@Spaghetto
I had something insightful but accidentally refreshed the page and lost it, so I'll summarize.
I hate when that happens. I've started writing in paragraphs to avoid having everything I've been writing disappear.
"Reactionary" is loaded with negative connotations, but there's also not much in the way of good alternative terms; the best I can think of is "traditionalist", which is less hostile but also not a perfect fit.
The problem for me is that a "traditionalist" is someone who likes their food or drinks a certain way, it doesn't even mean anything political. At the furthest stretching of the term, it might mean a hobbyiste.
"Traditionalist" in a political sense somehow means even less than "Reactionary". Still, it might be better than "conservative" since that word has become overstretched from overuse.
Ultimately the thing to recognize is that the words we use to describe politics are inherently incomplete and inaccurate; there is no strict delineation between what makes someone a "conservative", a "reactionary", a "progressive", or anything else, only sets of common traits that aren't mutually exclusive. This isn't exclusive to these broad terms, but with them it is the most evident.
This paragraph saves me some time in having to write this for myself. That's not even getting into the issue of political tribalism, where someone supports a policy they wouldn't otherwise, because their party or "tribe" is doing it.
Despite "reactionary" and "progressive" being antonyms, the people generally categorized under those broad tents have a peculiar tendency to believe similar things for different reasons; the two simplest examples are how they both oppose equality and support racial segregation.
Funny thing is, neither of those terms should necessarily have to have anything to do with supremacist movements. To simplify they're supposed to mean "going forward" and "going back", right? It's the same sentiment that the present is bad. To use examples of things that were mentioned here:
1) When I worry about theocracies, is that progressive or reactionary in the pure sense of the terms (I'm reacting to the action of the religious, I didn't care as much about them before that)? I would like to continue to have republics which strive to be secular, that's normally considered progressive, I guess.
2) Your concern for boys in school could be reactionary or progressive, it depends on whether you blame an unjust system that needs to change, or a group forcing a change that worsens things. Or do either of those things even have anything to do with it?
To give examples of the past:
1) The Roman Empire after Caracella was an empire which opened citizenship to everyone it ruled over, a concept that nations had trouble implementing for over a thousand years later. It's one reason Greeks, Germans, Turks, Russians, French, Spanish and even Italians would be claiming to be Rome's successor for centuries later (The Greeks had the better claim, and Fascist Italy had one of the worst despite having Rome). Yet, it was also a state that enslaved many. That's not counting the other ways Rome was both more advanced socially than their medieval counterparts, but also more backwards. The past is complex.
2) The dark side of this is take ISIS, they wanted a past caliphate, but even Medieval Era Muslims had multiple more virtues than them. An accusation against "reactionaries" is that their idealized past is a bastardize piece of imagination, the same way that people who idealize Knights and Samurais forget that King Arthur is a myth and that Samurais loved guns.
The issue is what exactly do is meant by past or future? I already have examples of the past, but visions of a golden tomorrow tends to attract utopistes and megalomaniacs of all stripes. Still, we consider a society more "advanced" if it doesn't engage in chattel slavery, murder indiscriminately, destroy cultural artifacts, commit genocide or repress their women, consider the US and ISIS.
I don't think anyone will disagree with me on this, that these states are not equal to each other? I hope people prefer the US or any other "Western Democracy" over ISIS? There's at least a baseline, even if it's arbitrary.