Letter 38

“You would multiply yourself by ten, a hundred, a thousand? You seek followers? Seek zeroes.” - Nietzsche, “Twilight of the Idols.”

If you are trying to start a movement, a church, a cult, or any other sort of flock you can fleece...uh, I mean, lead to the New World, you should begin with recruiting the lonely, the disillusioned, the desperate and the failures. If you can make them feel significant, you will have followers whose entire self worth is wrapped up in loyalty to you and your cause.

It has always been so. Movements usually begin with a core group of outcasts and misfits. As they are quite used to being rejected, rejection by society outside the group only makes them more fanatically cohesive.

Over time, they will attract more of the same, grow in numbers and capability, and eventually be rejected once again by the mature movement. Once it has "gone legit," it will see its fanatical early members as a liability. This "Night of the Long Knives" is an inevitable part of the movement's migration to mainstream power and legitimacy.

That is to say, red hats, the leopards will eat your faces first.