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

by Elizabeth Sandifer

For all the bullshit, Rothbard and his theories proved a seductive mix. With its built-in aura of both the intellectually-elite and the non-mainstream, its pretensions towards being anti-establishment, and its claims to brusque and impatient rationality mixed with a moral defence of liberty and property, Rothbardian reaction has an image that works. The hard-nosed defence of free markets has the right dose of machismo while also retaining a glamour of bespectacled, book-wormish intellectualism. But there are no sums to do, of course. Praxeology sees to that, along with serving the instinct to make reductionist statements about people based on the idea that they all have free will, a concept easily adapted to excuse whatever injustice needs to be excused. It’s free will, and also it’s always been like that; a classic reactionary contradiction that could be embraced unabashedly. The racism inherent here can be adapted silently, or not so silently, as strategy demands.