Mass Mobilisation 3. The Battle for the Streets

Much traditional libertarian activism has been focused upon Academic pursuits. This is not surprising since the leaders of the Libertarian movement tended to be Academics themselves, interested in spreading libertarian propaganda through traditional academic methods i.e. publish a pamphlett, speak at a conference or issue press releases.

The NLF is not an Academic forum for genteel debate on the fine detail of nationalist and libertarian theory but rather a physical organisation one aimed at achieving political power. One key area that the National Libertarian Front will contest is what may be euphemistacly termed the Battle for the Streets.

When we refer to a battel for the streets, the NLF speaks of the use of the street demonstration as the keystone in NLF propaganda. Unlike other ideologies nationalism has developed the organising of a public meeting, holding a demonstration or a simple march through a city centre into a fine art. In a certain sense this is due to the fact that it is a strategy of last resort as nationalists and libertarians are denied access to the media. Only through the march, the demo and the party rally can the NLF pierce the media blackout and deliver its message directly to the mases.

Unfortunately such is the intolerance of our ruling class towards opposition that any recognisably nationalist demonstration will be denied its freedom of speech and association and be targeted for destruction, by far leftist groups such as UAF. These groups partly funded through tax payers money will try to use violence and intimidation to prevent these protests from taking place. The police acting upon directives from the Ruling Class will rarely be present in sufficient force to deter this from happening.

Though any nationalists should be able to organise any march that isn't violently opposed. Such dramatic tensions whipped up by the hostility of the far-left indirectly helps serves the nationalist cause, as the media will flock to a newsworthy story like moths to a flame piercing the media blackout. Invariably the media will attempt to paint the NLF in the most negative light, the NLF will still be able to reap immense propaganda value by registering in the minds of the masses that the NLF not only exists and is important enough not only to command TV and Newspaper attention but also that it stands opposed to the increasing unpopular status quo. The thus generated by such a demo will encourage some amongst the masses to actually seek out what the party really stands for and of them a few may become involved as activists in the movement.

Such a strategy of tension must be repeated, the NLF must constantly be generating newspaper headlines in the mainstream media. Any news item however distorted has great propaganda value, not least because it because it is being discussed at all which implies a level of strength and organisation that makes the prospect of NLF political victory possible.

English Defence League

In the past few months a new nationalist force has emerged and been reported by the media.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/11/english-defence-league-chaotic-alliance

Despite the best efforts of the controlled media to paint this as being directed by sinster 'neo-nazi's' from behind the scenes, the English Defence League appears to be very much a spontaneous uprising with activists drawn from the English Working Class. It's ideology is pretty threadbare and it was formed in reaction to the hatefull protests of Islamic Fundamentalists, which denigrated servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, supported terrorism and demanded that those who insulted Islam be beheaded. The English Defence League then began confrontational marches of the type that were once the monopoly of the National Front and old BNP.

From the NLF perspective what is noticeable is that they have largely proved the point that the NLF argues in regard to activism. All it took was a handfull of ordinary people with little or no resources to agree to meetup in a certain spot and march. The trouble that was stirred up by the quickly attracted the media who gave them far more publicity than they would if they had merely spent the afternoon quitely leafleting the town.

Naturally the reports are highly distorted, one should be very skeptical of the claims of violence committed by the EDL activists. It is more likely that such violence has been greatly exagerated and not the intention of the organisers, but rather committed by a football holigan element who attached themselves to the protest. The end result is, however, the same free publicity for the English Defence League in the print and TV media. Such publicity will attract more marchers and generate more lurid headlines until the movement finally implodes due to its own organisational and ideological weakness.

That said the English Defence League suffers from many weaknesses that will be its undoing. Firstly its ideology is clearly undefined being merely an expression of anti-islamism, which will I suspect lead it to being infiltrated by both agent provocers and other more ideological nationalists, who will form hostile factions which will rip the movement apart in short order. Secondly without keeping it members and supporters disciplined with a formal organisation it will attract the hooligan element who will discredit the movement and repel quality activists.

Mass Mobilisation 2. Democratic Centralism

When advocating a party organisation, the NLF does not seek to replicate traditional mainstream party machines in which the bulk of its focus is on winning elections. The party mechanism is usefull in terms of maintaining ideological consensus and ensuring its activisits work together towards a common goal with the effect that their results of their co-operative enterprise are greater than if they acted alone. The party's involvement in elections will be limited for reasons of resources, serious campaigns cost money that is not available and any attempt at campaigning at a national level, without such results will result in demoralising failure. For example, demoralisation set in amongst the members of the National Front following the 1979 general election when all its candidates lost their deposit. That said the NLF will concentrate its resources on the local level, where is there a reasonable chance of success with a view to raising the profile of the party and gather recruits.

