You’ll often hear that the masses have no ideology, but I’m here to disabuse you of that notion. As observed by the great Arab political scientist Osama bin Laden, when people see a weak horse and a strong horse, they back the strong one. An appeal to the masses can only succeed when coming from the strong horse. In other words, the masses back a winner. This has nothing to do with “mindset,” mind you, but with the capacity to win, which is more often than not a product of physical, measurable categories. So, yes, the masses do have an ideology. It’s called strong-horseism.
The strong horse gallops across the political and global landscape and lesser beasts tremble. The strong horse cannot be ridden, bridled, yoked, or indeed destroyed. The strong horse can pull heavy loads and run great distances, but only if he chooses to do so; his strength is its sovereignty. The strong horse gorges himself on the best of foods and is bred to the finest mares. In the horseracing context, everyone wants to bet on the strong horse because victory is certain, as are payoffs, even if small due to the overwhelming odds.
Moving back to the arena of politics, the payoffs for supporting the strong horse are small because the strong horse doesn’t really need your support, but at the very least victory is certain. The strong horse does not forget his supporters, even if he does not really need them. When the strong horse gallops, the masses cheer. When the strong horse bites and tramples them, the masses reel and flee, but always come back to him; their fearful and weak nature drives them to venerate his strength. The strong horse can be of any color or breed, it doesn’t matter; what matters is that he is a strong horse.
The weak horse, by contrast, can barely be heard. He trembles when the strong horse passes by. He is ridden, bridled, yoked, and always under threat of being destroyed. Even in his enslavement, he is pathetic, unable to pull heavy loads or run fast. He is regularly beaten and poorly fed. He is not allowed to spread his weak seed to the mares, and may even be castrated to keep his temperament under control. The weak horse, if even allowed to enter the race, will face overwhelming odds and usually be used to hoover up the punters’ bets — the money of those who naïvely think that lady luck smiles equally upon strong and weak horses alike. The weak horse has no support, but even if he had it, what would he do with it? More importantly, what can he offer his supporters except the agony of defeat? When the weak horse trots along, the masses either ignore him or jeer. If he somehow finds the wherewithal to attack, he is punished mercilessly. The masses hate the weak horse and barely tolerate him, really.
Hold on, you tell me. This is not ideology. It’s not intellectually justified, not complex, not wide-reaching. It’s barely a step above a donkey following a carrot and running from a stick. Be careful, I say to you, I will not tolerate insults towards our donkey brothers. Claiming that the masses are a step above the donkey is a grave insult to that breed of animals replete in honorable stoicism. It is difficult to understand for the erstwhile nationalist who is used to imagining the common people as quaintly noble, but we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in today if men thought of more than their bellies (that they be full) and their backs (that they be relatively unscarred by the lash). Oh, sure, the common man will say that he generally agrees with dissident talking points, but when push comes to shove, he will reliably support the strong horse because he is completely awed by his strength. Power dominates the psychology of the masses, who more often than not content themselves to live in its shadows, and indeed erase the very idea of things beyond the parameters that power has set. You’d really have to be crazy to go against power.
Now for an unpleasant truth. We have to understand something as nationalists: We are the weak horse. Our power cannot be generated from the masses because the masses flock to our enemies, who are the strong horse. Indeed, the weight of the masses is on their side, no matter how much some Rightists — not necessarily nationalists — try to stoke popular rebellion or resistance against “the elite.” Indeed, these very theatrics, acting as if people power is behind nationalism or populism, is more or less a carnival act. Activists, commentators, and infotainers will act as if the great popular masses are behind them and that we’re on the verge of a revolution (“1776 will commence again!”). This is very profitable for the carnival barkers, but ultimately detrimental to our cause. These people pretend to be the strong horse and adopt his manner (or worse, “mindset”), stomp around, ride around Washington, DC in armored personnel carriers, beat their chests and howl at the Moon — but every once in a while, a strong horse must demonstrate his strength, and there are moments when strength cannot be faked.
After campaigning as a strongman in 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump governed like a whipped cur and a patsy for the Kushner crime family, pushing through Kim Kardashian’s decarceration plan, hiding in his bunker while BLM set America on fire, and then finally folding like a cheap lawn chair when the enemy dealt him a genuine blow with the 2020 election fraud (a blow he could have avoided by reforming electoral laws or running a stronger campaign). After thrashing around and declaring his overwhelming, Stalin-like power in the wake of the Groyper Wars, Nick Fuentes and America First collapsed in a heap after their ill-advised alliance with the failed Trump 2020 campaign took the wind out of their sails and the movement’s many maladjusted freaks came to the fore. After strutting around like an ‘80s movie villain for the better part of four years, Richard Spencer was reduced to becoming “CNN but racist” on Twitter, existing merely to poke holes in the more hare-brained dissident narratives. And, of course, the ultimate weak horse who pretended to be strong would be Vladimir Putin, who after 23 years in power exposed his regime’s weakness in Ukraine, where the Russia’s armed forces’ go-to strategy of using rapid maneuvers, intimidation, and posturing to bully enemies into surrendering failed in the face of concerted and courageous military resistance backed by a strong nationalist ideology.
When weak horses who pretend to be strong are exposed, the masses turn on them with a viciousness they never knew they had. The horse they once thought was strong intimidated and inspired them in equal measure; they were trampled, but worse, given false hope. For that, they will never forgive the formerly strong horse. Only by keeping up the appearance of being strong can that weak horse survive, but when it finds itself in a situation where only strength counts — political, military, physical, or even just moral or psychological, it’s very difficult to fake strength.
For the time being, nationalism is a weak horse. We do have the potential to one day become a strong horse, however. The way to do this is to attract quality people to our side — people whose ideology is not strong-horseism, but who can be turned to nationalist ideology. We need to build a coalition of people who support a cause not because it is strong or beneficial for them, but because they believe in it, consider it moral, and have devoted their lives to it. We need people who will support nationalism even if it is weak and who will sacrifice their own strength to make it stronger. In other words, we need people whose will cannot be overwhelmed by the strength of the strong horse, nor hoodwinked by the tricks of the carnival horse — the weak horse pretending to be a strong horse. We need people who will back the weak horse.
This is why it is imperative to build a moral case for nationalism and an ideological framework for interpreting the world. Part and parcel of this ideological framework will be a positive vision of what victory looks like, so that it will sustain our coalition in times of trouble and provide the hope we strive for in our time as the weak horse. Adherents of strong-horseism do not need a positive vision of the future; the very real and present strength of the strong horse dominates their mind’s eye. Carnival horse-backers likewise do not need a vision; they’ve been deceived into believing that they are already following a strong horse,that and the strong horse will bring them victory, so all they have to do is keep following. The emergence of our own cause — the weak horse, the overcoming of great and nearly impossible odds — is what sustains a movement even when its fortunes are low. We do not depend on victory; we will bring victory, though the heavens fall.
This is why it’s also very dangerous to abuse copium and hopium. When we suffer a loss, we must understand it immediately and integrate it into our framework. We have to ask ourselves why we lost, identify the core error, and remove it — or if it’s impossible or very difficult to remove it, minimize our exposure to this error. We must never deceive ourselves, like those who back carnival horses, of our horse’s true strength. If we are weak, we are weak — but let it make no difference to our commitment. We must know our enemies and know ourselves as well, and deceiving ourselves about either is fatal.
I’ve often criticized those who mock liberals as “weak,” pointing out that those weak libtards have been winning consistently for at least 250 years. Instead of deceiving ourselves, we must work toward removing weakness, or position ourselves so that this weakness does not matter. Our legitimacy does not come from strength, but from righteousness and conviction. We shall will our strength into being.