Tag Archives: Lenin

What Can Be Done To Create A Social-National Movement in the UK?

I was just reading a few appreciations of Paddy Ashdown, the one-time LibDem leader, who recently died. I tend to adhere to the saying de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but when it comes to political people, kindness must sometimes give way to clarity.

In fact, I rather liked Paddy Ashdown, at least in parts (not that I ever actually met him). I certainly feel more respect for him than I ever could feel for the idiots who preceded and followed him (Thorpe, Steel, Kennedy, Campbell, Clegg etc, though I do have time for Jo Grimond, whose interesting and erudite memoirs I reviewed on Amazon years ago; Grimond was by far the best of the Liberal/LibDem leaders, to my mind).

I feel that Ashdown was a great deal more honest than most System politicians, for one thing. Also, he was an idealist, and someone willing to put a mission above his (and his family’s) comfort: not many men in their mid-thirties would leave a comfortable and perhaps promising SIS/FCO career to get involved in the hurly-burly of UK politics, particularly for something as marginal as the then Liberal Party (at the time it had only 13 Commons seats, despite having garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote in both of the two 1974 General Elections). Ashdown gave up a pleasant diplomatic/intelligence near-sinecure based in Switzerland to take ordinary jobs in the Yeovil (Somerset) area while pursuing his political mission. When his employer folded, nearly a decade later, Ashdown applied unsuccessfully for 150 jobs. When elected MP for Yeovil in 1983, he had been unemployed for 2 years and was doing unpaid volunteer work as part of a programme for the long-term unemployed.

Not that I agreed with much of Ashdown’s policy-set: Ashdown was a politician for an England which was disappearing even in the 1970s. He seems to have been sanguine about mass immigration, for one thing. I doubt that he was ever anti-Zionist in any sense (certainly not my sense). Ashdown was no intellectual and not (to my mind) a policy person. Neither was Ashdown intellectually honest in a way that might match what I still perceive to be his personal integrity (leaving aside the “Paddy Pantsdown” episode). Certainly, amid the pathetic rabble called the LibDems, Ashdown could hardly fail to be seen as a star, just as the young Bill Clinton, with his Georgetown, Oxford and Yale academic background, could not fail to shine in the intellectual backwater that is Arkansas.

Yes, much can be laughed at in Ashdown, not least his absurd sense of his own importance and weight, as when he was or tried to be (using my own parody-title for him) “the Lord High Panjandrum of the Balkans and Afghanistan”, but without at least some elevated sense of self-worth, Ashdown would never have tried to be a political leader in the first place, I suppose.

So why am I talking about Ashdown, when this blog piece is supposed to be about the creation of a social-national movement?

What caught my attention about Ashdown as politician was that he only got elected as MP in 1983, after about 8-9 years of trying; also, once he was an MP, it only took him 5 years to become the leader of his party (admittedly tiny in terms of MP numbers).

One of the precepts of the American “self-help” guru Anthony Robbins is that “most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” That is very true. Examples are all around in history.

Famously, Hitler joined the NSDAP as “Member no.7” in 1919. A year later, it was still of little importance even in its home city, Munich. By 1923 Hitler had attempted the Beer Hall Putsch, which went down in shambolic ignominy; by 1928, 9 years after its foundation, the NSDAP could still only raise a national vote of 2.6%. However, Hitler had built a party and beyond that, a whole volkisch movement. It only needed the right conditions in which to flourish. The Depression provided that, together with the widespread feeling against the Jewish exploitation of the German people: by 1930, the NSDAP had a vote of 18%, by 1932 of 33%, and by 1933 of nearly 44%.

Lenin’s serious revolutionary political activity could be said to have begun with the establishment of Iskra [The Spark] in 1900. Though by 1910, Lenin was still politically marginal, he was considered to be one of the leaders of the Marxist tendency, at least. However, both Bolsheviki and Mensheviki together numbered only 8,400 by 1910 (perhaps 75% of whom were under 30 years of age). Once again, though, the important point is that a party, albeit split, existed and, once the disastrous Russian participation in the European war of 1914 onward had destroyed the strength of the Tsarist government and society, that party could take over the existing uprising in 1917 and perform a coup d’etat later the same year.

Other examples? How about “Solidarity” in Poland? Founded by a small number of workers in Gdansk (former Danzig) in 1980, by 1989 it was the governing party in Poland.

