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 is just a lazy, long-winded excuse not to engage in right-wing political activism? Have you heard, perhaps, that neoreaction is nothing more than another Jewish conspiracy to subvert the interests of white European Westerners and everything they know, love and stand for?

What you have heard, my friend, may not be entirely accurate. There has been ample, pained, and published work trying to answer the question “what is neoreaction?,” and the answer seems elusive yet. It is, however, less difficult to enumerate a list of things neoreaction is not. For example, neoreaction is not a motor vehicle. Neoreaction is not a form of government. Neoreaction is not libertarianism. Neoreaction is not [just] monarchism. Neoreaction is not a website. Neoreaction is not a Jewish conspiracy. Neoreaction is, for that matter, not a conspiracy of Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives. It is true that some Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots, and lazy conservatives all find a home in neoreaction — as do some Jews. Yet no single group dominates the neoreactionary bubble of thought, so much so that neoreactionaries delineate three separate zones of neoreactionary thought and affiliation, termed the Trichotomy of theonomy, ethnonationalism and techno-commercialism. In other words: faith, blood, and property. God, family, and guns. Everybody’s got a favorite, but nobody maintains less than all three.

Neoreaction was more-or-less founded by the prolific writer and programmer Mencius Moldbug sometime around 2007. This basic point seems to be agreed-upon by nearly everyone. Moldbug could easily qualify as a Jew (a half-Jew), a Silicon Valley nerd, and a pompous urbanite. Moldbug may have been the catalyst for this new intellectual phenomenon, yet before, during and after Moldbug’s de facto hiatus in 2013, neoreaction has flowered into far more than him alone. Dozens of neoreactionary articles are written every day. Neoreactionaries are meeting offline. Neoreactionaries are forming occult networks. If you don’t see neoreaction doing anything, that’s just because you haven’t looked — or, because neoreaction doesn’t want you to see what it’s doing. Moldbug hasn’t been scheming for years behind-the-scenes, directing neoreaction from a synagogue. He’s been busy with far less sinister things. So who exactly has been steering the NRx-Mobile, hidden behind tinted windows?

1. Neoreaction is demographically less Jewish than a Hamas birthday party.

How could anyone imagine that a group adopting a mascot as supremely non-kosher as a crab was Judaic in any shape or form?

Shellfish: not kosher.

There are three Jews who are or have been involved in neoreaction. Two are half-Jewish. The third is quarter-Jewish. This makes them gentile enough to be Nazi field marshals. The three are the aforementioned Mr. Moldbug, Mr. Boetel from Radish Magazine, and the Anti-Democracy Activist. Mr. Moldbug is not religious, and hasn’t contributed a word to neoreaction since 2013. Mr. Boetel posts sporadically (the last time was in November), and makes a blogging out of masterfully mocking and deconstructing liberal-progressive narratives on history and current affairs. The Anti-Democracy Activist is a convert to Catholicism. Instead of the flag of Israel, he flies the flag of Rhodesia. If this here is a sinister Jewish conspiracy, it strikes me as a rather lackluster one. My Jew-dar just isn’t detecting anything. In any case, I must recommend reading all three men. And so what about the rest of the neoreactionaries?

The columnists for this very neoreactionary website include one Minnesotan Catholic, one Catholic Slav, a grizzly American Southerner and three Anglo-Saxon gentiles. Zero Jews. Guest writers have included Russians, Scandinavians, and more Anglo-Saxons of various kinds. No Jews to my knowledge. The aggregator for neoreaction, Reaction Times, is curated by a reactionary Protestant from Canada. Listed in the aggregator are 30+ sites maintained by gentiles of European descent, and three maintained by the aforementioned souls of the most tangential Jewish background. Aside from Mr. Moldbug, the most influential neoreactionaries are largely English, American and otherwise natively Anglophone. Russians, Slovenians, and Bulgarians make a mark too. Ditto American Southerners. The latest newcomers have been Croatian and Turkish. Hangers-on from Spain, Brazil, Scotland, the rest of the Anglosphere, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, India, Panama, Scandinavia and elsewhere round out the neoreactionary sphere. I am still not aware of any neoreactionaries from Israel, nor any with surnames suffixed with ‘-berg,’ ‘-stein,’ or ‘-witz.’ Indeed, yours truly receives more traffic from Taiwan, Romania, and the United Arab Emirates than from Israel. Judaeoreaction? Why not Sinoreaction or Islamoreaction?

Current and active neoreactionaries are overwhelmingly European gentiles. The largest currents seem to be Anglo-Saxon, Roman Catholic, American Orthodox and Slavic. The most grossly over-represented ethnic group among neoreactionaries is not Jews, but South Slavs. The most cursory demographic investigation will reveal not just that neoreactionaries are not Jews, but that neoreactionaries aren’t necessarily Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives either. Some married with kids and others unattached students. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, neo-pagan and atheist. Former libertarians, former progressives, former Tea Partiers, former paleoconservatives, former fascists, former apoliticals, and former Marxists. Born and raised everywhere from Alaska to Australia. I think we even have a woman or two. The diversity of neoreaction, in fact, highlights precisely how non-Jewish it is. Jews, far from running the show the way they do for neoconservatives, communists, or progressives (but I repeat myself), are conspicuously missing. If neoreaction is a Jewish conspiracy, it is the first one without any Jews.

