Dimes, like a lot of white nationalists, thinks that we need to touch grass:
As a vanguardist you need to begin with a practical skillset, whether it be woodworking or training dogs. This will allow you to anchor your upward trajectory and create an intellectual base of operations from which you can branch out. This will be the divine prejudice which ensures you will not float off into an intellectual netherrealm where academic discussions of vague power politics underscored with pop-esotericism.
I strongly disagree with this. The problem is not that we haven’t been touching grass, it’s that we’ve been touching too much of it.
I do think that mass politics is outdated, but he doesn’t go far enough. The material conditions are completely different – as are the rules of radicalism.
Throughout his article, Dimes repeatedly says things like:
Many have correctly identified that successful revolutions tend to be originated within the intelligencia or the military… Revolutions very rarely arise from the working classes, the plebs, or The People.
and
The truth is that a nation (or grouping of similar complexity) can survive with an idealistic foundation that is betrayed in isolated cases as a response to changing circumstances but cannot survive with a foundation that is permanent treachery and fluid principles.
When we’re talking about systems, we’re really talking about objects and how they move around. Objects can move around in all sorts of ways, and so these rules must control for context before they can be useful stereotypes. This is not to say that I disagree with Dimes’ rules, but you should be very imaginative about all of the different ways that systems work. Rules that have applied for all of history may not apply in modernity. The objects don’t care if something is Lindy.
A similar issue arises when people talk about technology. Technology is explained through interesting stories, not a real examination of use, adoption, or significance.
This is to say that you want to have a wide, expansive imagination, and an emphasis on first principles – rules that will almost always apply no matter the context. Read Charles Perrow, not Václav Havel.
So when I say that “I THINK” that mass politics is outdated, that’s not to say that there isn’t some creative way to use the allists for some end, or even to take down the entire system as a whole. “I think,” but I’m willing to be surprised.
So first and foremost, let us raise our standards on what ‘will’ happen, and what ‘is’ politically plausible.
Your computer is an object. It is physically connected to all other computers on the internet. An email that you send from New York is received by a man in Norway. This email physically changes the patterns in the man’s brain. The man goes out into the world forever changed: his routines are altered.
So the internet is not ethereal, it is physical – as physical as distributing flyers or hosting a fundraiser.
This object, the internet system, is interesting for several reasons: it contains all of recorded knowledge, it allows one to parse this knowledge economically, and it connects people together.
Without the internet, white nationalism would be completely impossible. All information would be mediated through centralized services, and it would be difficult to percure information and make any sense of it. People like us would also be too few in number to develop any sort of dissident consciousness.
So from this we see that increased ‘mind-bending technology’ has resulted in more white nationalism, and has also made it more sophisticated.
So the internet is giving us something, but no one sees it. White nationalists have their “online” life that they think is not real and not serious – and they have their “real” activism located on grass among 3-dimensional people. These include:
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Starting a white neighborhood
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Starting a secret society
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Protesting
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“Networking” IRL (in other words, going to dive bars and then never hanging out again)
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Raising a family
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Hosting a fascist art show
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Starting a homestead
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Getting a job
Obviously, none of this stuff pans out.
So they don’t take the internet seriously, and then they find that real activism is larpy and has no power to it. Sure, they try to move up in the world, but there’s no coordination, and it’s going to take a long time, and most of us are not able to get into the upper strata anyways. …And so they just sort of use the internet for stupid nonsense like Radfem Hitler tea.
George Zipf
Zipf says:
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All systems economize for least effort.
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All of our decisions are intended to minimize the total average amount of work.
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City layouts, language, tool usage, and thinking are all highly economical and result in harmonic distributions.
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When speaking we use many short words that have many meanings and few long words that have highly specific meanings. This creates a straight slope:
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Even infant gurgling and schizophrenic speech produce harmonic slopes.
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Our perception of least effort is determined by our needs, our beliefs, and our available resources. White nationalism is less effort for a white nationalist; Marxism is more effort for a libertarian.
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Given stable conditions, systems become more economical over time. Ex: primitive tribes acquire traditions that improve crop yields while reducing input labor.
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Systems use “tools” to perform “jobs.” The matching of tools to jobs and jobs to tools is, again, economical. Ex: a factory that produces bombs retools its equipment (“tools”) to make lamps (“jobs”) when the war is over. Retooling equipment is more economical than starting from scratch. Ex: Steve Jobs demands special equipment to produce the perfect Macintosh screen.
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We try to arrange our tools so that those most frequently used are easier to access. We also try to use them to perform as many jobs as possible. Ex: a Swiss army knife kept in one’s pocket at all times. The knife is readily accessed and performs many jobs.
Intelligence vs. Strength
After synthesizing Zipf, ChatGPT came to the following definition of intelligence:
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Intelligence means economy of action. It’s the number of operations that an object can perform. A crow uses one brain to solve many puzzles.
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Few tools → many jobs
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Intelligence is a matter of opinion or comparison. A mushroom seems stupid until we consider its root networks. IQ compares you to other test takers.
- Intelligent people are known for their laziness. Shikamaru accomplishes many goals (jobs) using as little effort as possible (tools).
From this definition I arrived at the definition of strength:
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Strength means concentration of action. It’s the number of objects performing an operation. A deadlifter uses many muscles to perform one job (lift the barbell).
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Many tools → few jobs
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It is the opposite of intelligence.
- Strong people are known for their hard work. Rock Lee uses all of his energy (tools) to perform few, quixotic tasks (jobs).
White nationalists approach their activism from a philosophy of strength. They look at all apparent forms of activism and think to themselves: “If only we had more people doing X Y and Z.”
This is many tools → few jobs
For them, studying is airy-fairy. Real change happens when you get out and “DO something.”
A Prison Analogy
Your political movement is, metaphorically speaking, locked in a small, steel room. All apparent forms of escape have been controlled for. In other words, every escape method that came to the prison architects was designed out of the cell.
Well, your crew is impatient. They want to get out of this cell right now. There’s the door, and while kicking it doesn’t work, it is the only way out that is readily apparent. So they decide to kick it harder.
What happens? Nothing. Because the architects already knew that people would try to do that. So most of the crew does not get involved – that is a waste of effort.
But the ironic part is this: those still kicking the door are irritated by their comrades’ apathy. And in their mind, they could kick the door down if only they would get up and help.
If you’re in a steel box and all you have is a hair, you must use this hair cleverly.
Money, Intelligence, and Power
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Power means ability.
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Money increases one’s range of possible action. So money increases one’s power.
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As does studying. More info → more possibilities, more money
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Studying makes it easier to guess trends and thus the market.
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Power, wealth, and knowledge are all tightly coupled. Get one, and the others follow.
So Instead:
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Do not start from a philosophy of strength. Start from a philosophy of intelligence.
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Use the internet to access all of recorded knowledge.
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Use AI to parse this knowledge economically.
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Learn eclectically and purposely; do not methodically read a canon so that you can say “I have read it.”
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Have a meta-perspective on white nationalism as a dialectic that changes over time.
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Take studying to a virtuosic extreme, in the way that Buckethead has taken his guitar.
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The “vanguard” is a small group of virtuosos who use narrow and highly imaginative techniques to increase their power. Along the lines of Ted Chiang’s Understand.
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This point of view is called Virtuosity.
The internet is the authentic political space. While it is humble, decisions made here have tangible feedback. It is a third place, it mediates real communities, and its potential has hardly been explored.
