PSA: Let’s Kill the Drama and Work Together to Forge a Path Forward

Andrew Anglin
Daily Stormer
November 3, 2017

In the wake of of the Nationalist Front Shelbyville march, I and many others criticized the look of the march, in particular the military-like 1980s-style costumes.

Given the timing of the event, and the presentation of “this is the Alt-Right from the internet come to the real world,” and most importantly, the potential that more such costumed marches will take place, I didn’t feel as though I had a choice other that to say, “no, this is not the same movement that I helped build on the internet, and it is not something that I endorse or personally want to be a part of.”

I said that because I would not presume to tell others what costumes they can or cannot dress up in, we should go our separate ways. The reason I said this was so that people can understand that I am not going to give support to this type of costumed action.

That is the long and short of what I felt I needed to say. I have said this, a lot, to people privately, and I have said it publicly – it is important that we take the aesthetics and tone of our internet movement, which has been so overwhelmingly popular with the young, and create a real-world analog that jives with it. Despite that, those guys went ahead and did a costumed march, so I was put in the position where I felt I needed to say something.

I hated having to do that. There is nothing that I gain from that. I prefer, very much, to get along with everyone and simply ignore people that I don’t agree with.

Assuming that this group wants to push forward with costumed marches, I said “we should differentiate between that and what has come to be called the ‘Alt-Right’ on the internet.”

These costumed groups were around for a long time before the Alt-Right, and I have never had any reason to believe they would stop existing. However, I must admit that I never thought that they would converge and overlap. I never thought I would see one of the most prominent figures in the Alt-Right headlining a costumed march.

I fully understand the influence I have as the publisher of such an influential website, and I never want to take that for granted, and I certainly never want to use that influence to cause drama or infighting in the pro-white scene. People can accuse me of that, but then you would have to ask what I have to gain from that, why I would say anything unless I felt it was absolutely necessary.

My only other options in this situation were to either endorse the event or simply say nothing. I would have done the latter, as I have repeatedly, if the event had not been tied directly to the Alt-Right.

I feel very strongly that I gave the people I was criticizing two “outs,” while also making clear what I thought needed to be made clear. They could either say, “you know, you’re right, this doesn’t look great, we should reconsider embracing the image of 1980s costumed marches, in the future we’re going to wear normal clothing” or, “yes, we are doing different things and we should go separate ways.”

By claiming that I shouldn’t have said anything, or claiming that what I said was a malicious “attack” of some kind for nefarious reasons, what is being implied is that I am obligated to endorse costumed marches as the real world manifestation of the Alt-Right.

Once again: I was in a very awkward position. I feel that I responded in a mature and appropriate way.

Let’s Just Leave It There

If people involved in the costume marches want to offer defenses as to how dressing-up in costumes will lead to a stronger, more powerful popular movement, I think that is fine.

However, some of the responses so far have not been that. Some have been instead hostile, unrelated to costumes, framing what I said as an attack and saying “we’re going to attack you back because you attacked us.”

I am able to understand that people feel slighted. And that is fine. People put work into that march, and I’m certain that it didn’t feel good to get such a negative response to it.

I genuinely had no intention to slight anyone, but I can see how someone would feel that way.

However, I do not feel that there is anything to be gained from escalating this into some kind of massive argument about personalities or ideologies.

I can say with 100% honesty that if the Shelbyville marchers had simply worn regular clothing, I would not have felt the need to say anything. It was not about personalities or ideologies, it was explicitly about costumes. Technically, it was also about bringing weapons to the march, as that had been the plan beforehand. However, local authorities (thankfully) banned all weapons.

Obviously, I can’t stop people from turning this into a massive shit-flinging contest anymore than I can stop people from dressing up in costumes. But I want to say that I’m against it. And the best I can do here is refuse to participate in it.

Nothing can be gained from large public arguments.

I genuinely wish everyone the best, and if I turn out to be wrong, and costumed marches turn out to be a successful way to get millions of people behind the pro-white cause, then I will certainly embrace that. I will put on the costume and apologize to all of the costumed marchers that have felt slighted by my disagreement with their methods.

However, based on the datasets I am looking at, I think that it is very unlikely right now that costumes are going to lead to a movement involving millions of people.

And we do have the ability to form such a movement. Our ideas are currently much more popular than our movement is. What we need to do, in my view, is work to bridge the gap between the 55% of white Americans who feel they are being discriminated against and our current revolutionary political movement.

