Counter-Currents
1,908 words 
Let’s say that you have something to contribute to the White Nationalist movement. But you don’t just want to contribute. You want to excel. You want to have an impact. Here are five habits that you should cultivate if you want to be a highly effective nationalist. These recommendations are based upon personal trial and error as well as observing other nationalists.
All of these recommendations boil down to good manners. The movement consists of people working together. But people can work together well or badly. Friction is always possible. Manners are necessary to lubricate social interactions, so the movement can function like a well-oiled machine, as opposed to seizing up, breaking down, smoldering, or bursting into flames.
Be Approachable
Everybody understands immediately that to take part in the movement you must be outgoing. You need to reach out to others. There are two ways to do this: general (putting yourself out there for the whole world to see) and specific (seeking out particular people). The more outgoing you are, the bigger your audience, the bigger your network, the bigger your potential impact.
But it isn’t enough to be outgoing. You also need to be approachable. Approachability has two aspects.
First and foremost, people just need to know how to contact you. I have lost count of the number of important people in and around the movement who are hard to get in touch with. Ideally, you should share the address of your personal website or your business email address wherever people find your work. I have been available through www.counter-currents.com at [email protected] for nearly 15 years now. Millennial Woes is also easily available at https://www.millennialwoes.com/.
You can’t count on direct messages on platforms like X. For one thing, not everyone is on there, and not everyone on there can message you. And what if your account, or the account of a correspondent, gets banned? It is easy for people who build names for themselves on particular platforms to become dependent on that platform for their communications, but at a certain point, you need to provide your own platform, lest all your contacts and correspondence disappear when you are deplatformed.
A second aspect of approachability is more a matter of character or persona. If you are high and mighty, prickly, or condescending, people will be less likely to approach you than if you are unassuming and gracious. Being approachable doesn’t require acting like “just another Bozo.” Nobody would accuse Jared Taylor of not taking himself and his mission seriously, but he is also highly approachable.
Be Responsive
When people reach out to you, new things become possible, but nothing will happen unless you reply.
Frankly, I am astonished that our movement has accomplished as much as it has given how bad people are at basic communication.
I am not one to talk. I give myself a B+ on responsiveness. I am prompt with short replies, i.e., yes, no, maybe. But if people send me 1,200 word missives that require time to read, digest, and formulate a thoughtful response, I am likely to set it aside until I have the leisure, then forget about it, because I am inundated with correspondence and never have the leisure. There’s a lesson here that I need to take to heart as well: if you wish to begin a correspondence, keep your first email very short.
I have noticed that some of the most effective people in the movement are, unsurprisingly, very prompt in their replies. Alain de Benoist and Jared Taylor come immediately to mind. I fear for the future of our cause, though, because the younger the person, generally the worse the correspondent. You can’t plan a picnic much less save the white race if people don’t communicate in a timely manner.
Of course you don’t need to reply to everyone. I generally ignore journalists, obvious kooks and cranks, and the occasional piece of hate mail. (I have received remarkably little hate mail over the years.) Beyond these cases, however, you should say something to everyone who writes, if only to direct them somewhere else.
The main reason to reply is that nothing happens unless you do. The main reason to reply promptly is that if you wait, you are less likely to reply at all.
A secondary reason to reply is that not communicating doesn’t merely fail to augment your current effectiveness, it actually decreases it, because it inevitably makes people wonder about your motives for being uncommunicative, and the most natural explanations are the least flattering: he’s inefficient, disorganized, a snob, doesn’t like me, etc. Also, it just makes people angry. Finally, it invites retaliation. “If it took him two weeks to reply, why should I reply promptly?” If you think this sort of thinking is petty given the gravity of our cause, then what are we to think of your lack of a prompt reply, which set it all in motion?
Give Thanks
More than 15 years ago, I put Kevin Deanna in front of a room full of people. He gave a great talk, but I don’t remember what it was about. What I remember most was how emphatically and sincerely he delivered his first two words: “Thank you.” People were visibly touched. It wasn’t an empty pleasantry. Everybody in that room deserved thanks, for they all had spent time and money to be there, and not for something trivial, but for the most important cause in the universe. They were there for the greater good. They were doing their duty. But we can’t sustain this movement on high purposes and idealism alone. We must build in rewards along the way. And it takes an awfully small soul to begrudge people a simple and sincere thank you. Nothing produces greater benefits at such a small cost.
