A Way Forward: Building the Tribe

^[1]2,767 words

Spanish translation here ^[2]

The white advocacy movement is slowly grasping towards an ideological consensus. Most factions are united around the idea of a white ethnostate on the North American continent as the end game of our efforts.

There is an increasing impatience with the reactionary baggage of American conservatism and the “American Dream” itself, including the mindless rhetoric of “Constitutionalism,” capitalism, and deracinated individualism. Intellectually, Traditionalism, Identitarianism, and the European New Right are, perhaps for the first time, establishing a real presence within the “Lockean shopping mall” (to use Richard Spencer’s phrase) that is the United States. It is a time for optimism – we are at the end of something ^[3], and the beginning of something better.

At the same time, the System’s mechanism of repression is increasing in severity. The velvet glove is openly being replaced with the iron fist. The most obvious examples are in Europe, where political parties are banned, political dissidents are arrested, and Left-wing violence is not just tolerated, but encouraged. Soft totalitarianism is failing; the regime is solidifying. The machinery of formal repression will be in the United States soon enough. Our enemies are already constructing workarounds for the First Amendment in the name of banning hate speech.

Of course, they might not need such tactics. This System functions with full awareness of how most people interpret knowledge and truth. People in this society respect authority and credentials. This System drives those with our views to the fringes – academically, professionally, and even economically. Jared Taylor’s translation business, which has nothing to do with anything racial or even political, was attacked by the Southern Poverty Law Center purely to hurt his family ^[4].

They’re not wrong in doing this. The point of “antifa ^[5],” or “watchdogs,” or all the rest of them is to not to make hardcore activists quit. It is to isolate them and sever as many of their personal connections as possible. The target is the casual supporter, the potential donor, the mainstream sympathizer, or even the personal friend. Even in nominally apolitical settings, anyone “linked” to certain views, or “linked” to those “linked” with certain views, must be purged. Qui tacet consentire videtur – and the System will make no distinction between the racists and those who harbor them.

Hence, we have case after case of the hapless hotel or restaurant owner who hosts a conference and finds himself besieged by protesters screaming for his blood. We’ve even gotten to the point where this trickles down to auto repair stations, bars, or blue collar enterprises where people have never been forced to go to sensitivity training, but who understand economic or physical threats easily enough.

The result is that our movement is systematically denied financial, personal, and social support. People will not support positions if they think they are alone in doing so, and right now, people are afraid to openly advocate certain positions. Our articles tend not to go “viral” because if a person shares them, they could be fired. This leads to a credibility trap. When marginalized people are the only ones taking certain positions, it is easy to dismiss them. To win, we need the mainstream reporters, the academics, and the politicians to say what we are saying. We need support from unexpected sources. As has been said, “If the Pope gets up in the morning and says God exists, you say, well, he’s doing his job. If he says, ‘You know, I don’t think there is a God,’ you tend to take it a bit more seriously.”

For that reason, we need to change how we look at our movement. It’s not really a “movement” – at least not yet. It should be thought of as a support system, a network, a base to harbor those whites who have a future for the dark times that are coming.

In political terms, this also means ensuring a place for the inevitable casualties that result from the “purges.” Obviously, this includes reporters, scholars, and activists who are purged from the conservative movement or an environmental group or whatever else. However, it also includes artists, musicians, and even ordinary workers who will need a place to go. The state and its minions will increasingly move against us, and the Right never picks up its wounded. The so-called anti-fascists are the militant wing of the regime. In response, we must build support networks outside the state.

There are precedents for this. In revolutionary terms, one can look at the parallel state structure of the early Irish Republican Army ^[6] and support apparatus for lessons about how you build a state within the heart of another state. We can also look to the workers’ movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the state and police were openly mobilized against the labor movement, workers were able to build their own social clubs, mutual aid, educational, and fraternal organizations. Churches, heathen tribes, and national anarchist groupings are contemporary models to look to. We can also take lessons from the failures of past ^[7] and present efforts to jump the gun and build a standalone separate society from scratch.

These are three strategic objectives on which white advocates must focus.

