A few days ago it was the 10th anniversary of this place. The video about it was a tad bit cryptic, perhaps more cryptic than intended. At least in part this was due to the public nature of it.
It’s not that there’s anything to hide, but it’s one thing when one addresses supporters, collaborators and other intersecting circles and a whole different (more prudent) situation when one addresses the general public.
So, as I’m wrapping up the preparations for the first trip of the summer, allow me to explain what’s coming.
Background
Freedom Alternative was born in a context when the current thing was Leftism. Sex toys for 3 year olds were a thing and top intellectuals in Europe and North America were in all seriousness arguing for the legal recognition of “transchildren”.
Fast forward 10 years and the Supreme Court in the US ruled that there is no such thing as “transchildren” (after multiple countries in Europe effectively reached the same legal standard throughout 2024) and you have troons from the Left arguing in the pages of The New York Times (a former newspaper) that trooning as a political discussion is an abject failure for its proponents.
10 years ago a leader like Javier Milei wasn’t even conceivable, let alone imaginable.
In 2014 yours truly with the help of some of you reading this started working on locking out feminists from power and funding in Eastern Europe. In some places we did that by various point-by-point lobbying, but the biggest hurdle was always the USAID funding (which in Eastern Europe funded the furthest fringes of the far-Left as an absolute rule). Which is why I praised President Trump like a cheerleader back in February and said that shutting down USAID is likely the best thing he will have done in his whole term.
In Romania we managed to enshrine International Men’s Day into law. It doesn’t sound like a big deal until you realize that IMD being law means no public institution can launder money or fund a feminist organization without having to do the same for a men’s organization. In practice, since 2016, this meant zero or almost zero public funds for feminists. This decimated their whole infrastructure and have never really recovered. Sure, they get the occasional EU grant to pay for some propaganda here and there, but far from what they were able to prior to 2016.
The reason I mention these things is not for nostalgia purposes, but rather to contextualize the next stage.
We started in a context where the only somewhat non-Left answer came from, let’s face it, mostly low IQ and highly ineffective groups and organizations.
In 2014, as I was recruiting for the project to lock out feminists, I realized that I was simply lucky to even find anyone – and the reason we couldn’t find more was precisely because the paradigm and the thought-patterns that defined non-Leftism at the time were either not mature enough or simply crazy and thus incompatible with success and effectiveness.
Wising up
And so we spent the next 9 years, from 2016 to 2025 doing the kind of tedious work that very few were willing to do: Which is to build on the periphery.
But the point hasn’t just been to build on the periphery for building’s sake. At some point, the idea was that we’d teach others with a view to eventually become the center and replace the Regime. In the process, of course, we had to part ways with the “pure” people who would rather be right on social media than to push and enact policy that moves things closer to Liberty.
The Freedom Alternative isn’t (and wasn’t) just about an alternative school of thought or an alternative way of viewing power or the State. The idea was to eventually contribute to the developing of an alternative to the Regime itself.
In Romania in particular we were lucky because the Regime interpreted this as yours truly and my cohost on the podcast seeking a seat in the Parliament. And although we were very transparent with the fact that that’s not what we’re seeking, the Regime continued to think so and, as a result, continued to attack me personally and some of my known friends who happen to be active in public.
This worked out just fine. We ended up being the lightning rod allowing our people and our collaborators to operate more or less with impunity. Almost like a conspiracy. Except we really never imagined that the Regime people will be this obtuse.
Over time, our way of thinking expanded. Word to mouth, seminaries, other people having the same ideas finding the Sofa and comparing notes and, little by little, things started moving.
Yes, there was also a lot of luck involved. And our contribution qua Freedom Alternative Network was, of course, minuscule (especially before 2020). Not only we lacked resources (manpower, more than money, really) but we lacked the kind of connections needed – which also required time to make them.
And again, primarily, we lacked competent manpower. We quite literally had to grow a new class of activists, a new class of lobbyists, a new class of shills, and so on. And this is where luck came in: Gamergate straight up delivered a huge new class of relentless shills. Polishing them was (and is) tedious work, but shortened the path to the goal(s) by quite a bit!
Of course, this wasn’t without trade-offs. Some of the people we started with are now no longer interested in politics. This kind of work takes a huge toll on one’s mental health. Sadly, one of the highly competent activists in our Network died. If there is an afterlife, I hope John is watching us and is proud of how we forwarded his ideas too.
But all in all, today the politically activated non-Left looks and works far better than it did a decade ago and the Left looks and works far worse than a decade ago.
More and more leftists speak our language on topics like immigration, trans, and even certain economic issues. In Poland the “left” won the election by being more anti-immigration than the “right” and in Romania most leftoids speak like the Sofa on matters concerning taxation, fiscal policy or green policy.
Thanks to the people willing to slow walk our ideas and take our way of doing things seriously, we can now do things that would’ve been a pipedream in 2015.
A quick glance over my videos in 2015-16 about immigration or green policy will give quite an idea on how much things improved.
Preparing for governance
All of the above is really nice. And I’ve barely scratched the surface on how many things we have achieved. And by we I mean both we as Freedom Alternative Network and also we as in the politically activated non-Leftist sector.
But… we still don’t govern. Yet.
And this will have to be the focus for the rest of the decade: Becoming capable of governing.
