Movement Maxing

I have become a skilled practitioner of one of the most dismal of the Dismal Sciences (yes, even more dismal than Economics). Without hyperbole, the only thing keeping my conscience mostly clean and my soul battered but I hope mostly intact, is that I try to serve good and not evil and practice this foul magic to help only those who are also trying to do good, at the very least, trying to be honest.  

I won’t mince words: We need others on our side to learn this Dark Art as soon as possible. 

The best way to describe what I’m talking about is to call it Strategic Marketing. 

But, this immensely bland label reveals as little about the true nature of the work as would an assassin’s calling card reflect what he did if he described his profession as Problem Solver. 

Strategic marketing is about gaining a deep understanding of why specific humans of interest make decisions. It identifies their triggers and how to isolate an intended target audience and persuade them to do what you want by appealing to their base and often hidden impulses by whispering in their ear, like Worm Tongue, how they can have their secret desires fulfilled. Especially powerful is when you know how to leverage people’s fears (they will avoid pain and threat of loss with far greater urgency than they will act to gain an advantage or something positive). 

In spite of all the sanitized and boring MBA-speak explaining the reality of what is necessary for high level strategic marketing to be effective, the plain truth is that it requires intrusive profiling with the deliberate intent on manipulation. Big Business spends billions of dollars to learn what makes a target market tick down to the colors and songs they are most enjoying in a particular quarter.  

Altogether, it is gross. But these are the rules for competing and make no mistake, this is relevant to our cause because we are not just competing for market share, but for our very existence as Southerners and frankly, as a race.

Mid-tier Leftist front organizations employ often sophisticated strategic marketing with insight and intel funded by the Usual Suspects to get their people to passionately act in big coordinated efforts. Our side does not. 

Propaganda By Any Other Name

Propaganda:

1. The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person;
2. Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause

High level strategic marketing is effectively the same thing as propaganda in terms of its intent and in practice. I know there are some that might be wincing at all this, but propaganda is not a dirty idea any more than strategic marketing is. We have a negative association with both primarily because we are almost always on the receiving end of exploitative and evil instances of them.  

Effective propaganda (like strategic marketing) sees the very biggest of pictures and creates messaging and assets carefully designed to reach particular smaller segments of the larger population and advance them all along intentional paths that may or may not even converge. 

It not only understands what the best emotional triggers and messaging needs to be to attract each segment, but crucially, what the next step each needs to take. Then, once in the fold, it has a plan on how to keep followers loyal by not just continually reinforcing the “program” but by giving them things to do so they feel part of something bigger and meaningful.

This process is similar to courtship. Great propaganda (like marketing and dating) is a slow series of accumulating engagements, each asking for a small commitment that moves the relationship along, building in trust until The Other is not only ready for your Big Ask, but is frustrated that you took so long to get there.   

The often cited Peter Drucker quote is true and has direct application for our side:

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself…Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.“

Reclaiming the Dark Art

The Soviets formed the Department for Agitation and Propaganda to spread their ideology through media and forms of popular entertainment. Rest assured, the complexity and deliberate path they nurtured people through was not left to chance. It was masterful and methodical. Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda ran an equally sophisticated program that was well versed in the already century old study of mass movement psychology. 

Extending much further in time, in 1622, partially in response to the Reformation but also the need to organize evangelization in the expanding colonial empires, the Propaganda Fide (inelegantly translated to Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) was officially created by Pope Gregory XV. This was, however, mostly just making official an already synchronized effort going back to the 13th century to equip missionaries in their work.

Modern marketing and state propaganda increasingly overlap and are coordinated. 

What the Soviets, the Reich and missionaries didn’t have was of course today’s incredibly advanced behavioral knowledge aided by tech that can not only gather and analyze tremendous amounts of data but also construct complex marketing funnels that can nurture both customers and “Dear Citizens” along any desired path. 

I promise you, none of us are immune to these efforts. 

I have called this discipline a Dark Art because it gets repeatable and predictable results and behaviors at a mass scale that resembles what you would only expect possible from the blackest of magic. But I repeat, this can all be used for good and I encourage more on our side to learn the high level skills of becoming a master propagandist and strategic marketer. 

But, there are real obstacles. 

So, You Want To Be An Ideologue

For our side to be effective at the competitive level there are major interrelated obstacles:

1. No Unified Message: The single greatest handicap is that we lack a fully developed ideology which makes it almost impossible for individuals to contribute and act independently and in a coherent manner. 
   
   Any 19-year-old campus leftist or door-to-door missionary can speak confidently and on point because they can refer to guiding principles and beliefs. I made the case for this in previous articles. 

2. No Organization and Leadership:  Implied in having an ideology and resources is that there is capable and dedicated leadership and organization in place to craft and manage the efforts. Existing organizations either need to be supported (or taken over), offered feedback to improve competencies, or someone must emerge and lead.
   
   We are all aware of our history and what happens to the outspoken and the organizations who’ve come before us. In hindsight, we can see their mistakes and are understandably cautious about the consequences of stepping forward. But it is simply not possible to succeed at the scale needed without leadership and organization to guide (among other things) the process of crafting an ideological position and directing high-level propaganda/marketing.
   
   Ideology can’t fight non-ideology, trained will beat untrained, organized out-maneuvers the disorganized. With so many disconnected outposts and semi-adjacents doing great work, we need a Bismarck to unify.  
   
3. Limited Reach and Resources: As individuals, we have almost no ability or the resources to sustain an effort that will have true reach. The enemy knows this and is why legacy gatekeeper conservative and “dissident” organizations always become compromised.  Because they can raise the funds and hire talent to execute effective marketing/propaganda, they are always infiltrated at leadership and executive levels to misdirect and sabotage the effort. Upsetting the status quo cannot be tolerated.
   
   There are, without question, both wealthy individuals on our side and “rank and file” capable of modestly supporting the cause. They won’t give because they don’t have a reason to give and have no place to give it to. (See points 1 & 2.)
   
4. Be at Peace with Being Bored: The lion’s share of the work needing to be done is reaching the big “not aware” middle-of-the-curve population. This means the outreach is simple, short, and not nearly as exciting as you want it to be. Remember the dating analogy. What is most required is having “first date sensibilities” and being okay with hanging out at first base for quite awhile. The overwhelming majority of our efforts however are preaching to the choir. Exhortation is important but there is a tremendous imbalance in the messaging. 

You’re Being Called to Lead

Rather than this being a huge black pill, realize that right now, today, you can begin to address each of these four points, especially #4, by committing to become more familiar with leadership principles, how strategic marketing, propaganda, and planning work.  Even just investing time in drafting how you would progress someone from simple awareness of issues through progressively more in-depth and challenging conversations until, like Peter Drucker said, your marketing efforts, “…Result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.” 

There is an embarrassment of riches in the amount of raw material to work with. Listen to Rebel Yell 204 with James Edwards and be encouraged.

There is something happening, we all feel it, and we each need to be ready to serve when it coalesces. Maybe you are being called.