Tuesday, May 02, 2017

"We Are Living in an Era of Populism and Demagoguery"

"Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It's far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party—from Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution to today's Age of Trump—is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power."

Andrew Sullivan in New York writes about "the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots."

And Park MacDougald and Jason Willick profile reactionary Steve Sailer.

(These articles form a part of a larger package on "the new far right.")

Michael Hann at The Guardian discusses the soundtrack.

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