered “bad”, in any context, the more morally convicted person will aschew all racism and attempt to cast it from their own self, even while attempting to argue against anti-whiteness. It is a very very bitter pill to swallow that racism is actually OK, and the only way to fight antiwhiteness is for whites to embrace their own natural racism.
Again, this is a problem of huge proportions that is difficult to work out. I don’t want WNs to be neo-cons. We definitely need to fight them. But we need to be better at picking our battles as well as understanding their psychology.
The whole left/right paradigm is a significant problem for white nationalism. By identifying with the right, we are seen as siding with business interests against workers, with free market capitalism, with military adventurism, ecological vandalism and economic imperialism. Not all potential white nationalists are ok with these things.
So every time I read comments or articles here railing against ‘Leftists’ I shudder and imagine how much stronger we’d be if we could ditch the junior-high view of politics as a simple line with two ends.
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I don’t see this as a problem that can’t be solved with about three minutes of explanation.
I understand your point, but people understand “mental models”, and people do substitute racial tribalness with political or religious when they are left with no other choice.
We have to understand that people tend to feel more comfortable with affiliation politically with “allies”, when the allies aren’t saying things that are foreign to them.
“Leftist” is as good a term as any when it comes to social politics, because the “leftists” themselves have framed it that way, and they are in control.
You see, I’m not even against a lot of “leftist” ideas, I just want them argued in an environment where we don’t have to coddle and placate to every aggrieved minority. As long as the “leftists” are controlled by minorities and weak willed white people, we’re going to have to learn to keep it simple.
I think Greg is on to something here. IMHO he has been one of the best voices in our movement when it comes to arguing for real political power. The national populists in Europe are a model for us (as Greg has said). We need to do the same thing in the United States.
We need to work to take over the GOP. I disagree with those who think that is a waste of time. Of course the GOP is not good enough as-is today. Yes, taking it over will be a tough job. But it’s not impossible. Things change and are changing. Our nation’s politics are already in the process of realigning and so are our political parties. What seems hopeless today will seem inevitable when we look back in 10 years time.
The alternative strategy of creating our own party is not a good idea in the US because our first-past-the-post system works against third parties (unlike proportional representation systems in Europe). Our strategic model can be found on the left. Consider Bernie Sanders and AOC, neither of whom are running as irrelevant third-party candidates. Instead, they are working to take over the Dems. We need to do the same thing on the right with the GOP.
In practical terms, the model for us is any of a zillion interest groups that already heavily influence the GOP, including the NRA and others. We need to start by becoming a powerful interest group and proactively work to take over the party. Eventually we will run our own candidates, but there are interim steps before that.
They include the creation of: (1) a sophisticated political rating system where we rate politicians based on their votes and issue positions, (2) real IRL connections to local political activists on the ground (who may or may not publicly identify themselves with us), and (3) professionalized white papers on issues before the administration and Congress. There will be some cost associated with this, but a sophisticated political operation like this is definitely doable. Some of us already know how to do these things.
We can do it and we need to do it.
The last time a new major party arose in the US is when the Whigs collapsed and the Republicans were born.
If the Republicans manage to fend off a national populist takeover, they will simply collapse and an opening will be created for a new party.
But you are right: the chances of a third party emerging and getting into power are slim.
Excellent essay. Some of the commentor seem to have been triggered by the mention of Trump, vibrantly expressing their feelings of disappointment that Trump is not the White Nationalist Savior they — for some reason — thought he was (or ought to be). They do not seem to understand that Trump won the Presidency of the United States by going against 50+ years of US political consensus, but he is really nothing more than a Rockefeller Republican in most respects. Which is to say that, in many ways he’s pretty much a Democrat.
Though Greg doesn’t directly say so, if White Nationalists want a WN equivalent of Cato Institute there are only two possibilities: a WN Sugar Daddy/Mama or every WN doing what Jared Taylor describes as ‘The White Tithe’ in order to pay to have expertise deployed on our behalf.
You are right RE funding.
But deplatforming has made it very difficult for CC to depend simply on many small donations, which is what a tithe would be.