2. Moldbug alone is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought.

Mr. Enoch from The Right Stuff objects to Moldbug’s dismissal of white nationalism and psychologist Kevin Macdonald’s theory of innate Jewish behavior. Many neoreactionaries find Moldbug’s original position lacking, myself included. Many more accept Macdonald’s theory. Many are explicit ethnonationalists. Is Moldbug’s Jewish ancestry preventing him from reaching some unsavory conclusions? Perhaps, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. Moldbug is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought. His long deconstruction of the progressive worldview was an indisputable godsend to us Children of Modernity. His neocameralism — disputable. His poetry… eh. Key tenets of neoreaction, including the Trichotomy and the concept of Gnon, were not brainchildren of Moldbug’s. Neoreaction tangles with Evolian metaphysics, the tripartite caste society, entryism, geopolitics, holiness spirals, practical reaction, Western religion, “gene-culture co-evolution” and more, cheerfully and without Moldbug. Disagreements with Moldbug do not entail disagreements with neoreaction as a whole. Neoreaction is more than just Moldbug — which is why it’s called neoreaction and not Moldbuggianism.

Moldbug’s focus on Puritan/Protestant leftism to the exclusion of negative Jewish influence on Western civilization rightly irks some. Let it be repeated and emphasized that both Moldbug and neoreaction at large focus not on Puritanism, Protestantism or Christianity per se as the sicknesses of civilization, but rather the steady process of leftist degradation that used them as a vector over the centuries. No, Puritans wouldn’t approve of Iggy Azalea. This does not invalidate neoreactionary theories about leftism, holiness spirals, and Puritanism. It seems that now a more rightly neoreactionary position would be that both Jews and Puritans share significant blame for the decline of the West. An autopsy for Western civilization might read: “Immune system critically weakened by virulent holiness spiral and concomitant leftism. Fatal stroke from foreign pathogen.” There are surely many other groups and individuals who helped cause this untimely death in some way or another, but these two religious minorities seem to be the primary culprits.

Is Macdonald’s theory of Jewish behavior correct? If not, it wouldn’t be for lack of evidence. I don’t find the theory shocking, strange or unique at all. Macdonald does a thorough job of documenting what a hostile minority looks like. Regular minorities turn into hostile minorities after majorities try to forcibly convert, enslave, eradicate or otherwise injure them. Alternately, regular majorities turn into hostile majorities after minorities try to scam, deceive, impose on, thieve from or otherwise injure them. Minorities become hostile to survive. Majorities would argue that the minorities deserved it, being the dirty parasites and predators that they are. The minorities view the majorities the same way. Who “started it” is always impossible to figure out, and instead of turning to endlessly complicated conspiracy theories, it is much easier just to remember a simple heuristic: diversity plus proximity equals conflict.

3. Neoreaction answers the Jewish Question, once and for all.

Neoreaction, contrary to vitriolic accusations leveled against it, has not stayed suspiciously silent on the Jewish Question. Nick B. Steves wrote a three-part series on the issue. He concluded:

The Jews qua Jews are so uniquely destabilizing that no Jew could ever be trusted with any amount of power. They should be banned from our organization (presuming we had one) and probably forcibly relocated to a homeland of their own.

Do you smell latkes? I don’t. Jim has done a lot of his own commentary on Jews and cultural Marxism, Jews and anti-Semitism, Jews and Puritans, and Jewish misbehavior. Nick Land has staked his position. 28Sherman displayed a keen awareness of all things Jewish and political just yesterday. Neoreactionaries, steeped as they are in politically incorrect, anti-Semitic, old history books, are far more than acquainted with questions of Jews and Judaism. The perceived silence of neoreactionaries on this topic is not borne of conspiracy or cowardice, but conclusion.

The most perfunctory appraisal of the situation reveals that the Jews were and are a religiously and genetically distinct minority among Christian Europeans. Diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Each and every nefarious action attributed to Jews throughout history in the West can be traced to the ubiquitous and ever-present hostility that exists between different ethno-religious groups (or thedes or phyles). This hostility is a law of the Universe, a dictate of Gnon’s. Evil Jewish Bolshevism, depraved Jewish pornography, destructive Jewish capitalism, chauvinistic Jewish Zionism — all can be easily and sensibly interpreted as various manifestations of natural conflict between hostile groups i.e. Jews and Christian Europeans, Jews and Muslims, etc. There is little reason to zero in on the Jews and obsess about them as uniquely heinous among all the world’s peoples. The only thing unique about them is their continued survival despite the scale and length of their run-ins with foreign gentile civilizations, but this differentiates them by degree, not type — Jews are not at all the only hostile minority on the planet, and not at all the only one that’s survived to 2015. Various expressions of anti-Semitism throughout history, such as the Holocaust or the Russian pogroms, can also be sensibly interpreted using this paradigm of ethnic conflict. The manifestations of ethnic conflict may be complex, but the underlying causes are always the same: diversity and proximity. It is not difficult to figure out and most neoreactionaries have done so, and thus shut up about it.

