How Reactionary Thought Still Survives
...And Why You Should Still Be A Progressive
Now that Trump has no Twitter to call for Muslim bans, reactionary thought has now been decisively defeated and destroyed forevermore by the forces of social justice...or has it? Let's look at how the Reactionary movement still survives despite the seemingly overwhelming pressure against it, and what this says about its long-term chances of survival.
Oh wait — “a transwoman just competed in the olympics in the women’s section, I guess reactionary-meat’s back on the menu fellxs! Fry up those torches because it’s time to unite the right!”
Before you (“you,” meaning you the hypothetical crypto-reactionary from my scare quotes) start wearing that black and yellow Fred Perry Proud Boy shirt because suddenly you really, really care about women’s sports fairness — read this article.
What Is Reactionary Thought?
As part of its zeitgeist, reaction is practically synonymous with technology. From reactionaries to futurists, techno-optimism is central to the reactionary political discourse. It is not just techno-fetishism that runs reaction however, it is technology itself. Sections of reactionaries are rightly techno-optimists, in that the virtualization of the social allows reaction to unionize in thin air. With no reactionary head to bonk, progressives are stuck writing think pieces — like this one!
Reaction loves technology because technology allows it to escape capture by centralized forces. If you bring enough people together in today's world to accomplish any sort of administrative or corporate-capitalist task, you can't have one group shouting at another group for incompetence without using polite HR speak — let alone be openly upset for something like gender, race, or sexuality. But none-the-less, the appetite for reaction stays alive.
#NoThankYou is trending on twitter after the gold medalist women's weight lifter did not want to comment on the Olympic debut of the transgender weightlifter. Clicking around I found a popular shared drawing of what is a skinny version of the gold medalist by "The Famous Artist Birdy Rose," who states on her website:
"To those of you who aren’t aware. I have been on the receiving end of an entire harassment campaign against me for quite a while now."
This is followed by a group of women supporters expressing their identification with an olympic gold medalist along with various degrees of anti-trans rhetoric starting from trans people shouldn't be in sports, culminating with men in dresses commit sexual assault and make women unsafe.
Reaction, in short, tries to mark what is noted by society as progress as in fact, the degeneration of society. Despite its virtual ubiquity however, you won't hear this view echoed by any corporation, except maybe a manic/depressive CEO once-in-a-while. Typically the issue is totally ignored if not entirely suppressed. So how does reactionary thought still survive in a world that seems directly opposed to it, if only on simple, capitalistic grounds? There are two answers: one technological and one cultural.
Decentralization of Reaction
There are many ways that reaction can be decentralized and disseminated to a larger audience than traditional publishers, old or new. As a result of various developments in technology, there are different ways that reaction could be accessed through different virtual platforms which interconnect with one another via both content, and agents (writers, twitterers, facebook groups, youtubers, etcetera) of reaction. There is no longer any need for books to be printed in physical form when they can instead be distributed digitally. These mediums are not only very useful for reactionaries because they allow them to spread their message more easily and reach out to people who may not otherwise see their work, but also because they allow for a level of anonymity, or at least the safety of distance/anti-physicality.
Backed by online radicalization, the reactionary tendrils emerge from the virtual cloud and strike out at the real world. As progress seems to stand for lazier and more abstract goals which culminate putting this or that capitalist in charge of various chunks of corporate and state funding, reaction becomes pressurized, firing out from unexpected points, random conglomerations come together and whisper to the world after this or that event, "you don't really want trans women in sports, do you?"
Complexity and case-by-case responses are discarded in favor of the stereotype bursting quickly to remind us of what is "real," the answer to which seems to never care much for Nuance (tm).
Reaction Is Usually Not Extreme
It’s hard to pinpoint when reactionary thought became synonymous with extremism, but when we describe someone as extreme we’re generally criticizing their intellectual position. Calling reaction "extremism" misses the everydayness of reaction. Extremist politics are usually associated with support for violent action, war or death squads – something which I'm pretty sure JK Rowling isn't in favor of, although I haven't checker her twitter lately.
Instead, reactionaries seek order and unity by placing value on a real or imagined collective cultural heritage, one which by definition, wants to stop the movement of a second group from Point A to Point B.
This isn’t extreme. It happens every time you don't get a job. It happens every time a parent tells a child "no, you can't have that cookie until you eat your dinner."
Because it is not extreme, reaction can be cloaked in a million different disguises, because it has a very clear function, which is to call current progressive thought, degeneration. Whether it is a weightlifter or an immigrant or that new woman in the work place, if you are stopping someone from going from point A to point B in the name of progress because it is actually, in fact, degeneration, you might just be participating in the force of reaction!
Progress Is Hard: The Work of the Progressive
The history of Progressive thought is an interesting one, filled with decades of dedication, triumphs and failures. Progressivism has always made enemies; often as many within its own ranks as without. Are all the progressives actually crypto-reactionaries unless they agree with every tenet of every new idea which purports itself to be progressive? Of course not.
If you have been working on progressive issues and have not been accused of drinking from the poisoned chalice of reaction at least once or twice, you probably have not been exercising much political critique.
Is it not a simple notion that every idea which deems itself progress is not necessarily good, right, smart, or even within the realm of worldly possibility? Thus, you may find yourself getting the ire of a fellow progressive, being accused of some shade of reaction. The challenge is to maintain your values, and not give up the cause of progress entirely, socialist or otherwise, just because you're sick of hashing things out with activists.
The work of progress is hard, and it involves debate. Now that you know this however, maybe it will be a bit easier to call yourself a socialist or progressive without worrying that you don't agree with every last aspect of every radical idea.
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AI-assisted writing by Eliot Rosenstock