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Right-wingers often say they want to create an “elite” revolutionary vanguard.
This would supposedly attract the best and brightest of our society in order to overthrow it. This elite would be smarter, more dedicated, more athletic, and possibly better-looking than the cattle they wish to rule. “We’re attracting quality, not quantity! Elites, not the masses!” is the eternal response to those who doubt this strategy.
Allegedly, these future elites will be won over with the most extreme rhetoric possible, so you need to emphasize how far apart your movement is from the mainstream. Don’t even bother trying to reach people where they are — just fetishize third-world dictators and terror groups. Once he hears this call, the Ivy League-educated lawyer will drop his career and banish all hopes of a bourgeois existence to take up the cause of white revolution. And with all these elites secretly or not-so-secretly adopting the cause, white nationalists will suddenly obtain power without any effort at the ballot box.
Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration. But many in our sphere think like this and believe only the most virulent “anti-bourgeois” rhetoric will attract this elite.
In the real world, the opposite occurs. The best and brightest stay far away from the revolutionary vanguard and these groups mostly attract the strange and marginalized.
No person better exemplified this than William Luther Pierce. Pierce is many things to Counter-Currents readers, but he’s just the man who wrote The Turner Diaries to the general public.
The violent novel is most famous for being the favorite book of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. It also inspired The Order and its spree of bank robbing and murder. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and cemented Pierce’s notoriety. To millions of Americans, he’s the guy who advocated for a white supremacist revolution on a genocidal scale.
. . .That’s not exactly a charming legacy. You would think Pierce actively recruited the alienated, the cranks, and the future mass shooters for his group, the National Alliance. But that wasn’t his goal at all. Pierce wanted the respectable to join the Alliance, not the kooky losers who fantasized about shooting up their nearby mall. Yet, his violent revolutionary rhetoric put off most of the people Pierce wanted to attract.
Pierce certainly was a talented writer and speaker, but his bloody fantasies (and his open National Socialism) ensured he never reached the elites.
Robert Griffin’s The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds captures Pierce’s problem. Pierce tells Griffin throughout the book that he wants well-educated professionals for the National Alliance; doctors, lawyers, etc. But when Griffin attends the NA’s leadership conference, he doesn’t encounter a legion of school board chiefs and future law firm partners. He doesn’t encounter freaks, either. Most of the people at the conference are salt-of-the-earth types from the working and lower-middle class. Griffin finds them to be good people, but not the upper-class professionals Pierce constantly talks about.
The likely reason is that most upwardly mobile whites were repulsed by Pierce’s ideas. Now many of these people are so craven that they find anyone who wants fewer immigrants distasteful, to say the least about an avowed National Socialist. But there are plenty of these types who are open to our ideas, they just aren’t about to drop their careers and families to join a revolutionary cell.
Most people aren’t radicals — and they have few reasons to turn themselves into radicals in today’s America. Yes, we are plagued by degeneracy, nihilism, and alienation. But we still have a large degree of economic prosperity that many can aspire to. . . or at least accumulate a lot of debt to obtain. We are not close to revolutionary circumstances.
Pierce knew this and continually emphasizes this throughout Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds. But he still believed he needed radicals who wanted a revolution in his group. That’s why he didn’t mind scaring off the bourgeoisie with his books — even though he wanted to attract bourgeois people into his movement.
Here’s how he responded to Griffin’s question about these types being put off by The Turner Diaries.
[The Diaries] isn’t going to get a receptive audience from say, an intelligent person who is concerned about all the problems he sees around him — racial conflict, the effects of economic globalization, the de-industrialization of this country, the breakdown of morality in America, the negative influence of television and the other media — but who just wants those problems to go away without it putting him out or having things get messy. He’s worried about crime because it keeps him from enjoying life in the way he would like. . . He’d like somebody to do something about all these problems, that’s for sure, but, really, he doesn’t give a damn about the fundamental things I was concerned with in The Turner Diaries. He just wants those problems fixed so he can live his life without interference.