The first is the creation of subcultures and safe spaces. Our enemies clearly know the importance of a place to organize. Go to any college and the first thing you’ll see are the “safe space” stickers for the minority mascots and pet homosexual activists that the college administrations patronize. This isn’t just feel-good propaganda – it represents a resource base for Left-wing political constituencies on campus. This is something we lack – after all, just look at how difficult it is for white advocates to host a conference, and how grateful we are when we find a location.

Our enemies also know how important it is to deny us any base within the culture. There are entire groups ^[8] who do nothing but go to concerts and jump people who are wearing shirts with unapproved symbols, from political slogans to something more subtle, like runes or a patch with a certain band’s name. However, we should take heart in knowing that their effectiveness on this front is somewhat limited. Look at the current controversy over “Death in June ^[9],” which despite Left-wing protests, was still able to host a very successful North American tour. I spoke to the owner of one of the venues, a Leftist who simply didn’t care about the band’s alleged politics, who told me that the Death in June concert was the most successful in his venue’s history.

Politics is the tip of the spear – when you go to a demonstration (well, an organized one anyway), you walk away knowing an explicit message and proposed course of action. Culture is more subtle, but more important. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world ^[10], after all, and painting, sculpture, literature, spirituality, music, and film allow us to communicate ideas in more effective and lasting ways than even the most expertly crafted essay. More importantly, we can create “safe spaces” in which to organize.

This is not a call for more implicit activism – Tea Party groups, gun clubs, etc. We need to create safe spaces for “apolitical” things that have political consequences – even if the artists or participants don’t fully realize it. Examples are the rise of an apolitical but “folkish” heathenism, certain elements of the black metal subgenre ^[11], “kinist” Christianity, or even elements of the prepper or survivalist subcultures. Stella Natura ^[12] is the kind of thing we need to pursue. 

The second strategic objective is the creation of an economic support network. As they say in the second Godfather, “This is the business we have chosen ^[13],” and we can’t be too surprised or shocked when our enemies come after our businesses, friends, and personal lives. We always say we live under one of the most evil tyrannies that has ever existed – why are we shocked when they act like it?

That said, we can prepare for it. At least some of us should try to ensconce themselves within the existing system as deeply as possible, to function as the secret agents ^[14] Greg Johnson spoke of who can hollow out the empire. However, we should recognize the inevitability of the coming purge. The institutions that we are building can serve as a home for those who are eventually “outed” and forced against their will into overt activism. For this reason, every covert activist has the moral obligation to fund these institutions.

We must operate as a “tribe,” as Jack Donovan and others have said. To a certain extent, we even have to operate as The Tribe, consciously trying to promote and push our own into positions of affluence and influence. “Is it good for our people?” must be the question we always ask ourselves. However, unlike our Semitic rivals, we should be using our involvement as a way to transform ourselves and our peers. We need to be better people, examples of higher character. Part of the reason for participating in this movement is to distinguish ourselves from both the masses of man and mass society, and to overcome ourselves.

Obviously, this means building institutions, supporting explicit activists, and getting each other jobs. We should never be in a position where we have a job opening and we don’t have a young person ready to take that position. But you all know this. This also means everyone needs to buck up and stop screwing around. But you know that, too.

What we really need to do is operate like a real tribe – coalitions of bourgeois, writers, activists, construction workers, cubicle drones, and technical people all working together to accomplish tasks at the least possible cost while taking in as much money as possible from the larger society. We should always have website hosting and graphic design on hand. We should always be able to count on people to arrange conference hosting or holding a fundraiser at a restaurant.

But more than that, we should use the, shall we say, diversity of people in our movement to create new sources of revenue for all of us. We have working-class guys who need money who know construction, roofing, and home repair; we have wealthier people who live in suburban neighborhoods. We can have wealthier people buy property in depressed, even predominantly minority neighborhoods and have our people live in property while fixing it up and then selling it as a profit. We can gentrify entire neighborhoods, building our forces on the ground while making money for our own investors.

