Tag Archives: NeoReaction

Chronic Kinglessness

A while back, someone linked me to this interview with Tory MP Rory Stuart from 2014 (H/T: Peregrin). It was rather informative on what is wrong with modern politics (read it all).

“But in our situation we’re all powerless. I mean, we pretend we’re run by people. We’re not run by anybody. The secret of modern Britain is there is no power anywhere.” Some commentators, he says, think we’re run by an oligarchy. “But we’re not. I mean, nobody can see power in Britain. The politicians think journalists have power. The journalists know they don’t have any. Then they think the bankers have power. The bankers know they don’t have any. None of them have any power.”

And this from a man who only two years ago attended the Bilderberg conference, a highly exclusive and secretive gathering of the world’s most powerful bankers, politicians and businesspeople?

“Well there we are, you see,” he smiles. “I can tell you, there is nothing there. It’s like the wizard of Oz. This is the age of the wizard of Oz, you know. In the end you get behind the curtain and you finally meet the wizard and there’s this tiny, frightened figure. I think every prime minister has sort of said this since Blair. You get there and you pull the lever, and nothing happens.”

This is a perfect example of what Moldbug, referencing Carlyle, referred to as chronic kinglessness.

This is the secret of politics and modern society: nobody is in charge, no one has power, and nobody is running the show: not the people, not the corporations, not the politicians, not the bureaucrats, not the courts, not the military, not the journalists, not the bankers, not the white male patriarchs, not the SJW’s, not the Jews, not Davos, not the Bilderbergs, not the Tri-lateral Commission, not the Illuminati, and not the lizard-people.

Everybody likes to posit that some bogeyman composed of people they dislike is in charge and running, ruining, things behind the scenes because that is comforting. Even if a conspiracy is leading to disaster, at least we’re being led. Even if they are evil incarnate, at least they know what they’re doing and are leading society in a specific direction. It is comforting to know someone is in charge, even if we hate them.

But we’re not that lucky. There is no one who really knows what they’re doing and no one is in charge. Everybody has just a little bit of power, some have more some less, to accomplish tiny things, so nobody has any real power to accomplish anything. Our system is vieled anarchy.

Society’s moving the way it is not because anyone is willing it, but because society’s movement has taken on an inertia of its own, and continues moving along this inertial path whatever actual people may desire. It has almost become a will of its own, some have taken to calling it an egregore, but it’s not really mystical or mysterious. It moves because that’s the way it has moved, so people follow it along and continue to move it, so it moves.

We have the rule of law, but the law is unknown and unconstrained by man.

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Don’t believe me, remember this picture:

The wife of the leader of the free world was so powerless, she had to make meaningless twitter activism to try to rescue for a few hundred kidnapped girls. The so-called Leader of the Free World, who ostensibly has the most powerful military in the history of the world under his command, couldn’t liberate a few hundred girls from a few hundred tribal savages, so she had to pray to the activism gods.

The king of any third-rate kingdom in history would laugh at the pitiable weakness of any other king who couldn’t even round up 100 aging men to rescue some maidens to make his queen smile. Yet, the Commander in Chief of the the million man army of the strongest empire in history failed to do this.

The girls were later saved by a hundred aging South African mercenaries. I’ll also note, that despite being able to do what the US President was powerless to, these mercenaries also expressed feelings of powerlessness.

****

Because everybody has some power, but nobody has real power, there is no responsibility. Back to the interview:

Whenever Stewart took one of these ideas, such as rule of law, to an actual Afghan village, it became meaningless. “None of the things that I’m looking for exist. There obviously isn’t police, or a judge, there isn’t a legal code, there isn’t a prison. There’s a bunch of guys with white beards sitting around, and their system of doing that might be quite different from the next-door village. So then how do you get from there to here? Well, it can be done, but it’s not going to be done by a foreigner who barely understands any of that.”

These bearded men have real power. It may be limited to a small village, but it is real in a way no modern in the West could understand. There is no legal power or police backing them up, but they still have control over their local village. Because they have real power, they also have real responsibility; even an outsider who knows nothing can tell exactly who’s in charge. The village knows exactly who to hold accountable if something goes wrong, and if leadership is bad enough, they know exactly who to shoot.

