Reconstructing the old Regime

The Reactionary Mind

This week, we continue looking at Corey Robin’s book, “The Reactionary Mind.” What I have found so profound about this idea is that it completely shifts my idea of what conservatism really is. We hold that idea in our heads as a movement of maintaining the status quo and so when we see conservative movements want to tear everything down, it doesn’t make sense. But if the movement is really about restoring lost hierarchy, then tearing down a system that has evolved to destroy hierarchy, well then it all makes sense.

Robin says he came to realized that despite real differences, workers in a factory are like secretaries in an office, peasants on a manor, slaves on a plantation and wives in a marriage. There is unequal power. They submit and obey. The contract has led to unforeseen coercion and constraint. I found it interesting that there is new a wing of the Right, Sourabh Amari and his book we covered a while back which was titled Tyranny Inc. He must not be a true conservative because he is criticizing this coercion and constraint in the workplace.

Robin talks about the intimacy of slavery and hiearchy. Masters tracked births, marriages and deaths. There was a familiarity and closeness built on the hierarchy. Many whites, after the Civil War lamented the chill in relations between races. Of course, this was propaganda and self-delusion. But it is true that the consequences of slavery were felt not just by the slave but by the master as well. He had become identified with it. Conservatism is not a commitment to limited government and liberty, a wariness for change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These are not its animating purposes. To obey a real superior is one of the most important virtues. It is a counterrevolutionary practice.

Those on the left often believe the defense of power and privilege is an enterprise devoid of ideas. The conservative often likes to hold on to the label of the untutored and unlettered. It is part of his populist charm. But nothing could be further from the truth. We may think that the word reaction connotes an unthinking, lowly grab for power. But the reaction is not a reflex but a position of principle.

The belief is simple. Some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others. This idea made me think of the arrogance of the tech elite. But if a ruling class is truly fit, how has it allowed a challenge to its power to emerge? The overthrow of the old regime reveals the weakness and incompetence of its leaders but also a larger truth about the design of the world.

Reconstructing the old regime in the face of a declining faith in permanent hierarchies has proven a difficult feat and while they are not postmodernist, they have learned a lot from postmodernism. They do not unfurl a blueprint in advance of events. They read situations and circumstances, not texts and tomes. Their preferred mode is adaptation.

The conservative is a man acutely aware of having something to lose. What distinguishes conservatism from traditionalism is the traditionalist simple has a tendency to be attached to things as they are. Conservatism, on the other hand, is a conscious effort to recall those experiences which can no longer be had in an authentic way. Traditionalists can take things for granted. Conservatives don’t oppose change as such, they defend particular orders, hierarchical, often private regimes of rule. Hierarchy is order. William Buckley declared the conservative to be the new radicals.

The conservative not only opposes the left but also believes the left has been in the driver’s seat since either the French Revolution or the Reformation. To preserve his values, he must declare war against the culture as it is. And so you find militant opposition. Robin explores the emotional side of conservatism, especially its fascination with strength, toughness, and domination. If you want to hear militant opposition, listen to Stephen Miller’s eulogy at the funeral of Charlie Kirk. It is militant and angry and arrogant.

He argues that conservatives find meaning in struggle and conflict, not peace or stability. Their politics, he says, depend on having something to resist. That is why conservative energy often peaks when the old order is threatened. Conservatives define freedom, not as equality or autonomy, but as the right to rule or to resist being ruled by inferiors. This book revisits debates over slavery, class, and gender, showing how conservatives have often reinterpreted freedom as the protection of established hierarchies.

Conservatives often borrow the rhetoric of the left, rebellion, liberty, and resistance but use it to defend elite power. For example, anti-tax revolts or free-market movements adopt the style of revolution while serving established wealth. Think of the tea-party. Modern conservatives see themselves as victims, even when they hold power. He traces this to the way that once-dominant groups (aristocrats, men, whites, Christians) feel displaced in more egalitarian societies. Victimhood becomes a form of political identity.

Robin digs into gender and patriarchy as central to the reactionary imagination. He discusses how conservative thinkers and politicians often portray male dominance and female submission as natural hierarchies that mirror broader social order. Robin argues that religious conservatives see secular, democratic society as a threat to their rightful authority and so they frame their struggles as moral crusades. He also points out how religion gives conservatives a language of suffering and transcendence that deepens their emotional appeal.

In 20th-century America, the Right transformed the defense of hierarchy into a populist style, presenting themselves as rebels against liberal elites. The irony is that conservatives became anti-establishment in rhetoric but pro-establishment in structure. The once dominant now feel dominated and they have turned this resentment into a political identity. What ties together aristocrats, racists, patriarchs, and plutocrats is that they all experience equality as an affront.

Robin argues that Trumpism doesn’t break from the conservative tradition but instead, fulfills it. He sees Trump as the culmination of the populist, anti-egalitarian energy that has always defined the right. He is flamboyant, anti-intellectual, emotional, and devoted to the restoration of lost hierarchies. Liberal commentators misread Trump as a departure from true conservatism, when in fact, Trump expresses its essence.