optics, the forbidden subject

By Rundo

I spent hours the other day trying to find this one photo of me getting walked out of the criminal courthouse in Bucharest (tho its a poor quality photo). Thought it’d take a minute. Sadly, I remember that day too well. A shitty afternoon, after my second month in custody. There were maybe four or five journalists standing out front, posted up with big, expensive cameras, the kind that hum when they focus. All waiting for me; the villain.

.

(never let them take your smile)

One of them, a shaggy-haired, thick glasses, typical bugman called something out as I passed. Tried to provoke a reaction, like it was some brave act of resistance. I didn’t even break stride. Just turned my head and, with my thick Queens accent, said: “Go fuck your mother before I get there first.” Then I smiled at him. Big. Friendly. Like I was posing for a gym ad.

The guy froze. Didn’t take the shot. Didn’t say anything. Just stared, shocked. The two cops walking me, stiff in their uniforms, shifted like they were ashamed I’d gotten a word off. They moved me quicker toward the van, heads down. It wasn’t until I was already loaded in that the bugman finally stammered out, “Ah, you are dumb Nazi though,” in broken English. Real heroic. Real delayed.

I didn’t answer. Just gave him the three-finger salute out the back window. Nationalist style. Let him chew on that.

Back at the jail, I pulled up a chair and poured a glass of refreshing sink water. Told the other guys in the cell to put on the news. Figured I’d be popping up. Sure enough, a few hands into Macaua (card game), some anchorwoman says my name “Robert Rundo” then a bunch of Romanian I didn’t catch.

I’d told the guys what happened. How I thought they might’ve caught that moment outside me walking out, head high, cigarette behind my ear, unbothered. But nah. They didn’t run that. They pulled out my mugshot from back in New York. I was eighteen. Looked like every media cliché of what they want a “far-right extremist” to be. Shaved head, angry, frozen in time. (The photo’s over ten years old. Still their favorite.)

Not surprising. I know the trick by now. They never show you looking clean-cut. Never show normal. God forbid you look healthy, confident, or worse: attractive. But get decked out like a school shooter, scream about redacted things, play the bad actor? You’re getting front page. (Which a lot of fags really only care about or want instead of trying to actually set an example for our scene.)

That mugshot, back then, wasn’t even an accident. At that age, I thought that’s what it meant to be pro-white. Skinhead. Prison tats. Say wild shit. That’s what I’d seen on screen—movies, news—made by people who wanted you to see it as evil and broken. I bought it. I lived it. And I regretted it. (Damn that movie American History X.)

(at age 18 up to no good )

Eventually, I wised up. That shit is for movies.

You go back to the nationalist movements that actually had power, and what did they show? Families. Discipline. Clean-shaven guys in shape, looking like they had a future. Looking like someone you’d want to follow. You show that now, and the crowd that doesn’t get the game calls it “optics cuckery.” Like it’s weak to not be a cartoon villain.

We figured it out when we started Rise Above. No shouting. No symbols. No schizo manifestos. Just normal guys training, surfing, sparring, laughing. No voiceover. No agenda. Just a postive lifestyle.

That’s what made them come at us.

They couldn’t handle it. The FBI. The press. “Vanilla ISIS,” they called us because we looked like we could go to college or a barbecue and still believe what we believed. They kicked in doors. Ran international smear campaigns. There are more articles about RAM and myself than there are about almost any other nationalist or right-wing groups in the world. (Not a flex it’s actually a headache.) And for what?

We had no guns. No crazy plans. No victims. (Sure, a few minor scuffles with Antifa, but that’s just boys being boys.) It was an excuse. Legal cover for what they really feared: young men with conviction and normalcy.

(photo that of RAM that was used in FBI indictment to show what a threat we were because we looked normal )

That’s the point.

The edge-lord stuff? It’s bait. B-roll photos for bugman articles that are actually about us, because our photos look too good. If you gotta jump up and down in a skull mask screaming redacted shit to feel powerful…

That’s not power. That’s theater.

And it’s fake.

And it’s gay.

Because you make them look right. You prove their script.

Not to mention the media you put out , the optics you use is what you will attract. You put out a clean cut militant vibe , youll get that, put out something outlandish youll get guys that like to be outlandish.

I’ve been on both sides of the lens. And I’m telling you they don’t fear it. They fear the guy who looks like a 1930s propaganda poster. They fear the guy who looks like he could be in a health ad. The guy who smiles, shakes your hand, and then tells you the truth.

(for years they workerd tirelssy to depict right wingers as neckbeards in camo or autisic school shooters, why then would you want to prove them right. )

So listen to unc for a second:

The more Put-together you look, the more they panic.

The more outrageous you act, the more they roll their eyes and hit “record.”

And that’s the difference between being dangerous and being a meme.

And that’s the part most people never figure out.