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Not Your Grandfather's Conservatism

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Neoreaction Archive

Friday

27

March 2015

1

COMMENTS

Seeds of England

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The_Founding_of_Australia._By_Capt._Arthur_Phillip_R.N._Sydney_Cove,_Jan._26th_1788

There was always something of the Englishman in Lee Kuan Yew. During his Cambridge education, he had ample opportunity to examine British society. In the decades that followed, he proved how well he learned from his observations when he built up Singapore. He refused to give into an anti-colonial mania of purging British influences and instead took inspiration, from the Westminster system to the civil service – all backed up with Chinese cultural attitudes toward meritocracy. With his passing, it remains to be seen whether these influences will remain in Singapore. Regardless, the extent to which the British inheritance endured beyond […]

Monday

16

March 2015

4

COMMENTS

Yuray Reviews Anissimov’s Guide for Neoreactionaries

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If the first installment of Neoreaction: The Book was Bryce Laliberte’s What is Neoreaction? (Amazon link here), the second installment would undoubtedly be Michael Anissimov’s  A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries (see here). Despite their differences, our two hot-headed young intellectual mavericks remain the only two people to have formally published any sort of complete works on neoreaction, short as they both are (the books that is — not our mavericks [though they may be as well, I have no idea]). Whereas Laliberte’s work is a dense read by all accounts, Anissimov’s is a rather light one; a guide […]

Friday

27

February 2015

18

COMMENTS

The Crab and the Bear: On Alexander Dugin

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I first heard the name Alexander Dugin around the time that “neo-Eurasianism” was first being noticed by the online alternative Right.The Russian Question had been brought up by figures on the European New Right. An example is Guillaume Faye and his vision of a European civilization “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. Dugin fascinates many on the Right because he has gone beyond theory. A man who can both have a conference with Alain de Benoist and also claim to influence minds in the Kremlin has outdone every Western critic of global liberalism. These days even the Western media wants to know […]

Monday

23

February 2015

45

COMMENTS

Neoreaction is a Jewish Conspiracy to Thwart the Incipient National Socialist Revolution

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…is exactly the sort of nonsense to which I will be now establishing a well-rounded rebuttal. Are you a conservative or rightist of some kind? Have you heard about neoreaction? Have you heard good things about it? Have you heard bad things? Have you heard that neoreaction is just a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds with obscene power fantasies? Have you heard neoreaction is really just bunch of wimpy Yankees theorizing from an Ivory Tower (skyscraper?) in New York City? Have you heard neoreaction is just a poorly articulated justification for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry? Have you heard neoreaction […]

Monday

12

January 2015

13

COMMENTS

Enter the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany: Liberalism is a Sin

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The good Dr. Don Felix Sarda y Salvany (1844-1916) was a Spanish Catholic priest and writer from Spain’s Eastern region of Catalonia. His scribal tenacity was impressive; the Don was the editor of the Catholic weekly journal La Revista Popular for more than 40 years, and in the years leading up to the start of the civilization-ending First World War, he published a twelve-volume series titled Propaganda catolica (“Catholic Propaganda”), dryly described by an unknown Wikipedia contributor as “a vast collection of short books, pamphlets, articles and conferences.” The Italian historian Roberto de Mattei says of the Don Sarda: “[he] was a popular priest […]

Saturday

20

December 2014

3

COMMENTS

An Introduction to the European New Right

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When I first came upon neoreaction, the bulk of my information on the political tradition of the non-libertarian, non-conservative Right had come from the scholars of the Nouvelle Droite. I expected to find many others who had come from similar intellectual backgrounds, but surprisingly this was not the case. Most seem to have made their way to neoreaction from progressive or libertarian backgrounds, with some who journeyed here from mainstream conservatism just to even things out. While there is some awareness of European New Right (ENR) authors, for the most part they don’t seem to have gained as much prominence here […]

Friday

31

October 2014

6

COMMENTS

On Ecological Realism

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This week I want to respond to Sonja Sonnerström’s article on ecological fundamentalism here on Social Matter. I find that this topic gets overlooked in neoreactionary discourse so I’m glad someone got the ball rolling. When I’ve spoken about it, I’ve encountered two kinds of responses. The first is a knee-jerk negative reaction to the topic of the environment. I consider this a vestige from “conservative base” culture (think #tcot and #rednationrising). The Left adopted environmentalism as a cause; thus, conservatives adopt anti-environmentalist rhetoric as a cause. It’s signalling all the way down. The second is a willingness to engage the topic beyond political […]

Friday

17

October 2014

3

COMMENTS

Ignoble Lies

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The noble lie. The concept was formulated by Plato in his Republic. He describes a myth which would be told to the Republic’s citizens. Its people were born of the Earth and should care for it as their mother; the gods used gold, silver, brass and iron when they created people. This is why people differ in their abilities. Everyone should achieve the potential they were born with. But people mix, and so we might see a golden child born to a silver or brass father, or a silver child born to a golden one. The myth contains a prophecy […]

Friday

3

October 2014

5

COMMENTS

Devil’s Game: Free Speech and the Entryist Strategy

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“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That phrase contains all the hope and promise of political freedom of speech. One pictures intellectuals and workingmen alike discussing ideas unhindered. There is no idea so sacred, no value so widely held, that it is beyond critique. Without the power of the state guarding some official truth, only reason and logic can test their strength. That’s the theory, anyway. But the theory and the real history of free speech are very different. The modern era institutionalized free speech as a safeguard, […]

Friday

19

September 2014

4

COMMENTS

A Faith By Any Other Name

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My last article got a variety of responses, but one in particular stood out because it was so fundamental: what exactly do I mean by religion? Specifically, the confusion seems to be about what defines religion’s role in a society. Without understanding this, it’s hard to see why I claim that religion is a necessary phenomenon. I’d like to begin by proposing the following: in any society, religion’s role is to make truth-claims which result in certain actions being considered right and good, and others being considered wrong and bad. Questioning the common religion is considered subversive (or at least something […]