As a characterization of neo-reaction (not as his own point of view), Tyler Cowen writes,
If you are analyzing political discourse, ask the simple question: is this person puking on the West, the history of the West, and those groups — productive white males — who did so much to make the West successful?
My thoughts.
1. Various sources credit me with popularizing the term “neo-reactionary.” However, the links go back to this post from 2010, which today strikes me as quite confused. I wrote,
Other writing in this vein ranges from the best-selling (Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism) to the obscure (Mencius Moldbug’s old blog posts) to somewhere in between (Arthur Brooks’ The Battle, which I still have not read.)
To which, the current me says “Hunh?” I do not know what I meant, and reading the rest of the post does not help.
2. Let us follow Tyler and say that a major role of political ideology is to attempt to adjust the relative status of various groups. The extreme ideological combatants are the post-modernists and the neo-reactionaries.
The post-modernists seek to elevate the status of women, minorities, and nationalities they view as oppressed. They want to knock down the status of American white males. Neo-reaction can be thought of as expressing the feeling that the status re-alignment has gone too far and needs to be rolled back. A middle ground might be that the status re-alignment to date is fine but that further denigration of white males would be going too far.
3. I would like to elevate the status of people who work in the for-profit sector and reduce the status of people who work in the non-profit sector. Instead, we seem to be intent on reversing the status-change that Deirdre McCloskey says helped produce the Great Enrichment.
4. Consider the principle of “welcoming and assimilating outsiders,” which I think of as central to American success. I believe that we are seeing dangerous extremism against that principle. The neo-reactionary does not want to welcome outsiders. The post-modernist does not want to assimilate them.
5. Of course, every adherent to an ideology seeks to elevate the status of those who share that ideology and to downgrade the status of those with different ideologies. That is why it matters that journalists and academics are overwhelmingly on the left. This means that the institutions of the mass media and higher education are inevitably and relentlessly going to seek to lower the status of conservatives.
5. I don’t, but I guess I’ll have to start just to stay even.
“The neo-reactionary does not want to welcome outsiders. The post-modernist does not want to assimilate them.”
The neo-reactionary does not welcome outsiders *because* the post-modernists are not assimilating them.
It’s more then that. The reactionary believes that its *impossible* to assimilate certain outsiders, because its not within their nature to assimilate to our society.
This gets down to something more fundamental. If people have a fundamental nature, then the good comes from figuring out that nature and developing it to its best form.
This is in conflict with the liberal view that man is a self created being who determines his own nature. When people talk about “social constructs” this is very much in line with the idea that we can be whatever we want, we have no nature. Jim Kalb writes about this quite a bit.
I think that is incorrect. Ours is the system that assimilates all people. Go to about any McDonald’s. They can have positive value as long as we can hold onto the bourgeois virtues it’s not a problem. But if we don’t then it is a problem. I’ll take two Mexicans over an Ivy League social sciencesajor any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I can, of course, see problems of rates of diffusion and scale problems. We need to assimilate them, not them assimilate us. And why can’t we run immigration like, oh, say, those fascist countries known as Canada and Australia? But these people don’t just evaporate when we leave them in their inferior system.
So if asdf is right, count me out. If Thales is right, count me in.
You shouldn’t count yourself “in” or “out” of a fact based on how it makes you feel. You should ask yourself, “is this true or not.”
If they can’t be assimilated, then we shouldn’t import them. I feel the case that they can’t be assimilated, mostly based on genetics, has been made decisively all across the world over the last several decades.
You can choose not to accept the evidence, but it won’t change the facts.
https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s480x480/e35/12547455_963204500435225_593407958_n.jpg
Found this. The Bourgeois values of our inner city McDonalds workers.
Neo-reaction can be thought of as expressing the feeling that the status re-alignment has gone too far and needs to be rolled back.