We really need large patrons to step forward if we are going to fund new institutions.
The place to look is among gentile GOP donors. Ken Griffiths, Richard Uihlein, Robert Mercer, etc. They are not in my rolodex, but perhaps someone better connected is reading. If I got face-to-face with one of those whales, I would say this. “Why not take one of every ten dollars you were going to give the GOP and give it to this new project? See it as a medium-term political investment with huge potential returns. You can legally do it in secret.”
Correction – Mercer is not a gentile. A significant minority are though.
Our guys in GOP might be able to get in a room with these guys. Or leak their contact details – then a normie-friendly WN like Sailer or Brimelow could write them a letter proposing the new think tank.
“In a democratic election, it seldom matters one way or another how a given individual votes, or if he votes at all. After all, when was the last time that an important election was decided by one vote?”
Every time I see a statement like that I am concerned people will take it at face value.
You want to win, or at least make a difference ?
Dive into it and learn from a lefty, for a change !
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/you-can-make-a-difference_b_9172572?guccounter=1
I hope that this web site will stay in a relentless persuit of White Nationalist goals throughout 2020 as US Presidential election comes closer.
The 2020 United States elections will be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives, 34 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate, and the office of president of the United States will be contested.
Do you have second thoughts about voting ? Read the lefty again !
I actually think that the very best way to win hearts and minds (short of the obvious method, which is of course via movies of our own, television of own, and other such enterprises, which are currently just LARPing fantasies) is via essays or even separate web sites on particular topics.
E.g., long before I know of WN as anything but the Hollywood caricature, I stumbled upon GJ’s review of the first Twilight film — because I was looking up that topic specifically, and a Web search directed me to said review. I remember reading and agreeing with its points, but then being shocked when I came across explicitly pro-white elements in the review. I actually quickly shut my browser, thinking that I would immediately be flagged for accessing a site, the viewing of which was some kind of felony. But then I thought about the review more and more, and how it was the only one — the only one — that was making points that I myself had concluded about the movie, and I came back to it. And then I read another of the author’s essays, and another, and so forth.
Likewise, I stumbled upon (at about the same time) the original Alternative Right site because, as a Romanticism scholar, I was looking up something on that topic — and from there too was channelled into Alt-Right politics in general.
I imagine that enterprises like Architectural Revival are leading people into more general traditionalist beliefs and dissident politics through an initial specific antipathy to horrid modern architecture and the refreshing relief of finding at least one FB page that is appreciative of traditional, beautiful architecture.
In short, I think that any WN who has an interest in a specific topic (art, music, swordplay, film, whatever) and at least a half-decent writing style should run a site or blog or page or what not on that topic, and infuse it with WN content. Readers will soon find that their aesthetic inclinations are readily married to political positions.
I agree – mostly, although I think there is a value to having webzines like CC. An article on a blog might be read a few hundred times, but at CC it might be read a few thousand times.
I would love a regular writer on architecture and urbanism, a regular writer on classical music, and really a whole range of other subjects.
I believe art, architecture and music are perfect venues to connect with our past and our culture. My favorite period is the entire 19th Century, but any earlier European art is enchanting and inspiring. I’m glad that someone has been led to this site through an interest in and study of architecture, something at which we excel. Also, I always think to myself, every time I hear a Viennese Waltz or stroll through a Gothic Cathedral — nothing like this has ever been produced or appreciated elsewhere.
Very sensible article. Like many, I was excited for Trump in 2016 and voted for him. It was my first time voting GOP in a national election. I voted for Buchanan in the GOP primaries in 1996 and 2000 but usually vote third party in the general.
I will likely vote Trump again in 2020 but not too enthusiastically. I live in a former red state that is now deep blue so my vote truly does not matter.
Colorado or Virginia? I’m in Colorado and this state has been lost, especially after three metros have declared themselves as sanctuary cities. There was serious talk of secession in 2014-15, but Trump’s victory gave everyone false hope and that led to the movement fizzling out rather quickly. The northern part of the state along with the Western Slope and Eastern Plains are supportive of the idea. The Front Range has become a neo-Marxist cesspool. It’s sad.
