Background
Over the past weeks of controversy, I have striven to maintain peace between Michael Anissimov and Bryce Laliberte and supporters of each. I have tried to take everyone’s viewpoint and arguments very seriously. And, in fact, by so-doing have received significant heat, much of it in private, some of it good-hearted, from my so-called “libertarian left” as well as my so-called “social conservative right” on this issue. My goal was and remains: not to take a side. The only side I care to be on is that of the Truth.
All of this I have done without expectation of reward or sympathy, but only out a sense of duty to friends and Christian charity towards all. If, by my pronouncements in this post, I exhaust all remaining social capital which I have earned over the past couple years, then so be it. I have gotten to the truth and I cannot but publish it.
I have to my own satisfaction investigated the supposed infractions in this dispute and have come to the following conclusions:
Part I: On Talking to Whom
Talking to, being friends with, showing normal human kindness to a disordered person is not tantamount to:
a) approving all the free choices that person has made; or
b) favoring social and/or legal norms that support the person’s disorder; or
c) joining them in their organization (should it exist); or
d) inviting them into your organization (should it exist)
It just isn’t any of those things. I have said this before. No one has proven me wrong on this point. Unless I am convinced by strict logical proofs that I am wrong on this point, I shall consider all future allegations (allusions, hand-waving or emotional outbursts) to the effect that talking to, being friends with, or showing kindness to any disordered person is per se wrong (inappropriate, immoral) to be moot, null, and in horribly poor taste. I therefore declare this point settled and to represent the Official Neoreactionary Position.
[Everyone knows what “per se” means, right?]
Part II: On Friends of Friends
Now it’s a free Twitter world. People can talk to whomever they wish to talk, be friends with whomever they wish to be friends. People can not be friends with whomever they wish to not be friends, and not talk to whomever they wish to not talk to. One may even choose to not be friends with someone on the sole basis of with whom they choose to be friends or talk to. I don’t recommend this, but I will not condemn the practice.
However, once you start down the slippery path of attempting by private and public admonitions to get people to not be friends or talk with someone because he happens to be friends or talk with someone you don’t like, you have gone beyond a pale which separates serious adult men from 13 year-old girls (with apologies to 13 year old girls). I’m sorry, but such an action is not worthy of any man, much less a reactionary man, much much less a reactionary man who seeks to be worthy of leadership over other capable men.
I’m sorry, but “wow-just-wow” is about the only argument I can muster here. Read my Reactionary Oath. That is what men aspire to. Not girlish popularity games. I consider this to be the Official Neoreactionary Position on the matter until convinced by strict logical proofs that it is incorrect.
Part III: On Purging
Let me first be clear: Purging is a power necessary to guard the stability and principles of An Institution.
But if one wishes to engage in a purge, all of the following are required:
1) An Institution, i.e., with rules and hierarchy and (probably) oaths of loyalty;
2) Legitimate authority within that Institution;
3) Good cause to purge;
Even if Michael Anissimov had (3) (which he doesn’t based on Part I above), he yet lacks (1) and (2). If someone wants to purge someone else then show up with an Institution and your name at the top of it, and then there’ll be something to talk about. Until then, all future such attempts to purge are moot, null, damaging, extremely embarrassing, and in very poor taste. This shall be construed as the Official Neoreactionary Position.
Part IV: On Minding One’s Own Business
Here I quote the Reactionary Oath (Section 4A):
As a Member of Rank of the
Occidental Foundation[International Brotherhood of Carlyleans], I shall recognize the temptation to blame my own faults on others and to eschew ever doing so; to own up to my failings, refuse to make them into false virtues, and seek to improve myself toward conformity to the ideals of my thede. I promise:A. To tend principally to my own business; to avoid prying overly much; to respect the reasonable wishes of privacy in others; to eschew gossip and call it out, when appropriate, in my brothers
I realize that there is room for debate in “avoid prying overly much”. But the entire content of Anissimov’s complaint against Laliberte and elsewhere Oddblots has to do with looking into conversations and activities that he has no business looking into. In order to justify that level of “watchfulness” (let’s call it), you would have to at least show a) legitimate authority to do so; and b) clear and present danger.
Now I’ve already dealt with “legitimate authority”, i.e., no one’s got very much of that. But on the harm front, Anissimov is quite exorcised of late by the fact that, yes, the Baffler piece linked JT’s admonition to “Read Moldbug” and “her” neocameralist whitehouse.gov stunt to the Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction. This, Anissimov supposes, somehow represents a danger. This is, in my opinion, a huge stretch. I’m going to need to see some proof of harm. First, Baffler is of significantly lower Alexa rank than Daily Caller. I haven’t seen the Baffler piece on google news for example. Second, every other Nrx hit piece has been somewhere between bullshit and lark vomit, so why would anyone take this one more seriously than any other? Third, Tunney publicly claims to NOT be Neoreactionary. Fourth, any person stupid enough to think that Tunney is somehow a reactionary is probably not someone we want to attract anyway.
So I’m seeing risk of harm low, risk of being perceived as a busybody very high. Gentlemen mind their own business except for only the gravest reasons. If such grave reasons did exist they would provable and manifest to all. Anissimov has attempted to meet this bar, but has by my own careful calculations failed.
Additionally, Anissimov tried to tell me, a 47 year-old man with more innate social conservatism in his left pinky than he’ll ever have in his whole body, that it was “inappropriate” for me to have a meetup with Oddblots and others in the NYC-area neoreactionary community. Now this was in a private conversation, and though I am generally loathe to reveal anything from private conversations, I believe it is relevant to show just how far beyond the pale Anissimov was willing to go on this subject.
