The Very Best of Last Week in Reaction (2017/05/28)

Last week’s TWiR is finally up at Social Matter. The ballots are in. These were the articles most worthy of note:

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Honorable Mentions:

Imperial Energy: STEEL-Cameralist Manifesto Part 3a: The Age of Crisis; the Science of the State; and the Rules for Rulers. A lot of definitions pulled together here for the New Political Science.

Malcolm Pollack: Of Machines and Monkeys. Astute commentary on Nick Land’s philosophy of machine vs. ape, with Pollack taking the ape side of the conflict.

James A. Donald: The Enlightenment Debunked. Jim cuts a wide swathe through the heart of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy‘s view of the Enlightenment, with many delicious Jimisms all along the way.

Ryan Landry: Future White Progressive Suicides. Landry exposes the self-loathing and despair hidden under an increasing thin and unmaintainable patina of progressive feelings, and predicts this will translate into a future uptick of suicides in certain white demographics.

P. T. Carlo: The Coming Brazilification of the West. Carlo predicts that the US and the West are coming to resemble the world portrayed in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 black comedy Brazil. Only even less funny.

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The Silver Circle:

Benjamin Welton: The History Of America’s First Red Scare. In a debut at Social Matter, Welton digs up an under-studied phenomenon in Reactionary History: the revolutionary anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After claiming the life of President McKinley and making deep inroads into labor and organized crime, the US gov’t faced the threat properly as existential.

Gio Pennacchietti: Awakening the Politics of Zarathustra. A deep dive into Nietzsche’s anti-modernist and anti-egalitarian ideas and how they are relevant today.

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… And the Winner Is:

Adam: Absolutism: Some Clarifications. When Adam makes clarifications, it’s a must read for us mere pol theory mortals. And along the way makes a superb restatement of the absolutist view of sovereignty, answering the niggling questions of modernists along the way.