This is the first article in this new section for teaching nationalist activists how to participate in and grow grassroots nationalist activism. In this article, I will be outlining and discussing how:
minority political movements gain influence,
find constituency,
distinguish between supporters and sympathizers,
build patiently rather than expecting mass support out of the gate.
These four topics are the foundational ideas behind political organizing as a minority. A movement that starts from the ground up—with a relatively small constituency—has to learn how to think in terms of:
“How do we identify the people who are genuinely receptive, organize them, develop them, and gradually increase our influence?”
And stop thinking in terms of:
“How do we get everyone to agree with us?”
How minority political movements gain influence.
If you look at the public resentment and animosity towards Flock Safety (a brand of automated license plate recognition cameras), you can see several organizations that have stepped up to address the issue. The largest organization in that movement is DeFlock, with over 140k Flock cameras mapped and recorded. However, when DeFlock started in 2024, the general public’s awareness of Flock cameras was nearly non-existent. DeFlock helped bring this serious issue to the mainstream consciousness by influencing court rulings on the grounds of Flock Safety violating the 4th Amendment.
So a minority movement doesn’t necessarily need majority support before it can have political influence. Influence itself comes from being organized, persistent, knowledgeable, visible, and capable of mobilizing people around particular issues.
Yet, it’s important to note that popularity doesn’t equate to organization and organization doesn’t necessarily equate to influence. You need a combination of all three—to varying degrees—in order to create a movement that punches above its weight.
In general, a movement might have 100s of 1,000s of people who sympathize with it, but very little ability to accomplish much of anything. Meanwhile, another might have 500 highly committed members who can organize events, publish material, raise money, contact officials, recruit volunteers, and sustain projects.
The organization inside of a movement that can get more done despite its size, will always achieve more practical influence than an organization that is popular but consistently fails its objectives.
Influence tends to develop through multiple stages.
There are at least 5 different stages of influence that a movement will see:
Intellectual influence—the first type of influence in any movement—it produces ideas, research, publications, arguments, historical work, journalism, and cultural material that influence people just by being in its proximity.
Social influence—the second type of influence in any movement—members begin building relationships with people outside the movement and the movement becomes known within particular communities.
Organizational influence—the third type of influence in any movement—the movement develops enough people and resources to consistently undertake projects and it is able to actually commit to things. This is where you see the development of actual organizations within the movement.
Political influence—the fourth type of influence in any movement—politicians, candidates, journalists, community organizations, or other institutions begin paying attention to the movement.
Institutional influence—the last type of influence in any movement—the movement’s ideas or personnel begin appearing within established institutions. This is generally takes years to accomplish. Sometimes even decades.
At the organizational influence stage, successful organizations will begin to create parallel structures or institutions in order to compete with established ones. By the institutional influence stage, the ones that work will be kept and the ones that don’t will be folded or reformed.
Don’t skip stages
The biggest mistake that a small movement can make is trying to jump directly from a small amount of members to trying to exert national political influence.
Think of it instead:
10 competent people → 25 → 50 → 100 → 250 → 500
At each stage, the organized movement should become more capable and competent.
The question isn’t simply:
“How many people agree with us?”
It’s:
“What can we accomplish with the people we currently have?”
If 25 members can’t organize a successful local event, recruiting 2,500 followers isn’t going to solve the underlying organizational problem. In fact, all it would do is signal to every single sympathizer that it cannot achieve its goals.
Finding the constituency that actually exists rather than imaging one.
This is the biggest wakeup call for activists who believe they are achieving any amount of influence, but aren’t.
I have come across hundreds and hundreds of activists who begin with the assumption that millions of Americans secretly believe what they believe. And honestly, maybe they do. But the activists wouldn’t know that because they haven’t tested it.
Undoubtedly, there is a big increase in sympathetic Americans to the nationalist cause. However, sympathy doesn’t equate to real support. They could agree with 9 out of 10 things, but that last one might be an ideological deal breaker. For example, maybe they don’t think miscegenation is a big deal or they’re in favor of it.
The internet makes determining the scope of support particularly difficult because most activists can spend years surrounded by people who share their worldview and can’t fathom what the average political opinion is among Whites.
Social media feeds can create the illusion that a movement is enormous when it isn’t. So, treat constituencies as something to discover empirically.
Start with hypotheses.
Suppose an organization is of the belief that they appeal to:
young men
small-business owners
veterans
Christians
tradesmen
students
historical enthusiasts
That doesn’t automatically make it true that all of those groups constitute their constituency.
So, the best thing for the organization to do is to test them and find out where they actually find people who:
understand their basic position,
agree with enough of it,
are willing to associate with the organization,
are willing to contribute time or money,
and remain involved.
That fifth criterion is extremely important because an organization will die without a solid membership retention rate.
Measure conversion rather than applause.
A man desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of success. — Alec Waugh
Suppose an organization puts out a post about an event on social media and it gets 100K views, 300 likes, and 150 comments. That sounds like an absolutely massive amount of support. Right?
Wrong, because only 12 people bought tickets to the event. Of that 12, 4 joined the organization, but after the 1st month only 3 remained members. Those 3 people should tell them far more about their actual constituency than the 100K views.
Don’t get me wrong, by no means did the post about the event fail. They retained 3 new members and they learned a valuable lesson in the difference between audience—either organic or inorganic—and conversion.
Look for patterns.
After repeated organizing efforts, they may discover something like:
“Our strongest recruits aren’t actually college students. They’re working-class men between 25 and 45 who discovered us through X, Y, and Z.”
That’s valuable information to possess. With that in mind they can totally change their outreach accordingly, because the goal isn’t to manufacture an imaginary constituency, it’s to discover where genuine receptivity already exists and is more likely to grow if nurtured.
