Abstract

The key to understanding the Alt-Right is understanding the theories that comprise it, and no theory is more significant than the NeoReactionary movement. The use of affect theory, postmodern critiques of modernity, and a fixation on critiquing regimes of truth are fundamental to NeoReaction and what separates it from other Far-Right theory. The project of NRx is to usher in a dark enlightenment with a dogmatic anti-humanities and anti-liberal ideology. An investigation of NRx requires a cross-disciplinary understanding of politics that draws less upon social scientific empirical facts and more upon a historical, aesthetic, and philosophical approach. The NeoReactionaries argue for a reversal of the liberal enlightenment project, stressing that the most significant political freedom is the freedom to opt out of a system. The movement opposes the “Cathedral”, the superstructure of cultural capital within universities, the media, and bureaucracy, which it views as not only hegemonic and inefficient, but also the primary reason for the decline of Western civilization, as it has embraced liberal humanism.