I would say that undersells it a bit. I would characterize it as “expressing the feeling that the justification for this status-realignment rests largely on a fallacy, namely that differences in socioeconomic outcomes for different ethnic groups within the same polity is prima facie evidence of oppression or discrimination.” It hasn’t helped that the post-modernists have in recent years become more and more cynical in using the oppression rhetoric to obtain additional concessions of status and power. The difference between the rhetoric and the reality has, I think, become so large as to spark a, well…reaction on the part of many people.
Arnold,
I think you are confusing the “alt-right” with neo-reaction (something Cowen does as well.) Neo-reaction is really about politics and the rejection of liberalism (in all its forms): http://neoreaction.net/
Your #2 fits the broader alt-right much better — they are the army of Twitter trolls, Trump supporters, white nationalist bloggers, You-Tubers, etc. that are interested in status.
I don’t think either of these terms have hard, clear, universal definitions.
A neo-reactionary can be safely assumed to be someone motivated by reaction to the current dominant strain of progressive liberals, but that’s a wide net.
Alt-right is literally an alternative to the recently mainstream political right. It has vague associations with race realism and such, but there is no official definition to it.
I think the best way to interpret what is for going on is for people to look at and think hard about your previous post. The liberals have abandoned even lip service to the open and tolerant principles of liberalism the moment they passed some critical threshold in their hold on power and victory in the culture war and when it was thus no longer in their interest to play by the old purported rules of the game. Some paleo-liberals like Chait and Summers have been writing about this for a while.
It is as if, while the outcome of an armed conflict was still indeterminate, the gaining side still argued for stern adherence to the civilized law of war. But when their advance turns into a total rout of the opposition, they drop all the niceties, become drunk on vengeful bloodlust, and go berserk, commit vengeful war crimes because eradicating every last remnant of the vanquished who refuse to swear and genuinely embrace total allegiance to their new masters and pray only to their false gods. Because error has no rights and those evil people deserve everything they get and more.
At some point in the rout, observant elements of the opposition will realize what is happening and notice that if they do not change policy and tactics, they will get crushed. When they appeal to their generals, they are dismayed to discover a stubborn and obviously suicidal insistence that the fight be carried on with one hand tied behind the back, while the enemy leaps from success to success unencumbered. The generals have all but accepted the inevitability of unconditional surrender, and think their early capitulation will ensure their good treatment by the enemy after the conclusion of the war. The troops know that they’ll get nothing but a Katyn massacre.
They are apt to realize that the rules of the game imply a deck that is perpetually stacked against them, and to revolt against their current leadership in desperation.
Some of them will even question the wisdom and desirability of the game itself, noticing that the rules seem to make theses awful results inevitable since they never guaranteed the survival of the moderating elements necessary to prevent the social machine from spinning out of control, especially given modern technology and economic circumstances.
That is a lot of the spirit of neo-reaction, and most of the original Internet neo-reactionaries were originally conservatism-sympathetic libertarians who noticed the portents of what was happening and the utter iinadequecy of mainstream democratic conservatism and classical liberalism to grapple with the accelerating crazed advance of post-liberal progressivism, which put then on a path toward heresy with the orthodoxy of the old liberal narrative.
While neo-reactionaries and post-modernists are extreme they aren’t conservative or liberal, or even coherent, but warring factions, defined by their opposition as much as their support, their implacability as much as their loyalty, their antagonism as much as their cohesion. Conservatives don’t have to worry about others lowering their status; they do that well enough on their own.
You ruined it with your last sentence. Not just because it was insulting, but because Arnold is correct. Don’t claim the media isn’t biased.
Yes, it’s all liberal Fox News’ fault.
This post is entirely based on a theory of politics as the pursuit of higher relative status, achieved by damaging or denigrating other groups. Maybe that is an accurate rendering of today’s politics; but it’s interesting that at other times people commonly thought politics was about cooperation for mutual benefit, and charitable communication and compromise in support of mutually beneficial cooperation. So a more complete theory of politics would have to explain what has changed about America to make the first theory of politics more descriptively accurate than the second.