Now sure everyone’s free to have an opinion, and furthermore free to express it, publicly or privately. This is, after all, The Salon. But this opinion is a steaming pile of shit. I shall be the judge of who I can have a drink with. This should henceforth be construed as the Official Neoreactionary Position on this matter.
Part V: On Undermining Legitimacy
I am pretty sure that Anissimov has accused Laliberte of conspiring to undermine his legimacy within the Neoreactionary Community. If he has not, then others have made that charge on his behalf in pretty much those words.
Even this allegation were true as stated (which I doubt), then I believe that the harm by such a plot to Anissimov’s supposed legitimacy is microscopic compared to the damage he has done to himself in this whole debacle. Men who are fit to rule men do no behave in the way he has done. Period.
Men shit-test men all the time. It may or may not be a good and proper thing to do. But who is the worse: the one who constructs the shit-test, or the one who fails it?
It is the Official Neoreactionary Position that falling prey to hysterical over-reaction to a perceived personal attack is a disqualifying defect in a man who would lead other men.
Conclusion
Leaders of men don’t have to say they are leaders of men. Men follow them naturally. Having to say so is already a huge strike against legitimacy.
Leaders of men do not draw a line in the sand that their followers should not cross, unless they are certain the vast majority of their followers will obey. Doing so is to carelessly throw away any legitimacy you might have had.
Leaders of men do not engage in campaigns based on innuendo, fragile reasoning, and strained readings of their new found betrayer’s communications. (This is what leftists do!)
Leaders of men do not fail to put down challenges to their leadership with skill, reason, and grace.
Leaders of men are patient, prudent, serious, thoughtful, and wise.
Moreover, leaders of men intuitively know all of the above. And though it gives me great pain to say it, I believe Michael Anissimov has failed on nearly all of these fronts. These failures have been the very origins of #Trannygate, which has been a waste of time, a bigger waste of social capital, and a profound embarrassment to most contributors within the incipient neoreaction. It should never have been a thing at all. Michael Anissimov single-handedly made it a thing, and that was foolish.
#Trannygate is over. This shall be construed as the Official Neoreactionary Position on the subject.
Now I realize that this essay has not been flattering to Michael Anissimov, whom I continue to respect for his contributions to and influence within the neoreactionary and broader reactionary communities. It is my hope that he will receive this admonition in the spirit by which it is offerred, which is in humility, with honesty, and without malice toward anyone. I furthermore hope that we can all remain allied and work together without undue rancor in our common cause to delegitimize Progressivism and break it’s stranglehold on culture and politics.
A note to the duller half, I am emphasizing “Official Neoreactionary Position” with a fair degree of irony here since my own comments here and elsewhere for over a years casts great doubt on the very possibility of an “Official Neoreactionary Position” at least on many things.
This blog started out principally to document the Reactionary Consensus. One reason that such a record remains incomplete is that I’m lazy and lack sufficient expertise. The more important one is that it’s far from conclusive that such a consensus exists.
I would say however that if enough neoreactionaries concur on an “official neoreactionary position” then it probably is.
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Well written Nick. It’s times like these I’m glad I don’t allow Twitter past my house’s filter.
Feel free to share my email and let Tunney know there’s a place to stay in DC if one is needed.
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Thanks Handle. Pretty sure Tunney will be able read that Tunnyself.
Ya know, I continue to say that I am of two minds on twitter (at least). Navigating this conflagration has not been fun and it wasted a ton of time, but if I have in any way preserved the confederation we all have, then it will all have been worth it. And plus twitter is riproariously fun from time to time.
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A lot of learning came from this whole TrannyGate experience. I really enjoy Mike Anissimov’s writings and ideas on a lot of things, and I can fully understand his point. However, I also have noticed in humanity a tendency to attempt social engineering that causes secondary effects which are not linearly extended from intended effects.
In my experience, the biggest threat to RxD (NR, NRx, DE, Trad, paleo, etc.) is going to be entryists who are perfect in outward form but not coherent with the spirit of the ideology at their core. At least, this is how it was in the hacker community, underground metal, white nationalism and other undergrounds.
I also really enjoy Justine’s contributions. She has a keen grasp of the issues and understands how to apply them. This in my view suggests we should listen to her and include her. In my understanding of traditional conservatism, all people have burdens to carry and things to sort out in their lives. I think we should aid them in this through something more like Christian love than anything else (I think the pagans would agree).
Extreme orthodoxy seems to collapse on itself. Like liberal social engineering. Berlin 1945, France 1792 and Moscow 1991 aren’t all that different.
Well-written piece, look forward to reading more. Hope you don’t mind my slightly scruffy presence. As someone else said, we’re all misfits if we’re in RxD. We’ve dropped out of this society because it’s broken, evil or worse. And so we carry on, a small brand of humans — as other small bands have done for time immemorial — setting out on its own path, hoping to create something better.
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Brett thanks for stopping by. I’m surprised that you seem even more open to JT involvement here than I am, tho’ I doubt we are far apart.
“Extreme Orthodoxy” is another word for fanaticism and long-lived religions (like Catholicism, Orthodoxy) tend to have institutional as well as doctrinal safeguards against such things. A point I had made elsewhere in fact was that no matter what a person’s “sexual preferences” were, that they never could add up to be a part of the identity or essence of that person. People who reject trannies, gays, whatever because they are that way seem to be making the same anthropological mistake that the preference identitarians make.
