Unabashed internet reactionaries

[Nial Fossjet]

There seems to be a growing network of blatantly anti-modernity, anti-Enlightenment blogs. Some have called it the Orthosphere (http://bit.ly/svHXvI)-


It’s a term for a network of blogs and websites – notably Throne and Altar, Collapse: The Blog, and Dr. Charlton’s own blog – written by “orthos”, or traditionalist Christians (mostly Roman Catholics, with a smattering of Eastern Orthodox) who regard modernity as a fundamentally evil, destructive project, the devastating effects of which can only be reversed by a return to an essentialist conception of man modeled on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas....

I share their essentialism, their distaste for the liberal atheism of the Enlightenment, their admiration for the 19th-century counterrevolutionaries, and their contempt for the mainstream Right in Western Europe and North America. But despite all that, I don’t think I can quite call myself one of them.

This article (http://bit.ly/uesuHy) pretty much maps out all of the ideologies within the movement.


What do ‘we’ stand for? With ‘we’ I mean all those likely to read this blog, which are also likely to call themselves reactionary. Still it seems to me that the reactionary blogosphere is but a subset, the most coherent, of a wide pool of dissenter blogs. Most of them based in the US, each focuses on the particular aspect of liberalism that is screwing him the most. I discern the following:

1.HBD

2. Anti immigration

3.Anti welfare

4.Anti-feminism

5.Anti Jewish

6.Anti bankstas

7.Anti Democracy

After Handle’s suggestion I tried to do a Venn diagram on this, but they get pretty messy after 3 items. And all this items are not evenly related. If any Charles Joseph Minard fan is reading this, please give it a shot.

Note also that I exclude Christian traditionalists, as I think it doesn’t change much. You got HBD Christians, libertarian Christians, reactionary Christians, progressive Christians; its obvious to me that the Bible is of such plasticity that you can use to argue pretty much any position at all.

Most people start on one point, and after doing some reading and thinking, they get to all the others quite naturally. In my case I started with HBD, which means welfare is pointless, which naturally means to oppose 3rd world immigration, which is pushed by Jews so you start to oppose them too, Jews tend to be bankstas who are wrecking the economy so fuck them too. Somewhere on the process I discovered Roissy’s, which taught me how fucked up feminism is, and how HBD links nicely with gender relations, evolutionary biology, etc. And then came Mencius Moldbug who taught it was ok to say the obvious conclusion to all this: Democracy sucks. Opposing democracy, or voting in general, is the last threshold for so called reactionary politics. You may despise blacks, hate Marriage 2.0, or think Jews are evil. But if you think voting can fix anything, you’re no reactionary.

(Libertarians are 3+6, White nationalists 2+5, PUAs just want to get laid. Most conservatives are just mildly 2+3+4, but aren’t principled).

It also goes into the roots of this sinister phenomenon: counter-Enlightenment, counter-egalitarianism, counter-equality. It really brings to mind Corey Robin's book, The Reactionary Mind (http://exiledonline.com/conscience-of-a-radical-corey-robin%E2%80%99s-the-reactionary-mind/). This is an assemblage of anti-modernists, probably many of whom would consider fascism to be too progressive.

Fortunately, most of these guys are just bloggers with a quixotic, demented worldview, that is hardly united. Human biodiversity, which praises the IQ of East Asians and Jews, is of course anathema to white nationalists. Anti-Enlightenment Catholic traditionalists who want to bring back monarchism are at odds with the secularists within this. This is really fringe and far from the mainstream, but I'd argue that a lot of this converges with some less fringe reactionary movements such as the aforementioned human biodiversity (the new scientific racism promoted by Steve Sailer and Vdare), paleoconservatism (embodied in racist "racialist" online journals such as the Alternative Right and Taki's Magazine), and the PUA/"Game" movement (though Roissy is notable in that he is stridently political and ideological). Probably there's overlap with the Men's Right movement as well. One wonders if there can be a leftist version of Discover the Networks (www.discoverthenetworks.org/) that maps all of these movements out.

Still, sometimes one needs to gaze at the abyss, lest something crawls up from it.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I'm not really sure if this is a recent phenomena... reactionaries have always existed and if lately they are more active than usual than it might mean that the left is pushing harder (thus becoming more of a threat).

[Red Future]

This anti-enlightenment stuff seems to be really picking up in the USA.Especially considering the rise of fundamentalist christianity into US politics since the 1970s.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

This anti-enlightenment stuff seems to be really picking up in the USA.Especially considering the rise of fundamentalist christianity into US politics since the 1970s.

According to my minor research into the subject of fundamentalist Christianity in U.S politics,it was risen and fallen in waves depending on the year and economic circumstances.I believe,over all,that it,on average,declines more than it increases;some time eras are more active than others of course but I do not not see it as picking up (at least in the sense that it will transcend their usual prominence).

