PART II
The Counter-Revolution
CHAPTER I
One of the many protests against the Drag Queen Story Hour, throughout the United States.
1. The Counter-Revolution: A Specific and Direct Fight Against the Revolution
If such is the Revolution, what is the Counter-Revolution? In the literal sense of the word — therefore stripped of the illegitimate and demagogic connotations given it in everyday language — the Counter-Revolution is a reaction. That is to say, it is an action directed against another action. It is to the Revolution what, for example, the Counter-Reformation is to the Pseudo-Reformation.
2. The Nobility of This Reaction
The Counter-Revolution derives its nobility and importance from this character of reaction. Indeed, if the Revolution is killing us, nothing is more indispensable than a reaction that aims to crush it. To be adverse in principle to a counter-revolutionary reaction is the same as desiring to deliver the world over to the Revolution’s dominion.
A TFP Student Action campaign at George Washington University.
3. A Reaction Turned Against Present-Day Adversaries
It must be added that the Counter-Revolution, in this light, is not and cannot be a movement in the clouds, one that fights phantoms. It has to be the Counter-Revolution of the twentieth century, waged against the Revolution as it is in fact today. Therefore, it has to be waged against the revolutionary passions as they are inflamed today, revolutionary ideas as formulated today, revolutionary ambiences as seen today, revolutionary art and culture as they are today, and against the individuals and currents of opinion that, at whatever level, are the most active promoters of the Revolution today. The Counter-Revolution is not, then, a mere recitation of the evil deeds of the Revolution in the past, but an effort to bar its course in the present.
Fr. James Martin Protest at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.
4. The Modernity and Integrity of the Counter-Revolution
The modernity of the Counter-Revolution does not consist in ignoring the Revolution nor in making a pact with it, even in the slightest degree. To the contrary, it consists in knowing the Revolution in its unchanging essence and in its relevant contemporary accidents, and combating the former and the latter intelligently, astutely, and systematically, using every licit means and the assistance of every child of light.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution(York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Part II, Ch. I, pp. 73-74. rcr-p2-chap1