Law of Gnon: This is what the out-group looks like to the in-group. Always.

The answer to the Jewish question, as Mr. Steves concluded, is quite simple: segregation and separation. This solution is not unique to the Jews, but is the standard tried-and-true, traditional method of solving the problem of the violence at the nexus of diversity and proximity. Note that unlike progressives, neoreactionaries do not believe one can abolish the laws of nature and turn diversity into a strength, least of all using the State. Diversity engenders animosity and eventually violence, and is thus a weakness. The only solution to diversity is unity. Separate and segregate. This axiom is true when considering Jews and Europeans, and it is true when considering any other two distinct groups.

This is how liberals see conservatives. Law of Gnon strikes again. Always.

-

Satisfied with the question of the Jews, neoreactionaries notice that the rot in Western civilization frequently attributed solely to the Jews had in fact existed long before subversive Jews did (see: Jim). Neoreactionaries notice that there exists an entire science of civilization with its own laws and principles. They notice that the architecture of contemporary civilization is slowly disintegrating. They notice saboteurs and invaders. Ahead they notice a barren grave with their names on it, and they notice grotesque monstrosities rising from Hades and beckoning to them with meticulously tailored malformed claws: “Check your privilege.” Neoreactionaries notice all this and judge it terribly unworthy. It is just a matter of opinion whether the next step is letting the edifice of civilization collapse, building a new civilization in the ruins, or attempting to stay the badly quivering columns.

Or maybe what’s needed is Zombie Hitler and another round with those damn shadowy Hebrews. But if so, close your Internet browser — you won’t find them here in neoreaction.

The post Neoreaction is a Jewish Conspiracy to Thwart the Incipient National Socialist Revolution appeared first on Social Matter.

Statue of Don Felix Sarda y Salvany. Photograph by Josep Renalias.

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 in Spain at the end of the century and was considered exemplary for the firmness of his principles and the clarity of his apostolate.”

(I note here wryly that my Google Chrome browser attempts to correct the word ‘apostolate,’ describing [among other things] organized religious works, to the word ‘apostate,’ describing a religious defector.)

According to the Spanish Bibliography of Reference, the Don exercised an “apostolate of immense efficiency and resonance.” His writings against the growing liberalism of 19th century Europe achieved some level of notability after a series of Spanish political fiascoes from 1868-1874 that began with a liberal revolution and deposition of the ruling Queen Isabella II, followed by a short-lived monarchy under the Savoyard Prince Amadeo, followed by his own deposition and a similarly short-lived Spanish Republic that ended in 1874 when the original Queen Isabella II’s son Alfonso XII was restored as King of Spain in a military coup. Three coups, two monarchies, one republic, and all back to square one in just six years — politics today just isn’t as exciting as it used to be. But I digress.

I will here provide a choice quote of the Don’s so that the reader may be sufficiently intrigued to studiously follow the forthcoming backstory and analysis (my highlights in bold):

 “The theater, literature, public and private morals are all saturated with obscenity and impurity. The result is inevitable; a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation. Liberalism is the program of naturalism. Free-thought begets free morals, or immorality. Restraint is thrown off and a free rein given to the passions. Whoever thinks what he pleases will do what he pleases. Liberalism in the intellectual order is license in the moral order. Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice-versa. Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism.” (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 26)

During the 1868-1874 interregnum, the Catholic Church in Spain suffered a number of blows to its status, especially due to the short-lived First Spanish Republic that moved to establish a secular state. While Catholicism retrieved its status as the state religion of Spain after the restoration of the monarchy under Alfonso XIII in 1874, the sense of spiritual decay that had gripped Spain since the 18th century continued unabated. Yale historian Noel Valis describes a “a growing alienation from the Church,” and refers us to the observations of a Protestant chaplain in Spain Hugh James Rose, who dedicated an entire chapter of his 1873 book on the country to the “Decay of Faith in Spain.” Choice observations of Rose’s: “The Church of Spain … is an institution which has lost its hold on the masses, both educated and uneducated … [there is in the Spanish] a sense of spiritual drift, of having come unanchored from their religious moorings.”

It is in this context that Don Sarda’s magnum opus was released, the 1886 book Liberalism is a Sin, which was subsequently reprinted up to twenty times by 1960. Salvany, who believed liberalism “is the burning issue of our century,” found a quick rebuttal to his work by the liberal-leaning Catholic intelligentsia — both pieces were submitted to the Roman Catholic Church’s Sacred Congregation of the Index (the successor institution to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — List of Prohibited Books). The Congregation’s secretary ruled soon after in favor of Salvany, finding errors in the rebuttal and “uncharitable insinuations” about the good Don.

