Square Pegs in Round Holes

Expired advice for Spencer; advice for Der Movement.

What the low-life Zman claims he would have advised Spencer back in 2016:

1) Make other people come to you. In the case of the media, make them abide by your terms. The alleged point of the alt-right was as a revolt against the orthodoxy. It should appear to exist entirely outside of the mass media.

Better yet, ignore the mainstream media completely.  Create your own.

2) Use scarcity to create mystery. Being too available makes a person uninteresting and easy to categorize. When the leader of something speaks, it needs to command attention. If you’re out all the time talking to the troops, you’re just another guy.

Fair enough.

3) Concentrate on building up what it means to be alt-right. A catchy label is easily corrupted/hijacked when it is not backed by a filled out definition. “This is who we are, this is what defines us and this is what we want.” That way, grifters can’t create their version of your brand.

The problem here is that the core Alt Right were/are grifters themselves.  There was never any ideology there, and you can’t “build up” what’s not there in the first place – you need a foundation before any “building up.”  The Alt Right started out as “everyone to the right of the Neocon GOP” – including the Paleocons, the Alt Lite, the Alt Wrong, and various factions of Der Movement.  Later, it became more of a jackass Millennial “youth culture” version of fossilized “movement” dogma – there’s no ideology when all you are is Beavis-and-Butthead sniggering in drunken podcasts and simply parroting imbecilic “movement” talking points.

All that said, successful mass movement always outgrow their first leaders. The reason is, the first guys need to be more brave than smart. Once they have some success, the movement needs leaders who are more smart than brave.

You are not going to get any “smart” leaders until you ditch the affirmative action program, and don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.  And don’t mistake foolhardy with “brave.”

My advice to Spencer would have been much simpler, and more in accord with what Regnery likely had in mind: electoral politics.  Spencer had the background, connections, education, physical appearance, and personality for electoral politics, either as a Trump era right-wing populist candidate himself, pushing in the explicitly pro-White direction, or at least as a spokesman for such candidates.  He’s just not cut out for “movement” leadership, nor is he a deep thinker or ideologue. That’s not an insult; everyone has strengths and weaknesses.  He could have been a player in an electoral campaign in bringing the racialist Far Right together with Trumpian populism. And, yes, there could have been sufficient support – from a White electorate ready for more “red meat” racial politics after 2016, from Regnery, and from all the money currently being wasted on the Happy Penguins of VDARE.

A basic problem in Der Movement, and I’ve written about this before, is that people take on positions and responsibilities for which they are ill-suited, and thus fail.  One reason they do this is because there isn’t a critical mass of qualified people to fill the required roles (and Der Movement is in large part responsible for that paucity, since they drive away such people), because “activists” are not objective enough about their own strengths and weaknesses and let ambition and ego blind them to reality, because they want tin cup donations, and because everyone wants to be a leader – all Chiefs, no Indians.

For example, Jared Taylor is another who would have been perfect for electoral politics.  Greg Johnson (but not other Counter Currents writers - who are currently a sorry lot) produces reasonably good intellectual and metapolitical content – and I say that as someone who vehemently disagrees with almost all of that content, but I acknowledge its quality (likewise, one can acknowledge Lincoln and Stalin as men of ability without agreeing with their actions) – but he’s not cut out to be a leader, an organizer, or a public persona. Strom at least understands that he’s not leadership material (even apart from his previous legal troubles) and has let Will Williams ostensibly lead the National Alliance (or whatever is left of it).  Of course, Strom seemingly doesn’t realize that the NA died with Pierce and that he’s currently affiliated with a zombie organization, but at least he doesn’t harbor delusions about his own role – which is one of being a propagandist, for which he is well suited (although I also disagree with much of what he produces, similar to the Johnson case). Brimelow's strength is as an author - Alien Nation was a useful contribution - and he should be supporting his family through writing books, not editing a blog (that many do for free).  Or, he could set up a civic nationalist immigration restriction lobbying group, and attempt to get something done.  What he's doing now is worse than a waste.

The same may apply to me, maybe I don’t know where I’m best suited; the difference is that guys like me are not ethnically suited for any significant role in Der Movement as it currently exists with its dogma.  So, in my case, the question is almost irrelevant.  In these other cases, it is not.

And, Zman?  Best suited to cleaning toilets in the Fuhrerbunker, or rinsing out "movement" tin cups (functionally the same thing).