Sheep Without a Shepherd

Sheep Without a Shepherd
Shepherds of Arcadia

A recent post elicited some black pills in the comments, so it seems like a good time to put the current state of dissident politics in perspective.

There’s a feeling in the air that the energy of 2016 has largely dissipated. Even staunch MAGApedes are wondering if they haven’t poured their faith into an empty sack. As a commenter said here the other day, there’s a growing suspicion that Trump is all talk and no action.

Trump may be all talk, but it’s remarkable that he’s still talking about his core campaign planks this far along. A standard Republican grifter would have abandoned all talk of immigration for the donor class’ agenda by now.

We find ourselves in a paradox. Everyone inside the system is too corrupt to reform it. Only an outsider can stand against the system, but he lacks the knowledge of its workings needed to achieve his goals.

In the midst of all the MAGA hype two years ago, level heads cautioned that the best Trump could do was buy us time. I was one of them, but it’s starting to look like I was wrong. It’s unlikely that we’d have seen alt-lite figures deplatformed, roaming AntiFa lynch mobs, or kids given life in prison for dumb mistakes under Jeb or even Hillary.

I’m not saying those two alternatives would have been preferable. Trump has goaded the Left into showing their hand too early. Facebook soccer moms and lifelong union Boomers are turning their backs on the Democrat party in disgust. Meanwhile, the fact that hatred of white people is the Coalition of the Fringes’ sole unifying principle is being discussed on national prime time news.

The accelerationists may have been right after all. If Trump couldn’t save the system from itself, it was unsalvageable to begin with. Right now it’s burning itself down in a frenzied attempt to take him down. A smart dissident movement would take advantage of the diversion to start gaining ground elsewhere.

As the evident lack of results has shown, we do not have a smart dissident movement–or to be more precise and more charitable to its members, we have multiple squabbling dissident movements with leaders who are by turns foolish, mercenary, and unserious.

Every major movement in history has had camp followers who rush to the front of the parade when they sense there’s profit to be had. These are largely venal misfits who, as Alex said, couldn’t make it within the establishment, so they prey on political outsiders’ need for leadership and direction.

What we’re seeing now as the enemy ups the ante and Buckley style disavowals fall on deaf ears is also entirely normal. We’ve reached the point where speaking out requires heroic virtue. The grifters are naturally being peeled off as the costs of resistance rise.

That’s a positive development. Disease co-opts and kills off compromised cells, but this triggers an immune response.

Think of this juncture as an intermediary period when the disease is advancing, and the antibodies haven’t shown up yet. Time has just about run out for the first crop of unserious leaders. You’ll know when the serious people take the field.

In the meantime, folks on the Right would do well to exercise more discernment regarding who they put their trust in. We’ve seen a whole slew of prospective leaders rise to the fore, only to stumble or lead their followers to destruction like proverbial pied pipers. The pattern is quite clear by now, so there’s no excuse not to recognize the signs of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

  1. An unknown quantity, unaccomplished in media or of middling accomplishment in an unrelated field, commits a public violation of the Narrative that goes viral.
  2. The new hotness starts making the rounds on YouTube, allegedly to discuss how he owned the libz, but in fact to promote his personal Master Theory of Everything.
  3. The rising star’s big break comes when a major media outlet calls up a bench warmer from the C team to “debate” him. The up-and-comer’s place in the firmament is secured as he effortlessly humiliates Lefty.
  4. And this is key: The newest dissident star suffers none of the depersoning, deplatforming, or demonetization that you or I would for giving the death cult a bloody lip.
  5. The new dissident darling releases a book detailing his Master Theory of Everything. It features unusual content for someone marketed to nationalist populist traditionalists, to say the least.
  6. If he doesn’t burn out, the new star lands a cushy gig at some “edgy” media startup or dissident think tank. There, he attempts to carry out Buckleyite gate keeping on the rest of the Right, which was the point all along.
TL; DR: 
  • Just because the Left attacks someone, it doesn’t mean he’s on your side. Being hysterical Commie Puritans, the Left attack their own shadows.
  • Ditto someone who triggers the libz; owns the libz. It’s not that hard.
  • Use caution when dealing with a prominent Narrative violator who hasn’t suffered the three D’s.
Finally, the Right is well-advised to stop angling for a definitive showdown with the Left on the Left’s territory. Think guerrilla, not continental, ideological warfare.

19 Comments

  1. Frank Lin

    >Think guerrilla, not continental, ideological warfare.

    I wouldn't know how to operationalize that.

    • JD Cowan

      Rhetoric, and lots of it.

      Memes, shitposting, and barbs, are the best weapons you have in this conflict. Appeal to emotion with Truth wrapped in a brass knuckle of wit.

