Having read The Jacksonian Club’s new action plan, I have been trying to imagine what advice Saul Alinsky would prescribe for our newly minted organization. We are essentially styling ourselves as community organizers. This is an arena where Alinsky’s insights could prove especially useful.
The Goal
“The Jacksonian Club is an organization with a specific goal: the creation of an autonomous institution where new interpretations of American nationalism and conservatism can materialize that run counter to those of prevailing authority, liberal and mainstream National Review-style conservatism.”
Fortunately, such a revolt against the conservative establishment is already in progress, so there is clearly a receptive audience waiting to be exposed to our ideas. The logical task we should set ourselves to is pitching the tent of The Jacksonian Club within the Tea Party and working to give it a harder edge on social issues like immigration.
Tactics
“We will recruit among right-leaning mainstream conservatives, seeking to become individually and collectively influential in moving conservative and Republican organizations ever closer to the nationalist right. While that is its main activity, its core membership, its trusted members, will also be planning alternative strategies to preserve our people, heritage and culture should at the end of the day some sort of withdrawal or new creation be necessary.”
This is a sensible objective.
Saul Alinsky defines a “tactic” as doing what you can with what you have. We have six members. What can six people who are scattered across Europe and North America accomplish?
There is nothing stopping any of us from educating our peers or persuading them to join our cause. There is nothing stopping us from writing, voting, donating, networking or protesting. There is nothing stopping any of us from infiltrating mainstream organizations or injecting our nationalist message into conservative discourse.
Logically, the immediate objective must be recruitment. If this organization doesn’t grow and build momentum, it will stagnate and die.
We should be able to double our ranks from six to twelve members. That is a realistic goal. Let’s accomplish that first. Then we can set ourselves to tackling the next goal.
Real World Action
“The target audience for the Jacksonian Club is not the self-identified White Nationalists on the Internet. While of course we welcome and need such support, the fact of the matter is that decades of Internet activism has resulted in little real world impact. Instead, we are looking at the right-most fringe of the mainstream and disaffected ordinary Americans, working to bring them into the fold.”
Saul Alinsky would certainly advise inserting ourselves into the mainstream, communicating with people in their own terms, and establishing our credentials within targeted institutions.
The internet can be used as a tool that allows us to network, recruit, and communicate across vast distances. The purpose of our internet presence should be to educate radicals and give them productive tasks in the real world where they can learn how to be effective and make a difference in their communities.
It is currently election season in America. For the immediate future, I am going to focus my own Jacksonian Club energies on supporting an Alabama state senate candidate who supports Arizona-style immigration reform. This seems like a useful and productive way to advance our stated objectives.
Because Alinsky was of his father, the devil–the father of lies–he had his father’s help. Do you really think the devil is going to help you?
@ Hunter
Take your two votes, and pledge them to support the candidate, and the district leader will be lighting your cigars, and offering you patronage. LOL.
Torque,
I’m pretty sure the dedication of Rules for Radicals was tongue in cheek.
I know an unintelligent commenter on the other thread about Alinsky said it was just some magical force of “historical inertia” which lead to Alinsky’s success, and I guess you think that historical inertia was the work of the devil.
But what this ignores is how much better thought out Alinsky’s thoughts on activism were than those of anyone on the right.
Just try reading Rules for Radicals.
It’s obviously the product of a mind vastly superior in every practical way to, for an example, the writer of the Turner Diaries.
If someone who didn’t believe in the devil, or in “historical inertia”, read both books and then was asked which author would have more success in influencing the course of events, the answer would be obvious.
HW,
I think you should start locally. The Jacksonian Club would work best if you tried to gradually win over people in your locality. I think you should continue going to tea parties. You are right about the internet being good for communication but I think it is mighty difficult to organize people across state lines. Why not try to eventually establish chapters throughout Alabama and then branch off from there? Just a though. 🙂
You broke one of Saul’s rules.
Fixed.
Is Rules for Radicals fiction, Reginald?
Brilliant comparison!
Jenny,
Rules for Radicals and The Turner Diaries are both proscriptive works, therefore they are comparable in the way I compared them.
Didn’t you see Pearce’s interview with Mike Wallace before he died?
Both prescriptive works, I should say.
“[The Oklahoma City bombing] does not make sense under the present conditions that we have when there’s no group capable of actually taking on the federal government and defeating it. I do not believe that we are in a revolutionary phase yet. I believe that the people have a lot of waking up and understanding to do first.”
-William Luther Pierce (interviewed by Mike Wallace)
So as you can see, Jen, The Turner Diaries were to Pierce what Rules for Radicals were to Alinsky.
Good article Hunter. We really should be focusing on tactics and studying those of our enemy. The countless WN articles describing our dire predicament get really old and we already know the situation.
Hunter represents a refreshing trend of forward-thinking and realistic white advocates, and deserves all of our support. I’d love to join The Jacksonian Club. How should I go about doing this?
I should look in to joining The Jacksonian Club if only because I’ve always been a huge fan of Andrew Jackson. I was born, raised, and still live right near where Jackson was born, in the Waxhaws district on the NC/SC border – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waxhaws. James K. Polk was born in this area too.
But I just don’t know about this “conservatism.” What exactly is left to “conserve” in America aside from the race? Why not start the something like the ‘American Racial Preservationist Club,’ and then later on work out all the sociopolitical details? Isn’t this still a race-first site?
The Jacksonian Club is a great idea. Mighty oaks from little acorns.
Rules for Radicals is pro-active (The Devil Never Sleeps!) The Turner Diaries is re-active.
That’s the real problem.