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Lawless
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https://www.traditionalright.com/charlottesville-was-a-massive-4gw-failure/
traditionalRIGHT
Traditionalism in a changing world.
Charlottesville Was a Massive 4GW Failure
I’m sure that a lot of folks in the alt-Right, of whatever stripe, are feeling pretty black-pilled right at this moment. As well they should, because the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was a disaster. There’s no way to get around that. Don’t take what I’m about to say in the post below as “punching right”. Rather, understand it as me giving some well-meaning, and I believe much needed, counsel.
What everyone who is interested in this needs to understand is that the reason the Unite the Right (UTR) rally was a failure was because it completely neglected to take into account 4GW (Fourth-Generation Warfare) principles which can very easily be applied to civilian situations remaining at conflict levels below outright armed conflict. In fact the leadership at UTR and during the subsequent chain of events once the rally got started broke just about every rule of 4GW that could have been broken.
My advice for any serious alt-Righter of any stripe who wishes to avoid future debacles like UTR would be to first, first, FIRST read Victoria by William Lind, and then familiarize yourself with Lind’s other materials on this subject. If you haven’t done this yet, then stop what you’re doing, alt-Right involvement-wise. You’re only going to hurt, not help your cause.
However in the meantime until you can do this, I’ll provide a few pointers as overview.
One of the cardinal principles of 4GW is that before you ever set foot on the battlefield you should already be tilting the battlefield in your favor. Don’t fight the kind of battle the enemy wants in the place that the enemy wants to do so. So my first piece of (probably unheeded) advice would be to stop having rallies in the first place, at least of the kind that are likely to degenerate into brawls with antifa and BLM.
The fact of the matter is that right-wing activism always fails. You’re not going to be able to steal a page from their playbook and turn the Left’s game against them. This is because the Right does not have the institutional support of the politicians, bureaucracies, and other elements of the state apparatus. As a result, antifa can get away with beating you because the police will arrest you when you fight back. In fact, the police may openly side with the antifas, as they did in Charlottesville. Is it fair? Of course not. But life isn’t fair, so get a helmet. Earlier this year, I thought there might be a chance that the legal climate for legitimate self-defence against antifas might be changing, but I have since revised that opinion in the negative direction. So the question is, why show up armed with sticks and shields if you’re not going to be allowed to use them without getting a criminal record? Why give unsympathetic news media the opportunity to tar you dishonestly to millions of viewers across the country? There are other means by which antifa and BLM can be countered (more on this below).
However, if Alt-Righters are bound and determined to continue to hold rallies, then they need to make some changes to how they operate.
First, your organisation needs to be decentralised. When you’re the 4GW non-state actor in a conflict, it is not in your interest to give the hegemonic state enemy (in this case antifas, BLM, academia, the news media, and in many instances, the actual state) one or a few figureheads against which to strike. Stop organising these very-publicly advertised rallies to be headlined by a few “big names” like Richard Spencer. Instead, develop a heterarchic organisation based around small, local groups of trusted men (like, say, a männerbund). Each group should have a leader who coordinates with other group leaders. Be a distributed network rather than relying on a small number of centralised nodes.
Next, your organisation needs to maintain tight control on attendance and the activities of those attending. Grow the organisation by vetting and integrating trusted individuals, not by throwing the gates open to large numbers of people who just “show up” for rallies. Having a mentally unstable individual like James Fields just show up, be handed equipment with your group’s logo on it, and then turn around and run somebody over, giving the Left a massive photo-op, was a completely unforced error. Additionally, this may also help you to avoid infiltration by law enforcement agencies, who will try to encourage violence and other lawbreaking.
Third, you need to plan what you’re going to do, and have contingencies in place, before you ever step into your cars to drive to the intended location. This planning needs to go beyond the “show up here, walk here” level. Group leaders need to have the layout of the entire area to be invested before they ever go in. If the police show up “here” and try to bulldoze you into the arms of waiting antifa, then an escape route is “there.” The area also needs to be “prepped” – teams of undercover spotters should be in place the day before to mark signs of antifa or other Left activity. Find out where the ones with cars are parking and get license numbers and other info. Perhaps even be on hand to photograph them before they “mask up.” These spotters can double as “outrunners” immediately prior to and during the event. Use unobtrusive, easily hidden two-way radios (or earbud-based systems like Spy Ear, if you can afford them) to keep in contact with those inside the action, warning of antifa and police movements. As a 4GW actor at a force disadvantage, you can never have too much current information.
Speaking of information, you must, must, MUST control the flow of information into, out of, and about your rally. We already know that all mainstream media outlets will be hostile to you and are going to present a distorted, one-sided view of the event. It is imperative to have your own sources of information production and dissemination ready. Do everything you can to counter the propaganda prior to your rally. During the rally, be sure that you have multiple, disparately-placed sources recording the event and (this is important) streaming all photos and pictures to a secure server offsite, since antifas want to take away phones that could be used as cameras to record their activities. Even better, use “spy” cameras which can be hidden on your person and record events without having to hold up a video camera or smartphone. Have some of the spotters mentioned above embed near MSM journalists and try to blend in, thus allowing you to record events from the same angles as the media themselves. The more of this information, the better. Be creative.
Now, to move on to some other areas.
If you want to be successful in opposing the Left and advancing the alt-Right agenda, then you must be willing to operate within a realpolitik framework. And rule #1 for realpolitik is this – you deal with the situation you’re in as it is, not as you’d like for it to be. Relatedly, you need to understand the difference between social media and the real world. The things you might do or say and think are funny on Twitter are often times not things you want to do or say in front of MSM television cameras. We need to be ruthlessly pragmatic here.
traditionalRIGHT
Traditionalism in a changing world.