On the other hand, let’s examine our governance using Obamacare as an example. Obamacare was nightmare of inefficincies, failed deadlines, and rising health insurance prices. Despite being named after Obama, the blame gets heaped everywhere: Obama who championed the bill, Republicans who obstructed it and watered it down, the lobbyists and interns who actually wrote the bill, Justice Roberts who ruled a not-tax was a tax, the IT company that screwed the website, the bureaucracy implementing the plan, the insurance companies who didn’t act the way leftists wanted, or the people who elected those who put the whole thing into place.

Nobody got what they wanted out of this debacle, and everybody’s unhappy. Everybody was acting like they were powerless to get what they wanted and their opponents were using their overwhelming power to get their way. The only person who had even a hint of real power in this whole thing was Roberts who technically could have squashed it, but who felt he didn’t have the power to, so instead he made the cockamamie excuse that something that was specifically written as not being a tax was a tax.

Everybody has some power, but nobody has real power, so nobody nobody knows who to blame, beyond the other guy, and nobody can be held accountable, when things go wrong.

The reverse holds true as well, no responsibility means no authority. If no one is responsible for something, no one has legitimate authority over it, no one has power over it. Every villager in this village, knows who has authority. Nobody in the US has any clue who actually has authority.

****

Power flows from authority, authority flows from legitimacy.

At its essence, power is violence, real or implied. It is the ability to force others to do your will.

But, the violent capacities of one man are extremely limited, no one man could stop ten, let alone a hundred thousand, so the capacity for violence, real or implied, comes not from personal capacities, but from the ability to command others to carry out violence on your behalf. A man’s power is essentially: if he ordered it, how many man would commit violence on his behalf. The ability to carry out your will, particularly through the use of others, is authority. Authority is from here power flows.

Legitimacy is whether men accept your authority. Do men believe you have the right to command them and do they believe they have a duty to obey when you command? You can temporarily force people to obey without legitimacy through fear, but this illusionary authority lasts only until someone openly disobeys without consequence or someone responds with greater force.

****

So, who today has power?

The President can, with enough political maneveuring, command thousands of men into war, but that is limited. He couldn’t even command 100 men to #bringbackourgirls to please his wife. Should the President command a war, Justice Roberts could force the war to end, if he declared it unconstiutional. Theoretically, the Constitution states that Congress decides when men are sent to war, they could theoretically overrule the President, but they seem to not have been particularly effective in stopping the President in recent history. A general could theoretically disobey the president; he controls the men with guns. Come to that, the men with guns themselves could do whatever they desired, who could stop them?

So, in theory, nobody really controls when men are sent to war, yet, the men still march to war, and the wars end up wasteful and counter-productive. This century, our enemies always seem to end up controlling the countries the US invades, yet no one is ever held responsible.

You will notice the Constitution mentioned repeatedly above. Odd that a document, a set of words that could be destroyed by a single 10-cent match, controls so much. The Constitution has power because the constitution confers legitimacy. The legitimacy confers authority.

Yet, the legitimacy of the Constitution has been waning. When will the living document lose its power?

This basis of legitimacy is dedicated to preventing any one man from obtaining any real power. This was more or less functional when government was small and controlled, power rested outside the government, so there was little power for the Constitution to to distribute. It may have been uncontrolled, but it was a toddler swinging wildly. But as government has grown, so to has the dysfunctionality. More power rests with the government, but nobody has any real power over that power. The power of government swings around madly, like an enraged and blinded Hercules.

Also, odd, isn’t it, that the Constitution fails utterly to check the growth of government power, yet it strongly checks the power of any single man.

****

We are suffering chronic kinglessness. Everybody has some power, but nobody has real power. All the men we think are powerful, think themselves powerless. Instead of a directed, functional state, we a hyper-powerful super-state throwing its tremendous weight around blindly, destroying everything in its path. The Constitution, which limits any man from having real power, prevents any man from exercising real authority, yet at the same time it is helpless to limit government, so the behemoth fumbles around blindly leaving a swath of destruction in its wake.

