What Does it Mean to be "Reactionary"?

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.

Aug 17, 2024

“*Der Rächer*” (“The Avenger”) by Arno Breker (1940).

I think it’s an understandable starting point if I were to point out how many words in the English language have been diluted so much they’ve essentially lost all meaning. These include innocuous examples such as “literally” or “hero,” to more serious terms such as “fascist.” While we can attribute this to an organic development in the nature of the modern English language or to the ruination of minds consequently incapable of preserving or utilizing rhetorical faculties (more likely) the fact remains that some words have just been irreparably harmed. One word that I’ve been thinking about recently is at risk of undergoing similar treatment, and is akin to “fascist” (or “racist”) in its pejorative and politicized usage, and that is “reactionary.” In the tiring era of “cancel culture” and far-right fearmongering we live in this word has gained some traction, with various political figures and movements nominally on the Right being labeled “reactionary” (Trump is the most obvious example here) as well as the slightest societal or legislative pushback to the onslaught of modernity (such as the “reactionary” push to relieve minors of crossdressing lunatics).

The reason I am giving attention to this is because of what I’ve observed about the people who are labeled as such, whether volitionally or by a third party, is that they’re quite underwhelming. For all the naysaying I’ve alluded to, do I see any semblance of organization or envisioning at work within their ranks to warrant the fears that have been stoked? Sorry, but I strongly believe the last thing that will bring the final blow to the modern liberal-democratic world order is the agitprop of Curtis Yarvin or Nicholas Fuentes. Even so, what do these figures have to offer? Morose whining about the state of things, or endless “trolling of the libs” on Twitter?

A fact about “the state of things” I’ve alluded to on this blog before is the blight of civilizational ennui affecting many souls. Who has the energy or desire to keep up with any of this? I think elections, especially since 2016, are the most explicit and recognizable manifestation of this sentiment: no one cares, everyone hates it, we’ve all acquiesced to the “lesser of two evils” notion, it’s pretty much mainstream to say the politicians don’t care about us (or, in some circles, that our guys are the only ones that do still), etc. etc. The only thing fueling turnout at this point is a begrudging acceptance that turning out to the polls is just what we do, that maybe there is some viability left to this system that continuing to partake of it will incite, and that certain influential people may scorn us for not doing so. However, this mentality is akin to speeding down a highway at night heavy-lidded, letting your eyes fall shut for a few moments because you know the road is straight and empty so you’ll be fine, but when you open them you realize those imperceptible movements build up quickly and you’re veering toward the guardrails. While we might be living life half-asleep and moving along the highway just fine, there are imperceptible shifts happening, peripheral perhaps, but not for long, we will wake up to see that “going along with it” wasn’t the best move after all.

So, this civilizational exhaustion manifests among the “reactionaries” and other cadres of moderns, usually young men, in an aggressive contrarianism, but nothing more. Even the “chauvinists” are too sapped to be anything like a hero. I think this has been reasonably pointed out by Jordan Peterson, for all his faults, in his advocacy for young men against the anti-masculine overtures of modernity, which has emphasized such basic rules as “clean your bedroom” and “have good posture.”1 If men nowadays need to be told this, if they don’t even have these basic points figured out, who are they to “ride the tiger”? I think this contributes to a lot of what’s wrong, and embarrassing, about the much-feared “reactionaries,” which is that they’re just as plagued by modernity as everyone else, they’ve just internalized the plague differently. Yarvin is a dopey atheist who doesn’t (and can’t) have any meaningful relation to the pre-Enlightenment world he speaks on (because his secularism is post-Enlightenment), Fuentes is a juvenile delinquent who “can’t speak to women” and dresses that up as an ideological commitment to celibacy (an embarrassment to his touted Catholicism), and we also have the rise of the post-Christian “Right” (ranging from Geert Wilders to neopagan illiberals) that demonstrates little principle and conscientiousness and just the same old contrarianism.

Much of this reflects what Rachel Ferguson, a liberal writer over at The Dispatch, wrote back in June concerning this phenomenon of angsty contrarianism (referencing the work of Nils Karlson), “that populists”

do not hold any particular set of philosophical commitments, but rather cobble together a panicked, reactionary conglomeration of authoritarian-leaning responses to the sometimes frightening pace of cultural change. Surprise: This doesn’t work well…but it does fulfill the human longing to “do something!” when we feel threatened.

