Personal Finance Tips for Dissidents

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2,878 words

Many of us on the dissident Right are eager for action. We see the myriad ways our enemies conspire to destroy us — psychologically, financially, and even physically — and we feel a growing need to fight back. Metapolitics and online analysis are good in their places, but we know that we are in a war, and wars cannot be won with memes and arguments alone.

At the same time, it can be hard to know exactly how one can and should fight back against the rulers of this world. They are very powerful, after all. And no one should ever do anything violent against our enemies; that would be illegal. But then what can we do, right now, where we are?

Fortunately, there are some simple and relatively easy actions we can take in our everyday financial lives that will inflict tangible — if modest — harm on our enemies. These same actions will leave us financially stronger and better equipped to repel their attacks. I am going to outline several, but my aim is not to have the last word. My suggestions are simply first steps. I hope they will prompt you to think about other ways you can order your financial life to strengthen our allies and weaken our enemies. And I hope readers who have other and better ideas will share them in the comments.

1. Bank locally.

All the national, publicly-traded banks are fully woke. All of them celebrate and lavishly fund sodomy, abortion, race-replacement immigration, miscegenation, and anti-white violence. They eagerly cooperate with the feds in persecuting dissidents and coordinate with Jewish activists to deny us access to banking services. Without exception, they are our mortal enemies. If you do business with a national bank, whether through deposit accounts, credit cards, loans, or investments, one of the strongest actions you can take is to move your business to a local bank or credit union. You will thereby deprive our enemies of the resources you are freely lending them, make yourself less visible and hence less vulnerable to their attacks, and strengthen an institution that is likely to serve your neighbors honorably, regardless of their political views.

Do not doubt that your modest deposits and transactions make a real difference to these banks. Due to the corrupt system of fractional reserve banking, banks loan out most of the money in your accounts at much higher rates of interest than they pay you. This is why banks are so eager for your direct-deposit paychecks — they ensure the usurers of a steady stream of fresh dollars to loan. National banks pay some of the lowest rates to depositors but typically charge high account fees and interest rates. Every transaction you make with them is nourishing your enemies at your own expense.

By contrast, local banks and credit unions are a much more diverse lot. Before choosing one, you should assess its mission, leadership, reputation, and terms (including fees and interest rates). But in general, these smaller institutions have a more straightforward, non-ideological mission: to serve local people with banking services (and perhaps to make a profit while doing so). Both their fees and their spreads between the interest they charge borrowers and the interest they pay depositors tend to be lower than those of the national banks. While you are unlikely to find a pro-white local bank, you can probably find one that is not working to destroy you and your family. Indeed, local banks and credit unions help to keep money circulating within a community, whereas national banks exist to suck money out of communities. Seceding from the national banking cartel is one of the most potent injuries you can inflict on the system.

2. Use cash.

Like the big banks, the major credit card processors — Visa, Mastercard, and American Express — are all aggressively woke. Moreover, they collaborate with governments and Big Tech to record, expose, and criminalize your financial life. Indeed, regular readers of this site know that they have been actively persecuting thought criminals for years. Every time you swipe or tap a card with their logos, you pay a two or three percent tax to your enemies, and you give them a permanent record of your movement and spending. Visa and Mastercard are vying to be the preferred providers for governments seeking to implement fully digital currencies, through which every transaction would be centrally monitored and controlled. Moreover, digital transactions are easily taxable, which means that they feed the parasites of both the financial and the political industries.

Spending cash has many good effects. First, it deprives your enemies in the credit card industry of ammunition. Second, it keeps your transactions fully private and — if you desire — anonymous. Third, it creates an impetus among businesses against a fully digital currency, which would be ruinous for dissidents. Fourth, it deprives governments of any record of your spending and therefore of the ability to tax it (not that anyone should ever evade taxes). You may find that due to the elimination of intermediaries, the cash price of certain transactions is lower — sometimes considerably lower — than the credit card price.

A preference for cash should apply not only against credit cards but also against more modern alternatives like PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. All of these are administered by explicitly anti-white corporations and have been weaponized to deny pro-whites and other dissidents access to their own money. No honorable person should have anything to do with them.

