Neoreaction's Darkest Power

I was going to twitlonger this, but then I said, “Hey, I have a blog.”

I’m not the first to notice this. Bryce touched on it back in December, and he probably wasn’t the first either. But the most widely underappreciated aspect of Neoreaction, and by this fact the source of much confusion about its nature vis-à-vis Plain Ol’ Reaction, is that it is successful at turning the mechanism of progressive meme propagation against itself. This may be the first time in history since that his been accomplished. (Please bring any other near competitors for this prize to my attention—they will be GREATLY appreciated.) In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this occult ability within its memeplex is the sine qua non of Neoreaction. Without it, indeed, you have just Plain Ol’ Paleo-conservative Reaction with a lot of Rayban-wearing, cigarette-toking hipsters pretending it’s all new and cool. Your confusion is understandable if you fail to grasp this: Neoreaction’s Dark Art.

Progressives are open-minded by definition. Of course, they are not fully so (nor is anyone), but they fancy themselves so, and would rarely admit to a sub-rational bedrock of ideological assumptions—a pale beyond which they will not willingly go. Now in the bright light of day, this set of ideological assumptions is incoherent, full of logical holes, with many axioms unprovable at best and provably false at worst. Anybody who’s rubbed a few skeptical neurons together knows this. But none of that really matters. This is due to the fact that the Progressive wears this set of assumptions as a moral pose. For status. He no more cares whether it’s logical than a peacock cares whether his tailfeathers are logical. And if he’s a True Believer™, i.e., ignorant of cognitive dissonance and rational doubts, this is only to his benefit as he may signal all the stronger, and be rewarded by the power structure with tiny additional epsilons of power.

This is key: The Garden Variety Progressive adopts a moral posture, believes what he believes, to obtain social status in a power regime that rewards moral posturing; but he thinks it is all merely goodness and rationality. In other words, he drinks the kool-aid provided for him. He will be open-minded, so long as the ideas he entertains do not resemble certain patterns.

Canada geese can be driven away by a real dog or a real wolf. They can also be driven away by wooden cutouts of a dog or wolf shape placed near where they are grazing. Their tiny goose brains have circuitry that says, “Dog (or dog shape). Danger!” They are not driven away by squirrels… or cars, in the latter case often to their peril. Squirrels and cars do not trigger flight responses. (The squirrel might trigger fight response, and if so, my bet is on the goose.)

Even with a substantially more sophisticated brain, the Progressive may be likened to the goose when it comes to ideas: Long, long ago things like kings and czars, slave-holders, white-hooded optimates (and later white-hooded white trash), wife-beaters, brown-shirts, skinheads, and such like variously opposed or harmed or suppressed his kind. When he sees stuff that looks remotely like this, his memetic immune system activates. He will not listen to anybody who remotely looks white nationalist. Probably because he will be screaming epithets at him. (Did you know geese hiss when they’re mad? (Which they are. Often.)) The Progressive’s brain is protected from any idea that such a person might utter no matter how rational or principled or heart-wrenching or correct it might be, because he sees the shape of the klansman or the brown-shirted thug, which registers viscerally as low-status loser.

Now the Neoreactionary propagandist—an alchemist of fine memetic poisons—knows this defense mechanism. This is not least because he was born Progressive, took Progressive milk from his mother’s breast, was trained by Progressive teachers in his Progressive school, consumed 6 hours of Progressive propaganda per day for 20 years. Everyone knows Progressivism in keep with his stature and position in life, just as everyone also knew Catholicism in 14th Century Italy.

Neoreaction defeats the natural defense mechanisms of the Progressive by not looking remotely white nationalist. Or Nazi. Or even remotely working class. Neoreaction may even have gay or Jewish friends. He might have gone to Ivy, or been so privileged he didn’t need to. These ideas might be a bit odd, vaguely libertarian, but older and far more exotic, and oh-so interesting, and such high verbal IQ, and (therefore) quite clearly harmless. This is how our Neoreactionary Alchemist strikes, he puts these carefully crafted, putatively harmless memes into the Progressive while his defenses are down. Moldbug was the first and greatest master of this. What would our Martian visitor think of FDR? Just what was Time reporting on so deliciously in 1942? So what does this NYT reporter mean by African “freedom” and “independence” that he considers them so much more important than “roads” and “malaria suppression”? Etc.

The Progressive may even be fancying himself the moral superior here: “Just being fair and open-minded.” “I’m purely rational, he’s purely rational, what harm could a little mental taste do? “I value honest and open-discussion!” “I must represent his views honestly!” “I’m certainly no Rush Limbaugh.” And once he does that, the honest and open-minded Progressive is putting at risk virtually everything he’s ever believed about God, about himself, about power, about society, arguably about belief itself.

Neoreaction is the first known memeplex that effectively attacks the very heart of Progressivism, bypassing its otherwise impenetrable adapted defenses, worming its way into the executive routines, and shredding it’s internal rules-based order. The Progressive may not turn to the dark side, but he will forever be damaged. All other anti-progressive mechanisms rely on power: to close or open doors, to demand loyalty and obedience, to demand silence, to reward orthodoxy and disincentivize dissent. Such mechanisms worked great in conservative plutarchic or monarchic regimes, when power hard was to divide and even harder to get.

But now, after the spectacular rise of the bourgeoisie, nearly all such regimes have fallen, and power-based means are useless at combating Progressivism. You can found conservative institutions and set up barriers that prevent entry all you want, but Progressives will just take their toys and go elsewhere. And since they own 98% of elsewhere and 99.3% of the fashionable toys, that doesn’t leave much space for genuinely conservative institutions. They might be allowed to exist, but they’ll have power in inverse proportion to the square of their conservatism.

Neoreaction is a—perhaps the—answer to this conundrum. It’s a method of actually turning Progressives to the Reactionary Side. As such, it’s a method of turning elites or would-be elites. Turn enough of them, make it fashionable to hold a different set of values, then there’s no telling how small the piece of straw might be that finally breaks the Cathedral’s back.

None of which should be construed to mean that we Reactionaries (Neo- and otherwise) should not be very much about building genuinely conservative institutions, with a positive visions for social order and immune to progressive entry and takeover. We absolutely should. But Neoreaction stands as a second front to attack the enemy and simultaneously recruit members, both elite and ordinary, to fill those institutions.