How to Leave the Movement
Edmund Blair Leighton, Farewell, 1922
What do you do if you believe that nothing in the world is more important than White Nationalism — that we are not just fighting for our race’s survival, but for all that is good and holy; indeed, for the very survival of life on Earth — and then you want to leave? Given the importance of the cause, you’d need a pretty good reason to quit, right?
But what if you want to leave to focus on your education, family, and career? What if you are just burned out and need a break? What if you are tired of dealing with pathological personalities and personal betrayals? What if you are leaving because you just don’t see how your engagement is accomplishing anything? Don’t these reasons seem selfish and trivial by comparison to the cause?
In my opinion, all of these are perfectly good reasons to take a break from movement activity or leave it altogether. But honestly, although you should have good reasons for everything you do, you don’t need to share your reasons with me. You don’t need my permission to leave. You can always leave no questions asked.
But you should say something, because if you just go silent, your friends and comrades will be worried about you. It is also demoralizing when people just disappear.
What does it mean to say that you can come and go from the most important movement in the world, no questions asked?
First, we need to talk about what being part of our movement really means. Since the movement is largely online propaganda, the most minimal sense of “joining” or “leaving” is simply logging on to consume online propaganda, and then logging off again. There are plenty of people who don’t want you to read this website. But you don’t need my permission to log in or out of our online spaces.
If you want to join different movement groups, of course, you will find entry and exit to be more difficult.
Can you help the movement by doing nothing but consuming online propaganda? Yes, you can.
Ideas matter. By reading Counter-Currents, you are changing your ideas, and eventually that will change your behavior. And if enough people do that, we can change the course of history.
But in the meantime, even if you are merely passively consuming “content,” you are helping. By reading our sites, you are generating “clicks” that help other people find the sites through search engines. At Counter-Currents, we also sell advertising, which helps us stay online. People pay us just on the chance that you will do something more than just passively consume information.
For every thousand people who visit this site, maybe a hundred of them do something more than simply read articles or listen to podcasts. They might share a link, post a comment, or click on an advertisement.
Some comments are profound. Some are dumb or annoying. But even an anodyne comment that nobody responds to can help foster a sense of community and boost people’s morale.
For every thousand people who visit this site, one of them will actually send money to it through a donation or book purchase.
I don’t know how many of our readers do anything in the movement IRL (“in real life”). But we are betting that the ideas you encounter here will influence your life in countless ways, from your conversation topics to your choice of a movie, a career, or a mate. If you see the world differently, you will act differently.
I would be delighted if, of the more than two million unique visitors who are likely to come here this year, more than 200 of them will actually attend Counter-Currents events.
Now, before you start thinking that the numbers are stacked against us, let me just say that the numbers have always been stacked against every radical political movement. But small, organized minorities have made revolutions before. Indeed, they are the only force that makes revolutions. The masses are always moved and steered by minorities.
Beyond that, these numbers are actually good, so first and foremost, I am grateful. But these numbers can also get better, so after I thank you, I want to encourage all of you to do more.
I am not, however, going to insult, badger, bully, or gaslight you — for the simple reason that I think our movement will grow best if we all allow each person to choose his own level of involvement and respect such decisions, while gently reminding everyone that we need to do more if we are going to win. Indeed, the idea that people can come and go, no questions asked, is just one implication of respecting people’s decisions about their level of commitment.
Let’s dispense with the idea that being part of the movement is an all-or-nothing proposition. If you are thinking of quitting, why not consider taking a vacation or cutting back instead? If you are thinking of quitting, why not just quit one group and join another instead?
There are movement groups that model themselves on boot camps, cults, or totalitarian political parties. These groups try to make it very hard to quit. They frame it as an all-or-nothing proposition. This doesn’t prevent people from quitting, of course. It just ensures that they quit in a noisy way, which makes it less likely for new people to join.
If movement membership is either all or nothing, more people are going to choose nothing rather than all. Thus it is self-defeating to frame things in this manner.
For many people today, being a White Nationalist is merely one more “extremely online” lifestyle, all of which have addictive aspects, which make them very difficult to quit. If your participation in the movement becomes an addiction, then it really does become an all-or-nothing choice. Again, this doesn’t prevent people from quitting. It merely ensures that they quit in a wrenching and permanent manner.
How, then, can we avoid turning the movement into just an online addiction?
This movement should not be your life. The movement is a more-than-full-time job for me, and still it is not my entire life. I have non-political friends and pastimes. If I didn’t, I would have burned out a long time ago. If you believe nothing is more important than serving our cause, you still need to take time off, or you will become useless to the cause.
Now let’s run through some of these supposedly trivial reasons for leaving. Again, as far as I am concerned, you need not give me any reasons. But if you were to give me these reasons, I would say the following, then respect any decision you make.
First, you want to focus on your family, education, and career. That is laudable. But if you feel that you need to leave the movement to do these things, you are mistaken. Even if you think that nothing is more important than the cause, the cause itself is served best by people who are well-rounded and excellent in all walks of life. If you lead an exemplary life, you will attract people to the movement, strengthen it, and ensure that you are in it for the long haul.
Political commitment should never be an excuse for a stunted and disordered life. If you need to scale back your commitments or take a break to work on yourself, you are working for the cause.
Second, you are burned out and need a break. Thank you for your service. Take a break and come back when you feel better. But in the future, to prevent burnout, you might want to strike a better balance between the movement and other aspects of your life. If you can’t bring yourself to do that for yourself, try doing so for the cause.
Third, you are tired of pathological people. I get it. But the entire movement does not consist of pathological people, so maybe you just need to associate with a better crowd.
Fourth, your engagement is not accomplishing anything. Even though you can help by merely consuming online content, even though you can also help by mere “shitposting,” you still don’t feel like you are accomplishing anything. It feels empty and pointless, a waste of time. Perhaps you yearn for IRL activism, especially group activism, but you are frustrated by the absence of political opportunities and by state repression of such groups.
My first thought is that maybe you should not quit but instead simply consider doing different things that are more productive or satisfying. My second thought is not to quit, but take time off to work on other aspects of your life. If there are no outlets for group activism at present, then consider focusing your efforts on self-improvement, mutual aid, or just enjoying one another’s company. Again, a movement that requires accomplished, well-rounded individuals should encourage such groups. And if political opportunities present themselves, you will have a tight network already in place that can spring into action.
If you make it difficult for people to change their levels of commitment, they will simply quit. If you make it difficult for people to take breaks, they will simply quit. If you make it difficult for people to quit, they will engineer dramatic breaks.
I have seen a lot of exits from the cause over the years, especially after Charlottesville. These exits have been either freely chosen or forced by circumstances like doxing. They have either been quiet or dramatic.
I believe that many of the dramatic exits took place because the person in question could not allow himself to just take a break for personal reasons.
If you believe that you can only leave our world-shaking and momentous cause for something even more world-shaking and momentous, you have a strong motive to feign some sort of dramatic conversion to a new worldview. Religious forms of apostasy are particularly attractive because there is a taboo on questioning their sincerity. I don’t subscribe to that taboo. In my book, the only bad reason for quitting White Nationalism is a conversion, real or feigned, to an anti-white worldview.
If the movement is an all-consuming cult or an addiction, then you can’t just take a break. You’ve got to wrench yourself away from it. If you want the break to be irrevocable, you will do something unforgivable. Thus I have encountered people who have engineered bitter personal breaks, betrayed good people to the enemy, and even race-mixed — all because they couldn’t allow themselves to just take a sabbatical.
This is why I am convinced that we will actually recruit and retain people better by being easygoing about entry and exit.
