Amerika

Leadership to channel the rising storm of the Alt Right will be necessary for the movement to effect the change it desires. Its future conductors face a singular question that has vexed Nationalist movements for 150 years: how to separate ourselves from a multicultural world and preserve our people from threats both outside and within.

Previous attempts at this task by people with real historical experience such as the last white President of South Africa, the famous Nobel Peace Prize laureate F.W. de Klerk, failed. Also, history of Zimbabwe shows clearly that the opposition of the last white Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, to British favoritism for a knighted Robert Mugabe was vindicated in his own lifetime after lengthy denial. Between these two poles we can find our answer.

F.W. de Klerk’s famous answer to “the” question was: “I know they (whites) will find ways to survive.” It seems obvious from recent history, that elected career-driven leaders or other professional leaders will be in charge and not us. And by “us” it is meant the white middle class in each land, not whites as some artificial abstraction.

The current American Presidential election cycle has identified the failure of liberal-democracy at an even higher level. Few will remember that the coordinated end of the Cold War and the end of the Angolan War prompted the open declaration of the New World Order by George H.W. Bush in 1991. The failure of the South African middle class is therefore intimately connected to the current failure of American middle class because they are ruled by the same political structure.

The commonsense business approach by Donald Trump represents the common sense of the middle-class: Survival requires work because work produces output for that same survival. The beauty of simplicity is also a hard truth.

The experience gained from the liberal-democratic ideal is that it is a Leftist system that tends to move ever Leftward. It is not just self-perpetuating; it is getting extreme like a snowball getting bigger and bigger with no internal means to regulate size and speed. Instead of acknowledging a snowball out of control, asking for help, these Leftists ignore it and create a fantasy world where snowballs do not exist. This is clearly not common sense thereby causing a general realization of the need for a previously-demonized “alternative.”

This is not revolutionary and it is also not a protest against unfair treatment. It is not a new ideology to subvert “the masses” and it is not an experiment in capitalism. It is just simply tough and beautifully real. Perhaps then the terminology of alternative right is not so much a recognition of conservatism or nationalism or even identity, it is actually throwing the “Overton window” into the trash bin, replacing it with realism.

Maybe historians can point to past leaders that were “real” and not activists for some abstract ideology. The point is that leaders, who are real, do not have to manipulate the masses into a fantasy in order to “control” them. Real leaders allow the masses to control themselves.

“Leading” masses in fantasy land require leaders that are effectively fake and we have seen that on multiple occasions now. From this perspective Trump is just a realist which at this point in history may epitomize the loss of past conservative thought. The neutered Right is the past we have to get away from because a real future beckons, whether we get there through conservatism or not.

Real leaders present their followers with a vision and the Trump vision is common sense, not some position in the Overton window. Whether he gets elected as President or not, his vision proposed to the electorate will remain the same and assuming he will remain in politics, it will influence American politics and general life even, going forward. The fact that he has run, become popular, and forced the media to back down guarantees him a position in history.

The after-effects of the past seventy years of liberal snowball will unfortunately remain with us. It is against this unreal outfall that the Alt Right must position itself. It is less about leadership than it is about risk management because risks are real. The best way to deal with risk is to get ahead of it and that will be the goal of leadership of the future.

Some people would view “change management” as a way to engage risk. For example, companies use “change management techniques” to awaken their employees to the dangers of working in unsafe environments. Part of this “change management” is that “leadership” must regularly (weekly) formally interact with employees because it keeps employees “engaged.” These engagement outcomes can be measured with polls worldwide and everybody agrees that improving “engagement” of employees is beneficial to the cause, in this case safety.

This is not the leadership proposed for the Alt Right in its attempt to address snowball risk. The problem and salvation of realistic leadership is that the end image is unknown. No Utopia is promised for the future because that ideological vision is replaced with trust and belief in the present tense. My neighbor lives thirty feet away from me and I have to trust and believe that he will not harm me. There is simply no other way, because he is doing the exact same thing.

It is quite reasonable for me to go to neighbor and ask him for help in an emergency. Even if it is unexpected for him, he can be induced to give aid without threat or bribe. This can be done before the emergency even occurs by convincing him that mutual aid would be a realistic future act by either of us.

The point is that I am not “changing” my neighbor in the sense of “progress”; I am convincing him of a realistic scenario which he accepts without the need to “buy in.” The engagement is also different because he does not actually have to do something today; he simply must accept the concept of reality in practical terms. However, if it is required for him to start systematically providing aid to the neighborhood, then engagement is required. This is why granular systems in nature work so well: they do not require leadership or manipulation, only practical interaction at the local level.

This gives the Alt Right two missions: (1) it must establish realistic leadership to protect all local levels from above, but (2) it must also engage people in order to avoid actual risk. The question then is: Is there any possibility of too much realism? In other words can it become a risk like liberalism has become a risk? Future leaders will have to consider that possibility, and do their best to avoid becoming “ideological” or based on future promises instead of practical, day-to-day realities.

Leading the concept of Alt Right requires influencing the public to change their narrative from whatever it is now to a commonsense narrative. This is not part of the engagement process, but an organic cultural shift where common sense is accepted as a norm. This can be expected to take four “cycles,” or periods of adjustment bounded by historical events, or more.

Engaging people to resist ideological domination caused by a runaway snowball requires risk management techniques. However, since the risk is of ideological nature, standard technical mitigation techniques will not work. This will be a new development in history: the first time that a group organizes itself against “ideological attack,” as opposed to physical or economic attack. The interesting aspect is that it is preparing for ideological attack from any direction and from anybody; it is resisting the idea of ideology itself and not a specific ideology.

The success outcome of leading people to accept common sense is that their fear will subside. This can be measured and it is important for the risk engagement part. Fear is a devastating condition because it makes people defensive and in ideological terms it causes people to become apathetic. Reducing ideological fear is important in order to address physical fear.

In addition to reduce ideological fear by superseding the Overton window, people will also need to know that they have “back-up” during engaging risks. This requires legal support for the most part, or somebody to answer practical questions in real time.

In addition, this requires a focus on the source of risk of ideological infiltration. The Pareto principle advises that there were only 20% efforts that resulted in massive 80% failures. We are not looking for massive conspiracies in order to make a single momentous change.  We are looking for many small things that require a little cooperation from John and Jane Doe to get the information and action required to “limit” (not stop) the 20% drivers.

Take one popular issue such as the Mexican Wall solution to stop immigration. It will not be required to draft John and Jane Doe into a military border patrol, but it is necessary for them not to employ illegal workers and just to report those illegals to the correct authorities and then to follow up if the correct action is not taken. In other words, two or three phone calls.

This shows us the task before us. In the near future, the Alt Right will need to change the public narrative to become more commonsense while simultaneously protecting the public from subversion. This will result in less public fear, thereby motivating engagement to address physical risks caused by any runaway snowball, at all levels. With that, we can change from this sordid chapter in history to something far better.

Tags: ideology, overton window, risk management, runaway snowball