Thread by @Will_Tanner_1

I write much about the South Africanization of America and what it means for us

I think Orania is one of the most interesting and important stories for Americans from South Africa, as it shows how we can fight anarcho-tyranny in an entirely permissive environment🧵👇

For those who don't know about Orania, I really recommend checkout out @StrydomJoost's account; he's a great guy and very well-spoken, so you'll learn a lot from him

But, as a brief summary, it is an Afrikaner-only community in what's about a desert in the Northern Cape, an area far from the Mad Max-like cities and also far from the rich farmland the acolytes of the EFF and ANC want to take from the Boers, making it a somewhat less desirable target of government expropriation, as happened to the white farmers in Rhodesia

In any case, despite being small, despised, and in an effective desert, Orania is now a blossoming town. It has thousands of residents, thriving farms, its own community bank, its own solar farms which means it needn't rely on spotty Eskom electricity, and similar infrastructure investments that make it mostly self-sufficient and independent

Despite (or probably because of) its success, the EFF and often ANC rant about its existence, and Western media tends to be enraged when it finds out about it

But, more than just being prosperous, as many areas in the West and even some in South Africa are, the real draw of Orania is that it is 1) safe and 2) friendly to Afrikaners

Those are huge draws. South Africa has a higher per-capita violent crime rate than Somalia, after all, and farm murders occur weekly with farm attacks daily, with 95% of those going unsolved. And that's without touching the copper cable theft, the zama zamas (illegal miners), and so on.

Further, under the ANC, South Africa is incredibly hostile to the Afrikaners, doing everything from tearing down statues of Afrikaner heroes to chanting "Kill the Boer"

Orania is a refuge from both; there, the Afrikaner residents are free to celebrate their culture, and they are free from the crime that is otherwise omnipresent in much of South Africa

Critical to Orania's success, as Joost has noted, is that it creates facts on the ground rather than waiting for permission, and that its residents do their own word

They neither ask the government if they can do things, asking for permission from a regime that hates them, nor bring in outside labor that opens their community up to vulnerabilities of the sort that farmers in the country do by bringing in often poorly paid and hostile labor

I think there's a great deal of wisdom in that approach, and that Americans who are hostile to this regime would do well to learn

Particularly, I think there is much to be learned from the idea that one should do what is possible without begging a regime that hates them for permission to do something against its interests

That's not to say, of course, that the same exact strategy can be replicated; American Civil Rights law operates somewhat differently than South Africa's, at least in this instance. Additionally, South Africa lacks the state capacity and view of America toward private citizens organizing, something that @k9_reaper has noted in the context of private security

But, still, the same general mindset is a helpful one to have; the hostile regime is something to be overcome and its rules used against it rather than taken seriously

This is something that @DEI4WhiteGuys has noted often; many companies/institutions/etc. can be pressed to have groups that celebrate European heritage, something they obviously don't want to do, and which ends up either making a mockery of the DEI programs, leading to the organization ditching them, or leading to a way for like-minded European-Americans to organize and unite

Any of those outcomes is bad for the regime, and all the strategy requires is pretending to be earnest and weaponizing its views against it

Another example, more similar to Orania than hammering away at company DEI pillars from inside, is @UsaRidge, the attempt to build a community of like-minded people out in the Highland Rim

That's intelligent on a number of bases

One is that it's a way of bringing people together that's not a strange cult or similar entity, and so which doesn't provoke the government in the same ways

Another is that it helps with the creation of actual, real world networks that bring people together and get them used to organizing and working together, along with being part of a functional community with real bonds rather than the usually atomized suburbia

The third, and related way, is that it helps bring the resources and capital of those people into an area, much like Orania, that means the development of companies and jobs, both ones that service the community and area itself and ones which serve a broader market and draw in more capital, creating a self-growing base of capital to advance projects and help like-minded people

Fourth, by being in Kentucky and near Tennessee, it's in a friendly jurisdiction. Unlike Prospera, which now finds itself in an unfriendly foreign jurisdiction, or non-profits like the NRA or @vdare that found themselves in NY and so subject to lawfare from a hostile government, its in a deep red area that is somewhere between ambivalent and friendly to the project.

It's not heritage-based in the manner Orania, as that would bring down the hammer of government, but otherwise is a way of bringing people and capital together in a way that advances their interests, and doesn't need to beg a hostile regime for permission

Altogether, I think the lesson of Orania is that it is possible to accomplish things that serve your people and their interests even in an extremely unfriendly jurisdiction, so long as one doesn't draw unnecessary scrutiny

Further, it shows doing so can obviate the failures of and problems with that host society, from creating prosperity in the place of poverty and safety in the place of crime-caused danger, as it brings together like-minded people and what capital they have while putting them in a situation where they must work hard and together if they're to hold on

There are various ways of doing that, from inside an existing organization like an SP500 company to creating a new community, but all eat away at the rotten structure and replace it with a better one, and don't require the permission of the rot. That's a good lesson to learn

One other thing I should have originally added: they are very particular about who they let in

Not just anyone, even an Afrikaner, can come in. Only those who should be, only those who add something and fit in.

That’s another valuable lesson. They want the cream of the crop, not any and everyone who wants in

Dissident politics and movements/organizations generally would do well to learn from that and to focus on the best, the helpful, those who help and fit in, not everyone who seems interested in joining and who carry much baggage with them

That’s a continual problem

It also applies to labor. The Oranians rely on each other for labor, not on cheap labor from the outside. That’s another thing we would do well to learn: much of the point is helping each other and building something beneficial, not cutting costs at the cost of the project itself