Modern reactionary rhetoric, then, doesn’t even deserve to be called something as high-minded as rhetoric, and doesn’t really evince anything more than rudimentary agonistic behavior. Herein lies the intrinsic issue with contemporary “reactionary” sentimentality, and where we can begin to approach the issue more medicinally.

What does it mean to be a reactionary? The reactionaries don’t even know, because if they did they’d actually be getting somewhere. The generic perception of a reactionary is an ideological Luddite, wanting to smash mass society and its political machinery, and so there is a sense of antiquarianism in their “rhetoric.” I’ve also alluded on this blog before to the fact that those “antiquated” curiosities of civilization were actually quite excellent, promoting a “forward to the past” mentality.2 Accordingly, if reactionaries genuinely cared for the act of “bettering” or truly regarded what is “antiquated” as central to that act, we’d expect them to bear some fruits, right? Well, as I’ve said, they haven’t. Accordingly, they don’t know what it means to be reactionaries.

Whenever it comes to trying to understand a word that might be unfamiliar or misused, my go-to method is two-part: first, I break the word down into any constituent parts,3 and, second, I determine what these parts literally mean if “expanded.” We will operate with “reactionary” to demonstrate this. Now, this word clearly comes from the noun “reaction.” What does that word mean? Well, “reaction” is itself composed of the Latin prefix “re-” and the noun “action.” The latter means “something done” and the former can mean either “again” or “in turn.” As I see it, the majority understanding of “reactionary” hinges on the latter signification of “re-,” and so we get the common understanding of “reaction” and a “reactionary” is simply someone who acts in turn to a stimulus.

To be a “reactionary” then is nothing more than, as Ferguson put it, to “fulfill the human longing to ‘do something!’ when we feel threatened.” Like an exothermic reaction, wherein the input of heat from an external source leads to a chemical substance acting in turn, the “reactionary” is a completely passive creature who only does something when faced with a “heat source” (modernism). This is why angsty contrarianism is often all this manifests as, because to be contrarian is to not posit anything substantive but merely be ready to sternly voice your opposition (most often a vacuous whataboutism) and nothing more to everything. What does this build? Nothing. What does this restore? Nothing.

I propose the more appropriate understanding of “reactionary,” an understanding I believe is strongly implicit in the futile contrarianism as well as the successes of the “old reactionaries” (contra the “NRx”) derives from the other signification of the prefix, “Again.” The reactionary re-acts something, he does an act again. “Reenactment” is more so what we’re looking for, and it allows us to actually posit something constructive. You can’t build a civilization on tit-for-tat whataboutism, but you can build one on that which has actually built up civilization. In other words, what should reactionaries be re-acting? The very thing they implicitly idolize: the heights of traditional Greco-Christian civilization, the very thing undermined by the uproarious emergence of Enlightenment and modernity. We’re not just pooh-poohing mainstream media, senile demagogues, onanistic “art” exhibits, or any of the other spectacles of modernity, but we’re actively pointing people to something better, something stronger, such as the very epochs of mankind that laid the foundation for a prosperous society that would later take everything for grant it and seek to tear itself down in an infantile pursuit of hedonism.

This makes my “forward to the past” rhetoric more well-rounded, making sense of it as not just a cutesy antiquarianism but a serious conviction, that, as the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler put it, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” The “Old World” was aflame with the glory of humanity at its peak, with the curated genius of the Greeks refined by the eternal wisdom of the Christians, combining to produce unparalleled accomplishment.4 Why this is true and venerable is clear: if Christianity is the will of God on Earth, if it is, to put it bluntly, the greatest thing in the world, then a civilization defined by the bottom-up, thorough, incontrovertible expression of Christian truths throughout the fabric of said civilization, in all its institutions and guilds and villages and what not, would most certainly be the greatest civilization in the world. Why would this not be something we’d ever seek to draw from the gushing springs of? All this has made me better appreciate a concept I derived from reading Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind years ago,5 based on an analogy from Burke: traditional conservatism is akin to cattle grazing under shadowy oaks, the cattle will remain where they are and acclimate to the pasture, but if the environment is altered and no longer suitable for grazing the cattle will indeed pick themselves up and move, adjusting to a better pasture, not however to become chickens or to graze on leaves, but rather to remain cows and keep grazing grass. In other words, true conservative doctrine is not against change (especially since “change” is a neutral concept) and is indeed fine with improvement, but the improvement must be warranted, it must be purposeful, and it must ultimately seek out the status quo rather than a new state of affairs. Per Mahler’s quote, we don’t just watch the fire burn for hours and then frown when it smolders, but we are always stoking it and keeping it alive.