Most people are like those Pierce chides. People come to our ideas because of the problems they see around them, and because they want solutions to those problems. They probably aren’t going to be interested in hearing about telluric forces or Agartha. Any movement that wants to obtain power has to come to terms with this. These certainly aren’t going to be committed activists or dissident intellectuals, but you will need them on your side.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here
Pierce ranted about these middle-class types in many of his writings.
“The man who is against busing is generally a man who is fairly well-satisfied with the other things around him. Let’s solve this busing problem, he thinks, and then I can go back to my TV. Or let’s defeat this gun-control law, and then I can go back to what I was doing before,” he wrote in the 1977 essay “Conservatism or Radicalism?”
Pierce argues in that essay that his movement should be a dedicated core of revolutionary idealists. This small minority would then drag the masses along with their power and influence. Countless others have made similar arguments since then.
Nobody has offered the means to take power through a revolutionary vanguard. Some imagine they can reenact the Bolshevik Revolution, others think they can win over a powerful institution from which to take over the whole country. This can all happen if we get the most radical ideology possible. The problem is that “vanguards” often end up being a handful of losers who imagine they are elites. They get nowhere and merely jerk off to their own power fantasies. The “elite” talk is a cope for being unable to win over many followers.
You can witness these fantasies every day on right-wing Twitter. People act like they get closer to power the more they pose as radicals. Just one more tweet offering an imaginary alliance to leftists/Islamists/Chinese and the world will be theirs. It’s like the famous meme of a boomer woman saying she will single-handedly destroy ISIS. These people should know better than the poor boomer who was turned into an internet legend.
All of this self-radicalism doesn’t make you a revolutionary vanguard; it just ensures you stay in the ghetto and no one pays attention to you.
There exists a great example on the Left. The Students for a Democratic Society was a massively influential group in the 1960s. They shut down multiple universities and organized anti-war demonstrations that attracted tens of thousands of people. At its height, it had over a hundred thousand members. However, it collapsed in 1969 due to the extremism of its leaders. The group split up at its 1969 convention between two sides that were far outside of the American mainstream. On one side were orthodox Maoists, on the other side was the Revolutionary Youth Movement. Both sides focused more on arguing over Marxist minutiae than appealing to widespread youth discontent. The two split and formed their own version of SDS. They both died off without ending the war, eliminating capitalism, or bringing about the revolution.
The RYM is the most similar to vanguardist fantasies. Led by actual elites, the RYM later became the Weathermen and engaged in pointless acts of terrorism. They considered this more important than organizing students and protests. Their terrorism accomplished nothing and made the American public more averse to their viewpoint. Like right-wing vanguardists, they thought American society was too corrupt to save and the whole order must be swept away by a revolutionary elite. That convinced them terrorism was the real solution. The vast majority of SDSers and sympathizers didn’t follow their leaders into revolution, leaving the student protest movement disorganized and confused.
Mark Rudd, one of the radical leaders, concluded this strategy “played into the hands of the FBI. . . We might as well have been on their payroll.”
Of course, some Weathermen were welcomed back into polite society and were awarded plum jobs. That’s more a testament to them giving up their cause and our elites’ greater tolerance for left-wing violence. Right-wing extremists only get this treatment if they fully sell out and become a lapdog for the Anti-Defamation League.
There is no guaranteed path to power and you never know what the future might hold. But intentionally marginalizing yourself for the applause of malcontents is not going to achieve anything, no matter how much you tweet about POWER.
A movement cannot be led by the conservatives Pierce deplored, but it can’t make its mission to attack their sensibilities. It has to engage with our people where they are. That doesn’t mean we pretend we’re kosher conservatives who don’t see color. We just have to present our ideas in terms that they will understand and sympathize with. There should be places like Counter-Currents where we discuss more esoteric topics, but those subjects shouldn’t be the focus of our pitch.
We have to build a movement that escapes from the ghetto and makes itself a viable political alternative in the real world. That starts by appealing to people’s ordinary concerns. They do not care for unironic National Bolshevism or Pan-Evropean Imperium. They just want to live in a nice, white country.
The best and brightest will join our cause when nationalists show we’re a serious force that can make the West great again. Making transgression a virtue and LARPing as revolutionaries online ensures they stay far away.
