Wes is contributing mightily to Menciist Theory with his series on Status and Civlization (parts one, two, and three). The finale, we are admonished, is delayed due to the difficulty of not invoking a basilisk (which appears to be some sort of scary talisman that really smart, non-superstitious people believe in).
Speaking of high Menciist theory, Poseidon Awoke, indeed! From unheralded and little known Butch Legolas (@PoseidonAwoke) comes an analytic masterpiece on neoreactionary status signaling. I really don’t what to say on this piece, except maybe “Magisterial!” and “Go! Read it!” It is now Officially Totally Cool (High Status) to look out for the best interests of working class whites. Nick Land notices and adds a few notes.
Well, among the noisier shufflements of deck chairs this week, after #Trannygate (qua #Trannygate) was “officially” put to rest, was the question of rebranding the thing formerly known as “Neoreaction”. Anissimov says do it. After playing with a couple of names, I say “Hey, maybe not a bad idea.” Laliberte admits more must be done to distinguish between essences.
Then, completely out of nowhere (known to me), comes Adam (@roscerli) with his fresh off the byte-farm Roscerli blog and a fine contribution to the rebranding discussion:
What we should call Position B [conceptual avenue that leads inexorably rightward] and Position C [rightist solutions themselves], or even whether there should be a division, are up for debate. It seems that confusion is being caused by calling separate concepts, with inherently different and possibly conflicting elements, by the same umbrella term without distinction at the lower level.
I think that gets it about right. It is an important question that remains far from resolved (and one that cannot be resolved by partisan bickering). Anyway, keep it coming, Adam! Speaking of rebranding… Ya know, I have friend whose band, when opening in clubs for more famous acts back in the late 80s, would occasionally go by the moniker: “Elvis has Left the Building”. (As in, “Ladies and gentleman, Elvis has left the building!”) Ya think that’d work?
And speaking of reactionary institutions, this just in: Part 1 of Ideas toward a Neoreactionary (or some aptly named) Institution from another guy (@kantbot2000) I had barely heard of, who himself has a whole new rather scholarly blog: Die Turmgesellshaft (The Society of the Tower). Looking forward to parts 2 through N.
At Social Matter…
I linked to it in last week’s TWiR, but Ash (Ketchum) Milton gets himself out on the Big Stage with a repost of his Maple-Leaf Moldbuggery.
More Neoreactionary poetry from E. Anthony Gray.
Laliberte says Not All Racisms are Created Equal. Nor, in fact, are the most bigoted ones even called “racism”.
Bishop on Progressive Trading Cards. Bad news: The most powerful ones are taken.
Glanton gets to the conclusion of his “Paleface” series, which has been an fantastic extended meditation on how the left wins by playing language games:
In other words, the categories created by the term “misogyny” make for clumsy and heavy-handed analysis. They’re severely limited. The struggles of brave, independent girl programmers in Silicon Valley and victims of sexual trafficking in Romania probably don’t have all that much in common, at least not so much that we can trace both of their plights to a single concept called misogyny.
Oh and then towards the end, Glanton suggests fighting the Left’s language games on their own terms is an okay short term strategy, …
But the long term strategy, the winning strategy, strikes me as something that will require a little more subtlety and sophistication. Because ultimately working in such large terms as “us” and “you” at the national level traps us in the same sort of centrally-administered, mass society that helped to engender all of this dysfunction to begin with. Because ultimately even fighting the good conservative fight in those huge, fuzzy prog terms is just perpetuating huge, fuzzy, prog categories.
Indeed, extricating genuine cultural conservatism from Left’s heads I win, tails you lose rules, is arguably the biggest issue facing cultural conservatives today, not least because most of them don’t even know the rules.
Dampier, perspicacious as usual, pens Understand the Educated Young Woman’s Perspective:
This extraordinary social engineering project [broadly: women’s “economic” equality] has been in development since at least the mid-19th century if not for longer. It was thought that, by socializing elite women in a similar way to how elite men were socialized, women could eventually contribute just as much to the high arts and sciences as men could. Today’s women see themselves as at the vanguard of an attempted revolution in the species.
Today’s educated women feel the weight of these expectations bearing down upon them like nothing else. Enormous quantities of credit have been extended to them in aggregate in speculation that their higher-than-ever educational attainment will result in stupendous leveraged gains for the rest of society. The entire state apparatus has built itself around this risky bet that devoting enormous financial and legal resources to women at the expense of men will result in an out-sized payoff.