[Red Future]

According to my minor research into the subject of fundamentalist Christianity in U.S politics,it was risen and fallen in waves depending on the year and economic circumstances.I believe,over all,that it,on average,declines more than it increases;some time eras are more active than others of course but I do not not see it as picking up (at least in the sense that it will transcend their usual prominence).

So sort of an inflated paper tiger in terms of its importance ?

[Commissar Rykov]

So sort of an inflated paper tiger in terms of its importance ?

It is interesting to note that states with a high amount of fundamentalists makes it much more likely one will be sentenced to death via Capital Punishment. Just some information I found out while digging for information for a paper I was writing about Capital Punishment in the United States.

[Nial Fossjet]

These guys are different from fundies, though. They really attempt to create some sort of vast elaborate intellectual framework for this beyond Scripture. Hence their fetishization for French pro-Ancien Regime philosophers, for Thomas Carlyle, for metahistorians like Spengler or Toynbee, and so on. Has anyone seen Mencius Moldbug's blog (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/) before? It is a veritable fucking Great Wall of Text devoted to his archreactionary spiels analyzing the Tory papers and so forth. It's really how breathtaking how backward all of this is.

[Ocean Seal]

Capitalism in decay. Its to be expected.

[bricolage]

the internet is like speakers corner, except if everyone's booing the one doing the ranting can still speak just as loud. it's bound to have every kind of idea that seemed impossible, horrific or ridiculous pop up on it, people probably look at websites like this and write about growing communist threats, there obviously aren't any. my advice is to let it wash over, life goes on much the same as ever.

[Frank Zapatista]

The funny thing is, this completely goes against Christian teachings and the teaching of the Roman Catholic church, the things they are preaching go directly against some papal declarations. I would love to see them be excommunicated. I'm not Christian but I have a deep interest in theology of world religions (I like to study the Qur'an, bible, Tanakh, Buddhist Scriptures etc.) I find the funnest way to argue against these religious fascists is to use scripture, there are only so many passages they can deny before it becomes obvious they are picking and choosing the ones that fit their viewpoint.

[#FF0000]

lol who cares they are a step above LARPers

[Os Cangaceiros]

This anti-enlightenment stuff seems to be really picking up in the USA.Especially considering the rise of fundamentalist christianity into US politics since the 1970s.

Actually it's been on decline for about a decade, since the success of the GOP during the 2002 midterm elections. The power of the Christian Right as a voting bloc has been decreasing ever since, most evangelical Christians don't even vote, and political independents (ie the ones with real power in the American electoral system) are generally repulsed and alienated by hardcore Christian zealotry, even the ones who are conservative in other areas.

[GPDP]

The funny thing is, this completely goes against Christian teachings and the teaching of the Roman Catholic church, the things they are preaching go directly against some papal declarations. I would love to see them be excommunicated. I'm not Christian but I have a deep interest in theology of world religions (I like to study the Qur'an, bible, Tanakh, Buddhist Scriptures etc.) I find the funnest way to argue against these religious fascists is to use scripture, there are only so many passages they can deny before it becomes obvious they are picking and choosing the ones that fit their viewpoint.

Indeed, this is why the person the OP quotes states a reactionary movement should eschew using the Bible to base its philosophy, as one can pick and choose whatever parts sound good to them and justify just about anything, which is why there's both communist and fascist Christians, and everything in between.

While most reactionaries do tend to be religious, there is nevertheless a growing secular undercurrent, who do not back up their backwards politics with religious scripture, but rather pseudoscience and an intellectual background going back to ancient and pre-modern philosophers and thinkers. They're small and on the fringe, but nevertheless are on a whole different level from run-of-the-mill conservatives or boneheads.

Nevertheless, as #FF0000 said, they're hardly better than LARPers at this point. Most of them just stick to their little blogosphere circle jerk, occasionally wandering off into other general politics forums to debate with their intellectual enemies, but little more than that. On the mainstream political arena or even the streets, they have close to no influence or presence. Doesn't mean we shouldn't consider them a threat and let their poison go unopposed, however.

[Nial Fossjet]

I believe all of this is useful to look at as a petri dish of virulently reactionary strains of thought, and see which ones may leak out into the body politic. Some of these are a few steps away from the paleoconservatism of Pat Buchanan, who while being a fringe character already, isn't too far from the mainstream. The growth of human biodiversity, which again is very fashionable in certain online circles, creates an entirely secular and pseudoscientific movement based on fuzzy statistics to justify racial prejudice. Steve Sailer and VDare may be fringe, but again he may have adherents on the right-wing mainstream.

[Black_Rose]

But if you think voting can fix anything, you’re no reactionary.Don't we revolutionary leftists agree with this too?

[Zostrianos]

What's sinister about some of these movements, is that a few that were in decline are now growing steadily once again. In America, racist and Neonazi groups had been steadily declining until Obama was elected. Since then, they started growing again...

