Lee Kuan Yew at St. John’s College, Cambridge.

Lee Kuan Yew is a contradiction. A Singaporean of Chinese descent, his critique of liberalism was in a sense uniquely English. At a time when Britain and much of its diaspora became the most enthusiastic supporters of liberalism and democratic modernity, his worldview has a spark of something aristocratic…dare we say, imperial? He does not fall into the postmodern philosophizing of the French, the quiet conservatism of the Germans, or the pious resistance of the Catholic countries. Instead, his critique was delivered with wit, candor, and the occasional stinging barb. Rather than bemoaning the changing times, he kept a stiff upper lip. He did not shut himself off from modernity, but sought to reshape and improve it. So what might we call this tradition, which nurtured such English sentiments in a child of the anti-colonial era? What is this unique expression of Reaction?

The British Empire was not the child of grand designs. As one author wrote long ago, when the Empire was still a lived reality and not a topic of history books ignored by modern education:

“The British Empire…is a typical British product. It is the result of gradual, almost fortuitous development, and not of deliberate planning. Its constitution is difficult to describe in terms of political theory, but it is a living political association in full working order.”

This seems to be a striking pattern in the history of English civilization. From the slow unification of the UK itself to a preference for the market system in modern times, the Anglosphere has harnessed its taste for personal liberty and benefited from what we might call an antifragile approach to social and political life.

It is a curious fact that there has never been in Great Britain any dynamic popular urge towards Empire building….even in the expansionist, Imperialist era of the last century, new lands were added to the domains of the Crown often reluctantly and with halting steps; and always there was opposition from the little Englanders, who raised powerful voices and powerful influences against the building of an Empire. In this century, following a brief period when the Empire was a cult and its prophet was Kipling, there has been among all but a few lack of knowledge and lack of interest. The Empire was taken for granted.”

No great crusades to be seen here. Britain’s scattered, varied, global scope of rule stemmed largely from the fact that its decision to start ruling seems to have come after it woke up one morning and realized that things might have gotten a little out of hand. I would put forward that as with England’s Empire, so too with its Reaction. The essence of the Anglosphere is one of exit and searching for new frontiers, and little surprise that it did not die with the advent of Social Progress. From across the Anglosphere we have had artists, poets, authors, and philosophers who have imagined a different future for English and Western civilization. The idea that modernity could not be wrested from the firm grasp of the Whig and the Jacobin was entirely foreign to these thinkers.

The Crowd, by Wyndham Lewis. The small figures in the grids remind one of modern skyscrapers – not a common site in 1915 when this was exhibited.

T. S. Eliot made his mark as a poet who turned modernity against the moderns. This “Classicist in literature, Royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion” believed that human nature was nowhere so pliable as the Enlightenment had imagined, and thus tradition was the result of generations of trial and error. In these sentiments he echoed men like Charles Maurras from across the Channel, who stated that it was necessary to “bring freedom downstairs to the people and restore authority at the top”. Eliot’s fellow American, Ezra Pound, was even more enthusiastic in his belief that there was a future beyond modernity. With his ally Percy Wyndham Lewis, he engendered a futurist art in Britain which attacked what it saw as a decadent and naively liberal literary establishment, epitomized in the Bloomsbury group. From elsewhere in the British realms, Roy Campbell came out of South Africa and began a career as a writer, defending the classical and Christian traditions through his poetry. He would end up going to Spain during the Civil War, and dying a Catholic after the faith captured his heart there. Closer to our day, we have thinkers such as Roger Scruton, who is renowned for his work on how the death of aesthetic beauty has mirrored a broader cultural dissolution.

Portrait of T. S. Eliot, by Wyndham Lewis

These very few examples are given to show a general trend. Insofar as we can talk about an English expression of Reaction, it is as much a patchwork as the Empire itself once was. The eclectic mix includes High Tory futurists, Nietzschean-minded Catholics, aristocrats and populists, traditional colonials and techno-commercialist capitalists. Its lineage includes Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets and Yeats’ Second Coming. But there is something of a cohesive entity behind them. There is a shared suspicion that perhaps the baser elements of English civilization triumphed over the loftier ones. There exists an embrace of the future combined with a typically Anglospheric willingness to set out and discover the future for oneself. The English reactionary is pragmatic, appreciating that which has passed the tests of time.

Lee Kuan Yew possessed all these things. He may not be an English reactionary, but there was something recognizably English in his Reaction. Whatever the essence of this mindset is, our own Henry Dampier sees it in neoreaction:

“This is my tentative suggestion: if neoreaction is not English, then it’s incoherent, because most of its values are at least implicitly English…Considering that the cultural ailment afflicting the rest of the world has its roots in London, Washington D.C., and New York, the correction ought to be focused on those cities, also. For most of us, it isn’t a choice. We can’t suddenly decide to be Chinese, Swiss, Italians, Germans, Austrians, or Russians, especially if our roots are here. We want to believe, perhaps, that we have a choice in these matters, but there is no choice, because it was already made before we were born. We can no more elect to stop being English any more than we can elect to become frogs or wombats.”

