848 words

I just got back from the Counter-Currents retreat in Rome. To culturally appropriate a phrase from the Civil Rights Movement, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested” after a week of walking around the most historically significant city in the West. But we weren’t just exploring Rome’s past. We also encountered her present and future at CasaPound.

My single biggest impression was the immediacy and realism of having an “irl” (in real life) community. CasaPound has claimed numerous other physical spaces in Rome and elsewhere across Italy. I had the pleasure of visiting their famous headquarters in the Esquilino District, two bars, a bookstore, and the Acca Larenzia memorial site.

Despite the slogan that America is “the freest country on Earth,” Nationalists have nothing similar in the states due to anarcho-tyranny. The ones that do exist are either secret, and/or mainstream things that were infiltrated and hijacked. Until we can have what CasaPound has, we should call out the disparity between the slogans and reality of the American Regime to delegitimize it.

CasaPound’s real life community makes it impossible to be black pilled. They are incredibly optimistic and high energy without being delusional. Which is probably why the American Regime has done everything it can to shut down white organizing in America, whether it be explicitly, or even implicitly with things like safe malls, the Boy Scouts, or bowling with friends rather than “bowling alone.”

The optimism, real life friendship, and affirmative vision of CasaPound are also evident in Dominico Di Tullio’s book Nessun Dolore (No Pain), the English translation which I had the honor of proofreading and which will be published within a few weeks. It is clear from the book and what I saw firsthand that CasaPound has an affirmative vision which is actively lived, rather than just talked about, critiqued, or speculated about online by armchair quarterbacks.

Honoring the movement’s martyrs is another important lesson which the American Right struggles with. During the Years of Lead on January 7, 1978, communists killed two youths, Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta of the Italian Social Movement on Acca Larenzia. Latter that day when Rightists gathered to protest the attack, a cop (whose name should be obliterated from history) killed another young man, Stefano Recchioni. The cop’s pistol initially jammed, so he took the pistol from another cop, which makes the senseless and premediated nature of the crime even more shocking.

While the Acca Larenzia memorial site is hallowed ground, it is not dour. Today’s militants use it as a concert venue, gathering place, and propaganda workshop. Their smiles and laughter are the best form of revenge.

Honoring our martyrs imposes an opportunity cost on the regime which makes oppression less likely to happen in the future. The American Regime has gotten away with much because until the advent of the internet, hardly anyone knew or remembered its outrageous actions. Rather than being depressing, it keeps morale high because martyrs are inspirational. It also reassures people that if they are injured, killed, doxed, or lawfared that they will not be abandoned. It also makes our struggles look petty by comparison which prevents black pilling.

One thing which multiple Europeans have told me is that they admire how much America dominates the online sphere. But that dominance is exclusive, like a country relying on a single export. If it fails due to a return of censorship, it will be like the coffee crop failing in Columbia. Diversifying into real life endeavors won’t just make our online activism more effective, it will provide a backup, which may also function of a deterrent to a return to online censorship because it would make such censorship less effective, thus fundamentally changing the cost/risk/benefit calculation.

Real life is where real friends are made. And friendship is essential to every great enterprise. I suspect that is why the American Regime has done everything they sunder our movement from the real world.

I like to think of this year’s Counter-Currents retreat as a foil to CPAC Hungary. One has the sense that CPAC Hungary is about making Europe more like America. But I would like to see America become more like our ancestral homeland of Europe. And not just with architecture and art, but also with political organizing.

One of our panels at the retreat discussed elevator pitches to rogue elites. Mine was about creating an offensive law firm. But a close second project I would propose for a based millionaire to fund is sending white college students to Europe, much as Conservatism Inc. is always sending people to Israel.

Rome would be high on the list of places to send them. Not just so that they can put frivolous things like the Enlightenment within a historical perspective of aqueducts, the Baroque masterpieces of Caravaggio and Bernini, the triumph of legions, and the glory of Augustus, which are the measure of what endures. But also so that they could learn how to build communities from CasaPound. That way, in addition to passively appreciating European civilization, they would also be equipped to actively defend it.