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Uh, unless you are being ironic, comrade, NO. As imperialism becomes increasingly decadent, all manner of single celled slime will come oozing out from under their respective rocks. Pseudoscience it is. I wrote a paper in graduate school about the book "The Bell Curve" - which had as its main thesis, that poor people are poor because they are stupid. It was a best seller, and the Wall Street Journal had an editorial praising it.

Of course it is , with anything approaching careful consideration, a hopelessly shoddy piece of work. If submitted as a proposal for a Master's Thesis it would be rejected as fatally flawed. These esteemed professors make the most basic blunders using statistical methods by comparing different populations (like apples to oranges). Thus they conclude that entire countries in Africa are, in the main, populated by mentally retarded people.

My rambling point here is that they were given credence because their bullshit served the political program of reactionaries. If the downtrodden are trod down because of their genetic makeup, well there isn't really much we can do for them, is there? Anyway, it is good to monitor this stuff just to keep an eye out for what the bourgeoisie will pick up and use to batter the rest of humanity. Provided, that I don't have to read too much of it myself:).

[Zostrianos]

Of course it is , with anything approaching careful consideration, a hopelessly shoddy piece of work. If submitted as a proposal for a Master's Thesis it would be rejected as fatally flawed. These esteemed professors make the most basic blunders using statistical methods by comparing different populations (like apples to oranges). Thus they conclude that entire countries in Africa are, in the main, populated by mentally retarded people.


This can be easily refuted simply by looking at history. For instance, nowadays northern European countries are regarded as havens of stability and progress, but go back a few centuries (e.g. to the Catholic-Protestant conflicts of the 16th century) and you'll see that back then they were awash in savagery, war, massacres and chaos (like many African countries are today).

[Ismail]

This can be easily refuted simply by looking at history. For instance, nowadays northern European countries are regarded as havens of stability and progress, but go back a few centuries (e.g. to the Catholic-Protestant conflicts of the 16th century) and you'll see that back then they were awash in savagery, war, massacres and chaos (like many African countries are today).Engels noted that into the 1500's some German peasants practiced cannibalism, IIRC.

[NewLeft]

What's sinister about some of these movements, is that a few that were in decline are now growing steadily once again. In America, racist and Neonazi groups had been steadily declining until Obama was elected. Since then, they started growing again...

They prefer "white nationalist." :rolleyes:

[ColonelCossack]

Wait... they call themselves reactionaries?

I thought that was a term we used to negatively describe them! This seems like someone saying, "I roll around in shit, and I'm proud". I suppose that's just the illogical nature of reactionaries...

[Nial Fossjet]

One of the Catholic reactionaries (http://bit.ly/rvw6vD)


“Reactionary“: The thing I like best about this word is that it’s already considered derogatory. Nobody can say that I’m hiding my true beliefs behind a respectable label. There’s something pleasantly bold about owning and redeeming an insult. And nobody doubts that “reactionary” means “hard-core right-wing”, which we certainly are around here. So I have used that word for myself and those like me, and I will continue to do so. My one reservation is that the word “reactionary” highlights a vice in people of my disposition that I’m trying to overcome, namely the tendency to define ourselves by what we’re against rather than by what we’re for. Our books all have titles like “The Unspeakably Perverse Evil of Liberalism and Why All Liberals are Idiots”. I’d rather move away from that, and I hope other reactionaries will too. Our efforts should be toward describing the elements of a good social order rather than toward cursing this one. Liberals who visit this site should find themselves challenged but not insulted. This site hasn’t always lived up to that, but I hope that’s the direction it’s moving in.

[Zostrianos]

A good example of hard reactionaries are traditionalist Catholics, who are ultra conservative and want to see a return to pre-1960's Catholicism, are fiercely opposed to reforms and women's rights in the church, and are obsessed with crackpot conspiracy theories about a global "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy. They have a big online forum:
http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/

[Black_Rose]

One of the Catholic reactionaries (http://bit.ly/rvw6vD)


Thanks for the link.

This supports my supposition that the religious traditionalist blogosphere is one giant circle jerk. While reading the comments, I noted that I encountered Alte, Svar, and Chris before; thus, it seems that the traditionalist/reactionary blogosphere just consists of a small clique of followers, rather than a broad assembly of people generally sympathetic to conservative values and "Christian morals".

One reason why I am a Marxist-Leninist is because I understand the necessity of repressing these pernicious reactionary sentiments in a socialist political order, at least in the revolutionary, neoteric (before the "legitimacy" of the regime has been established) stages of socialism.

