Neoreactionary Realism¶
The easiest place to start is with what neoreactionary realism isn’t, which is this:
For a reactionary state to be established in the West in our lifetimes, we’ll need to articulate the need for one in a language millions of people can understand. If not to produce nationalists, to at least produce a large contingent of sympathizers. The question,“What is it, exactly, that you propose to do?” must be answered, first in simple terms, then in detailed terms that directly support the simple arguments. The urge to develop esoteric theories of causes and circumstances should be tossed aside, and replaced with concrete proposals for a novel form of government that harmonizes with perennial principles. This can be achieved by producing positive theories for a new order, rather than analyzing the nuts and bolts of a decaying order.
Beginning with a model of an ideal society is a procedure that already has a name, and a different one: Utopianism. It’s not a difficult way to think. For instance, imagine a political regime based on commutative tax politics. As far as economic considerations are concerned, the political problem is solved. Policy choices are aligned with practical incentives, and the manifestly irresistible democratic impulse to redistributive violation of property rights is immediately terminated. The trouble with this idea? — There’s no practical way to get to it. The real problem of political philosophy does not lie in the conceptual effort of modeling an ideal society, but in departing from where we are, in a direction that tends to the optimization of a selected value (equality stinks, utility doesn’t work, freedom is OK, intelligence is best).
Where can we get to from here? Unless this question controls political theory, the result is utopian irrelevance. The initial real problem is escape. In consequence, two broad avenues of realistic neoreactionary reflection are open:
(1) Elaborate escape. This topic naturally bifurcates in turn, into the identification and investment of exit-based institutions, and the promotion of secessionist options (from fissional federalism to seasteading). An escape-based society, unlike a utopia, is structured in the same way it is reached. Upon arriving in a world made of the right sort of fragments — splintered by political philosophy rather than tribal variety — all kinds of real possibilities arise. (Tribes are a useless distraction, because they resonate to defective philosophies — a world of Benetton differentiated failing social democracies is the one we are being herded into now.)
(2) Defend diversity. Once again, ethnic diversity — as such — means next to nothing (at best). Every ‘people’ has shown itself capable of political idiocy. What deserves preservation is fracture, defined over against Cathedral universalism. Any place that can practically count as ‘offshore’ is a base for the future. In particular, the East Asian antidemocratic technocapitalist tradition merits ferocious ideological defense against Cathedralist subversion. Within the West, domestic enclaves that have resisted macrosocial absorption — from Amish communities to survivalist militia movements — have comparable value. Wherever political globalism fails, neoreaction wins.
The very last thing neoreaction has to usefully declare is I have a dream. Dream-mongering is the enemy. The only future worth striving for is splintered into myriads, loosely webbed together by free-exit connections, and conducting innumerable experiments in government, the vast majority of which will fail.
We do not, and cannot, know what we want, anymore than we can know what the machines of the next century will be like, because real potentials need to be discovered, not imagined. Realism is the negative of an unfounded pretense to knowledge, no less in political sociology than information technology. Invention is not planning, and sky-castles offer no refuge from the Cathedral. If there’s one thing we need to have learned, and never to forget, it’s that.
ADDED: Adventures in Exiting