Reactionair — Honey Pot and the definition of ‘the right’

By Vrederijk. 28 October 2021.

Farewell to an outdated concept

Yesterday I watched the latest film by the art collective KIRAC, Honey Pot. It is a film of a joint conceptual art initiative with Jini van Rooijen, a 22-year-old UvA student with an OnlyFans porn channel. The purpose of the initiative, as Jini herself explained on camera [1], is to have sex with a ‘right-wing’ person to close ‘the gap’ between left and right.

The initiative was promoted by GeenStijl in June: commenters and right-wing young men were invited to sign up to have sex with Jini on camera. Up to that point, I did not feel addressed as part of the ‘target audience’. GeenStijl is a weblog populated by middle-aged liberal men who see themselves as young, right-wing and politically incorrect. That is not me. I would never have sex with someone on camera myself, and I also try not to consume porn. That changed, however, when it emerged that Sid Lukkassen had signed up for the initiative and been selected. Lukkassen is tangentially involved with Forum for Democracy, the party I have voted for for years and which, I thought, was closest to reactionary thinking. The idea that someone described — even if incorrectly — as the party ideologue of a party in which I have placed my hopes [2] would voluntarily participate in a filmed sexual encounter with an online prostitute — let me avoid calling it porn for Stefan Ruitenbeek’s sake — compelled me to watch the film after all, and now to say something about it.

The catch-all concept of the right

The democratically moderated online encyclopaedia Wikipedia says of the definition of the right: ‘[…] the right stands primarily for conservative values, for example in ethical or religious matters.’ [3] I recognise this definition from the people around me too: ‘right-wing’ is understood as conservative, meaning protective of sociocultural values, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, in favour of harsh punishments, and so forth. You are undoubtedly familiar with it.

If we consult public opinion through blogs such as Joop and GeenStijl and prominent Twitter users, the concept ‘right-wing’ encompasses numerous characteristics with little internal coherence, and which frequently clash. ‘The right’ is conservative, but also liberal. ‘The right’ supports preserving tradition, but also opposes institutionalised religion. ‘The right’ supports Gay Pride, but opposes woke nonsense. ‘The right’ supports the free market, but the right-wing Nazis were socialists. Dividing the spectrum from right to left along economic and sociocultural axes sometimes clarifies matters, but also complicates them further. Through the catch-all term ‘right-wing’, I, as a reactionary, am associated with a Sid Lukkassen whose participation in a sex film runs counter to a reactionary outlook.

Reactionaries and the rest of ‘the right’

I welcomed Thierry Baudet’s recent statement that he ‘no longer feels connected to the anti-Islam right’. [4] With that statement, Baudet distinguishes between what he called ‘the anti-Islam right’ and another part of ‘the right’, which he leaves undefined. With the release of Honey Pot and the association of ‘the right’ with participation in a sex film, I believe a clearer distinction between the various parts of ‘the right’ has become more necessary.

When I think about these distinctions, a few qualifications arise:

It is impossible to provide a set of definitions of political or metapolitical ideologies in which every person recognises themselves completely and without reservation.

If we do not use the definitions too specifically, that is not a problem: people can identify to a greater or lesser extent with a broad ideological current while leaving room for nuanced positions on individual points. Definitions can always be further qualified: national-conservative, social-liberal, and so on.

Because the catch-all concept ‘right-wing’ is unusable, we MUST abandon it and stop using it. It obscures everyone’s aims and frequently provides opponents with ammunition for misrepresentation through guilt by association.

Which terms, then, can we use when we want to identify or characterise people and ideologies in public debate? As previously argued on this website, the major ideological distinction is based on the difference between a materialist and a meta-materialist or metaphysical worldview. Without going into too much depth here, a materialist worldview prioritises a material, empirical, measurable approach, while a metaphysical worldview prioritises a more holistic, spiritual understanding of the world. It is important to note that a materialist worldview does not mean there is no room whatsoever for some form of spirituality. Materialists of all kinds regularly attribute a certain spirituality or religiosity to themselves. It does mean, however, that the material and the measurable always take precedence and are decisive in materialist thought and the decisions arising from it. Likewise, the above does not mean that an ideology based on a metaphysical worldview leaves no room for measurable science, but that the spiritual, overarching interest takes precedence and is decisive.

In our present political constellation, reactionaries and the religiously orthodox are really the only heirs to the metaphysical tradition. These groups therefore overlap considerably, and the distinction between them may be possible only on the basis of the extent to which a specific religiosity defines their political approach. All other contemporary ideologies are fundamentally materialist according to the definition above: liberals, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, socialists, and so on.

For distinctions within what has so far been called ‘the right’, this means we should really speak of materialists and non-materialists, but I suspect that definition will win little applause. Perhaps, then, the best — or least bad — approach is to go one level lower in our definitions and use the existing ideological labels instead of ‘right-wing’, while remembering that the differences between some of these labels are much smaller than they are made out to be: they are variants based on a materialist worldview.

All liberals

What does this mean in concrete terms? In my view, Sid Lukkassen is simply a liberal. I have read very little of his work, but his proposal for a ‘humanist-realist’ pillar [5], and his voluntary sex on camera, lead me to conclude that the liberal outlook is primary in his thinking. He presumably also holds nationalist or patriotic ideas, but waxing enthusiastic about humanism and fucking on camera is very liberal indeed. GeenStijl is a liberal weblog too. Of course, they think the very latest woke trends are nonsense, but they liked all the pre-2019 woke ideas, which were then called progressivism. Annabel Nanninga and JA21 are liberals too.

This will undoubtedly mean that, in our conversations and debates, we use the label ‘liberal’ very often, whether or not accompanied by qualifications such as ‘nationalist’, ‘neo’, ‘conservative’, ‘social’ or ‘boomer’. Although this may initially feel strange, and may not be appreciated by people on the materialist right, it does greater justice to the truth. Much greater justice, at any rate, than the shared label ‘right-wing’.

[1] GeenStijl, ‘22-year-old UvA girl really wants sex with commenters — seriously, and NSFW’.

[2] Joop, ‘FVD ideologue dreams of violence against dissenters’.

[3] Wikipedia, ‘Right-wing politics’.

[4] Het Forum, ‘Sietske Bergsma on HET FORUM! What is the price of freedom?’

[5] De Dagelijkse Standaard, ‘Sid Lukkassen: On the future of conservatism, part II’.