A Clear Agenda

We are not playing a game here. We can’t do things because they feel good or because they seem like maybe they’re a good idea. We can’t do things because “someone just has to do something.” We need to be calculated in our actions.

Some of these public debates are going to be necessary, because no one has ever done what we’re doing right now before (yes, there are historical parallels, but if they applied 100%, no one would have any disagreements about anything). Hopefully, we can keep these as civil and as peaceful as is humanly possible. Everyone should be able to agree to that. And we should be able to tell each other when we are losing the plot, and making things about egos rather than the agenda.

Criticism is fine. It is difficult to receive, I know, but it is necessary.

We should be able to make the case for what we are doing in a complete, logical and coherent manner. And we should feel obligated to make the case for what we are doing. Claiming that some behavior is above criticism, or claiming “at least it’s something,” are not valid explanations of actions.

Memes and Real Life

The meme war was something that we were able to win.

The Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a British think-tank founded by a prominent Jewish British MP, the late George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld, recently published a paper entitled “The Fringe Insurgency,” which claimed that our memes – they specifically mentioned /pol/ and The Daily Stormer – were so effective that we must have employed leaked NATO psy-op techniques. Though I cannot speak for /pol/, I can tell you for a fact that I did not employ leaked NATO documents in my meme warfare. I simply figured out what worked best through an understanding of human psychology, an understanding of internet culture, and trial and error.

This resulted in The Daily Stormer becoming the first legal website to be kicked off the internet, and a new set of extreme rules to shut down memeing on social media. The authors of the think tank compare us to ISIS, and call for a global campaign to shut us down.

If we are going to do a real life movement, that same principle of absolute efficiency needs to be applied.

Regrettably, there is much less room for trial and error, and much more energy goes into trials.

That said, there have been plenty of trials so far this year:

• Charlottesville: Police refused to honor our permit, attacked us, forced us into a street-war type situation. A guy crashed a Dodge. Multiple of our guys are in jail as a result of this debacle. The world saw a street-fighting scene which they did not find to be tasteful.
• Gainsville: A weapon was discharged in a dispute with antifa, resulting in attempted murder charges for three guys.
• Shelbyville: The movement generally disliked the costumes and being outnumbered and shouted down by counter-protesters was interpreted by some as looking bad.

I think at this point, we should have learned quite a bit.

The biggest and most important lesson is that large rallies on public property, where we know there is going to be confrontation with antifa, are not a good idea. Fighting antifa could be a good look, but only when we are defending something from them. When we plan an event and they show up to attack us, in the mind of the public, it looks like we’re just showing up to fight one another, and people hate that.

As far as the claim that “we have to occupy public space” like in Mein Kampf – the people saying this do not understand that we are currently in a different context. At that time, the DAP was an established political party seeking electoral victories. When the real intense street battles were going on it was the late twenties and early thirties and Hitler was running for President. So they were out in the street saying, “here we are, vote for us.” What are American rally-holders saying, other than “here we are”? Furthermore, all of the early rallies were held on private property – the beerhalls. Then consider the fact that we do not have anywhere near the number of people to actually occupy and hold space. The SA had 400,000 members by 1931.

Attempts to claim the public square right now are premature in terms of the political situation and premature in terms of numbers.

The amount of media attention surrounding Charlottesville could be seen as ultimately being positive. But overall, the goal of the public rallies is unclear, and it is also not clear that they are accomplishing anything.

So I would like for the assumption that any and all rallies are good to be dismissed.

The counter here from rally-supporters is that I am “discouraging activism.” For that to be the case, one would have to accept that large rallies are universally good, and that they are worth the massive amount of risk that goes along with them. Again: I do not accept that as a universal and absolute truth.

The Purpose of Real Life Events

Public Property Rallies

We have to understand what the purpose of these events is. Because of how serious this all is, I think that “to draw attention to X” is not a significant explanation. Because a rally is a big deal, it should be thought through as if it were a big deal, and there are so many negatives that to simply hope that the message you are trying to present slips through the cracks of the media into the consciousness of normal people is just not enough.

There are three purposes that public street rallies could serve:

1. Gaining media attention and/or letting society know that you exist
2. Disrupting society in order to force change
3. Presenting yourself as a solution to a problem that is generally acknowledged to exist

Apparently, the recent rallies are intended to be a little bit of all of these things.