The examples are literally limitless. Instead of arguing about theology, ideology, or politics, we should be talking about how we can practically help each other and create a sustainable network of activists. After all, our people retreat not because our ideas are wrong or even because people disagree with them. They retreat because our enemies hold the economic weapon. We have to take it away from them and arm ourselves with it.

This can also lead to organizational advantages. To use the construction example, cheap housing in certain cities could host “activist colonies” of four to five people who could do work on behalf of the tribe. This doesn’t mean just protests – it means essential back-end work, including fundraising, record keeping, social networking, putting together direct mail efforts, managing online efforts, recruiting at concerts and social events, etc. These are all things that can give us a huge return for a small investment – and even make us a profit.

The original fraternal organizations, like the Knights of Columbus or the International Order of Odd Fellows, were for people to take care of each other. That’s what we need to be. We are a tribe. We owe loyalty, compassion, and aid to our own. As far as the rest of the world is concerned – to borrow from House Greyjoy in Game of Thrones ^[15],“We do not sow.”

The last strategic objective for white advocates is to grow up about politics.

Imagine the amount of complicated planning, scheming, and relationship building it takes to survive in mainstream politics. Imagine just how hard it is to do something even fairly low on the totem pole, like becoming the head of a state Republican Party organization. Imagine the degree of political skill this demands.

Why do we think revolution will somehow be easier? How will three guys holding signs suddenly translate into a mass movement?

Any white advocate who wants to do anything in politics needs to spend at least a little time in the mainstream. We can no longer afford the costs of naiveté. We can no longer afford blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on candidates who despise us but want our money. We can’t think that somehow the entire country is going to vote for us because we put up a website, or started a third party, or got in a picture or shook the hand of somebody important.

Politics is subtle, careful, complicated, and slow moving. Politicians obsessively craft and test messages. It is as much science as art. White advocates blundering in talking about what the white population will or what not do are of no importance unless they actually have some real political experience.

Look at the National Front in France. It is now the leading political party in the Republic, at least according to some polls. At the same time, it is under heavy criticism from our quarters for compromising its message. The problem here is that it is a political party – it is not a debating society or an organization dedicated to searching for truth. Its purpose is to win elections and do what is necessary to protect its image.

I have a rule about how white advocates analyze politics. The farther away popular figures are from our position, the more we read things into them. Meanwhile, the closer someone is to our position, the more we criticize them. Therefore, we go after our own for not being hard enough on the Jews, but we somehow think that Rand Paul is secretly on our side, all evidence to the contrary.

Let’s be quite blunt. Electoral politics is about the details. Creating a new political party, writing the Republican National Committee, or issuing some new manifesto isn’t going to do anything. If you want to have real political change in the existing system, you have to engage the process, and that means doing a lot of knocking on doors, addressing envelopes, and jockeying for position in boring meetings. It means abandoning your beliefs, image, and identity to do what is necessary to win. To be a politician qua politician means to subordinate your humanity to your ambition. If you are not willing to do that, then don’t get involved in politics. You are wasting your time and money – and everyone else’s.

Politics isn’t necessarily the answer anyway. If you were maneuvering for position in the Roman Empire, you would be kissing up to this aristocrat or the other, this faction or this army grouping. Yet within a few decades, this radical new religion of Christianity is going to transform the entire environment that you operate in. Politics isn’t irrelevant, but it is downstream of cultural and economic change, and here we actually have more opportunity. We need to grow up about politics – but until we can do that as a movement, we should think more about building our cultural and economic influence.

What does all this mean?

Live the cause. This shouldn’t be a hobby. This shouldn’t be something you hide from your friends and family. This shouldn’t be something you steal moments to engage in, like an affair or some kind of dark obsession. Your circumstances may force you to approach it this way, but the eventual goal is for your beliefs to sustain or even enable the kind of lifestyle we want. Until victory, or until the moment when the struggle enters a new phase, white nationalism should be an economic asset, a social asset, a spiritual asset. There are things every one of us can do from where we are right now to build our own power and the power and resources of everyone around us.

We are a tribe – a folk living under occupation in the American Empire of New York/Washington/Los Angeles. We have to build the networks that will sustain the whites who have a future. And we can do that from where we are right now.