Given the explosion of social pathologies arising from domestic maladaptation, and the now two generation secular decline women’s self-reported happiness, it’s becoming clear that there are few who will win by going long Women’s Economic Empowerment™. It is a credit bubble of Biblical proportions that even Janet Yellen could not backstop (social capital is not manufactured at the Discount Window). Deflating it gracefully is a question for some between literal life and death.
In other news…
SoBL on Hillary’s Stroke (erm) Concussion; also some humorous musings upon presidential politics. SoBL pays attention so you don’t have to. I lolled especially at his take the guy from my lower ankle of the woods as a VP contender:
The Ambiguously Gay One—Senator Cory Booker. He is a sharp, charismatic 40-something who just hasn’t found the right girl. This spot is if Clinton fears she needs the black vote desperately, but what if the ignorant base voters force him to come out and this backfires on Clinton as blacks stay home rather than support a gay? Booker lost Newark’s mayor race the first time.
Booker lost for the same reason Obama first lost in Illinois: insufficient blackness. And Booker is quite arguably less black than per impossible Obama. Don’t like his chances, but you know Progs just love a mulatto. A gay one? Ka-Ching!
Apropos of the coming centennial of a War that at once started and ended it all approaches, SoBL also recommends Two Great Reads on the Great War (cross-posted at The Den; and finishes up the week by looking at stuff like money and geopolitics (again so you don’t have to). Loved this bit on Gaddafi and how US foreign policy, conspicuously moralistic since 1863, seems to have upped its fire-n-brimstone of late:
Left unsaid is the weird issue of needing to kill off these tin pot dictators now compared to the old days when the dictator would be allowed to leave the country and finish off life in exile. The exile option was a nice one, so why did the leaders of the international order do away with it? Is the need to kill off the oppressive figurehead or administrator so great that we must allow it? Does that conviction, imprisonment and execution allow for a cathartic group experience that helps with moving people along to a new phase in their nation?
Jim clarifies the “Official” Reactionary Position on some stuff. By the way, I missed stopping by Jim’s last week and boy was I sorry.
Matt Briggs asks Is Laverne Cox Still a Man? (Hint: yeah.) Also some scientists publishing in the very hoity-toity sounding Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (a-CAD-emy!!) have discovered female named hurricanes are deadlier than male-named ones because, behold the power of p-value, people are less apt to run away from ladies. Look for NOAA to begin naming hurricanes after comic-book super-villains and scary ancient demiurges soon. There are lives to be saved here, you understand.
Mangan reports:
We’re busy deconstructing our nation, while Putin is trying to correct the errors that got Russia into a bind. At least they have something to hope for.
Also, some good advice: “Lighten Up”.
Over at Neovictorian’s: A not terribly sanguine view of Laissez Faire City; some scattered musings on Heinlein with a bonus link to an early 2009 cordial back-n-forth between earthbound reactionary, the late Larry Auster and Mencius, the Reactionary from Outer Space. Also, missed this gem from last week: a Tale of Two Malaises. From someone who was cognizant through both of them. Wow, Neovic is older than me! (Had no idea. But I don’t think he’s as old as Jim… either of them.)
Over at his own place, Bryce Laliberte continues working the problem of reconciling transhumanism with regular ol’ traditionalist humanism:
Traditionalism does not entail a death of the future, but rather the reconciliation of the future to the past and the production of novel traditions in the eddies of social-historical evolution.
Over at his own place, Ash Milton draws up some plans for real economic reforms. I’m not an economist, but they sound good to me.
Handle poked his head out of the shell and delivered a couple: First, a detailed discussion on Seeking Educational Alpha; also a fine expose of leftist tactics during the American Revolution courtesy of Rothbard.
Don’t miss Spandrell’s curmudgeonly Modest Proposal on what to do about sexual deviancy: Study it. (And stop talking about it.)
Hey Reactoids, that’s all I got time fer. It’s been one heckuva week in the life of this blog and one heckuva Week in Reaction. Stuff is going on behind the scenes to enhance the quality and productivity of the nascent Moldbuggian School and shore up its structure. (Straw wasn’t such a great idea.) Don’t worry about it, no matter who you are, they are not and never will be your real enemy… Unless you’re a progressive, in which case: Be very afraid! Keep reading (and donating to) Theden and Social Matter. And hey, check out all the new guys, ‘cuz I think they’re pretty good. Keep on Reactin’! TRP… Over and Out!
Paleoreactionaries think neoreactionaries are annoying and entryizing. But paleoreactionaries have already lost everything to the progressives, so entryism is hardly a threat.
Jim and Zippy like insulting each other for some reason, but they’re both on the side of truth and civilization.
