Of all the weapons wielded by our liberal opponents, the use of emotional blackmail remains, far and away, the most effective. It is an obvious truth that liberal ideology survives primarily based on retaining a full stable of victims. The grammar of victimology is the linguistic ocean in which the sharp-toothed minnows of social justice swim. It is the strategy contained in the Maoist proverb: “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.“

The typical reactionary response to this pernicious method has usually been ham-fisted and cavalier. Instead of fishing out the offenders, the reactionary attempts to drain the ocean. The results are almost always a special kind of graceless barbarity. Such was the case of Valeriano Weyler’s policy of “Reconcentrado” during the years leading up to the Spanish American War. Weyler, a militant Spanish Nationalist, was sent to Cuba to succeed where his predecessors had failed in crushing the rebellion.

After experiencing the frustrations and travails common to a traditional army’s engagement with guerrilla fighters, Weyler embarked upon an enterprising but ultimately disastrous course of action. In order to separate the guerrillas from their base of support, he ordered the mass relocation of the peasant population from the countryside to special camps, where they would be guarded and monitored by Spanish troops. The logic was to separate the guerrillas from the populace in order to begin the now much simpler process of eliminating them.

The idea seemed sound, and it proved to be effective on a tactical level; however, after some ostensible success, the camps began to produce consequences unforeseen by Weyler. The camps, which had originally been designed as islands of stability, were not prepared to properly supply the needs of such a large amount of people. Thus, the camps quickly devolved into dens of famine, squalor, and disease, which resulted in the death of over 200,000 civilians.

News of the camp’s conditions quickly spread throughout the world and howls of moral outrage emerged from horrified Spanish liberals. The news about the camps also managed to capture the attention of a rising regional power that eagerly perceived a noble pretext for territorial expansion. Consequently, Weyler’s plan, while theoretically and tactically sound, ultimately resulted in the failure of his campaign and the utter destruction and dismemberment of the Spanish Empire.

The desire for quick decisive victory, however admirable, often morphs into a proverbial hacking apart of the Gordian Knot. Such is the situation in which the outer right finds itself. The liberal establishment is controlled by a small elite comprised of ideologues and their financiers who command the allegiance of an impressive coalition of victimized groups: Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, women, as well as the varied and aggrieved sects of sexual deviants. It is from these groups of victims that they derive eager foot soldiers and, more importantly, their moral legitimacy.

All of the aforementioned victim groups are merely pawns that dissemble the pitiless class war waged against the white working class.

With respect to real world examples, we need to look no further than our own age of partisan politics. Evangelicals have for the last 30 years acted as the useful idiots and earnest footsoldiers of the GOP establishment. While clinging to empty promises of ending abortion and vows to halt the moral decay of the public square, Evangelicals willingly sat by as the very material conditions that permitted the flourishing of their cherished Middlebrow Christianity were destroyed by free trade and the obscenity of a hyper-capitalist popular culture.

Likewise, for the Democrats, the black underclass has filled the same niche of the useful idiot. In exchange for continuous handouts (in the form of lifetime social service benefits) and a series of never-ending affirmative action initiatives, blacks have become the most consistently loyal members of a party’s base in the history of American politics. This is, of course, in spite of the fact that it is the ideologies of their benevolent overlords, i.e., the perverse stupidities of free love and atomized individualism, which have so thoroughly devastated their communities. Walk through any black ghetto in the United States, and immediately you will be immersed in conditions so degenerate that the social mores of feral dogs seem genuinely aristocratic in comparison.

In a way that is analogous to the hostage taker, the liberal forces his opponents to either shoot through his human shield or do nothing. Either way, the liberal wins. Taking the first option, though emotionally gratifying and tactically successful, is almost always a strategic error. If you take the route of the ‘noble white knight’ and surrender to preserve your honor (let’s call this the conservative option) you also fail, just more quickly.

When confronted with such a novel and vexing problem, traditional societies frequently find themselves at a loss. The Japanese Samurai were caught completely flat footed against the arrival of modern firearms to their island. Even after the dissolution of the Samurai, the ghost of their obstinate refusal to change continued to haunt Japan. Many scholars have sought to identify the root causes of the Japanese Empire’s defeat in World War II. It has been typically suggested that the lack of natural resources or, perhaps, a foolhardy attack on Pearl Harbor is to blame. In contradistinction to these suggestions, a simpler and more elegant explanation is that the Japanese Soul, as channeled thru the Samurai code of Bushido, was always too fanatical and rigid to abide the adaptations required for victory.