We’ve shown ourselves to be very capable of taking over the mainstream discourse. Some people in our newsroom still can’t believe it how easy it can be sometimes. But maintaining and accelerating this momentum doesn’t come by itself. And it’s also not enough.
Ability to take over the discourse and have the leftoids reduced to basically being us but under the speed limit is a necessary condition, but not sufficient.
The Regime still controls many institutions and much infrastructure. They command access to capital and levers of power that we lack—for now. And, quite frankly, we still can’t cover enough ground to be worthy of replacing the Regime.
Last night I was having a conversation with a fellow traveler and at some point we were discussing energy policy and prices in Romania. And at some point I started explaining how the infrastructure works, why things are the way they are and why the populist (and even populist left) instinct is directionally correct even though their proposed policy (crude price controls) is bad. To which he responded: “Damn, I really need to learn more about this.”
The above paragraph is not to show off my knowledge. Heck, this happened to me as well in another convo about a month ago in a discussion about influencing a sub-committee in the European Parliament. Turns out I still don’t know everything about the inner works of the largest bureaucracy on Earth.
So no, the point isn’t to show off – but rather to point out that there’s still ground left that we aren’t covering. We could educate ourselves better and try to cover that one too, but I will modestly suggest that it’d be more efficient to just expand with people who already know that. It’s faster, but it comes with the same cost from 2021 – which is the fact that some temporary compromises will have to be made and those too pure for this will have to accept it or join the rest of the peanut gallery.
During the Pandemic Project we worked with people with whom we disagree vehemently about a lot of things. A similar thing, but for a much bigger project, will have to be done in the next 5 years.
It’s not enough to complain or push (even vigorously) for a smarter non-Leftist/”sovereignist”/euroskeptic bubble. It may happen too late at this pace.
What we must do is lead. Now that we have their attention, we must capture their imagination and, if possible, their admiration as well. Then, and only then we can dare to claim we can lead by our example and, with them, lead our own countries.
This process will not be easy and there is a strong chance we might fail. But then again, in 2015 the chances of failure were over 90% and yet, when all is said and done, things worked out much better than even some of us hoped for.
The key will be to avoid setting up unrealistic goals and be cognizant of our limits without allowing ourselves to be crippled by them. Or, even worse, fall into neurotic thought patterns that renders too many valuable people incapable of even doing the things they’re competent at.
The ultimate goal (the vision, if you want to borrow from corporate management) is not to get our little organizations to be ”sustainable” – but to make our little organizations obsolete.
In a world in which we won, this place doesn’t need to exist anymore. At best, it would convert into a small think tank and act as a night watch. Sounds like a pipe dream, but I’ve been here before.
Over 25 years ago when I was running a private social worker practice focused on certain aspects, the team(s) looked at me like I was a crazy person when I said that in 15 years I want the organization to either cease to exist or to move on to something else entirely because the current problems were solved. Admittedly, my biggest problem then was youth. Being too young led to too many assuming I must have no idea what I was talking about. Well, I had the final laugh as I filed for the dissolution because indeed the problem had been solved.
This is something I want all of us to do now as well: To make our current work obsolete.
Almost 10 years ago I explained that liberty can’t really “win” – because liberty is (spontaneous) order. Keeping the order requires maintenance.
But to get there we first need to build it. I realize it sounds far fetched, maybe even delusional. After all, I’m just a dude on a Sofa with a few friends. But it’s amazing how many things just a handful of people can do if they’re willing to be smart about it and have a community willing to support it.
So that’s the objective, broadly speaking, for the next several years: Get as many of us as possible to be capable of governing.
Winning an election is not the hard part. Governing is the hard part (as the corporate fags/NPCs are finding out these days in Romania).
Our time to govern will come. It’s an implacable force. The time for quite a few of our ideas has come or will come in the next 5 years. The more of us are capable of governing when that time comes, the better for us, for our ideas and for our peoples and nations. Again, in this case our is in the broadest sense possible, not just our (increasingly not so little) Network.
The next moments are as follows:
2027 – elections in Slovakia, Italy and Poland
2028 – elections in Romania[unless earlier], the USA and Argentina
2029 – EU elections; Czech Parliamentary elections
2030 – Presidential elections in Poland and Romania; general elections in Hungary
Getting as many people with our ideas elected is a great shortcut to getting some things done. But this will be worthy only if we’re also able to send people with our ideas who are capable to govern.
Our ideas are no longer confined to dark corners. We are no longer merely challenging the mainstream – but increasingly competing to be the mainstream. And that’s good, but only if we’re capable to govern. Otherwise, it’s no good for anyone and, if we fuck it up too badly, we will have discredited some of our ideas for a generation.
So… let’s not fuck it up! That’s it. Really that simple.
For the details, we’ll continue to discuss and implement them step-by-step just like we’ve been doing in the last several years. The only change is that we’re no longer pushing to be noticed or for smaller things.
Slowly we have to transition [sic!] to the stage where being included in governance is the bare minimum. And it’s on us to be capable of that.
I’m moderately optimistic. In some countries (Romania *cough* *cough*) the Regime is so stupid that I’d feel like an idiot if I weren’t trying.
And, just like I was saying 10 years ago,… there is no “someone else”. If you want something done, do it yourself. We’ll be here to try to help. And I’d personally be very happy when someone else does it better.
As a sneak peak detail: Let’s just say that we need to become more shameless as well.
That’s it for now.
I’m off to finish packing and hop on the train. That networking won’t happen by itself.