Counter-Currents
1,734 words
I never took a side in the Optics War. I only wondered why anyone thought it needed to be fought.
I realize I’m going against the general sentiment of nearly every other writer on this site and most of the readers by stating this, but I feel the entire Optics War was ill-advised, divisive, and destructive. And neither side came out in better shape as a result.
Please at least try to hear me out, as annoying as it may be. Try to bite your lip just a little bit while I vent my spleen.
I’ve been around this particular political mulberry bush enough times that I don’t give much attention to the hot new “dissident” trends, because I’m aware of how quickly every last one of them crashes and burns. So the only opinions I publicly expressed while this war was raging were that in a modern technocratic dystopia, traditionalism is bound to lose and religion is a distraction from politics. Traditions emerge in specific cultural and technological environments and become obsolete once the demographics and technology change. Regarding religion, when the war is on the ground, it’s foolish to keep your head in the clouds.
But that’s as far as I went. Otherwise, I found it depressing to see this fraternal war that took everyone’s attention away from the rapidly encroaching barbarians.
By the way, I don’t think it qualifies as a “war” when it’s “fought” entirely online and not in the streets, but that’s a matter for another article.
More on point: Who exactly managed this “war” that was only successful in that it took everyone’s attention away from focusing on the common enemy? I suspect it was someone with a lot of power—either in the government, the private sector, or some collusion between the two.
As far as who pulled the strings behind the curtains of this entirely unnecessary and wholly divisive war, I strongly suspect it was someone who was hostile toward both sides. Maybe it involved agents in the FBI and the CIA. Perchance it involved wealthy Republican operatives who didn’t like the taint of bad PR from what used to be known as the Alt Right. Maybe it involved all of the aforementioned.
But I highly doubt it was some organic uprising of the sensible and righteous hall monitors of the “Dissident Right.” Instead, I strongly sense it was planned and executed by those who hated both the good-optics crowd and the white-trash “wignats” and manipulated them into blaming one another. I feel it was orchestrated by those who both benefited from and enjoyed seeing these two tiny groups of “extremists” at one another’s throats.
But even though I didn’t take a side, when it comes to which side I found much more annoying, it was the “good optics” people. It wasn’t even close. Most of them came off like a bunch of pampered, snarky brats. Whether or not they were encouraged to do so by murky, unnamed forces, the good-optics crowd seemed to have instigated the infighting and done almost all of the attacking, and seemed to rejoice whenever one of their designated foes was destroyed or jailed. It was sickening to behold.
I sense that most of the “wignats” were taken unawares and mostly wondered what the fuck was going on. After all, they were being attacked by people who were openly Sieg-Heiling and focusing 100% on white identity only months prior.
It mostly seemed like a one-way war. Most of the accused “wignats” seemed to be thinking, “What the hell is this all about, and why has it happened all of a sudden? We were best friends only a year ago!” I feel the entire “anti-wignat purge” was ill-advised. If things get hairy, you’re going to need those people. Many of them may be dumb, but I sense a lot of them are more willing to shed blood—that of others and their own—than many of the trust-fund, frat-bro “optics” crowd who look down on the wignats with the identical disdain that Leftist snobs fling at them.
I find it difficult not to see the “Optics War” as an intraracial class war among whites, with all the snooty and protected rich boys making fun of “trailer trash wignats.” If the shit really goes down—and I don’t know anyone who thinks it won’t—you’re all going to need one another. Think about that for a second. Rather, think about it for at least one day.
One thing the modern Left doesn’t tend to do is disavow anyone who seems to be on their side politically, no matter how nutty or violent they are. Perhaps something can be learned from that. Black academics don’t attack crackhead gangstas, but we have the “America First” crowd—and it’s not a new idea, folks, but maybe you’re too young and uninformed to realize that—going after the meth-smoking lower-class white “wignats” with the same gleeful fury that Antifa does. The snobbier—and, in many ways, softer—elements of the “Dissident Right” have consistently displayed as much open disdain for the trailer-dwelling “wignats” as the Left does, if not more. So thanks for volunteering to do the Left’s dirty work for them, fellas.
I may be getting my chronology wrong here, but it seems as if the Optics War ignited shortly after Charlottesville. Of course, “Unite the Right” was the most ironically-named event in political history. Rather than achieving its stated goal, it pulverized the Right into subatomic particles. But when factions of the very same people who’d sympathetically attended Charlottesville began blaming other factions of those who’d sympathetically attended, I was baffled. I remain mystified that people could blame anyone but the press, Antifa, and the police for what happened that day.
After Charlottesville, things quickly devolved into a pissing contest centered on the narcissism of small differences. Who gives a fuck if some fool is stomping around in a Stahlhelm if he agrees with you on 99% of the things that matter?
Suddenly, everyone began accusing everyone else of being federal agents. Yes, I’m aware that there are feds infiltrating everything. I’m a guy whose writing was quoted by someone who shot at the White House back in 1994, so chances are good I’ve been on government watchlists since before many of you were born. But my instincts tell me that the first sign someone is a fed is that they’re always accusing others of being feds. Just drop it, guys. It creates an insane climate of paranoia and mistrust. Most importantly, it does the enemy’s work for them. They don’t even have to get their hands dirty.
The good-optics crowd assured us that if we followed them into the sunset, the normies would be converted and young men wouldn’t have their lives destroyed like they did when they were held captive under the Alt Right’s sinister thrall.
How’d all that work out fer ya?
There are some crucial differences between January 6, 2021 and Charlottesville. In Charlottesville, it was a Leftist—a presumed enemy, right?—who died. On January 6, a white female Trump supporter was shot in the neck and died at the hands of a cop who still hasn’t been identified.
As far as the aftermath goes, January 6 was incalculably worse than Charlottesville. Now the same people who seemed to think “good optics” would prevent them from social ostracism and even jail are learning the hard way that it didn’t. A lot of the “good optics” people were directly involved in the January 6 fiasco, which will prove to be a billion times more disastrous for “the cause” than anything that happened in Charlottesville.
Just like the “wignats” were a few years ago, now the “good optics” folks are being deplatformed, locked up, put on no-fly lists, designated as terrorists, and kicked out of the armed forces. Doesn’t that suggest that the whole “war” was not what it seemed to be?
Right across the board, both the good-optics and bad-optics people have been jailed, deplatformed, depersoned, and even exiled.
So many of the good-optics people completely fed into and encouraged the climate that led to what happened on January 6, but I’ve yet to see any of them take responsibility for it. Just as the “wignats” walked into a trap at Charlottesville, so did the good-optics crowd on January 6.
And now both sides are destroyed. Was it worth it, guys?
When the “Good Optics” people are now being deplatformed and put on no-fly lists and declared to be terrorists and described as Nazi white supremacists no matter how hard they strain to disavow such labels, can you explain to me what the entire purpose of that Hatfields vs. McCoy feud was? To the enemy, both the Hatfields and McCoys were dirty, contemptible hillbillies—no difference between any of them.
I’m sure most of you realize how difficult it’s been to visit this site over the past few months because of the endless DDoS attacks by those who view all of us as bad optics.
If sites such as this one are getting more traffic, I believe it’s not because they adhere to the good-optics credo or our wonderfully persuasive propaganda, but because of the Left’s absurdly bad behavior. Very few of us – and I’m including myself here – have had nearly as much of an impact as the Left’s behavior has. If the “normies” are coming “our” way, I think it has very little to do with “us” and everything to do with the establishment Left’s blindly arrogant drive for power.
I don’t have a clue about how to build a sustainable coalition, but I believe I have a good sense for what’s unnecessarily divisive. Just as the “boomer” meme got generations who would ordinarily be in agreement about most things blaming one another, the Optics War only served to divide people who agree about almost everything, or at least the things that count.
I’m not a “movement” guy. I’ve never even claimed to be “Right-wing,” but circumstances find me and the readers and writers of this site agreeing on a l0t of things. Not agreeing about all of them—that would be stupid and fanatical—but enough to prove we share similar concerns about the state of the world.
Trying to appeal to “normies” will fail. Circumstances will drive “normies” this way. Until then, quit the petty bickering, you schoolgirls. Drop your electronic swords. We have bigger fish to fry.
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66 comments
The TRS guys have been warning about this for a long time. Fuentes and his little movement have been subverted and made toothless by the same GOP establishment he thought he could subvert himself. MAGAtards who cite their love of their mixed race kids/grandkids when accused of racism are tortured in prison. Having said that, a talk with Jay Dyer on propaganda, COINTELPRO, tradition, and cultural creation and control would be good to see. Forget the boomer topic this time.
You’re underestimating just how much the “normies” will tolerate.
If you say anything that makes a White person think they cannot be a part of ‘our thing’ for any reason other than that they are not pro-White you’re fucking up.
Now is not the time to be critical of our brothers and sisters, but welcoming and generous in our patience and solidarity.
