What are the Reaction’s chances of success? An answer given by several commenters in
Foseti’s big thread
is: none. The Cathedral is too strong.
“not only does the Cathedral monopolise status (whilst also being
kind of grey and awful in most people’s eyes, I’d say), but things
that identify as ‘right’, and overtly countenance inequality,
authority, tradition etc. have been consistently losing for hundreds
of years. Sensible people steer clear of loser ideologies.” — James G
“there is absolutely no way any contrarian ideas can ever be ‘made
cool’ in today’s world. The Cathedral has an absolute iron monopoly
on manufacturing cool, and trying to counter its propaganda machinery
with your own attempts at ‘cool’ is like challenging all the demons
of Hell hoping that you’ll scare them away by saying ‘boo’ loudly.” —
Vladimir
“The ‘serious people’ are conditioned to run from anything that even
smacks of reactionary thought. The ‘serious people’ would like
nothing better than to see our ideas outlawed. There’s precious
little status to be found here…” — survivingbabel
I think that assessment underestimates both the intensity of actual
practical ineffectiveness of the establishment, and how recent a
phenomenon that lack of effectiveness is. We hold that the underlying
ideological faults in the establishment go back centuries, and the
truth of that should not blind us to the fact that up until a few
decades ago, it was nevertheless practically very effective.
During the time that it was, despite its philosophical flaws, able to
successfully run a civilisation, it was indeed very hard to attract
well-socialised people to a rival ideology. That period is over, and
what was previously impossible is now becoming a realistic goal.
See, for instance, the flourishing of radical Islam within Europe.
Islam is not, in fact, a progressive ideology. True, progressives are
forced by their ideology into giving it more space and encouragement
than they ought, but that is not the same thing as actually wanting
liberal youths to convert to a political belief system that involves
religious law, patriarchy, strictly enforced rules about sex,
etc. etc. Islam wins by exploiting the contradictions in
progressivism.
The liberal ideology is also forced to make concessions to us. They
claim to believe in science, in free political debate, in respect for
the individual. When they defy those principles to attack us, they
weaken themselves.
And, at the same time, their failures are becoming bigger and more
obvious. Take one example: at some point in our lifetime, it will
become obvious to everyone that the great Global Warming scare was
false. When that happens, the debates that happened, the books that
were written, will still be around in memories and on bookshelves.
This is a new thing — by the time that the failures of, say, female
suffrage or decolonisation had become obvious, the accurate
predictions made in advance had become obscure and mostly
forgotten. After twenty years, the argument over AGW is still current,
and in twenty years time, the scientific establishment will be
completely discredited by it.
There are numerous other areas where things are not only worse than
ever before, but getting worse at an increasing rate. The speed of
disaster is the crucial thing: it outstrips the Cathedral’s ability to
rewrite history. Given enough time between a failed policy and its
results, the policy can be painted as a right-wing aberration
committed against the better judgement of progressives, or else so
totally established that any alternative is unthinkable, despite the
failure of the chosen policy. That works over a scale of fifty years,
but not over fifteen.
The only thing that can save the Cathedral is conservatism, a
moderating of the headlong progressive rush that can slow the rate of
failure down so that the old methods will work. That has happened
before when the rate of leftward movement became dangerous to the
whole structure. But, while the effectiveness of its rule has
deteriorated, the ability of the left to emasculate and marginalise
conservatism has increased. The chances of a Thatcher or Reagan
appearing in the next decade or so to slow the rate of decline and
provide a scapegoat for some of the failures looks very slim.
The worse things get, the more likely it is that some serious
conservatism might appear to staunch the bleeding. If it can’t happen
in ten years, maybe it will happen in twenty. But if it can happen,
that means that the Cathedral’s monopoly of cool, and, more
importantly, respectability, has already frayed. If a long-excluded
conservatism can gain status, then so can we. And if it can’t then the
decline continues to gather pace and the failings of the state
continue to become more obvious.
In the end, we don’t need to beat the left. We only need to beat the
right — a much easier goal. The only thing that can save The
Cathedral is conservatism. We can stop it.