re: neoreactionaries and political LARPing
(if this comes across as mean to neoreactionaries that was not my intention, it’s meant as more self-critical than anything else)
I don’t have like, a coherent thesis to share but I was thinking a lot about this when I read Submission. Submission is this beautifully embarrassing Mary Sue wish-fulfillment fantasy that clearly lampshades that it is such. (Quote from the main character Francois: “Story of O contained everything I didn’t like in a novel: other people’s fantasies disgusted me.”) Francois is … well I really sympathized with him but also he’s an upper-middle-class white man whose response to his pathetic life is “hey man … what if we like … brought back the patriarchy?” He’s a beta who buys into redpill/evo-psych and thinks he’s an alpha.
(I’m not saying neoreactionaries are weird beta losers who spend too much time on the internet but uh)
(<3)
It reminded me of this old post about confusing a kink for a political philosophy because there’s something similar about BDSM and neoreaction–maybe that they’re both about being transgressive by playacting an oppressive past. Ross Douthat’s commentary on Fifty Shades of Grey is relevant I think; “The hope … is that we can eventually have all the fun of Rome without the nasty bits,” he writes. Because like, I hate my left-liberal bubble but would never live anywhere but SF or NYC. Sometimes my friend from Texas shows me her Facebook newsfeed and it’s sort of horrifying. And Francois doesn’t really want to return to the past. What he wants is this absurd pseudo-Islamist fantasy where his life is kinda like it is now but also he gets three virginal teenage brides to serve his every whim.
Internal monologue I had the other day:
mmm my wedding is going to be so great. We’ll use traditional wedding vows of course … ooh, maybe we should leave the “obey” in the vows, that would be ~rly trad~
… wait, if I do that will people interpret it as like public BDSM or something? ew that is so not what I’m going for
… wait, is there really a difference?