‘Optics’ might have been the theme, but Mr Goad is right in noticing the class aspect of the ‘Optics War’.
It was just another occasion were ostensibly pro-White people try to discriminate between themselves and some other group of Whites for reasons that have nothing to do with being pro-White or not.
Until Whites have power as Whites, all internal struggles are over pictures of crumbs, not even lousy crumbs.
Our goal every day should be to convince every White that they have a home in any future pro-White arrangement, whether it be a Union of Whites or a 90% White Nationalist virtual territory acquired via nullification as long as they are pro-White.
Well said.
Well said. Being pro-white should be the litmus issue, and compared to it, all other questions shade away toward insignificance. That takes care of the big question of who belongs to the broader cause. But when it comes to smaller questions, such as who you want to bring into your particular organization or movement, other questions apply. It is not enough to be pro-white if one lacks the character and skills necessary for a particular role in the movement. A lot of the optics war was just a parting of the ways between people with differing visions who tried working together when things got exciting in 2016 and 2017.
Yes, being prowhite is the irreducible bottom line. But the problem arises when we start asking about the content of “prowhiteness”. We must make sure that specific policy agendas really do in fact advance white preservation, as that term is commonly understood. We want racially pure whites to continue to exist on the planet. We Americans want whites to live – and live racially free – on the North American landmass. Racial freedom requires racial sovereignty. Racial sovereignty in turn requires either racial separation or racial domination. The ethnostate is probably more sustainable long term than white domination (which, after all, has already failed once).
Certain policies naturally follow from this. We want to end immigration (as the vast bulk is nonwhite, esp the illegal kind). We want the illegal population deported. We want to abolish affirmative action. No extortions for antebellum slavery. Hardline crime suppression policies, with the emphasis on violent street crime. No firearms freedom restrictions. No “hate speech” laws. Racial segregation of prisons. Termination of all foreign aid, which either goes to Third Worlders or Israel. A foreign policy based focused on protecting global white interests. Expelling Turkey from NATO. Improved relations with Russia. Abolition of HUD (which is used to combat “geographic segregation”, ie, to ruin white working class neighborhoods by imposing taxpayer-funded diversity upon them). Not only no tolerance for CRT, but also school curricula reflecting real (ie white) American history. Protection of monuments to great white men, and schools and parks named after them. Rescinding of “King Day”. The list goes on (some of which for the moment can only be persuasive: eg, discouraging interracial fraternization and especially miscegenation).
OTOH, other policies do NOT follow from the baseline commitment of prowhiteness. Issues pertaining to: abortion and queers; tax rates; corporate codes reforms; litigation reform; defense appropriations; agricultural subsidies; healthcare; the War on Drugs; Medicare funding; environmental policy (unless it involves huge transfers of wealth to foreigners in order to “fight climate change”); transsexualism; etc.
My point is that true prowhites only get an immunity from criticism by other prowhites when they stick to the inarguable prowhite agenda. If they go “off rez”, like that ass Heimbach used to do even when he was an alleged Nazi (eg, pushing his socialist crap), they become fair game. To me, a lot of the “wignats” seemed to bring in issues extraneous to core prowhite goals (and the intermediate positioning goals which must be reached first in order eventually to achieve the core).
Words of wisdom from one of my favourite authors.
Guys like Jim Goad, David Cole, Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor – rational thinkers who point out the absurdities of the left – have influenced me far more than the likes of Nick Fuentes ever could. And I’m a millennial.
The only thing that matters in this whole “Optics War” is that dissidents look sane.
Nothing makes our movement look worse than when it gets hijacked by morons.
Exactly. Pointing out the lunacy it’s 80% of the task. If you can engage the critical faculties of a readership the long term effect is good. It’s also likely to be profound. Call it the Invisible University.
So older guys influence a 30 year old more than a 22 year old does. Wow that’s shocking bro
More than 20 years ago I realized I could no longer label my political affiliation with any particular word because assholes always quickly ruined them. Even way back then I could sense it was deliberate. Dividing us has been easy and fun work.
I also don’t like or use the word “religion” to describe my faith, but I am guessing that’s what you mean when you mention it. Let me just share that if I didn’t believe that God was in control, especially now, I can’t imagine I could summon the will to get out of bed. My head is in the clouds because it’s better up there, and it allows me to want to be prepared for what’s coming down here.
P.S. Anyone who says they “fought in the optics war” unironically, should be forced to watch The View on an unending loop for a month. Yes, I realize that’s not very “Christian” of me.
The problem is that people see the movement as a single unifying force moving in one direction, and as such it seems important to pick the single right strategy and keep everyone in line.
The correct answer to what is the right strategy is everything. By being disjointed from the extreme left Joe Biden can look the other way as Antifa attacks you, and he doesn’t care if the attacker is a furry and a cam whore.
I don’t really respect internet trolls, but I understand that they are useful. Still I wouldn’t encourage everyone to engage in such activities if they want to be taken seriously. Same goes with real life activism.
Everyone has to chose for themselves how and to what degree they want to engage in politics.
Re: “Trying to appeal to “normies” will fail. Circumstances will drive “normies” this way.”
I don’t know if people saw this article posted in AmRen yesterday:
https://www.amren.com/news/2021/08/23-percent-of-republican-men-have-favorable-view-of-white-nationalists/
23% of Republican men surveyed said they have either a very or somewhat favorable view of white nationalists in America!
To make the math very simple: assume Trump got 70 million votes, assume half are males and half females, that’s 35 million (are you following me? 😊) . Now 23% of that is 8 million! That’s a huge number of sympathisers.
But as you wrote Mr Goad: I don’t know what to do with that either …
As a participant in that online slugfest, this article deeply resonates with me. I was a “wignat”, but I wasn’t a costumed Nazi. I probably would have been more comfortable in Patrick Casey’s Identity Europa than in the NSM as far as optics go. I thought Ricky Vaughn’s initial criticisms of certain people like Heimbach were reasonable.
But then I gradually felt alienated by the “American Nationalists” because I saw a good number of them calling for the AltRight to disavow White Nationalism, and turn to race realist conservatism, drawing heavy influence from paleocons like Pat Buchanan. And the behavior of the AmNat e-celebs did not help. The Weekly Sweat guys (Beardson, Shawn) were openly hostile to WN and took pride in “deradicalizing” the AltRight. Ricky Vaughn was denouncing ethnonationalism as “feminine” on Gab. Anglin and Weev were calling every WN not aligned with the new AmNat rebrand “feds” without proof. Lauren Rose mocked Patrick Little even though he was a Republican with a suit and tie. And by late 2018, what was once known as “AltRight Twitter” now fixated on GOP politics and ignored stuff that once mattered like James Fields (who had yet to go trial).
So can anyone blame me and other “wignats” for feeling like the AltRight went through this sudden 180 degree turn and was overreacting to the real problems highlighted in Cville? This is why we turned to people like Richard Spencer and Matt Parrott for leadership, since they still seemed like they believed in explicit pro-White activism. And yet their recent behavior on Twitter made it clear to us that they’re not fit to lead, and that they do not have the interests of the White race at heart.
Thus, looking back, I can concede that the AmNats were right about a few things. They were correct about the AltRight leadership being compromised, and they were also correct about the importance of normies, and winning them over. Recent data shows that nearly a quarter of Republican men are sympathetic to us. That’s huge. So the AmNats were right to want to build bridges with conservatives. Unfortunately, it felt like they spent more time attacking us than networking with MAGA.
And the sad truth is that we never needed to fight, like what Jim Goad says. AmNats could have quietly exited the AltRight and influenced MAGA from within, while explicit WNs like me who made no claims of being “conservative” would have continued to operate as a separate and distinct movement, ready to take in the people converted by AmNats. That being said, I hope we can put this ugly history behind us and move forward as a loose community of people who are like-minded when it comes to the survival of the White race.
What do you see as the differences between WN and “race realist conservatism”? I’m pretty sure how I would answer that question, but I’m curious what you have in mind (and how others would see the differences).
To me, White Nationalism is the belief that Whites (or White Americans specifically) are a distinct people and need an exclusive homeland in order to survive. White Nationalism generally overlaps with White Separatism. And even if a WN rejects the ethnostate vision and believes that WN participation in the United States can work, they will still favor doing whatever it takes to keep Whites from being absorbed into a generic, post-racial identity. Miscegenation is fiercely opposed in the WN camp. Blood and soil is central to WN beliefs.
Race-realist conservatism, on the other hand, acknowledges the reality of race, but still believes in civic nationalism, and prefers non-authoritarian solutions, such as supporting freedom of association rather than outright outlawing miscegenation. Race-realist conservatives typically reject anything that goes beyond immigration restriction and repealing anti-White policies. They have a preference for a White majority, and believe that Whites can be the “glue” to hold a diverse nation together. This is similar to how Putin views ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation.