It remains to be seen where exactly the English spirit of Reaction will make itself manifest. If I had to guess, I’d say that the reactionary mindset will become most apparent among those forced to make their exit, following in the footsteps of their ancestors. Across Africa, the diaspora lives on as a tiny, often-urbanized minority. Cape Town has remained an astoundingly English city in temperament. One need only go to its Victoria gardens or the Rhodes memorial to see that England left its mark. If a charter city is ever established here or elsewhere, the cosmopolitan Anglos will likely be drawn to it, bringing their cultural pragmatism with them to a project with little room for error. Australia has recently had something of a resurgence in its Anglospheric roots, with the government of Tony Abbott, a monarchist and cultural conservative. As the Asian powers increase their influence, perhaps we will see Australia and New Zealand become more aware of just how much they differ from their neighbours.

Of all countries, America has retained and grown the independent streak of the earliest English pioneers of the New World. The question is to what extent the melting pot has eliminated any identification with the heritage which bred that streak. In Canada, the Anglophone elite was without a doubt the Laurentian Consensus – the Anglo-Protestant liberal elite of Ontario. However, this consensus also established the progressive ideology which has undone its former hegemony. Anglophone Canada will remain a large majority of the country, but its conflicts with French or Aboriginal cultures begin to fall away as China, India, and other Asian powers make their presence felt north of the 49th. Finally, there is also the huge British expat population, many of whom have seen first-hand what measures places like Dubai and Singapore must use to properly govern a multiethnic and multicultural society.

Finally, I’d note that the vast majority of these groups – aside from those actually from the UK – would likely never think of themselves as “English”. American, Canadian, Australian, and South African identity has swept away the earlier British one for generations now. Nevertheless, the cultural inheritance remains. Each part of the English cultural and ethnic diaspora has adapted the mother country’s customs to its own environment. Yet many have retained a similar sense of pragmatism, ordered liberty, and remarkable adaptability. Those with such a mindset cannot long tolerate the ideological rigidity and praise of victimhood which are all too common in our day. Like their ancestors before them, they will leave it to its fate and set sail for greener pastures.

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

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The differences between worldviews become clear from the start. Following in the tradition of the French Right, Le Pen does not shy away from seeing the state as the spearhead of reform. While modern movement conservatives in America and elsewhere rail against the evils of “big government”, this abhorrence is absent in French culture. Le Pen declares that the Front National’s platform is aimed towards reclaiming French sovereignty – in political, economic, and military terms. All these objectives require the state apparatus. Politically, the FN wants to decouple France from the Schengen Area and its free movement of trade, goods, and people. Monetarily, this means returning to a French national currency instead of the euro. Without being the final arbiter of its own laws and monetary policy, French political sovereignty would be a mere fiction. Even so, the state cannot exercise this power if it is dependent on global economic networks for food, energy, and capital. Therefore the FN considers it vital to employ protectionist policy to rebuild French industry, energy independence, and food security. In terms of foreign policy, the FN aims to restore France’s role as a Great Power on the world stage, refusing to be tied into a greater European structure:

“Our political adversaries base their actions on a historical nonsense. They have decreed…that history brings us toward a globalized world without states in which universally we all submit and cowtow to the American-Western model. That is a mistake, and their mistake is the reason for our weakness. From Asia to Latin America, going through the Muslim world, a new world is emerging based on the affirmation of these individual identities and national sovereignties.”

The Canadian Pacific Railway: Not an example of “small government”.

Here is the first of our distinctions: the role of the state. Neoreactionary thought has already gone beyond the inane “small government versus big government” debate. What is necessary is competent government. In practice, nearly all politicians end up doing this. Progressives might expand this or that program, but the market still creates most wealth. Conservatives cut back welfare, but infrastructure spending goes on. “Small government” ideologies have been particularly effective in the Anglosphere for a variety of reasons. This may indicate that competent and appropriate governments in these territories will in fact be smaller in practice. Nevertheless, when we shift the focus from size to competency, we free ourselves from ideological constraints which can blind us to good solutions.

This is especially obvious in economics. In the Anglosphere, the gap between positive and normative economics gets blurred. Free trade increases economic efficiency because countries will focus on areas where they have competitive advantage, lowering prices over the long term. So let’s go for it! In the French Right and Left alike, this is not the case. Political and social goals make create economic costs, but then those costs must simply be paid. For the FN and many French, food security is worth paying more for groceries. This only becomes a problem when people forget that this trade-off exists. You can’t live like the German or American middle classes if you work 35 hours a week, and no amount of “people before profits” chants will change that. We can’t treat the laws of economics as alterable. They stem from human nature and the realities of supply and demand. Rhetoric like Le Pen’s statement that “we are bending to the laws of trade” aren’t careful enough in making this distinction.