Third party candidates did very well here and throughout most of the Mountain West in 2016. Nonetheless, Bernie has an enormous amount of support in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins and in the more liberal ski towns across the I-70 Mountain Corridor.
However, you’ll see large pro-Trump billboards along I-70 while driving across the Eastern Plains from DIA to Kansas. Grand Junction and most of the Central Rockies are as red as you can get.
One way to start & to practice improving your own skills is to get rid of SJWs/pro-inclusive people off various social/sports committees. In the scheme of things it isn’t great but any of us can start here. Start by raising your personal standards of presentation & reputation – how you look, whether you do what you committed to.
Work to support others who get trashed as they attempt it. Hubby got trashed a year ago. No-one supported him usefully but when another got trashed 2 weeks ago he got alongside her, rallied support, & a group are now looking to replace the current president, secretary & most of the committee.
This is a long term scheme. Hubby used to be a doormat & people used & abused him. About 4 years ago I made the decision to make him head of our home & he would make the decisions. At the same time I demanded he make sure he dressed well when he went out & encouraged him to get further training as a sports referee. 2 years ago he decided he was too fat & that we should both go on a diet. 16 kg lost. Got trashed on the committee, moved sideways out of the club & became a state ref, not just a club ref. With massive weight loss, state reputation for his skills & senior players appreciating his competency as a ref he is in an ideal position to drive the group to take down the SJW driven committee.
We need more male leadership. Train for it.
great comment
I hope they listen to you Dr. Johnson.
You need a party system like in Germany.
It is better to try to convert 10 elite people then 100 000 non elite people.
White nationalists should have fun at work. There is everything to win.
I didn’t realise the British were still so powerful. Could you elaborate?
I tried to muddle through this, but I gave up at the “conehead pharoahs” plot of the British/Egyptians/Jews. If it were only a bit more creative, it would be funny.
Wait, I just scrolled down to see the map of America divided into ethnostates of Corn, Ribs, Chili, and Celts. You’ve made a believer out of me. KRAUS 2020!
Our ideas are already out there. The problem is that they are considered very low status (lower than pedophiles) and publicly admitting to them is quickly becoming a one way ticket to homelessness and destitution. This is the primary problem that needs to be solved. We need to be able to access financing and secure the ability for people to express these views without being assaulted or having their lives ruined. This means having things like credit unions and legal advocacy groups. Until then, trying to “change the culture” or “move the overton window” is just spinning our wheels and getting nowhere.
Metapolitics = propaganda + community organizing. What you are describing falls in the latter category. We definitely need institutions that will help lower the costs of open white advocacy.
Legal defense/lawfare organizations and payment processors are two very important types of institutions to create.
Legal Defense and Structure via our own law-oriented organization is very important for us. (Judicial Watch could be a role model). I would hope we could encourage many of our younger followers — or anyone at any stage of life — to begin legal studies at local colleges, which are usually less expensive, or online paralegal studies while still working.
Law and Finance are crucial avenues of study for our proposed organizational planning and accomplishment. Students would however have to avoid the left-wing enticements to philosophical legal entanglements –‘helping the world through social justice’, etc. — which they will encounter in colleges and universities today, and certainly avoid arguing in class and on-campus, where they can get ‘off-track’ and mired in Leftist nonsense. Having organized institutions will help us all to know we have a more solid foundation. Of course, the publishing of books by our scholars should remain our first goal, because getting ideas out there in physical book which people can pass around and share, is still basic.
The problem is organizing requires meet in person and it requires trusting people a lot more. That has a lot of potential for fed infiltration.
We are already infiltrated on many different levels…
why should that stop us?
The majority of Americans are distrustful of the feds as it stands now. I tend to think that fed or state infiiltrators would only bolster our cause with the populas at large.
You’re right about the ‘homeless’ angle’ — my landlord is a Bernie Sanders supporter, and my two roommates are both ‘airy-fairy’, ‘help the poor and despise the rich’ Democrat types. I have to keep a very low profile. Thank heavens I have money stashed in case of emergency — word to the wise.