Of course, this is not binary. There’s a spectrum. A man like Jared Taylor would probably fall somewhere in the middle. And those middlemen have their place. Very few people go from conservative to outright WN overnight. I know I didn’t.
Thank you for your reply. That’s pretty much how I see it, too (I was a bit confused by your original comment). I actually find myself supporting both positions, and not just depending upon audience, but simultaneously. I see them as complimentary (or as you say, “non-binary”). Ultimately, I want an ethnostate (although I strongly doubt that I [b.1961] will ever live in it; it’ll be enough for my peace of mind to see serious movement towards it before my own end). I want it to be as territorially large as possible, though for the sake of PR, I think we should demand about a third of the US landmass (excluding Alaska).
A lot of whites really love diversity, but they want everyone to be mostly like themselves ideologically. Thus, I think our rhetoric (of peaceful national dissolution) should focus on a 1/3…1/3…1/3 territorial split: 1/3 multiracial progressive; 1/3 multiracial conservative; 1/3 99% white ethnostate (why only 99%? I suspect that no contiguous third of the continental US can be acquired or won that does not contain an Indian reservation or two, and the ethics against telling them to leave if they don’t want to will be, at least initially [pre-ethnostate creation], given their primeval land claims, too great to overcome; of course for our European brethren, all European countries must once again become ethnostates, and they at 100% racial purity – not a single exception should be permitted).
In the decades until the ethnostate, while WNs are stuck in the polyglot American Empire, out politics should simply focus on defending and advancing white interests against all challenges. We want white, but no nonwhite, immigration; we want illegals deported, and the Wall built; we must discourage miscegenation as best we can; fight CRT, affirmative action, and any type of “reparations” extortion; remove any legislation disparately negatively impacting whites; support the police (to the extent they are fighting black criminals), and oppose any Federal law enforcement that targets white dissidents; support internet freedom; and build white pride and heritage recovery at every opportunity. A lot of this agenda can appeal to non-WN white conservatives, too (which is why radical WNs, which includes some writers here, those who crap on Christianity, or push various new socialist schemes, are so foolish: they are alienating potential supporters over matters totally outside the very wide policy area related to white preservation which overlaps with normiecon priorities).
Big disagree with Mr. Goad on this one. Optics are crucial in honest opinion.
“Black academics don’t attack crackhead gangstas…” Well that’s true, but this is the behavior of a people who commit over half of the violent crime disproportionate to their population. I’d attribute that to a general lack of judgment. While some Whites can go a little overboard down talking our beloved meth-heads it’s probably a good idea to have some standards of behavior or appearance.
As for the Boomerwaffen Uprising/Charlottesville comparison it’s not even a question which one was more of a disaster. January 6 was an overwhelming victory compared to Charlottesville. Roughly half the Country think the protesters are being unfairly persecuted for taking a leisurely stroll through Congress that day. They punched the system squarely in the face and the system is acting like it was worse than 9/11. Literally they make that argument. It’s no contest as to who people will sympathize with more: Granny waving her American flag walking through the Capitol smiling ear to ear? OR The fat schizophrenic retard goose-stepping in a stahlhelm? Not even close. Optics.
So, since I disagree with Mr. Goad there’s only one explanation: Jim Goad is a federal agent.
Since you said “roughly half the country” but didn’t cite any survey, I’ll cite an actual survey. From mid-July. 81% of those polled either “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove of what happened on January 6.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-opinion-poll/
Also, if you can’t find—and I doubt you’ll be able to—an example of anyone on the left referring to anyone else on the left, no matter how deranged, as a “fat schizophrenic retard,” thanks for proving my point. Ever consider that the endless infighting is possibly the worst optics of all? It seems to delight the leftists. “Those Nazis can’t even get along with one another! Victory will be a cakewalk!”
Being optics-oriented as you appear to be, you missed my point—opinion polls aren’t the gauge of what was actually more disastrous about January 6. In the bigger picture, opinion polls don’t mean shit. It’s the gigantic excuse it gave the government to crack down on “extremism,” which now includes the flag-waving grannies.
That stat can be parsed in many ways which undermine your argumentative purpose in citing it. For one thing, how much can we trust this kind of liberal media polling data? Moreover, even if there was no actual chicanery on the part of the pollsters, massaging the data to achieve a pre-desired result, many people loosely on the Right would not answer this type of question honestly given the vague but increasing general sense that we now live under some kind of Woke Occupationist Government (perhaps we all should start referring to the WOG; actually, I kinda like that …).
Since the Biden inauguration I have heard occasional bizarre conspiracist statements from even some very highly intelligent and fairly elite class friends of mine worried about the dangers of being unwoke even in private email exchanges. This is not simply the musings of redpilled rightwingers, either. Back in June, I was talking to a client who said something about “Juneteenth”. When I made a derisory remark, she said “yes, it was a strange matter, Biden sucking up to black voters” … and then she stopped herself and muttered to me that “we really shouldn’t be talking about this”. WE REALLY SHOULDN’T BE TALKING ABOUT THIS??!!?? “Where do you think we are, lady, North Korea?”, I felt like saying.
C’mon man! You don’t think a lot of Middle Americans have internalized all this, and thus might not be altogether forthright in spilling their opinions to complete strangers on the phone (or over the internet) – especially when they’re hearing in the news about FBI investigations into the whereabouts of various “wanted” “Jan 6 insurrectionists“?
And then even honest and aware people can answer that question legitimately in different ways. I myself “somewhat” disapprove of what happened on Jan 6 (more for strategic than moral reasons, however, believing that the truth is that those mobbers were nothing more than overwrought patriots, though with more than a few of them deserving to be called “patriotards”). Yet I’m a white preservationist-secessionist-ethnostatist.
Bidenism is cynical white politicians fronting for a homicidal black voting bloc on behalf of subversive Jewish donors. Obama and Clinton were amateurs by comparison. Biden’s been doing it since the late 1980s during his outlandish vilification of whites in South Africa. Now it’s mainstream and is killing good governance. 2020 Rioting was a Color Revolution inflicted on the homeland. Bidenism could spread from the US to Europe.
When you demonstrate a need to instruct people on how to behave, it shows that you identity with them. That is the problem in my view.
Frodi has the best take on this. You don’t have to engage with people just because they share your opinions. There are millions of reasons to avoid a person other than bad optics.
Hey, Gaddius, what’s the weather like over there in Quantico?
You’ve been misled by faulty/old information Mr. Albrecht. That’s a closed chapter in my life, it’s on to bigger and better things now. But since you ask it’s hot and sunny on the beach in Tel-Aviv!
I can’t do much other than echo what’s being said in this article. I’d love to have someone dig around in my comment history to prove otherwise, but I believe I never gave a rat’s ass about the optics thing. “Optics” and “LARPing” were buzzwords that popped up all over the Chans (my then-main hangout) and other right-relevant webzones right after Charlottesville, and it seemed to be everywhere all at once. Being the wary white guy that I am I just never saw it as wholly organic, but I refrain from calling it a psyop: I believe much of it was a genuine concern from responsible “White Advocates” wanting their unmarketable ideas to become marketable. But regardless, it just did not seem like a justifiable reason to attack my own side. I just kept going over this in my head – wasn’t Charlottesville caused by Antifa and the cops? Is Richard Spencer really worse than Mitch McConnell like some are telling me?
That’s not to say that there weren’t good arguments made during the optics debate. White advocates should not help the establishment in making themselves look like maniacs any more than they’re already made out to be, and American nationalism should depend on historic American iconography. I probably expressed my beliefs that Americans using the symbols of their past enemies was a terrible choice in terms of public persuasion. That said, I thought the tiki-torch-boys looked perfectly presentable and disavowing the Swastika obviously wasn’t going to stop the system from trying to stamp us out. This has been proven by establishment-gremlins like Mark Milley frothing that ordinary Trump supporters are “the same guys” that America fought on Omaha beach. It’s really clear that the enemy disavows us, regardless of what we disavow.
Being a newcomer to Counter Currents, and thus White Nationalism, after reading at least 3/4 of each of Greg Johnson’s books, and others from CC, nevertheless, I had never heard anything about an ‘optics war’. However, by the end of the post, I had it figured out to be: How we present ourselves to other people that are not directly involved in White Nationalism, or to those of us who are fully in accord with us, but are afraid to extend even a fingernail out of the closet of such. Or: How we appear in public, on FB, Twitter, and You-Tube; as well as on TV, or hidden cameras, etc. Being an ‘elder’, which is hard for any woman to admit, I nevertheless do not have any interest in going to the more esoteric White Sites that are mentioned above, to have verbal battles with them. So, I manage to keep our ‘optics’ clean, I would assume. I do have to say, again as a senior, I think all young people worldwide, not just WNs, spend entirely too much face time on the internet, actively searching for these inane sites to do battle with. Please get out of there and return to the ‘real’ world. We need you out here, cheerful, well-dressed and intelligent.
