The Danger of Lost Causes

Don’t conflate righteousness with pragmatism.

By guest contributor TJ Martinell.

One interesting habit of Heritage Americans in the Dissident Right is their interest, passion, or enthusiasm for many historical endeavors that have acquired “Lost Cause” status because, as the name suggests, they didn’t emerge victorious.

The exact causes vary, with the Southern Secession among the most popular, naturally, among Americans. However, people can equally be dedicated to championing the lost cause of other efforts, such as the White Russians during their civil war or the plight of Rhodesians before it fell and became Zimbabwe.

Then, of course, there are historical revisionists focused on World War II and the “lost cause” of keeping America out of the war.

To some extent, I understand the natural proclivity men might have to side with the underdog or at least to doubt the official narrative of any conflict. Once an American realizes the extent to which he has been lied to on so many other matters, it is only logical that he would examine the facts around major conflicts that are still referenced or relevant today. As the famous remark suggests, he finds it incredible that the good guys won every conflict.

However, the problem I see isn’t so much whether a lost cause was morally justified or correct, but the odd mindset that plagues many enthralled by it and the threat it poses to our mindset and mentality.

Let’s call such individuals “Lost Causers.”

The greatest frustration with Lost Causers is their frequent inability to appreciate that outcomes are determined by practical and logistical matters, not the righteousness of one’s cause. To me, whether the Southern states had a legal, constitutional right to secede, or the reasons why they seceded, is far less relevant than the factors contributing to the Confederacy’s military defeat and conquest.

This is precisely what Irish nationalist hero Michael Collins did in real life and as depicted in a 1996 biographic film starring Liam Neeson. He looked at the centuries of failed Irish revolutionary movements, including the 1916 Easter Rising he had participated in, and understood what they needed to change in terms of tactics and intelligence-gathering if they were to take on a more powerful adversary with a vast spy network. As Quintus Curtius puts it: “His tactical and strategic mastery of urban guerrilla techniques showed what a determined minority could do against an oppressive system of domination.”

His form of warfare brought the British Empire, which had just won a war against Germany, to the negotiating table where Collins worked out the first peace treaty between the two nations.

In contrast, many Irish Republicans who fought on the same side as Collins were perfectly willing to participate in another failed rebellion because they identified with the “lost causes” that had come before them. They seemed far less concerned with winning than they were seething with jealousy of Collins’s success or making sure the war was conducted “properly,” which led to a disastrous attack on the Dublin Custom House.

When Collins, not known for his skills in diplomacy, came back home with a proposed treaty for them to sign that gave Southern Ireland independence all but in name, under the threat of a resumed war from England if it was rejected, the anti-treaty republicans clung to impossible demands such as complete and formal independence that would include Northern Ireland, which had voted to remain with Great Britain.

Not only was it foolish to consider tossing aside a guaranteed “stepping stone” to freedom, but such demands were completely inappropriate considering that the Irish Republican Army was mere weeks away from collapsing when the British called a truce. Even after a majority of both elected officials and the Irish people approved the treaty, these people still refused to accept it and instigated a civil war that, though they lost, led to Collins’s tragic death at the hands of former comrades.

The 2005 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley depicts a debate amongst rural Irish nationalists over whether to vote for the treaty, and while the scene is praised by some for its evenhandedness in depicting both sides of the issue, neither in that film nor in Michael Collins’s biopic do the anti-treaty people explain how they could win a war with England when their own army was already on the brink of collapse, or whether the risk of being reduced back to a colonial state was worth it.

These questions don’t get asked or answered by Lost Causers because, somehow, they are completely off limits for discussion. When the conflict is fought and lost due to a lack of adequately addressing those questions, Lost Causers involved in the conflict or championing them in the future argue that the only reason their cause did not prevail is that the other side was evil and stooped to levels their side would never go to on moral grounds, which is why they focus on the atrocities committed against their people. It’s akin to the Scooby-Doo villain saying, “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”

That is the abyss Lost Causers threaten to bring to the Dissident Right and which needs to be avoided.