What is this, 1776 all over again? Lmao
Organize around issues which have raised the hackles of your average White voter:
* Affirmative action
* Diversity indoctrination
* Loss of employment for dissent against PC orthodoxy
* Leftist violence against conservatives on campus and at Trump rallies
Your average White voter sees themselves as under siege from the Left and abandoned by Conservatives. They are open to Nationalism if it were presented in a manner which addressed their interests.
Example: recently an acquaintance expressed his annoyance about his children being taught in public school that Columbus is one of history’s big bads. There ought to be a way for Nationalists to reach out to people like him, say websites aimed at specific groups: disgruntled parents, students fed up by campus orthodoxy, employees dispossessed by affirmative action, gun owners who are up in arms, IT folks opposed to Silicon Valley totalitarianism, even people in the System itself.
But going Full Fash is too much for most people up front. To use an overworked metaphor, the situation is like people plugged into The Matrix who have to be Red Pilled – gradually. The critical thing is that once your average American has been unplugged to get them to see the link between issues like the above laundry list and the bigger picture of White dispossession.
A major strength of the Dissident Right is the refusal to knuckle under to political correctness, unlike Conservatism Inc which seems to enjoy groveling out apologies. The Covington High student incident shows that Whites are looking for people to stand up and fight the System. There’s the value of being transgressive. Pepe/Kek/It’s-OK-To-Be-White worked as tactics for people to engage in acts of everyday resistance. But like any tactic, these can burn out as the System comes up with countermeasures. New memes can be developed, then switched to stay ahead of System response.
Another thing to consider is an alliance with other elements of the Dark Enlightenment. (Didn’t the term Red Pill have its origins with the MGTOW movement?) Heartiste, for whatever his anomalies, made the crossover from manosphere to race realism. Think of a student coalition to demand that universities provide (pro-)White Studies and Men’s Resources programs on campus.
Alternative media and legal defense need to be provided to back up your average White voter who comes over to the Nationalist side. Again, easy enough to say here, another thing to do IRL. Any White-radical movement is going to be up against the usual repression: de-platformings, media smears, trumped up charges by the political police. Counter-tactics need to be developed.
A couple of Constitutional issues have resiliency with many Americans: Free Speech and Gun Rights. How can Nationalists organize along these issues? The recent Richmond 2nd Amendment rally ought to be studied for lessons learned. Might also think of a trans-national alliance of National Populist forces worldwide.
There are at least 60 million Whites in the USA open to Nationalist mobilization.
284 days until election 2020 and counting down…
This commentary is full of good concrete ideas of how we can fight back in intelligent, yet non-controversial ways which will not get us censored or de-platformed. It also lists specific groups which we can ally with, such as gun owners, who might make common cause with us and mutually increase both our numbers. For instance, while I cannot shoot guns myself due to a broken hand, I can sure support those who would ‘have my back’ in any coming squabbles with the left.
So, I see lots of pathways here, which I intend to re-read and make lists of ‘to-do’ actions, and get myself busy. And, as always, at the top of my list is calling out the differences between White Nationalism and White Supremacy, where I seem them used incorrectly and/or interchangeably in the wrong context within articles or posts.
I watched one of Dr. Steve Turley’s videos on YT yesterday on the subject of Nationalism. His channel is generally pretty civnat oriented and steers clear of references to race. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised he dipped his toes into the “is America an idea, or a people” question. The comments to the video were overwhelmingly in favor of the people part of our nation’s Nationalism, and quite a number used the word White when describing said people. These were the comments that had the highest upvotes too. I found it encouraging.
Ultimately, what is needed – and more importantly, what is absolutely possible – is a mass American civic (but, what it would in fact be or rapidly become, implicitly white) nationalist dues-paying organization. Something like the NRA, but for tying together all of the anti-antiwhite positions and concerns: opposition to affirmative action, racist “white privilege” crap, mass immigration above all, the war on cops, coddling violent felons, foreign aid, bad trade deals, etc etc. If we had a mass civic nat org , that would be an entry to future mass racial nationalist org. I think that a mass civnat group would over time be taken over by whitenats anyway. The enemy took over many of our institutions through infiltration and later redefinition; why can’t we use the same playbook?