Well said Mr. Goad.
I don’t believe anything is gained by disavowals and infighting. We all have family members we’re not proud of; perhaps we even dislike them. They’re still family and you have to stick by them, in the face of a common adversary.
Extend that sentiment to people who share your goals. I don’t see why anyone would fight with an ally, in the face of a common adversary.
Save the infighting for after you’ve won. All successful movements do that.
Exactly. We can disagree and argue like gentlemen among ourselves later if needed. A united front of like minds is more important.
I never even realized the optics war was happening, but after hearing about it, my gut instinct told me everything I could not articulate for myself, but that Jim Goad has so brilliantly put into words in this article. I think it was some actively instigated divisive play by certain elements to weaken the dissident right. I suspect the higher iq clean cut types are closely intermarried with ethnic leftists and are seeking to impress them by attacking the lower class wignat types. I’m not sure if they want to destroy the dissident right altogether or to force it to comply with a certain bizarre set of precepts, which would never happen in a significant way.
You’ve got this almost completely wrong. First of all, the Wignat camp at the end included both Spencer and Parrott-Heimbach, which means it can’t be reduced to a class issue. Now here’s the thing. The wignats are united in their focus on appealing to liberals and leftists. The people in the American nationalist scene, by contrast, recognize that our natural audience, and where our movement will grow, consists of the more than 60 million white people who voted for Trump.
The wignats respond to this with narcissistic self-congratulation/paranoid ideation about being coopted by the Republicans, as if our votes mattered to them. They bought the idea that “we memed Trump into the White House” and in 2020 claimed that they were the mythic 5% who memed Trump back out of the White House.
TRS distanced themselves from Spencer/Parrott/Heimbach, but in terms of orbiting the Left, they are pretty much indistinguishable. Now that Spencer and Heimbach-Parrott are sidelined, TRS is wignat central.
There’s nothing wrong with some outreach to Leftists. But we need to realize that it is by its nature a somewhat boutique operation, like appealing to vegans and animal rights advocates. Legitimate, but it will never be the major growth front of the movement.
I’m honored by your reply. You certainly called that Charlottesville would be the altamonte of the alt right!
Most interesting. The attempt to appeal to the left as leftists is a niche and outside of certain targets, pointless. The only principled ideological left wingers are naive whites. All else are nonwhites playing out an ethnic power strategy at the expense of whites in general. Then you have cynical whites on the left who recognise the hegemony in a strategy I can call Bidenism (unprincipled white man fronting for black voting bloc). Actively undermining so-called “ugly white regimes” like South Africa (see his senate hearing theatrical condemnation of Reagan era SA policy) or actively tricking white militaries into war’s that secure Israel (see Iraq) or sponsoring a Colored Revolution (George Floyd Riots) in their own homeland to terrorise whitey into submission. Biden hit the trifecta in this strategy. He’s more dangerous than he’s given credit for.
My views lean towards Mr Goad’s.
The idea that we could all agree to stick to a path so narrow and non-provocative to the sensibilities of our enemies, so non-exploitable by them, so risk-free and so fully vaccinated against anything prior, that doesn’t result in any arrests and pain, while at the time is effective enough to build on consistently, is interesting, attractive to a lot of people I am sure, but I find it difficult to reconcile with the entire gamut of reality.
Was the crux of the optics war about real life activism and the ‘bad optics’ energies it can attract ? The argument that in principle, it is always bad, too high risk, ‘dated’ and something our enemies will just use to stigmatize and punish the entire movement with and therefore should never be attempted never sat fully true with me.
The case against is a strategic, survivalist case rather than a moral one. Post-UTR it did feel like proponents of that position sometimes blurred the strategic risk-avoidance or risk:reward ratio case with the institutional limits placed on us by our enemies, as if those limits were something that simply had to shape our actions. I understand the pragmatic reasoning, but I thought it was dangerous to get too comfortable with that.
I can also understand how even very intelligent people can feel that “anyone who thinks something different to me is a fed”, but I also see this as a waste of our energy.
Whatever choices people make as activists, it seems at some point, in any political struggle, someone, somewhere will take some risks to further the cause as they see it.
But that also comes with a condition on others: that if something goes wrong that the entire movement doesn’t then disintegrate afterwards if those efforts have been undertaken by real actors on our side in good faith.
That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with or applaud everyone else’s tactics/optics.
It’s easier for me as someone not on the front lines, but it seemed the greater mistake re UTR was more the post- internal self destruction, (I presume in what later became known as the optics war), rather than what particular optics/tactics/action were used and did that contribute to our problems. Because there seems to be a misunderstanding about conflict itself baked into that.
This reminds me, someone very interesting who I’m really sad to see has pulled out of political discussion was a guy on youtube called ‘Right Ruminations’. He’s a very articulate fellow, he was something of a rising star on the more moderate wing of the Right, but it looks like he’s found some new path and has deleted all his old videos.
But I remember he wrote ‘an open letter to the Right’ about the post-Charlottesville affair and I think he said a lot of very insightful things in that.
I hope he comes back and makes content again and that Greg can get him on for an interview, but it’s looking like he wants to cool things off with his political internet life.
*If* a proper healing ever takes place in America it will occur after Whites on the right cease to give a damn about optics.
Bingo
But there will never be a proper healing and optics will always matter in some way in a decent society. sigh
It’s only 9.45am and already I need a drink. And I don’t drink.
I am often mystified by the number of people with their figurative clipboards in hand, marking who will and who will not be allowed on the team. Who will and will not be granted White Wellbeing. Who does and does not deserve to be saved from White Genocide.
Seems to me if someone wants to help save the White Race, they are welcome to assist, at least in my book. I don’t have to like them. I don’t have to approve of their behavior. We just need to not throw each other under the bus. Plenty of time for squabbles over differences after we are no longer facing annihilation.
The real optics is not what you say but how you look. Don’t dress like a slob, don’t have visible tattoos, don’t wear uniforms, don’t be extremely overweight, don’t have matching haircuts, don’t where homemade body armor and helmets, etc. Just look like a normal person and you can pretty much say whatever you want.
I don’t know if your comments are as radioactive as you say, Jim, but count me as a supporter of them – this shit was the last thing we needed.
With whites like this, the ‘race’ is over:
https://www.top5.com/father-knows-babies-arent-his/?top4&utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=b1_outbrainrtb_www%2Ecnn%2Ecom&utm_campaign=rap-ddd-zmt-tripletbabiesrap_t1_46609_ALLZMT_CV_US_REL_0806&utm_content=9735296&utm_term=z148936558b1_outbrainrtb__www%2Ecnn%2Ecom1z&_z1_adgid=9735296&_z1_caid=48936558&_z1_msid=b1_outbrainrtb&_z1_pub=www%2Ecnn%2Ecom&zpbid=6695_33dc7807-f68e-11eb-a3c2-604f36132b12
Makes me ashamed ever to have been a Christian (though in my heart I know that what this couple has done is more sick than Christian, and, if allowable, certainly not mandated by traditional Christian moral theology). The relevant point is that hordes of whites are evolutionarily defective, and their genomes (like those of this couple) will go extinct. We must segregate from the sickos, and breed up a racially healthier future race.
I’m not familiar with the Optics War (I think Travis LeBlanc did some writing on it, but the issue is uninteresting to me, so I didn’t read any of it). After reading Goad’s essay, I remain unsure what it was about, who the combatants were, etc. What I do know is that prowhites must convert normiecons (who else is there to convert? we’re talking about our people), and that we should not make it difficult for them to be willing to hear us out. I think the slang is that the “entry cost” should be as low as we can make it. I have said this for as long as I can remember. When you’re selling a very outre message, you’d do well to be otherwise as conventional in dress and manner (and style of presentation) as possible. Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald and Greg Johnson are all exemplars here. They want the listener or reader to focus on their arguments, not themselves. “Wignats” and Nazi “LARPers” (lol, all these internet terms I’m learning …), who are mostly much lower in IQ (and IQ matters, people, as much in this struggle as in any other competition), by their very behavior and/or appearance repel many decent ‘potentials’, and distract from the core message. Their jejune theatricality and sartorial selfishness also allow the dishonest WOG media to successfully tar the whole prowhite movement – which has science, history, ethics and commonsense on its side – as “evil” and “extremist”. Such persons should clean up their acts. I do agree that our preferred enemy should always be to the Left, and further agree that intra-movement conflict is disastrous. But that doesn’t mean that the wignats shouldn’t be told in private to clean up their acts for the good of the Cause.
I couldn’t agree more. Well done.
This needs to be said, I think.
the “optics war” never needed to be a binary debate.
