Redpill me on reactionary literature

The fall of the WRE was due to more than just immigration, which wasn't very detrimental to the entire empire at all. Anyone that thinks that is a giant idiot.

I'm a Leftist and I'm not calling Spengler a reactionary dipshit.

I can't speak for the actual historical reality but doesn't Spengler write about the recruitment of Germanic soldiers into the Roman military as key to its downfall?

It's completely wrong either way. It was the fact that after a while of treating them well they started treating them like shit.

The Romans were fantastic at incorporating cultures into the flock of Rome.

What do you regard as the cause(s) of the decline of Rome?

The Mediterranean cultures they absorbed had more in common with Rome than barbarian Germanic tribes from the north.

The world then wasn't split into a Europe / non-Europe dichotomy it was Mediterranean / non-Mediterranean.

Time. Expansion with a breakdown in logistical power. Discrimination from Roman citizens when the empire expanded and opened up citizenship. Infighting. Actual invasions from migratory hordes. Etc. Multiple factors. No real one single problem.

Have you read The Decline of the West? The historical model he sets up for the rise and decline of civilizations is plainly wrong and based on very inaccurate information, especially his claims about ancient civilizations

I know, but it was still mostly accepted. German refugees were accepted and settled into the Roman empire. Stuff like that is pretty telling. The only thing Rome asked for was able bodied men for the legions, which the Germans were happy to provide in exchange for what they were given.

The refugees (or migrants) were from multiple reasons too. Mostly environmental.

I don't see how this is relevant to my post. I was not at all speaking of its accuracy but why his account is attractive to reactionary politicians

Do you see the issue however in how Roman technology and tactics was consequentially spread through the association to the Germanic nations.
Germanicus is an obvious such example of this attempt towards assimilation back firing.

Oh, okay, my bad

Because it's what they want to hear. The army that sacked Rome was ironically her own. The Germans comprised most of their fighting force in the north were tired of being treated like shit and mistreated along with their families. Flavius was also tired of being the Bannon to the emperor's Trump so he deposed him and declared himself king of Italy.

>in english

for you

All historiography is sketchy. Shitting on Spengler is passe, nerd. You're behind the literary turn and that was 30 years ago.

No. If they didn't treat them like shit and invade Germany instead of continuing diplomatically it would not have happened.

I guess it's kind of like the US backed and trained Mujahideen.

This. Empires don't fall due to a single "illness" afficting them. When an empire falls it's because it's diseased on multiple levels. The Bolsheviks are not the only factor that contributed to the fall of Tsarist Russia.

I don't know if that's true, as long as the Empire existed it would always have been an existential threat to the German tribes and vice versa. Its easy to say they should have trust them but we don't know how things would have turned out otherwise.

Patriarchy

I think with the amount of cooperation that was going on it would be safe to say everything would have been fine with some minor, but fixable, disagreements and clashes.

You are right though. This is speculation on my part.

The question becomes though what are the mechanisms over time by which an Empire degrades.
The Romans were a sophisticated and historically aware people and all of the problems you mention occured over entire generations and could have potentially been prepared against. Its why Spengler's main concern in his writings is the development of attitude and ideology rather than logistics and economics which he believed could nearly always be overcome except in certain extreme disasters.

Spengler was definitely a conservative, but I think what reactionaries find most appealing about the decline of the west is the title. I feel like most modern reactionaries wouldn't appreciate his morbid, fatalistic celebration of cultural (followed by) civilizational decline, and his argument against cultural relativism is that you get inaccurate views of another society when using your own as a yardstick. Also he denies civilizational continuity between Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the West. Many right wingers would love to claim those two as products of their same culture, I think.

you say that like it's a bad thing

I agree for the most part except I think his fatalism is actually appealing to the reactionary project. The idea that society is a living and vulnerable thing that not only may die but WILL die brings to them a holistic sense of urgency and gravity to their mission.

spengler is overrated by the dissident right and underrated by everyone else

Yeah, you're probably right about that. Can definitely see that appealing to a young guy getting viscerally involved in politics.

archive.org/details/populargovernme01maingoog

Here's some genuine reactionary reading.