BTW, I consider the appellation of "revolutionary" positively and embrace that label, while, in contrast, I regard being called a "liberal" an epithet and an insult. I am a bona fide socialist who earnestly believes that it is a moral imperative to overthrow capitalism (not merely reform it with social democratic redistributive programs programs), not the faux "socialists" that talk radio hosts refer in their shrill agitprop railing against a supposedly liberal, elitist political establishment. Like those "reactionaries", I too embrace my political extremism, although my views are relatively mild relative to other RevLeft posters, since I am one of the most economically right-wing person here who is not a reactionary. To me, my views as a source of pride and an expression of my individual essence, as they are indicative of my curiosity and intellectual, political, and ethical independence and maturity, since, contrary to the assertions of many conservatives, Western culture and media is not under a torrent of propaganda that is sympathetic to genuine socialist ideology, thus I didn't acquire my views through passive osmosis nor were they inherited from my parents.

[Seth]

Very interesting, I wasn't really aware there was still a conservative movement radical enough to completely reject the enlightenment and modern liberalism, as opposed to the liberal conservatives/neocons/paleolibertarians we're used to.


Don't we revolutionary leftists agree with this too?

Yes, hence the line between standard liberalism in bourgeois democracies and extremism/radicalism/totalitarianism/hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr which are all totally the same thing according to the liberal horseshoe theory of politics.

[Black_Rose]

I found this blog comment (http://bonald.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/the-challenge-for-the-christian-apologist/) on a the aforementioned traditionalist blog:


1. Probably the most important thing influencing whether your children will be traditionally religious is their genetics. Which specific tradition though is mostly environmental.


2. The next most important thing influencing your kids’ values and beliefs is their peer group from adolescence through early adulthood. That means keeping them out of mainstream high schools and undergraduate programs. Some people are so truly constitutionally devout that they will remain so no matter where they go, but why take that risk.


I found it ironic that this comment essentially concedes that "materialism" (a philosophy that is often castigated by religious traditionalists, but not the more open-minded liberal Christians) has an intellectual allure as it explains much of the natural world, even aspects of one's personality such as whether a given child would be "traditionally religiously".

The next comment explicitly advocates obscurantism and the suppression of information from rival philosophical and ideological schools of thought, even if children is mature. I thought traditionalist parents would be confident enough to believe that the traditionalist worldview would possess enough intellectual and ethical vigor that mature traditionalists in young adulthood would have enough fortitude to resist the onslaught of "liberal" and "socialist" memes prevalent in Western population culture.

In contrast, like I mentioned before, I was not explicitly indoctrinated as a socialist, but it is personal conclusion of an intellectual odyssey. It seems that traditionalism has to be imposed on people, but, in contrast, I can defend my political views in an intellectual setting using my knowledge of history, politics, economics, philosophy, and ethics.

[Nial Fossjet]

Relevant coverage (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4904) (embedded links not quoted):


Most thinking conservatives believe that the modern West has gone off the deep end, and most of them also identify a particular historical event as the start, or at least the first major symptom, of this development. For many modern cultural conservatives, that event was the moral revolution of the 1960s; for some on the American right, it was the Civil Rights movement, the New Deal, or the end of the Civil War; and for certain counterrevolutionaries, it was the French Revolution.

But for a loose affiliation of conservative bloggers and authors who have recently taken to calling themselves “orthos”, the sources of our modern malaise lie farther back in time, and are more deeply embedded in our presuppositions and prejudices. Their critique of the modern Left is far more philosophically substantive and, for better or worse, far more radical than most of its competitors. Their main target is not postmodern relativism, redistributive left-liberalism, Frankfurt School cultural radicalism, or Marxian socialism; for although they deplore these things, they also regard them as mere symptoms of a deeper problem.

I pause here to note that it is difficult to summarize the orthos' beliefs succinctly. This is partly because of their often high level of philosophical abstraction, and partly because the orthosphere (the orthos' term for the network of blogs and websites they administer and write for) is a loose coalition of people who do not necessarily agree about everything. Still, I think the founding idea of the orthosphere can be fairly oversimplified into this sentence: “The problem with the modern world is modernity itself”. For the orthos, the philosophical core of modernity is the rejection of the Aristotelian-Catholic idea that there are objective essences and purposes in the world. Many of the orthos trace this idea back to the nominalism of late-Medieval scholastics like William of Ockham, although they would also argue that it did not culminate until the 18th century and the Enlightenment. In philosophy, this modern nominalism gave rise to the idea that the world consists of nothing but meaningless, purposeless matter, and thence to modern atheism, materialism, relativism, and finally the complete nihilism which today is increasingly engulfing America and Europe. In ethics and politics, it produced a worship of autonomy – the idea that every individual can and should define its own purpose and destiny, unfettered by tradition, authority, or higher truth – which became the founding idea of every modern political ideology, from the classical liberalism of Locke to the redistributive leftism of the modern state. (The American philosopher Edward Feser, while having given no indication that he considers himself part of the orthosphere, provides an excellent overview and critique of this modern anti-essentialism in his book The Last Superstition.)

