Monday 17 February 2014

What's "neo" about "neoreactionaries"?

So there's this whole discussion that's been running around ALL the internets these past few months about the shocking propositions of people calling themselves "neoreactionaries" or "the" "Dark" "Enlightenment." To put a long story short, it's just about a bunch of attention-seekers (no criticism implied there, honest) running around telling the world that women really should get-back-in-the-kitchen-and-make-me-a-sandwich and-a-tribe-of-minions-while-you're-at-it and that we really should just let plutocrats run our societies because then we won't have to pay for other people's firefighters and that black people really do have a case of the stupids present time-orientation passed down by their stupid presently time-oriented ancestors. There's a refutation FAQ, and there's some other choice words over here.

But be that as it may, I fail to see what is "neo" about this "neoreaction". A motley collection of racists, misogynists, and wealth-worshippers suddenly discovering that woo-woo everything is connected woo-woo? It's not like they don't repeat that, oh, about seven times a generation. I mean, since when has a racist movement of any note not also been deeply misogynist? And wasn't Jim Crow deeply enmeshed in a quasi-feudal US-Southern social architecture? Pretty much all of zero of the arguments weren't being parroted on the intertoobs themselves back in the 90s!

Voldemort's got a viewpoint. OK, duly noted, time to move on.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

What a great blog!

Purple library guy said...

Huh. Never heard of these dorks before. I'm hoping if I don't bother following that link, I won't hear of them again.

Anonymous said...

I'm beginning to enjoy all of these intellectually challenged people. It makes me happier while I watch the climate catastrophe unfold. Just knowing that when the doors on the underground cities close, these people are not going to be inside with the rich and powerful.

Námo Mandos said...

Alas, you have likely already encountered them. They're the people who deposit a crude racial slur on a comment thread and then proceed with some high-falluting pseudo-scientific bafflegab about executive function, and then finish with a warning that the "gimmiedats" living off "da EBT" are destroying society because it allows their women to be "slutty".

It's basically Charles Murray coalescing Voltron-style with Murray Rothbard to form Charlesrothbard.

Námo Mandos said...

Anonymous: Unfortunately, some of them ARE the rich and powerful, like Peter Thiel. And they'll be sitting in their underground city shaking their heads and clucking at the moocher "gimmiedats" dying outside.

Niles said...

Climate change denial is just the latest in a long chain of people sitting atop the social pile checking to see how much control they have of the greater population via the "you gonna believe me or your lying eyes" test, especially if they believe the Golden Rule is defined as "we have the gold, we make the rules, because gold is proof the almighty Diety loves us better."

If people in social power can't figure out history is not on their side when it comes to the evidence of the real world around them, and their only response is to stick fingers in their ears while the guards on the walls bloody the ground outside to christen the return of Utopian feudalism, well, sow that wind.

The storm is on its way. The planet will survive and change and humans will prove if they're dumber than a hamster.

lagatta à montréal said...

Either their wimmen are "slutty" or they are hiding their charms under a damned niqab or summin.

Now the serious question, what happened to that poor cat? Did he have skin cancer and have to have his ears and nose-tip removed?

Námo Mandos said...

It may well be Photoshop to make him look like Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies. I suspect you're not familiar with Voldemort. Voldemort is an evil wizard, the chief villain of the Harry Potter series, who believes that the world of magic needs to come out of the shadows, purify itself of "muggle" influence, and then rule directly over the world of "muggles" (non-magical people). To do this, he has spent decades assembling a shadow goverment of the magical world.

I haven't read the books but I gather they are not subtle in pointing out Voldemort's ideology of virtue via force. "Neoreactionaries" self-refer to their viewpoint as the "Voldemort Viewpoint", as it mentions in some of the articles.

Námo Mandos said...

If you ARE a Harry Potter fan (which would go against my understanding of your literary tastes from previous discussion), then ignore all of that. :)

I just got the pic off of a lolcat web site after searching for "Voldemort lolcat".

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