This article is perhaps the most significant of any Counter Currents has ever published. Because without white nationalists’ unification into a political voting bloc and participation in major national elections, all the good work produced here by Greg Johnson and his team doesn’t matter; whites are going to be incapable of winning even most mayoral elections in just a few generations, and we will have absolutely no political power to prevent the US from becoming a North American Brazil.
Let me first state that I am a strong opponent of the sort of northwestern ethno-state that some in the movement have advocated, or the “pockets of resistance” many partial white nationalists like white gun rights advocates and their libertarian counterparts envision, because as a member of the US Military (which from the inside appears to me the most anti-white organization in perhaps the entire US government), such an idea could simply not be put into practice in the era of Great Power Politics, just as it was impossible for the Confederacy to exist side by side with the ideologically-opposed government of the North, or National Socialist Germany to exist side by side with its ideological opposites in Communist Russia and Capitalist America. We would, as white nationalists, be attempting to live beside an equally hostile multiculturalist, globalist regime whose sole purpose is to destroy the very type of white ethno-state we are proposing to carve out of its own territory. Therefore, our only path forward is the type of participation in national electoral politics that Greg Johnson describes above. I think Francis Parkey Yockey and Willis Carto would agree with this opinion; it really is all or nothing for us now, and politics is the key to unlocking the door to the preservation of our race and nation.
Regarding the formation of a white nationalist political party, or at least the replacement of Republican leadership by committed white nationalists, the Tipping Point will be 2040, the year when whites cease to be a majority in our own nation. At that time, I believe most whites, even the dwindling few who due to white flight or other measures of isolation have not experienced the very real negative consequences of the radical demographic change our country is currently suffering, will feel a visceral reaction to an articulate white man standing on a stage espousing how we have just become a minority, what the implications of that are in a democracy, what the implications are for future generations, and how the two existing parties are both complicit in this handover of our forefather’s sacrifice to globalist elites and their third world immigrant pets. It will be at least as refreshing as the sense of hope we felt from Donald Trump’s initial campaign rhetoric, which challenged such political third rails as immigration reform, when a white man on a TV speaks not about meaningless temporal issues like tax reform or transgender rights, but about greater ideals like our mission as a nation, as a race, about our shared history and most importantly our collective future.
The problem is, therefore, as Dr. Johnson says in the WN Manifesto, making our cause worthy of a great leader, someone to lead this new political party, to represent the best of us, to portray white nationalists as the well-educated patriot and not the alcoholic illiterate motorcycle-driving skinhead caricature Jewish Hollywood has concocted. But we cannot wait around for such a leader to fall from the sky. As Jared Taylor recently expressed, if you cannot find an organization to join, lead one yourself. I would like to personally ask Dr. Johnson why he himself cannot become involved in politics? I know the many answers to that question, to include his own lack of desire in or taste for the carnage and stupidity of electoral campaigning. But I believe he is exactly what we need, a face to attach to our movement, a voice of reason standing aboard a ship of fools, a man talented and intelligent enough to potentially get onto a debate stage and instantly catapult our cause into the national limelight, thus for the first time truly bringing white nationalism from a divided, virtual-dwelling movement best known for its “God Emperor” Trump memes, into mainstream politics with a tangible political platform addressing a future for all whites in this nation.
I am flattered, but I am not cut out for politics.
Why not?
For those of us who are not going to live to see 2040, what are we to do NOW in order to be effective? No one should be asked to wait 20 years before millions of other people become ‘woke’ to the need for White Nationalism before they jump into action. Any concrete ideas?
‘Democrats should be the party of gentiles’?
Are you serious? Democrats are specifically and vociferously the party of the non-whites already here and the non-white immigrants, as well as the champions of the whole non-white world out there, and are massively opposed to ‘White Privilege’ (which is just another word for everyday white life) and White Nationalism. Were you just being facetious?