This is a radical idea, and it entails a radical conservatism. The orthos reject the Enlightenment project entirely, and espouse many ideas that are unfashionable even on the Right, including theocracy, censorship, and absolute monarchy. Their ideology centers around the defense of particular loyalties and moral communities, of traditional authority, traditional morality, the monarchy, the patriarchal family, the ethnos, and the Church. Many of them draw inspiration from the throne-and-altar conservatism of counterrevolutionaries like Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Juan Donoso Cortés, and seek to rescue the Middle Ages from the historical scrapheap. Needless to say, orthodox Christianity is central to the their thinking (hence the name) – in fact, I have yet to come across an ortho who is not a traditionalist Catholic or a conservative Protestant.

But beyond the ideas, who are the orthos themselves? Although the term itself was only coined in late 2011, most of them have been active for much longer. My own introduction to the movement came in early 2010 through the blog Throne and Altar, “devoted to defending the legitimate authority of God, tradition, fathers, and kings against the diabolical partisans of freedom and equality”, which is run by an American Catholic who writes under the pen name Bonald, a reference to the 19th-century French counterrevolutionary. Considering that Bonald appears to have no formal education in most of the subjects he writes about, the breadth and erudition of his thinking is truly astounding. Of particular note is a series of essays, with titles such as “In Defense of Tradition” and “In Defense of the Patriarchal Family”, in which he ably explains and defends his basic ideas. Another American ortho is known as Proph, and runs Collapse: The Blog, which is devoted to “making sense of our ongoing social catastrophe”. Although he began his blogging career as “a Druckerian pseudoleftist” who was largely preoccupied with economics, Proph gradually moved to the Right and increased the scope of his writing, culminating in his recent (and still incomplete) conversion to Roman Catholicism. Also of note are the Australian Mark Richardson of Oz Conservative and Bruce Charlton, the author of the recent book Thought Prison, in the comments section of whose blog the term “orthosphere” was coined. While the American authors Lawrence Auster and James Kalb have not, to my knowledge, commented extensively on the phenomenon, their ideas are very similar to the orthos' in a number of ways, and are frequently cited with approval by the orthos themselves.

It is ironic that virtually all of the orthos come from the English-speaking world, since many of the ideas they oppose are British or American in origin. They themselves appear to be well aware of this irony. In an essay entitled “Can there be an American conservatism?”, Bonald contradicts virtually everyone else on the American Right and strongly repudiates the Founding Fathers, whom he describes as «liberals who hated tradition and piety» and «traitors who deserved to be hanged». (However, he goes on to caution that while Americans should reject – and indeed, in practice, have rejected – the radical liberalism of the Founders, they should still revere their symbolic role as fathers of the nation.) Bonald goes against the grain in other ways as well – for example, he is less hostile to Islam than many others on the Right, and has even suggested that American and European conservatives might benefit from an alliance with socially conservative Muslims.

It would be wrong, though, to think of the orthos as mere iconoclasts. For one thing, they themselves would reject the label – they are, after all, self-described authoritarians who see no inherent value in dissent and radical change. For another, their arguments and ideas, which I have not done justice in this article, are far too serious and substantive to be labeled so glibly. We may disagree with them, but we can not dismiss them. And although they are mostly American, British, and Australian, their thoughts are in many ways inherited from the European Right. Agree with them or not, those thoughts may provide just the intellectual reinvigoration we on the continent need.

[Nial Fossjet]

A more succinct summary (http://midwestballadreview.tumblr.com/post/13550867725/a-full-standard-deviation-better-use-of-your-time), from a liberal perspective on the blog Midwest Ballad Review (excerpt below):


I keep seeing hints, not evidence necessarily, but hints, that we are seeing a serious cleavage on the American right. Not even between the “extreme” or “Tea Party” and run-of-the-mill conservatives — that’s a back and forth undulation you can see going back to Goldwater and before, but the nascent return of interlocking sets of ideas that are markedly different, older, more stark, more fierce, and really not fit for public consumption.

What do I mean? Not just your average anti-labor, Laffer-curvy Reaganism, but heavy anti-Fed metallism. Not just the familiar traditionalist Schlafly-style anti-feminism, but explicitly anti-woman politics, whether in an arch-Christian or scientific “evo-psych” mode. Not just the pro-white-status-quo country club resentment and giggling of Limbaugh et al, but true-blue racialism, Spenglerism and high-toned warnings of (white) civilization collapse. All of these things look and feel very different to me than the Christian conservatism we all loved and feared through the 90s, though of course a demographic doesn’t appear overnight, and no Venn diagram would be fully distinct.

And a fuller write-up (http://midwestballadreview.tumblr.com/post/20860366027/derbyshires-firing-is-an-ideological-matter) he wrote in the wake of John Derbyshire's firing from the National Review (again, an excerpt, you ought to read the whole thing):


I think there is a different kind of cleavage happening here; it’s not a continuum of right vs. center, of the-real-thing vs those-who-compromise. When it comes down to it I think we’re looking at a genuine ideological disagreement. Derbyshire, for NR, was always a representative of a different kind of conservative, not just “more than” but different from average American Republicanism. “Derb” held a different set of ideas that are both Jacobite-ancient and internet-au-courant.

