The Reactionary Mind

[Cain]

I may have to buy this book, especially after this glowing review:

The first rule of debate: Never accept your opponent's characterization of his own position. But for decades, liberals–in their perpetual Nerf-war against conservatives–have done just the opposite. While conservatives bloviate about traditionalism (Buckley), skepticism (Burke), sobriety (Taft), and order (Mill), liberals are the first to bobblehead in agreement. "Yes," they say over paté and pinot at Davos, "That's you."

Yet no matter how many laws they break or billions they loot, how many phantoms they conjure, how many social ties they sever, how many innocents they imprison, torture and execute, no matter how many foreign monsters they champion, no matter how much they scream that two-plus-two equals five, and no matter how much they double-down on crazed schemes while swearing it'll all be different this time, the liberal–dutiful little poodle that he is–still wags his head. "Yes, yes. Calm, measured, skeptical conservatism." "Calm, measured, skeptical." Who does that sound more like to you: Barry Goldwater or Noam Chomsky?

So it's no great surprise that the New York Times–that great bastion of spineless bourgeois liberalism–hates Corey Robin's new book The Reactionary Mind. So much so that the author, Sheri Berman, dubs Robin the left-wing Ann Coulter. But we can forgive Berman. If her crowd was to actually accept Robin's arguments, they'd be faced with two options: 1. accept that they are little more than chumps basking in the same cushy privileges forged by the long conservative counterrevolution or 2. tip over the dinner table and drive a salad fork into David Brooks's eye-socket.

Robin's thesis is simple: ignore the Right-wing taxonomy. Conservatism–despite the seemingly incompatible respective ideologies of free-marketeers, slavers, neocons, neofascists, Buckleys, Federalists, Bloombergians, traditionalists, Tea Baggers, Randians, McCarthyists, libertarians, Birchers, Goldbugs, Jesus Freaks, J .Edgars, pro-lifers—has been, in reality, firmly united behind a single mission since the French Revolution: the creation of new regimes of privilege and domination in the face of democratic threats.

Conservatism, as Robin states, has never been about "taking us back" but about "great leaps forward"–from the ashes of the Ancien Régime into the arms of a new one of the conservative's making. Conservatives aren't looking for exact "restoration," but radical new constructions—building new regimes of power and domination to replace the old and unworthy elites–unworthy, to conservatives, because they failed to beat back a democratic threat. Robin quotes Burke, "It is truth that cannot be concealed; in ability, in dexterity, in the distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors."

Burke despised the monarchy for being unfit to rule, Goldwater saved most of his hellfire for the Rockefeller-dominated GOP, and now, Sarah Palin bemoans the "crony capitalists" and "Ivy Leaguers" that run the show. As Robin states, the GOP is now the party of "Scalia, D'Souza, Gonzalez, and Yoo." This need for reinvention via the injection of fresh blood has long been a cornerstone of the movement, which makes it more–not less–accepting of outsiders willing to throw-in for the cause: "Maistre was from Savoy, Burke from Ireland. Alexander Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Nevis and rumored to be part black. Disraeli was a Jew, as are many of the neoconservatives who helped transform the Republican Party from a cocktail party in Darien." It follows that 21st century Conservatism is Dick Cheney's lesbian spawn going on TV and calling the president a pussy because he refuses to torture enemies of the state.

"Conservatism," writes Robin, "is not a commitment to limited government and liberty–or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and everchanging modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force–the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere."

But in a truly sick little twist, the liberals have–in recent years–started cribbing stale right-wing rhetoric, dutifully neglecting any call for a "Morning in America" of their own. Now, it's the liberals who are repeating all that Taft-era bullshit. They've long since turned up their noses at the grand projects of emancipation, forward marches into a glorious future ("didn't Lenin, like, kill people?"), and have instead begun to squirt out the very lies that conservatives told about themselves fifty years ago–whether it's Carter, Mondale, Clinton or Obama wagging his finger about balancing budgets or some anarcho-liberal down at Zuccotti calling for the return of "mom and pop shops." (I got news for you: mom and pop were among the first to screech about OSHA and the EPA and never cared much for "the Coloreds" either.) The difference is that conservative elites—in practice—never believed any of this shit, whereas liberals gobble it all up and ask for seconds. Hell, half the chapters out of Pat Buchanan's last book read like Naderite manifestos.