No Enemies to the Right

I’ve seen No Enemies to the Right (NEttR) come under scrutiny over the last while, most recently and prominently by Land. I’m going to clarify the issue a bit.

As I’ve written before, we on the right should point our guns at our true enemies, the left, and, occassionally, the traitorous moderates. We should avoid turning on each other. We should avoid attacking allies, even if they are overzealous, degenerate, wrong on certain base principles, or if they have tactics we disagree with.

When first formulated, NEttR had a slightly different formulation though than simply not attacking fellow rightests. When originally used a few years back (can’t find the links), it meant no attacking people from the left. You could not criticize people for being more right then you, ie. you never criticize from the left, always from the right. For example, you don’t criticize a anarcho-capitalist for insufficent economic justice, that would be criticizing from the left. It instead you criticize him for the problems created by a lack of legitimate authority, ie. from the right. Criticizing a 14/88er for being racist is from the left and is verboten; criticizing a 14/88er for being a nationalist rather than a thedist is fine as it is from the right.

I agree with both the old formulation and the new formulation. In that there’s a difference between attack and criticize. You don’t attack someone else on the right, but you can criticize, as long as your criticism is that they are insufficiently rightward. You never attack or criticize someone for being insufficiently left. (Remember, right is order, left is chaos. Any criticism should be that the person is not sufficiently promoting order).

We should always be signalling right. But we should not become stupid about it to the point where we devour our own or promote stupidity. Ideological purity is nice, but don’t be concerned to the point where it becomes counter-productive. Attacking everyone for some minor ideological deviation will only alienate people. Instead, try to encourage and convince them towards your point of view with reason and argumentation. As well, continually trying to one-up others in a “righter than thou” holiness competition is to be avoided. This is not a status game.

NEttR does not mean that we can’t criticize, it means we can’t criticize people for being more right than us. In Land’s case, we should not critize the assassin for excessive rightward zeal or for being an extremist. We can criticize him for promoting chaos (ie: promoting leftism), for promoting evil, or for his actions being strategically or tactically unsound. The attitude to others within the right should be “I admire his passion for the cause, but he went too far by committing this counter-productive evil.”

Criticism of other rightests should always be internal. We should never criticize other rightests to leftists. Never virtue signal to the left. Our public attitude towards our extremists to the the centre and left should be the Mutt and Jeff routine. When talking about rightests we don’t agree with to the left, our general stance should be “While I don’t agree with him and he went too far, you have to agree that he has some valid points. Maybe we could appease people like him by adopting [something moderately right].” One of the major reasons leftists win is because rightests denounce their extremists (ex: abortion-clinic bombers), while leftists play Mutt and Jeff with theirs (ex: communist and Islamic terrorists).

Similarly, some allies are ideologically impure, degenerate, or otherwise distasteful in ways other extremism. Milo, Roosh, and Spencer (Edit: Looks like I was confused. My apologies to Mr. Spencer) are some of the bigger examples. In these cases, the old Bedouin proverb comes in handy: “I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger”. We are not biological family, but we are ideological family. Just as in a real family, we may not like or agree with some people, we may find their choices distasteful or wrong, but they are still ours. We have concentric ideological circles, and at each circle, we should always rally facing outwards. When someone in one those circles outside us gets attacked from the left, we should support them for what right thing they have. Allies are useful and we have few of them. Extremists and distasteful allies should be used not rejected. Once the restoration has succeeded, then we can sort out our internal differences.

Finally, loyalty is a two-way street. There is no need to help traitors. Those on the right who are constantly attacking other rightests, especially if they’re doing so from the left, or who betray their allies deserve nothing. Disloyalty is chaotic and disordered, it is leftist and these rules don’t apply to them; feel free to attack (but always from the right). If they repent, let off and allow them to prove themselves.

So here’s the basic rules of No Enemies to the Right we should all follow:

1) Never attack or denounce a fellow rightest. Entryists, traitorous “moderates” and R(ightests)INO are fair game.

2) Never attack or alienate an ally. If you dislike them, ignore them.

3) Rational critique is not an attack.

4) Rational critique is not personal. Keep personal drama private.

5) Criticism of rightests should always have the audience of other rightests. Never criticize rightests to leftists.

6) All criticism should be from the right. Never criticize from the left.