I disagree with the statement that nobody cares about the weirdos in the stahlhelms. But just as the stahlhelms are “cringe”, so are Brad and Buffy in their preppy “Young Republicans” garb. The idea is to not dress, speak, or behave in a way that is alienating or that too starkly differentiates us from average working and middle class people.
If I had been in charge of Charlottesville, everyone would have shown up wearing the same casual off-the-rack clothes that most of us get at the mall or department store. No polos or kakis, no TWP armbands or clothes inspired by the 1930s. Vintage Led Zeppelin tee shirt and jeans? Yes. Tailored suit/tie with cufflinks? No. Brownshirt with SS patches on it? No. No Confederate reenactment costumes. No motorcycle gang or LARPy iii%er military surplus gear. Only normal, average people dressed cleanly, casually, with non-dramatic not off-putting clothes and hair.
No I wouldn’t have wanted toothless, morbidly obese, inarticulate people grabbing microphones and getting front and center. But I also don’t care for pompous, snooty, narcissists like Richard Spencer hogging the camera.
Maybe this sounds like “big brained centrist” BS, but I think that average centrists are the ones who are most likely to find populist/rightist rhetoric to be appealing as the hard left takes over. You have to know your audience and appeal to them.
Maybe someone who was in Identity Evropa can confirm or deny this, but I heard the story that the white polo and khakis thing was never suggested as a uniform. It was just given as an example of a decent way to dress, but it became a uniform out of groupthink, which is funny if true.
That dress code gave the right January 6. Clothes obsessions are tantamount to cargo cultism.
“If the shit really goes down—and I don’t know anyone who thinks it won’t—“
It has been going down for some time Jim. The pop Right and some of the hard right just hasn’t accepted that there’s no political solution to any of this.
I thought Fuentes’ critique of Spencer’s events was good. He compared how Charlie Kirk had a more suitably sized small stage and venue than Spencer did during his college tour with his giant stage. However, unlike Fuentes, I don’t think Mike Enoch’s weight was a big problem. I mean, it’s not like he was morbidly obese.
Most of the time Spencer had good optics. That can go a long way in influencing people these days. Looks matter more now than before the Internet as Ed Dutton tells us. It’s not like the 19th century when the ability to write well mattered more.
Some of the optics disagreements may come from the fact that zoomers tend to be much more image conscious than earlier generations. I blame social media for this. Perhaps more of the people who critique optics are young.
Optics matter for us because, for one thing, status correlates with looks, and culture tends to flow from the top to the bottom, so good-looking people are more influential. Because more good-looking people have high status, they tend to have more to lose and shy away from being public white advocates, whereas people with nothing to lose, who have worse looks on average, are more likely to be front and center in the lime light. The media tends to exploit this because as Jews and white liberals they hate white advocates the most, so they look for the worst among a group that isn’t the best sample in the first place. They hope to get people to think that being a white advocate is low-status and not worth doing. Unless you can get people to think about the cringiest people among us whom the media typically spotlights as dearer than blacks, then we will need to consider optics.
In my opinion, leaders of the movement should have good optics and organizations should too. There are so few leaders, it’s reasonable to fear cringe people highjacking the movement. Matt Heimbach for example dressed up like an idiot and couldn’t write coherently. (He couldn’t think all that well either.) He got himself out there but failed at everything else. On second thought, he withstood an ANTIFA assault on a May 1 day and got a nice wife, but she needed to get away from him, and sadly the rallies had no lasting effect.
Some of what Fuentes does may seem like nitpicking, like belittling Mike Enoch for his weight or allegedly telling “cringe” people not to approach him for photographs for whatever, but I think some of his critiques were okay. They just have to be kept in perspective. And yes, believing that merely having the right image will lead to victory is foolish magical thinking.
Here’s the big picture on optics. Dark-skinned snub-nosed people in Sub-Saharan Africa are doubling every 28 years because black women are having sex and having babies, while white girls are taking a million selfies for their Instagram account and holding out for young men who make at least as much as their fathers, which rules out almost half of all young men. Thus, nice-looking light-skinned people are set to nearly cut their population by half each generation, to be replaced by multiplying snub-nosed, dark-skinned more androgynous people. That’s where the worst optics are. Indeed, people with noses like bumps on a tree trunk, featureless black skin, and usually nothing beyond platitude to say are doing a better job of populating the future than the most articulate, sharp-featured white men. The fittest are not the best, especially when it comes to optics.
while white girls are taking a million selfies for their Instagram account and holding out for young men who make at least as much as their fathers, which rules out almost half of all young men.
A ridiculous claim. Women do not expect young men to earn as much as their late-career fathers. At most, they want men who have the potential to earn as much as their late-career fathers a couple of decades in the future, but then, I have seen no evidence of even this more modest claim.
It’s strange that you claim to have seen no evidence given that you commented so much on my Singles Epidemic article. I would prefer that rather than claim to have seen no evidence you attempt to dispute the evidence I provided in that article–specifically in figures 7-10. There you will see that the difference in percentile interest women have in men on OKCupid better matches people having the average ages of their fathers than people having the ages of their boyfriends. I would admit that their interest does seem to match the men’s income when the men are college age, but when they graduate college, women expect the guy to earn closer to what their fathers do rather than expect realistic income levels. Not until they reach their mid to late thirties do women on OKCupid start desiring men who actually earn as much as their age group. As you may know, women’s fertility experiences a precipitous drop off at this time, meaning that many women are rejecting men during potential childbearing years and canceling out their mutual genomes.
As I’ve stated, there is no reason to suppose women who use OKCupid would be fundamentally different from most single women. Maybe you have a point that non-single women who wouldn’t use OKCupid, would be more forgiving in light of the bad economy, but single millennial are largely living up to their reputation of being the “now generation.” As to your claim about women merely desiring potential or a career track, I want to do some research in the BLS data. I’ve have already noted that customer service jobs, which are often dead end and low-paying, are populated disproportionately by people in their 20s. If I can show that there is a log jam in high status jobs among petered out Gen Xers which are not filtering down to millennial and zoomer men at the same rates–atbleast not until they are old, then I can prove that even women who only judge by potential are also disregarding economic reality to their own reproductive peril and potential lifelong loneliness.
Women should go by a man’s income percentile. They should seek a guy who earns within the same percentile as their Gen X fathers. This means accepting 20-something men who earn not much more than half of what her more generously paid Gen X father does.
This is not to say women should not desire that a guy earn as much as he can get, but they shouldn’t ignore generationally imposed walls in front of him. Maybe a single millennial girl could petition her father to hire more millennial and zoomer men. Just a thought.
You know, when I recall women I know discussing a guy’s credentials, potential, or ability to be a provider, their voice goes up an octave and then back down one. They obviously experience a lot of emotion when discussing these things. It is a less subtle version of what men do when they discuss a woman whom they find physically attractive. A woman’s physical attractiveness would seem to be mostly genetically determined, but a man’s economic status is to a much greater extent environmentally determined. It’s a little comical how seriously the women I’ve seen take the social simulation, one which is increasingly becoming, through no lack of effort on their part, a dysfunctional clown world. African women may not be so pretty on average, but they are willing to go with men, and that is why they are winning the battle for the demographic future. If white women want to stop being genetic losers they need to forsake unrealistic expectations and focus on curbing population in Africa.
It’s strange that you claim to have seen no evidence given that you commented so much on my Singles Epidemic article. I would prefer that rather than claim to have seen no evidence you attempt to dispute the evidence I provided in that article–specifically in figures 7-10.
Yes, I read your article, and like almost all attempts to blame women for our plight, it was full of nonsequiturs that do nothing but reveal your confirmation bias.
Old men’s greed and young women’s hunger for high-status men are the main factors in the singles epidemic and ultimately white genocide.
This is the fatal flaw in your argument. You fail to mention young men’s desire for women who are (for whatever reason) out of their league in the looks in the department.
Your reliance on percentiles is seriously misplaced, as it fails to take account of the absolute number of responses men get. Unless that number is zero, they have options. They may not like those options and choose to stay single, in which case, it is they who are holding out, not women.
https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyourinbox.html
Why is it a non-sequitur to assume that if women’s interest in men aligns with their father’s income level that they want someone who earns close to their father? The theory is fruitful because it explains why developing China, where men are richer than the girls fathers because of growing up in a better economy, there is no Singles Epidemic. Now, in my personal opinion, women who are single are just about as good-looking as those who are not. If your theory were correct, then we would expect single women to be far less attractive on average. The main difference I see in women who aren’t single versus those who are is that the former are more flirtatious and seem to like me more. This despite having a boyfriend. Many non-single women aren’t very attractive, but it seems they have a guy because they like guys more not because guys like them more.