A good example of where this “We’re right, so we don’t have to worry about how to win” mentality led to disaster was depicted in the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. Just prior to the Third Crusade, the Christian armies protecting Jerusalem marched out to confront Saladin’s Muslim forces; in a strategic move that would have left Sun Tzu appalled, they chose to march through the middle of a desert with no meaningful water supply. Their entire battle plan was based wholly on the righteousness of their cause and the belief that if they carried the Holy Cross into battle they could not be defeated.

Instead, at the Battle of Hattin, the entire Crusader force was almost entirely wiped out or captured as Saladin patiently let them make a blunder that ultimately cost Christendom the city of Jerusalem itself.

The conflation of righteousness with pragmatism is a force Saladin also contends with in Kingdom of Heaven, where he is lectured by a mullah for withdrawing from the fortress of Kerak, rather than besieging it in the face of a massive Christian relief force he would later destroy:

Mullah: Why did we retire? Why?

Imad: God did not favor them.

Mullah: God alone determines the results of battles.

Saladin: The results of battles are determined by God, but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease, and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came… that is, before God determined that I should come?

Mullah: Few enough. That’s because we were sinful.

Saladin: It is because you were unprepared.

Saladin is making the same point that Oliver Cromwell later observed during the English Civil War, a remark accurately depicted in the 1970 film Cromwell. After the Battle of Edgehill, Cromwell was convinced that the key to success in the war was not only better trained, better disciplined soldiers, but mounted cavalry. Though he had zero prior military training, Cromwell went on to raise his own force in East Anglia that would become known as the New Model Army, which swept aside all enemies that opposed it.

While religious fervor ran rampant among the ranks of his army, their success was due to their ardent pragmatism in waging war that the Christian knights at Hattin had sorely lacked. I mentioned this in my essay about the puritan identity and why it has retained its rhetorical power; the cavalier mindset is to fight for the sake of fighting, and defeat can be as glorious as victory, whereas the puritan mindset is that it is his moral duty to achieve victory.

The reason why Lost Causers are so dangerous to the Dissident Right is that we’re ultimately concerned with winning, and lost causes fundamentally are about romanticizing the losing side of a conflict. If we are to prevail in our struggle, we must study the tactics and strategies of winners and learn from the failures of those who lost. This is not to say that we should castigate the dead in their graves or dismiss the justness of what they fought for, but to ensure that we don’t fall prey to the same mistakes when we can avoid them.

Refusing to acknowledge blunders made by people we deem to be heroes or role models does them no good, because the dead don’t care, and even if they’re still alive, it doesn’t benefit our cause to ignore facts. In his memoir Always With Honor, White Russian general Pyotr Wrangel makes it very clear that the Bolsheviks could have been crushed had his side not been so divided and dysfunctional, in no part due to Lost Causers on his side. To admit this is not an endorsement of communism, but that kind of logic applies to how Lost Causers see any deviation from their prescribed dogma.

Likewise, we must give credit to individuals or causes we don’t agree with but who adopted tactics that proved vital for their success — tactics we can also utilize without compromising our vision.

Lastly, it must be said that there is something unintentionally subversive for a man to identify too closely with the loser of a conflict. As much as I sympathize with many causes in history that did not prevail and have great respect for many men whose efforts went down in defeat, in almost every case I see lessons learned of where they could have done things differently which could have changed the outcome. It very well can sometimes be the case of hindsight being 20/20, but this isn’t about casting judgment on the past. I simply don’t wish to follow in their footsteps in terms of outcomes.

Pretending that there is nothing the losing side could have done, or that there are no practical lessons to be learned, all the while identifying with them, is to associate oneself with an individual to whom things happen beyond his control. That kind of Arthurian fatalism not only denies us our agency as men, but it also creates an aversion to victory wherein defeat is more comfortable and therefore subconsciously pursued despite whatever rhetoric is employed.

Further, it leads our side to spend less time figuring out how to prevail in our cause and more time justifying causes either from the past that have already been lost or those of our present circumstances. You explain after winning; one might call it “justification through victory.”

I’ll leave you with this comment from a recent post by dissident writer Paul Kersey:

If you don’t want to win & win for good, now is the time to get off the ride.

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Thumbnail image depicts Dublin after the 1916 Easter Rising attack.