7) Always signal right.

8) This is not a holiness competition. Don’t don’t be stupidly excessive when signalling right.

9) Don’t denounce extremists. Remember, Mutt and Jeff.

10) Zeal is good and should be commended, stupidity is not and should be criticized.

11) Always rally facing outwards at our concentric ideological circles.

12) Support those attacked from the left, even if the person is more left than you.

13) None of this applies to the disloyal or traitorous.

Accept Power

A lot of the criticism of passivism comes from Step 2: Accept Power. Critics correctly point out that accepting power is a vague, almost magical, “something happens” that is undefined. Like Anti-Dem, I’m also highly skeptical we’ll convert the current elites in any significant number, but we don’t need to.

Accepting power is what we must do, and it is necessarily vague because I’m not a wizard, nor is anyone else in NRx. We can make predictions and educated guesses of what might happen in the future, but nobody really knows how any restoration will come about because there is no real model for how this happens.

Society moves by the combination of large, underlying, occult economic, demographic, and social forces, the occasional great man, and pure random chance, a combination that makes a joke of any planning for specifics.

The restoration will be a black swan event: an unpredictable event of highly improbable circumstances.

From the direction of the large, occult forces, we can discern that Western society is degrading before our eyes, but how this disintegration will play out is unknowable. All that is knowable is that institutional legitimacy, social bonds, and social trust are plummeting and a society without them is not a society that can maintain itself. Barring some major, unexpected occurrence at some unforeseeable point in the future, the illusion that is America will shatter and things will disintegrate in some way.

And that is all we can know. You can’t make specific plans because we don’t know what the situation will be. That’s why we do passivism. We build up our support, legitimacy, and strength, so that we are ready when opportunity presents itself.

Did Gorbachev and East German officials think the Berlin Wall would fall and the USSR would collapse because one official misunderstood a note? No. No one had any idea that the communist world would collapse so quickly and what stupid little event would set it off, even though everybody knew the USSR was decaying, hence Gorbachev’s earlier reforms.

After the collapse of the USSR, Harvard, USG, and their many imperial tools were on hand to economically rape Russia and install an American order under Yeltsin. There will be no outside force to install order, even rapacious order, after the US collapses. So somebody internally will need to restore order. That will be whoever has best positioned itself to respond to the black swan.

Social entropy in the US will not be reversed little by little, there is no internal or external power centre or force that can push an incremental reverse, such as the socialist media and the Soviet regime which supported the long march of American communists and liberalization. The introduction of mass propoganda through TV and radio and the introduction of mass education were singular historical events which the communsists took advantage of and we didn’t. We will have not have these advantages which allowed the left to win. The internet doesn’t present us the same opportunity due to its distributed nature and its already completed infiltration by progs.

If entropy is reversed, it will be reversed in one big reset, this will happen when the Cathedral’s legitimacy and authority disappears. What will trigger that and what the circumstances on the ground will be, is unknowable.

Then best strategy in this case is to build: build a power base, build legitimacy, and build authority so that when the black swan occurs, we are ready to move and have a set alternative to chaos. The great man will be whoever finds the right timing and uses what has been built to restore order.

I already quoted this, but I’ll do so again:

Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
– Sun Tzu

Those committing activism are seeking fights now and looking for victories afterwards. They wish to squander resources where they can not and will not win.

Passivism is about seeking victory through building and preserving resources and taking battle after victory has been achieved. That is why it is called accepting power. If we become worthy, ie: if we build our power bases, legitimacy, and authority to the extent necessary, then when the time comes, there will be nothing to do but for the great man to accept what is rightfully his. Lord Monck will walk into London unopposed and restore the king to his rightful place.

Alternatively, the more resources we squander now and the less we build, the greater the fight and the lesser the odds of victory will be when the black swan flies.

Activism

In the comments to my recent article on passivism, I’ve been accused of not defining activism, even though I did.

Activism is democratic politics. It is action by the people for the people to influence the people’s laws. Activism is necessarily leftist because it assumes the people should be involved in politics and in the power of the people to change politics, which are both inherently leftist concepts. In an ordered, right-wing society, the people do not engage in politics (at least, until society becomes disordered and the people throw a revolution), so there is no activism. Activism should be avoided for this reason alone.