There is no doubt that every straight guy hits on some who are above his level, that is to say, who have a sufficient combination of rich fathers and good looks. My complaint isn’t that women reject me. It is that they are rejecting all men, and this is a disaster for civilization and our race. I would guess that because the top 20% of guys on dating sites receive 80% of women’s attention that women are mostly responsible for the Singles Epidemic. It is not a distinctive feature of white women but all women regardless of race, whose families have lived in developed nations long enough to have to have richer fathers than boyfriends. This helps to explain why Latinas don’t have such as bad singles epidemic in the US. Their better educated male peers have better income relative to their fathers than white men do to their fathers. What’s more, young Latino men can benefit from nepotism networks their fathers pioneered.
So in sum, because white women happen to live in late stage developed nations, they suffer from more of a singles epidemic than African women. The only way you can blame white men for the brunt of the singles epidemic is to assert that they created the technology and developed world civilization which is now eating them alive.
His theory is useful. There’s one flaw though. Conservative whites do reproduce at or above replacement level. What’s happening is that liberals are becoming extinct through lack of reproduction.
I would guess that because the top 20% of guys on dating sites receive 80% of women’s attention that women are mostly responsible for the Singles Epidemic.
It’s really sad that you are so ignorant of the basic facts surrounding this issue, yet you play the expert. If you’d bothered to read the link I posted, you would see that women are far more generous than men in spreading their messages around. They say 80% of men are unattractive, but then go ahead and message them anyway. Men, by contrast, are more generous in what they say about women, but then they turn around and compete fiercely for the most physically attractive. There is a reason for this. There is more consensus among men concerning mate desirability, and therefore more competition. Look it up for yourself.
Why is it a non-sequitur to assume that if women’s interest in men aligns with their father’s income level that they want someone who earns close to their father?
Because you falsely assume that women’s contacts reflect more than mere interest. You claim they reflect minimum requirements. Yet, you sing a different tune when it comes to men’s clear preference for the best-looking women, with nothing but your own claimed “opinion” as evidence.
The theory is fruitful because it explains why developing China, where men are richer than the girls fathers because of growing up in a better economy, there is no Singles Epidemic.
Yet, their birthrates are in the tank, and if other East Asian nations are any indication, will not recover after the one child policy. Nice own goal.
Don’t S. Korean men earn more than previous generations? Why the abysmal birth rates there? Don’t they like children?
Anyway, this thread is about the optics wars. You hypergamy hoaxers seem singularly incapable of sticking to the topic at hand.
The link you posted claims 66% of men give 33% of women messages. This is a ratio of 2-1. This is not as bad as the 4-1 ratio described here:
“the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.”https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-dating-economy/
What’s more, the link below explains that there are between 3-4 times more men on Tinder than women. Why aren’t women as eager to get a guy as guys are to get a girl? https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tinder-statistics/
The combination of there being more men on Tinder and women getting more attention means women are over 6 times more likely to receive “likes” than men. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a
I would argue that likes are a better indicator of a relationship happening than messages, which was the subject of the article you posted. I would bet that the correlation between likes and dates is much higher than that of messages and dates. What’s more, what’s not clear about the link you posted is who is initiating the messages. To what extent are the women merely responding to guys but doing nothing more?
Regarding women’s looks, 10% of women traditionally haven’t married. I suppose they would tend to look less feminine and attractive overall and have more psychological disorders. Are you suggesting men should tap into this traditionally single demographic rather than the additional 35% or so of women who are saner and prettier on average who are perpetuating the singles epidemic? In my opinion this additional 35% is no worse looking but maybe a little less sane on average than the women who get guys. Some argue both the traditionally single 10% and the newly single 35% shouldn’t reproduce because they are more likely to have left-wing beliefs. However, I fear left-wing beliefs can re-colonize future generations of misfits continually regenerated from a genome increasingly mutated by a lack of child mortality which would otherwise presumably reduce mutations and older fathers on average passing on more mutated genes. Political beliefs are somewhat genetic, however, so maybe these hypergamous, presumably disproportionately leftist holdouts exiting the gene pool is a good thing. I would rank them above most non-white women though, so don’t like that so many are staying forever alone.
Your response to my comment on China not having a Singles Epidemic was something of a red herring. You moved the focus away from the rate of singles to birth rates. China’s total fertility rate has been the same since the mid 1990s. Their rate of singles has stayed low during this time. You would have been better off making an explicit counter-claim that a high rate of singles is not necessary to make births go down and that these other factors are more important in the demographic decline of peoples than the rare of singles. I would argue however that the surest way to sterilize people is to make them single.
Also, when I stated non-single women flirt with me more, it was a poor choice of words. I meant to say they are much friendlier to me. (I never flirt with women once I learn they are married or have children with someone.) I have noticed, though, that such women are much friendlier on average than women who are always single.
I agree about avoiding the childish drama but I think the debates are a good thing.
Because my focus has been on Holocaust Revisionism, I have mostly stayed away from Movement matters. Real History is not a “movement.”
My main focus is freedom-of-speech because the Truth is always the right answer, and that holds for H Revision as it does for anything else. I love pointing out the hypocrisy of censorious ideologues like (((Deborah Lipstadt))).
However, “Movement” aspects are still important because of the potential for hard deplatforming and other cowardly sanctions, so conversations about Optics and Tactics, and relationships to Establishment power still have to be had.
Furthermore, it seems to me that those conversations should be as transparent and as PUBLIC as possible.
I am hardly one of the insiders in the Kool Kid’s Klub, but I can remember when the National Socialist White People’s Party decided to dump the 50-star System flag and adopt the Betsy Ross flag instead. They showed dissent and still remained patriotic. The N in Nazi is for Nationalist after all. This was a (very) minor optics issue from forty years ago but it was a good call in my opinion.
Similarly, at Charlottesville there should have been no flags or uniforms displayed other than American or Confederate given the occasion of honoring a venerable Civil War general ─ and this is just skimming the surface of the tactical mistakes that were made.
For starters, one of the fundamental things that a soldier learns in basic training is the (expletive) Buddy System.
That is how you keep from getting rolled on payday when you find yourself in Darktown after dark. I mean, I am talking here about some very basic operational planning (or lack thereof). It is sad that speakers and participants have to have an exit strategy, but that is just the reality of our interesting times.
I can come up with much complaint about how Charlottesville and Jan 6th went down, but the most important point is that I believe that these conversations need to be had. Leadership does not fall from trees but has to be learned, taught, and then re-learned.
We would all like to live in a world where we can just take some vacation and head on over in the flashy Dodge Charger, and show up in a white polo shirt and khakis like we wear at our McJob, and participate in a “Unite the Right” rally to protect Confederate and other monuments from Commie scum and other vile incursions. Next time it will be Christopher Columbus or George Washington, after all.
In a perfect world some podcasters could just show up with their thoughts jotted down on a note in their pocket and tell everyone listening to go ahead and come if they can to hear them speak in person. I was in Idaho visiting my folks and watching the 2017 solar eclipse, and I really wanted to be in the Old Dominion to honor the great Confederate general. I am glad now that I did not just show up to the CF.
Unfortunately it looks like we are going to have to work harder to secure our First Amendment rights, and there is much blame to go around. We need good leadership, and that requires transparent discussion and organization. Most of the kind of strategizing that we desperately need can be discussed openly and in public.
Some have called for an end for street activism entirely as it is risky, but I don’t see how that is going to move the ball forward in any way. There is a place for it but it will take discipline and not be easy to pull off.
Street activism was risky in the 1960s too, but George Lincoln Rockwell was able to speak for pay on college campuses and deliver his unpopular message despite a near total media blackout. Rockwell was a true leader and not just an intellectual.
A political Movement depends by definition on getting attention and support from “Normies.” It has to attract competent technocrats as well. That pretty much precludes a “Working Class” movement unless everybody welds trailer hitches or keeps the horses shod.
The German NSDAP were actually a lower-middle class movement, as much as anyone would like to fetishize the “working class.” And that kind of grug LARPing is not going to organize a Wendy’s anyway, let alone unite a revolutionary or White populist movement. (I also don’t like too much esoteric emphasis but the Lighting and the Sun conversation is for another day.)
The Optics Debate (for lack of a better term) remains crucial.
For example, I never liked the “Optics” of trying to make people who look like they snort something smuggled in their motorcycle crankcases into shock troops of any kind. Every lost soul is not our duty to save, as George Lincoln Rockwell ultimately found out to his demise. Elite means just that; you have to set some standards of conduct and even appearance for various necessary roles. History was largely made by elites of some kind. They provided the leadership for the mass movements, and they trained the cadre that carried the plan forward.
Let’s tall about it…
I can remember an “Optics debate” associated with the late Denver radio host (((Alan Berg))), allegedly slain by White Nationalists in 1984. If obnoxiousness were a capital offense, this guy would have deserved the Jewish star in gold, but not many would argue that his assassination did WN any favors.
One thing that Cville and Jan 6th have done is that many inquisitive but otherwise insensitive White Normies can see that the system truly hates them. By “Normies,” I am not talking about irredeemable Shit-Libs and questionable sorts either. White people are good raw material for creating a galaxy of things and we have to make use of those gifts.