To illustrate the then Church’s zealous and masculine dismissal of liberal protests, I will excerpt the secretary’s letter to the liberal Bishop who ordered the rebuttal:

To The Most Rev. Jacobo Catala Et Alboso,

Bishop of Barcelona

Most Excellent Sir:

[…]

D. Felix Sarda, merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone.

[…]

The same judgment, however, cannot be passed on the other work, that by D. de Pazos, for in matter it needs corrections. Moreover, his injurious manner of speaking cannot be approved, for he inveighs rather against the person of D. Sarda than against the latter’s supposed errors.

[…]

Therefore, the Sacred Congregation has commanded D. de Pazos, admonished by his own Bishop, to withdraw his book, as far as he can, from circulation, and in the future, if any discussion of the subject should arise, to abstain from all expressions personally injurious, according to the precept of true Christian charity; and this all the more since Our Holy Father, Leo XIII, whereas he urgently recommends castigation of error, neither desires nor approves expressions personally injurious, especially when directed against those who are eminent for their doctrine and their piety.

[…]

Fr. Jerome Secheri, O.P.
Secretary of the Sacred Congregation Of the Index.

Don Sarda had the full backing of the Roman Catholic Church of the late 1800’s, and his works built on the Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors) issued by the Holy See under Pope Pius IX in 1864, which condemned, among other things: pantheism, naturalism, absolute rationalism, socialism, communism, and modern liberalism. This is all relevant to the crux of this entire piece, which finally manifests itself: that the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, and his contemporaries in the Catholic world, were not just potentially in agreement with the tenets of the nascent neoreactionary school of thought (more introduction to it can be accessed here, here and here), but fully paleo-neoreactionaries, a clumsy description which we might condense into reactionaries, with the understanding that our contemporary neoreactionaries are rediscovering reactionaries and applying their insights to the chaotic world of 2015 (hence, neo-). I will now highlight several key tenets of the 21st century neoreactionary school of thought that were articulated nearly word-for-word by the 19th century Don, and, crucially, firmly defended by the Catholic Church at the time, as illustrated above. There are far more instances of overlap that I will go over comprehensively sometime over the next 1-2 weeks on my personal blog, Ara Maxima, but these three will suffice for now.

1. To Hell with the journalists.

The contempt that most Westerners hold for the “mainstream media,” and the much deeper contempt that neoreactionaries hold for journalists themselves is rooted in a very real and consistent tendency for journalists to style themselves as heroic investigators of dark secrets held from the masses for illicit gain, but to act in reality as left-wing propagandists advancing a uniform agenda of feminism, multiculturalism, LGBT-ism, and a myriad of other -isms through a long-cultivated routine of mental gymnastics and/our outright fraud. The result is a “mainstream media narrative” divorced from reality to one degree or another, useful only to leftists (Don Salvany’s “liberals”) for political purposes — namely, attacking and crushing with overwhelming propaganda the rightist resistance they invariably face.

“Here are theoretical and practical Liberals. The first are the dogmatizers of the sect—the philosophers, the professors, the controversialists, the journalists. They teach Liberalism in books, in discourses, in articles, by argument or by authority, in conformity with a rationalistic criterion, in disguised or open opposition to the criterion of the divine and supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Ch. 9)

“Amongst Liberals we must not forget to include those who manage to evade any direct exposition or expression of the Liberal theory, but who nevertheless obliquely sustain it in their daily practice by writing and orating after the Liberal method, by recommending Liberal books and men, measuring and appreciating everything according to the Liberal criterion, and manifesting, on every occasion that offers, an intense hatred for anything that tends to discredit or weaken their beloved Liberalism. Such is the conduct of those prudent journalists whom it is difficult to apprehend in the flagrant advocacy of any proposition concretely Liberal, but who nevertheless, in what they say and in what they do not say, never cease to labor for the propagation of this cunning heresy. Of all Liberal reptiles, these are the most venomous.” (Ch. 9)

“And all this comes of a foolish desire to be estimated Liberal. Insane illusion! The usage of the word Liberal makes the Catholic who accepts it as his own one with all that finds shelter in its ominous shadow. Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades, and with Rationalism does such a journalist identify himself, thus placing himself in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!” (Ch. 13)

2. To Hell with the “moderates.”

A more niche contempt held by the modern Dissident Right at large — including the gamut of neoreactionaries, monarchists, paleoconservatives, white nationalists, New Rightists, identitarians, right-libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, radical traditionalists and so forth — is the contempt for the mainstream right-wing political forces that exist in every Western country but act as little more than controlled opposition for the zealous Left, making loud noises in parliament halls but inevitably and invariably capitulating to the Left’s demands, only to style themselves as the vanguards of the old order a decade later — but not the primordial rightist order, but the 10-year-old new order of the Left!

