Reactionism

Reactionism is a twenty-first-century mode of politics with long provenance. Lately, it tends to have four main articulations: national populism, the alt-right, neo-fascism, and antimodernism. Inhabiting a right-wing space beyond conservatism (but only uncomfortably distinguished from it), reactionism has been a puzzle, variously, for political analysis, historical explanation, and moral criticism. This entry describes an overlapping commonality in commitments to inequality, but meanwhile finds fault with Marxian approaches and those indebted foremost to philosophy or psychology. What may better serve sense-making exercises across politics, history, and ethics is an approach prioritizing rhetoric. As such, reactionism is found constituted in three interrelated pillars (“decadence,” “indignation,” and “conspiracy”). What may take future study forward is greater attention to the detail of reactionary expression in nonconventional forms and settings.