A lot of ordinary White people have become a lot more self-aware since Cville, and how unarmed White people petitioning Congress for redress of grievances is now viewed as a 9/11 by the System. That is an itch that needs to be scratched, and there is so very much to be done. Time is always short. Even a CF is some progress at least, and that is how we learn.
This is well-said. We do need debates, they should be public, and the need is great enough to risk the childish drama, although we should hit back against that when it raises its head.
As I recall it, the “optics war” started with a Tweet after a rally at a different ‘ville. Not Charlottesville but Shelbyville or Pikeville. The Tweet came from Nathan Damigo, who said that the footage of the rally was “cringe.” This set off a debate about “optics” that took place on enemy social media platforms as well as some movement platforms. I am told the major thread was at the TRS Forum, but I did not see it or participate because I was banned there. Still, I have a sense of the major issues and parties, and why they went at it.
It is impossible to endorse all aspects of the optics war, because many people took part in it, at all levels of intelligence and seriousness, and some of them behaved very badly, offering bad arguments, arguing in bad faith, making it all about personalities rather than principles, even doxing people and defending doxers, which should lead to a social death sentence in our circles.
There were, however, real issues that needed to be hashed out about strategy, tactics, and ideology, and the people on the American Nationalist/good optics/metapolitics rather than protests side had the best arguments. Many of those arguments were developed and/or refined at Counter-Currents.
Some people, however, seized on these questions simply because they wanted to separate themselves from other people (principally Spencer and Parrott-Heimbach), and instead of air out their real reasons (some of which were personal, others of which were connected to private, “inner party” disagreements that probably should not have been aired), they decided to make litmus tests out of issues that separated them.
Sometimes people cut intellectual and moral corners — for instance, jumping on the whole “cuckbox” incident with Parrott and Heimbach and mercilessly ridiculing them — but I definitely understand why they wanted to be rid of those people, because they were dishonest, cynical, embarrassing, and most probably collaborating with the enemy. Unfortunately, there was a lot of snobby bashing of poor white people, which I censored with a heavy hand around here. (Heimbach comes from an upper middle-class family and only LARPs as working class.)
Since we are a metapolitical movement, I don’t think we should fear intellectual debate about philosophy and strategy/tactics. We should never be dissuaded from such discussions by henpecking arguments about “infighting.” Since this is a serious movement, we must also call out bad actors when they appear, even if it is not “nice.” Otherwise, the scum will rise to the top, then run the movement into the ground.
But Jim is right to suspect that some people in the movement push the optics debate and other sectarian wedge issues simply because they want to polarize the movement, fragment it, then build up their own following from the fragments at the expense of the health of the movement as a whole.
For instance, Richard Spencer turned on a dime from being “gay friendly” to pushing the retarded meme that gays are a race that reproduces by child molestation right around the time he was sucking up to TRS and trying to take down Milo. The American Nationalist crowd started chanting “Christ is king” right about the time they wanted to drive away atheists and pagans and National Socialists.
The common denominator of sectarians is they want to create a smaller movement that they control by making litmus tests out of side issues instead of uniting people around the common issue of racial survival. It’s all so transparent and tiresome. It came from both sides in the optics war, and it is not healthy for the cause.
But I don’t think that the optics war was a net loss for the movement. It was the beginning of the end for some very bad characters, and it did clarify some real intellectual issues. But it did leave a very bitter aftertaste, which certainly contributes to the perceived malaise that people are talking about today. Is the movement malaise the PTSD of optics war veterans?
The good news is that a quarter of our audience has come to us since 2018, and the optics war to them is as hazy as the battle of Iwo Jima. They can benefit from the intellectual and tactical gains, as well as sidelining bad actors, without the hangover.
“Otherwise, the scum will rise to the top, then run the movement into the ground.”
I remember Heimbach was doing patrols on his college campus allegedly to protect students. It seemed odd to me at the time. Why not let campus security escort any kids who needed extra protection? Overall, the Towson campus is rated about average as far as security goes. It seemed like from the patrols that Heimbach was into superfluous political posturing. I thought this was something which could be overlooked because after all so few people were willing to engage in campus activism, and whatever eccentricities they had could be overlooked. However, after he graduated from college his superfluous posturing metastisized into LARPy armband wearing and what appeared strange black uniforms and silly uniform helmets. It’s last hurrah was the Michigan event, where he postured as security for Spencer in what was an optics failure. Maybe if someone had chastened him against superfluous LARPy security patrols early, he wouldn’t have ended up so cringe–at least in that particular aspect. Young movement people should realize that no one is perfect and everyone does things that are silly. When older people criticize such things, they are not necessarily doing so to try to ruin the young person but many times protect them from engaging in bad optics which they’ll later regret.
Well said. There is an interesting question, one which I believe historically has challenged all movements of genuine political dissent and change, as to the extent to which any ideo-political movement should be centralized in leadership vs decentralized. Obviously, a serious case can usually be made for either approach, and the importance of specific historical contexts renders any attempt at developing a universal answer to this issue problematic. We can develop a plausible, empirical (scientific and historical), and timeless theory that ‘diversity’, eg, is a net negative for whites. But how centrally directed our white political activism should be can only be decided on a case by case (nation by nation, era by era) basis.
I have long believed (since the early 90s) that white Americans do indeed need some kind of leadership organization. We need a place to make our stand, and a group within which to do it. Conservatives, to their credit, don’t seem to produce weirdoes who loudly identify themselves as conservatives. But other groups on the Right – Christianists, libertarians and WNs – do. Christianists mostly get dismissed, and libertarians are seen as harmless if a bit goofy. But emotionally unstable, or merely far out of the social/cultural mainstream WNs are seen as scary, and thus our enemies, who control most avenues of information dissemination, are able to tar our entire prowhite movement by using the most extreme examples of self-styled “WNs” as representative of us. Whether fair or not, this is a real problem. It absolutely requires some kind of “policing”.
What we need is a central body of WN activism (the “Council of White Preservationist Organizations”, or something similar, equivalent to the “Congress of American Jewish Organizations”), an umbrella organization under which can shelter the myriad micro-groups comprising the otherwise “Let a Hundred Flowers bloom” decentralized approach that we’ve been taking. This CWPO should be led at the top by three very wise, smart and established WNs whose commitment is unimpeachable, and whose judgment can be trusted. I would nominate Jared Taylor, Greg Johnson, and perhaps a third person with more practical, business or legal, background. This triumvirate would play the W.F. Buckley role, ultimately deciding the “official” direction of the movement, and which groups of self-styled “WNs” can be deemed acceptable, and which are frauds (and thus dangerous for movement “optics”) and should be “excommunicated”. Within this mainstream umbrella group, sub-groups can focus how they want, where they want, and what their style of activism will be.
I have more to say, but am curious how others feel.
I’m flattered to be put on the same rung as Jared Taylor, but such an organization would not really work, for a reason you reveal: It isn’t really an umbrella organization if one of its purposes is to exclude people. Then it becomes a more particular organization within the larger body of the unorganized movement. Which means that even on your model, the movement will remain as a whole unorganized. So let’s just let that happen. Let it remain decentralized.
The reason we will never successfully go from a decentralized movement to one with even a broad umbrella organization is that anybody can just say he is a white advocate. There are no standards and barriers to entry. Some of the people who have nominated themselves as one of us have turned out to be crazy, or to have severe personality disorders, including drug and alcohol problems. Others are criminals. Others are informants for law enforcement or public and private intelligence agencies. Some are all three. Some are well-meaning people who just have not accomplished anything. The idea that we would somehow benefit from cooperating with these people boils down to thinking that sane and sober people are more effective when working with their opposites, as well as criminals, informants, and amiable do-nothings. To me, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, and a miserable experience on the way.
I think the best model for the movement is simply for different people with different visions to build their own platforms. These parties can cooperate with each other to the extent that it is possible and beneficial, without sacrificing their autonomy to some sort of hierarchy.
Ideally, the best way to deal with people with conflicting visions of the movement is just to ignore them. If you want to compete with them, do it by improving your own work rather than running down theirs. Trying to build your following through schisms seldom works and is bad for the movement as a whole, because people who are just arriving on the scene don’t want to take sides in old wars, and people who were around a long time will eventually check out from exhaustion.
That said, even if you choose not to have enemies, enemies will choose you, and you will inevitably be drawn into battles. You may think that principles are more important than people and wish to criticize ideas, but others are not so broad-minded. You may not want to name names, but people will name themselves. Bad ideas will have to be criticized, and you will find a lot of ego invested in those ideas, and the egos will strike back. Bad actors will have to be called out. It will get messy fast, and pretty soon we will be back to where we are today. There will always be “infighting” and “wars,” but contra the henpeckers, they are not always just “childish bickering” between people who should just try to “play nice.” There will always be conflict, but sometimes it is necessary and good.
