A comment on Charlottesville: this sort of chip-on-the-shoulder activism is a no-win for the Right. It attracts too many of the lowest, stupidest, and most undesirable elements, and as we have seen, it results in officially sanctioned violence.
I remember a slogan from back in the Vietnam War era: Fighting For Peace Is Like Fucking For Virginity. Creating disorder in the name of order is very much the same thing.
The Left is moving, with increasing energy, towards such offensive absurdities as to alienate ever-increasing numbers of normal and traditionally minded Americans. The social, ideological, and political structures it has created are collapsing from their own internal weaknesses, costs, and contradictions. As it accelerates leftward, the fractal nature of faction and grievance, and the absence of any limiting principles, begins tearing Leftism apart from inside, as its zealots turn upon each other.
As Napoleon said: never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. What the Right needs to do is simply to stand clear, be true to its principles, make its case where possible, and to prepare for, but not incite, violent conflict. It also has some very important historical and intellectual work to do, namely to understand what went wrong, and make sure that as we rebuild we do not repeat our errors.
In short, the reactionary Right needs to think of itself not as a battleship, but an ark.
23 Comments
This is the Long March moment for the dissident right.
In terms of insurgencies this was an attempt to move to phase 2 operations..moving into enemy territory. It failed. The leaders were inferior, the time wasn’t right and the plan sucked.
Now the counterattack has wiped out several safe bases and we are back to phase 1..establishing safe bases and rebuilding networks.
The single best outcome from this is that the people who planned it are now completely discredited, and the alt-right is forced to go back to what it does best…culture jamming. Now we can begin to build proper alliances and work more to influence the culture.
The time will come to move back into phase 2. But it must be done after the ground has been prepared. The left of course will do much of the work for us as it grows more violent, more authoritarian, more insane.
If the purpose of the ridiculous “Unite the Right” rally was to stop the removal of Confederate statues, it failed spectacularly.
There has now been an extreme acceleration in the removal of statues, be it through mob action as in Durham, or by government action, as in Baltimore where Confederate statues were removed under cover of night.
Even a plaque marking the spot where a tree was planted by Robert E. Lee in Fort Hamilton was removed in the last couple of days.
I hope the Neo Nazis and their enablers are happy.
How many decades has homosexualism been being promoted to children in schools, again? And now they’re telling little kids they should mutilate themselves.
I am not aware of an example of passivism as a successful strategy historically. I fail to see why it will suddenly work now.
Dave: So you’re in favour of doing nothing, and waiting and watching while the communists and queers slowly destroy heritage, rather than actually taking them on? Nice.
Roger,
Fair points. The question is a pragmatic one: do we watch the Left overreach, while tearing itself to pieces, and wait for the great mass of public support to turn in our favor? (It’s already happening before our eyes; the election of Trump would have been unthinkable very recently.)
Or do we take to the streets right now, as in Charlottesville?
What say you?
Here are some thoughts of my own on this, from 2015.
Roger Milk,
If you think accelerating the removal of statues is a success then we define success very differently.
If you think getting set up by the police and delivered directly into the hands of a violent mob while the lying Media watches and distorts what happens is positive action then we are definitely on opposite sides.
Torch lit processions with guys carrying Swastikas and chanting Blood and Soil rhetoric while David Duke steps up to speak is about as bad a display as one could hope for. It alienates most average white folks. It just doesn’t work with middle America.
You want to know what works ?
What Damore did with his memo at Google.
That elicited a ton of positive interest and thoughtful discussion, and the SJW’s can’t effectively respond to it.
That kind of action resonates with millions of average Americans, even liberal ones.
Jordan Peterson converts more progressives than a mob of trashy rednecks ever will.
Take your pick.
Well. I’m from the great state of Arkansas and, in the immediate aftermath I reached out on one of my state’s Proggy sites and offered ’em a solution.
“Want to take down some statues? Y’all realize that’ll leave all those pedestals looking kinda trashy so here’s my suggestion – replace the statues honoring the long dead with somebody more contemporary.
But somebody who’s done some actual good, my suggestion?
Anthony Weiner holding aloft not a saber but rather a cellphone.”
I would add, Mr. Pollack, that the more thoughtful Right just needs to be smarter, more professional, more prudent, more competent. Especially vital is the tone, the words it uses. For instance, there is certainly truth to what the president said about both sides being guilty for what transpired in Virginia a few days ago. Yet the way he and his staff delivered this message was so clumsy, so off-the-cuff, that they – as they so often do – just managed to shoot themselves in the foot. Politics, like any vocation, involves a certain finesse, a professionalism: how you say things is as important as what you say. Because of his pathological narcissism Trump will never understand this, but his successors need to.
One more brief point that is related: the Dissident Right simply needs more leaders who are normal, who have actually have a balance of virtues so as to attract others. As it is now, most of its current stars are individuals who constantly give off the vibe of bitterness and lack of charity. Guys like Roissy (PUA), Dalrock (Christian traditionalist), Theodore Beale (Alt/Right Racialist), and others are often insightful and brilliant, but I would never want to be in the same room with them.
Perhaps the first words in my comment should have been “To reiterate,” since I suppose I’m really not adding to but simply agreeing with (and amplifying) your post.
Thanks, Jason, you’re quite right.
We actually have no shortage of pleasant, civilized, and articulate writers and speakers, but when it comes to media coverage they are swimming against a very strong current — and they are always at risk of being dragged into the spotlight for the Two Minutes’ Hate.
Dave,
Exactly.
Well yes Jason I rather agree. He and his staff could’ve taken a page from President Obama’s playbook where outrages are concerned. (See here and here.)
JK,
Obama after the Dallas shootings? Ah yes, I remember it well…
Looks like Ramzpaul agrees with you.
Yes Loki.
And to think that was just barely over one year ago.
Yep Dave. But then we find ourselves as Napoleon (I think) might’ve put it, “From the sublime to the …”
I’m seeing “they’ve” set their sights on:
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=8643
The Unite the Right rally was at-worst a wash. The underlying purpose was to air their grievances against the establishment and being denied a platform by the city and/or state is an illustration of that point.
Granted you can say it was endless fodder for the media, but the fallout hasn’t just been a bruising for various right wing websites. It has also emboldened the hard left to consider taking down ever more mainstream and popular colonial figures.
The only way to convince normal people that the left is insane, given the left controls the media, is to get them to illustrate that point.
“The only way to convince normal people that the left is insane, given the left controls the media, is to get them to illustrate that point.” Which the Left will do in living color!
Also I like the Professor Jordan Peterson mention. A smart man!
To wit, Sharpton is now calling to defund the Jefferson memorial in DC. I can’t imagine a better advertisement for American Nationalism than colonial founding monuments being destroyed while raving communist mobs beat aging military vets nearby.
The Left is becoming not just fascist but Nazi like at a rapid rate. I knew it:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/anti-israel-profs-organizing-antifa-campus-network/
Soon coming to the Left-casualties. Kent State on steroids.
Yeah being kindly push overs these past 50 years has worked so well in “conserving” sanity. You notice the left never attacks anyone to the left of themselves.
Of course, Trump has certainly pulled the curtain on how big of whores and traitors the Republican Senators really are.
Who is capable of sitting still while being tortured to death?