Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right

by Elizabeth Sandifer

The most perverse thing about him is that he does not actually value money so much as being rich. As he puts it, money is just a way of keeping score. This is not to say that he does not enjoy the material trappings of luxury, but he enjoys them primarily because they provide constant affirmation of the fact that he is a rich and powerful man. As far as the details, he knows what he likes, and has probably asserted the fact in those exact words. But the way in which this is true is almost base tautology. He recognizes the tingling of his lizard hindbrain when certain things happen to him, and he calls these things great. These things include but are not limited to: seeing his name in big, gold letters; a steak, cooked medium, with an overpriced California cult wine; telling someone to do something demeaning and having them do it, particularly when black men carry things for him; Dorian columns; when people break eye contact with him; seeing himself on television; groping women; the look in a man’s eye when he knows you’re screwing him over but goes along with it anyway; and Citizen Kane.