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16 Comments
“Right-wingers often say they want to create an ‘elite’ revolutionary vanguard. This would supposedly attract the best and brightest of our society in order to overthrow it. This elite would be smarter, more dedicated, more athletic, and possibly better-looking than the cattle they wish to rule.”
This was parodied quite nicely by Chuck Palahniuk in his novel “Adjustment Day” (2018).
I’ve always contended that revolution in general, be it rightist or leftist, cannot succeed without the context of a war or civil war, the cause of which is virtually unrelated to the movement’s central goals. Only in the complete breakdown of society can things get shaken up so badly that outsider movements, who aren’t perceived as carrying blame for the conflict, can seize power. There’s plenty of examples of this throughout history, and virtually no success stories of vanguardism in peace time.
The winning position of white nationalism would be that of the non-aggressor in a civil war, stuck between, let’s say, a Marxian leftist revolutionary movement and a liberal democratic establishment that fails to keep the peace. Only when both liberal democracy and Marxism are synonymous with instability and terrorism in the public mind will there be space for WNs in the noosphere, to say “we told you so.”
There’s plenty of examples of peacetime revolutions. The fall of Communism and 1848 come to mind. You could argue that the first was spontaneous and for the most part, there weren’t any vanguard movements involved (except the Solidarity in Poland), but the many revolutions of 1848 were mostly directed by dissident intellectual elites of the type Pierce dreamt of. The 48ers might not have succeeded then and there, but they got some important concessions from the powers that be. Kind of the equivalent of us forcing a moratorium on immigration by going out in the streets with huge public support, (although this would be more akin to a revolt than a “revolution”).
There’s much to be said for tailoring the message to the audience.
We also should be aware that there are several audiences, all that can make their contributions. Elite audiences will be put off by lowbrow appeals. Proletarian audiences won’t get into highbrow appeals. Middle-class audiences won’t quite be a fit for either highbrow or lowbrow appeals, and need their own messages.
We can’t be all things to all people. This is why separate efforts are important. These efforts, despite their differences, should remain on friendly terms, or at least refrain from tripping up each other.
Forget the vanguard. And forget rationalism.
Things will have to get a lot worse before anybody reacts. They will.
A persons status is more important for him than anything, and hence the idea of the ‘good people’ joining our ideas is generally far fetched. They will always as a rule go for whatever the society demands. The payoff is better.
And forget the idea of winning by peaceful rational argumentation and behaviour. People applying brute force paired with a cunning behaviour will beat you. Every time. Few people from the masses will join you because you are peaceful.
A revolution is for people who wants to tear down for the sake of it. Responsible WN will never go for that. But they’ll go for war when they have to.
This is exactly the reason that makes me think that The Turner Diaries it is much more “realistic” than The Hunter.
The second it’s completely unrealistic, and fantasy about this supposed elite to be created regardless of a material need for protection. Not to mention that the protagonist is a psychopathic maniac who becomes a strategist in the blink of an eye.
The best and brightest will join our cause when nationalists show we’re a serious force that can make the West great again.
We have some very good people already. Are they ‘the best and the brightest’? Seems like it to me. Pierce had hope the ‘successful’ people would join because, being a National Socialist, he wanted to believe that all Whites in all classes had similar concerns.
Being a cynic, I think ‘successful’ people will ‘join’ the movement after White Nationalism (or something similar) is already successful. That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930’s and that’s what will happen here.
The Fame of Dead Man’s Deeds is a fascinating work, I would encourage people to get a copy, read it and make their own assessment of Pierce who struggled long and mightily on behalf of White well-being and died still fighting.
White advocacy occurs along a spectrum of different foci and approaches. There is value in galvanizing extremism as well as seductive moderation. I agree with Beau Albrecht that audience — and rhetoric — matters, I also, think, however, that one can only sculpt a message for different audiences when one is quite certain of the core message to be communicated independent of the audience.
Cadres arise out of the masses because they focus on the part of the message that is more extreme or more doctrinal and, thereby, become the cadre.
>That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930’s and that’s what will happen here.
Did it? Depends on when you put the timestamp of NS becoming “successful”, I guess, but Hitler was making headway with industrialists long before 1933 and medical doctors were the professional group with the largest percentage of support for NS long before they came into power.
