The Reign Of The Reactionaries: The Know-Nothing Century - How The Great Unlearning Aims to End ‘Society’

Cosimo’s Secret Guardaroba is where the future is plotted, one whispered dispatch at a time.

Prologue: Bonfire Of The Brightest

For centuries, the Western intellectual tradition has revolved around one revelation: society is not simply a place we inhabit—it is a contract we enact. It was John Locke (1632–1704) who first lit the flame by insisting that individuals, in pursuit of life, liberty, and property, must bind themselves to a shared set of laws, protections, and responsibilities. Montesquieu (1689-1755) constructed the scaffolding of the separate powers. Then, in the United States, it was Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in The Federalist Papers who argued for its codification in the form of the U.S. Constitution adopted on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to approve it. From Florence to Philadelphia, the Enlightenment redefined freedom not as escape, but as participation.

This concept—that we rise together or fall in fragments—is no longer debated. It is being deleted. Not trimmed, but torched. Not reshaped, but reversed. Institutions are now “indoctrination centers.” Expertise is “elitism.” Solidarity is “submission.”

The far-right reactionaries used to believe in reversing time. Bringing back the old. U-turning the course of history. It was an argument. It had some underpinnings. However, now, a new breed of reactionary has evolved, or shall we more appropriately say: devolved: does not wish to govern society at all. It wishes to unmake it.

I’m calling it Cultural-Arson-ism instead of Conservatism.

What once passed as a fight over the size of government has mutated into an open rejection of its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the new GOP is a party not of policy, but of performance—where sabotage is virtue, and knowledge is heresy.

And this isn’t only theory. It’s praxis. In America, agency heads are appointed for their willingness to dismantle the very systems they command. In the UK, climate offices are shuttered. In Brazil, indigenous research is defunded. Across the West, statecraft has become stagecraft.

Once, the Right sought to rewind history or at least yell: “stop!” to paraphrase William F. Buckley, Jr. Now, it seeks to cancel it.

To reinforce, all this new reactionism comes from the alleged heirs of conservatism. Yet, nothing is conservative about it. Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the intellectual founder of conservative, said:

“Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

This bears no resembles to the new movement that has engulfed the right.

Once, it was books. Bundled by the armful, flung into the flames, licked by the tongues of zealotry. Mirrors, musical instruments, paintings—objects of beauty and knowledge deemed too dangerous for the soul. Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence was a warning from history: when the forces of regression gain power, the brilliant pay the price.

But in 2025, the bonfire has metastasized. It bans books still, for certain. But now, it burns budgets, journal articles, neural networks, independence institutions, and the public welfare. Today’s torches are digital, their flames algorithmic, their fuel the fury of manufactured grievance and casual cruelty.

The forces on the extreme right claim America is collapsing. America is being collapsed—strategically, theatrically, vindictively. The MAGA movement is not merely anti-liberal, it is anti-logic. Its target is not only the left, but the luminous. It seeks to unmake not merely the state, but the Enlightenment.

Calling it a culture war would be to belie its actual more sinister purpose: it is a knowledge war.

The Renaissance began when courageous minds defied the darkness. When The Medici backed astronomers, not astrologers. When Florence funded anatomists, not arsonists. When power meant patronage, not performative pettiness.

Today, that legacy is being undone by a movement that mistakes its own ignorance for integrity. A movement that punishes the pursuit of truth. That defunds the discoverers. That jails the referees of reality.

And the world suffers. The original quote was: “when France sneezes the whole of Europe catches a cold”. It was said by an Austrian Chancellor, Prince Klemens von Metternich, one of the architects of balance of power. It was adapted for the United States as a use case in later centuries. Now, the U.S. is in full metabolic meltdown and the world may go with it.

For when the greatest generator of global talent, funding, and coordination decides that truth is negotiable and reason is elitist: plagues fester, planets warm, and possibilities shrink.

This is the bonfire of the brightest.

And if we do not reboot the republic—not as a solitary state, but as a global system—we will lose artists, engineers, and alchemists of modernity to be sure. But we will also, more importantly, lose the very idea that civilization can be improved.

The New Heretics: Scientists, Systems, And The Search For Truth

In the 17th century, Galileo dared to claim the Earth orbited the sun. In this Know-Nothing Century, Dr. Katalin Karikó dares to defend mRNA, and Dr. Fauci dared to say masks work. Different centuries. Same heresy: observable fact.

Once upon a time, the Church labeled truth as treason. Now, it’s Congress. This is not debate. It is inquisition. And it is spreading like mold across the edifice of modern science.

On May 22^nd in The Economist’s “MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm”, they highlighted:

“The attacks have been fast and furious. In a matter of months the Trump administration has cancelled thousands of research grants and withheld billions of dollars from scientists. Projects at Harvard and Columbia, among the world’s best universities, have been abruptly cut off. A proposed budget measure would slash as much as 50% from America’s main research-funding bodies.”

MAGA’s new war isn’t with Democrats—it’s with data. In gutting research budgets, firing scientists, and politicizing health agencies, the Trump administration isn’t saving money, it’s upending the foundations of American power. Again, it is a warning that this a central act of playing for de-civilizational keeps, crippling innovation while rivals like China surge forward. MAGA is amputating the brain while shouting it’s trimming the fat. Actually, the brain is composed of about 60% fat…never mind.

With senior virologists in the U.S. having been fired, left, or refusing to speak out publicly: citing threats, smear campaigns, or state-level retaliation, the intimidation is chilling. We are seeing a massive drop in academic F-1 visa renewals. And for climate and public health researchers, its even higher. This is not brain drain. It is brain eviction.

Now, nearly140,000 visas were to nationals from the 19 countries targeted in the president's travel ban in fiscal year 2023. The vast majority are for business and tourism, yes, but more than 10,000 are those F1 visas that are so critically and justifiably prized.

Public health agencies are bleeding staff. CDC oversight is muzzled. NIH grants are now filtered through political purity tests. Lab closures are on the horizon. And science itself is reclassified—no longer public good, but partisan weapon.

The new MAGA litmus test? Not replicability. Not rigor. But resonance—with rage. If your data contradicts dogma, you’re denounced. If your discipline doesn’t serve the narrative, you’re defunded. If your research helps the planet, you’re a globalist. If your findings defend the truth, you’re accused of bias.

Florence knew better. When others silenced dissent, The Medici funded discovery. Lorenzo patronized Marsilio Ficino, translator of Plato. Cosimo commissioned anatomical studies. They weren’t afraid of the future. They built toward it. What would the Medici see now?

Epidemiologists chased offline. Engineers targeted in hearings. Climate scientists publicly smeared by senators who wouldn’t recognize a bar graph if it bit them.

The Renaissance once asked: Can we go to the stars? Now America asks: Can we go back to the 1950s?

We’re back to witch trials. And speaking of…Boston.

Boston—the brain of America—is under ideological siege. MAGA’s war on elite institutions now targets MIT and Harvard, not with better ideas, but with budget cuts and cultural cudgels. We see the regime sabotaging research in what the Economist calls “America’s Most Innovative Place” Hubs like Kendall Square, the Seaport District, and Cambridge writ-large, the U.S. risks kneecapping its own innovation engine while competitors like South Korea and Germany poach the talent. It’s global abdication. America’s intellectual crown jewel is being pawned off for a press conference of Puritans.

Since The Trump regime thinks history doesn’t matter or it can break it, let’s not tell them what happened the last time an imperious authoritarian figure messed with Boston. It’ll be a surprise. They’ll love it.

Let us be clear: when America chooses to treat discovery as danger, and data as dissent, it does not merely fall behind. It forfeits the future.