For example, one of the best ways to get this information is by polling the members that are already in an organization.
Distinguishing genuine supporters from people who merely agree online.
So, now that we have talked about identifying a constituency that resonates with a movement’s message by gauging conversion rather than applause, it’s time to talk about distinguishing genuine supporters from people who merely agree in principle online.
There are several levels of political commitment:
Level 1 — Viewer
This is someone who sees certain content and might agree with it, but there’s no certainty.
Level 2 — Follower
This person deliberately subscribes or follows a publication or social media account. And while it is a stronger gauge of commitment, it’s still relatively passive.
Level 3 — Supporter
A supporter donates, purchases merchandise, shares materials, attends events, or commits to small acts of activism. This is where an organization will actually be able to see behavioral evidence.
Level 4 — Participant
This person attends meetings, volunteers, contributes regularly, and/or participates in projects. This is someone becoming part of the organization.
Level 5 — Member
They formally join and accept organizational responsibilities.
Level 6 — Activist
This is a member who initiates activity rather than waiting for instructions. They recruit people, organize events, produce material, and or take responsibility for projects.
Level 7 — Organizer
This is the highest level of political commitment to a movement’s activism. This is a crucial transition, because they will develop other activists capable of doing work instead of merely doing the work by themselves.
The test is behavior.
Instead of a organization just asking:
“Do you agree with us?”
They must also ask:
“What are you willing to do?”
There isn’t anything inherently wrong with someone merely being a sympathizer. But an organization needs to know the difference if they’re going to be successful.
For example someone who:
Reads an article → shows interest
Subscribes → shows continued interest
Shares an article → identifies with that article in some way
Donates $10 → contributes financial support (obviously)
Attends an event → has some sort of personal investment
Volunteers → actively supports the organization
Joins → commits to the organization
Recruits someone → shares their commitment with another
Organizes an event → shows leadership potential
In full transparency, none of these are perfect measures, but together they help to provide a much clearer picture of convertible behavior.
Don’t insult passive supporters.
This is one I have seen quite a lot in the last 15 years that I have been an activist. Time after time, I see organizations and recruiters for organizations treating people who don’t volunteer as “fake supporters.”
I can tell you from experience, dear reader, that sentiment will push potential members away. Someone might genuinely agree with what an organization espouses or does, but they have little time to personally commit to that organization.
And that’s is why it is incredibly important to understand the difference between an audience and an organization.
A publication might have more than 20K active subscribers, but they only have 150 members in their political organization. These are two completely different assets and neither one should be diminished.
An organization has to understand the difference between those two assets and how to use them to their advantage without disenfranchising one for the sake of the other.
Building patiently rather than expecting immediate mass support.
I have seen this time and time again: small political movements expect to rule the world, but can barely get out of bed.
This is called premature expectation, and it often comes about when the founder of a political movement reads about a historical one that went from obscurity to prominence and thinks:
“We’re going to do that.”
However, they either forget or are completely ignorant of the years and years of political and organizational struggle before there was any visible breakthrough.
Personally, my mentality—which I believe is the correct one—is:
BUILD THE INSTITUTION FIRST.
This is a callback to stage 3 of the stages of influence—organizational influence—, because at its core, an organization is a parallel institution of some kind.
So how does a movement build the first institution/organization? Well, firstly they’re going to have to think in layers, like an onion:
Year 1 — all about building the core of their organization.
Year 2 — now they can expand membership and establish repeatable recruitment.
Year 3 — now should focus on developing additional leaders and expanding the organization’s geographic reach.
Year 4 — by now the organization should be expanding to include more publications, increasing the amount of events they attend or hold, raking in more fundraising, and increasing their overall public presence.
Year 5+ — at this point the organization should be able to leverage the institutional power that they have built. The exact timeline obviously varies, but it’s the principle that’s important.
Don’t measure yourself against mass movements.
For example, a small organization shouldn’t constantly ask:
“Why aren’t we as big as Patriot Front?”
It should ask:
“Are we substantially stronger than we were six months ago?”
Lets say for example that an organization has 20 members and 2 recruiters in January, as well as 1 regular publication, they bring in $500/month and they have already held an event.
In July they have boosted their numbers up to 35 members and now they have 4 highly trained recruiters. Their total income is $875/month, they have 2 publications, and they are now able to hold 3 recurring events.
That’s the measurement of real tangible growth.
Build institutional memory.
This is absolutely crucial and should be at the forefront of every organization’s agenda: every activity should produce something that survives the activity itself.
For example if an organization is holding an event, it should produce new contacts, new members, promotional photos/material, the organizers should learn some lessons to make the next event even better, they should acquire potential volunteers, and build future relationships.
Networking is the key to future success and it will open the door to new opportunities. An organization cannot survive without it.
If an organization is doing a recruitment campaign, it should produce better recruitment methods, better conversation starters, a better understanding of their constituency, and above all it should train the recruiters to be better at their job.
Also, a publication should produce readers, subscribers, researchers, writers, donors, and it should bring potential members to the recruitment line.
Essentially, this is a long-winded way of saying that every activity should increase the organization’s future capacity for success and any activity that doesn’t should be forgotten.
The deeper principle to operating as a minority political movement.
Taking the 4 key topics that I wrote about in this article on operating as a minority political movement, the deeper principle can be summarized as:
Find the people who actually exist → Determine which of them are genuinely receptive → Convert the receptive people into participants and members → Train those members into activists and organizers → Build an institution capable of increasingly ambitious things → Use that institution to reach a larger constituency.
The objective isn’t to convince everyone. It’s to find the people who can become part of something great and then building it into something great with them.
