Reminder: Don't get too cocky

The bad guys won't go quietly

Things are going well for the American Right these days. The regime is totally humiliated, both domestically and abroad. Everything is getting worse, it’s impossible for anyone who’s being honest not to notice. Trump has commanding leads in the polls in many swing states; the attempts to legally derail him with bogus charges have only solidified his support. I’m more confident than ever before that, absent something really crazy happening, he’ll win the election in 2024.

No one takes this stuff (or anything) seriously anymore. It seems like shitlib fatigue has set in. People could be more reluctant to operate outside norms or in bad faith because the grand cause they were pursuing obviously makes everyone (including themselves) miserable. The usual voices who always appear to cover up or justify obvious signs of decline are unusually quiet, if they haven’t been killed in an extremely ironic or revealing way by one of the golems they inflicted on the general public.

It’s also difficult for Leftists to know where to focus their attention. So much of early leftist harassment/intimidation campaigns relied on the “Eye of Sauron.” Multiple outlets would scrutinize one particular topic or even just one person, aiming millions of braindead leftist media consumers, along with employers, regulators, and federal agents, at him. It’s difficult for most people to stand up to that sort of pressure. With so much going on and so many targets for leftists, a lot of things that normally would be getting a harsh response are allowed to slip through the cracks.

In a time like this, members of the quack right (of which I consider myself proudly a part) might feel the need to “reveal themselves.” They can talk about previously forbidden topics with unusual leeway, more mainstream figures are far less intimidated by lazy scare articles and hit pieces. People are less offended by edgy jokes and more open to ideas that were once considered unthinkable.

Despite all of this, I urge everyone, if you are anything but a turbo-normie who has never done anything controversial in his life, to keep it cool. Situations like this, when things are going unexpectedly well, are the time to build, not to take victory laps or unnecessary risks. The situation can change for the worse rapidly in ways that aren’t fair and don’t make a lot of sense.

Do not dox yourself, do not be careless with your identity, do not feel the need to have a public thought experiments about stuff that most people outside extremely online communities would viscerally reject, do not attempt to bring known hostiles into your radical way of thinking. It’s OK to be normal and have normal goals. Never forget that we are the reasonable ones here, we have the chance to implement policies that will make everyone’s lives better.

There’s a recurring power fantasy on the American Right, especially in fringe circles, that comes from liberal propaganda. Liberals say that rightwingers are violent super villains and pretend to be terrified. They’re not saying this stuff because they actually believe it, statistically speaking rightwing violence in the United States does not exist. Rather, they’re saying it to justify political persecution of peaceful dissidents. Rightwingers sometimes feel the need to play a role for leftists. It’s funny to act like a supervillain. I promise, if you really want to get a response from these people, you will and you won’t like it. I’ve seen too many good people chewed up by this process.

There are still a lot of leftists and they have a lot of money and power. I promise they can make your life worse if they are given the chance, even if you’re not doing anything wrong. With this in mind, I encourage you to simply stop interacting with liberals of all flavors. However much prestige these people have from the legacy institutions that they’ve parasite-ed, remember that we do not need them.

Now, perhaps more than ever, it’s clear that the rightwing is where the cultural energy is. Rightwingers have the truth on their side. It’s fun. Creative things are happening that aren’t allowed anywhere else. You don’t have to put up with the normal bullshit that everyone hates. Journalists, thrill-seekers, etc. will be drawn to this energy. All these people who are flirting with edgy thought now, in this moment of unusual cultural freedom, will turn on you in a second without reservations if the winds begin to change. When that happens, you don’t want them to have leverage over you.

I think people need to reevaluate their expectations. When we win, which I think we will, there won’t be rightwingers being praised by the New York Times or getting big prestigious awards. Rather, people will simply not read the New York Times, and when they hear about the New York Times secondhand they’ll automatically know that it’s just one of these propaganda outlets run by people who hate them and civilization at large and ignore whatever they say. We can write our own articles. We can give our own awards. You do not need their approval or permission to succeed. Do not get used to letting people who will really hurt you into positions where they can affect your behavior.

Ultimately, the goal of the fringe circles should be to disappear, to have all the good and correct ideas that they have suffered persecution for advocating on behalf of become mainstream and widely accepted, just as they were in the past and as they should have been in a fair system. Most will forget the controversy ever even occurred. They won’t remember who was right or wrong. People won’t necessarily know that you were a trendsetter and helped bring this about, and that’s OK. It’s not about you, it’s about the ideas. Eventually the breeze carries us all away. This is something that people should get into their heads early if they want to stick around.

There are also those who will never forgive you for being right. Never forget that we are not up against reasonable people, or people who play by the rules or abide by normal standards of behavior. They will lie to you. They will lie to others. They will lie to themselves. Their cultural and political views are downstream from pathological dysfunction. Often the loudest advocates for “humanitarian” policies are actually deeply sadistic and twisted. If you go out of your way to intentionally antagonize these people, even if you get away with it for a while, it’ll come back to haunt you and all the appeals to justice or morality in the universe won’t have 1/1000th the impact of real world power.

I’m not trying to get on a high horse about this stuff. I’ve said plenty of things I regret. You can’t take it back and shouldn’t expect someone who hates you and wants you to die to give you a fair hearing or any credit for changing your mind. I just worry that younger people especially aren’t familiar with the fact that fringe rightwing politics are cyclical. Just as there’s a time when you finally break through and your good ideas are recognized and all the nasty people who tried to shut you up suddenly go quiet, there’s also always a big backlash and a lot of people get burnt. Your life can change very quick and there’s only so much you can do after the fact.

So, please, take active steps to protect yourself. You have your whole life ahead of you and you don’t want it to be weighed down by any unnecessary baggage. The feeling of overwhelming numbers and cultural power can disappear in an instant for bad reasons or no reason at all. You can always still be the loneliest person in the world.

Above all else, focus on improving your life and the places and people around you. It’s easy to get sucked into bitterness or the bad energy of this world. It’s happened to me before and I am thankful every day that I eventually came up for air. I look back on it like a bad dream. There’s always still a lot of work to be done and good times ahead. I think really turning the situation around will take hundreds of years. None of us will be there to see the end of this, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul.