Stay Unreconstructed!

A mission statement of sorts

Clarence John Laughlin’s “Elegy for Moss Land,” colorised by author

A brief update, seeing as it’s been awhile since the last post, and given that the article on Paul Gottfried’s relationship with Hegel is still in the oven. With a deluge of new subscribers after I broke my own “no shilling” rule, I figured now was the time to outline some overarching projects for this blog.

I don’t think of myself as an original thinker so much as a wide-reader with the free time to synthesise disparate strands of right-wing thought. Given the creatively bankrupt and intellectually impoverished state of movement conservatism across the west, coherent men of letters are needed to tackle progressivism on that metapolitical level that flows down into everything else.

What does it mean to be “Unreconstructed” anyway?

“Oh I'm a good old rebel,
Now that's just what I am.
For this "fair land of freedom"
I do not care a damn.
I'm glad I fought against it,
I only wish we'd won,
And I don't want no pardon
For anything I done.

…

I can't take up my musket
And fight 'em now no more,
But I ain't going to love 'em,
Now that is certain sure,
And I don't want no pardon
For what I was and am.
I won't be reconstructed,
And I don't care a damn.”

I came up with the title for this substack on a lark, on account of my dixiephile sentiments. But as I started to examine both the original Reconstruction era and its 1960s sequel, it became clear that the political happenings of our time amount to a third Reconstruction, particularly in the American case.¹

The still largely unexamined birth of the Civil Rights regime and the cultural sentiments it legally incentivised, as well as how those changes are exported via the American Empire, are key to understanding the cultural and political assault on shrinking western majorities that characterises our post-2016 political zeitgeist.

To be unreconstructed is to be a rebel from the right, a proud reactionary unwilling to accept those deleterious changes introduced in the dead of night.

Going forward, a focus of this blog will be developing a conceptual vocabulary to articulate the reality that right-wing men of the west live under occupation, like the subjugated Southerners of the postbellum period.

Another advantage of the Reconstruction frame is that it centres the role of race in political conflicts. The key dilemma of the 21st century, like it or not, will be managing political interactions between different ethno-sectarian groups in an interconnected world. Progressive factions have already issued challenges to old mores based around the doctrine of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and one must return the serve, preventing the dispossession of those majorities responsible for creating much of the value in modernity.

The racialist perspective, in my view, remains more sensible than the neo-Marxist class analysis proffered by socially acceptable populist voices. I have already addressed this subject elsewhere.

When a distant and unaccountable elite begins looting a nation and violating its laws under the guise of a racially egalitarian cause, the correct analytical approach is to be unreconstructed, and to reject their polemical bromides!

Reaction and History:

On a conceptual level, much of my output is blatantly characterised by an enduring sympathy for reactionaries, and an attempt to identify the social forces they were reacting against. The superficiality of progressive narratives leaves an appreciation for older forms of social order.

With that said, I would not describe myself as a conservative in disposition. The enemies of civilisation have largely ensconced themselves into every institution, and any defence of those bodies, on their terms, is completely self-defeating.

I am a dyed in the wool historicist, observing that institutions and social forms are time-bound. Though both conservative and reactionary approaches leave much for the modernist right to learn from, analysis must be tempered by Spenglerian pessimism, Hegelian historicism and Schmitt’s reminder that historical truths are true only once.

I find such an approach additionally refreshing in the face of contemporary historians are skeptical of “historicisation” of values, preferring partisan morality plays to genuine understanding.

This approach allows one to defend old orders from presentist attacks, while diagnosing more proximate causes for modern ills. The decline of the west is not in fact the fault of medieval nominalism — the semi-legal institutional changes of the 1960s are more convincing culprits.

With the historical contextualisation of concepts and events in the style of a Paul Gottfried or a Panagiotis Kondylis, a strategic empathy can be developed.

The study of history is, in many cases, more useful than familiarity with abstract and deterministic philosophies. Experience is, to coin a phrase from Mel Bradford, a better guide than reason. The experience of the overly-philosophical Alt-Right should confirm this observation, as they failed to convince the masses of their message.

More than a Feeling:

The final guiding star of this effort has been the inspiration of Panagiotis Kondylis’s “Conservatism: Historical Content and Decline.”

Kondylis may have been a Marxist, but as wise commentators have opined, “the left can be right on accident, while the entire centre-right worldview is built on lies.”

In describing the classical conservatism of Europe, Kondylis stressed its nature as an ends-focused ideological stance, rather than a vague disposition characterised by a constant capitulation to progressives.

A primary goal for modern reactionaries should be a return to this attitude, transforming the idea of reaction from a losing disposition to a coherent programme to be implemented. A program for redemption, reaction and the restoration of ancient forms in a way syncretic with the irrevocable developments of the modern world(where the historicism comes in).

Fin:

In the future, I would like to adopt this idealist, historicist lens to analyse topics ranging from the Dasein of Donald Trump to the consequences of the Civil Rights regime.

Despite these gloomy topics, we must remain optimistic, for good ideas seldom stay submerged. Gramsci’s aphorism calling for a “Pessimism of the intellect, {and an} optimism of the will” is a creed to live by.

Stay tuned, and above all, stay unreconstructed!

1. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-moral-change-1ad2776df7c/