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Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right by Jack Graham, Elizabeth Sandifer
redbecca's review against another edition
3.0
This book is an interesting document from a larger internet nerd fight. I don't recommend it as a clear explanation of the alt-right. it does provide a detailed close-reading of three major neo-reactionary figures, and a smack-down of racist paleo-libertarians, with connections to longer intellectual traditions. However, the writing style, a kind of ongoing performance of intellectual pwnage, makes the book harder to read than it needs to be. At times, the readings seem more aimed at ridiculing the book's subjects than explaining their ideas or why anyone would believe them. This can be satisfying on one level, which may be why the chapter on Trump works - because we are inundated with information about him all the time and don't need a basic explanation of who he is or what he's about. In the end, for me the snarky style became tedious and undermined the book's stated purpose.
otterno11's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
informative
slow-paced
4.0
In recent years, there has been a spreading darkness online, a weirder but no less important aspect of the fascist resurgence of the last decade. Due to some of my weird niche interests (alternate history, apocalyptic fiction, anomalous archeology), over the past eight or so years I found myself encountering some strange and disturbing words online, including “race realism” and “human biodiversity,” the “dark enlightenment,” and “neoreaction.” Despite being disturbed by these ideas, obvious euphemisms for racism and oppression, I never would have guessed that they were just the canaries in the coal mines of contemporary politics, the first stirrings of what would later be dubbed the “alt-right.”
With the explosion of Gamergate and the horrors of the primaries and the election of 2016, I was shocked at how what had seemed like some minor nobodies on the internet appeared to have birthed much of the background radiation of the Trump Administration. This is why I was so intrigued to read critical analyst Elizabeth Sandifer’s collection of essays Neoreaction A Basilisk, a work that delves deeply into these arcane and hideous online underworlds, and the connections they contain that link them to the mainstream.
Funded on Kickstarter in 2017, Neoreaction a Basilisk is a very weird little tome, but one that is very insightful of all the really weird, profoundly stupid threads that animate much of the far-right today. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so awful, and Sandifer analyzes it all in all of its awful, eerie weirdness, a weirdness that makes it difficult to turn away. All in all, this is some bleak, bleak stuff that Sandifer doesn’t sugar coat. She begins the first essay in her collection, for instance, with the statement “Let us assume we are fucked.” We hadn’t even seen 2020 yet!
There is a horrific, apocalyptic feeling throughout, both in subject matter and in the way Sandifer frames these topics. Looking back at the information and topics she discusses in Neoreaction A Basilisk, I found myself forgetting that she wrote much of this before even the election of 2016, and it feels all the more compelling. Like, this was the swirling, arcane cesspool that the last four years was birthed from.
Sandifer links the ideas of such strange, niche characters as fascist English philosopher Nick Land, pseudonymous reactionary Silicon Valley blogger Mencius Moldbug (aka Curtis Yavin), and Eliezer Yudkowski, a non-reactionary rationalist philosopher whose ideas nonetheless provided intellectual fuel for the fire, the very names that seemed to pop up when I first became aware of the budding horror of neoreactionary fascism in the years before 2016. From the bizarre quasi-religious Roko’s Basilisk hinted at in the title to the seething cosmic horror that was/is Gamergate to the perfidious nature of the Austrian School, Neoreaction a Basilisk delves into some obscure and confusing territory, and I often found myself just barely able to comprehend it all. While these deep literary rabbit holes we explore are often intriguing, it can become a bit difficult to follow at times. This is very much an almost self-consciously obscure work, diving deep into disturbing topics filled with strange correlations and connections.
There is something, though, that appeals to me about writing in such depth about the nexus where popular culture meets the dark urges of fascist ideology, and so much of fascist thought is completely bizarre, full of cockamamie ideas and geeking out about mythology and ancient history, for instance. I’m definitely glad I tracked down this book, and while perhaps I still am as mystified as much as ever, Sandifer provided some stark food for thought about the weird ideas festering beneath the rock of contemporary political culture.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
With the explosion of Gamergate and the horrors of the primaries and the election of 2016, I was shocked at how what had seemed like some minor nobodies on the internet appeared to have birthed much of the background radiation of the Trump Administration. This is why I was so intrigued to read critical analyst Elizabeth Sandifer’s collection of essays Neoreaction A Basilisk, a work that delves deeply into these arcane and hideous online underworlds, and the connections they contain that link them to the mainstream.
Funded on Kickstarter in 2017, Neoreaction a Basilisk is a very weird little tome, but one that is very insightful of all the really weird, profoundly stupid threads that animate much of the far-right today. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so awful, and Sandifer analyzes it all in all of its awful, eerie weirdness, a weirdness that makes it difficult to turn away. All in all, this is some bleak, bleak stuff that Sandifer doesn’t sugar coat. She begins the first essay in her collection, for instance, with the statement “Let us assume we are fucked.” We hadn’t even seen 2020 yet!
There is a horrific, apocalyptic feeling throughout, both in subject matter and in the way Sandifer frames these topics. Looking back at the information and topics she discusses in Neoreaction A Basilisk, I found myself forgetting that she wrote much of this before even the election of 2016, and it feels all the more compelling. Like, this was the swirling, arcane cesspool that the last four years was birthed from.
Sandifer links the ideas of such strange, niche characters as fascist English philosopher Nick Land, pseudonymous reactionary Silicon Valley blogger Mencius Moldbug (aka Curtis Yavin), and Eliezer Yudkowski, a non-reactionary rationalist philosopher whose ideas nonetheless provided intellectual fuel for the fire, the very names that seemed to pop up when I first became aware of the budding horror of neoreactionary fascism in the years before 2016. From the bizarre quasi-religious Roko’s Basilisk hinted at in the title to the seething cosmic horror that was/is Gamergate to the perfidious nature of the Austrian School, Neoreaction a Basilisk delves into some obscure and confusing territory, and I often found myself just barely able to comprehend it all. While these deep literary rabbit holes we explore are often intriguing, it can become a bit difficult to follow at times. This is very much an almost self-consciously obscure work, diving deep into disturbing topics filled with strange correlations and connections.
There is something, though, that appeals to me about writing in such depth about the nexus where popular culture meets the dark urges of fascist ideology, and so much of fascist thought is completely bizarre, full of cockamamie ideas and geeking out about mythology and ancient history, for instance. I’m definitely glad I tracked down this book, and while perhaps I still am as mystified as much as ever, Sandifer provided some stark food for thought about the weird ideas festering beneath the rock of contemporary political culture.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
cyrus9579a's review against another edition
“Actually, I was high while writing it” means never having to cop to whether you meant what you were arguing, care about the massive holes in trains of thought where you got bored, or notice ‘haha, men holding hands is super gross’ is still homophobic.
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