Scott Alexander’s summary of Reactionary philosophy passes the ideological Turing test:
If you “criticize” society by telling it to keep doing exactly what it’s doing only much much more so, society recognizes you as an ally and rewards you for being a “bold iconoclast” or “having brave and revolutionary new ideas” or whatever. It’s only when you tell them something they actually don’t want to hear that you get in trouble.
Western society has been moving gradually further to the left for the past several hundred years at least. It went from divine right of kings to constitutional monarchy to libertarian democracy to federal democracy to New Deal democracy through the civil rights movement to social democracy to ???. If you catch up to society as it’s pushing leftward and say “Hey guys, I think we should go leftward even faster! Two times faster! No, fifty times faster!”, society will call you a bold revolutionary iconoclast and give you a professorship.
If you start suggesting maybe it should switch directions and move the direction opposite the one the engine is pointed, then you might have a bad time.
Try it. Mention that you think we should undo something that’s been done over the past century or two. Maybe reverse women’s right to vote. Go back to sterilizing the disabled and feeble-minded. If you really need convincing, suggest re-implementing segregation, or how about slavery? See how far freedom of speech gets you.
In America, it will get you fired from your job and ostracized by nearly everyone. Depending on how loudly you do it, people may picket your house, or throw things at you, or commit violence against you which is then excused by the judiciary because obviously they were provoked. Despite the iconic image of the dissident sent to Siberia, this is how the Soviets dealt with most of their iconoclasts too.
The thesis falls short. It does not comprehend the entire zigzag of Western history:
Period 1 (c. 2000 BC-c. 1200 BC): shift from Proto-Indo Europeans (PIE) republican oligarchy on Ukrainian steppes to Near Eastern Asiatic-style despotism (e.g. Hittites, Mycenaean Greeks)
Period 2 (c. 1200 BC – c. 146 BC): Asiatic-style despotism shifts back to PIE republican oligarchy.
Period 3 (c. 146 BC – c. AD 632): PIE-style republican oligarchy shifts back to Asiatic-style despotism.
Period 4 (c. AD 632 – c. AD 1314): Asiatic-style despotism shifts back to PIE-style republican oligarchy.
Period 5 (c. AD 1314 – c. AD 1830): PIE-style republican oligarchy shifts back to Asiatic-style despotism.
Period 6 (c. AD 1830 – present): Asiatic-style despotism shifts back to PIE-style republican oligarchy.
Where “reactionaries” see a drift from supposed antediluvian monarchy to isonomia as something to “react” against, it is more plausible to see isonomists as the true reactionaries. They seek to preserve the PIE inheritance from innovators, however “reactionary”, from reinfecting it with the alien Asiatic tradition of proskynesis.
@ L. C. Rees.
wat.
L. C. Rees, OK, but:
Period 6 (c. AD 1688 – 1933): Asiatic-style despotism shifts back to PIE-style republican oligarchy.
Period 7 (c. AD 1933 – present): PIE-style republican oligarchy shifts back to Asiatic-style despotism.
It wouldn’t be a very conservative philosophy if it purported to explain the entire zigzag of Western history with one simple formula.