      Your opponents will not debate or discuss with you because they believe they've already won and that you are evil and stupid. Therefore they have no counter when opposing messages are levied at them in their own form of communication. They've gotten so fat and drunk off their own hubris that they've forgotten how to counter their own methods. This is why they scramble to destroy all semblance of free speech.

      Anyone angling for a truce when the enemy has proven time and time again that they will shoot you in the back is not someone on your side. They're either out of touch boomers who allowed this to happen in the first place or they are shills. There's no in-between. Not in a post-Trump world.

    • Brian Niemeier

      There's a decentralized dissident group that just gives out instructions for printing stickers with simple messages like "It's OK to be white" and "We owe them nothing."

      Then Gen Zeds who are placing those stickers on street corners, at public parks, and in shopping carts are doing more good than guys like Richard Spencer have in the course of their entire careers.

    • JD Cowan

      And the reaction they get emboldens them further.

      See PewDiePie's recent spat with the media over endorsing E;R's channel. E;R and Pewds each gained a ton of subs while Vox is getting ratio'd in their comments. The media have absolutely clowned themselves.

  2. wreckage

    The left ground away at the West for half a century to get where they are – or longer.

    • Brian Niemeier

      Indeed. Clown World wasn't built in a day. It won't go away overnight.

    • wreckage

      And if we stay true to what we are – Christians by creed or culture, we will eventually win. The modern-post-modern-marxists are failures at family life, incoherent in social structure, and untrustworthy in trade. Which is probably why they're slowly moving towards displacement and genocide as their only real options for being rid of us.

    • Brian Niemeier

      America's elites used to attend the same churches and believe the same things as the working stiffs who made up most of the country. At the very least the ruling class paid lip service to the core tenets of American culture.

      Somewhere along the line–I think the Wilson administration is a good benchmark for when this happened–our elites abandoned mainline Protestantism for globalist Moloch and Mammon worship. They deeply resent us, and yes, they're ramping up to democide heritage Americans and persecute Christians.

      We've seen this movie before. It's not too early to ask the death cult what it wants on its tombstone.

  3. Alex

    Well, I'm the one who inspired this post, and I can't say I disagree with Brian in the least. There is a silver lining. I just don't see it coming from government, Trump or not.

    I mean, the Wall's not gonna happen, guys. We're GIVING money to Mexico.

    • Brian Niemeier

      World's Only Rational Man observed back in 2012 that there are two Americas now, and we're not putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

      2016 was the final test to see once and for all if the system could be reformed. Trump's failure proves it cannot. Sanders was the only other one who was willing to try, and suggesting he'd have done better is risible.

      As you said, the problem isn't the people in the system. It's the system.

    • Durandel

      Liberalism, all of it, is cancer

    • Brian Niemeier

      Yes, it is.

      And what comes next will be nothing like it.

    • Alex

      "And what comes next will be nothing like it."

      And thank God for that.

    • Brian Niemeier

      Amen

  4. Durandel

    Can we win with the leaderless, multiheaded hydra approach without at some point having a legitimate, genuine leader who is then martyred for the cause to trigger the Right into action?

    I really need to get back and finish all those 4th gen warfare books by Lind and Creveld.

    • Brian Niemeier

      I've had reservations about the "no leaders" approach for a while. Granted, military history is not my forte. But every social system abhors a power vacuum, and people naturally seek out leaders to guide them–see the alpha-beta dynamic. The fact that many willingly followed the Charlottesville organizers into a trap those leaders should've seen coming is just one example.

      At the same time, abuse of leadership does not militate against legitimate use. There's a difference between decentralized action and a leaderless movement. What's brewing on the horizon is more likely to herald the arrival of the Man.

    • wreckage

      We need to compartmentalize and do both. For example, Antifa having a conscious cell-structure does not preclude the Democrat party or Bernie Fanboi-ism from existing. The Right is just starting to get its teeth into the complex approach, I have high hopes that we will, over time, perfect it.

    • Durandel

      That’s my take as well. Leaderless stage, followed by the rise and fall of pretenders, and then, hopefully, a true leader(s) shows up. Because the one failure of a hydra is that eventually you need conviction and a focused vision, and that’s difficult to maintain for a leaderless movement.

    • Brian Niemeier

      We've seen that cycle play out elsewhere already. Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Brazil, to name a few, have their true populist nationalist leaders. Most of those countries faced crises far more severe than anything the US has yet experienced. It seems like rebirth may not be possible without going through the fire.

      Contrast Trump with figures like Orban, Salvini, and even Bolsonaro. Trump is not the Man. He is more of a Tar-Palantir figure who makes a last doomed effort at reform while the rest of the elite tragically refuse to repent.

      We may have to go through whatever waits in the post-Trump era and come out the other side before we get serious leaders. Despite all the troubles, most Americans are too fat and complacent to risk losing it all by challenging the powers that be.

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