Nomos London: Wants and Needs

Practical Dissent

This speech was originally presented at Nomos London on October 29th 2022

The theming of these events has been structured very deliberately: first it was the idea of basic community without which nothing can coalesce. The second was about creating a vanguard from that community, finding leaders and specialists within our own circles and not looking outside for answers and saviours. The work in these two areas is still ongoing, but the pattern and message can be boiled down to this: Crawl, Walk, Run. 

We’ve heard from our speakers this evening about defining who we are as a prerequisite for knowing what “we” want, and we’ve heard various ideas regarding the current political situation and the visions that could plausibly extract us from it. But “what we want” needs a starting point, a place where everyone can pick up a shovel and start digging us out. 

The simple reality is this: the basics must be in place for any movement, of any kind, to succeed. There is an idea becoming thankfully fashionable that in many areas of politics the ideology does not matter, or is in many ways not genuine. I want to strip much of the ideology away for a few moments and ask “What do we want?” in a less philosophical and more literal sense. 

First of all I would caution in the eternal words of the prophet Jagger: “you can’t always get what you want.” Or at least, not without putting in the leg work. 

There is an abundance of pie in the sky ideals and high minded discussions around faith. Ideology and terminology. This is entertaining but ultimately most of it is wasted time and energy at this stage. Pagan, Christian–and yes even Muslim, Shik and Hindu I’ve met them in these circles and they’re as pissed off at the rampant degeneration in their own cultures as you are. 

There must be a degree of flexibility—and a degree of pragmatism—for a movement to make it out of the embryonic stages and out of a sea of bickering. These nascent stages are going to be messy and imperfect, but these growing pains are normal in any group. We will have to put aside some of the more grandiose ideas whilst we grapple with the reality; before we can get anything we want, we should first ask what we need.

Well, what do we need? This is not merely a rhetorical question posed to get you to think, I do have some concrete answers about things we can do right now that often go neglected. 

I believe what we need is staring us in the face, it's demonstrated every time there is a climate protest or “free speech” court case. There are clear lessons to be learned from how the establishment undertakes its supposedly grassroots activism that show what you need to become a successful movement. Before any sign was lifted, before any painting was covered in soup the NGOs quietly got their ducks in a row. There are four key foundational area: 

Monetary: the first concern is obviously monetary. We are happy to take a risk booking these events and paying for large aspects of them before a single ticket is sold because we believe in what we are doing, but having an entity that could receive applications for funding and issue money based on feasibility of an idea would make planning events like this a hell of a lot easier and less stressful. Even just an ad-hoc group of people who we know can be tapped for resources

If we wanted to set up a “Just Stop Oil” event for example, you can be handed a budget in a matter of minutes from the billionaire backed “Climate Emergency Fund.” What is billed as spontaneous political action never is, this is a mistake I see so many make when looking to our own circles. Action simply does not spring forth from magical people power, it must always have some degree of money behind it to take shape. Before a single hand could be glued to a road, before a single painting could be splattered with soup, those activists were plied with hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

There is of course a huge amount that has been done already by volunteers and people with specialist skills in certain areas, but that is unsustainable for those people long term and more a way of saving money than a primary method of operating. What must be done will take resources, and a hell of a lot of them.

Legal: lawyers are of course expensive. This is why I put “monetary” first. Black Lives Matter for example was able to have a small number of hardcore activists go through a revolving door of repeated arrests to continue showing up and causing violence and disruption though their use of virtue signalling lawyers and deep pockets for bail funds. In the US, district attorneys were put in place specifically friendly to this revolving door approach. This represents extremely advanced lawfare, but the basic forms are already something successfully engaged in by political dissidents in isolated cases. Despite ultimately not being granted a final appeal, Count Dankula, Marcus, who helped us host our Manchester event was able to undertake stringent defence with the help of gifted and motivated lawyers. The law will not always save you, but it can make the financial and social un-personing that the regime undertakes many times more costly. 

All of us would of course feel a lot safer coming to events like this if we knew–should our attendance be used against us in some way–there is a friendly group of legal experts ready to fight your corner and the resources in place to see it through. This is the certainty the “Just Stop Oil” protestors feel, as they have large bail funds and 24h access to legal help should they be arrested. The same is true for black lives matter and Antifa protests and activists. They have the legal personnel framework in place. 

Organizational: monetary and legal resources require a trusted body of people to allocate them. Figuring out who “we” are and who “we” trust with our money is a separate struggle, but to put any kind of basic plan into place–even if that plan is at first limited to emergency legal and financial assistance to people who find themselves being targeted–there must be a group of people who make up a tangible organization with correct financial and legal status. Some may see this as a lightning rod for being attacked, 

Practical: This is a bit of a catch-all, but only once the money, legal protection and basic organizational structure are in place can people have some breathing room for the practical organization needed for political action. It could be as simple as more regular meetups and events with some funding and extra help surrounding them. Discussion and outreach in the real world on  a more regular basis are the next step in putting any part of “what we want” into action. 

These are not easy things to accomplish. They require trust, investment, competence and patience and they require it in a consistent manner over the span of decades. But the time to start building is now. Others have tried and failed to do this, but limiting scope and trying to build the boring basics somewhat quietly limit the risks other organizations have exposed themselves to. 

These are the unglamorous aspects of political action but ones that come before ideology, they are agnostic to the minutiae of what you believe and step over many of the squabbles many people fear having. Practicality makes infighting more difficult, as what needs to be done in the immediate term comes into focus before we can even think about putting more high minded ideas into action.

This is of course not to say we must not gatekeep and maintain basic internal standards, I’d like to think that is a settled issue with the people in attendance. The clearing out aspect–and what is needed to achieve it–should supersede any differences beyond the overarching agreement on the basics. Ultimately we need to be a group of people willing to say “This is what makes you part of the group or not part of the group” and anything beyond that should be set aside in service of the immediate hurdles of making a dissident presence in the real world a reality. We cannot get what we want if there is no money behind it. We cannot get what we want if we are sued out of existence. We cannot get what we want if there is no organization there to represent it and we cannot get what we want if that organization cannot practically utilize the resources allocated to it.

We must not fall into the chicken and egg cycle of trying to settle every aspect of belief and interpretation before anything tangible can be built. I think tonight has proved we are already in agreement regarding the broad strokes of who we are and what we want. Many people see the size of the problems we face and see an insurmountable obstacle, but really what we have is a target so big it's difficult to miss. Do not despair, there is always something practical you can be doing to help that does not require a treatise on metaphysics or an encyclopedic knowledge of Roman battle formations. There is victory, but only if we stop arguing and start doing.