[….] We are not coherent enough of a group nor are
we organized as an official electoral voting block that can be integrated into either of the major party’s as a legitimate body. However, this is taking the maximalists interpretation of what a voting block is.
US electoral politics has a long history of unofficial voting blocks on both the left and the right. In times past left liberals had to obfuscate their alliance with racial & sexual identities. While you can pull up plenty of quotes of FDR openly stating his desire to end segregation, you can also pull up plenty of quotes of FDR playing good optics in front of white crowds and obfuscating or outright lying about his desires. While blacks were some what integrated into FDR’s publicly facing coalition, they were still marginalized, sidelined and expected not to be visible. FDR arguably did a decent amount for blacks in the cultural landscape he was navigating but that is largely irrelevant to my point that he still pumped them for votes while not making them visible.
Homosexual rights was another great example of left liberals having to “hide their power levels” and using the homosexual rights activists as democratic activists/voting block while keeping them invisible and publicly counter signalling them.
So the phenomenon of having a small but heavily engaged unofficial voting blocks is nothing new to the left or the right.
As we’ve learned from the information coming out about smartcheckr/clearwater ricky vaughn clearly had an intent to identify and fundraise and funnel the alt-right into bland republicanism.
[…]
Two points:
1. Whether or not WNs constitute a real voting bloc has nothing to do with how openly or covertly the establishment would court us, which depends on the existing structure of social taboos. Establishment parties won’t court us openly OR covertly unless we have (1) a clear picture of our size, location, and commitment as a voter bloc, and (2) some sort of leadership structure that can collect and convey that information and plausibly deliver the votes. Lacking that, we are nothing that can figure into the establishment’s electoral calculations. The issue of whether they would openly or only covertly seek our votes is entirely different.
2. You claim:
This is not supported by the facts. It is not even plausible. It’s really quite stupid. Just standard wignat boilerplate.
Ricky Vaughn, who was a highly influential Twitter presence in 2015-2016, went to Paul Nehlen with a pitch to help his campaign. Apparently he was affiliated in some way with a company called Smartchecker, which was developing “proprietary search and facial recognition technology.” The data this technology worked on was scraped from the major social media platforms. People put information out about their preferences and identities. Smartchecker scrapes it, tabulates it, and looks for patterns.
For years now, I have been saying that the movement needs to start collecting data on the people who follow us – primarily by incentivizing people to answer polls – to see what else they might have in common besides WN views. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if, say, members of the Dissident Right are disproportionately from other groups as well? Wouldn’t that help us in outreach and redpilling efforts? Every political movement does this sort of work, except us.
As I mentioned above, this sort of information is necessary for us to become a real voting bloc.
Now we know it is already being done, on a much bigger scale than what I had envisioned, and when it was offered to Nehlen, as a trial run to see if it could help political campaigns – he doxed the guy who made the pitch.
We will never get anywhere with kooks like Nehlen.
The idea that Ricky Vaughn was obviously all about subverting the Alt Right is simply the line taken by people like Richard Spencer, who is desperately trying to explain the collapse of the Alt Right without reference to his own disastrous lapses of judgment, like hailgate.
A lot of things were possible in 2016. The online Alt Right — which had nothing to do with Spencer except the name that they later adopted — was an important part of the intellectual and political conversation swirling around the Trump campaign. We were networking and building connections to disaffected people in the mainstream. Most of that collapsed after Hailgate.
But rather than take responsibility, Spencer is now putting forward the argument that the fix was always in against us, there was never really a chance of having productive working relationships and influence on people closer to the mainstream — people like Bannon, for instance. Instead, Spencer is presenting the narrative that they were always acting in bad faith, trying to harvest the votes and energy and money of the Alt Right for the Republicans. Hence this crack-brained take on Smartchecker.
In truth, the Alt Right allowed Richard Spencer to appoint himself its leader — the very sort of phony, self-aggrandizing grifting behavior that he accuses others of — and when Spencer behaved like an ass, sensible people cut ties to all of us.