As in all things the borders are fluid, but let me sketch out two camps: one is Americanist. This is the basic National Review position, the average Republican position, the average sentiment of the red American. It’s conservative, but still sees itself as fighting for and working within the bounds of America’s founding mythology: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” you know the rest.

Derbyshire wasn’t ever on that team. His atheism ought to have been the tip-off. He played in a different pool. His work, and the work of people who write for the non-NR places he turned up, argued explicitly against the bounds of Americanism as an imperative of civilization: rights and equality sound very nice, but it’s all fake, and we are being destroyed. The article that got him fired is a straightforward argument against the Declaration. How else can you summarize it but “it is self-evident to me that men aren’t equal at all, now behave accordingly.” This is all he’s ever written.

...

[ex-pat right-wing philosopher Nick] Land calls this set of ideas “The Dark Enlightenment”; let’s just call them the Anti-Enlightenment. To give you some flavor, Land adopts the Moldbug term “Cathedral” to stand in for the great enemy of liberty and truth: it’s not just the State (as your Austrians would have it), nor Feminism (as your PUA political-misogynists would say) nor Equalism (your scientific racists’ bete noire) — the Cathedral is all these things, and more besides. It’s the whole of Western culture basically since the Reformation, including democracy. The modern democratic-national-Westphalian order is a sick, evil cult. “MM” is the at the outer edge of this line of thinking to be sure, but he’s a good enough example, and the lines connecting these people are short. The rejection goes very deep.

...

A while ago I wrote that this other kind of rightwinger — the younger, internet-bred Derbyshire — is endlessly fascinating to me; getting an accurate judgment of their strength is a big preoccupation of mine. (It’s worth noting that this second camp of semi-underground arch-reactionaries is not synonymous with “the gutter” of hard-right internet rabblerousing. The Breitbart organs have come out in support (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/04/07/Debryshire-Fired) of Derbyshire’s ouster. Mostly.)

In recent years they have scored a notable political-rhetorical success: the “alpha/beta” male typology beloved of antifeminists and evo-psych poonhounds has firmly entrenched itself in the conservative political internet and beyond. Derbyshire’s ejection suggests, at least, that the Dark Enlightenment will have limited success on overt racism; arguments on that score will have to be kept to a Murray/Hanson standard of long-winded classiness (http://theamericanscene.com/2012/04/08/how-a-racist-blended-in).

But my suspicion is, in the long term, little by little, the Anti-Enlightenment is winning on the right.

Interestingly, Derbyshire himself (http://takimag.com/article/anniversary_of_a_defenestration_part_ii_john_derby shire/print#axzz2HEkDHaw0) seems to have discovered the above article, and responds to it on Taki Mag:


MBW is much better acquainted with us of the Dark Enlightenment than a liberal has any right to be. Did he steal one of our decoder rings? What really got my attention, though, was his prediction at the end of his piece that conservatism’s future belongs to us. It surely does, pal, but you’re not supposed to know.

Not that MBW is all good sense. He goes on to argue that I, Mencius, and others out here in the Dark Enlightenment have rejected not only the Declaration of Independence but also “the whole of Western culture basically since the Reformation, including democracy.”

That’s hyperbolic and a bit silly. The stuff about equality in the Declaration was nothing more than a ceremonial way of saying, “We’ll have no aristocracy of birth in our republic.” Name a Founder who would not have fallen dead of apoplexy on seeing his daughter out walking with a black man. Nor were the Founders great fans of democracy (http://www.proconstitution.com/republic/). Nor do I have any problem with post-Reformation Western culture; I have in fact written reverent books about two aspects of it (math and opera).

Democracy, though? We-e-ell… (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349807131&sr=1-1&keywords=democracy+the+god+that+failed)

[hetz]

Engels noted that into the 1500's some German peasants practiced cannibalism, IIRC.
So did Soviet peasants under Stalin. And in 1921.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

"In defense of the patriarchal family".

"The faults of Anti-Monarchism".

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE INJECTING!? :laugh:

[Flying Purple People Eater]

When it comes to the family, the facts are well known. Humans reproduce sexually. Unlike many other animals, our young are born completely helpless and take more than a decade to reach maturity. They require an enormous investment of time and effort from their parents if they are to survive long enough to reproduce themselves. Because it is only the woman who can be pregnant, give birth, and nurse, she is naturally more involved in child care, at least during the early years. For his progeny to survive, the man has had to assume those tasks which the woman can’t do while caring for a child—acquiring food and repelling attacks. Men and women have acquired (by natural selection) special physical, mental, and psychological features to assist them in their specific tasks.
Patriarchy is the idea which assigns moral significance to these facts. The good toward which the patriarchal family is ordered is procreation. Its basic principle is the embrace of dependency. The child depends on his parents, and the parents depend on each other. These experiences of dependency, both of having others depend on us (and the responsibilities this creates) and of depending on others (and the humility this engenders), are regarded as positive goods. The more deeply each member relies on the other, the more the family can be said to thrive. Thus the family is not merely an illiberal institution; it is positively anti-liberal. Nothing is more opposed to its ethos than independence, in either the sense of autonomy or of self-sufficiency.