The frequent banzai charges of Japanese troops throughout the Pacific theatre are frequently romanticized as heroic (if fanatical and futile) last stand actions; however, the actual record depicts Japanese commanders as using these charges as a primary strategic maneuver and not as a last ditch measure. This was done in spite of their possession of both modern military tactics and weaponry. At the battle of Tenaru (on Guadalcanal), a Japanese commander ordered 800 of his men to commit a banzai charge against a dug-in force of American Marines armed with rifles and machine guns. The ensuing slaughter resulted not only in a tactical disaster for the Japanese, but a strategic one, as well.

This fixation with preserving their traditional notions of Bushido cost the Japanese the war and their empire. The same thing will happen to any movement, unless it can diversify its lanes of attack and begin to think asymmetrically. Peruse any site on the outer right, and you’re almost certain to find articles extolling the lost virtues of the Roman Republic, the shrewd decision making of its political class, the discipline and iron willed resolve of its legionnaires, etc. Although it is not of itself a bad thing, this fixation upon Roman martial culture tends to obscure more than enlighten.

The Romans favored direct, attrition-inducing battles. They generally sought the complete annihilation or subjugation of their opponents in a head-on fight. This is, all too frequently, the way outer right propaganda can manifest itself. Yet, reducing NRx to just this element is a recipe for disaster and defeat.

The strategies most needed at present by NRx are not Roman, but rather Byzantine in character. Byzantine strategy favored intelligence and subterfuge over brute force, as is documented with precision in Edward Luttwak’s magisterial work The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, a book deserving attention from any student of strategy. Always outnumbered and with enemies on every side, the Byzantines were frequently forced to rely on alternatives to the ancient Big Stick approach of their forefathers. As Luttwak notes:

The strategic success of the Byzantine empire was of a different order than any number of tactical victories or defeats: it was a sustained ability, century after century, to generate disproportionate power from whatever military strength could be mustered, by combining it with all the arts of persuasion, guided by superior information. The current terms would be diplomacy and intelligence… To persuade foreign rulers and nations to fight against the enemies of empire—most difficult precisely in times of weakness when such persuasion was most needed—was only the most elementary application of Byzantine diplomacy, though easily the most important.

The ability to set their enemies against one another was the key to Byzantine success and will be key to any success NRx may experience in the coming years. The leftist coalition, though ostensibly quite daunting, is actually a very fragile organism, which, with properly applied pressure, can be easily torn apart. One example of how this can work in action is the work of the political philosopher Alexander Dugin.

Dugin, author of “The Fourth Political Theory,” and one of the most influential philosophers of Putin’s Russia, is a master of co-opting leftist grievances. He has actively allied himself with various traditionally leftist causes, such as Anti-Zionist and Anti-Salafist Muslims (including groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime itself) as well as Greece’s Syriza. As Dugin says:

So we are not on the Right or on the Left. We are against liberal postmodernity. Our idea is to join all the fronts and not let them divide us. When we stay divided, they can rule us safely. If we are united, their rule will immediately end. That is our global strategy. And when we try to join the spiritual tradition with social justice, there is an immediate panic among liberals. They fear this very much.

Few experiences are as gratifying as watching a meltdown in response to a ‘for effect’ accusation of racism. Whether the accusation is related to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or a U.S. gay rights initiative in Uganda (in which a rich global hegemon is attempting to force white Western values upon a nation of poor blacks), the results are always impressive. The reason why a somewhat tongue-in-cheek attack of this kind is so incredibly effective when employed against liberals is that it undermines the very narrative through which they understand their political actions. The whole conceit of the liberal is that he fights to remove the oppressive restraints that enslave the victim classes. When this narrative is reversed, and the liberal finds himself cast as the oppressor himself, a state of paralysis and confusion quickly emerges.

The beauty of co-opting the culture of victimhood is that, if effectively carried out, it not only provides an effective rhetorical tool but also a host of new allies. Imagine being able to watch a group of Black Nationalists deface a progressive Brooklyn neighborhood full of effete white hipsters as a protest against the racist policies of gentrification. Or perhaps a group of veiled Muslim women confronting a group of white, upper middle class feminists over the white privilege that is implicit in their calls for female equality. The possibilities are endless.

This, then, should become our aim: (1) establish productive dialogues with vulnerable and underserved members of the liberal coalition; (2) adopt their grievances and slowly peel them away from the herd.

It’s time to stop worrying and fight like a Byzantine. It’s time to learn to love the culture of victimhood.