“This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends upon their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God’s grace will not fail them. But they are in a dangerous position. On the borderland between the realms of light and darkness, the devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and he spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method, in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism, is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth, provided they keep the other inside the camp of error. In this way they stand the victim of the devil’s deceit and their own folly. In this way those whose consciences are not yet entirely hardened escape the salutary horrors of remorse; so the pusillanimous and the vacillating, who comprise the greater number of Liberals, avoid compromising themselves by pronouncing themselves such openly and squarely; so the shrewd and calculating (according to the measure of expediency—how much time they will spend in each camp), manage to show themselves the friends and allies of both; so a man is enabled to administer an official and recognized palliative to his failings, his weaknesses and his blunders. It is the obscurity that arises from the indefiniteness of clearly defined principles of truth and error in the Liberalist’s mind that makes him the easy victim of Satan. His boasted strength is the very source of his weakness. It is because he has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze—a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him.” (Ch. 8)

3.  Demotism

Demotism, the idea that a ruler must rule “in the name of the people,” is a malady of civilization omnipresent in the post-Enlightenment period: the three great dragons of the 20th century, capitalism, communism and fascism, all ostensibly ruled “by the will of the people,” a stark contrast to the aristocratic monarchies of Old Europe which ruled not “by the will of the people,” but “by the will of God.” The idea of demotism is a uniquely neoreactionary insight, which the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany foreshadowed heavily in this excerpt on the differences between Catholic and secular governments, and their relationships to monarchical and republican governments. Don Sarda’s point seems to be that the crucial worth of a government lies not in its constituted political form i.e. whether it is republican or monarchical, but rather in its agreed-upon basis for legitimacy — the people, or God? Couldn’t an absolute monarch be a demotist, and wouldn’t this constitute a problem? And couldn’t a republican government consist of ardently religious aristocrats sharing a divine right to rule over the masses? There is ample room for debate here.

“A government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics on rationalistic principles. It is not the act of legislation—by the king in a monarchy, by the people in a republic, or by both in a mixed form of government—which constitutes the essential nature of its legislation or of its constitution. What constitutes this is whether it does or does not carry with it the immutable seal of the Faith and whether it be or be not conformable with what the Christian law imposes upon states as well as upon individuals. just as amongst individuals, a king in his purple, a noble with his escutcheon or a workman in his overalls can be truly Catholic, so states can be Catholic, whatever be the place assigned them in the scale of governmental forms. In consequence, the fact of being Liberal or anti-Liberal has nothing whatever to do with the horror which everyone ought to entertain for despotism and tyranny, nor with the desire of civil equality between all citizens; much less with the spirit of toleration and of generosity, which, in their proper acceptation, are Christian virtues. And yet all this, in the language of certain people and of certain journals, is called Liberalism. Here we have an instance of a thing which has the appearance of Liberalism and which in reality is not Liberalism at all.

On the other hand, there exists a thing which is really Liberalism and yet has not the appearance of Liberalism. Let us suppose [i.e., imagine] an absolute monarchy like that of Russia, or of Turkey, or better still, one of the conservative governments of our times, the most conservative imaginable; let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right, on the indestructibility of the Faith, or upon a rigorous regard of the rights of the Church; then, this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and anti-Catholic. Whether the free-thinker be a monarch, with his responsible ministry, or a responsible minister, with his legislative corps, as far as consequences are concerned, it is absolutely the same thing. In both cases their political conduct is in the direction of free-thought, and therefore it is Liberal. Whether or not it be the policy of such a government to place restraints upon the freedom of the press; whether, no matter under what pretext, it grinds its subjects and rules with a rod of iron; a country so governed, though it will not be free, will without doubt be Liberal. Such were the ancient Asiatic monarchies; such are many of our modern monarchies; such was the government of Bismarck in Germany; such is the monarchy of Spain, whose constitution declares the king inviolable, but not God.

Here then we have something which, without seeming to resemble Liberalism, really is Liberalism, the more subtle and dangerous precisely because it has not the appearance of the evil it is.” (Ch. 12)

Without regard to political or religious identity, I recommend all sane men take a day or two to carefully read the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany’s Liberalism is a Sin. Filled with biting commentary, no-holds-barred reactionary criticism, and such ardent and unforgiving opposition to the leftist-liberal movement that would make the staunchest Ultramontane blush, the entire text is available for free online at this link. Go, young men of the post-modern world: let your ancestors’ spiritual guides’ teach you the real things that they’ll never teach you in school.

The post Enter the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany: Liberalism is a Sin appeared first on Social Matter.

Sonja talks about eco-fundamentalism as a religion – a belief system based on emotion instead of evidence. I’d just call it Political Environmentalism. This is the sort of environmentalism which thinks that all pollution is bad and rejects technological solutions to ecological problems as somehow impure. It’s the belief system which leads people to link anti-capitalism and ecology – never mind that the Soviets devastated their environment. Sometimes it’s backed by a back-to-nature sentiment or an idealized version of non-western cultures living in harmony with the planet. Sonja does a good job of showing why these mindsets are at best naive and at worst dangerous. I fully agree that some of the major ecological problems stem from lack of property rights, tech, and population pressure.

But I’m going to lay the eco-fundamentalist conception aside for a moment. My own academic background is in the economics of food and natural resources. I often cross paths with people involved in conservation, climate science, forestry, and similar work. I’ve seen eco-fundamentalism at work time and time again. But I’ve also seen saner people. I can’t think of any mainstream environmental economist who would push zero pollution, for example. Instead, economists state that the benefits of pollution should outweigh the costs. Furthermore, externalities have to be internalized. For example, if your company causes damage to land, you need to pay for its proper restoration. Few people would disagree with that principle. Certainly no rightist accepting the value of personal responsibility should.