This actually sounds like something that would come out of Mises.

[Nial Fossjet]

I sort of regret posting those links earlier on, because they misrepresent the full nature of the Dark Enlightenment/Orthosphere. That's because as appalling and morbidly fascinating the views of Traditionalist neo-monarchists are, gawking at them is sort of like gawking at PUA/Game misogynists; they're two subcultures that are tied to the movement as a whole, but not the whole picture. My latest (previous) post, with its links from Midwest Ballad Review, is probably most complete.

[Nial Fossjet]

The neoreactionary movement seems to be growing. By that it seems like more blog posts are showing up in search results. And that it will be a long time before "Dark Enlightenment" has a whole gains the strength of Weird Twitter, never mind social justice otherkin activists on Tumblr. (Though taken individually, their subgroups such as HBD blogs, PUA/Game subculture - the ones politicized enough to have a opinion on the rest of the Orthosphere, and MRA probably have huge niche followings of their own.)

That said, I still feel that it's good to keep an eye on these people.

Here, a diagram of their obsessions, created by themselves:

http://occamsrazormag.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/darkenlightenmentvisualtrichotomy.png

Another summary from their own (http://darkecologies.com/2013/05/20/youve-got-to-be-kidding-neoreactionary-soup-and-the-fall-of-man/) (quoted in an article from an outsider blog not part of the Dark Enlightenment):


Most neoreactionary writing consists of detailed criticism of particular progressive reforms, with particular emphasis on the flaws in one specific idea — democracy.

Ultimately, however, if after all these centuries of trying to improve society based on abstract ideas of justice have only made life worse than it would have been under pre-Enlightenment social systems, the time has come to simply give up the whole project and revert to traditional forms whose basis we might not be able to establish rationally, but which have the evidence of history to support them.

Twelve points (http://www.moreright.net/twelve-points-of-neoreaction/) from Michael Anissimov, a futurist (!) devotee of Eliezer Yukdkowsky and the logic fetishizing rationalist group LessWrong, and apparently a neoreactionary himself (full descriptions of the points are in the link):


1. Communism and capitalist Democracy are two sides of the same coin—forms of mass rule, or Demotism.

2. The United States is controlled by a coalition of Progressive thinkers in the media, civil service, and academia.

3. A Democratic government is not accountable for anything.

4. Democratic elections are nothing more than crude popularity contests.

5. Irrational voters don’t “cancel out” — actually, the impact of their irrationality is magnified when it is aggregated.

6. Irrational voters and pandering politicians create a feedback cycle of error.

7. Voters have every incentive to vote themselves as much wealth from the Treasury as possible, until the nation overloads itself with debt and must declare bankruptcy.

8. Democratic politics are a tool whereby different segments of society vote themselves benefits and wealth away from other segments of society, exacerbating social conflict.

9. For roughly 165 years (since 1848), democracy has caused social and economic mayhem worldwide.

10. Democracy and progressive culture have destroyed traditional social structures.

11. Modern Western society, dominated by progressive ideas, is always trying to level everyone out, condemning those of greater wealth, intelligence, or ability.

12. The “salad bowl” approach to culture, the attempt to toss together different cultures in the same small space and hope they flourish, has failed.

He also wrote a glossary of neoreactionary terms (http://www.moreright.net/neoreactionary-glossary/). Including Julius Evola.

Finally, they created a helpful chart of the various internet celebrities of their movement, so when you guys know who to purge, or something

http://habitableworlds.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/darkenlightenment2.png

And look, they even have graphic artist geeks making embarrassing Magic cards featuring their ebon luminaries:

http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/carlyle-rising/

http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/volume-2-issue-8-heroes-of-the-dark-enlightenment/

http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/volume-2-issue-9-more-heroes-of-the-dark-enlightenment/

That site is called the Carlyle Club. Did I mention that they really, really love Thomas Carlyle for some reason?

[brawler5k2]

^I see in one of the above graphs that Hans Herman-Hoppe is included as a portion of the neo-reactionary movement. Do you know if he's personally involved, as in advocacy or monetary funding/endorsement of any of the other websites, or if it's just by association in regards to his anti-democratic/pro-monarchic writings?

