The past few days have been deeply affirming and deeply trying.

Affirming in that our conference was a wonderful event. On Sunday morning, everyone I met was in great spirits and excited about the speeches, the press conference, and, in particular, the atmosphere on Saturday evening. The amount of excitement we’re generating means we’re making a breakthrough.

But these past days have been trying, too. And—let’s be honest—we must learn some important lessons from the media outrage that has resulted from my “Hail Trump!” toast and the handful of people in the crowd who gave Roman salutes.

One of the greatest qualities of the Alt Right is our irreverence and fun. Conservatives are dour and humorless. The Alt Right is boisterous and even outlandish.

As I began my speech on Saturday night, I said “Long Live the Emperor!” Another speaker, Matthew Tait, toasted the Egyptian deity Kek. When I was in Cleveland, Ohio, this summer, I was photographed giving the “other” straight-arm salute (the one with a clinched fist, which is apparently okay). One person photographed saluting with Tila Tequila observed, “As a half-Jew posing with an Asian, I figured it would be viewed for what it was, a joke.” Other people who took part in the exuberance have emailed me similar stories.

The other stiff-arm salute.

We should never allow our enemies to define what we can and cannot joke about. (For the record, I don’t care if BLM activists make ironic gestures towards Stalin or Mao; it doesn’t change what I think of them.)

But the fact remains, there are millions of eyes on us now. And what we do and say have more ramifications than they did before.

We are a movement that is challenging the Great Taboos of the age and, because of that, we will inherently run up against massive attacks from the mainstream media. This often inspires us to throw PC back in the faces of the chattering class. And, no doubt, the Roman salutes at the event were meant, not just as a celebration, but as a big “FU!” to the lying media (which, as we’ve seen, really does lie).

But we should always remember our goal of reaching that “Eternal Normie”—the people who grasp that something is profoundly wrong with the world . . . but who can’t quite articulate it . . . who are looking for a way out . . . and who have been psychologically programmed since birth to see anything related to Nazism as the seat of all evil. In other words, we must demonstrate discipline; this goes for me, as well those who attend public and private events. Since I began my career as an activist, I have recognized that the Alt Right will not succeed as a movement trapped in the past. This is 2016, as they say, and we must be fresh and new and engaged.

So let’s move upwards and onwards. No apologies, for we did nothing wrong. Despite all the media’s ridiculous fear mongering, it was our enemies outside the hall who were engaged in the most vile physical attacks. We were the ones celebrating, and we’ll be the ones who get the last laugh.