I assume by “scruffy appearance” you mean the Kazinsky avatar? If so, please know that Kazinsky, while not considered a hero of the neoreaction, has nevertheless provided quite a bit of fruitful study over the years. Some of his analyses are spot on and prefigured a significant chunk of moldbuggian analysis. It seems neoreactionaries are one of those rare intellectual groups that can handle memetically radioactive material without killing them or causing them to turn into raging green super monsters when they feel threatened.
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Nick, you are truly the soul of neoreaction. The movement is safer in your hands than it was in Moldbug’s.
Now let’s get started on that neoreactionary queer theory that Scharlach assigns us. I conjecture that homosexuality could be partly a way of announcing and maintaining heirarchial arrangements between men, especially for the purpose of determining who has first choice with women if they become available.
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Right — this is a point that ought to be emphasized. I’m going to write a post on this once I get home, but, in short, a society ought not to create conditions favorable to the formation of a coalition to rebel against it. Extreme orthodoxy shuts down the unprincipled exceptions / avenues for internal exit that draw off the pressure. Obviously, part of the problem is that this sort of coalition-formation is incentivized to an extent as a weapon of progressivism — but progressivism itself doesn’t seem to understand it, and, in (already) enforcing this extreme orthodoxy, has (already) overplayed its hand.
The problem with social conservatism is like the problem with old-time sodomy laws is like the problem with today’s marijuana laws: duocodicalism isn’t obvious. The laws/norms are on the books, but when are they enforced? (Tunney’s example here is King James.) The problem is that people might miss the point and bring it to attention, losing the drawing-off and creating the conditions favorable to the formation of a rebel coalition — my impression is that this is what happened with homosexual sex, but I could be wrong.
I wish I’d bookmarked that Islamic parable I came across ages ago, the point of which was that one ought not to publicly acknowledge one’s sins, because publicly acknowledging them contributes to their normalization. This is another form of duocodicalism, just not a legal one: the point isn’t not to do it, but not to make a big deal out of it. (One can be fairly sure that blanket prohibitions against premarital sex were not scrupulously adhered to in societies where the average age of marriage was significantly over 20. So you have shotgun marriages to prevent bastardy if she gets pregnant, but other than that, it’s a solution to the problem of the clash between biological drives, the utility of maintaining monogamy, late marriage to ensure that the father has an adequate resource stock [or whatever the point of late marriage was], and anything else I might be forgetting.)
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Peppermint: LOL. My theory about the etiology of homosexuality is that all of the theories are probably somewhat true.
Wes: Yes. And Christianity very early modified it’s practice of public confession and put it behind closed doors and sworn secrecy. Probably for much the same reasons.
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Hello
This may not be the best entry to post on since it is about a matter internal to the neo-reactionary movement that I know nothing about, but I am hoping you can offer some guidance.
I am genuinely searching for ideological truth. I converted to Christianity a year ago after growing up as an atheist, and have been looking for others who see the world the way I do, that have a genuine dislike of decadent, modern western culture and a subversive love of tradition, Biblical authority, and radical anti-liberal political theory. I had been reading a blog known as ‘Amerika’, but its criticism of Christianity told me that the writer wasn’t exactly in the same camp as me, though he had many good points
I am wondering if I actually belong in this ‘sphere’ since a lot of what you say makes sense to me. I am aware the so-called ‘Dark Enlightenment’ has its own subdivisions and yours represents those with more of a pro-theonomy approach with a focus on the Word. Where can I find the best material on this perspective to study up before networking with like-minded reactionaries who wish to change the world?
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I think an essential point in defense of Anissimov’s position hasn’t been addressed, so I’d like to outline it here.
I would propose that looking at this issue as “should neoreactionaries be allowed to talk to whoever they want?” is missing the point. I think the particulars of this situation, namely the uniqueness of Justine Tunney, warrants addressing the issue as whether neoreactionaries should talk to her, specifically.
It’s not a matter of whether it is unbecoming of a reactionary to speak publicly with Justine Tunney, it’s whether speaking to Justine Tunney does unnecessary, and potentially irreparable, harm to Neoreaction. It’s not just that she’s is transsexual, or that she was formerly associated with OWS, or that she’s a public figure who has advocated for neocameralism (sort of). None of these things by themselves are particularly dangerous. It’s all of these things together, however, that presents a threat.
Tunney holds neoreactionary beliefs. Since holding neoreactionary beliefs is, as of yet, the only real criteria to being a neoreactionary, there is nothing to stop people from associating Tunney with neoreaction. Her being a public figure holding neoreactionary beliefs places her as a de facto ‘face’ of neoreaction in the eyes of the public. Evidence of this is the baffler article. There is no good reason to believe this trend of the media associating Tunney with neoreaction will not continue. If it does, and the wider public comes to accept this association EVEN IF she is not actually a neoreactionary (perception is what matters when dealing with the public), then we have a problem. It’s bad PR and image matters. This association undermines and discredits neoreaction and severely damages recruiting efforts. Bad press is going to happen, but it should be controlled to the extent that it can.
So, I agree that talking to someone doesn’t imply an endorsement of their values, and that telling people who they should not talk to on twitter is inappropriate. But I think people are not looking at, or are underestimating, the potential damage that any association with Tunney may have. And perhaps looking at it as an issue of negative side effects, rather than as what type of conduct on twitter is appropriate, people might have a better understanding of Anissimov’s concern, and may be more inclined to heed his advice.