My impression may be mistaken, but “neoreaction” seems to be a theory attempting to explain this evolution, with diversity in itself the main factor making politics less cooperative and more a combat between tribes. If everyone is from one genetic group, there is little tribalism, but if society is split among people with different genetic backgrounds, they have trouble seeing things from each others’ point of view and trouble finding common ground, and tribal conflict is likely.
As “it takes a theory to beat a theory,” those who think the neoreaction thesis is wrong should offer alternative explanations.
There are always divisions and it is difficult to keep coalitions together. There are always economic and regional disparities. When done by vilifying ones opponents and making promises that can’t be kept, cooperation is harmed and coalitions break down. A reckoning with reality becomes due and a new bargain must be struck between those willing to cooperate and rejection of those without the numbers or power, by force in the case of civil war when the two sides are resolute. Not new in that regard, just continuing skirmishes.
One major animating theme of neo-reaction is aversion to presentism.
Over the course of the last century while the left has been on “the right side of history” in terms of cultural change and government expansion, the conservatives have largely been right in their predictions of consequences.
To the extent one views the conservatives of the past as having been correct, it’s hard not to be a reactionary. To be a center-right conservative of the 1930s or 1960s in today’s world is to be a fire-breathing reactionary. The problem is the toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube through democratic politics. Suffrage doesn’t get rolled back. The sovereignty of the States doesn’t get recaptured. Monopolistic bureaucracy (gov’t) doesn’t shrink. “Entitlements” and special interest subsidies are not curtailed (except from very unsympathetic and weak groups).
So you end up with a bunch of keyboard warriors advocating for fanciful technological deus ex machina e,g. “crypto weapons” (Moldbug), apocalyptic accelerationism (Land), or ugly/impractical white nationalism to allow a reactionary reset or the emergence of patchwork sovereignty.
The problem for a reactionary reset is 1) the environment in which a reactionary reset or fragmentation of USG sovereignty occurs (becomes plausible) is one no one with a family should want to live through and 2) it seems more likely an increasingly sclerotic and fractious American polity slowly fades into dysfunction and irrelevance (see Argentina).
A Salazar or Pinochet are the best-case scenarios for a reactionary reset. The worst case scenarios are not hard to conjure.
The patchwork possibility is more interesting. There’s plenty of historical precedent (pretty much every Empire, but in recent times and relatively smoothly the Austro-Hungarian, Bristish, Swedish Empires) and an existing vestigial cultural/legal framework (remember Federalism?). I also don’t think the Union would have the political will in this day and age to (again) fight a war against its partial dissolution.
Real, rather than emotional-signalling, secession movements in general (e.g. Catalonia) have to confront the industrial/economic/trade and geopolitical logic that has led to larger states and in the United States would have to deal with the broader role the consolidated USG has whether as guarantor of a Pax Americana or a Balance of Power vis a vis Russia/Europe/China. As far as I can tell the neo-reactionaries haven’t developed this line of thought much.
I’m pretty sure SeaSteading and charter cities aren’t the answer. Just ask the citizens of the Republic of Minerva or ask Paul Romer how things are going in Honduras. . .
That’s all pretty accurate, but its not quite good enough to throw up ones hands and go “we’re all fucked anyway.” At a minimum, many people’s souls just won’t allow it.
One could accept “there is a lot of ruin in a nation” and move on, which is probably where I’d be without demographic replacement threatening. Once you determine that doing nothing means eventually reaching an environment, “no one with a family should want to live through,” trying to just wait things out isn’t on the table.
In the US, power and sovereignty have been moving from the local and state levels to the federal level. I don’t see why this can’t reverse. I wouldn’t bet on it in the near future, the dominant culture is moving in the other direction, but I don’t see any reason this can’t change at some point.
Charter cities in Honduras failed. The concept still has merit and has potential. Kling has long advocated the importance of freedom of exit, and charter cities are a powerful expression of that.
The other big coming change is human genome engineering. That technology will completely change all racial/ethnic/tribal politics.