Most professionals, ie lawyers and doctors, are not very sophisticated politically. Most are right of center, Fox News watching economic conservatives, with a growing smattering of leftist cat ladies. It’s not that they’re not smart people, but subjects have become so complex and technical that they are completely absorbed in mastering their fields until they are about thirty. There is a certain highly politically motivated element in these strata, however, which busily polices ideology and opinion, particularly on race, and approximates itself to nexuses of control and power. The rest of the professionals are only worried about getting their paychecks and getting out, naturally, so these aggressive elements hold undue sway. Think of Sam franciss essay on the manegerial elite.
For example, when duke ran for governor in Louisiana, the American board of cardiologists threatened never to have another meeting in Louisiana if he was elected. Now what does politics in Louisiana have to do with heart health? Nada. And most doctors are republican. A certain leadership element instigated this.
But if you just want a nice, white country and not an esotheric Nazbol dictatorship then you’re a racist liberal! /s
Now, seriously, this is the point. Being normie friendly and focusing on showing normies how everyday life would be better in a homogenous white country is the most simple and effective thing to do. Then we should think about how to conquer important positions in society.
One advantage of being explicitly Hitlerian (or Rockwellian) national socialist is that it would keep out Conservative Inc., libertarians, and Strasserites/Nazbols/communists/Duginists. People know exactly where you stand. Dissident right, white nationalism, national populism, America First, etc. may have more mass appeal, but when you cast a wider net, you also risk letting in more undesirables. The main problem with the Old Right, as Greg Johnson has pointed out, is their inane fantasies of violence. But national socialist advocacy need not be violent. Indeed, it should not be in the modern age. Although, it should have a no tattoo policy. If we are to stick with the terms white nationalism or national populism, however, perhaps it would be best if we took a more clear position on economic policy. We also need a third party and more non-violent protests, imo. A third party would make it obvious that we are not Republicans or conservatives (even if white Republicans are our target audience). But what about Charlottesville? Charlottesville was a failure because we let it become one. We capitulated instead of doubling down. I think a protest bringing awareness to white genocide/white replacement would be great. Maybe even a sit-in or something. Anything non-violent to keep our ideas fresh in the minds of the public.
The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanaticism yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations of a similar sort. It is the greatest error to believe that the strength of a movement increases through a union with another of similar character. It is true that every enlargement of this kind at first means an increase in outward dimensions, which to the eyes of superficial observers means power; in truth, however, it only takes over the germs of an inner weakening that will later become effective.
For whatever can be said about the like character of two movements, in reality it is never present. For otherwise there would actually be not two movements but one. And regardless wherein the differences lie-even if they consisted only in the varying abilities of the leadership-they exist. But the natural law of all development demands, not the coupling of two formations which are simply not alike, but the victory of the stronger and the cultivation of the victor’s force and strength made possible alone by the resultant struggle. Through the union of two more or less equal political party formations momentary advantages may arise, but in the long run any success won in this way is the cause of inner weaknesses which appear later.
The greatness of a movement is exclusively guaranteed by the unrestricted development of its inner strength and its steady growth up to the final victory over all competitors. Yes, we can say that its strength and hence the justification of its existence increases only so long as it recognizes the principle of struggle as the premise of its development, and that it has passed the high point of its strength in the moment when complete victory inclines to its side. Therefore, it is only profitable for a movement to strive for this victory in a form which does not lead to an early momentary success, but which in a long struggle occasioned by absolute intolerance also provides long growth. Movements which increase only by the so-called fusion of similar formations, thus owing their strength to compromises, are like hothouse plants. They shoot up, but they lack the strength to defy the centuries and withstand heavy storms.