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Very well said. The weekly catfights instigated by anissimov divert energy and focus from proper topics and ideas. There is much to do and much to discuss… all while balancing our real life responsibilities.
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I remarked in an earlier thread about my desire not to contribute (or even be seen to contribute) to entryist decay through intemperate participation in these fora. I’d like to bookend those remarks with another encouragement, if I may.
I think it’s right and good that Nick has put this issue to rest, because as I read “… To tend principally to my own business,” in the Oath, I read it as a start, not an end. I see that “start” in how I teach, and how I teach has been clarifying NRx principles in my own mind (and despite following NRx since shortly after Moldbug started UR, I still don’t have the sharpness and acuity in articulating NRx positions that so many of you demonstrate).
We want an “Anti-Versity,” so I built one – a small one – in my classroom. May I share some tales from my NRxLab?
I pepper my students in my ESL classes with daily NRx challenges. Besides being great fun, it sharpens my thinking, and riles them up (hence they speak more English, hence I’m doing my duty). This week, I had one class reading TheLastPsychiatrist and concluding that the universities are money-driven institutions that contribute to social-narcissism-as-disease; when a couple fellas from Venezuela arrived early for another class, and remarked (can’t recall why) about women’s inequality, I hammered them with stats from JudgyBitch on what would happen if men took the day off (their jaws dropped, and they were pounding the desk with pride by the time the one female Turkish student came in from smoke break – they summarized, she agreed); a Spanish student was writing a 5-page essay, and chose feminism in history as a topic, and in response to her first draft, I gave her quotes from Radish’s “Democracy and the Intellectuals” critiquing Rousseau, democracy, the French Revolution and feminist-Whig-thepastwasalwaysBAAAD history with quotes from Filmer, Maine, and Evola, and she was impressed enough to actually go dig up some of them, and draft 2, which just hit my inbox … looks different, shall we say; I’ve introduced neo-cameralism and the Patchwork in past week’s classes and had the students agree that a joint Canada-Brazil-Spain-Cuba run Guantanamo Bay would be a joke, but a Singapore-run version would find us all packing our bags to move into (this followed a warm up game of “Detroit or Mogadishu”); I was teaching ESL teachers this week, and for a dictation exercise, I read them parts of Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall 60 Years Later” and asked them to tell me the gist of some of the passages (they were intrigued, to varying degrees).
There was a lunch break when a colleague came in, boasting of how she’d put a Saudi student “in his place” by demanding to know why gay marriage wasn’t allowed there, and “all he could say” was “that’s how it is in my country.” I calmly pointed out she might as well have told him to go mug the King for his wallet, because what could he do about it? I told her she probably left him with the conclusion that gays in the West 1) have powerful/popular allies, like her fine self 2) little merit of their own (I mentioned Turing) 3) are “in fashion” this season, indeed that “gay” “rights” are nothing more than political fashion. It went ok-ish, but I would like to get better at arguing … ahem … against my own (?) interests.
As I said in the other post, I’m gay, but I’m more: I’m the grateful son who benefited from his parents’ homeschooling, and didn’t let its downsides embitter him; I was raised a conservative evangelical (I’m not, now); I spent time in the Canadian Forces and can clean/assemble/fire a rifle; I’ve traveled to and lived in Asia. And I’d like to get better at thinking, as Nick said “to the Core,” like a NRx – if only to benefit the people in my little class, who come in, and hopefully leave seeing the world with a different set of eyes. That’s what NRx – and our “Anti-versity” – can be, in its early stages: we have so much work to do sharpening our own minds.
Perhaps a mentorship program is in order where older, more experienced members of the NRx coach the newer ones in rhetorical tactics and logic-on-the-fly. Your point #1 on Purges remarks on needing an Institution – what better institution than one that trains younger NRx-ers in arguing against the very entryist decay you seek to be vigilant against?
There, back I go to my perch, to lurk.
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@mlr LOL. And thanks for that. PLEASE keep commenting! Yer doin’ The Lord’s Work, whether you intend it or not.
@Sobl Thanks. Ppl like you got real work to do. I’m happy to scrub toilets and put out the occasional chemical fire.
@Roscerli Indeed Tunney is a unique case. For better and worse. On one hand, since Tunney is unique (a chimera not thought to exist in the world even 6 months ago), then this is all the more not a reason to change neoreactionary culture in which we suddenly go around reading each others semi-private communications, and overreacting to the penumbras and emanations which we imagine are there. If Tunney is a uniquely dangerous case, you handle it differently. You call a summit of all the “leading neoreactionaries” (and tho’ no one has such a list, everyone pretty much knows who’s on it) and you hash it out away from the public eye.
Is, in fact, JT being publicly ID-ed as Neoreactionary a PR Disaster? After having read and now met Tunney, it may not be quite as preposterous as I and others have hitherto alluded. The answer is: I don’t know that it is a disaster. If you want to attract Stormfronters and Trad Catholics it probably is. If you want to attract elite Brahmin defectors from Progressivism, it probably isn’t. And that is going to come down to What is the Essence of Neoreaction and how if at all does it fit into Broader Reaction? A question which I studiously avoided in this OP.
Michael is trying to say the soul of Neoreaction is social conservatism (traditional old-school reaction). But I, in spite of my innate old-school reaction and fervent wish that neoreaction were merely “New Reaction”, I am not actually convinced that is correct. Land and Laliberte forever, and now Sandwich (brilliantly) are contending for a much different view of Neoreaction: a tool that disassembles progressivism from first principles, which by its nature leads to reactionary, i.e., antiprogressive, solutions to social order.