You'd almost forget that anti-Communism is, in itself, a militant and internationalist ideology all its own–one with a 20th century bodycount that rivals the bloodiest work of Stalin. This is wholly understood in conservative James Ellroy's pathologically gory "Underworld USA" trilogy but flies over the heads of liberals, perhaps because some of their biggest champions–JFK, Orwell, Truman, etc.–bought into it whole-heartedly.

But there's another component to Robin's argument that makes the Times crowd squish up in their khakis: how exactly do conservatives get the masses on-board in the first place? Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?, the preferred liberal Rosetta Stone to unlocking the right-wing brain, suggests that non-elite rightwingers simply get "tricked" into supporting conservative policies. The Big Scary GOP demolishes labor unions with one hand, but draws crosshairs on Tiller the Baby-killer with the other. It's the only way Frank can explain such "irrationality."

Robin calls bullshit on that. Non-elite conservatives–the Red State bubbas that have cursed this land for so long–reap very real material rewards, but they're rewards which fly in the face of the cheery "every one's good at heart" worldview of liberalism.

Conservatism offers them something Robin brilliantly calls "democratic feudalism." In other words, dominion over your "lessers" in the private spheres of the workplace (middle-management tyrants) and the home (lockin' down the wife and daughter's ladyparts): "the most visible effort of the GOP since the 2010 midterm election has been to curtail the rights of employees and the rights of women." This is the link between the Santorums and the Pauls of the world–one which Reason magazine, the Mises Institute and other appendages of the supposedly "anti culture-war" libertarian propaganda circuit work very hard to obscure.

Robin points out that the U.S. stands alone in the Western world–as it does these days on most everything awful–in the enormous size of its middle-management and supervisory workforce. "Every man a king!" sounds great, but who plays "the serfs"? That would be the usual roster of women, immigrants, and all those who stink of poor–well, poorer than the "little conservative king" handing out the pink slips. The hedge-funder gets the capital gains tax cut and the Walmart Assistant Manager gets to hold the livelihoods of dozens (and their families) in the palm of his hand–permitted to inflict an economic violence on each and every one that, in some ways, makes a public flogging look like a demerit.

So why do liberals let conservatives get away with this shit? Where's their battle cry of freedom? Let me let you in on a little secret: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death"? Liberals don't believe a word of it. Not one fucking word. They've long since abandoned the emancipatory call of the Enlightenment. "The common American liberal today," says Roger D. Hodge in his scathing review of Obama's first two years The Mendacity of Hope, "is mostly interested in lifestyle–and the not inconsiderable virtues of tolerance, compassion, decency, and fair play. Lifestyle liberals tend to express proper environmental pieties and feel very strongly about respecting the rights of racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. All of these perfectly admirable liberal qualities and attitudes...but as modes of action and behavior they do not necessarily follow from a coherent political philosophy or a theory of government."

But, says the mealy-mouthed "progressive," Obama, Clinton, "they're not real liberals." Of course they are! Liberals make no challenge against a society's given socioeconomic framework. Instead, liberalism promises only to open up that very same framework to the greatest number of people. That's it. Hence Obama's "free market solutions" to education and health care. Sure, when Keynesian-welfare state was the name of the game, we got Medicare and the Great Society, but count that model among conservatism's many scalps as they rode the 1970s neoliberal wave to total victory.

So despite all that bullshit about federalism and limited government, Conservatism is thus revolutionary, crusading, impassioned, combative, and–let's face it–creative. Basically, it is everything that liberalism is not. Both conservatism and genuine Leftism calls for a grand societal project that terrifies the liberal.

Of course a liberal doesn't want to face any of this: that at least a fifth of the population needs to be fought and defeated for anything close to "progress" on those supposed "Enlightenment values" to take hold. Because that means, oh nos!, a fight! Combat! Saying "fuck you" instead "we agree to disagree!"

Robin believes, as I do, that the current incarnation of the conservative movement is approaching its terminus–though I'm fairly certain that the death rattle will be loud, long, and bloody. Without a significant democratic challenge (the labor struggles of the 1930s, the revolts of the 1960s, etc.), conservatism has nowhere to go. It's been too successful. "Loss–real social loss, of power and position, privilege and prestige–is the mustard seed of conservative innovation. What the right suffers from today is not loss but success."

