One critique that more normie-centered Dissident Right groups, like Identity Dixie and others, receive from the more extreme elements is that our embrace of optics, imagery and strategies that will be palatable to the average person and strongly disavowing violence, amounts to, in their language, “optics cucking.” Now, optics cucking, per the critics, can be boiled down as, “you’re only putting on a normie face because you’re too scared to openly embrace fascist imagery or praise violence.”
There is a strong level of cynicism and bad faith here, one that borders on moral relativism, so let me say this – optics or not, I find that murder and those that praise the actions of madmen certainly deplorable. And, engaging in this kind of rhetoric will only serve to marginalize the Right. It may very well cause significant employment and even legal problems for those who engage in it.
But, even beyond that, calling someone using basic native intelligence “optics cucking” ignores one basic rule of politics – optics matter. Just as clothes make the man, optics makes the movement. It is how a movement presents itself to those outside the movement and will determine what those people think about it. And, as much as certain elements of the Right, not to mention Tumblr feminists, don’t like it, humans are visual creatures. Visuals are extremely important in creating first impressions and first impressions not only matter, they matter a great deal.
I do think a lot of important lessons about political optics can be gained from looking at clothing. How well you dress will determine how seriously (or not seriously) others take you. So, if you show up in a mustard stained Pinochet t-shirt, or even worse a cheap looking SS uniform, those around you will make the necessary assumptions. I am reminded of a speech class I took. The professor noted that he had a bright student give a speech on the healthcare industry. However, the student was wearing tattered jeans and a Guns N’ Roses t-shirt. “It was a good speech” he recalled, “too bad no one took him seriously.”
It is a lesson I have taken with me to this day. And no, complaining about how unfair that is will not change it. This is even more of the case when you dress (or try to dress) like a brownshirt or wear a shirt with a swastika on it. At best, people will think you’re a wannabe Sid Vicious (or worse, Varg Vikernes) out to shock. At worse, you’re celebrating something their fathers and grandfathers fought. They may have never known their father or grandfather because he was killed in WWII. Either way, they won’t be joining you anytime soon and your movement will remain forever marginalized. Optics matter and ironically the Nazis themselves understood this and this includes the Nazis in the United States. This is why the German American Bund, a Nazi organization made up of German immigrants, used iconography of George Washington during their rallies- they wanted to appeal to the masses and in the United States of the 1930s, there was no better way to do that than George Washington.
Look, I’m not claiming that we need to dress to the nines to go out and buy milk- we shouldn’t want to be Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) from Pulp Fiction, who comes decked out in full evening dress to clean up a crime scene. But, taking some pride in your appearance goes a long way. Go look at pictures from an American college classroom in the 1950s and look at one today. Which group of students look like they take their education seriously and which group looks like they want to party for four (or more) years? This same principle works in politics as well, most people are far more likely to listen to someone in a suit or sportscoat, than someone in a skull mask and Fred Perry polo.
It is also worth pointing out that bad optics can more easily corrupt good optics, than good optics can sanctify bad optics. A really good way to look at this can be seen in the public perception of the fedora. Not all that long ago the fedora was the epitome of class and a well-dressed man. It was the hat of the 1930s and 1940s and along with the trench coat, one of the biggest clothing hallmarks of film noir. Today though, all that is over. Almost overnight, the fedora went from being a staple of a well-dressed gentleman’s wardrobe to a meme of an obnoxious and overweight, video-game obsessed male. Ask people on the street about the fedora today and they will no longer visualize Humphry Bogart, but rather a NEET wearing a grimy Cheeto stained, internet meme t-shirt, naturally two sizes too small, and cargo shorts that smell of bad energy drinks (maybe even Mountain Dew Code Red). The old adage of “one bad apple spoils the bunch” works quite well here. All the class and elegance the fedora used to evoke are gone thanks to bad optics. I think it will take years to recover, if not decades. It may never recover. Keep that in mind the next time someone claims optics don’t matter.