The NLF will not be an election focused party machine but will engage in not only intellectual battle against the ideas propping up the current regime but will also engage in what is euphemastically known as the 'struggle for the streets', engaging in extra-parliamentary activism such as grass roots community activism, marches, demonstration and entryism. It is through such activities that the NLF will create the conditions that will enable it to take power.

Mass Mobilisation 2. Democratic Centralism

Finally the NLF needs a formal structure, not only do party meetings need to be structured formally, but the party organisation should also be similarly structured. The communist party, for instance, has a model the NLF should do well to emulate. The smallest unit of organisation in the Communist Party is a cell, which is made up of 3 people, then comes the party branch, then the regional organisation, then the national organisation. The smaller groupings will meet more frequent and the regional and national groups will hold congresses every few years, when they adopt resolutions and make amendments to the constitution and party program. As in a normal party the rank and file membership elects delegates to the regional and national congresses.

Though it may seem presumptious of a small fledgling organisation like the NLF to begin by setting up regional and national organisations, but it is important to have the skeleton structure in place and all mass movements have begun with a handfull of people. For instance the at the first Bolshevik party conference only nine delegates showed up and and a central committie of five were elected. (Those five were arrested a month later by the Russian secret police).

Mass Mobilisation 2. Democratic Centralism

3. Formal Meetings - A Meeting should be conducted in an orderly and efficient manner and governed according to a set procedure. This set procedure is known as 'parliamentary procedure' (Regardless of whether the meetings are held in parliament or not.) These rules specify that meetings must have a chairperson, a secretarty, minutes, an agenda. The reason for this is not to strangle the NLF in bureacracy but that real politics is a time consuming buisness and and mainly consists of work undertaken to support the conduct of the political party, such as fund raising, the creation and distibution of propaganda and tasks to obtain facilities where the party can do its work i.e. to book a meeting room for a bar for a party assembly. Such bueracratic procedures are put in place to ensure that plans are put in place and then executed and the meeting does not degenerate into a purely social event. This is not to denigrate the value of socialising but it should not get in the way of generating positive activism. Better a meeting passes swifty and all outstanding points are addressed and then the committe members have the rest of the evening to drink and socialise at the bar.

A futher purpose of the formal meeting is to promote openess and accountability, any grievances can be put on the record and be dealt with through legitimate channells and not through gossiping. Having things put on record ensure that goals can be measured and ensure agreements on ideological positions and organisational changes are voted on and put in place. Minutes can also help identify potential trouble makers in the party ranks intent on sowing division in the party. Through evidence of the minutes of meetings a case can be built up
and presented to the party's disciplinary committe and deal with the individual in question. Having a formal disciplinary process is more important for a nationalist orientated party as time and time again Nationalist parties have been infiltrated by hostile elements intent on wrecking these parties. These must be identified early and thrown out of the party before they are able to do any serious damage. It should be pointed out the infiltrator works much better in a cloudy and uncertain party atmosphere where everything from ideological positions, the nature of activism and the vetting of new members is done without reference to a strict and defined process. Finally in any political organisation that handles money financial transparency is essential, every penny must be accounted for and subject to examination by the membership.

It should be pointed out that in keeping these records that security will be paramount. No potential damaging personal information should be released in them and it may also be in the interest of the NLF to keep certain dealings more secret than others. The NLF for instance will not publish the address of a meeting rooms it has organised in advance and will instead inform the relevant members on a one on one basis.

Mass Mobilisation 2. Democratic Centralism

Once a handful of regulars have known and socialised with each other long enough and have built up the bonds of trust a meeting shall be arranged to establish the constitution of the political party. The NLF is to be a party and not a lobby group, scholarly journal or such like.

In nationalist and libertarian ciricles there is widespread division and faction over ideological matters and much energies are wasted in unproductive arguments amongst the faithfull, which rarely if ever result in consensus. The NLF will avoid factionalism by imposing consensus from the start by ensuring the political party is governed according to the principles of democratic centralism.

Democratic Centralism owes its political origins to Lennin's particular brand of marxism. Its keys tennants are listed below:

1. Ideological Consensus - The NLF develops its ideological principles through vigorous debate which are then adopted by formal democratic vote and then sticks to it through thick and thin. In the inagaural party conference the delegates of the party elected by the party. These delegates then through debate will adopt a constitution, a program (which sketches the aim of the group over the long-term) and resolutions. In future congresses, constitutions and programs are ammended by votes from the delegates - paragraphs are struck out, new ones added and new resolutions aopted.

