Just a Little Bit More on Neoreactionary-ism

Spandrell confirms my instinct that creating a political theory of neoreaction is a bit Progressive, although he does it in a sideways manner:

But leftists don’t understand why anyone would go in the internet and write without trying to form a conspiracy to change society and raise their own status. So suddenly neoreaction is all about Monarchism. Yes we’re a Dark plot to abolish democracy and put ourselves as kings and enslave all the black lesbian neuroscientists. Why else would we have a blog, huh?

He's talking about the recent attention the Dark Enlightenment has received from the Cathedral. I spent a little time thinking about what these outlets were saying. The grunt-level pieces, written by and for unthinking progressives, were satisfied to apply the "racist" slur, confident that it was enough to translate into, "You don't have to waste any time considering these ideas." The more "intellectual" pieces fixated on the few writers who favor monarchy. To your average middle-brow, "monarchy" is nothing more than archaic, painting the whole group as political flat-earthers.

But the point of those articles was the same. Neoreaction is a conspiracy of counter-revolutionaries, cis-men bent on re-seizing power. Spandrell makes the case that neoreaction is more a think tank than a coherent ideology:

None of this matters to neoreaction because neoreaction is not a government agency. It’s a research center. We’re here to see what reality is and what it teach is, in short, that humans are evolved apes, with mammal brains, with innate biases and tendencies, all of them inheritable and variable between individuals, groups and races. That everything that the powers that be teach us is false, and that they lie to each other too. Well we don’t lie to each other. That’s all we have in common, and all we can have in common. And it’s enough. When the entryists come in, we’ll know who they are, because they’re the ones lying.

The coalition has a better active mission than any defined theory could have:  to encourage the public to question the progressive "certainties" we've been taught for generations. The less easily a label can be applied, the less easily these ideas can be dismissed.

But Spandrell was also prompted by Jim's discussion of libertarian entryism. Aimless Gromar is making a distinction between neoreaction and libertarianism. This, I think, is necessary.

But libertarianism is not neoreaction. Neoreaction is not libertarianism. In other words, it’s not that property rights or freedom are unimportant (they’re obviously important), but that they’re not the most fundamental political values. Order and stability are fundamental, and they actually presuppose a solid inclusion of property rights, liberty, and individual rights.

Libertarianism is a compromise ideology. Free enterprise and free love, so to speak. But it makes the same mistake as leftist progressivism:  We can apply some simple basic principles to the whole of society. Gromar points out the flaw:

[T]he fundamental idea of neoreaction, which is that the aggregate of individually innocuous actions is not innocuous, at all. If people manage to simultaneously blow lines and be essentially productive citizens, then I don’t see that much to worry about. Then again, when it filters down to the lower classes and crack epidemics occur, the hammer of the state needs to fall.

Libertarianism assumes a rational, level-headed populace. It simply isn't so. Permitting the basest urges of humanity is no different than encouraging them. Casanova was a cocksman of legend; this guy recorded himself infecting dozens with HIV.

Gromar points out that many neoreactionaries are recovering libertarians. I fall in that category. Just as leftist economic ideas are impractical, leftist social policies are the same. People are not equal. There is a difference between those that are imperfectly moral, immoral and amoral. The same rules can't apply.

[Note: quick, unedited post--too busy.]