Let’s scale up. The purpose of the state is to preserve order and stability. This is a central tenet of neoreactionary thought. Now let’s say that agricultural companies are operating in your state. But they’re generating large negative externalities! Land is being damaged, insects are being poisoned, mono-cropping is impacting biodiversity. This presents a clear threat to the biological resiliency of the state. The companies don’t have incentive to change their practices; maybe they can buy land elsewhere at a lower price than changing their practices would leave them with. In this situation, the state must intervene to fulfil its function. It must make sure that the companies pay the full cost of their operations. The response will probably be something like “but then won’t those companies leave anyway?” Yes, probably. But they would have had to leave when damage to the land made it impossible to use further anyway. The cost to the state is the same, but by playing it safe the state has preserved vital biological resources.

Scale up again. An oil company operating in international waters screwed up and oil is churning out into the ocean. There are several states bordering that ocean. Those states will have to deal with ecological damage, health effects, and economic loss. It’s in the interest of these states to prepare for such an eventuality, especially when oil companies are operating in that ocean. It’s also in the interest of these states to cooperate when creating these safeguards. Businesses also like a single set of rules more than a variety of differing ones because it’s easier to follow. It’s the same reason multinationals like free trade treaties. Here we see the foul spectre of international law arise, which elicits fear and disdain from many on the right. But international laws have existed for millennia. From the treaties between Rome and Parthia to the Peace of Westphalia, cooperation benefited the states involved.

The point of all these examples is to show that ecological concerns are well  within the purview of hypothetical neoreactionary states. The result by definition is environmental law and regulation. The principle of subsidiarity should be followed here. I’ve heard the counter-argument in discussions that the majority of environmental problems are local in nature. This is true. National laws which try to regulate local effects often have their very own set of negative externalities. Nevertheless: non-local environmental problems are by definition bigger problems even if there are less of them.

Here’s where we should address the elephant in the room: global warming. Generally speaking, neoreactionaries are suspicious of climate science, and not without reason. But here’s where things get tricky. On the one hand, the political impact of climate science means that politicians desire certain results. Collectively, these results provide the politicians with a Useful Truth. Like anything related to politics, Useful Truth can conflict with real Truth. Eventually, Useful Truth becomes Official Truth and that’s pretty damn hard to overturn. One of the tenets of eco-fundamentalism is that Green Energy is pure and good and oil companies are corrupt lobbyists. The problem is that most industries end up lobbying and acting in their own interests instead of the common good. Green energy is no exception. The logic of the skeptic is simple from here: interests from progressive politicians to environmental consultants benefit from results which tighten regulations and create green energy demand to reduce carbon. Therefore, climate science is compromised and cannot be trusted. The issue is that this narrative leaves out the other half of the story. There’s a collection of interests which benefit from fighting Warmist climate science and disproving its findings. And that collection of interests has got deep pockets too. So we must apply the same chain of logic to them. The person who believes the science behind global warming to be in thrall to Useful Truth must say the same about those who denounce it.

I don’t have a solution to the above quandary to publish here. But I want to take a step down the road. The problem is time-preference. Actors on both sides have relatively high time preference. Businesses (both oil and wind) must think in terms of shareholders and profit cycles, not generations. Politicians (both Bush and Gore) must think in terms of special interests and election cycles. This problem is exacerbated because these interests control the state which could otherwise take a long-term view. In other words, it’s necessary for the state to lower its time preference in order to accurately assess  and confront threats to ecological stability. Isn’t this long-term view of politics exactly what neoreaction demands?

Sonja references the fact that the climate has always changed and will always be changing, from the age of the dinosaurs to the Medieval Warming period. One response Skeptics give Warmists goes like this: non-human causes changed the climate throughout history, so isn’t it wrong/overblown/presumptive to attribute such a significant human cause to modern changes? I think this is fallacious, but I’ll let you pursue that for yourself. Humans are one of many factors which can impact the climate – but we are one of the factors. What remains is the question of how much weight we should give that factor. And even if humans have a negligible impact, this does not mean that all changes are favourable to humans. States will become more fragile if extreme weather events become more normal. Investment in increasing resiliency requires a time preference low enough to not see an ROI until a statistical outlier shows its face. The commenter SanguineEmpiricist was dead on when he said that we can’t tiptoe around ruin events when we only have one earth. The fact that these events might be hard to predict doesn’t provide an escape; that signalling sometimes rules over substance should only make us more worried. Nassim Taleb (a skeptic of anthropogenic warming) expressed this sensible view: do not shake up an extremely complex system when that system could cave in and doom us. (This is also why a Taleb student would be suspicious of large, centralized solutions, by the way.) Massive deforestation and destruction of vital insect populations definitely constitute a shake-up. Sure, a ruin event could be a complete outlier. But it only takes the one. The best thing which could happen for the state would be a source of knowledge which exists outside of the current academic nexus.  One which could conduct the research necessary to verify or falsify the current models. I believe Moldbug calls this a “truth service” and dubs it the Antiversity.

