A correspondent recently informed me of Arthur Versluis’ article, “Antimodernism” (Telos, no. 137, winter 2006, pp. 96-130). This passage is particularly relevant to what we do here: (pp. 122-123):
“Indeed, even those who are often termed ‘leftists’ or ‘anarchists’ share a great deal with what is often termed the ‘far right,’ so much so that I think it more sensible to use the term ‘autonomist’ to describe all those antimodernists, of both the putative left and the putative right, who oppose the centralization, mechanization, bureaucratization, and technologization of life. It is hardly an accident that major anarchist figures like Peter Lamborn Wilson (under his pseudonym Hakim Bey), Bob Black, John Zerzan, and David Watson all seek to affirm individual and local autonomy in the face of what Watson, following Mumford, terms the ‘megamachine’ of technological society. Wilson’s ‘temporary autonomous zones’ (his name for areas or spheres that can be temporarily free from centralized authority) itself reminds us rather strongly of traditional conservative insistence throughout the twentieth century on local and regional autonomy, and even, in a more distant way, of ‘state’s rights’ based upon an extension of the same principle. Without a doubt, late twentieth-century anarchism belonged to the autonomist end of the political spectrum.
“While obviously these various groups and individuals represent a broad spectrum of views (and do not agree with one another on questions like the centrality of religion for human life), when it comes to antimodernism, the themes of their works are very much in harmony. For this reason, Alain de Benoist in particular and much of the European New Right in general explicitly seek a ‘red-black’ or ‘green-conservative’ alliance to cut across political boundaries that are often claimed to be impermeable, but that in fact are not only artificial but also misleading and even illusory. Benoist is quite right in this regard: there really is a fundamental area of unanimity that the theme of antimodernism reveals, and that area of unanimity joins together what once was called ‘left’ and ‘right.’ It is hardly a coincidence that the antimodernism of Noam Chomsky, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Alain Joxe, and many others is at least partially in harmony with the antimodernism of Patrick Buchanan, Alain de Benoist, and even to some extent that new Rasputin, Alexander Dugin. They all, from various perspectives, share a profound distrust of American imperialism, of the corporatization and bureaucratization of modern life, and of the superficiality of what is often termed the ‘consumerist’ society of the spectacle, of ‘entertainment.’ ” (pp. 122-123)