With media attention, we need to figure out exactly what we are trying to accomplish. We need to take into consideration how the media works, and control for that as best we can. That is to say, we must be able to understand that the media lies and distorts and then decide that the overall coverage will work in our favor, despite that, or we are doing more harm than good.

Gaining media attention is fine. But that can be done with much smaller events, which involve virtually no risk and cost nothing. Flashmobs do not result in arrests, they do not result in street fights. They do result in the same amount of media attention, generally. Orders of magnitude more per-manhour more media attention.

HAPPENING NOW: @RichardBSpencer & white nationalist supporters are back with their torches in front of Lee statue in #Charlottesville. pic.twitter.com/CwVhxpN7r8

— Matt Talhelm (@MattTalhelm) October 7, 2017

The Black Lives Matter “racial grievance march” model is probably not best suited for our movement. We have on several occasions now managed to create a large disruption, mostly by using the energy of our enemies, but everyone hates people who purposefully disrupt society. Furthermore, we do not have the numbers to significantly disrupt anything on an ongoing basis, so all we are getting is the hate without any chance of forcing change. This is, of course, open for discussion, and I invite those promoting this type of activism to explain what the purpose of it is.

Presenting ourselves as a solution to a problem makes sense, but only in combination with electoral politics. Otherwise, what is being communicated? “We will solve [x] if you [x]” – what is the second x in that sentence?

We also need to be realistic. Through the internet, we have convinced millions of people to take our side on these issues. I don’t think that is going to happen by marching through the streets, even with perfect optics.

Private Property Rallies

There is another way.

Rallies held on private property avoid disrupting society, and serve the purpose of creating an environment where people can actually hear what you are trying to communicate to them. You can also normalize the existence of a far right movement by maintaining visibility and progressively increasing profile.

In my opinion, rather than public rallies, energy for real life activism should be put into creating environments where normal people feel comfortable coming out and seeing what is going on, as they did with the Trump rallies.

The Trump rallies were all done where the people in charge were able to control who came in.

If we hold events on private property, we can decide who goes in, we can avoid the street-fighting, we can figure out what flags we want flown and so on. After a few of them are held successfully, more people will feel comfortable going to them (assuming there is no violence and we are not presenting ourselves in a way that turns people off).

In this way, we can build a grassroots movement that normal people feel comfortable embracing. They can come and see what we’re doing, hear what we have to say, and grow to support what we’re doing.

As such, I feel extremely strongly that private property rallies are the way forward. Renting space is cheap and easy, and the risk evaporates.

We can invite the media. We can allow people who disagree with us to attend. If they create a spectacle and try to disrupt, security can remove them. But, inviting everyone to come and hear what we say gives plausible deniability to everyone who attends, so people worry less being doxed. We can also have interesting Q&A sessions.

We could slowly build up momentum this way, holding events in different cities on a regular basis with regular speakers. It can easily be marketed to young people as “just come and hear what we have to say, what do you have to lose?” It can work in concert with an internet marketing campaign.

Obviously, this is not going to be easy. Figuring out the details of something like this is a lot harder than showing up and marching through the streets.

And before someone says “well, are you going to do it Anglin????”

No. I’m not going to organize any rallies. I work full time doing what I’m doing right now, and I’m very successful at what I do. I am publicly putting out suggestions for what I believe is a very clear way forward for our movement, because I have the ability to put out these suggestions in a place where people will read them. People can follow this advice or not, but it is now out there, and I think people are going to think about this advice the next time people do a racial grievance march that creates chaos in the center of a town.

The good news is, it’s November, and we have a while to figure this all out. And we must figure it out using the information we have, logic and reason, instead of ego and pride.

Finally

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the above mentioned think-tank study on our movement explicitly recommends using disruption along lines of division to break up the Alt-Right.

It reads:

Researchers and practitioners should increase their awareness of the points of ideological convergence and divergence between these groups and leverage them to move effectively disrupt their efforts.

What that means is that they are going to send in shills to stir-up disputes between persons active in the Alt-Right in order to “effectively disrupt” our efforts. And they are already doing that. Not all of these anonymous comments you see purposefully sowing discord are shills, some of them are just people with personal problems, but many of them are shills, and when you give in to ego and engage in these pointless conflicts, you are giving them exactly what they want.

So let’s get along as best as we are able and figure out the best way forward for the movement.

We only get one shot at this. And if we fail, that’s it.

No extra lives, no continues, game over.

If you’re not interested in winning, then bow out, go do something else.

I want to win.

Total victory.