Successful political movements, even radical ones, understand the importance of good optics. And, during times of great turmoil, when radical movements tend to gain popularity, a promise of a “return to normalcy” goes a long way in drawing in more people. A promise of a “return to normalcy” works especially well with Dixians- that is a time when our heroes were honored and our flag was flown. When we were unashamed to show our pride. When our neighborhoods were safe. When Christian morality was placed at the head of the table. For millions of everyday Dixians, that is what they want, the world of their childhoods, of maybe their fathers. By focusing on those optics, by promising that, we can win.
-Harmonica
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
I have a good friend named Tom. He’s a great guy; one of the “straightest shooters” (as in honest to a fault; brutally so at times) you’d ever have the honor and pleasure of meeting. Tom is also what I’d describe as “wirey.” It’s just the way he’s turned. I wish I’d known him as a younger man when he was really full of fire in the belly.
I first met Tom about twenty years ago, and we immediately hit it off. In some ways Tom has been something like a father figure to me since he is only a couple years younger than my dad. But he’s mostly a good and loyal friend; one of the few I know without question I could count on in a bind.
Tom of course hated Barack Obama with a passion. During the entire course of the Obama presidency Tom would get highly irritated by virtually every word that came out of Obama’s mouth. He was always saying to me at the time, “that son of a bitch is destroying the country,” and that sort of thing. I would just take it all in stride since I had already figured out by that point that Obama et al are just symptoms of a much greater disease.
In any case, somewhere along the way Tom’s rhetoric about Mr. Obama started to become more intense; he continued to assert Obama was (single handedly to Tom’s mind, apparently) “destroying the country,” but then he would add, “I don’t know why someone doesn’t shoot that son of a bitch!” If I heard that phrase or its equivalent once from Tom’s lips, I heard it at least several hundred times before I finally got my own belly full and retorted, “why don’t you shoot him, Tom?!” His answer amounted to “uh, uh, well, uh, well,… uh.” I simply said to Tom at that point, “yeah, that’s what I thought, Tom,” and left it at that. My point was made, and Tom understood it; my purpose in making the point was also met since I never heard ol’ Tom utter those words again. He at least didn’t utter them again in my presence, and that was all I was after in any case.
Now, is my friend Tom a coward because the extremer form of his rhetoric doesn’t match his will to commit the act? Not hardly. I can guarantee anyone who should make the mistake of believing that about Tom based on that faulty reasoning that he would come to regret it put to the test. Ol’ Tom possesses plenty of bravery, and plenty of will to match it come crunch time. But he isn’t stupid or especially self-destructive, by the same token. Tom also has a lot of common sense and common moral decency, even though his passion sometimes gets the best of him and he says things like the above. When he says things like that he’s really just letting off steam. I always understood that about Tom, but even I can only take so much even so.
For those guys that make the argument that a vanilla salt of the earth Nationalist site like ID are engaging in optics cuckery, I have two responses.
1) Assuming they are in fact “optics cucking”, do you or do you not hold the 14 words to be a benchmark by which tactics and ideology are measured? If so, what is the problem? Has Andrew Anglin or the Bowl Gang made a breakthrough in the cause of bettering the lives of white people that I was unaware of? They are the pinnacle of autism when it comes to purity spiraling.
If not, you aren’t on our side, so gtfo.
2) It is one thing to optics cuck, it is another entirely to realize that you must pick your battles, and to do this effectively requires some compromise (this is called balance in martial arts) so as to be able to give ground or advance as outside circumstances and your enemies attempt to effect your standing.
Optics cuckery isnt whats happening here. Its a reaction to (maybe an overreaction to) an ever shifting set of circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Accusations of cuckery are divisive. We know that by now. So is posting pictures of our guys faces and mocking them as FatSocs or using their tattoos as a basis for a character assassination like was done in a recent article here.
None of that helps. None of it furthers a real effort for the 14 words. It shouldn’t be something we spend time on.
Very well said. ID has been doing precisely the same thing for the past couple of weeks as is being done to them, just from the other direction. Ever more infighting, same as for the past 40 years. Very sad.