The Timescale of Politics

Timescale informs the strategy of an organisation, What are the organisations short term, medium term and long term goals, do you see short term as 3 months or 1 year. Do you see long term as 5 years or 50 years?

People and organisations with a short time-scale are often focused on aggravating revolutionary politics. Based on a belief that times are so rough and unsettled today, that you may be able to achieve widespread action against the institutions and top end of politics by continual piercing agitation on particular subjects such as Immigration.

We do of-course appreciate the zeal of people who fling themselves into the fray to battle against the international system but we must at the same time realise this battle is not a flashpoint for the masses yet, they still have their bread and their circuses. So the battle will principally be waged only by the vanguard of nationalist ideologues. Many of whom will be squashed by the sustained harassment mechanisms of the system.

Considering this fact we must act strategically, with long-term thinking. Whilst we will never compromise in belief, and will always sustain an outward projection of true Australian ideals. We must be mindful of the fact we are in a sustained, long-term struggle for our country.

The flashpoint ‘battles’ of a war which are comparable to acts of activism are only a fraction of the total set of actions that are necessary to wage a war. Napoleon rightfully noted that an army marches on its stomach. History showed us that the Romans invested more time into the logistical support of an army than it did in planning the actual formation of their troops in battle.

The ‘activist’ cell with short timescale thinking picks up radicals and throws them into the grinding beast of activism which tears up and burns them out. The political campaign of poster runs, scuffles with trotskyite radicals and potential encounters with the state police is taxing, it’s an entirely self-sacrificing methodology for propagating the cause. The activist cell does not take care of the logistics to support the soldier. The soldier marches on until his stomach is empty and he falls flat on his face, drops out and is never heard from again. How many have you known to have suffered this fate? How much better off would we be if we had cared for his stomach to permit the endurance of his march, or better yet invested the years to build his character, his industry and his own capacity to fight and endure.

The original movement for a White Australia toiled from 1854 to 1901. This is a multi-generational cause with each generation enduring advances and setbacks, the greatest flashpoint of this in the 1891 Shearers Strike saw men imprisoned for sedition, the army called in to break the strikers. This was only possible because the price of wool had fallen, the proverbial ‘bread and circus’ for the average shearer was taken away from him, giving him the grease to fight against the introduction of Chinese scabs to the shearing sheds.

To their advantage in the Shearers Strike there had been a vanguard of nationalist minded unionists who had put in the early work for some years to develop the financial infrastructure and Organisational practices to support the strike which lasted many months and went on to drive the national psyche towards high ideals of national life and character.

As long as the masses have their bread and circus, it would be prudent to focus less on selfless acts of activist martyrdom (which doesn’t make you any friends and doesn’t win you any spoil) which we know burns out our potential membership. Focus more on endurance; Let us find ourselves having spent 20-40 years building the infrastructure to feed the stomach of the soldiers of our cause. Having spent decades propagating our idealism to those willing to hear it. Constructing the organisation that is prepared to lead the masses when their bread and circus has fallen away from them.

History will affirm it was not necessarily the “strong horse” that wins, but the enduring horse. Not the flash in the pan, but the luminous candle-light. The Marathon, not the sprint.

M. K. Grant