Neo-Reaction has been making the rounds on blogs lately.  As mentioned in a previous post, TechCrunch posted about it here.  The American Conservative has talked about it twice recently ( here and here ) and The Week has mentioned it as well ( here ).  A long and detailed criticism of Neo-Reaction can be read here.  With the embarrassment of George W. Bush’s legacy, and with no collective consensus reigning, the Right just keeps on splintering.  We’ve had the divisions we’ve had for the past two decades – the National Review circle, Reason‘s circle, Lew Rockwell’s orbit, the paleoconservatives, the neoconservatives, the Catholic traditionalists, the populist Religious Right, among others – but within just the past few years there’s been an increase in more factions than ever.  “Reaction” has resurfaced as a badge of honor on the Right and now we have all sorts of individuals and groups clinging to the label.  On the very outer fringe the Right also still has, unfortunately, numerous white nationalist and racist groups, some of whom bleed over into various reactionary, monarchist, anarchist, and libertarian groups (National-Anarchism being a prime example).

Do I buy into Neo-Reaction?  I certainly agree with a lot of it.  This shouldn’t be surprising, as the Anarcho-Monarchism I advocate does have many of the same philosophical influences as Neo-Reaction (and National-Anarchism for that matter).  But whereas I reject nationalism and racism, some reactionaries accept them (typically under the softer names of “race realism” or “human biodiversity”) while National-Anarchists are very outspoken with their views on white nationalism, tribalism, and racism.  Regardless of my differences with some in the reactionary camps, it is great that anti-egalitarian and anti-Leftist thought is on the rise (amongst blogs at least).

Neo-Reaction and all its related movements do actually have a point: simple conservatism just doesn’t work.  Matt K. Lewis concedes this when he writes that

Additionally, these movements tacitly accept that conservatism as a political force is utterly incapable of slowing the leftward march of liberalism. By definition, conservatives, who want to conserve the good things about the past, are always playing defense. When you consider that many of my conservative views aren’t terribly different from John F. Kennedy’s views in 1960, this becomes self-evident.

Popular American conservatism doesn’t work.  “Conservatives” of today apparently look longingly back to the Camelot of Kennedy.  When the conservatives (ahem Republicans) have gotten power, they’ve typically only made it worse.  This shows both the problem of Power itself, as well as the failure of conservatism.  Despite my objections to some of the ideas on the Far Right, at least we are attempting to get to the roots of the matter.  Whether one sees the root of modern decay in the Reformation, Enlightenment, French Revolution, or elsewhere, at least we are seeking for fundamental truths and actual solutions.  Rallying for the Fair Tax or the likes of Chris Christie accomplishes nothing for what is desperately needed in our age of societal stagnation, egalitarian leveling, state centralization, economic fleecing, and all-encompassing tyranny.

Of the recent articles, The Week‘s details some valid points about American monarchists and reactionaries.  Simply put, Americans shouldn’t want a monarchy for America.

Whatever happened to a world where the Right was almost obsessively proud of the Founding Fathers (you know, the revolutionaries who stood up to the British Crown) and hated the Evil Empire so much they could never be seduced by a former KGB agent?

And Noah Millman from The American Conservative writes that

So: my bottom line is, there are good conservative arguments for preserving a monarchy where one exists and has deep roots in the culture of a given society, and any such long-lived political institution helps preserve political stability merely by virtue of its longevity. But there aren’t any very good arguments for monarchism as a political system in and of itself. You can’t even argue that monarchies last longer than other political systems; most of the monarchies established since the dawn of the age of republicanism have been very short-lived indeed.

There’s no monarchy in America, though, and no tradition thereof. In fact, the American political system and American society are exceptionally poor fits for any of the rationales for monarchy articulated above. America has no landed aristocracy. We are shallowly rooted in our own soil, a highly mobile people, and we cannot delude ourselves about an organic connection with the land as the descendants of the displaced original inhabitants still live among us. And our family arrangements, well, let’s just say that absolute patriarchal authority doesn’t have pride of place these days.

I agree.  There have been brilliant defenses of medieval monarchy by such conservatives and classical liberals as Edmund Burke, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and Robert Nisbet.  None of them argued for monarchy per se as the par excellence of government systems for all peoples, of all times (although Kuehnelt-Leddihn came close).  Instead, what was argued was a principle of Burkean prejudice.  Neo-Reactionaries and monarchists of every stripe should understand this.  America has no tradition of monarchy.  Preserving the American heritage of the Founding Fathers, constitutionalism, states’ rights, Jeffersonian individualism, etc is the correct course for the American reactionary.  This is scarcely different from the goal of the typical American conservative, except that in our case, we actually do favor anti-centralistic republicanism over democratic federalism and empire.

Millman also states that

So what could possibly motivate monarchical yearnings among American conservatives? A fear that the American people have failed and needs to be properly directed by the right people. A fear that existing privilege cannot be maintained without explicit resort to violence as a political principle. A resolute inability to identify with the majority of the citizenry, the abiding conviction that one is a member of the natural but unrecognized elite.

I think the right word for this kind of thing isn’t reactionary but fascist.

Again, he’s right.  A desire for the Hero-Man to rise up and direct society?  This line of thinking that is present diversely in Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Carlyle, Julius Evola, Ernst Jünger, and Ayn Rand (brilliant thinkers all) is certainly similar to core fascist themes.  It’s also the wrong type of thinking for monarchists and reactionaries to uphold.  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the most influential thinker on my own ideas, greatly detailed the differences between dictators and kings, between leaders and rulers.  Because of their inherent centralization, identarianism, and socialism, both Nazism and Fascism were inherently Leftist movements.  However, these movements also had Rightist influences and modern Rightist reactionaries must be careful against these proto-fascist ideas.

Many libertarians, for their part, are distancing themselves from the Neo-Reaction movement.  When PayPal co-founder and radical libertarian Peter Thiel declared, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” some were horrified.  To some libertarians, democracy and freedom are practically synonymous and only fascists would want to revert to a monarchical system (alas, even Mises and Rothbard viewed the transition from monarchical systems to democratic ones as progress).  Well, while some neo-fascists may be part of the New Right or neo-reactionaries, it’s certainly not some established fact that anti-democratism equates to white nationalism or pro-fascism.  Anarcho-Monarchism is fundamentally anti-democratic but it is also pro-liberty.  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, Proudhon, Tocqueville, Mencken, and Nock were all fiercely anti-democratic, and yet pro-liberty.  I like monarchy, aristocracy, and conservative cultural standards; I oppose egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, and the bulk of the modern world.  If that makes me a “neo-reactionary,” then so be it.  But a fascist?  Or a fan of Putin?  No.

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