Reactionary Governmentality: Nature, Society and the Apocalypse

Apocalypticism is a core mechanism in New Right governmentality. This article examines how the threat of complete collapse informs New Right understanding of the present crisis, how it might be avoided, or accelerated towards, and what lies thereafter. We show how their conceptualisations of imminent collapse and post-apocalyptic reconstruction shape their ambitions to change how bodies, minds, society and international relations are governed. Apocalypticism bridges contradictions between neoliberal and bio-culturalist strands of the New Right by deferring contemporary issues, discourses, voters – and failure to deliver on promises – to the imminent threat of collapse caused by liberalism. Analysing New Right visions of the collapse and post-apocalyptic reconstruction reveals the core goal of New Right governmentality: birth-determined inequality. This informs a governmental apparatus based on institutionalising birth-cultural competitive and violent advantage, which is envisioned to achieve the telos of birth-determined hierarchies as the basis of government and society.