This view is quite consonant with what other biggies like Foseti, Handle, Jim, Anomalyuk, KFB, and (we think we know) MM would think.
If MM owns the copyright on “Neoreaction”, then, in spite of his aversion in principle to copyright law, I think we know what “Neoreaction” is. Merely “social conservatism” ain’t it. An ideological justification for social conservatism, in fact more conservative than most so-cons could even imagine, but it’s not social conservatism itself. Neoreaction leads inexorably to social conservatism. But the latter is not a starting point for the former, and trying to make it so is really just shooting neoreaction in the foot, because the people you really want to attract to neoreaction are very likely put off by conspicuous social conservatism.
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@Mark Citadel:
Hi Thanks for stopping by. The best window IMO into a geniunely traditional (counter-prog-cultural) Christian worldview is The Orthosphere. I can think of no better place to lurk (and participate) to find what you seek. It is genuinely reactionary, with a decent amount of overlap and cross-pollennation with the neoreactionary community.
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@mlr
Dude, I just tweeted a link to your comment because it was THAT good, but I called you a Mormon (which I don’t think you are/were). I was thinking of someone else (Sansfoy?). So sorry about that. Weird: I got the gay guy confused with the Mormon guy.
Apologies to both of you.(Ack!) (LOL)
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Re: Baffler
I think we can trust Adam Gurri and/or Jordan Bloom to get the Neoreactionary story right. We must be patient.
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Indeed/Quite right/So say we all…
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@NBS
I concede that if neoreaction is a set of analytical tools, a truth-seeking salon, nothing more nothing less, then it must remain free from political tampering if we want it to produce pure truth.
I will take Nyan Sandwich’s definition as the official version of this view:
“The main value of Neoreaction is in producing a novel, intelligent, uncompromised, and correct analysis of social and political science that is unafraid to contradict current political fashions and is unafraid to draw on non-contemporary or non-agreeable thought.”
There isn’t room within the term ‘neoreaction’ for both an analytic wing and a movement wing. They must be nominally distinct. Once figures like Justine Tunney begin contributing to the analysis, which would be fully appropriate under Nyan Sandwich’s vision of neoreaction, then it is unlikely that a movement will be able to call itself neoreaction. Also, the pure, unadultered truth that the analysis provides will not always be favorable to right wing causes.
‘Reaction’ is an inherently right wing term. There is no getting around that and I don’t think anyone would argue against this fact. So to call an organization dedicated to novel and uncompromised social and political analysis ‘neoreaction’ is to confine and undermine it’s stated mission right from the beginning. No one would expect unbiased truth from an organization that called itself ‘neoprogressivism’. If we are to keep this ‘truth seeking salon’ pure, it must, as Nyan Sandwich says “not answer to any political cause if it wants to produce the truth”. By calling it a term borrowed from right-wing politics is to shoot itself in the foot before the battle even begins. It should be called something else. Moldbuggian analysis, or something.
Neoreaction is a more suitable term for a movement that draws heavily from moldbuggian analysis and applies it toward the mission of building a prosperous, stable civilization. It’s a term more fitting an explicitly right-wing movement, and should be reserved for this. There’s no ‘movement’ going on as of yet, but I would suggest that the time has come to make the distinction between the ‘analysis’ and ‘movement’ wings formal.
You are right that a truth-seeking analytical salon association with Tunney will not be damaging, but if we are ever going to call our right wing movement ‘neoreactionary’ or if there is ever going to be a ‘doing something’ wing of neoreaction, then public association with Tunney WILL be damaging.
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Very simple – if you refer to J Tunney as “Justine” or “her” you’re pwned by progressivism.
If you can’t recognize reality when it’s staring you in the face that boldly you’re lost.
If you won’t state a truth because it’s socially disapproved then maybe you should stop talking about HBD because it might hurt the feelings of black people.
You can see where this leads.
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roscerli: Exactly. This is the point of all the intentionally contradictory movement names I keep generating. (Still annoyed that some people started taking ‘anarcho-fascism’ seriously…)
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Tunny as a PR disaster? Possibly, but Neoreaction doesn’t get to control what the hatchet-job journalists are going to say about Neoreaction.
Radish defined the players in Neoreaction with Magic the Gathering trading cards. It was a tremendous morale booster at the time, but it is low hanging fruit for any journalist that wants to mock and belittle Neoreaction. Anissimov? It’s a trivial task to paint him as a nutter that wants to set up a “compound” in Idaho. Nick Land? Loony PoMo philosophy professor that has lost the plot. The SPLC smears folks like Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor as “white supremacists.” There are a vast number of angles that can be used to attack Neoreaction. Trying to mind our P’s and Q’s at this point to try to get fair coverage is a fools errand.
The progs are going to demonize Neoreaction by any means necessary. It is pointless to regulate our own behavior for the purpose of optimizing the public image of Neoreaction. The progs are simply going to make shit up if necessary, or twist reality to suit their black propaganda needs.
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I think that analysis is already called ‘Dark Enlightenment’
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Calling him her is disturbing, and an alarming concession to progressivism.
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@roscerli
I’m OK with this. To the extent that I have any clout in the direction of the analysis wing, I think it ought to focus its attentions and prescriptions towards supplying insight “for a movement that draws heavily from moldbuggian analysis and applies it toward the mission of building a prosperous, stable civilization.”
@Steve Johnson
You are consistently bothersome and uninteresting everywhere you show up.
@strirner
Concur. Worrying about PR for a racist, patriarchist, capitalist, anti-egalitarian, theocratic, right-wing, etc movement is a funny thing to do.