3. Avoid buying from corporations.

Just as all publicly-traded national banks are anti-white, whereas local banks are much less likely to be driven by ideology, so almost all publicly-traded corporations are anti-white, whereas their local competitors are likely to be run as old-fashioned, non-political businesses. The donation records to Black Lives Matter, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Southern Poverty Law Center bear this out, as do the loyalty oaths sworn on the websites of virtually every publicly-traded corporation to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “environmental, social, and governance” (aka ESG) goals. A white person will not go too far wrong in assuming that every publicly-traded corporation is committed to the destruction of himself and his family and people. Just look at the television and print ads these companies have produced over the past several years in which whites appear rarely, and only as breeding stock for mulattoes.

By contrast, local businesses are less likely to be owned and run by our enemies, and are very unlikely to be run for the purpose of our destruction. Even a local merchant who contributes personally to Democratic politicians is unlikely to run his business on rigidly ideological lines. If a local business identifies itself as your enemy, you can avoid it; but such businesses are the exception, not the rule. Moreover, whereas you are unlikely to form any useful relationships by trading with corporations, you may very well build up a network of skilled and friendly local suppliers and craftsmen that could be very useful on the day when opportunity or necessity releases us from the current system.

Of course, it will be impossible for most of us to avoid dealing with publicly-traded corporations entirely. But as with credit cards and other electronic payments, we can shift our transactions away from them and toward less anti-white alternatives — especially local, privately owned businesses.

4. Avoid the worst corporations entirely.

Even if you must sometimes hold your nose and give your money to an anti-white corporation, some companies are so aggressively evil that it is worth blacklisting them fully and permanently. These are companies that demean and discriminate against whites not merely internally and incidentally, but loudly and publicly. They are among the biggest funders of anti-white propaganda and lobby heavily for woke and Leftist causes.

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You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here. [3]

My list is incomplete, and yours might look a little different. But I make a point never to do any business with (in alphabetical order): Airbnb, Bank of America, BlackRock, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Levi Strauss, Nike, PayPal, Proctor and Gamble (P&G), Starbucks, and Target. Remember that many of these firms have multiple brands and subsidiaries, all of which I avoid. For example, Coca-Cola sells Sprite and Dasani, Levi makes Dockers, and P&G makes Crest, Gillette, and Tide (among myriad other household products).

There is almost always an alternative to buying from one of these egregiously bad actors; normally, you can buy a comparable product or service from a competing company, and at worst, you can forego buying anything at all.

Note that I am not here advocating (or condemning) conventional boycotts. Boycotts are organized collective actions that aim to change their targets’ behavior. I respect anyone who can mount or participate in an effective boycott of corporations for their anti-white policies. But my aim is more modest. I view these companies as our declared enemies who cannot be reformed; they must eventually be destroyed. I refuse to do business with them not because I hope to change them, but because I don’t want to contribute, even modestly, to their power. I don’t want to feed the parasites that have dedicated themselves to the subjugation and destruction of my people.

5. Stop buying from Amazon.

Although this item would fit naturally under points three or four above, I think it deserves its own space. Most of the people I know, including self-professed conservatives, use Amazon as their default retailer. But Amazon is one of the original tech censors of dissident ideas. I stopped doing business with them after they removed Greg Johnson’s books several years ago (while continuing to promote all manner of anti-white propaganda). They are also one of the most centralizing forces in the American economy, inundating the marketplace with Chinese junk and driving countless local shops out of business. Using Amazon as your retailer not only feeds your enemy, it also pushes you toward a future where Amazon is your only option and Amazon decides what you can and cannot buy.

I still use Amazon to research products and keep a wish list; I just don’t buy things from them. If you are heavily Amazon-dependent, you may not be able to imagine getting by without it. But 20 years ago, nobody bought much of anything from Amazon, and you can still find just about everything available from Amazon from other sources.

If you want to take a step back from Amazon but aren’t ready to cut all ties, cancel your Prime membership. Prime is mostly a prepaid express shipping program, and Amazon sells it hard because they know you will buy more from them if you don’t face additional shipping charges with each order. By subjecting yourself to those charges, you will likely buy less from Amazon.

