Though I shudder to mull over anything Marx said, his tragedy/farce adage is readily applicable to the juxtaposition of historical reactionary movements to contemporary neoreactionary movements espoused by those among the so-called alt-right.
Historical reaction is tragic because it was a spiritualized or at least somewhat spiritualized force that ultimately failed against the dispiritualized or at least somewhat despiritualized forces of democracy and egalitarianism. Its aim to restore society to a previous political state neglected or misunderstood the shift in consciousness fueling the new ideas and social changes that had risen up to challenge the status quo.
The only spiritual response historical reaction could offer during its intermittent victories against the despiritualizing deluge of egalitarianism, democracy, and materialism was to force a return to the external temporal authority of Church and Crown. Unbeknownst to reactionaries at the time, the spiritual solution historical reaction offered was no longer viable because human consciousness had outgrown it.
Contemporary neoreaction was a farce because it learned nothing from the tragedy of historical reaction. Consequently, its anti-egalitarian, anti-democratic stance not only failed to address the underlying spiritual causes of egalitarianism and democracy, but denied the very existence of spiritual causes altogether. Unlike historical reaction, neoreaction attempted to challenge the forces of despiritualization from a fundamentally despiritualized position.
Historical reaction was both a political and spiritual force; neoreaction was neither. Historical reaction was a deposed spiritual and political system fighting an ascendant, unspiritual political system. Neoreaction was not a system in its own right, but merely an aspect of an all encompassing anti-spiritual System challenging itself.
In this sense, neoreaction never really occupied the "right wing" the way historical reaction had because it did not abide by the primacy of the spiritual; more specifically, Christianity. This means the alt-right and other neoreactionary movements were not truly "right" in the traditional sense, but was merely among the "least left".
Historical reaction was a curious blend of politics, religion, and science; the alt-right was purely political science. Moreover, from the perspective of political science, contemporary neoreaction was all theory and no practice. Since neoreaction refused to base its movement on religious principles, it never looked for an opportunity to transcend the System, but contented itself with dreaming about reorganizing the politics and "stuff" of the System.
The successful global totalitarian coup of 2020 has rendered moot whatever legitimacy neoreactionaries claimed to hold.
All politics is now officially left; all systems, even those that pretend to oppose the System, are now mostly or firmly within the System's grip.
As a result, "reacting" to the System has become pointless. Most reaction today amounts to little more than objecting to "leftist" stupidity and outrage in much the same way a person's lower leg "reacts" to the impact of a reflex hammer at a doctor's office.
Reaction, in whatever form, is now dead. Reaction is dead because it lost its connection to Creation - without this connection, reaction can provide no meaningful way forward.
Historical reaction's answer to despiritualization was a fundamentally good but otherwise outmoded form of Christianity. Human consciousness had moved into adolescence; the only spiritual solution historical reaction could conjure is the attempt to force this adolescent consciousness back toward the Church and Crown of spiritual childhood.
Neoreaction, on the other hand, attempted to challenge an anti-spiritual status quo from an essentially un-spiritual and often anti-spiritual position.
Historical reaction offered the wrong solution to the problem of despiritualization, while neoreaction offered no solution at all.
The only meaningful and viable way forward is authentic respiritualization, but this does not entail the building of a respiritualized system to take on the System (an impossible undertaking at this time); nor does it entail any attempt to respiritualize the existing System itself. The respiritualization we need now must occur outwith the System and must not "evolve" to become a system.
Our task is to take the impetus behind Reaction and invest it into Creation.
It starts with taking the "c" within Reaction from its current spot in the word and placing it before the "r", and continues from the knowledge that any meaningful way forward must pursue the primacy of Christianity in a positive rather than negative manner.
Hence, we must learn to become creation-ary rather than reactionary.
Foremost, this means aligning ourselves with and being in harmony with God and Creation.
Once we have done this, we must remember that the task ahead does not involve building a new system to challenge the existing System or attempting to reform the System from within. Instead, it involves creating new spiritual elements from within ourselves outside of and beyond the System.
Our task is to create a new spiritual element that will inch us closer to spiritual adulthood.
We need to "create" the kind of spiritual element historical reaction should have but could not supply; the kind of spiritual element neoreaction did not acknowledge, let alone attempt to comprehend.
Creation is neither tragedy nor farce; it marks a new spiritual beginning.