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-

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 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. 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 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 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."