I think we can safely state that antifa has horrible presentation. Most of its members look like they haven’t washed their hair in years. They undoubtedly smell, a disproportionate number of them have permanently disfigured their faces. And I think we can say the numerous acts of arson, the outright execution of Aaron Danielson, uncountable acts of defacing public property and more would go well beyond merely “bad optics.”
Meanwhile, those of us who are sane and who want a well-ordered society often invest a great deal of effort in making sure we have “good optics.”
What gives? After all, if members of an organized movement that literally undertakes summary executions and gleefully burns down businesses on the public street can return to their day jobs as public school teachers without incident, certainly a clean-cut law abiding young man should be able to throw a Roman salute without it constituting a life-destroying event. It’s a hand gesture, nothing more, and harms nobody. Yet those who get caught making it will be accorded fewer rights than even convicted pedophiles.
Such a warped hierarchy of values makes no objective sense. Kyle Rittenhouse, who clearly acted in self defense against armed violent attackers with prior felonious history, cannot raise money for his defense on major crowdfunding platforms, while those very same platforms cheerfully allow murderers, rapists and convicted child molesters to receive unlimited funding and exposure.
What’s going on?
At the most proximate level, it is a manifestation of something I’ve covered before: dynamic silence. Dynamic silence is the formalized practice of how people on the right are treated by a monolithic controlled media: if we do something wonderful, it is not mentioned. If we spit on the sidewalk because a gnat flew into our mouth, it makes front page news as a major “hate” incident that the mainstream is called upon to “disavow.”
That’s the proximate level. But it goes a level deeper.
The issue at hand is power, pure and simple. Those who have power can do what they wish and have it ignored or covered up, just as so many prominent politicians could fly to Epstein’s island, and the news would never mention it. If you don’t have power and become an annoyance, or present even the possibility of a threat, then even an act of CPR on a heart attack victim will be portrayed in a sinister light, if at all.
So the so-called “optics debate” is about something that, in a sane world, wouldn’t even matter. Optics, by definition, are superficial window dressing. What should matter is the content of the ideas being put forth.
Obviously, we do “judge books by their covers,” so if you want to make a strong case for something among sensible people, you probably shouldn’t look like an Antifa terrorist or drool overmuch. But what this is really about is defense. That is, “good optics” are intended to present a smaller “attack surface” to the enemy.
The phrase “attack surface” is used in computer security to describe the process of “hardening” a server. By default, when you install the operating system on a new server, that operating system will make available a large number of services accessible over the network. Even if these services are password protected, because all software has bugs, the more services that are running, the greater the odds of there being a bug that can be exploited by hackers. Anything with a public IP address usually experiences hundreds of hack attempts daily. Removing network services that are not needed to perform the server’s role is called “reducing the attack surface” of the server. Doing this reduces the odds of a successful hack.
So good optics are a purely defensive consideration. Good optics give the enemy — the culture hackers — a smaller attack surface, thereby reducing their odds of an exploit.
So why doesn’t Antifa and its allied organizations such as Black Block and BLM have to concentrate on optics and shrinking its attack surface?
The first reason is because, as I described, they are on the side of power. If power is on your side, those with power are not seeking to exploit every possible foible, including your dress code. You can even get away, in some cases, with murder.
But the second reason is something we can remedy: they are hackers, and we are not. Although this also applies in the computer sense, right now I am focused on the metaphorical application.
Consider the case of the school teacher who was doxed. Or the case of the engineer who was eagerly and joyfully pushed to suicide by journalists and Antifa activists. In both of these cases, “journalists” were literally paid to seek out every possible attack surface on these people, and then exploited whatever they could find to first uncover and then damage these people. It happens all the time. All day, every day. Just like the hackers who are constantly scanning IP addresses to find exploitable services. And so at least monthly we hear of some innocent person whose life is turned upside down for daring to think outside certain very narrowly prescribed boundaries.
And keep in mind, that IS the “crime” these hackers uncover: thinking outside their narrowly prescribed lines.
The only reason this is a problem at all is because these hackers are interconnected in a network such that “news” revealed by one is immediately covered by hundreds of other outlets until it is fully saturated, and this can be used to apply pressure that will destroy marriages, careers and lives. In other words, these hacks only have meaning because those hacks serve power.
And thus, if we were to expose the fact a certain journalist has genocidal views pertaining to European Americans, it would not harm them at all. They’d likely get a raise.
BUT, (metaphorical) hacking can work for us too, we just have to do it differently.
Hacking is a force multiplier.
The power of computer hacking is that it allows even one person who is poor and disempowered to hold entire organizations hostage and even collect funds from them. You can witness this with the now-pervasive ransomware attacks that have crippled billion dollar businesses, hospitals and even municipal governments. Almost invariably, the targeted institutions end up paying.
And the metaphorical hacking by our enemies allows an impotent, smelly, drug addled moral reprobate with no redeeming social purpose to destroy people with enormous potential to improve human well being. In this case, their force multiplier comes from interconnected media and connections to protest mobs.
But we can do the same sort of metaphorical hack.
As an example, let’s go back to the crowdfunding sites that had to de-platform Kyle Rittenhouse. I say “had to,” because that decision was made for them by their credit card processing company, CompanyX. (You won’t have to look hard to find who they are.) CompanyX has actually been behind the de-platforming of anyone to the right of Mao on sites ranging from GoFundMe to FundedJustice.
So, what can be done?
Here’s an idea.
We know that CompanyX determines who GoFundMe and FundedJustice will be able to raise money for.
I am quite certain it wouldn’t take much digging to find people who collected money via these platforms and either used that money to do something heinous in and of itself, or subsequently committed a heinous crime, including rape and murder.
They can be metaphorically “hacked” using a simple “This X proudly funded by CompanyX” meme campaign. Illustrate the victims, and then “This murder proudly funded by CompanyX” or “This child molestation proudly funded by CompanyX.” When you go to a retailer, ask if their credit cards are through CompanyX, if they are, tell them you can’t do business with a company that funds murder and rape.
Their power to de-fund … unwittingly demonstrated that their attack surface is literally everything they CHOOSE to enable funding, including criminal bail money that enables murders.
So if you are inclined to do a bit of digging, we can turn the bad optics around, leverage metaphorical hacking and transform what has been a strictly defensive position for us into an attack vector.
Now — remember all those pictures of Antifa arsonists who were arrested and turned out to be public school teachers? Pictures of burning buildings “This Arson Proudly Funded by the So-And-So School District.”
There are numerous ways to do this — the whole point is anywhere an entity exercises discretion against us, they expose that they have discretion, so anything they DO allow is something they allow by choice. And those choices represent their attack surface.
Tired of defense? Try some offense and have fun.