Thank you for your extended reply. Though I am I suspect at least a decade older than you are, and have probably been “awakened” longer, I’m certainly willing to defer to your superior tactical knowledge derived from much greater experience and more intensive involvement in the movement.
I admit I’m less sure today than I was 30 years ago about how to move the cause forward. All across the 1980s-90s, I was certain that we would make massive gains if only we could break through the liberal Jewish media stranglehold, and somehow get our obviously true message to a really large audience of our people. When the commercial internet started to take off, around 1995-96, I thought that time might finally be nigh.
Recall various racio-politico-intellectual events of that time:
1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall; David Duke’s election to the Louisiana state legislature
1990 – Duke’s run for US Senate; founding of American Renaissance and The Social Contract
1991 – Implosion of USSR; Duke’s widely covered run for LA Governor; Pat Buchanan’s challenge to Pres. Bush from the American nationalist Right
1992 – LA riots; Peter Brimelow’s massive National Review article against immigration
1993 – big growth in nascent militia movement; election of anti-crime Rudy Giuliani as NYC Mayor; start of widespread urban adoption of “broken windows” model of aggressive policing
1994 – crushing GOP takeover of Congress (clearly fueled by Middle American rage); CA Prop 187 (anti-illegal alien initiative); publication of Nelson, America Balkanized, Herrnstein/Murray, The Bell Curve (with extensive public reviewing and discussion), Rushton, Race, Evolution and Behavior, and MacDonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone
1995 – publication of Brimelow, Alien Nation (extensive media reviews); launch of Stormfront (I think)
1996 – serious anti-immigration nationalist campaign of Buchanan; passage of CA Prop 209 (attempting to ban affirmative action); publication of Lynn, Dysgenics, and Pearson, Heredity and Humanity
I’m sure this list only scratches the surface. Although the militia movement took a big hit thanks to that McVeigh idiot, there was a lot of revolutionary ferment in the air, most of which was ‘liberty’ (and anti-NWO) oriented, but with a considerable undercurrent of prowhite anger. I know, I was “there” (on the margins) as a conservative activist and sometime GOP staffer. Things seemed to be trending our way. Admittedly, I was a bit disquieted by the failure of Buchanan’s immigration restrictionist candidacy to do better in the GOP primary of 1996. Still, as the internet started to take off, I was certain this would be the great breakthrough mechanism. Finally, we could end-run the elites and reach the masses directly!!
We know how this all worked out (it didn’t, except in a slow-going and small way). My real “awakening” – my awakening to just how evolutionarily maladapted our race really is – came, first, in 2000, with the very poor showing of Buchanan’s third party presidential challenge (granted, there were many extenuating factors, but he should have done better than garnering less than a half million votes); and then definitively with Le Pen’s crushing defeat in the 2002 French Presidential election. Finally, I thought, a European people, much oppressed by Islamic and African immigration, has broken through all leftist-overclass barriers, and now has a chance to register its disapproval of its intensifying postwar dispossession. And what happened? Le Pen got fewer than one in five votes. Even if there were electoral chicanery, France is not (yet) a Third World country, and the Treason Class never could have stolen the election had Le Pen won by a large margin (as in America: even if Trump actually won last year, as is possible, it was only by a small margin, and only in the EC).
At this point I don’t see how we move forward. Politics is the ultimate purpose of metapolitics; my fear is that we could spend decades or even centuries stuck at the metapolitical stage. But the world is always evolving simultaneously in various directions, and none of its current trajectories conduces to white preservation.
The only hope is the conscious exercise of racial and political will. We must make our own future. We must decide and then organize to survive. I love the idea of developing a white nationalist counter-culture. It is something worthy and interesting in its own right. But I’m sceptical that this can be done in time to effectuate a sufficiently radical change in the broad ideology of enough whites to prevent impending white extinction. We’re not going to educate our way out of this world crisis.
Which brings us back to the issue of leadership with which I started. The first issue of AR, I think, asked the question (which is essentially mine, too): Who speaks for us? Why should we think that we don’t need “official spokesmen”? You have advocated a new “white identity politics”. But doesn’t every identity group in society (except whites qua whites) have its “spokesgroups”? I don’t know how they get to be designated as such, but they seem to be ubiquitous. Blacks can dismiss the ravings of their extremists by pointing out that “they don’t speak for all black people”. The group which will make this claim is the venerable NAACP. The Jewish majority can similarly reject the JDL, and it would be something like the Congress of American Jewish Organizations that would be doing it. Every single nonwhite group; feminists; Jews; LGBTQs – everybody has some kind of media-recognized “mainstream” advocates except us. How did those advocacy groups get to be “mainstream”? And why shouldn’t we strive for the same? And how can we expect to advance our collective identitarian goals without formal political advocacy organization(s)?
Goad is right and wrong this time.
Right – Less infighting and stop trying to toss people out of the boat in an ever increasing attempt for purity standards. Choose your battles. Some of these online debates and feuds are guys trying to puff up their chests when they are really trying to hide that, “I’m very sensitive that you disagree with me” [sniff]. There are plenty of people in the middle that shouldn’t be dismissed as normies or intractable. What did Frank Rizzo say? A conservative is a liberal who got mugged last week…
Wrong – Optics matter. Events are remembered a long time, beyond your own lifetimes. So don’t be a fool because you can’t contain your irritation. The good news is that this works both ways, and the left leaves plenty of bad optics. Every month the mainstream media is working ever harder to try and sweep it under the rug. There is so much there now though that its conspicuous to everyone. First the increase in crime was a blip due to COVID, now it’s because there are guns on the street even if the math doesn’t work. Everyone knows who’s doing it, the Estonians, right? People remember the multiple LA riots decades later and this shapes the hundreds of thousands of dollars in a home purchasing decision on it (that counts more than whether I’m going to fire back a tweet at so and so). The hearts and minds battle is not going to be won by street fighting, but by reminding folks of where things are heading. Not in hysterical ranting, but showing the numbers, reminding them what really happened… People aren’t dumb, and while the left his highly motivated by virtue signaling, in the end everyone has self interest in mind.
Thought for the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvlqjFp5CfA
One thing I will say as a “long-time reader first time commenter type on all sorts of dissident material, is when writers start referencing personalities and attacking each other, my eyes glaze over. I’ve been reading this stuff for about seven years, and when writers start to get personal and petty it is so often the beginning of the end for me caring what you have to say.
These personal squabbles, corrections, feuds etc. make both parties look so much less impressive nearly 100% of the time…I’m sure you are thinking “wow I just have to set the record straight on this, it’s important!” but I’m not at all sure people in general feel this way.
It seems to ebb and flow somewhat, but it shouldn’t be necessary to point out we have much, much, much bigger fish to fry.
Principles are more important than personalities. But principles don’t practice themselves. That requires people, which means that personalities come into play. That means that you are going to have judgments of good and bad, sincere and insincere, suitable and unsuitable people. There’s going to be “he said, she said.” It’s all so tiresome.
Yes, some of these discussions really are a waste of time. Yes, some people lose sight of the big picture and the overriding goal. Some of them are revealed as petty-minded and uninterested in anything but personal aggrandizement (themselves judgments about characters).
But that fish won’t fry itself. So such discussions are necessary, if we really are to fry the big fish. So if you are serious about politics, you are going to have to drop the delicate sensibilities that make you bored and unimpressed by such topics.
That’s sort of the reason I didn’t listen to personalities such as rush Limbaugh. Discussions with those sorts of commentators always degenerate into personal attacks on the clintons, Bidens, etc, and as appropriate as those may be, it changes politics into wars of cults of personalities and team fidelity and deflects from the issues. In their case, I would say it’s certainly strategic to prevent discussion of immigration, the needless middle eastern wars, etc, etc. There’s this gripping public political theatre, but it’s over Hollywood nonsense like who gave whom a bj.
In our case, I sort of like hearing about the personalities involved and their various foibles and conflicts, but I keep the strife in perspective. We’re human, politics and conflict will always happen.
Yeah Greg, I do appreciate the line isn’t always so clear cut, and I also understand that my own comments could be interpreted as tires moral posturing of the kind I am implicitly railing against…it’s a matter of balance, but in the example of the optics war, I think it fell substantially on the personal vendetta and trivial events side of the line and a lot of the bullshit simply didn’t need to exist.
Point taken, but generally I don’t think the balance is right amongst many (not all) dissidents.
There’s also not much accountability or post-mortems done where the personal and legit worthwhile debate cross. For instance you hosted a debate between Hunter Wallace and Andrew Anglin on Covid. As I see it, Anglin, largely reviled, won that argument in the end, but I’m not sure what we as a movement have learned from that.
Oh dear…
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/police-vetting-process-branded-mess-133556277.html
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