Once this has been done, each NLF member agrees to abide by the program and the resolution, when representing the NLF's position to non-members, even if the individual member does not personally agree with the position. (This is a common enough phenomenon in mainstream, liberal democratic political parties: the MP in the Labor or Liberal Party has to support the position adopted by the party membership at the time, even if he does not agree with it, and refrain from criticising it in the public eye). Public criticism of the NLF by a member on any of its points should result in disciplinary action.

2. Members and Cadres - Only paid up, card-carrying members who chose to subject themselves to discipline of the party are truly members. Anybody else is merely a sympathiser. Furthermore there must also be gradations of memberships i.e. the Cadre who devotes more time to the party than a member who does nothing apart from pay his dues on time should be afforded a greater voice in how the party is run.

Mass Mobilisation 1. The First Step

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao-Tzu

The next series of articles will look at how a handful of libertarian nationalists can utilise their limited resources and skills to mobilise a mass movement to achieve political power as the purpose of politics in the final analysis is to organise enough people to take control of the state to implement their political agenda.

All ideological movements must face this problem but for nationalists the problem of mass mobilisation is unique as they must labour under threat of persecution. They are denied many of the rights of free association and free expression that other political groups take for granted. They are granted no access to the media, cannot meet in the open and known nationalist activists who are identified by the authorities through the seizure of party lists are formally and informally hounded from their jobs.

At present most nationalists are isolated 'keyboard commandos'. They exist only in cyber space and most likely have never met another nationalist face to face, let alone been active in a nationalist organisation. To some extent this is also true of the average British libertarian layman who's activist potential remains untapped because no appropriate means of agitation are provided for him by the libertarian leadership who tend to concentrate on intellectual endeavors which are naturally the preserve of a professional elite rather than that of your libertarian layman.

In the internet age most nationalist and libertarians become acquainted with these ideologies via the internet. The blog, the email and the online forum have revolutionised political activism by circumventing the traditional political gatekeepers, but barriers continue to exist that prevent activism. The nationalist scene has its fair share of neo-nazi's freaks and weirdos which no libertarian nationalist would want to be associated with yet one is expected to take a leap of faith in joining existing nationalist organisations without ever having scrutinised the people who comprise the organisation. With state agents actively trying to penetrate and derail these organisations it is not surprising that many nationalists are unwilling to come out from behind the keyboard for fear that by joining such an organisation they might be opening a Pandora's box, which will come back to haunt them.

This psychological barrier can only be broken down by building up trust and friendship first. Before any decision is taken to participate in formal organisational activism, be they attending a conference, canvassing or attending a demonstration our prospective nationalist must know and come to trust the men and women of the organisation he is thinking of joining: this can only be done by getting to know them on a social basis.

This requires libertarian nationalists to arrange to meet each other offline on an informal basis. They would, using the medium of the internet, agree to meet at a bar on a certain date and time and do nothing - just sit, drink and talk. There would be no roll call, no chair person, no public speeches and no secretary taking minutes. There would be no structure, the libertarian nationalists are free to talk about whatever they wish, invariably they will talk about politics but they might talk about sport or films. There is only one rule and that is nobody must exert pressure on another to do any kind of activism that he doesn't want to do.

At the end of the evening the libertarian nationalist will likely have come away with a positive impression of his fellow libertarian nationalists at the meet up and he will agree to another meet up again in perhaps 4-6 weeks time. Though it may initially appear that little constructive action has been achieved through these repeated meetings the bonds of friendship and trust are built up, which any political movement requires to thrive. Over time the numbers who attend these meet ups should hopefully increase to a few dozen regulars who know and trust each other enough to form an embryonic activist organisation to engage in offline activism to stimulate a mass movement.

For security purposes the dates and times of these meetings would not be publicised in any online forum or blog. The reason is to prevent any disruption by Antifa like groups, for example , a National Anarchist blogger refers to such an incident where such an informal meeting was infiltrated by the Antifa.

A nationalist friend of mine once organised a meeting of nationalists
through the Internet. Half a dozen would meet each other, some for the first
time, at a barbecue in a public park. The event was publicised in an online
chat forum for nationalists - including the place where the barbecue was to
take place, and the time. The actual meeting went ahead well enough, and the
nationalists in attendance, all young men, got along.

Naturally, an Antifa activist managed showed up and managed to pass
himself off as a nationalist and infiltrate the group. He took photos, as did an
Antifa pair standing some distance away. The photographs, and even some footage
of the gathering, were splashed across an Antifa website in the next few days,
along with mocking commentary. Understandably, the nationalists in
attendance were mortified, and some of the more inexperienced ones went
underground and never came back to the scene.

Anybody reading this blog interested in meeting up with this author and other like-minded libertarian nationalists in the United Kingdom should send an email to: kjerico142@googlemail.com Remember the longest journey begins with the smallest step.