Reactionaries and Our Lesser Brethren: The Meme Brigades
There are two kinds of bars; those whose clientele are based around devoted regulars, and those based around a broader appeal or popularity, maybe having a good location or more beers on tap. The former bar will be based on a community of people who have conversations and know each other to some extent. The larger or more widely-appealing bar will have many patrons who pop in occasionally but there will not be expectation that the bar itself is really based on any stable social circle, just a general air of popularity and the ability to provide good food and drink. Both bars have their place, but the former kind of bar is going to be more cozy, the kind of place where people chat with other groups or individuals in the same bar and get to know them. The larger bars are going to have larger, separate tables and the social scene will mostly revolve around friends you already know from outside the bar.
Reactionary circles in the last couple years have evolved from being more like a niche pub to a popular bar located in a city center. This is great in terms of popularizing reactionary ideas, but it also creates a sort of social fragmentation and lack of ideological grounding that wouldn’t exist in smaller circles with higher expectations. In the neoreactionary circles of 2014 or 2015, you could reasonably expect that any random person being involved was probably a voracious reader, with a sense of political perspective built up carefully over years of reading old books. Today, any random person you meet on the alt right is more likely to be a troll whose ideological background is limited to statements of the sort that Trump is a cool guy and that mass immigration is destroying America.
Is there anything wrong with saying that Trump is a cool guy and that mass immigration is destroying America? No, of course not. But it is important to remember that the alt right is not Trump alone; it is rooted in reactionary ideas that derive from initial opposition to the French Revolution. By reaching centuries into the past, reactionaries are exploiting a political vein that is returning dividends from an investment with deeper roots than any contemporary populist electioneering.
The problem with ideological success is that it attracts adherents, and without formal training or high standards these adherents will become less and less connected to the core ideas that underlie why the whole movement was created in the first place. There is a constant pressure, as any new political movement reaches the mainstream, to align itself with popular political will encompassed by millions of people. The issue with this popular political will is that it often contains the seeds that subverted traditional structure in the first place. This popular will is “cultural libertarian,” it adopts the most un-controversial aspects of reactionary-style thought, like nativism, while discarding the rest. While this political current may help get Trump into office, its shortcomings will become rapidly apparent as degenerate and troubled figures like Milo Yiannopoulos become its dominant representatives to the public.
It is appealing to surf the popular political will because it is popular. It is more difficult to change the popular political will and get it to follow you. Compared to the average person, the reactionary thinkers who built up the Neoreaction/Alt Right complex from nothing are immensely influential. The ideas of a handful of people, like Curtis Yarvin and Nydwracu, have reached millions through the process of diffusion and by being associated with a rising right wing movement whose numbers are very good. The millions of people whose association with the alt right is primarily through memes often copy ideas originated by a few “obscure” thinkers without even knowing their names or work. One of these ideas is detailing the evolution of global socialism from university professors of the 50s to the present day. This is not something that /pol/ tier shitposters would think about very deeply on their own, without prodding from an intellectual, directly or indirectly.
Many of the people on the alt right are there not because of any political views, but because they like social media success and trolling. The alt right is successful, and as it continues to spread, its average adherent will have less and less ideological grounding. Right now, this doesn’t really matter because there is a charismatic authority figure — Trump — who unifies the warring tribes. Adherents do not need any ideological education outside of memes and the things that Trump says. The issue with this is that the ideological intensity of Trump support is not eternal, it has a limited life expectancy. The ideological support for a political figure is most intense in election years. When that political figure either actually gets into office or loses, the political intensity around their existence is greatly toned down.
The alt right consists of two castes; people who create the ideas and those who repeat these ideas because they know it will bring them likes on social media. If the person supplying the ideas is powerful and influential, like Trump, there is some kind of stability because that person provides a point of focus for everything else. But if and when the intensity of political fervor around that individual moderates, extreme political differences among the people who were temporarily brought together by his candidacy will be highlighted.
Right now, the alt right is coherent because it has concrete goals: get Trump into office and build the Wall. Beyond that, it is a squabbling mass of people with an eclectic mish-mash of libertarian and far right beliefs. The most popular figures in the “alt right” are not “alt right” at all, they are just political journalists, rabble-rousers, and Trump supporters: Mike Cernovich, Milo Yiannapoulos, and so on. They are more motivated by the fun and excitement of ideological warfare than committing to any genuinely controversial or reactionary political positions. The problem is that the civilizational system that most “alt right” figures wish to defend is basically just America in the 1980s; center-right libertarianism. This is not the “reactionary” worldview that birthed the alt right, it is just Reaganism with a splash of Pat Buchanan. Remember that until he started his campaign, Trump was to the left even of simple Buchananism. Only through reading Ann Coulter’s book did he become more nationalist and nativist. If Trump never became nativist, what would the alt right be today? It would be a lot smaller. This over-dependence on Trump draws the alt right towards cultural libertarianism and casual American patriotism rather than the more primal rejection of the entire system on which the proposition nation of America is based.
That is why it is important to point out that if it weren’t for a small cadre of Reactionaries and Neoreactionaries, the alt right in its current form would not exist. As the popularity of Trump increases, it becomes evident that he appeals to wide groups of people: not just white Americans or the far right, but people of all ethnicities and segments of society (except blacks) including cultural libertarians who are vaguely sympathetic to social conservatism but ultimately reject it on a very visceral level.
After November, there will be a civil war in the alt right. The fun of memeing will abate somewhat in the aftermath of the election. It will no longer be possible to gain a popular account on Twitter just by posting Trump memes. Without an active election underway, the flotsam and jetsam of the alt right will be forced to examine what it really believes. It won’t be able to lean on Trump as much anymore. I predict that the alt right will fragment into people who are just pro-Trump and have no reactionary beliefs versus those who do. Because the alt right is dependent upon the latter for its ideology, those who continue to go with the reactionary program (not general Trumpism) will be the ones to succeed and continue gaining traction. It is clear that the increasing popularity of the alt right is not due to Trumpism alone, but ideas considerably to the right of Trump, inspired not just by the 1930s but also by the opposition to the French Revolution in the 1790s. It is easy to lose sight of that in all the excitement of this Presidential election.