Maybe I'm being a little too hard on liberals. After all, a liberal is fundamentally a more "decent" person than a conservative. And there's something to be said for decency. But good manners, sympathy for the powerless, and a congenial disposition are useless in beating back conservatism after its gone hegemonic–and who could possibly deny that it has? Maybe that's the most frightening lesson from Robin's book, and what makes it all so hard for liberals to take: that the fight is over, the battle is lost, and the bastards won. And if we wanna do something about it, and it's starting to look like maybe we do, we might have to summon up some of that dangerous radical fire that's propelled every worthwhile step we've taken towards a more civil and egalitarian society.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

No, he's not being too fucking hard on liberals.  If anything, he's not raking them over the coals hard enough.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oooooooh! This sounds interesting!

[Cain]

£13 for the Kindle version....might put it on my Xmas list instead, along with the Underworld USA trilogy.

[LMNO]

Wow. That sounds.... right.

[Telarus]

Wow. That sounds.... right.

Yeah, I read a piece Cain linked to a while back about how Liberals let Conservatives define the Liberal as well as Conservative Narratives. Good so see some-one else calling them on it.

[LMNO]

$10 on the kindle?  Fuck it, it's mine.

[Luna]

$10 on the kindle?  Fuck it, it's mine.

There are reasons that, if given thechoice between my kindle and most people, I'd choose the kindle.

[LMNO]

Although, I still have to finish Dance of Dragons.

[Freeky]

tip over the dinner table and drive a salad fork into David Brooks's eye-socket.

This is awesome.  That whole book sounds awesome, Cain.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Holy shit.

Though I don't have money to buy this book, I will definitely find a way to read it.

[Cramulus]

Interesting. Sounds like the classic "To make an omelet..." appeal.

This is kind of what I was poking at in my "theaters of mutual antagonism" thread --- shirking conflict only puts yourself in a position to lose that conflict when it does come up.

I am very vocal about the need to understand your opposition. I'm quick on the trigger when people brush off republicans for "being stupid" or some other effete dismissal. You have to understand what they're thinking in their terms. If you can step into their worldview, they do have a point... If you can't see the point, you can't possibly communicate with them.

and through this, I feel like over time I've become more averse to certain types of conflicts. To use a contemporary american example --- I don't really think that the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations are really that significant. (How he responds to them is critically important though) Same with the Rick Perry / niggerhead incident. I don't think it's really a cogent statement about Perry, it's just a great soundbyte that supports a larger narrative of "Rick Perry Sucks".

And my liberal friends get so whiney when I brush off those points. Like--they're really concerned with the end-game (proving that Rick Perry / Herman Cain sucks), the means aren't important. And to me, the means are really important.

The right wing uses a microphone like Fox News to skew and misrepresent current events... I find that disgusting. MSN is trying to take on the left-wing media channel mantle, and it also disgusts me (in different ways). It sounds like the thrust of the Reactionary Mind is that you gotta fight fire with fire. I'm pretty disenfranchised by the left, but personally, I'd have a harder time identifying with them if they tried to symmetrically match the right.



sorry about the ramble --- still thinking about all of this

[Scribbly]

Interesting. Sounds like the classic "To make an omelet..." appeal.

This is kind of what I was poking at in my "theaters of mutual antagonism" thread --- shirking conflict only puts yourself in a position to lose that conflict when it does come up.

I am very vocal about the need to understand your opposition. I'm quick on the trigger when people brush off republicans for "being stupid" or some other effete dismissal. You have to understand what they're thinking in their terms. If you can step into their worldview, they do have a point... If you can't see the point, you can't possibly communicate with them.

and through this, I feel like over time I've become more averse to certain types of conflicts. To use a contemporary american example --- I don't really think that the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations are really that significant. (How he responds to them is critically important though) Same with the Rick Perry / niggerhead incident. I don't think it's really a cogent statement about Perry, it's just a great soundbyte that supports a larger narrative of "Rick Perry Sucks".