Accordingly, reactionaries have two focuses: first, they are sons of antiquity seeking to reignite its blaze in modernity, unraveling the rivalrous tumors of “progress” in the little foxholes of their lives; second, they have realized a strong cold wind has blown in and threatens to blow out the flame, or that the river has risen and flooded the pasture, requiring changes to be made to be able to return to grazing. I think of the quote by the Colombian reactionary writer Nicolás Gómez Dávila, “The reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a canceled past, but rather a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills.” Will we ever recreate the School of Athens? Will we ever have another Nicolas de Cusa? Will Rembrandt’s The Night Watch ever be captured again? No. But what does this mean other than we may have the opportunity for new accomplishments for new times? A true new reactionism will never resemble the 12th century, but what it can do is inculcate the 12th century in the 21st. And it can do this by re-acting these high-minded ideals, which, to their credit, some reactionaries have tried to do: rediscovering the practice of classical education, emphasizing rhetoric, resuscitating chivalry, engaging in a dignified pooh-poohing of modernity, embracing matrimony, etc.

The two men I think of as pioneers of true reactionary thought were J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.6 These men were thoroughgoing medievalists, both professionally dedicated to that civilizational epoch as well as personally and culturally. Lewis was an old dinosaur by admission, and Tolkien was a Hobbit, enjoying his simple living and antiquated charms. Yet, did they at all consider the medieval world at all appropriable at their point in time? Certainly not, they knew that was a bygone era, but not the spirit. Joseph Loconte erroneously remarks in his study of either man that they never “sought a return to the political or social ideals of Christendom” which is frankly absurd if you know anything about Lewis or Tolkien, which is that at the very core of their work laid the sentiment that all that was wrong and bleak about the world was that Christian ideals had been lost!7 A quote Loconte shares two pages prior provides a more accurate sentiment and utterly contravenes his own take: these men “did not simply preserve the traditions that the war threatened, but reinvigorated them for [their] own era.”8 Lewis wrote his works quite conscientious of this fact and in continuous scorning dialogue with it,9 and Tolkien grew up seeing the great factories of industry grind his beloved countryside, and even lived to see modernity creep into his beloved faith.10 Again, these men, true reactionaries, saw what had been lost, and offered directions to a new pasture, a change.

Being a reactionary requires grit, it requires dedication, it requires creativity. One should be able to withstand modernity, making for themselves a foxhole, and have the capacity to resurrect the ideals of antiquity within their own waking lives. How shall we be chivalrous? How shall we be rhetors? How shall we be dignified? We must rediscovery glory, find each other and work together to build shelters of this glory and curate it, teach it to our children and have them pass it on further. It starts small, but grows larger as foxholes turn into trenches, trenches into encampments, encampments into strongholds, and strongholds into liberated territory. This is akin to

Rod Dreher

’s “Benedict Option,” an admirable stratagem and by happenstance grounded in the medieval spirit. We don’t seek to fight the titanic forces tearing through society, but rather we refuse to give them total dominion and instead create pockets where truth and beauty and goodness can flourish. As he puts it,

Could it be that the best way to fight the flood is to…stop fighting the flood? That is, to quit piling up sandbags and to build an ark in which to shelter until the water recedes and we can put our feet on dry land again? Rather than wasting energy and resources fighting unwinnable political battles, we should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the occupation.11

Yes, the answer is yes. Here we see true reactionism, both theory and strategy. It is the devotion to the truest civilization, especially when civilization is understood as Richard Weaver once did, as an ascetic and aesthetic commitment to the proliferation of human goodness, something with discipline and tact, rather than abstract technocratic “growth.”12 In strategy, it is withdrawing from the Ninevehs and Gomorrahs, shoring up piety13 and virtue in communities dedicated to that art of civilization as well. This is what it means to be a reactionary.

The Ruminatrix

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