6. Minimize taxes (legally).

Probably no single corporation is as uniformly and lethally anti-white as the United States government (or whatever government you might be under). There is much debate on the dissident Right between supporters and opponents of strong central government, but there should be no debate that virtually all actual current governments are our mortal enemies. Money is power, and paying taxes transfers power from us to our enemies. Reducing our taxes — i.e., keeping more of our wealth — transfers power from our enemies back to us.

Each person’s situation is different, and I am not an accountant or a financial advisor. But many people have opportunities to reduce their tax bills legally. You should always do your own due diligence, and perhaps consult a qualified advisor. But here are some of the most common opportunities I have observed:

7. Unplug from television, movies, pro sports, and other anti-white entertainment.

This counsel might not seem overtly financial, but it is: All of these franchises make lots of money off their audiences, either by charging you subscription and ticket fees or by selling your attention to advertisers (themselves often anti-white). When you watch Netflix or attend National Football League (NFL) games, you are paying your enemies to sedate and propagandize you. Hollywood, of course, has long been the epicenter of the Jewish war on Christian European culture. But all of the streaming services, all of the major studios, and all of the professional sports leagues are proudly woke, and they are using their platforms to promote your dispossession. I am amazed at the many men I know who deplore the NFL’s support of Black Lives Matter and kneeling during the national anthem, yet continue to pay their avowed enemies to insult them. What slavish behavior!

When you eliminate these cultural poisons from your life, you not only deprive your enemies of the dollars they were making from your consumption, you also make room for more healthy hobbies and entertainments to take their places. Reading, writing, making music, exploring nature, exercising, cooking, building, repairing, gardening, worshipping, and socializing with friends and family are examples of activities that will improve your life much more than watching sports and movies will.

8. Support pro-white and dissident-friendly businesses whenever possible.

Many of us don’t have good pro-white options for our daily purchases. But if you do, you should support them when you can. I try to buy dissident books directly from their publishers, eliminating distributors. And I can vouch that Above Time is roasting some truly excellent coffee.

9. Redirect your time and money to dissident causes.

If you adopt some of the financial habits recommended above, you are likely to find yourself with at least a little more time and money. Look for ways to redirect some of this to worthy people and institutions. Dissident content creators, publishers like Counter-Currents, legal defense funds for activists, or personal aid for victims of the anti-white regime are all worth supporting. The money you save from eliminating one streaming service or forgoing one sportsball event could easily cover the $120 cost of an annual Counter-Currents paywall membership.

For people who don’t have money to share, or who want to go beyond financial support, look for ways you can share your time and abilities with the movement. Get involved (cautiously) with activists in your area, or contact dissident groups to volunteer specific skills or ask how you might be able to help.

Conclusion: The all-or-nothing fallacy

When difficult or complex behavioral changes are at stake, it is tempting to reason this way: “I can’t possibly stop eating fried food or desserts, so there’s no point in changing my diet.” “I can’t possibly read the Bible in a year, so there’s no point in starting it.” “I can’t possibly go to the gym every day, so there’s no point in joining.” Of course, all of these reactions are really rationalizations for complacency, and they are predicated on a false dilemma: Either one must change a behavior entirely, or there’s no point in changing it at all. But all the behaviors in these examples can be approached as more-or-less, not just as all-or-nothing. Even if you can’t fully attain your goal as a result of one momentous decision, you can start moving toward it. You can eat more vegetables, pray more often, and start exercising a couple times per week.

Orienting your finances in a pro-white direction is not a single, all-or-nothing action. For most of us, there will always be more to do on this front. But we can continue to make smaller and larger changes to the good of our people and the detriment of our enemies. You do not have to be able to put Target out of business in order to help it less than you do now. You might still need to stop there for a last-minute birthday present, but you could shift your regular grocery shopping to a local supermarket. Every dollar you spend is a transfer of power. Pick a few concrete ways you can start to transfer less of that power to our enemies and more to our friends. When those first changes become habits, then take a few more steps. And please share your ideas and experiences on this front in the comments below.

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