This couldn’t wait for the TWiR. It’s too big for that. And too important. Neoreaction (aka. “NRx”, “#NRx”, “neo-reaction” (obs.), &c.) is, I think, the studied avoidance of obsessive reliance upon or partisanship for any one particular theory or narrative or point of view. I’ve called such an obsession “wankery”, without reference to it’s onanistic connotations. We are realists. And Reality doesn’t give too many figs about your obsessiveness… or, for that matter, your point of view.
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I threw a rock at a hornets nest last night with this:
Picked a bad time to do it too, because I’m “off of twitter at work” (variously defined) for Lent, and I don’t really have much remaining time to answer the ample feedback which this engendered. So I hope to put out some of the fire here. (Because I haven’t given up blogging from work, which I probably should have.)
A year ago this blog did not exist. I’m not sure exactly when I adopted the moniker “Nick B. Steves” (aka. Nicholas Bernard Stevenson) as an occasional commentator at the Orthosphere, Foseti’s, Jim’s, and elsewhere. It was hastily and poorly chosen. But by the time in May I decided to host my own blather here, it was the name that stuck. Along the way, I’ve met a large number of reactionaries in person, and come into contact with hundreds more via the web and social media. 2013 is the year, thanks to Bryce and the Tech Crunch article, in which Neoreaction became a thing. Not all reactionaries are happy about that. More are puzzled. I’m not sure myself what, if anything, Neoreaction means, vis-a-vis plain ol’ Reaction. But attracting more cars to this very small train is important work.
The highlight of the year for me intellectually was Spandrell’s Conflict post in which he identified ethno-nationalists, religious traditionalists, and techno-futurists as forming three legs of a Reactionary Trichotomy. This really resonated in my brain. It identified a pattern that I hadn’t noticed before. So what was it that unites the branches? Is there a core of consensus that diverse, potentially mutually antipathetic, groups could endorse? I think so. I continue to hope so. To these three legs, we’ve been able to add more articulate regions of the manosphere and advocates paleo-living.
Modernity sucks more than it should. Almost everyone believes that. But why? To look at the question honestly—to clear our minds of cant, aka. pretty lies—is, in a real sense to become neoreactionary.
I would like to encourage young people to keep their faith (or to get (or be gotten by) one), love their own particularity (or to find (or be found by) one), and commit themselves to the slow, patient, and generational work it will take to see the final glorious death of Progressivism. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people [or various peoples], will get to the promised land!”
Happy New Year!
To be reactionary is to be anti-revolutionary. The more of them you’re against, the more reactionary you are. You cannot stop revolutions by having more revolutions. You can only stop them by restoration. The act of restoration is The Reaction®. When The Reaction® comes, revolutions will cease, and civilizations can go about their business of building civilization again. The Reaction® will be ours, so long as we can hold it.
So over the past few weeks, we’ve been having much discussion (and here and here and here and here and a zillion other places) in the Reactosphere about the Spandrellian Trichotomy and what voices make up the reactionary consensus.
I am interested in the content of the consensus. What can Catholic Traditionalists, Ethno-Nationalists, and Techno-Commercialists, and assorted Particularists and non-brain-dead PUAs agree on? Continue reading The Reactionary Consensus?
Here are a few minor nips & tucks to the viewgraph I threw together for Nick Land the other day.
Fixed a typo (“hierarchy”), and renamed “globalism” to “cosmpolitan” as a descriptor of Techno-Commercialists, based on the discussion here.
What remains is to find an actually useful name for what I have dubbed “microeconomics”. As I said over at Nick Land’s, I am trying to describe the apparent reactionary consensus that macroeconomics as it is currently practiced is snake oil and serves mostly as a political tool to reward favored constituencies and… umm… disreward unfavored ones.