You are welcome to resubmit the parts I cut if you can rein in your snark.
I completely agree with you analytic information is crucial for us. Polling is exceedingly expensive but completely necessary. Not having our own polling is like a general making up battle plans based upon how the enemy fought last time, you can have an idea but your relying on a lot of luck as well.
I would agree and stated we are not an official or an integrated voting block, which depending on how you define it I get your point. We definitely do not act with agency to push a self aware agenda in an organized fashion. All I can do is look backwards and try to make sense of what I see (again, it’s a self admittedly limited view) Republicans *do* do their own internal polling and while I doubt they ask questions “are you a white nationalists?” They’re obviously asking questions about immigration, social issues etc that would strongly indicate if someone was or had said leanings and trumps campaign sent don jr on political cesspool for a reason, could it of been random? Sure I guess but a quick google search would pull up James Edwards splc profile as the top hit, and I highly doubt that wasn’t a conscious decision. There’s quotes of Bannon referring to amren as “on ourside” and considering bannon was close to Stephen Miller who isn’t one of us but is a genuine immigration restrictionists who as we know from that tradcaths (I forget the womens name) doxes was sharing amren articles, I fully believe bannon had said something similar at some point.
One could argue bannon was trying a kitchen-sink strategy and was was simply trying everything, which may have been part of his thinking but I dont think they would’ve made that play if the campaign didnt think something was there
Whether or not we should perform our own analytics is one thing but the characters behind smartcheckr are not a group any of us would trust. I don’t think anyone looks at rudy gullani and thinks, that’s the type of based Republican we can trust.
Spencer’s biggest mistake was embracing TRS and daily stormer. As much as I disagree with Vdare and Amren it was a big mistake for Spencer to realign himself with DS/TRS. Who were responsible for inserting Hollywood nazism into the alt-right, DS/TRS were responsible for pushing ‘1488’ in 2017.
Spencer was down stream from that. I blame spencer for not being spencer enough. He shouldn’t of given into their memes but your criticisms rings hollow when you defend people who directly pushed nazism into the alt right and absolve them of any responsibility. Even if you believe DS’s transformation during the optics war was sincere (I dont) you still dont come off as honest or genuine when you absolve DS’s prior influence on the movement (assuming you think they’re a positive influence now).
Hailgate again, it’s disingenuous for all the blame to land on spencer. I was very vocal about my displeasure of how that was handled, and was frankly when I lost a lot of respect for mike enoch. To be totally honest and fair I think spencer’s speech was ok, but not a great choice. Spencer’s best speech was “why do they hate us” from the 2015 amren conference. It wasn’t boringly basic but also very digestible to a broad audience. He should’ve made some tweaks to it and delivered that instead. HOWEVER hailgate was ultimately the blame of mike enoch.
Spencer could’ve saved face for himself and the movement if he would’ve immediately came out and said “that was mike enoch, I dont support nazism in anyway and he will be banned from any future events.” Which would’ve opened up the door to none stop denunciations, what about this guy and what he said? What about him? It still would’ve been a disaster but it would’ve given the alt-light the plausible deniability they needed to provide cover for us. Spencer didnt do that. He never throw mike under the bus and figured it’d be better to hang together than to hang alone (which was the right choice). How did mike repay his loyalty? By not showing up to the gallows himself. Mike’s refusal to step up and to at least say to the movement “guys, dont blame Richard. I threw up the roman” helped to make Richard the fall guy for hailgate.
I compare it to if your at a bar and your friend is being rowdy and the bouncer comes up and kicks you out, a good friend doesn’t point his finger and say “I didnt break the glass, it was him over there” but conversely your friend who did cause the trouble shouldn’t just stay in the bar and continue to party. A good friend would either step up like “dont kick him out, it was me” or at the very least simply leave with you and roll out together to another bar.
