A Strategy for Dissidents

The following passage is an excerpt from the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story.


In 2017, “antifa” was not a well-known term. By 2020, it was a household name. The decision of the Department of Justice to allow the antifa to violently assail ideological opponents, destroy businesses, damage private businesses, and as Andy Ngo has reported, even kill people, began to peel layers off the onion. “Normies” (individuals generally unassociated with any Far-Left or Right ideological spectrum) began to curse antifa. The year 2020 was great for us.

The more normie Americans saw the extreme violence perpetrated by the Left in the name of “racial justice,” the more they began to awaken. For many with civic nationalist, non-racialist views, their unfortunate trust in Donald Trump and the Constitution led them to act. In essence, 2017 was the beginning of an internal color revolution that was allowed to proceed for three years unabated. Once the American regime rid themselves of Trump and his most ardent supporters, they closed the lid. Antifa was clearly an extension of the U.S. government and the American people saw it.

Today, thanks to the excesses of censorship, the suppression of dissent, the violence of 2020, the total collapse of trust in the mainstream media, Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the overreaction to January 6th, the participants of UTR are no longer universally viewed as the bad guys they were in 2017. To be sure, there are still terrified normies who would never openly admit that they sympathize with the beliefs of the participants. However, there is a reason that Gab makes its donation numbers month after month, and continues to grow, despite no presence on an app store.

Our beliefs are more popular than ever before. That is especially true of those who support the balkanization of the United States. Secession is statistically supported by more than 60% of Republicans in the South based on the most recent polling. There is no federal political solution to the leftist trajectory and collapse of the United States. So, what is next? Recognizing and operating within a new strategic paradigm, using different tactics to achieve tangible results.

UTR taught us that the Dissident Right cannot openly protest and assume the government – whether it is local or federal – will allow such a protest. The government does not need to overtly suppress dissidents. They can simply send the antifa to do its dirty work. Much like censorship, the government has learned that it can outsource its suppression by means of non-governmental actors. When the government wants to silence dissent – such as questioning the origins of Covid – it engages smartphone platform companies (Apple and Google) to compel social media companies to censor or ban dissenting thought. This was always suspected, but it was recently confirmed by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk.

Cumulatively, it is apparent that the United States is no longer a free country. The government can suppress thought at will. Those who do not agree with the government’s approved mantra can be silenced, violently assaulted, deplatformed, lose their employment, and even arrested. Dissidents need to accept this reality and operate within this new framework.

It is not enough, however, to complain. Action is needed. That requires work.

To begin, committed dissidents need to produce thought provoking content that avoids government censorship. Working within the barriers of language constraints and exploiting free speech platforms like Gab to maximum effect are critical to the success of the movement. The needle is moving in our ideological favor. It is time to double down in ways that amplify our messaging without spooking the uninitiated. As the official government narratives collapse, it is important to replace those narratives with emotional and logical arguments that fill the void.

Second, belonging to organizations is important, but action needs to be disaggregated and seemingly organic. The U.S. government can target groups more easily than it can target that which appears to be a multitude of activated individuals. We saw this with the school curriculum protests. Angry parents directly attacked and changed school boards throughout the country over educational content they found objectionable. Consider the following lessons from that experience and how they can be applied to a revitalized Dissident Right or secession advocates.

When the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked the Biden Administration to treat concerned parents as terrorists, it is important to remember how the government reacted. Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed with them and began to work toward the suppression of those parents. That did not end due to any reconsideration on the part of the Department of Justice. Rather, public outcry was inspired by the use of Gab and Telegram to share information with elected opposition officials (Republicans), who shared the memos with Fox News, especially Tucker Carlson. This forced the DOJ to step back, but they did not necessarily stop. The government simply changed the mechanism of suppression.

Shortly after the NSBA fiasco, the Department of Homeland Security created the Disinformation Governance Board. Recognizing that the democratization of information leads to unacceptable outcomes, the Biden Administration attempted to use the DHS to suppress speech. The attempt was immediately weaponized by the opposition party to harm the incumbent. What happened?

There is very little true opposition within Washington, D.C. The Republican and Democrat parties are interchangeable on nearly every policy level, with minor differences related to “how” not “what” to achieve. One thing that divides the two parties, however, is a personal desire for power. California Congressman, Kevin McCarthy, wants to be the Speaker of the House. California Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, wants to be the Speaker of the House (although, no longer). The parties and individuals who elevate them are rewarded with power. With power comes money and influence. They are driven by self-serving needs.

When those self-serving individuals saw a seemingly organic movement of parents protesting against educational programs with which they disagreed, those self-serving individuals worked to ensure they were protected. It harmed their opponents. Politics is literally a “Law of the Jungle” operating environment, whereby power and self-interest rules. None of them actually care about the parents or the cause. They care about themselves. The parents became a useful weapon.

Note, very few politicians actually addressed the issues those parents found objectionable. With the exception of a handful of outspoken U.S. representatives and only one governor, Ron DeSantis, Critical Race Theory – as an example – was not addressed. But the self-serving actors protected the parents from being considered designated terrorists and ensured communication lines remained open. The Dissident Right needs to learn from this example.

