Optical Illusions

Virtue Signalling for the Right

Looking out for “good optics”!

It seems like a never ending struggle for “Optics” on this site and abroad with the “Right” wing.

For those of us with the ability to critically think we see beyond the surface-level. Things are not always as they seem, and to us, that matters. The substance, that which composes a man or woman, an idea or a concept, lies at the heart of a movement. Foolishness is marching off with any and every pretty face that comes hearkening to your supposed cause.

And what even are “optics” in the first place?

It is a strategy in relationship with virtue signalling. Where the actions of moral compliance with a movement compose the virtue, optics is the awareness of that action’s effectiveness and value.

Good versus Bad Optics

The Left has mastered the art of virtue signalling by actually foregoing the other side of the equation. The optics of the Left are horrible, and yet they maintain the largest ideological demographic in the world. You could argue that this is because they, themselves, are horrible, but that’s another discussion. What they ensure instead is the enforcement of their collective virtues regardless of what it looks like—especially once they have the power to actually do so.

By contrast, the Right focuses entirely on optics with none of the virtue to back it up. Memetic warfare is all well and good, but it is entirely abstract and immaterial. Our biggest influencers are concerned with talking a big game while having no actions to back it up. Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the fucking presidency, and yet we can’t get the simplest of Right wing talking points accomplished? But don’t worry guys, Apollinaire is happy that Homeland Security is shit-posting! The optics are looking fantastic!

It’s precisely why this gang of faggots (literally) and non-whites are the face of the modern right-wing:

None of the usual shills had anything to say about this though, strangely enough.

So at the end of the day, does it really matter whether your optics are good or bad? We just had a bunch of neocons a couple weeks ago suck off the military industrial complex for taking over Venezuela, and now they’re about to do the same thing with Greenland and Canada. “Power is all that matters!” these idiots will say, despite the fact that such a position is incredibly unpopular i.e. the “optics” are incredibly negative-facing.

Yet, these very same shills become entirely engrossed with the necessity of “good” optics when it comes to stuff like below:

Eva has been catching well-deserved shit for being just another female grifter showing up on popular right-wing media outlets. Famously, she couldn’t say for certain on Tucker’s show who was at fault for migration into the West.

Yet, when you call her out for what she is—a pretty face with blonde hair and beyond that, absolutely no substance—these simps crawl out of the woodwork to defend what is so obviously “good optics”: “It’s good that Eva is saying this, because then maybe other pretty women will be “racist” too! Don’t focus on the fact that she refuses to be controversial or name names, that’s just negativity!”

Let’s grant that this is somehow “good optics”. What has then changed? Are cute girls hopping on your dick all of a sudden? Is the economy any better? dating any better? housing, food, jobs any better? No, because at the end of the day, optics don’t accomplish what already could have been done by anyone with the willpower to pursue actionable behavior. It’s all for show.

Besides, what is said in these conversations that we don’t already know? The media machine is constantly regurgitating the same stories, the same people, the same concepts that we’ve understood for years now but have manifested no genuine change regarding them. Like a gaggle of women we just talk and talk and talk and think that if we look good while doing it, something will come of it. It’s merely a discursive trap, meant to keep people talking in loops which they can’t break out of.

The Left are filled with horrible, ugly, dysgenic freaks, and yet—like it or not, whether it’s effective or not—they’re still out there harassing ICE in Minneapolis.

This has convinced me that the proper usage of “optics” is not really being practiced here, but is just another term for “virtue signalling” that is employed by the Right. These people here on Substack, on Twitter or 4chan—they don’t really care about how something looks. They care that you submit to the same thought process as they do. Remember, the Right is just the other side of the same dialectical coin that is the Left/Right. Both are concerned with controlling and managing your mental and physical output, which is why these shills for optics are so potent, because they themselves don’t even know that’s what they’re doing. They’ve drank the kool-aid and nothing can convince them otherwise of the folly of their perfectly-crafted visual movement.

Maintaining Frame

Perception plays a big part in the optical illusions of the Right-wing. True narrative and discursive dissonance is turned into milquetoast chat; anything new or with the potential to disrupt is a threat once the established belief-set has been codified into the minds of the newly-formed herd.