Thank you, dear reader, for all you do for this cause.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here
Give Praise
Giving thanks is one of the simplest forms of praise. We must never stint on offering sincere praise for genuine virtues and good deeds.
This is a hard lesson to accept, because our movement is so spectacularly burdened by narcissistic egomaniacs ravenous for praise and acclaim. Given the destructiveness of such people, it is easy to see why some wish to extinguish such behavior entirely. But you can’t do it simply by being stingy with praise.
Even the worst narcissists always have some genuine talents that deserve praise, or we would never hear of them in the first place. The problem is that they overestimate their worth. The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive impairment that leads the sufferer to overestimate his intelligence. We need a word for consistently overestimating one’s worth. Fortunately, we do have such words: vanity and pride. There are legitimate forms of pride and even vanity. But they can also be vices, even “sins.” For instance, in Aristotle’s ethics, vanity (chaunotes) refers specifically to the vice of overestimating one’s worth and demanding more honors than one is due. This inevitably leads to conflict, because it is both grotesque and unjust.
But it is also unjust not to praise people for genuine virtues and achievements.
People hunger for justice. They fight to the death for recognition. Moreover, whites—particularly young white men—have grown up watching authorities fawn over non-white mediocrities and failures while ignoring white achievements or even denigrating them as unjust results of unearned “white privilege.” Normal whites are treated like pathological narcissists simply for demanding just recognition of their achievements and virtues. Given that “white guilt” is central to the psychological warfare against our people, White Nationalists should be the last people to be stingy with sincere and deserved praise. Furthermore, there’s something perversely self-defeating about a movement that cannot offer activists money also being stingy with thanks and praise, which cost nothing.
Of course there is a distinction between praise and flattery. Praise is sincere whereas flattery is not. We should guard against flattery, since it is a counterfeit form of praise that devalues the real thing.
Keep Promises
Unless you plan to save the world on your own, you will need to work with others. As soon as you do, you begin to give and receive promises. But nothing will happen unless you and your partners actually keep them.
Based on long experience and observation, nothing is more destructive to a movement career than breaking promises. Movement people are astonishingly tolerant of cranky ideas, personal eccentricities, debilitating vices, and general drama. But if you break promises, word gets around rapidly, your trustworthiness crashes, and opportunities evaporate. Beyond that, nobody will even bother to tell you off. They simply go silent. Why would they level with you if they no longer trust you?
Obviously some promises are more important than others. If you break a promise to pay someone for work, that will not be quickly forgotten, even if the sum is relatively minor. If you promise to appear on a podcast and bow out, that’s far less consequential than backing out of a real-world event, especially one you are speaking at. But the most consequential broken promise is a cancelled conference, because such events involve large expenditures and promises to dozens if not hundreds of people. Moreover, if you break a promise to Peter, which causes him to break promises to Paul and Mary, all the blame will be passed back to you.
Some broken promises are more culpable than others. If you make a promise and never intend to follow through, you are simply a criminal and should be drummed out of the movement. Astonishingly, such criminals often hang around for decades, feeding off the idealism and ignorance of new people.
Most broken promises, however, were meant to be kept. They fall into two categories: those that aren’t your fault and those that are.
When you are forced to break promises because of government persecution, deplatforming, debanking, being turned out of venues, and the like, most people are prepared to forgive you. Such persecution can actually improve rather than harm your reputation.
Nevertheless, you can be blamed if you brought such persecution upon yourself by not practicing good operational security, failing to have backup plans and venues in place, or failing to include liquidated damages clauses in contracts, which both deter cancellations and give you money to refund people’s expenses in case of cancellation.
The faults that cause people to break promises fall into two categories: forgivable and unforgivable.
The most forgivable fault that leads to broken promises is setting unrealistic dates for completing projects. If you are a day late, you have broken your promise and caused stress for yourself and others. I hope this is forgivable, simply because I have done it more times than I can count. But slowly I am getting better. You should never announce projects until they are essentially complete and ready to go.