Yuray has defined activism as well:

Per Google the definition of activism is “the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.”

Activism is participation in the official political process, which the Brahmins at Google have found fit to define as “campaigning to bring about political or social change.” Passivism is not “doing nothing,” it is non-participation in the official political process.

Activism is people power. It is a part of democracy in which the people take political action, generally against the authorities or those perceived to be in power.

Democracy is inherently leftist. People power is inherently leftist. Activism is inherently leftist. There is no such thing as right-wing activism.

If you are trying to influence the people or democratic power structures you are not acting right-wing. You are acting like a liberal and are engaging in liberal democracy on liberal terms on the liberal battlefield. You are completely pwned and accepting your enemies’ frame.

The term for this is folk activism, which Moldbug borrowed from Friedman, while altering the meaning. Folk activists commit ostensibly right-wing activism. I say ostensibly, because even though folk activists may be pursuing nominally right-wing ends, they are legitimizing liberal and democratic values and the system that represents these values.

Some commented that writing and speech are activism, but they are not. Political writing and speech are only activism when it stirs (or is at least meant to stir) the people to action. Political philosophy is not activism. By calling political writing and speech activist you are accusing Plato, Confucius, or Hobbes of being activists, which is patently absurd.

Neither is building the mannerbund, institutions, groups, or families. These activities are generally non-political. Where they are political, they are only activist insofar as they participate in liberal democratic activities.

Activism is not synonymous with action. Activism is democratic action against (perceived) authority. Some action is activist, but much action is not. The right needs to avoid activism, as it further legitimizes liberal democracy, which is antithetical to right order, tradition, and right authority.

If you want to take action, then take right-wing action. Write anti-democratic political tracts that delegitimatize liberalism. Build order in your communities. Build institutions and/or gain power in them. Gain legitimacy and authority through action.

You’ll notice these right-wing actions are exactly what passivism encourages.

The Neoreactionary Bargain

I’ve explained the theoretical core of neoreaction and made an introduction to neoreaction. But what it the ultimate goal of neoreaction?

Neoreaction was originally an intellectual exercise, a discussion of ideas. Because of this it had no real goal beyond theorizing. Moldbug wrote a general idea of the final goal of neoreaction in his Open Letter.

The end goal of neoreaction is formalized, privatized government. The Open Letter and Letter to France outline the steps a country’s elites should take to do this.

But how is neoreaction to achieve this?

The current social order is slowly(?) collapsing. The money’s run out, inflation and cheap debt are reaching the limits of their ability to mask insolvency, the natives are growing increasingly restless, low-level guerilla war is rising, and our culture and cohesion are breaking down. What can not last forever, won’t. Eventually this social order will be replaced.

What will it be replaced by?

One option is a slow limping decline/dark age. Another is simple collapse and anarchy, possibly an on-going low-level civil war. Another possibility, particularly in Europe, is Islam. A fourth possibility is a leftist singularity. The most likely possibility is a right-wing surge of the native population and the violent expulsion of the elites and invaders.

You’ll notice that all of these are bloody. Neoreaction wants to avoid this. To do so, we are building an ideological and, eventually, structural basis for a leader* to arise and implement the neoreactionary agenda by making a bargain with the elites.

The neoreactionary bargain to the elites will essentially be this:

Your regime will fall. It can fall to the leftist chaos, Islamic invaders, or right-wing populists, but it will fall. Any of those three groups will happily and ruthlessly exterminate you and your families, probably after torture, reeducation, work camps, rape, and/or enslavement. The leader knows that violent revolutions of any type tends to end poorly for the country and he also would like to avoid death camps and mass executions if possible. So he will make a deal.

If you willingly divest power to the leader, he will restore orderly government. He will expel the Islamic invaders, halt the leftist singularity, and placate the right-wing populists. Current higher elites will be allowed to keep some of your wealth (and your lives) as long as you obey the new order; lower elites and officials hostile to the new order will be retired on a modest, livable stipend and not be further harassed as long as you remain private. Some of the most criminal of the elites will have to meet final justice but it will be served cleanly and measuredly, there will be no torture, no camps, and families will be spared and treated well.