Our views are becoming more acceptable. No one at the top of power will ever openly accept or admit racialist views, per se. They will not question the Holocaust. They are highly unlikely to embrace secession. They can, however, be made to assist our goals at a more easily digestible level, which is important. They can be made to protect Confederate monuments, defend free speech, address issues related to illegal immigration, and/or defend white people from systemic racism, if they feel that those who seek these outcomes are normal citizens that are simply fed up. In other words, exploit their self-serving impulses at the micro-level (school boards, town councils, etc.) to achieve minor but important gains.

Make it feel organic. Make it look organic. Organize without association. Press for simple, achievable goals that accumulate into bigger, dissident victories.

The Dissident Right no longer believes in any political outcomes. I agree with their outlook as it pertains to the federal government, but I disagree with abandoning political solutions entirely. The Dissident Right, more than any other philosophical movement, should understand human nature. Democratic-Republics are driven by the exploitation of human nature. The Left is excellent at exploiting human nature. They intuitively understand how to label a given position and make it seemingly acceptable or unacceptable to take that position, such that the consequences of taking a countervailing position becomes a threat to the elected officials continued power. Let me provide some examples.

The Dissident Right is highly impatient. There are good reasons for this impatience. First, it is a relatively young movement. Although some of us are older, most of those joining the ranks are young people who are tired of being abused for the “crimes” of being white, Christian, and heterosexual. They are justifiably angry. Every day they are fed a steady stream of anti-white and anti-Christian hatred. Academics and media personalities can literally call for the execution of the white race with impunity. This feeds our movement. These young adherents want to do what all young men have wanted to do since the dawn of time when they feel attacked: they want to fight back. As older dissidents, it is our obligation to use that to our advantage, but also manage it.

There is a reason that commanding officers within the military are older. Their experiences and maturity make better decisions. Young soldiers are hungry to kill the enemy on the field of battle. But such an impulse often leads to death. Thus, seasoned commanders enforce discipline within the ranks and guide their soldiers to make better tactical moves for the purpose of attaining strategic goals. As they grow in their maturity and reasoning, sharing those strategic goals becomes important.

Unite the Right was, in so many ways, the young Dissident Right – going half-cocked across the field of battle, unaware that the rules changed. UTR was not wrong; how we executed UTR was. The Dissident Right ran into preset machine gun nests in the form of an organized and sanctioned leftist resistance. It was the Right’s Battle of the Frontiers – a short-term loss. There is no reason to repeat that which we learned cannot work. We can win the long-term war. It is time to do so in a smarter way.  Pick up your mantle and make it happen.


From the book, A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story, by Padraig Martin. You can purchase a copy of the whole book in Hardcover, Paperback, and/or Kindle Format at https://a.co/d/7SF5WnD

5 comments

  1. We need to form a Southern Nationalist Party, and have it become active like the Texas Nationalist Movement is. The Texas Nationalist Movement itself, needs to start running candidates for state office. It’s well past time for them to do so.
    We need to get control of our Southern State governments. Our Southern governors need to work together for Dixie, the way that the sixteen Northern
    State governors work together, for the North. Which they’ve done for nearly two hundred years.
    The only way to survive the collapse of the federal government, is by keeping our states and state governments intact.
    For the Yankees, the collapse of the federal government will precipitate an identity crisis among them. The North will cease to exist as an organised civilisation. They’ll all be busy fighting each other over which ones are the rightful rulers of “America®,” and which ones are the “real and true, patriotic “Americans®.” This will allow us to walk away from them and pursuit our own path and destiny. But we haf to have the political machinery in place, in order to take advantage of it.

    Side note;
    America was essentially destroyed by the Puritans and Quakers. Sixteen Northern States, led by Massachusetts and New York, are solely responsible for the destruction and downfall of a whole continent spanning nation. Sixteen out of fifty states. None of which, individually, is as powerful as Texas, or some of the other Southern and Western States.
    The North is a rotting corpse that we’re bound to, with rusty chains. We don’t haf to beat them on the battlefield, this time. We’ll beat them on the floors of the legislatures, and in the political arena.

    End Reconstruction. End the War.

    1. Well said, Mr. Owen. I agree. I also understand the sense of urgency some feel for saving ourselves from the sinking Titanic before it takes us down with it or in its undertow. But we have to be smart and methodical about it too. There aren’t enough lifeboats for the lot of us, so the “Yankee Nation” will have to go down with the “unsinkable ship” of its own design and making. Strengthen our States and State governments for sure. That’s a good and sensible first step.

      1. The Union was originally set up to allow the states to continue on, without a general government, if and when it became necessary.

        The Yankees, however, slowly dismantled that arrangement, from 1860, onward to today. They essentially made the sovereign states into subordinate subjects and dependencies of the federal government, which the Northern People all but totally control.

        The Southern People are going to haf to reacquire the Jeffersonian republican mentality again. And to disabuse themselves of the corruption of the New England Moral-Political Paradigm. Which itself cannot understand or accept any political ideal but that of the dictatorship of the elect. Nor can it understand or accept the republican form of government. Which it has fought mightily against, since ten minutes after the ink dried on the Constitution.

    2. There is not much point organizing a Southern Nationalist party, or anything else Southern Nationalist, until there is an agreed upon definition of what is and is not a Southerner and some pretty near agreement on where to draw the line. Until that is done, all Southern Nationalist organizations will soon begin to lean like the tower of Pisa.

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