What are the honest political aims of reactionaries?

There's only so far back one can go, after all. Centuries of history can't be undone. We can't simply put a king back on the throne and call it a day.

>We can't simply put a king back on the throne and call it a day.
Just you wait. In the afterscape that's exactly what will pass for rule.

unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html

That's essentially what happened in the Middle East.

You'd be surprised at how quickly things can change.

It's all ridiculous, because they peddle the pseudo-scientific notion of race

Culture is just a construct too, amirite?

his historiography is having no historiography.
he spends a good portion of the first volume explaining his position. you can take it or leave it.

But yeah. He's not necessarily reactionary. Just anti-liberal and anti-whiggish

>He describes the downfall of all civilizations being intrinsically linked to immigration
wat
no he doesnt

except that if you actually read Spengler the idea of advancing any project of restoration is patently absurd.

Restoration no but preservation and life extension seems feasible.

Smarter reactionaries frame their theories in Marxist terminology so they are taken seriously by the left and corrupt it from within.

Pic related.

I can understand how you can frame Foucault as oppositional to Leftism in a Nietzschean sense but calling him a reactionary is absurd

okay, yes. true. but such preservation and life extension of Civilization would actually be a rather awful image for any Reactionary. In Spenglerian terms, reactionaries love Culture but hate Civilization.
Such a project of civilizational extension is closer to Social Democrats or something akin to that, I think.

Lyotard, Debord, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, BAUDRILLARD

all reactionaries. fite me.

Dude what, how are you defining reactionary, was Marx a reactionary?

I mean, they were skeptical of utopian enterprises. Our contemporary leftist 'political' movements would probably strike them as totally grotesque and dangerous if realized.

In some ways, the smart reactionaries seem like the smartest of all. I wouldn't be surprised if they had the highest average IQ of ideologies, even higher than most Marxist academics.

>Our contemporary leftist 'political' movements would probably strike them as totally grotesque and dangerous if realized.

Purge all Trots

>most Marxist academics.

That's not really saying much and I say that as a fan of Marx

If you're going to be a revolutionary, you better be prepared for an infinite revolt.

>was Marx a reactionary?
no. Marx was an accelerationist
Critical Theory writers are hardly marxists at all.
I seriously doubt they actually read Capital from start to finish.

>I mean, they were skeptical of utopian enterprises.
Not just that. They recognized the complete failure and horror of modernity as a whole.
Their reaction was a nihilistic and defeatist one though.

Infinite revolt is such a nonsensical idealistic concept its just straight up retarded. It reminds me how Thomas Jefferson believed there would have to be a new revolution in the US every fifty years or so to keep the Republic healthy

You know what you're winning me over. I don't think I can get on board with the particular semantics but I highly respect this aim towards reconstructing the notion of alignment without using yet another autistic barometer

Well, look at the state of the union today and say to me with a straight face he want on to something.

its good to think about Reaction as much more than just superficial aesthetics and muh kings, because Reaction is hardly about that at all.

>niggers don't exist

He was of course but his solution was absurd. Revolt can not be regulated

>that bait

Science recognizes that humans are split between different "populations."

They don't call it race but for all intents and purposes it's the same thing.

>it's the same thing.

Its the same in that it aims towards the same form of categorization but in reality there's huge gaping contradictions between our social conception of race and the reality of human genetic superclusters. One of the most important is we tend to talk of race generally as clean cut categories when its incredibly messy, que 'Are X White?' memes

>Are X White?' memes

It is clear cut unless you're a butthurt Argentinian

I'm Irish so you're close

I'm going to ask this here. Why does it seem liek most philosophers and modern day academics, do not question democracy? They all treat the value of democracy as a forgone conclusion. I don't get it. Democracy seems like it has a lot of problems. And I'm no authoritarian. I actually think democracy is almost authoritarian by nature.

Not him but no.

