Now that Ross Douthat has run an article on neoreaction (no hyphen!) in the august New York Times, perhaps I should take back my previous statements about disassociating with neoreaction because they're a bunch of retards of late. Bad timing! Before Anissimov comes back from his night job at a San Francisco bath-house, I shall proclaim myself Leader of Neoreaction and as such will negotiate with Mr. Douthat for any lucrative deal as the new edgy domesticated right. I have Catholic family too so I'm eminently qualified to deal with Mr. Douthat. He'll need my friendship when God-Emperor Trump comes down to ask him to respond for his articles against the Trump candidacy.
Jokes aside, Ross Douthat is really missing the point. His article argues that neoreaction is racist and evil, but we are often right about many issues and so mainstream conservatism should listen to what we say in order to have something real to say once in a while. He brings up Nicolas Gomez Davila aphorisms as an example of non-evil reactionary wisdom.
But reactionary wisdom like that used to be quite common. Did mainstream conservatism listen to it back then? No. The insight of neoreaction isn't that modernity and leftism sucks. Plenty of people have noticed that since before modernism even got running. Neoreaction explains why modernism happened even though it sucks. Why leftism gets progressively worse, and why conservatism, like the one Ross Douthat represents, is a complete joke. Mainstream conservatism are those few ideas which the left can't outright prohibit at a given moment, because the leftist consensus hasn't moved far enough. Mainstream conservatism was against gaymarriage because the Left hadn't reached an agreement within itself. Once the Left decided on gaymarriage, opposition was outlawed, and mainstream conservatism summarily dropped the issue. The moment that a conservative takes even the slightest hint of reactionary ideas the Left will make sure he is not allowed to speak in public. Journalism isn't about facts. Journalism is the state-run bullshit industry. And the left runs it very tight.
Mainstream conservatives themselves are part of the Left's censorship apparatus. They volunteer to police their own because they want to keep their jobs. See like Douthat himself has dealt with Donald Trump, even though it's increasingly obvious that Trump is a liberal fraud. See what National Review has become. Douthat is of course right that people are increasingly disaffected from mainstream conservatism, as it has moved to the Left much faster than the common people have.
Douthat complains that reaction on top is a set of piecemeal complaints about democratic politics, which the bottom it's yet another nationalist movement based on racial grounds. The reason is obvious. The people on top have read their history and know that going back to the past is neither feasible nor desirable, that there are systemic reasons why the Left always wins, and that the signaling patterns that move modern politics are likely to spiral into complete madness until the whole thing collapses.
The bottom has neither the expertise nor the leisure to engage in historical and sociopolitic analysis. If all politics are signaling, the bottom needs to find a good signaling post to rally around and to fight back against the modern leftist establishment that is destroying the middle class and using foreign barbarians to intimidate them with state-approved violence. And for better or worse, the only set of ideas that can fight leftism today is fascism. Good old secular ethno-nationalism. That works. It's working in France, it's working in Germany, it's working in Hungary. It just won the election in Austria. It may very well make Donald Trump the president of the United States.
If Douthat wants to keep his job in the bullshit industry he better listen to those fascists on the bottom, not to the highbrow reactionaries. Reading me or Moldbug won't get you a job. Being friendly to the God-Emperor might. He doesn't like it. To be honest I don't like it either. But that's the way things work. That's the real message of the reaction.
