Neoreactionary

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A person who opposes progressive political change and advocates restoring traditional authority, hierarchy, and pre-modern social organization
2. An adherent of a modern reactionary ideology that rejects egalitarianism and seeks to revive hierarchical systems of governance and social order
3. Someone who promotes a return to authoritarian or aristocratic forms of society while rejecting contemporary democratic and liberal principles

Etymology: The contemporary sense of this word was launched by an economist's blog post. In July 2010, Arnold Kling published a piece titled "The Neo-Reactionaries" on EconLog, the blog of the Library of Economics and Liberty, and the label stuck to a loose online movement of writers who questioned democracy and the Enlightenment-era ideals behind it. The term had no such meaning before that post. The construction itself is transparent. It joins the prefix "neo-", meaning "new", to "reactionary", a word that has long described someone who opposes political change and wants to restore an older order. Put together, the compound names a new form of that old resistance rather than a fresh ideology with its own name.

Synonyms: reactionary, conservative, traditionalist

Antonyms: progressive, liberal