And here’s where the neoreactionary approach to this issue should lie. First, we should acknowledge the simple fact that political interests substitute Useful Truths for real Truths – and then admit that this applies to both sides of this debate. Second, it needs to be admitted that ecological systems are highly complex and difficult to analyze – and that’s exactly why states have an interest in making themselves ecologically and biologically resilient. Changing climates and long-run environmental consequences are far from Black Swan events. Third, the work of the Antiversity begins now. The hydra image of the Green Movement which many on the right have leads to a confusion of issues. There’s a sense that to buy into restricting pesticides which harm bees requires going the whole nine yards and chaining yourself to a nuclear plant. The Antiversity is a truth provider and advises on that basis. Does the evidence swing in favour of pesticide toxicity? Regulate. Does it come down against the efficacy of wind energy? Get rid of the subsidies.

I hope this article serves to create a better frame of mind for approaching ecology. As happens time and time again, political signalling tends to overrule reason when it comes to the issue and very few on the right or left are immune. Useful Truth and Official Truth are worthless when they don’t reflect reality. The neoreactionary approach must be better. The work may be complicated. The method surely isn’t.

The post On Ecological Realism appeared first on Social Matter.

“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, not as an ideal. Acemoglu and Robinson are two economists specializing in institutional development. In How Nations Fail, they discuss how various interests vied for power following Britain’s Glorious Revolution. Agreements between these factions to uphold the rule of law were self-serving. After all, the emergency powers you allow your friends one day are ones your enemies can usurp the next. Further studies seem to show the same behaviour at work. Democracy and its freedoms are “a way of committing to reforms when the likely alternative is the guillotine or the firing squad.”

The thing about this model is that the incentives are different. In the idealist vision, people commit to free speech because they desire a tolerant, liberal society. In the latter one, it’s because people don’t want to risk being silenced themselves. Problem is, it only takes one bastard who thinks they can get away with it to tear the whole thing down. The conditions which foster free speech on a political and cultural level are fragile indeed. As we’ve seen here at Social Matter, we’ve got a whole gang of bastards at it this time. The internet has been a haven for free speech. Campaigns have been fought to protect those freedoms from governments and businesses alike. Who’d have thought that its well-established denizens would be the ones using the internet to limit speech?

Free speech doesn’t just function as a constitutional right; it also defines the great game of politics. It introduces a rule which players in the game have to follow. Those on the top can’t use their power to limit what their opponents say about them. Those trying to get to the top can’t use silencing tactics on their way up. Like any game, there are a variety of strategies which players – parties, political leaders, activists, etc – can use to try and gain political power. What are some of them, and how does each strategy affect the resiliency of free speech?

First, each player could agree to respect free speech norms. That means that no one undermines anyone else’s rights to free speech. No rallies howling for the silencing of the enemy, no secret plans to invoke emergency powers. Each player incurs a cost upon gaining power because their opponents will be able to criticize them. But the benefit is that no other player will be able to silence them either. That’s pretty big, especially since the majority of people usually don’t hold political power directly. Free speech remains stable. The system functions.

What happens when a player stops following the rules? Well, that depends. In stable democracies, openly saying you oppose free speech erases any hope of gaining power. That’s why politicians have to play a careful game. It’s common to hear that certain speech infringes on other rights: it’s racist, it offends religious rights, it undermines national security, and so on. Even Communists and Fascists invoke the security of the state or the people. It takes a pretty ballsy authoritarian to straight up deny the right to speak. In stable liberal democracies, destroying your chance to gain power is a huge cost. In unstable regimes, like Britain during 1688, Weimar Germany, or Greece today, the game is a bit different. If things get bad enough, you might find yourself being the only one willing to stand up for free speech. In that case, the costs to you are high (since your enemies can speak against you) but the benefits are low (you will be silenced if you lose power). In Britain, players took this into account and stabilized the situation by accepting open criticism. In Germany, radical groups ended up battling it out until Hitler and his allies emerged victorious in 1933. Greece’s ultimate fate is yet to be determined, but it doesn’t look great.

None of this is radical thinking. But here’s where it gets interesting. Since it’s in no one’s favour to oppose free speech, how can one avoid the costs of free speech without openly opposing it? Let’s look at Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement (FSM) helped spark the student movements of the 1960’s. Their vision of free speech was certainly not restricted to the government. This was the dawn of the New Left. As Jacobin Mag explains, the Old Left was never a fan of “bourgeois freedoms” like speech. It reeked of the capitalist liberal democracy they sought to overthrow. So the very name of this student-led rebirth of Left-wing theory seemed to repudiate the old militancy. Nevertheless, strong ties remained between the student movements and the Old Left. Barbara Kay recounts the history of Bettina Aptheker, former Communist Party USA member, radical left activist, and student leader of the FSM. She was raised in a radical home, where “Party line” was a serious matter. Her father believed in Comrade Stalin and became his staunchest defender on the American Left. Despite supporting free speech in America, she was by her own admission not such a fan when it came to free speech for the USSR. For the record, the CPUSA was one of those critics of “bourgeois freedoms”. From a former member:

“Discipline in the Communist Party is voluntary, but in the silent background is the sword of excommunication. Without the power and religiosity of expulsion, the Communist Party could not exist as it is. Before the moment of the Khrushchev secret speech, expulsion from the Communist Party was akin to eternal damnation, the body alive but the soul already dead for eternity; and so powerful had this conviction of the membership become, and so widely and sincerely had they promulgated it, that millions of non-Communists considered anyone who bore the label of expulsion from the Party as a lost and damned soul, a corrupt and dangerous human being who no longer owned the right of admission to the society of men of good will. To a sincere and devoted Communist, expulsion was almost as bad as death – and sometimes worse.”