Another relatively forgivable fault that leads to broken promises is being overly agreeable, which causes people to promise too much. The only way to avoid this problem is simply to learn to say “no.”
Unforgivable faults that cause people to break promises include laziness, disorganization, poor judgment, and poor planning. But none of these faults will cause broken promises unless you also lack self-knowledge. If you know you are lazy, disorganized, etc., you might not be happy with yourself, but at least you won’t make promises that you cannot keep.
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
14 comments
The question on my mind was, “what is the ‘group evolutionary strategy’?” I sent off for a trilogy of books on this, and (very unexpectedly) my worldview was demolished and replaced with a new one. I looked up Kevin MacDonald online and read everything I could by him. The first thing I actually did from a pro-White standpoint was to send Kevin MacDonald a short email containing corrections. I didn’t care about the minor errors. I wanted to know if he would (a) ignore me, (b) freak out like a guru encountering doubt, or (c) respond like the sober and trustworthy academic he seemed to be.
Kevin MacDonald replied quickly and briefly. He said “thanks” and the corrections appeared online.
When approached politely and not at length, Kevin MacDonald proved to be gracious, and clearly someone who valued truth and did not have ego issues.
There was no excuse not to take seriously what Kevin MacDonald’s books soberly established, and since pro-White thinkers were apparently good people (despite what Hollywood says) there was no excuse not to get involved and not to help. The course of my life was changed for the better.
When someone contacts you, think that they may really want to know what sort of person you are, whether what you have said should be taken seriously, and in general what sort of person advocates for Whites. It takes very little to provide good, reassuring answers to these questions. Though the occasion may be small to you it may be pivotal to the person who contacted you.
Wonderful comment. Thank you.
Just to compare prompt, polite responsiveness to corrections, I’d like to see if neil degrasse tyson, robin diangelo, or bill nye would be near the same tier as K-Mac.
I wish everyone was as nice as me! 👿
Thanks for this good motivational article. I like to read more motivational articles like this. This is great stuff. Reliability and keeping your promise are the most important things. If every nationalist would keep his promises and be reliable, the whole movement would move towards the goal (white etnostate) very quickly. It is also quite important to be internally motivated and avoid mental burnout. It is about burnout that I am writing a new article. I’ve got a lot of new literary stuff going on right now.
Same here. These “overlooked essentials” are vital to a movement people want to be a part of. “The world’s most evil ideology” (i.e. Whites loving their own) has enough of an uphill battle to fight as it is; add to that a bunch of boorishness and you’ve got an outfit that no self-respecting person would want anything to do with. And rightly so.
I’ve gotten periodic unsolicited emails from Counter Currents simply giving thanks and expressing appreciation for being a subscriber. My contribution is likely meager compared to some, but that hasn’t stopped the admins of this site from being kind and gracious to me.
Additionally every email question I’ve sent in has been promptly responded to by an articulate and pleasant soul. You’re doing good work here. Thank you.
Sometimes the best way to help is to stay away from the movement. In my case my appearance is so shocking that I realize I could really scare people. Sometimes strangers call the police on me after only short interactions. This would be counterproductive to any political group. Therefore, since I want us to win, I minimize involvement.
Oh boy, DP, while this is almost certainly boorish of me, your comment is crying out to be asked – why? What could be so shocking about your appearance? I hope you weren’t a burn victim at some point. I feel very bad for such persons.
I do grant your general point, which is about salesmanship. It is simply a biological fact that people prefer attractive to ugly persons (why are leading actors, unless comedians or muscle men, usually good looking?). Men like William Pierce, David Duke and Jared Taylor were good representatives for the cause. Indeed, I know some women thought Richard Spencer was a handsome guy, which probably goes some way to explaining his meteoric rise within the movement (his poor judgment and narcissism likely precipitated his eventual downfall, along with one-sided government persecution after Charlottesville, to be fair).
Spencer has sort of the opposite curse. His over abundance of intelligence and beauty can excite jealousy in colleagues.
All the personalities of the last decade who jumped aboard the antiWoke ‘own the libs’ train trying to appeal to losers’ club of raceless cuckservayidism out of fear of being unapologetically proWhite & judeocritical have been left in the dustbin of history: spencer, milo, kaitlin bennett, crowder, bret weinstein, lauren southern, chris sky, faith goldy, jordan peterson, and I hear even daily wire is floundering, and tim pool will be next. The refuseniks who shun (‘other side are the real Nazis!’) our historic racial struggle against Mordor’s hordes have been forgotten and never reclaimed any ground of relevance. Their sincerity was always doubtful to begin with.