That said, if that movement was front-manned by a tranny, you can bet that the right-wing normals wouldn’t go anywhere near it.
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I’m very disturbed looking at Justin Tunney’s timeline full of him screeching NRx memes….converting postmodern hipsters won’t help us if the rest of the Right shuns us as polysexualists. There’s got to be standards.
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Actually, let me revise my opinion.
This analysis/activist split is probably a bad idea. I tried to find a good “analysts go one way, activists the other” solution, but now I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. We need each other and ought to be flying under the same banner and in the same minds.
We are all doing more or less similar or at least compatible things here. Nobody is a progressive, everybody respects a good analysis, everybody wants more solid analysis, everybody wants to find and implement a cure.
The major disagreements I’m seeing are:
Some of us (eg. Me) think we are currently not in possession of a cure, and we need to do a lot more analysis and building the intellectual franchise before we’ll have anywhere near the research and design manpower to find one. To the extent that we focus on action, that action should be focused on trying things out in the field, and on spreading neoreactionary *ideas* among the thinking class.
Others of us (not me) want to focus on building non-intellectual power towards the purpose of getting something stable and reactionary off the ground quickly with the cures we do have. Action should be focused on spreading reactionary lifestyles and practice, and creating reactionary structures. (Have I got this right?).
There is the further disagreement of whether the people involved in the movement need to uniformly live up to its highest standards of behavior, and what those standards are.
My opinion is that practice should be spread by opt-in societies and specific social structures, not necessarily trying to redefine the existing “neoreaction” to refer to a coherent political movement with strict standards of behavior, which it currently is not. And ideas should be spread by what we’re doing, which is propaganda and strong theory.
As for what good standards of behavior are, and whether we need to live up to them, I think that is a complex topic:
For example: I am a) a believer in traditional monogamous patriarchy as a very elegant social-tech solution to the problem of male and female socio-sexual behavior. I am b) currently an aspiring PUA. Is this a contradiction? I think not at all.
Patriarchy is a social technology deployed on the society-level. That social tech is currently broken, so I don’t currently have a way to find a suitable woman or keep her around besides Game, the development of which happens to be damaging to society. Do I give a fuck about society when my eventual family is at stake? No I do not. If I pretended that we live in a working patriarchal society and approached life in that way, I would be selling out the stability and quality of my family for… What, exactly? Even if I chose this strategy against my rational common sense, most others will not.
The problem is not solved by us simply martyring ourselves by choosing irrational but virtuous lifestyle choices, it is to make the virtuous more rational by restoring social control mechanisms society-wide.
So obviously this is what some of us are trying to do: shame people who try to do the otherwise rational but antisocial thing.
The problem with that becomes apparent when you look at the game theory of shaming. Shaming is a framing tactic, and it requires a large base of support for it to work. If a strong social faction decides to shame some behavior and the frame works, they become stronger and the behavior gets modified. If a weaker social faction tries it and the frame fails, they just look like a bunch of antisocial idiots.
We are currently a weak faction. Even within NRx, the socons are weak. If you try to shame someone with strong rational justification for the target behavior, they are just going to leave and the movement will lose many quality people. Maybe that’s a good idea? I think not.
Thus I favor (possibly selfishly) a pragmatic acceptance of the fact that right now, a good number of us are hardcore sinners. This is also the traditional Christian thing to do, by the way; strong positive encouragement of virtue, but acceptance that one can hold an ideal of virtue without practically being able to live up to it.
Similarly for other degeneracy. Once a reactionary state has power, it is critical that the perverse lifestyle JT represents be suppressed and officially nonexistent. However I also think even then it is best that such people should be quietly tolerated and respected and allowed some dignity far away from the levers of power. Even then I think it is harmless to be friends, and harmful to punish non-punishers.
But now, given that we don’t have the power to dictate society-wide norms or even our own norms, it would be the height of folly to burn large amounts social capital trying to enforce social conservatism on ourselves. We are still early and fragile.
That said, this JT thing needs to be solved on the object level particular case for tactical goals, not in general with principles.
As a further point against hysteria:
Membership in Neoreaction is not binary. Two years ago I was basically a progressive. A year ago I was writing on MoreRight but still polyamorous and still stupid on a number of other points. I have moved steadily right since then. Maybe I will come around to hardcore social-conservatism-though-the-heavens-may-fall. I imagine the same dynamic is true of many others. If there had been a “you must be this reactionary to exist” requirement, I would not be here, and would probably still be blue-pill on a lot of stuff.
NBS is absolutely correct in this:
“Neoreaction leads inexorably to social conservatism. But the latter is not a starting point for the former, and trying to make it so is really just shooting neoreaction in the foot, because the people you really want to attract to neoreaction are very likely put off by conspicuous social conservatism.”
People will come around by the strength of the ideas. We might need to worry about eternal September dynamics where recruitment outstrips rightward drift to a left-drifting result, but beyond that there is no need to be really strict about anything.
Save the purges and social control for explicit institutions and after we’re done winning.
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Neo-reaction does not inexorably lead to social conservatism.
It is clear that it can just as easily lead to techo-commercialism. Which is basically libertarians wanting to impose libertarianism through authoritarian rule.
The leftward drift has already occurred.
Half of your reactionaries (and way more than half of the active ones) are Jacobins, not Jacobites.
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Van Phauc: Some things are hard to see from a perch high atop the internet.