Fast-forward to 2014. The long march through the institutions is complete. One study found a third of faculty members admitting they would discriminate against people with conservative political views. Nicholas Dirks, Chancellor at Berkeley, now warns against “division and divisiveness that undermine a community’s foundation”…during his FSM 50 year anniversary talk, no less. The idea that “we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so” (Dirk) has overturned “defending to the death” your enemy’s right to speak. Now, in our model of the game of politics, this attitude should incur a great cost. Isn’t the agreement that everyone must respect free speech?

Marcuse: architect of our age?

As Radish has shown, these trends aren’t the product of over-zealousness or misguided idealism. Herbert Marcuse, philosopher of the Frankfurt School and the New Left, went into detail about the nature of political toleration. He believed that freedom was only useful in the service of Social Progress and political liberation. This demands “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left”. A feminist professor physically assaulting female pro-life students (including a minor) is a pretty good metaphor for the whole thing. Roger Nash Baldwin, co-founder of the ACLU, summed up this sentiment in an infamous quote:

“I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers’ rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental. When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies, at home and abroad.”

I won’t re-print the entire Radish article, but I encourage everyone to read it. The use of political freedom as a strategy to gain power is nothing new. This is the third strategy which our game must consider. In the democracies which these movements operate in, they want to avoid the costs incurred by opposing free speech. By necessity, this requires them to officially favour free speech, and other democratic rights. As Baldwin so eloquently shows, this is entryism: the player pretends to agree with the commitment to free speech in order to be accepted. Moreover, the player continues to uphold this official commitment to political rights once they have gained power. However, through slow re-definitions of those rights and freedoms, they are able to silence opponents over time. Of course we all want free speech, but can we really turn the university into an unsafe space? After all, when your ideology has not only political but also cultural dominance, your power increases exponentially. We saw above how Communist Party influence extended far beyond Party members. We’re living in a time where most people accept the values of Social Progress, tolerance, and equality. If activists and philosophers want to re-assess those terms, who’s going to say no? Isn’t that their job? Once you can get people to advocate equality of rights in the same breath they use to advocate revoking rights from certain groups, you’ve pretty much won.

This strategy is the most threatening of all to free speech. When a group openly opposes free speech, people can ally against them. The battle is in the open. But in the face of the entryist strategy above, the challenge is more difficult. One has to fight to reveal the hypocrisy of the player employing this strategy. Until their actions become too blatant to ignore, this treads a fine line between conspiracy theory and fact. When the player holds the weight of moral authority, as the Social Justice movement does for many progressives and youth, defense becomes even harder. If large numbers of people see you as a “bad person”, whose rights can be revoked without any threat to the freedom of “decent people“, then they have no reason to protest. The player avoids all the costs of openly opposing free speech while gaining many of the benefits over the long term. This would make the strategy very attractive to political actors who can pull it off. Once the facade no longer holds, cultural and political power are strong enough that it no longer matters. If you’re really lucky, maybe you can even get people to admit that free speech was a bad idea. After all, look how many bad people were able to subject decent people to their bile through exercising that right.

The most recent victory of this strategy was at 4chan. The haven/sewer of internet free speech appears to have been successfully purged of many of its moderators. Given the seductiveness of the entryist strategy, the question is how to guard against it. Those liberals and progressives truly committed to free speech must begin to examine who they have allied with. Those committed to free speech for other reasons need to consider their situation as well. Above all, pursuit of Truth – scientific, philosophical, and intellectual – demands free speech because it requires inquiry and criticism. If the game includes rights to free speech, then players have the incentive to use the entryist strategy. Therefore, new rules and protections need to be built to guard against it. Some are trying to do just that. Created in the wake of events at 4chan, 8chan is experimenting with allowing anyone to make their own board. Following the principle of free exit, if people become unhappy with the direction of one board, they can just switch to a new one. This makes it difficult for anyone to silence opponents through restrictions and purges. Even a small minority can just escape to their own board. It’s an option almost no minority  – ethnic, political, or otherwise – has in real life. It also reduces the benefits of the entryist strategy. After all, once your motives become obvious, people will just leave. That’s one solution, and others are doubtless forthcoming.

More than anything else, the internet may have made the entryist strategy much harder to employ. Whether this is enough to overcome it completely remains to be seen. If one thing is certain, it’s that we are moving into a new phase in a conflict as old as politics. The game has changed.

The post Devil’s Game: Free Speech and the Entryist Strategy appeared first on Social Matter.