After hailgate is when ‘1488’ became a meme in the alt-right, again pushed out by TRS and DS. Mike, I think wanted to prove to himself his nazi fauxpas wasn’t a big deal. I was in [blank] discord chats at the time saying “apologizing publicly may not be right thing to do, but we internally should acknowledge that was really dumb and should never happen again.” Alex mcnabb and mike himself were viciously attacking me as a cuck, encouraging people not to listen to me. I would say how hailgate was handled and the doubling down on 1488 was the real disaster. Again, that was mostly the fault of TRS and not spencer personally.
I also reject the narrative spencer never had his own appeal and simply rode waves. Spencer had a lot of pull himself separate from what TRS or DS were doing.
While I’ve had my frustrations with spencer big picture wise he has done more to pull in higher quality people than any other. One of TRS’s shittiest meta memes is cRuSh dA uRbAnItE. Urbanites eg educated professionals are worth much more than DS’s & TRS’s goyim farms of rural autozone employees. I never even heard a nickelback song until I was in a TRS forum.
Everyone who I meet who came in through DS or TRS were all a mess. Angry, bitter, weird misfits. Everyone who I meet who said they came around to embracing these politics from Spencer were healthy, educated put together people. I would say the same about you, and maybe it’s only because Spencer put his face out there when you wouldn’t but I’ve meet more people who came into pro-white politics through spencer than yourself, but everyone I meet who came through counter currents were also smart and healthy people as well. I get the split between you two philosophically and I understand some back-and-forth between the two of you but the radix/counter currents divide was very unfortunate.
While I have diminished respect for you because of your alliances, I have little to no respect for DS and TRS.
First quotes then comments:
One of the Smartchecker people is a Jew who used to work for Guiliani. I’d be more worried about the Jew angle than who he worked for. It is meaningless the say Guiliani is “behind” that company.
My views on Anglin and DS are clear here:
https://counter-currents.com/2017/08/my-conversation-with-andrew-anglin/
https://counter-currents.com/2014/10/vantard-strategies/
https://counter-currents.com/2014/10/vanguardism-vantardism-and-mainstreaming/
I think Anglin and Weev learned some valuable lessons after Charlottesville. They were right in the optics debates. They learned from experience. They matured. Spencer got worse and worse over time, making dumb choices and doubling down on them. This is a trait with malignant narcissists. They can’t learn from their mistakes.
No, it wasn’t. It was Spencer’s fault. He put news cameras in that room, and he said “Hail victory” and raised his glass. Only a complete moron could not foresee the consequences. When somebody says “Shave and a haircut,” he can’t act surprised when someone shouts out “Two bits!”
Spencer should have given a statesmanly speech about how it is time to put away the memes and buckle down to do serious policy work to help forward Trump administration objectives. He would have attracted a huge amount of support. (I know a guy in NYC who was talking about giving NPI $100,000 over three years. I told him there is no sign that Spencer is intereesting in using NPI for anything but self-promotion, and I persuaded him to wait until after the Inauguration to decide. Needless to say, he changed his plans after Hailgate.)
After Hailgate, Regnery should simply have fired Spencer. Now NPI is effectively dead.
I wish Spencer had blamed Enoch. It would have been the end of Spencer in the movement. Enoch kept Spencer on life support for years when he should have been just allowed to fail.
Spencer had a modest track record with Alternative Right, NPI, Washington Summit, and Radix. I thought he was lazy, vain, and frivolous. But he wasn’t stupid. I tried to work with him until the Budapest debacle in Oct. 2014. But Spencer had the wits to see what everyone else saw: the online movement that emerged in 2014-2015 around TRS was something special, and when these people stated calling themselves the Alt Right, Spencer saw it as an opportunity to set himself up at the leader, even though I know for a fact that most of those people thought he was a pompous tool. Spencer was desparate for Cool Kid cred, and the cool kids were TRS and the Daily Stormer. Hailgate happened because he was desparate to curry favor with the TRS-DS faction of the movement. AltRight.com, which is Spencer’s third failed webzine (fourth if you count Takimag), was obviously whoring after the DS TRS audience.
This is so petty and myopic it’s frankly too believable and on the nose.
[snip]
I gave you a chance, and you blew it.
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