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@nickbsteves:
Good points on all fronts. If we turn into extreme orthodoxy, and begin policing ourselves aggressively, in my view we will lose: we will lose sight of our forward, growth-oriented goals and become self-referential. That’s the institutional equivalent of solipsism.
Kaczynski has been a hero of mine for some time. His arguments are techno-Nietzschean: how a mathematics guy might approach Nietzsche’s more philological arguments. He also brought in the environmental connection, which is that “blood and soil” makes for unpolluted soil, where commerce/popularity makes nature a means to a human end. Fear of environmental damage has always been my biggest issue, but I think it’s impossible to tackle it without a “deep ecology” viewpoint, which is that we can’t treat it as an issue. Until we reshape our society around respect for life itself, we’re never going to understand why to avoid eating up all of nature and replacing it with a fecal streak of concrete, shopping malls and fast-food joints.
One thing I’ve realized is how close all of these belief systems are: neoreaction, new right, traditionalism, paleoconservatism, dark enlightenment. The reason is that at its core civilization preference divides into two basic approaches:
1. The individual first.
2. Social order first.
With the individual first (individualist) approach as was adopted in the West with “the Enlightenment(tm),” there is no possibility of social order because it conflicts with the individual. Thus if individuals want cheeseburgers, we cut down the Black Forest and put in roads and fast food joints.
By the same token, individualism encourages deviation from any tradition and ANY values system other than ideology and commerce. Thus you get destruction of the family, neurotic and schizoid behavior being normed, degradation of learning and speech codes like PC to keep us all on the same page. This is the ultimate fate of the “proposition nation” or the nation-state based on political ideology and not the triad of culture, heritage and values.
With social order first (conservative) approach as was the norm in the West a couple thousand years ago, we all try to have a sacred role as a means of participating in the collaborative achievement of the goals of our specific civilization. This can’t be separated from gender roles (patriarchy), identity (nationalism/ethno-culturalism) and some kind of social order or hierarchy, including but not limited to some kind of caste system.
In the conservative view, ideology is nonsense. What matters is improving quality of what we have. Thus if someone suggests a specific improvement, we do it. What we don’t do is add a “narrative” to change our purpose; our purpose and methods are organic, and relate to a civilization dedicated to balance and harmony in all things, the classical ideal. We don’t need to explain that. It just is. When people start requiring narratives and ideologies, you can tell they’re working around this.
Regarding Tunney, I can only inject my experience with other undergrounds: (1) entryism will come from true believers who distort the philosophy by over-emphasizing certain parts, not outsiders who are honest about that status and (2) when one becomes self-referential and pogromist, it’s an admission of defeat. All respect to Mike Anissimov because where I’m from gentlemen can disagree without acting against one another, but I think he’s not so much “wrong” as on the wrong path.
My hope for neoreaction is that it admits its roots begin long ago in Nietzsche, Evola, et al and continue through many literary artists — including Eliot and Greene — and was expressed before MM in Houellebecq and others like Kaczynski who dared refute individualism. That is the primal taboo and when we attack it, we unravel this society’s pretense of itself as dedicated to the “less fortunate” and reveal that the actual basis for egalitarianism, diversity, subsidies etc. is the selfishness of those involved.
That is the task before us. I really enjoy reading your blog and how it brings out these topics to the community at large. We try to do the same at Amerika.org but take more of a Nietzschean crunchy paleoconservative/traditionalist outlook because of our origins more in philosophy than political philosophy. We’re also secular, meaning that we are pro-religion but believe that any good idea can be justified through study of physical reality alone, and that physical world common sense and metaphysical common sense are one and the same. It makes us outliers to just about every movement but an interesting nexus point between them (or so I hope).
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Brett, I have long read you and considered you a fellow traveler in the broader Reaction. The key of neoreaction (I’ve been trying on new names of late “Moldbugism”, “Menciism”) is in the way the critique tries to get behind the motivations of leftism (variously republicanism, progressivism, liberal democracy, socialism, communism) as an explanation for why it always wins. What in the human psyche and condition, in spite of the fact that we can see society disintegrating around us, keeps making that happen?
Certainly Moldbug has many antecedents, as he himself readily admits and liberally points to. But his unique and most valuable gift to modernity is a way—a narrative—to break the stranglehold that this leftist memetic virus has on power.
It is not so much that I disagree with Individualist(liberal) vs. Social Order(conservative) spectrum as I believe it complete. There is also the Egalitarian(leftist) vs. Natural Hierarchy(rightist) spectrum. They are not of course orthogonal axes, as often illustrated in the pick-your-politics questionnaires. And though I am a stoutly conservative rightist, I’m not too concerned about the exact optimum on x-y plane for my or any particular nation. I am far more concerned at the frightfully powerful gravitational pull we find at the Egalitarian pole. Each extreme has its horrors. But the Egalitarian pole (Leftism) A) has already demonstrated more horrors (by way of body count) than all of the other extremes combined; and B) shows no sign of being containable.
On the JT question, I was and remain of two minds on the subject. I think Michael’s proposal for a wider separation of branding between Neoreaction/Moldbugism/Menciism and various Reactionary Impulses & Movements (following the separation that Marxism has from various Socialist movements) has a fair degree of merit. Importantly it moots the confusion that a lot of natural born reactionaries sense when they look at neoreaction. They’ll say stuff like: “What kind of reactionary smokes cigarettes with a tranny? Blech.” This happens because “neoreaction” is seen, improperly IMO but because of its lexical nearness, as a subset of reaction. “Ick, those neoreactionaries are like no reactionaries I’ve ever seen.” But Menciism (nee neoreaction) is a motivating force (“occult motivation” in Laliberte’s lingo) behind Reaction, not the (or a particular) reaction itself. Menciism is a tool (or set of critical or analytic tools or a school of thought) for creating Reaction.