UKIP was formed in 1993 and had become an organized though marginal party by 2003. UKIP never did break through. It peaked in 2014 and deflated from 2015. What stopped UKIP from taking power was not only the UK’s totally unfair First Past the Post electoral system (though that did not help). What stopped UKIP was, first, that it was and (to the extent that it still exists) is not a revolutionary, nor even radical, party/movement; also, there has been no truly “triggering” event comparable to the First World War, the Great Depression etc in the UK of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

Even if the future for the UK and Europe is a kind of multifaceted civil war, a political party or movement must exist. It is the sine qua non. In a year, it would achieve nothing, but in ten years it could achieve everything.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Ashdown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Grimond

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/16/paddy-ashdown-i-turned-to-my-wife-and-said-its-not-our-country-any-more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#German_Reichstag

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jo-Grimond-Memoirs/dp/B0015L8O0G

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#Revolutionary_activity

Further Thoughts, 28 December 2018

As to practical steps, I have blogged before about these:

  • Focus on one, two, or a very few areas of the UK at first;
  • Establishment of safe zone(s) which can develop into a germinal ethnostate;
  • “Tithing” as a way of building up operational funds.

What’s in a Name?

Religious and occult literature is replete with learned disquisitions about the sacred power of the Name. We see that, in Genesis, the Bible itself starts with the words “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the New Testament, this theme is continued. Jesus Christ renamed some people who had “come over to him”, such as Peter. Others, later, renamed themselves, to mark their “ideological” or spiritual transformation, as when Saul became Paul after his experience on the road to Damascus.

In Rome, Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus or Caesar Augustus eventually (the style Augustus Princeps was bestowed upon him by the Senate of Rome in 27 B.C., when he was 35).

In early mediaeval Spain, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar is given the name El Cid (from the Arabic for “lord”, sidi) to crown his mission. Likewise, in the Christian monastic tradition, the postulant chooses or is given a new name, often one referencing a deceased saint. The same is true of religious leaders such as bishops, metropolitans, popes etc. Gandhi is called Mahatma Gandhi, same surname but elevated by the new forename.

In literature, we see that the hero who fights perceived evil, particularly if doing so covertly, takes a new name, a nom de guerre: the Scarlet Pimpernel was an early example, followed by many another, right up to the “superheroes” of the 20th and 21st centuries: Superman, Batman, Spiderman etc.

In the field of espionage too, we see that sometimes a secret agent who becomes a known character is given or takes a name: the White Rabbit, the Welshman etc. Mata Hari…

Politically, the same applies: the anarchist Bruno Traven (itself a pseudonym) was known in early 1920s Germany as der Ziegelbrenner (“the Brickburner”). Better known were the noms de guerre of the Bolshevik leadership: Lenin (V.I Ulyanov), from the river Lena; Stalin (I.V. –or JV– Djugashvili), from “steel”, Trotsky (L.D. Bronstein), a Russification or Polonization of the original Jewish (Yiddish/German-style) name. In fact, most Bolshevik leaders took on longlasting pseudonyms, in a macabre aping of those old religious orders: Scriabin became Molotov (from molot, “hammer”), though he was a rare real ethnic Russian. Most of the Bolsheviks who changed name did so partly to disguise their otherwise all-too-obvious Jewish identity. Having said that, the new names of the leaders also often spelled out the new strong self-image: “Steel”, “Hammer” etc. [Stalin and Molotov were among the few non-Jews].

Though German National Socialists were not generally given to changing name and in fact disapproved on principle, some did so temporarily, while on the run or on special missions. Hitler himself used the nom de guerre “Wolf”, Herr Wolf”, and “Herr Doktor Wolf” while evading State agents in Munich after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Hitler himself did often say that it was fortuitous that his name was Hitler and not, as it perhaps might have been, Schicklgruber

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Ancestry].

“Heil Sch…!” you get my meaning. Names are important. Many a showbusiness personality has achieved fame and fortune only after changing name. Beyond even that, the use of “transformational vocabulary” can change, with the name, the sense, the sense of mission or purpose. Thus, the U.S. combined operation “Desert Shield” of 1990 became “Desert Storm” of 1991, as defence turned to attack.

The use of a particular name for a political party or group can energize it and make it stand out: En Marche!, le Front National, the Angry Brigade, Leave and so on.

An allied aspect is that of the Invocation, a word or form of words designed to link the material with the spiritual, to send up prayer or supplication, and to bring down power to the Earth. “Heil!” is an obvious example. “Heil Hitler!” which eventually (in just a few years) replaced the likes of “Good day” and “goodbye” in, at least official, Germany. Hitler’s speeches are often very well-written, erudite, informed, but the power of Hitler’s oratory was not founded on its content, but on something above and beyond content. Yet that still required words as a basis.

When we consider how to pull the UK and Europe out of the mess into which it is sliding, we must consider the sacred power of the Word and use it.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotsky_(surname)

The Way Forward for Social Nationalism in the UK

The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives.”

Those words of Clausewitz are often taken to encapsulate the essence of strategy. How are they applied to the socio-political question in the UK (England, primarily) from the social-national point of view?

“The Decisive Point”

The “decisive point” or objective, ultimately, is the formation of a British ethnostate as an autonomous part of a Eurasian ethnostate based on the Northern European and Russian peoples. However, within the UK itself and before that, the objective must first be drawn less widely, as political power within the UK’s own borders.