It may be that large states developed due to enabling military and communications technologies favoring scale. We are largely post those particular developments.
Time and death change everything, but slowly. There is no resuscitation of the ancien regime no matter how fanciful the memories or wishes. Time moves on and the despicable socialism of entitlements becomes the precious sacred past that must be preserved.
This “neo-reaction” discussion is a bunch of crap, designed to tar those who oppose the progressive rot as racists and worse. Trump is the true target. The Democrats and Republicans have both made a Trump inevitable The Democrats have become completely identified with the extreme left in this country, and in conjunction with their captive media, slander any mainstream Republican candidate as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. The Republicans have been unable to counter this assault and instead try to prove they really aren’t such bad guys. Despite their voters turning to them to stop Obamism, and gaining the House and then Senate, the Republicans have been a major disappointment to their voters. Along comes Trump who isn’t cowed but fights back – he must have taken Obama’s gun to a knife fight quote.
Trump is not my first choice, Cruz was, but nobody else has shown any fight.
LOL “He fights!”
Too bad he won’t win so you can find him fighting you
I think describing Goldberg as “neo-reactionary” would have struck him as bizarre at the time, but I think I can explain your inability to understand what you meant:
You cannot meaningfully define an ideology in relative terms, especially relative to something which itself shifts. The advantage Marxism gains from use of the term “reactionary” is that anything can be construed as reactionary if you want to look at it that way.
So you could plausibly call the “neo-reaction” against the early Obama administration, a kind of run-of-the-mill conservatism with some greater libertarianish emphasis, “reactionary.” But now, when it seems the dominant strain of “reaction” to the late Obama administration is a kind of unhinged National Socialism that’s deranged itself to think it is conservative or even proudly regressive, the idea that the Goldbergs of the world are the reactionaries is no longer plausible, it’s crazy, the kind of thing you’d have to read Pravda or the New York Times to believe (but I repeat myself).
There was still a lot of actual issues being discussed in terms of the left’s fixation on George W Bush. The good old days when democrats were against drone terrorism and total information awareness. Now we are talking about bathrooms and “what is a woman?”
The neo-reactionary does not want to welcome outsiders. The post-modernist does not want to assimilate them.
Post-modernist does not want to assimilate them? That is Steve Sailer crap…Go to any California public school and not see assimilation happening. I know it ain’t perfect but please don’t dismiss it so easily.
As some comedian pointed out, we had to learn Spanish, but they don’t have to learn English?!?
But seriously, are you claiming that didn’t happen? I have no idea what the status of that ridiculous debate is, but I’m under the impression that people really believed that.
Don’t get lost in the relativity scales. The reason schools assimilate is simply to save costs. It’s the same reason that they wait until kids are mostly ready to sit quietly in a desk that they require them all to sit quietly in a desk, and not before, and not after. They don’t take 3-4 year olds because they would be too expensive. We can define the neo-reactionaries as simply thinking the assimilation isn’t enough as they’d prefer.
On the other hand, I also would suspect the mainstream left’s assimilation skepticism is probably exaggerated by the assumption that if the right wants it they should oppose it.
If the concept of assimilation has been reduced to the bare minimum of passing English classes white children emerge illiterate from then no, there is no assimilation. LOL “California public school”
One thing that is funny about the current narrative is the emphasis people put on oppressed people not getting their share of the pie. The crazier thing is people buy into this at all. Our pie dwarfs that of even Europe. Clearly (economic) progress is the thing. Is it the fact that the size of the pie issue is so boring and obvious (regardless of who made the pie- I wonder if the Chinese are concerned about their lack of diversity, haha)? Is it the very fact that social justice doesn’t matter that makes suspending disbelief about it more fun?
As others suggest, maybe these are the problems that arise when you define your politics based on the opposition. Progressives want more progress relative to the reactionaries’ equal and opposite reaction. It’s not like we rubber stamp the obvious areas of agreement. We torture potential agreements until they provide conflict. Do we really care about status, or are people really just trying to win arguments without having to resort to argumentation?