“Those Menciists are plotting the demise of Progressivism? Great. So long as I don’t have to have them at my dinner table.”
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If Menciist is supposed to reflect the analytical model that Moldbug uses to dismantle progressive illusions, perhaps a snappier phrase for it would be Moldbugology>
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The reason I call Moldbug a “popularizer” of neoreaction is that he invented reasons for people to get interested in not being leftists. However, as you point out, that work around for leftism — generally using the same methods Houellebecq did, attacking its social results from a programmer’s perspective with a poet’s heart — is not neoreaction itself, but a reason to get involved with neoreaction. This in turn points to the historical lineage of neoreaction, which per the division of the French political bodies into left/right reveals the nature of modern politics: there are leftists, and then there’s everyone else.
I suggest that instead of trying to differentiate neoreaction, we admit this heritage and point out commonality between non-leftists, which is that we want a reality-based consequence-driven narrative, much as an engineer or scientist would. The difference between us and engineers/scientists is that we are also aiming for something above baseline function; we must be conscious of beauty, of what a truly elegant civilization would be like, and what sorts of existential elements our society would want.
This was the brilliance of Houellebecq’s attack. He looked at the effects that liberals has on our individual experience and the loneliness, emptiness, anomie, carelessness, listlessness and otherwise “heat death” style emotions created by leftist takeover of the West. Houellebecq was influenced by Nietzsche and Celine and most likely was read by Moldbug, since in the early 2000s he was what every literate but edge-pushing person was reading.
Let’s look at these spectrums:
* Individualist(liberal) vs. Social Order(conservative)
* Egalitarian(leftist) vs. Natural Hierarchy(rightist)
For my next magic trick… these are the same. Individualism = egalitarianism. Individualism means “no one can tell me no.” How to achieve that in a social group setting? “No one can tell anyone no.” Are there exceptions? Yes, for the big bad obvious stuff like murder/rape/theft but also for the social offense of telling a truth that indicates “no” to an individual.
I think we all are, but it’s important we admit something: leftism IS egalitarianism. It has no other real component. Thus we need to look at egalitarianism as leftism but remove it from a political context. What are the philosophical, social, and emotional roots of egalitarianism? Individualism. This explains why it has such a pull: it is directed at the most basic Bonobo instincts in the human being, which is me first, screw everyone else. What contravenes this? The triad: culture, heritage, values. But that contradicts individualism.
We will always lose the first throw with egalitarianism, because it sounds better. This is why it appeals to the inexperienced (young – no experience, female – shielded by men, suburbanites and gated-community ubranites – shielded by money) and why it’s impossible to argue directly against. “We stand for good,” egalitarians say. “We want to include everyone! Why are you against including everyone?”
It’s the political equivalent to “Answer yes or no — Have you stopped beating your wife?”
The correct response is as Houellebecq illustrates to attack the existential results of it, which are a collapsing society and massively depressed and negative people, and to as the libertarians have done attack its consequences, which are a financial slide into third-world ruin. There is also the Nietzschean approach, which is like Houellebecq but with more of a “rising above” attitude, and the Huxleyian/Evolan approach, which is to tie our individual existential experiences into the sense of a “sacred” role in upholding an eternal order.
I disagree here. Marxists had impetus to separate from Socialists because leftist movements always have impetus to change names. The reason is that while they’re eternally popular with the inexperienced, they are equally eternally unpopular with the experienced. Thus once Joe voter snaps to attention and sets down his beer, whatever term the leftists were using in that generation is poisoned… so they switch names. Marxists, leftists, liberals, socialists, Communists, progressives, compassion-based voters… do they really mean anything different? At a philosophical level they are egalitarianism with different degrees of method applied.
On the other hand, right-wing views are not very popular and suffer from a branding problem. The more names we come up with, the more we split activity. This is great if you want to run a clubhouse, and Mike is right that this leads to great “branding” or identity, but it also distances us from infiltrating mainstream conservatism, which is how Le Pen has succeeded in France and UKIP has succeeded in the UK. Most people of any utility tend toward conservatism, but don’t recognize this; conservatives do a horrible job of explaining themselves (on an A-F scale, a Z or worse). When they do snap to the result is usually something like the Tea Party: quasi-libertarian (government is fail, “civil rights” & “social issues” are fail, get it off our back) with a strong social conservative element (religion, chastity, honesty and hard work).
I suggest that instead of trying to distance ourselves from the Right, we unite the right, and put our ideas on top. MM is a nice method-thinker for looking at alternatives to egalitarianism, and we shouldn’t forget him, but we shouldn’t (a) limit ourselves to him where he is wrong/broken and (b) not use MM as an identity to separate us from others, which then isolates us from those who see things the way we do. Whether in a democracy or not, having consciousness of an idea by the majority of useful people is how change occurs.
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If reaction is largely about red pill truth, Mr. Tunney is as far from this as it is possible to be.
He writes on Twitter,
“At the end of the day, what really matters? What do you covet most… — I want to have a husband and kids.”
This is like someone who has his legs cut off on purpose and then tells us the thing that matters most to him is hiking. Such an individual lacks either integrity or sanity.
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In my estimation it’s the sanity.
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Brett: Your answer deserves more of a response than I can muster right now. Too much sangria with dinner….
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