And my liberal friends get so whiney when I brush off those points. Like--they're really concerned with the end-game (proving that Rick Perry / Herman Cain sucks), the means aren't important. And to me, the means are really important.

The right wing uses a microphone like Fox News to skew and misrepresent current events... I find that disgusting. MSN is trying to take on the left-wing media channel mantle, and it also disgusts me (in different ways). It sounds like the thrust of the Reactionary Mind is that you gotta fight fire with fire. I'm pretty disenfranchised by the left, but personally, I'd have a harder time identifying with them if they tried to symmetrically match the right.



sorry about the ramble --- still thinking about all of this

I don't know, I didn't take away that you should use the same methods as the Right...

What I took away was that the Left are afraid of being painted as radicals, or arguing for a breakdown of existing social structures outside of the very easy ones (we should be more equal/accepting of race and sex whilst avoiding income inequality, for instance).

I think he's right on that.

I think that if we're going to address the major crises of the day - the distribution of wealth, the growing global population (and dealing with that will probably need to tie into the first), and environmental collapse, what we need is an overarching unity that reaches beyond the narrow interests of the nation state. We need to rebuild our view into one which encompasses all of humanity; or at the very least encompasses it into much larger units than it currently is. We need to do that because the issues we're facing require such massive resources that we will never do anything if we are all 'looking out for number one' in the smaller units that Conservatism has locked us into.

I don't think you necessarily need to subscribe to the tactics of the Right to manage that. But you do need to be prepared to articulate a viewpoint that is radical and that is based on a willingness to stand up for your beliefs in the face of your opponent. It may even be necessary to be willing to do so in the face of violence, and be willing to resort to violence yourself to smash those social structures.

To go off on my own tangent...

When I was at university, I got very angry with one of the Green People. They were trying to explain that we have maybe ten years before the planet is so fucked up we will all die, and we need to lobby for more green fuels and less fossil fuel use in order to stop that...

I was like, "If you believe that, why aren't you saying 'BLOW UP FUCKING OIL RIGS?' If you are correct, why aren't we trying to sabotage car factories and destroy roads so people CAN'T use their cars?"

That got nervous laughter and shifty eyes, "Well, you can't hurt people..."

But you're talking about THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD. If you aren't willing to step up and force people to stop when you are talking about something which you believe will kill you, at what point are you willing to step up?

The Conservatives have the monopoly on violence and oppression these days. They are the ones willing to go and shoot people, and they've painted anyone with liberal leanings as being too weak and cowardly to stand up for their beliefs to the ultimate level.

Am I saying you have to jump straight to that? No. Fuck no. Violence is never something you just jump into. I don't personally believe that in the environmental argument, we're actually ten years away from global destruction, either. But until Conservatives can accept that their political rivals are as committed and determined as they are, they will refuse to engage with you. There's a popular conception that liberal minded left-wingers are ultimately posers who will fold at the first sign of hardship, and who can be hardballed into concessions which render their concerns pointless. The evidence seems to point to this being the case in most modern politics.

You need to break that association before any true middle ground can be found.

[LMNO]

For me, the argument that the Right defines the terms on both sides of the issue is merely the starting point.  What I get from the OP is that Robin looks at how the Right acts in a pragmatic sense; it doesn't look at what they say they do and stand for, it looks at what they actually do, and what the results are from that-- and that's what they seems to be standing for.

To me, that's much more important, because it reveals what the actual targets should be.  Everything else is a false front, like putting a target on a kevlar jacket, so people don't just aim for the knees.

[Cramulus]

Well articulated, D_S... that BLOW UP OIL RIGS anecdote is spot on.

I guess what's hard for me is that I've developed a rigidity, like a callous, towards radical view points. That's a bar in my black iron prison that I'm slowly becoming aware of. And it's not, generally speaking, that I disagree with the point itself, it's just that when it gets expressed in a radical form like "SMASH CAPITALISM", it seems like the idea loses power. (memetic smoothness)

Because to me, the liberal radicals often taste like anarchists or PETA. I feel like you need to dress those ideas in palatable clothes if anybody's going to swallow them.

I guess the trick is to frame those big ideas in a way that it seems insane NOT to listen to them? Like campaign finance reform, or a reconstruction of the financial bloc... ends up sounding crazy. but isn't it crazier not to reform those things?