Charlottesville Was a Massive 4GW Failure
I’m sure that a lot of folks in the alt-Right, of whatever stripe, are feeling pretty black-pilled right at this moment. As well they should, because the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was a disaster. There’s no way to get around that. Don’t take what I’m about to say in the post below as “punching right”. Rather, understand it as me giving some well-meaning, and I believe much needed, counsel.
What everyone who is interested in this needs to understand is that the reason the Unite the Right (UTR) rally was a failure was because it completely neglected to take into account 4GW (Fourth-Generation Warfare) principles which can very easily be applied to civilian situations remaining at conflict levels below outright armed conflict. In fact the leadership at UTR and during the subsequent chain of events once the rally got started broke just about every rule of 4GW that could have been broken.
My advice for any serious alt-Righter of any stripe who wishes to avoid future debacles like UTR would be to first, first, FIRST read Victoria by William Lind, and then familiarize yourself with Lind’s other materials on this subject. If you haven’t done this yet, then stop what you’re doing, alt-Right involvement-wise. You’re only going to hurt, not help your cause.
However in the meantime until you can do this, I’ll provide a few pointers as overview.
One of the cardinal principles of 4GW is that before you ever set foot on the battlefield you should already be tilting the battlefield in your favor. Don’t fight the kind of battle the enemy wants in the place that the enemy wants to do so. So my first piece of (probably unheeded) advice would be to stop having rallies in the first place, at least of the kind that are likely to degenerate into brawls with antifa and BLM.
The fact of the matter is that right-wing activism always fails. You’re not going to be able to steal a page from their playbook and turn the Left’s game against them. This is because the Right does not have the institutional support of the politicians, bureaucracies, and other elements of the state apparatus. As a result, antifa can get away with beating you because the police will arrest you when you fight back. In fact, the police may openly side with the antifas, as they did in Charlottesville. Is it fair? Of course not. But life isn’t fair, so get a helmet. Earlier this year, I thought there might be a chance that the legal climate for legitimate self-defence against antifas might be changing, but I have since revised that opinion in the negative direction. So the question is, why show up armed with sticks and shields if you’re not going to be allowed to use them without getting a criminal record? Why give unsympathetic news media the opportunity to tar you dishonestly to millions of viewers across the country? There are other means by which antifa and BLM can be countered (more on this below).
However, if Alt-Righters are bound and determined to continue to hold rallies, then they need to make some changes to how they operate.
First, your organisation needs to be decentralised. When you’re the 4GW non-state actor in a conflict, it is not in your interest to give the hegemonic state enemy (in this case antifas, BLM, academia, the news media, and in many instances, the actual state) one or a few figureheads against which to strike. Stop organising these very-publicly advertised rallies to be headlined by a few “big names” like Richard Spencer. Instead, develop a heterarchic organisation based around small, local groups of trusted men (like, say, a männerbund). Each group should have a leader who coordinates with other group leaders. Be a distributed network rather than relying on a small number of centralised nodes.
Next, your organisation needs to maintain tight control on attendance and the activities of those attending. Grow the organisation by vetting and integrating trusted individuals, not by throwing the gates open to large numbers of people who just “show up” for rallies. Having a mentally unstable individual like James Fields just show up, be handed equipment with your group’s logo on it, and then turn around and run somebody over, giving the Left a massive photo-op, was a completely unforced error. Additionally, this may also help you to avoid infiltration by law enforcement agencies, who will try to encourage violence and other lawbreaking.
Third, you need to plan what you’re going to do, and have contingencies in place, before you ever step into your cars to drive to the intended location. This planning needs to go beyond the “show up here, walk here” level. Group leaders need to have the layout of the entire area to be invested before they ever go in. If the police show up “here” and try to bulldoze you into the arms of waiting antifa, then an escape route is “there.” The area also needs to be “prepped” – teams of undercover spotters should be in place the day before to mark signs of antifa or other Left activity. Find out where the ones with cars are parking and get license numbers and other info. Perhaps even be on hand to photograph them before they “mask up.” These spotters can double as “outrunners” immediately prior to and during the event. Use unobtrusive, easily hidden two-way radios (or earbud-based systems like Spy Ear, if you can afford them) to keep in contact with those inside the action, warning of antifa and police movements. As a 4GW actor at a force disadvantage, you can never have too much current information.
Speaking of information, you must, must, MUST control the flow of information into, out of, and about your rally. We already know that all mainstream media outlets will be hostile to you and are going to present a distorted, one-sided view of the event. It is imperative to have your own sources of information production and dissemination ready. Do everything you can to counter the propaganda prior to your rally. During the rally, be sure that you have multiple, disparately-placed sources recording the event and (this is important) streaming all photos and pictures to a secure server offsite, since antifas want to take away phones that could be used as cameras to record their activities. Even better, use “spy” cameras which can be hidden on your person and record events without having to hold up a video camera or smartphone. Have some of the spotters mentioned above embed near MSM journalists and try to blend in, thus allowing you to record events from the same angles as the media themselves. The more of this information, the better. Be creative.
Now, to move on to some other areas.
If you want to be successful in opposing the Left and advancing the alt-Right agenda, then you must be willing to operate within a realpolitik framework. And rule #1 for realpolitik is this – you deal with the situation you’re in as it is, not as you’d like for it to be. Relatedly, you need to understand the difference between social media and the real world. The things you might do or say and think are funny on Twitter are often times not things you want to do or say in front of MSM television cameras. We need to be ruthlessly pragmatic here.