There there are so many examples of groups who blur the lines and nobody can quite decide how to categorise them: Pale Ashkenazi Jews, Swarthy Southern Europeans, East African ethnicities who have caucasoid skulls but black skin, tribes in north Pakistan and Afghanistan with blonde hair and green eyes. etc etc etc

/pol/ just tries to explain it all away with the "rape babies" meme but it's obvious that the complexity of the topic is too great for simplistic black/white dichotomies.

That's why the British, in their infinite wisdom, created a third category: the wogs. Not quite quite white, not quite black, 100% wog.

Whig historiography

Basically the axiomatic understanding of history as a "march towards progress' (to quote the Wiki page)

I.E. something is better merely because it's happening now instead of in the past

welfare expansion, sectionalism, loss of trade dominance. I'm sure there are more I can't think of.

There is everything wrong with Decline Of The West abridged version. You can get pdfs of the full version without trying too hard. Just don't get the abridged, you'll miss a lot.

>having large populations of foreigners who demand gibs isn't seen as a giant liability
>same foreigners sacked the capital multiple times

Trump is the revolution.

Plenty have critiqued it; at least in political philosophy. Isaiah Berlin offers some neat reflections on it in 'Four Essays on Liberty', and Arendt has some neat pieces in 'On the Human Condition' to give just two examples.

Here's one pretty prevalent view of democracy in academia today: The 'value' of democracy is less in the idea that the people can decide a leader, and more within the idea that it creates a space where people are free to conduct and express themselves without compulsion. Since people may have different ends they view as the most important, the best system to accommodate such plurality is one with has such a focus on liberty as a centerpiece.

If you had an autocratic political system that ensured widespread liberties, it would likely be received at least somewhat favorably - its main issue would be that the autocratic leadership would have to abstain from deciding upon one end as superior to others - and in doing so, revoking the liberty of the nonconformists through a changing of the government away from the accommodation of their liberty.

Does your concept of nigger encapsulate all blacks everywhere?

>Here's one pretty prevalent view of democracy in academia today: The 'value' of democracy is less in the idea that the people can decide a leader, and more within the idea that it creates a space where people are free to conduct and express themselves without compulsion.

This sounds like liberal individualism rather than democracy. What academics are advocating this view of democracy?

Any of the scholars in departments who read heavily from those thinkers will likely share some form of the view.

My experience is as a recent grad with a phi and polisci degree from a major state school (40k + people).

I saw that the majority of the people who wrote or spoke in support of democracy in the phi department generally did it as a vehicle for the goods that democracy brings (I.E. liberty or justice). There were many people who would be fine with non-democratic mechanism if the state were just, however. Some kantians, for instance, were not openly hostile to the idea of enlightened dictatorship.

In the field of political science support for democracy is somewhat more axiomatic, but that's because its considered integral to state stability. One thing that political scientists have been trying to figure out is whether or not economic growth promotes stability and democracy, or if its democracy that promotes economic growth and stability. If you believe the latter you've a surefire proponent of democracy as a self evident good. If you believe the former, then even an effective dictatorship will eventually give way to democracy (see South Korea as an example).

One final point - an example of a modern, getting paychecks thinker sharing a view from a previous one would be Seyla Benhabib over at Yale. She's an Arendt scholar, who's own writings deal with issues of liberty and democracy in a manner very close to Arendt, with that same sort of focus on individual liberty.

My personal view is within that initial post - I think that democracy at its best gives a society the ability to debate and decide what ends it wants to value. As an amerifat, I can decide how many of my burgers get redistributed depending upon my own view and experience of equality vs personal freedom. If I am voted against, at the very least a large bloc has advocated a view they support (in the case of Trump, a stronger preference for security and cultural unity over openness), and I am entitled to disagree, but in a manner that is respectful of their position. The system weighed the values in an open debate, and their position won.

If it were an autocracy, neither side would have the responsibility or agency to weigh these options - it would all be handled by the instrumental skill of the technocrat, or the whim of the emperor.

Yeah, man, he's really draining that swamp.

Tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens left, right, and center. Innovation!

Slashing budgets and shuttering decades old programs to pay off a fraction of the interest on the national debt! Radical, dude!

