Official Statement on the Leadership of NRx

The time comes early in the life of any serious endeavor for it to gather itself into a coherent form, grow legs, and leave the primordial tidepool. Neoreaction has successfully navigated multiple such evolutionary moments so far, and we make this statement because we have reached another.

It’s become clear over the past year (mid 2014 to mid 2015) that “Neoreaction” is suffering a tragedy of the commons and lack of formal structure. Because no one has formally owned the #NRx brand, there have been a lot of territorial skirmishes, confusion about who’s in, who’s out, and who’s in charge, disruption of the interesting theoretical work, and bad behaviour lasting months or years that wouldn’t last days in a serious organization.

A few of us have been working behind the scenes through this time to put out fires and build new institutions as required to mitigate these problems and keep alive the flame of neoreactionary inquiry into the workings of human society. These efforts were always just contributory and offered to NRx without pretence of authority, but we’ve reached the conclusion that further progress without formal leadership and organizational structure is impossible.

Therefore we are formalizing our stewardship of Neoreaction under the organizational umbrella of the Hestia Society for Social Studies.

The Hestia leadership team itself now consists of Henry Dampier, Hadley Bennett,  Anton Silensky and Warg Franklin. This represents both Hestia and Social Matter, and the Rationalist branch of NRx formerly based at MoreRight, now at The Future Primaeval.

As for what this new leadership structure will actually do, our ambition is to essentially act as gardeners; pruning things around the edges, removing pests, building and maintaining key infrastructure, coordinating projects, defining behavioural standards, coordinating funding, and so on, but otherwise letting this thing carry on organically. We don’t intend to interfere directly in matters of theory; our job is to ensure that the spirit of free inquiry that makes Neoreaction so exciting will be nourished and protected.

Our first order of business is to start to officially recognize key people who have helped us get this far and who hold significant public positions in NRx. There are many more not mentioned here, but these people deserve specific public recognition: The Hestia Official Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, not everyone has been helpful, and we also need to make official statements condemning certain people who have been persistent problems or have attempted to invoke or speak for the NRx brand without our blessing: The Hestia Official Black List.

Sincerely,

The Hestia Team