The lesson to be learned is this: positive economics is not normative economics. Once you understand what choices Gnon has given you, you still have a choice to make. As an extreme example: the legendary Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus understood the effects of currency inflation. He used this knowledge to make the currency worthless and instil martial asceticism in his people. Neoreaction’s focus on Civilization-promoting institutions forces it to confront these questions. Could it be worth paying economic costs to maintain food sovereignty or a manufacturing sector? Or do lower prices allow us to focus on developing industries like technology? Do we pay the economic cost or the political one?

Another lesson France can teach the Anglosphere is that intellectual power shouldn’t be dismissed as “elitist”. Without a doubt, one of the worst characteristics of right wing groups across the Anglosphere is their dismissal of intellectuals. We can see this tendency in America’s Republican base as well as their equivalents in Canada, the UK, and other countries. It’s difficult to overcome because it responds to a real problem: the left does have immense power in the universities and media. Participating in red state cultural institutions like 4-H can make it harder for working class white Americans to get into elite colleges. They may denounce colonialism abroad, but this demographic essentially plays the role of the barbarian in the mind of Academia. Their backward ways must be left behind if they come to our universities.

France did not succumb to this temptation. Unlike many Anglosphere countries, there has never been a contradiction between being an elite intellectual and a political reactionary. The result? It’s much easier for the French right to attract intelligent people who can carry it forward. From the Economist

“The French far right is intelligent. This makes it the more compelling and the more disconcerting. Compared to, say, the BNP in Burnley or Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’, we are talking of some of the best and the brightest. Far right thought is a rich and textured seam in the French intellectual imagination. It emerged in part from the writings and philosophy of highly influential and intellectually respected reactionary thinkers like Chateaubriand and de Maistre who began, as it were, a right wing narrative – dialoguing with their adversaries over the next two centuries – in negative reaction to the French Revolution of 1789. And they dialogued. In and out of the right, centre right, and far right, and even the left. They are part of the landscape. In the twentieth century, writers on the nationalist far right such as Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras became enormously influential—and their influence was felt well beyond the right.”

Carlyle: Because there’s more to good governance than being the kind of guy you could have a beer with.

Because of this ongoing tradition, rightist French intellectuals were able to create ideological responses to the French revolution and anti-colonialism. Although Le Pen has been criticized for substituting populism for this tradition, it also makes it possible for her to harken back to France’s past as a colonial Great Power. The Anglosphere countries – even those which maintain the monarchy – generally have a more negative view of the imperial era. When we learn about the Empire at all, it is in the context of racism, capitalism, and gunboats. The tradition of shrewd diplomacy, technological development, and “stiff upper lip” mentality has been entirely forgotten. As we saw earlier, “professional governance” is more desirable than across the board “small governance”. Until recently, only the paleoconservatives preserved the Anglosphere’s intellectual Right – and this at the cost of achieving real world goals. Neoreactionary writers have begun re-examining this tradition. Moldbug cites Carlyle. Foseti examines old Rhodesia.  Examining former colonies which learned the British tradition well is also useful. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew brilliantly synthesized British governance and Chinese cultural values.

The Anglosphere stretches around the world and across continents. As such, it can be difficult to understand what unites it. Countries where other cultural forces compete may be expected to drift further from the Anglosphere. Will Han Chinese culture come to dominate in Hong Kong? India retains its civil service, but its ruling party is staunchly Hindu and nationalist. Yet could Canada, Australia, and Anglo expats from Barcelona to Dubai find commonalities?  The Anglosphere thrives on trade. British Capitalism birthed both the golden child of Technological Progress and the black sheep of American Consumerism. But why is this? Unquestionably, the Anglosphere has a more individualistic bent than its continental cousins. Neither communism nor fascism did that well here on a popular level. Perhaps that’s why the Soviets had to get their spies at Cambridge. Modern liberalism and free trade conservatism fit in better with the Anglo tradition of property rights and individual liberty. This is also why it is known for greater tolerance of cultural differences. While it’s not impossible to imagine British laws banning the burka, the government would be hard pressed to find an equivalent to laicite to justify it. The officials who allowed 1400 children to be raped by Pakistani gangs in Rotherham were able to exploit this and use political correctness as a weapon.

Before I close, I should address the question of why it’s worth thinking about the Anglosphere as a distinct entity at all. The answer is that similar issues are confronting many of the Anglosphere countries and communities, from mass migration to Cathedral politics. On the flipside, shared cultural norms will likely shape similar solutions. The nationalism of old tied ethnic identity to territory. This form of nationalism cannot serve the interests of a group which finds itself across the world. Like Chinese and Indians, the Anglosphere exists both as populations with political institutions (Canada) and minorities maintaining their culture (Dubai expats). Like the Arabs and Hispanics, foreigners – from high-performing colonial subjects to migrants – have historically been brought into the ethnic fold (Anglo-Indians). Neoreaction in particular must understand these realities. It is a primarily Anglo phenomenon with its roots in the analytic, empirical tradition of social science. I won’t predict that this will result in some kind of reborn Anglo thede, but who knows? The Neo-Victorian phyle of Diamond Age may yet come to pass. 

Or this.

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