The Gaining of Political Power in the UK

The sine qua non of gaining the sort of political power required is the existence of a political party. More than that, a party which is uncompromizing in its wish to entirely reform both State and society.

History is replete with examples of states which have seemed not even just powerful but actually eternal, yet which have collapsed. Ancient Rome, though perhaps not a “state” in our modern sense, is perhaps the one most embedded in the Western consciousness. More recently, the Soviet Union and its satellite states. In between those two examples (but among many others) we might cite the pre-1914 European “settlement” based on the empires and kingdoms which collapsed during and after the First World War: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire.

The main point to understand is that, in situations of crisis on the large scale, it is not the political party with the most money, erudition, developed policy or even membership that comes out on top, but the party with the most will or determination. That means the most disciplined party under the leadership of the most determined leader.

It is better to have a party consisting of only 1,000 which is tightly-disciplined and self-disciplined than one of 100,000 which is a floundering mass of contradictions. When a national crisis occurs, such as 1917-1921 in Russia or 1929-1933 in Germany (to take two obvious examples), the people instinctively turn to the party perceived to be strongest, not strongest in numbers, money, intellectuality or number of members, but strongest in the will, the will to power.

The Party

A party requires leadership, members, ideology, policy and money. Everything comes from the leadership and the membership, in symbiosis. In practical terms, this means that policy is open to free discussion, up to the point where a decision is made as to what is party policy as such. Also, it has to be understood that a party requires money as a tank or armoured car requires fuel. To have endless fundraising drives, hunts for wealthy donors etc demeans and dispirits the membership. Having a “tithing” system renders such other methods unnecessary. The members sacrifice an agreed amount of their post-tax income, such as 10%. The party organizes itself and its message to the general population using that money.

As a rule of thumb in contemporary Britain, it might be said that, on average, each member will provide something like £2,000 per year to the party. A party of even 1,000 members will therefore have an annual income of £2 million, enough to buy not only propaganda and administration but real property as a base. By way of comparison, the Conservative Party in 2017 has an income of about £3.5 million.

Elections

It must be understood that elections are only one way to power, but they are indispensable in England, for historical-cultural reasons. A party which cannot win elections loses credibility rapidly once that party is large. In the initial phase, no-one expects the party to win Westminster or even local council seats, but after that, it has to win and so grow, or deflate as the BNP did and as UKIP is doing now. The problem small parties have under the English electoral system is that a Westminster seat can be won only with, at a minimum, about 30% (and usually 40% or more) of votes. The insurgent party is in danger of spreading itself too thinly, in every way. UKIP’s history illustrates the point: in 2015, about 12% of votes cast (nearly 4 million), but only the one MP with which they, in effect, started. The answer is to concentrate the vote. That is done by concentrating the members and supporters of the party geographically.

Safe Zones

I have blogged previously about the creation of safe zones and especially one primary safe zone (possibly in the South West of England). If the members and supporters of the party gradually relocate into that zone or zones, many things become easier, from protection of buildings, meetings, exhibitions etc to the election of councillors and MPs. I have also blogged about the magnetic attraction such a safe zone might exercise over people in the UK as a whole.

The Decisive Time

The “decisive time” cannot be predicted. In Russia, Lenin (at the time in foreign exile) thought that the 1905 uprising was “the revolution”. He was wrong. He also thought that the first (February, old-style) 1917 uprising was not “the” revolution. He was wrong again. It was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution

Lenin had to hurry back to Russia (arriving belatedly in April 1917, old-style) not only to try to take control (he failed in that and had to foment his own coup d’etat in October 1917) but to avoid being sidelined and so becoming an almost irrelevant footnote to history.

In Germany after 1929, Hitler likewise was not in control of events. In the end, economic near-collapse and political turmoil gave him the chance to win enough votes (33% in 1932) to form a coalition government which led on to full power in 1933, after the NSDAP achieved a higher –though still minority– popular vote (44%).

In other words, both Lenin and Hitler were the pawns of Fate while striving to be the masters of events. They had something in common though: highly-disciplined and ideologically-motivated parties behind them.

Practical Matters

At the age of 60, the last thing which is convenient for me is to form a political party. I have no need of such an activity as a hobby or absorbing interest. I am coming to the idea out of duty, out of a realization that something has to be done and out of an understanding that something can be done, if Fate concurs. I am not willing to compromize on overall ideology or on the way things are organized within such a party. I shall only establish a political party (which may become a movement) if it can be done on a serious basis. However, there is a need for a party to speak for the British people and there is a widening political vacuum in which such a party can thrive and grow.

Update 15 April 2019

In the two years since I wrote the above blog post, my view has not changed, that is

  • a political party and movement is needed;
  • there is at present no such party;
  • such a party can only be established if done on a serious basis;
  • I myself still do not have the means with which to found such a party; but
  • a political party and movement is —still— needed…

Update, 8 March 2023

All factors mentioned in the previous update remain the same.