Taking personal calls from positioned supporters to haggle over the users fee of his own political power. Talk about turning a new leaf!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, the two best critiques I've seen of democracy are Schmitt's "The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy" and Sorel's "On Violence". Both of those are an invaluable asset in re-examining democracy and making it more coherent

...

A lot of bullshit about Spengler has been spouted by people in this thread.

Spengler was not a "reactionary" in the traditional sense. He's more a nietzschean pessimist. He was definitely of the Right.

His "Decline of the West" is more about the cyclical nature of civilisations, not necessarily the "cataclysmic collapse" of Western Civilisation that the title suggests. It is reminiscent of Giambattista Vico's (early counter-enlightenment thinker) work about cyclical history written two centuries earlier

This is somewhat true, but I prefer the term "perennialist".

This is only half true. Immigration for him was merely a symptom of wider civilisational trends.

This post is mostly accurate. Although I think his denial of civilisational continuity is overstated. In many ways, ideological continuity is more powerful than direct political continuity, although I think the very notion of "The West" is a confusing term anyway. (beyond crude genetic links, which can also be powerful). Let's put it this way, a 19th century Englishman would have much more in common with 5th Century BC Athenian or a 1st Century BC Roman than he would with a 5th Century BC Persian or a 1st Century BC Numidian.

Spengler was an interesting guy. His conception of "race" was particularly interesting (one of the reasons he fell out of favor with the Nazis) which is expanded upon by Evola.

I'd recommend his essay about Prussian Socialism, to understand his political views.

This is a quality post user.

do you think immigration is linked to decline because of a decreasing ability to assimilate, due in part to the distance from the founding myth and energy of a civilization?

Immigration is linked to decline because it is indicative of the native population's inability to maintain themselves or continue their own civilisation under their own steam. Hence, they import people to solve problems that they themselves created. However, immigration itself brings new problems (cultural disparity, ethnic conflict etc).

The notion of "assimilation" is questionable in its entirety. No group entirely assimilates into its host culture.

Benjamin was surely not a reactionary, you are thinking of Fromm. For some reason reason the latter is popular with hippy spiritual but not religious people where i live.

Thanks user. It sounds like your experience is that many academics point to either what they perceive to be the material results of democracy, or vice versa that material prosperity leads to democracy. This is a very pro-capitalism argument for democracy. Or that democracy brings liberty, which to my mind isn't obvious; that requires a firm conception of individual rights along the lines of liberalism. Interestingly, Arendt was critical of the then-new notion of human rights; she favored instead civil rights within a democratic society.

As a fellow Amerilard, I share your view on the value of democracy, namely a forum of debate for society to choose in what direction it is headed.

Have you encountered anyone who holds to the John Dewey view that democracy isn't just a political system, but is an ethic in and of itself? This is somewhat closer to the American view of democracy, balanced against other values of course.

Schmitt is a profoundly astute critic of democracy. He gets a lot of shit for being a Nazi judge, but he was a very deep thinker in legal and political philosophy, enough so to have engaged in dialogues with Leo Strauss.

>Have you encountered anyone who holds to the John Dewey view that democracy isn't just a political system, but is an ethic in and of itself?

Not him, but Habermas is one, Hannah Arendt another.

>but he was a very deep thinker in legal and political philosophy, enough so to have engaged in dialogues with Leo Strauss
His ideas were literally considered when making up the Israel constitution.

>Habermas

I've heard he is particularly difficult, this coming from people who think Foucault is an easy read. Is this true?

That hasn't been my experience. He's writing in a different style and 'tradition' than someone like Foucault, so I can see someone familiar and comfortable with the latter's work having to adjust and maybe struggle a bit until the words fit.

Who do you think is underrated by the dissident right?

No, his political works are made with middle-class social-dem voting unerudites in mind. His new stuff is extremely easy, since he likes to mingle with analytical(aka anglo) political philosophers. He popularised some words we all use today(like public sphere) so you know he is accessible. Just don't deal with his language stuff.