Daily Archive

He who commits violence first loses moral authority and legitimacy in society.  We are entering a period where the provocateurs on both the Left and Right will be doing all they can to make the other side resort to force and violence.  We, in our fight to save our culture, must always be sure never to blindly react to the other sides provocations – the target’s reaction is the action – is how  Saul Alinsky’s The Rules for Radicals phrases it.  We must stop – breathe – and see the contrived decision dilemma we are being maneuvered  into.

It’s tough to do in the heat of the moment, but it must be done in order to avoid the reactionary outcomes that ultimately push the other side to victory.  Manifestos (that advocate for violence) are part of the path of blind reaction and are almost never justifiable in a peaceable society.

“A manifestor’s engagement with violence, whether it’s aggressive language sharpied onto the body, or the gunning down of children, is a premeditated rhetorical act. It’s what makes the manifesto itself a performance as opposed to a static object: it possesses the power to communicate something of its own and stop an audience in its tracks. An act of violence amplifies the ethos of the writer and the legitimacy of their cause, adding flesh and bone (often literally) to mere words. Without the rhetorical effect of direct violence, the manifesto is just a literary rant.

Manifestos are not your usual five-paragraph essay, or editorial thinkpiece or essayistic article like the one I’m writing at the moment. They’re not even measured, posturing political speeches; as Breanne Fahs notes in ‘Writing with Blood’ (2019), manifestos are ‘wild-eyed calls to arms intended to provoke radical social change, often moving at breakneck speed and invoking the collective “we” as they envision a new world order.’ There is always a dimension of spleen and spite, an ‘us’ vs ‘them’, or ‘it’, or ‘everything’. And it all has to go. Be it up in flames or surgically removed, the manifesto’s target will have a fight on its hands.

Here is the explosive recipe we’re working with as we approach the manifesto’s present-day incarnation:

1. Demonstrate a burning desire for change.
2. Identify a clear target of blame.
3. Remain committed to the intended goal, no matter how extreme the proposed solutions.
4. Experiment with style and form for the sake of impactful rhetoric, expressivity and wresting attention from the reader.
5. Promote ideas off the page through direct action.

A contemporary equivalent of the traditional manifesto doesn’t really exist. Did its recipe disappear? Has it been replaced by a new one? Not quite. It’s migrated online, reverted to the shadows, stretched like smooth taffy across the ether to grow less identifiable with each click. The modern manifesto is no longer a singular, blatant document touting a megaphone, but an underground extremist network fronted by professional interests.”