[Aleister Granger]

It's the Internet, man.
The Internet will internet whenever it feels like it

[Remus Bleys]

The funny thing is, this completely goes against Christian teachings and the teaching of the Roman Catholic church, the things they are preaching go directly against some papal declarations. I would love to see them be excommunicated. I'm not Christian but I have a deep interest in theology of world religions (I like to study the Qur'an, bible, Tanakh, Buddhist Scriptures etc.) I find the funnest way to argue against these religious fascists is to use scripture, there are only so many passages they can deny before it becomes obvious they are picking and choosing the ones that fit their viewpoint.
I think they are actually Sedevacantist. The opinion of most people at my Church is that we are better off without them.

[Red_Banner]

They prefer "white nationalist." :rolleyes:


I prefer to call them CONnards.

:)

[Aleister Granger]

This thread makes it seem like its a growing renaissance of thought.
After snooping around, it looks like it's just another ibowelmovement that will die off in a few years or be replaced by something like 'We should follow the example of Greece' or shit like that. I wouldn't put too much stock into it. Even the laffabertarians are ruffled by it.

[Nial Fossjet]

^I see in one of the above graphs that Hans Herman-Hoppe is included as a portion of the neo-reactionary movement. Do you know if he's personally involved, as in advocacy or monetary funding/endorsement of any of the other websites, or if it's just by association in regards to his anti-democratic/pro-monarchic writings?

I doubt he's related at all, except as you point out, he's a modern critic of democracy. They love that.

A lot of people on that diagram are unlikely to be fans of their "movement" (or rather, their coalition of the chilling), or even be aware of its existence, like Dr. Steve Hsu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hsu) or LessWrong.


This thread makes it seem like its a growing renaissance of thought.
After snooping around, it looks like it's just another ibowelmovement that will die off in a few years or be replaced by something like 'We should follow the example of Greece' or shit like that. I wouldn't put too much stock into it. Even the laffabertarians are ruffled by it.

Agreed, but it's certainly amusing that all of these super antithesis of internet socialist groups are melding together in a big tent that's only marginally less shaky than the GOP alliance. That said, they do have ideas that may occasionally resurface in the mainstream. That Midwest Ballad Review blog already pointed out that the "alpha/beta" pop sociology stuff in PUA/Game is common parlance now. (Though clowns like Neil Strauss, Mystery and the like are far more mainstream and probably less political like Roissy and his ilk, and the politicized, ideological group within Game is probably much smaller than the rest of the subculture.)

That said, there are two takeaways from this:

1. Modern day fascist (not actually fascist, some of these d00ds are harder right than fascist in their understanding because fascism places too much power on the masses, dammit) movements mostly get their jollies from being contrarian and anti-politically correct.

2. Modern day fascism (same disclaimer as above) is tacky as shit.

At least the movements in the '30s and onwards had a certain sense of aesthetic style.

[Venas Abiertas]

What kind of economic pull do these people have? I expect that it's very small.
Politically they're a fringe element. They're anti-consumerist and morally puritanical, which makes them unattractive to the typical Western libertine capitalist. They oppose democracy and only propose monarchy as an option, which pits them against the vast majority of Westerners.
Inside different religions they appeal to "hallowed tradition" and can counteract more progressive tendencies. Many of the negative comments I hear from leftists about organized religion or belief in general is based on the actions and attitudes of these groups.
In the Muslim world similar groups seem to be more powerful and have contributed a lot to the misery of their countries.
I don't see that in the West they represent much of a threat. Their proposals, such as return to absolute monarchy, institution of a state religion, puritanical styles of dress, music, film, and speech, emphasis solely on "classics" in schools, and return to racial segregation, will not gain much traction in the majority of the population.

[Nial Fossjet]

More "conventional" white supremacist and neo-fascist groups don't have much economic pull, either. I'm not saying that this is the next big threat, but I think it's at least worth examining to understand what weirdness is gestating on the ultra-right.

Also, I think you're focusing way too much on the ultra-Catholic/pro-monarchist fringe of their movement. The PUA/Game guys are super anti-woman but they're total hedonists interested in finding creepier and creepier ways to bed women. There are libertarians within this as well, and futurists, who aren't as interested in morality.

[Nial Fossjet]

Internet progressive/rationalist-statistic type/LessWrong-poster Scott Alexander writes a long explanation of his take on what the Dark Enlightenment (or Reaction) is, from an outsider's view: Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/)

he then writes a long rebuttal of many of their core ideas (or at least Mencius Moldbug's), the Anti-Reactionary FAQ (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/)

And some notes on that (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/24/some-preliminary-responses-to-responses-to-the-anti-reactionary-faq/).

[Nial Fossjet]

They've hit the mainstream, gents:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/

[Dagoth Ur]

5.Anti Jewish

6.Anti bankstas
Why do they have anti-jew on here twice? I mean why use the "bankster" code if you're openly saying Jews suck?

[#FF0000]

Why do they have anti-jew on here twice? I mean why use the "bankster" code if you're openly saying Jews suck?

Uh damn dude

[Dagoth Ur]

"Uh damn dude" what? I'm confuse.