You can give power to the leader, who will formalize and privatize government, or you can try your odds with chekists, Islamic militants, and right-wing death squads?

This is the neoreactionary bargain to the elites: surrender power to a leader to formalize government and be treated well, or be exterminated by one of the populist groups.

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Honestly, as one of the most prol of the neoreactionaries, the less charitable parts of me wouldn’t mind seeing our criminal elites meet right-wing death squads. I’d probably feel some primal satisfaction upon hearing of the fire-bombing of Yale and Harvard, the torching of the Federal Reserve with everyone in it, the decimation of Washington, and the staff of NYT and Gawker going for helicopter rides.

But Christian charity compels me towards mercy, so I hope they take the bargain.

What is Neoreaction?

There seems to be confusion as to what neoreaction actually is. Most outsiders focus on monarchy and technology, most other alt-righters focus on it not being their particular brand of right-wing thought. I’ve written an introduction to neoreaction on Reaction Times, but it was a simple description made in relatable terms and doesn’t get to the core of it.

Keldory got the right idea on twitter:

https://twitter.com/Keldory20/status/661206124104781824

The core of neoreaction is the two interrelated ideas of formalism and neocameralism.

Formalism is the essentialist notion that the symbolic and the real should align, particularly when it relates to power. The mythic, factual, and social truths of power should be the same. He who rules in name should rule in fact, and he who has power should hold an office and title truthfully indicating his power.

Neocameralism flows from formalism. It is the truth that the state is simply a group of people working towards a common goal, it is a corporation. The only difference between it and other corporations are sovereignty and territoriality. Sovereignty is the right to force obedience through violence, while territoriality applies this sovereignty to a particular geographic area.

Formalism and neocamericalism are neoreaction, everything else flows from these two ideas. Combined these ideas give the neoreactionary position: that the state should acknowledge that it is a corporation sovereign with ownership over its particular territory and the residents therein and that it should openly wield and delegate its power as an owner.

Notice how these ideas are rather abstract and lacking in any concrete prescriptions or goals. This is what confuses outsiders and this is why neoreaction can seem somewhat schizophrenic at times. People tend to judge ideologies on their goals and prescriptions, while neoreaction’s only real prescription is ‘make real power and theoretical power converge and wield them openly’, which is a rather vague.

Because of the abstract nature of core neoreactionary ideas, neoreactionaries can mold these ideas into very distinct ideologies. For example, Nick Land and Nick Steves both derive very different prescriptions from neoreactionary axioms.

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Some clarifications:

One form of neocameralism which was mentioned by Moldbug, the joint-stock corporation government, has been the focus of people criticizing neocameralism. It’s probably unworkable, but the cryptographic joint-stock government is not the core of neocameralism, rather it is one possible prescription derived from it. Sometimes, due to it being included in the original patchwork posts, the two are conflated.

As well, the word corporation can confuse people. Colloquially people generally use ‘corporation’ to refer to large, for-profit organizations, and corporation automatically brings to mind McDonald’s or Monsanto. Corporation in this case is used in its more proper definition: a group of individuals recognized by law as having an independent existence apart from any particular individual. The state being a corporation does not necessitate it being for-profit, impersonal, large, etc. For example, your local church and community clubs are corporations.

The Norman Hypothesis

The Puritan hypothesis is a main plank of neoreaction, but the English Civil War itself didn’t arise out of the vacuum.

I came across this article:

Indeed, such attempts to root Northerners, particularly those from the Northeast, and Southerners in antagonistic bloodlines went back at least as far as 1837, when another anonymous writer in The Messenger wrote, “We, too, of the South, and especially we of Virginia, are descendants, for the most part, of the old cavaliers — the enemies and persecutors of those old puritans — and entertain, perhaps, unwittingly something of an hereditary and historical antipathy against the children, for the fathers’ sake.”

It seems many southerners (and northerners) prior to the civil war believed themselves to be the descendents of the Normans (and Anglo-Saxons, respectively). Here’s an 1846 journal article from a J. Quitman Moore in DeBow’s Review arguing the Norman heritage of Dixie.