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With friends such as these, what man will find himself in need of enemies? Or if someone should deign to provide one, will he not say, “forbear, for I am not in want of this thing.”
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“Paleoreactionaries think neoreactionaries are annoying and entryizing. But paleoreactionaries have already lost everything to the progressives, so entryism is hardly a threat.”
No, that’s doubly wrong.
Reactionaries were defeated long ago, by liberals, back when liberalism was a more effective and seemingly less insane ideology. Conservative Liberals then tried and failed to conserve their current stage of liberalism for a few hundred years, until, thanks to their failures we reached the current situation. We’re now at a point where liberalism / progressivism has reached an insane extreme and some kind of reaction is clearly coming.
But many neo-reactionaries are…liberals. Right-liberals but liberals all the same They don’t deny it. And if the reaction that comes is liberal then reactionaries lose before the reaction has even begun. And once the reaction is complete, we’ll just be in the same position of trying to conserve the present stage of liberalism.
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hey van phuc, if paleoreactionaries are dead and neoreactionaries are liberals, is anyone not a liberal now?
Also, I though paleoreactionaries were dead too, a few months ago. Then the blogger at this blog told me that he has a family and his children aren’t exposed to the madness. I’m surprised, but I will admit that such a thing could be possible perhaps and at any rate I shouldn’t deny the lived experience of a minority.
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“hey van phuc, if paleoreactionaries are dead and neoreactionaries are liberals, is anyone not a liberal now?”
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Reactionaries still exist, but they haven’t had the reins since our civilization went liberal. Which was a long time ago. So long ago that America was liberal from day one.
Not all neo-reactionaries are liberal, but neo-reaction has a libertarian / classical liberal infestation and they do most of the talking, because that’s how liberals work. Cult of Reason, etc.
And yes, non-liberals are rare. Our civilization has been defined by a liberal consensus for a long time now. Which is why the “right wing” “conservative” parties are always so disappointingly liberal in practice and which is why everything always gets more liberal.
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Also, I though paleoreactionaries were dead too, a few months ago. Then the blogger at this blog told me that he has a family and his children aren’t exposed to the madness. I’m surprised, but I will admit that such a thing could be possible perhaps and at any rate I shouldn’t deny the lived experience of a minority.”
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Reactionaries exist, but they’re firmly out of power. Many people have a temperament that would be compatible with reaction and live in such a way, but when it comes to politics their energies tend to be diverted into conserving the present stage of liberalism instead.
But liberalism is looking less and less sustainable as it grows more and more extreme. The end is coming, maybe not in our lifetimes, but it doesn’t look like this can continue indefinitely. Some sort of reaction (in the “small R” sense) to the current system is coming. But it’s not guaranteed that those energies will be expended in a useful way. If the reaction can be hijacked then liberalism can continue for longer. Some would have us revert to an earlier stage of liberalism (VXXC), delaying the end for a little while longer, as liberalism continues to ruin everything.. Some would have us introduce a more efficient form of liberalism (neo-cam), which might well ruin everything either intentionally (Xenosystems) or inadvertently, through sustaining liberalism for too long.
So yes, there is a danger of entryism into the coming reaction against the current system You just have to understand that in this sense “reaction” should be used with a small R.
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There is unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, given the swamp that is YouTube) an utter lack of representation, engagement, critique, etc of Neo-Reaction/Dark Enlightenment on YouTube. I am going to attempt to fill the void.
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Bravo Rorschach. Cute kid.
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“im and Zippy like insulting each other for some reason, but they’re both on the side of truth and civilization. ”
Have you seen Zippy’s treatment of people who disagree with him? He edits their comments and make up random rules that only apply to the people he disagrees with. I’ve read Zippy for a long time and he’s quite dishonest when it comes to dealing with those who disagree with him. He’s clearly not on the side of truth and an in fact I think the only team he plays for is team Zippy’s always right.
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Perhaps some commentary is warranted on the new ruling in Denmark forcing churches to marry sodomites. This would appear to be a radical stepping up of the war on Christian truth.
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Hey Mark, yeah I heard about that. It’s not so much a war on Christian truth, I think, as it a war on Natural truth. And I’m inclined to believe the radical stepping up occurred at least 400 years ago.
Of course it is good and proper for a nation, like Denmark, to have an official state-sponsored church. It is unfortunate when that church throws away its charism to advise the state in maintaining proper order. But I think that ship sailed a while ago too. I am utterly beyond being surprised at all to the depths that states (and their church apparati) will sink to enforce their orthodoxy (i.e., their heresy) against internal dissenters (i.e., the partially orthodox).
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