Abstract
The key to understanding the Alt-Right is understanding the theories that comprise it, and no theory is more significant than the NeoReactionary movement. The use of affect theory, postmodern critiques of modernity, and a fixation on critiquing regimes of truth are fundamental to NeoReaction (NRx) and what separates it from other Far-Right theory. The project of NRx is to usher in a dark enlightenment with a dogmatic anti-humanities and anti-liberal ideology. An investigation of NRx requires a cross-disciplinary understanding of politics that draws less upon social scientific empirical facts and more upon a historical, aesthetic, and philosophical approach. The NeoReactionaries argue for a reversal of the liberal enlightenment project, stressing that the most significant political freedom is the freedom to opt out of a system. The movement opposes the “Cathedral”, the superstructure of cultural capital within universities, the media, and bureaucracy, which it views as not only hegemonic and inefficient, but also the primary reason for the decline of Western civilization, as it has embraced liberal humanism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Random House, 1963).
- 2.
Matthew N. Lyons, Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire, Kindle (Oakland: PM Press, 2018).
- 3.
George Hawley, Making Sense of theAlt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trumpand the Alt-Right (New York: Zero Books, 2017); Lyons, Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire.
- 4.
Matt Lees, “What Gamergate Should Have Taught Us about the ‘Alt-Right,’” The Guardian, December 1, 2016; Noreen Malone, “Zoe and the Trolls,” New York Magazine (New York, July 2017).
- 5.
Heidi Beirich, “White Identity Worldwide,” no. Winter (2014).
- 6.
Nick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment,” The Dark Enlightenment, 2013, http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/; Peter Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk (Danbury, CT: Eruditorum Press, 2016).
- 7.
Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of Post-Catastrophic Age (Arktos, 2010); Jared Taylor, White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century, ebook (New Century Foundation, 2011).
- 8.
Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk.
- 9.
Nick Land, “The Alt-Right Is Dead,” Outside In, 2016, http://www.xenosystems.net/the-alt-right-is-dead/; Michael Anissimov, “Why the Replacement of Neoreaction with the Alt Right Was a Good Thing,” Medium, June 2016; Brett Stevens, “Why the Alternative Right Will Absorb NeoReaction,” Amerika, 2016, http://www.amerika.org/politics/why-the-alternative-right-will-absorb-neoreaction/
- 10.
Emma Cott and Andrew Michael Ellis, How anAlt-RightLeader Lied to Climb the Ranks (USA: New York Times, 2018).
- 11.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Stevens, “Why the Alternative Right Will Absorb NeoReaction.”
- 14.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 2: The American Rebellion,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_15/
- 15.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 10: The Mandate of Heaven,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/10/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/
- 16.
Nick Statt, “Reddit Bans Two Prominent Alt-Right Subreddits,” The Verge, February 1, 2017.
- 17.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 18.
Land, “The Alt-Right Is Dead.”
- 19.
Nick Land, “A Quick-And-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism,” Jacobite, May 25, 2017.
- 20.
Curtis Yarvin, “Why I Am Not a White Nationalist,” Unqualified Reservations, 2007, https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ca/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist.html; Michael Anissimov, “Why There Are No White Nationalists,” Medium, June 2016, https://medium.com/@Burzenland/why-there-are-no-white-nationalists-20e37a3e30c7
- 21.
Joseph Bernstein, “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream,” Buzzfeed News, October 5, 2017; Sarah Posner, “How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists,” Mother Jones, August 2016; Andrew Jakubowicz, “Alt_Right White Lite: Trolling, Hate Speech and Cyber Racism on Social Media.,” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 3 (2017): 41–60, https://doi.org/I:https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v9i3.5655
- 22.
Andy Beckett, “Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the Future We Live In,” The Guardian, May 11, 2017; Robin Mackay and Armen. Avanessian, #Accelerate#, 2014.
- 23.
Anissimov, “Why There Are No White Nationalists”; Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream (California: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).
- 24.
Land, “A Quick-And-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism.”
- 25.
Michael Anissimov, “How to Exit,” Medium, June 2016.
- 26.
“An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives: Chapter 7: The Ugly Truth About Government,” Unqualified Reservations, 2008, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/05/ol7-ugly-truth-about-government/
- 27.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 28.
“The Dark Enlightenment.”
- 29.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 2: The American Rebellion.”
- 30.
Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk.
- 31.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 32.
Andrew Culp, Dark Deleuze (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016).
- 33.
Land, “The Dark Enlightenment.”
- 34.
Land, “The Alt-Right Is Dead.”
- 35.
Luke Winkie, “The ‘Classical Liberal’ Pivot,” The Baffler (New York, August 2018).
- 36.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 37.
Jane Meyer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016).
- 38.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 39.
Paul Feyerabend, “How to Defend Society Against Science,” Radical Philosophy, 1975, 3–8; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, SubStance, vol. 20, 1995, https://doi.org/10.2307/3684887
- 40.
Curtis Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 3: AGW, KFM, And HNU,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22/
- 41.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 11: The New Structure,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/11/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/
- 42.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 3: AGW, KFM, And HNU.”
- 43.
Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk.
- 44.
Land, “The Dark Enlightenment.”
- 45.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 46.
Land, “The Dark Enlightenment.”
- 47.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 10: The Mandate of Heaven.”
- 48.
“Inverted Totalitarianism,” The Nation (New York, May 2003).
- 49.
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).
- 50.
Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America (Arlington, Virginia: Washington Summit Publishers, 2016).
- 51.
Urbit, “Urbit,” 2018, https://urbit.org/posts/company/
- 52.
“Inverted Totalitarianism.”
- 53.
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Verso, 2008).
- 54.
“An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives: Chapter 7: The Ugly Truth About Government.”
- 55.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 1: The Red Pill.”
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.
- 58.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 3: AGW, KFM, And HNU.”
- 59.
“A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 10: The Mandate of Heaven.”
- 60.
Clark, “Nock, Hoon, Etc. for Non-Vulcons (Why Urbit Matters),” Popehat, 2013, https://www.popehat.com/2013/12/06/nock-hoon-etc-for-non-vulcans-why-urbit-matters/
- 61.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 11: The New Structure.”
- 62.
Land, “The Dark Enlightenment.”
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 11: The New Structure.”
- 67.
Ibid.
- 68.
Maya Oppenheim, “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban Bans Gender Studies Programmes,” Independent, October 24, 2018; Chris Selley, “It’s Not Free Speech When the Government Compels It,” National Post, August 31, 2018.
- 69.
Curtis Yarvin, “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 8: Olde Towne Easte,” Unqualified Reservations, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/04/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_15/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jones, A. (2019). From NeoReactionary Theory to the Alt-Right. In: Battista, C., Sande, M. (eds) Critical Theory and the Humanities in the Age of the Alt-Right. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18753-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18753-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18752-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18753-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)