I can’t find anything on how factual this myth of Norman heritage is, but according to Jayman the Cavaliers believed themselves to be descended from the Normans. But if it is genetic fact it is interesting.

The Normans were Catholic Vikings who had settled Northern France, while the Anglo-Saxons were Germanics who displaced the original Celtic Britons. Interestingly, given the later alliance of the Cavaliers and Scots-Irish in both the English and American civil wars, the Irish and Scots were also invaded and ruled by the Normans who became “more Irish than the Irish themselves” and were eventually integrated. The Norman’s were, being vikings, a rather violent people.

It is possible the roots of modern political differences are genetic in origin, extending past the American civil war, before the Glorious revolution, and back the conflict between the Norse Normans and the Teutonic Anglo-Saxons. Even more speculatively, could this go deeper to a genetic legacy from the split of the Germanic peoples or even the corded ware/battle axe culture era.

Now, I’m no expert in this area and from my understanding, nobody really knows for sure, this is all speculative but the possibility is interesting to think about. Maybe someone like HBD Chick could give this a closer look.

Explaining Neoreaction to a 5-Year-Old

A small tidbit I saw from the Reddit, Explain like I’m Five by Nick Bentham. I rather liked it.

Like you’re a five year old, eh? Hmmm…

This is actually quite easy.

You know how your dad is like the boss of everything, but he still loves you and your mom and everything? And how, basically he’s a good guy and even though he makes mistakes sometimes, you all love him back? And how the rules that you may have as a family are pretty much decided by dad and mom and kids aren’t consulted very much? And how even if you do have a rule, how dad or mom can break them when necessary because they are really looking out for the family’s interests?

Well neoreaction basically says THAT arrangement is (actually ferreal) a government. And all governments are derived from that relationship, and in a very real sense inherit its essence.

Cultural Genocide

Cultural genocide has been in the news in Canada recently due to a report on the Canadian treatment of aboriginals. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

“Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group,” the report reads. “States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are con?scated and destroyed. And, most signi?cantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.

That’s seems a fair and workable explanation of the concept, but today, I’m not planning to talk on the aboriginal cultural genocide.* I’m planning to talk about this:

As you’re probably aware, the Cathedral has been whipping up hatred against the symbol of the South. A bunch of private corporation have been banning the battle flag at the Cathedral’s behest. This is just the latest in anti-Southern activities whipped up by the North.

We all know of the Civil War, where the Yankees, primarily at the behest of the abolitionists of Massachusetts, refused to let the South to either run their own affairs or be independent. After killing almost half a million confederates, Massachusetts conquered America.

Of course, the US Civil War did not spring out of nowhere, but goes much earlier, to the English Civil War, where the roundheads and cavaliers fought over whether power should be held by the king or by the parliament. These groups carried their quarrels and ideologies over to the new continent. The North was settled by roundheads, a group of puritans, proto-anarcho-socialists, levellers, and apocalyptic Christians. The South was settled by royalists, cavaliers, and loyal Scotsmen. The northern puritans continues to wage their ancestral war on the cavaliers to this day.

After the US civil war, the US began reconstruction to ‘destroy the political and social institutions’ of the South and force the federal government’s agenda on it. Carpetbaggers swarmed the South to politically manipulate, seize land, loot the South, and forcibly conquer churches.

This has not ended. The Yankees continue to use their power to import foreign populations into the South. They continue to force their religious values on the South and suprress Southern religious values.  They continue to attack and ban symbols of the South. They enforce schooling where southern children are taught Yankee values. They use their media power to continually denigrate the South and southerners.

The descendents of the Roundheads are waging a very quiet, slow, and low-key cultural genocide against their historical enemies. Keeping it soft and slow prevents the South from realizing and rebelling against it (again). One flag, one religious desecration, one child, one small denigration at a time, the Yankees are gradually destroying Dixie culture to eventually turn them into good little puritans.