Greg: We need a word for consistently overestimating one’s worth.
How about self-conceited? There are about 90 antonyms on Mirriam-Webster for self-critical, which we must always be — all suitable to describe the word you’re looking for.
—
Uncle Semantic: April 20, 2025 All the personalities of the last decade who [were] trying to appeal to losers’ club of raceless cuckservayidism out of fear of being unapologetically proWhite & judeocritical have been left in the dustbin of history: spencer, milo, kaitlin bennett, crowder, bret weinstein, lauren southern, chris sky, faith goldy, jordan peterson, and I hear even daily wire is floundering, and tim pool will be next…
That’s quite a list of marginal “leaders” I’ve either never heard of, or, if I had, paid absolutely no attention to.
Recruiting losers to our noble cause is a worthless endeavor. More warm bodies are not what is needed. An interesting observation by Dr. William Pierce to his Alliance members 40 years ago should be of interest even to those White race-thinkers who have no interest whatsoever in the National Alliance: Thoughts on Recruiting, part two | National Vanguard
Every Alliance member should understand that at the root it was not dirty politics that got the White race into its present jam: it was spiritual corruption. Unless there can be a transformation of values, a spiritual renewal and reorientation, the race cannot be saved. Education is part of the task of the Alliance, but facts and ideas alone will not win the war for survival in which we are engaged.
Many racially conscious Whites have reacted so strongly against alien Judeo-Christianity that they have acquired a negative attitude toward not only the poison-peddling, race-mixing Protestant and Catholic establishments which they have rejected, but also toward everything else which seems “religious” to them. That is unfortunate indeed, for we are a religious race by nature. We need religion in order to be whole and healthy.
In particular, Alliance members need spiritual inspiration as well as a fighting spirit if they are to accomplish their task, and we seek recruits who are capable of being inspired spiritually.
Uncle Semantic, I doubt any of those losers that you list, who you say are onn the way to the “dustbin of history,” ever spoke or wrote about our cause’s need for spiritual renewal and reorientation. For good reason Pierce will never be found in history’s dustbin.
“How about self-conceited?”
Dunning-Kruger effect
On a not entirely unrelated topic:
There is a lack of cooperation between White Nationalist groups. For example, WN blogs often forget to link to other WN blogs. But despite the friction, some cooperation is still possible.
I’d like to see some cooperation in the specific matter of using common slogans and mantras. White Nationalists use similar arguments because they have similar views, but everyone does it in his own way, with his own words. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s also effective to have some common slogans. It’s easier to remember and it can help popularize some ideas.
• We already have some effective memes like this one: Daily Struggle / Two Buttons.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/daily-struggle-two-buttons
Example:
Button 1: People can be born as the wrong gender.
Button 2: Gender is a social construct.
It shows the lack of coherence of wokism.
And as I see it, anti-wokism goes hand in hand with White Nationalism.
• Bob Whitaker’s mantra: Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, White countries for everybody! (…) They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white. Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white. (https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/The_Mantra)
• a Polish proverb:
The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you.
• a succinct ideal:
the 14 words (David Lane).
• a few simple useful phrases:
– the great replacement (Renaud Camus)
– every single time (David Duke)
– they want us dead (Lana Lokteff)
• NAXALT
• I’m with the current thing
…et cetera.
We need more of this. I’d like to see a team of WN activists get together and take on the task of contacting other activists to encourage the sharing and recycling of good slogans and short words of wisdom. Those who want to participate would only have to reuse someone else’s words a dozen times in the same month. The following year, search engines would indicate whether any of it had caught on.
Bob Whitaker probably put a lot of effort into forging his mantra, and a lot of activists worked to spread it. Not everyone likes the phrase “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white”, but I think it’s very good. Keeping that in mind can help you resist intellectual intimidation.
But it doesn’t have to be something super clever. When many people repeatedly express the same common sense idea in the same well-written words, it becomes more accessible in people’s minds.
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.