For example, one tenet of science is independence. That is the whole point of the PhD, to prove you can be an independent investigator. We know we can’t trust administrators to understand their jobs, so we institutionalize independence through things like tenure. Check for yourself by asking if progressives want to raise the status of scientists if an independent scientist comes out as skeptical of the supposed global warming consensus or the political version of evolution (or stem cells, hahah!). I think you’ll find they care about your status if you can be used to undermine debate.
neo-reaction is in opposition to the Cathedral.
possibly it is against the decay of what Walter Russell Mead calls “The Blue Model.”
One workable stab at defining the commonalities of neo-reaction is that it is opposed to “The Cathedral,” whatever that is.
I think the Cathedral is generally understood as a progressive, idealistic, blank-slatist view of the world that shifts the “Overton Window” always further to the Left. The Cathedral is maintained by left leaning, well-meaning, virtue signaling intellectuals who say things that may not hold up to careful inspection. But think twice about saying “That’s not true!” if the Cathedral priests assert something.
The Cathedral has a certain outlook.
1. It is Blank Slatist (what Steven Pinker called SSM, if I recall correctly). It believes human nature is mostly fluid and can be changed for the better. It lacks what Thomas Sowell called the “Tragic Vision.”
2. The Cathedral is leveling–it dislikes hierarchies of merit (for some reason, pop stars and athletes are allowed to be rich, as Thilo Sarrazin noted).
3. An annoying aspect of the Cathedral is that It is sanctimonious, always seeking enemies on the Right and bad-thinkers within the left–people who don’t think right and who need to be isolated or re-educated. This is a niche for the so-called Social Justice Warriors. As Steven Pinker said, “Man is a sanctimonious animal.”
(Members of designated victim groups are, as a tendency, allowed to be more outspoken when voicing correctly incorrect thoughts.)
4. The Cathedral (or the community of its adherents) is cosmopolitan in the way that suburban liberals and childless urbanites are cosmopolitan–it likes the Other, it gets a frisson of delight from proximity with a wide variety of people–but only if it doesn’t have to send its kids to failing urban public schools.
As an expansion of 4, it thinks that ethnically heterogeneous societies work as well as more-or-less uniform nation states. It thinks that inside every Lebanon is a Switzerland waiting to get out. The Cathedral thinks that the Habsburg Monarchy would have been better off without the military, the Church, and the dynasty (the very things that probably held it together).
(as pointed out here: https://20committee.com/2012/12/18/why-the-european-union-is-not-the-habsburg-monarchy-2-0/ )
Those who worship at the Cathedral think that wars are mistakes, that democracy is the natural state of of any political community, and that we all have many rights but very few duties. Cathedral adherents promote the multiplication of “duty-less rights.”
Many social problems arise from people being denied their rights–such as the right to housing, health care, a free education.
The Cathedral believes in “radical egalitarianism,” defined here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/radical_egalitarianism_is_the_real_threat_.html
The Cathedral dislikes Robert Conquest, Thomas Sowell, Edmund Burke, and Adam Smith. and Charles Murray. And Roger Scruton. And Aristotle. but not Rousseau.
neo-reaction is basically everyone who would listen politely to Thilo Sarrizin when he says this
http://www.unz.com/isteve/thilo-sarrazin-on-the-limits-of-free-speech-in-germany/?highlight=germany+does+away
further reading:
1. Pinker’s _The Blank Slate_
2. E. O. Wilson’s works, including both Consilience and On Human Nature
3. Peter Frost on the difference between guilt and shame based societies. at unz.com. A great challenge is preserving civilized order from barbarism. Neo-reaction thinks this is hard. The Cathedral thinks it happens easily, and all immigrants can be assimilated easily–it is a forgone conclusion.
4. Suicide of the West
5. blogs at West Hunter, Psychological Comments, and Bruce Charlton.
P.S.: neo-reaction knows that we are in what Bruce Charlton calls “Thought Prison.” And it’s trying to get out.