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* Maybe I will a little, here’s a quick rundown: Yes, whites committed cultural genocide on aboriginals. No, it wasn’t because they hated aboriginals, but because they wanted to civilize aboriginals (the white man’s burden). Yes, it was wrong for Europeans to destroy traditional aboriginal cultures, excepting in cases where they were wholly evil (ex. the Aztec’s culture of human sacrifice probably needed destroying). No, modern whites don’t hold any guilt for it. Yes, aboriginals have a right to be angry, but what is done can’t be undone and fixing their own situation rather than complaining would be more beneficial to them. Yes, their current situation is, on an individual level, their own fault, but evil institutions such as INAAC need to be destroyed. As for what should be done, the same as with blacks and Jews, give them a fair allotment of land, and let them set up independent aboriginal states.

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This was mostly written before NBS put up his piece on white genocide. I’m not sure how much traction the concept of cultural genocide gets in the US, but up here it’s a pretty big in intellectual/midbrow circles due to aboriginal issues. The WN’s may seem more reasonable and be more influential if they start calling it “white cultural genocide”, although I think “Western cultural suicide” is far more apt.

I think Steves is partially wrong. Whining about white genocide accomplishes nothing, but conservative/moderates whites do need to be informed of the ongoing cultural genocide/suicide and how leftists are purposefully carrying it out.

I also think NBS is wrong on this:

If you indict Cultural Marxists for White Genocide, then you can indict European Americans for the genocide of Native American and Australian peoples for exactly the same reasons. Strong peoples out-compete weak peoples. They always have and always will.

Just because something is does not mean that something is right. Dead European Americans are guilty of the cultural genocide, but those who committed the acts are mostly dead, those currently living are not guilty of the sins of their fathers and in fact have bent over backwards, too far backwards, to atone for them.

Authority

Legitimate authority, as the name suggests, requires both authority and legitimacy. Authority is the ability to carry out your will, particularly through the use of others, while legitimacy is the general acceptance that your should be able to enact your authority. Authority without legitimacy is tyranny and will only hold as long as the threat of violence holds, which admittedly can be a long time.

Legitimate authority flows naturally from healthy hierarchical structures. The ur-example of legitimate authority is fatherhood which flows naturally from healthy family structures and collapses in unhealthy structures. Other forms of natural legitimate authority are generally forms of fatherhood: monarchs are the political fathers of their nations, elders are simply fathers who have unofficially adopted a tribe, while ecclesiastical authorities are spiritual fathers of their flocks. Some domain-specific authorities arise naturally from ability or knowledge and adopt many aspects of fatherhood to their specific domain: warband leaders, gangs, teachers, mentors, etc. These natural authorities flow from basic human social and hierarchical instincts and are the building blocks of civilization.

Healthy authority is generally these forms of natural authority.

There are also unnatural forms of legitimate authority. Modern democracy is the greatest example of this. It is an unnatural system derived from numerous artificial and unnatural social constructs, yet is accepted as legitimate by most of the citizens within the democracies. Democracies also tend to be unhealthy precisely because it is unnatural.

Unnatural authority is not necessarily bad, per se, but because it is unnatural, it has higher bar to clear when it comes to legitimacy and it is more likely to be dysfunctional. Legitimacy flows from God and from the people; it is not the will of the people, but the people ruled by an authority must recognize the legitimacy of an authority. Natural authority by default confers legitimacy: children do not question the right of the father to rule them until these child naturally grows to an age to rule themselves, and even then, children still accept their father’s advice and guidance. The biggest threat to natural authority is the abuse or neglect by the authority. In cases where a natural authority is abusing or neglecting his duties, legitimacy breaks down and the ruled will rebel to be replaced by either anarchy or a new legitimate authority.

Unnatural authority does not automatically confer legitimacy. Legitimacy comes through either earned merit or persuasion. Intellectual leaders and recognized experts generally gain their legitimacy as authorities in their domains through the demonstration of knowledge and skill related to their specific domains. Business leaders and the rich earn their authority through performance in the free market. Democratic leaders gain their legitimacy through persuasion, using the methods propaganda and bribery, hence the omnipresent state and state instruments in any democracy constantly trumping the virtues of democracy and providing bread and circuses. The main problem with unnatural authority is that it is much easier to persuade than it is to earn. A bribe or a piece of propaganda is easier than decades of labour excelling at an area of expertise. So, unnatural authorities will tend to drift towards manipulation over merit to obtain legitimacy.