Optics are meant to provide the perceived sense that things are occurring, change is on the horizon, there is a unified discourse behind the visual. The truth of the matter is that this is a facade—a ripple in the horizon of a large, conservative desert. One in which the capacity, hell even the desire, to actually change is not true to these adherent’s form.

They end up embracing the very things which belie change. For instance, so many people obsessed with “optics” are staunch MAGA/Trump fans despite the FACT that from his very first term years ago, it was obvious that he was taking the Right-wing for a ride. What becomes more important is whether Trump does things that make him look good, which trickles back down to them as his favorite online butt-buddies. Nothing has to actually be rendered from the ridiculous things he says, even if they are things that, again, on the surface, appear like victories for us. HE IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES—he has the power to actually DO things, not just TALK about them. Deportations, the economy, housing, he has commented about every single thing possible and yet nothing has gotten remarkably better since the first day he stepped into office all those years ago. 8 years of supposed “institutional” power, and nothing to show for it.

No matter. The red hats look cool and he’s got somebody posting funny memes on a government X account.

All of this, because people have their entire identities, their entire Self, wrapped up in a certain perception of historical events. They possess no capacity for intellectual change which might threaten the status quo of their beliefs and so they chain themselves to whatever movement/ideology that passes the bare minimum necessary to get them on board.

It is all about maintaining frame. Keeping people thinking and looking like me, and the things I believe, so that I come across as successful and “correct”. And the thing is, for them, they can never be wrong. There is never a perspective that isn’t theirs, nor can they effectively empathize, or see from the perspective of, their enemy so as to understand the potential consequences down the line.

When the Republicans lose control (as they inevitably will), how will our optics protect us when the Left goes even harder on clamping down upon White Americans? Will their optics be “good” so as to reflect their virtues? Or because they have relations of power which run deeper than the surface level “power” of anything the Right has, will they just take action against us as they please?

What is Gained and Lost?

The ability to properly discourse and unify around a singular vision—that is what is lost. Playing the “optics” game comes down to obsessing over an image of a movement with no foundation. Perhaps Clavicular is, then, the perfect candidate to represent us, considering he is an entirely exterior-facing individual with nothing going on inside himself.

To have millions of people openly acknowledge and discuss the Jewish Question?-how does that serve us? Has there been violence in the streets, banks burned, lynchings? Do you expect this to occur at some point in the near future as a result of people possessing this knowledge?

Simply put, we have gained an immense number of social acceptance but lost any ability to realistically create the foundation for an elite counter culture. Because if everyone is a part of this giant, unorganized, orgy-of-a-conversation, the only thing you get out of it is trash.

Imagine if the people who heralded the Right-wing were genuine intellectuals with experience, wisdom, and political prudence. People that might not be super popular but were capable of reaching the individuals with wills strong enough to see change genuinely manifest for their cause.

Instead, we get millions upon millions of people listening to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes—all of which love to do the song and dance around the conclusions most people have already come to but won’t personally admit out of fear of losing their lucrative platform.

Because if you’re trying to “win” people to your side in all this by looking good, you’re just gathering the masses under one big ugly tent. That is not a tenable way to achieve what you want. The history of most revolutions reveal this in stark fashion.

Optics only nets you points when you have something going for you on the ground, in actual practice. It is for movements that are accruing genuine power, or have done so already and are focusing on establishing it long-term.

The optical propaganda of National Socialism was beautiful and incredibly aesthetic, but it was only capable of working if the efforts of the men who fought in the streets and at the polls were just as potent. The same could be said of Mao’s China, or the Soviet Union; look at some of the optimistic propaganda produced by those regimes, and how they related to power with organized effort. Such optics would not become necessary as power was solidified in their movements and governments.

Conclusion

The cart is being placed before the horse in this entire endeavor. I couldn’t tell you whether this is on purpose, out of ignorance, or both, but the fact remains that too many people are focused on the way things look with nothing having even been done to begin with.

My common response to these people is always the same: I’ll believe the optics that you are trying to sell me when I see it.

Until then, I’ll continue to maintain that personal growth and community-building are the most important things for young men and women to accomplish. Optics can come later, when there is an established, unified drive towards a common goal. But right now, as fractured and torn apart as we are, then like Aristocratic Dog says all the time, optics like fancy Greek statues and marble busts aren’t going to create the new future that we want to see—only we can do that.