The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. If an idea in itself is sound and, thus armed, takes up a struggle on this earth, it is unconquerable and every persecution will only add to its inner strength. The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine. The apparent head start which movements achieve by fusions is amply caught up with by the steady increase in the strength of a doctrine and organization that remain independent and fight their own fight. -AH
The italicized passages of the Leader’s remarks are a great read. Despite that I agree with the main line of CC and the general intelligent consensus in the better part of the current White Nationalist movement that it is advisable to keep a low profile on AH and refrain from praising or highlighting him in public presently due to the political and socio-cultural vibe of the West today, deep in my heart, I still love, admire, and venerate the Leader, his flaws and foibles notwithstanding, for his unmatched selflessness, fortitude, purity, and indefatigability as a great White leader and anti-(((usurer))) and anti-Bolshevist warrior, and my profound and sincere reverence of him will not be altered by the vicissitudes of the time, nor be taken away by any one.
Nationalist movements against mass immigration in white countries are generally dominated by the working class, since it is mainly blue collar workers who are affected by this immigration in their everyday lives.
Members of the upper classes, on the other hand, can afford a white flight and can sometimes even benefit from the immigration economically. Many of them also take pride in being political correct and more open-minded and tolerant than the less educated working class.
But the revolutionary nationalism repels most working class people too. Most of them just want to return to the demographic situation they had before the immigration reforms of the 60s and 70s in the Western world.
“Nationalist movements against mass immigration in white countries are generally dominated by the working class, since it is mainly blue collar workers who are affected by this immigration in their everyday lives. … ” But the revolutionary nationalism repels most working class people too. Most of them just want to return to the demographic situation they had before the immigration reforms of the 60s and 70s in the Western world.” – Breidablik.
Exactly. And this is why I think these issues should be pushed harder, especially in an economic downturn. It’s also a fairly easy mental jump to make for most people. Immigration = less employment for natives, higher rents and housing costs, and less social welfare, especially in retirement. It also creates social problems such as crime and less social trust.
Most people understand this, even on a less than conscious level. This year I believe, Australia for example, has reduced immigration numbers by 85% (because of Covid19). The predicable outcry from property owners, business and other interest groups, accusations of racism etc, didn’t stop the majority of commentary on various media platforms from putting their opinions forward. In other words, they were losing their narrative, and no-one was drinking the cool-aid anymore. I’m sure this will change again and immigration will go up again in a few years, but my point is, these are easy ideas to get out there to White working and middle classes. The issue then becomes a need for some sort of leadership to direct these feelings to, rather than just complaining about it to their mates down the pub.
Too many times I’ve heard naysayers do their whatabouts, you-can’t-do-this’, and the worst possible characterizations of others with completely out-of-context statements imaginable while proclaiming “we must do this!”‘ as an untested alternative. All without doing this alternative himself.
Well, Robert Hampton has done so this this time around. I’m underwhelmed.
Robert, if you’ve got ideas to implement, is it necessary to spend your time to tear others down? Were I you, I’d put all my efforts into making ideas you like into reality rather than shoot uselessly from the lip. Your own success stories would then be all that’s needed to do the talking for you.
The National Alliance is growing again under thoughtful and competent leadership, and is making strides in rebuilding and building upwards from there what was torn down in near totality.
Thank you for forwarding Mr. Hampton’s criticism of William Pierce and of the organization he founded, JM/Iowa. I don’t follow C-C or other sites that style themselves as intellectual arbiters of truth, so would have missed “The ‘Revolutionary Vanguard’ Trap” otherwise. My first impression reading it was that it was the Jew queer Mark Potok writing under an alias: “…[WLP is] just the man who wrote The Turner Diaries to the general public.” Really?
The italicized Hitler quote by commentator Nikandros counters the negative critique, particularly the last sentence that speaks to the National Alliance’s uncompromising long term strategy: “…the steady increase in the strength of a doctrine and organization that remain independent and fight their own fight.” Our Alliance is not Left wing, Right Wing, New Right, alt-right, conservative nor libertarian. We are racial nationalists, apart from the rest of the so-called “Movement.”
This critic’s characterizing of Alliance members and supporters as wild-eyed genocidal losers is indefensible. So, as the current National Alliance Chairman, with my right of reply, I only offer to C-C readers this for the “other side of the story”: https://natall.com/about/what-is-the-national-alliance/ This will resonate with some determined, racially responsible Whites, but not with others, especially with those who find they are ineligible for Alliance membership or with defeatists who have lost all hope for a racially separate White future.