Reaksioner berpendirian bahawa ada perlunya sesebuah masyarakat itu kembali kepada status quo ante - suatu keadaan politik masyarakat yang sebelumnya di mana ia dipercayai ada ciri tertentu (disiplin, rasa hormat kepada pihak berkuasa dan sebagainya) yang dianggap sudah lenyap daripada status quo kontemporari sesebuah masyarakat.[1]
Reaksioner politik sering ditemui pada haluan kanan sesebuah spektrum politik, namun ia juga ada pada haluan kiri spektrum yang sama.[2] Ideologi yang dibawa fahaman sebegini boleh bercirikan radikal dalam konteks ekstrimisme politik demi mewujudkan semula status quo ante masyarakat.
- ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition, (1999) m/s. 729.
- ^ Lilla, Mark "Rise of the Reactionary", accessed 10/10/2017. "For [Lilla] “reactionary” is not an insult. It is a taxonomic term. It describes an organic response to political and social revolution, and the quite sensible fear that the shared common life of a people has been wrenched out of its cherished patterns. Nor is the phenomenon limited to the ideological right. The left has reactionaries, too—including progressives in the nineteen-nineties who, Lilla wrote at the time, were convinced that Americans did not grasp the disastrous truth about the Reagan Revolution, “since if they did, they would overturn it.” But reactionaries on the right far outnumber those on the left."