"DarkReformation" on Moldbug

Moldbug is not for everyone. Indeed, he is intentionally obscure and cryptic. Furthermore, I thought, more than a few times, that he might well be pulling off sort of elaborate intellectual prank. Moldbug’s work is, nevertheless, a class A intellectual drug. Fortunately, when I first encountered him, I had developed an extremely strong constitution. My reading in philosophy, [fiction|science fiction], and the words and deeds of great men — Carlyle’s heroes (I had read Carlyle, Moldbug’s hero, on Muhammad) — had prepared me for Moldbug; plus, I just love a good bit of clear, crisp and true crime-think.
So, in a not-so-planet-sized-nut-shell, what the hell is this guy saying?
Moldbug’s main concern is preventing mass murder. He thinks that all our other problems —moral decay, inequality, forest depletion —is trivial by comparison. Democracy is an unsecure form of government. It produces uncertainty because power is unsecure (it changes hands) and uncertainty produces friction. Friction or competition can either be peaceful, but under certain conditions, it can produce organised violence, i.e. the Roman Republic of Caesar’s time; the French Revolution; Weimar and then Hitler’s Germany; Iraq, and what America and Europe is starting to look like now.
Secondly, and here Moldbug is following James Burnham, he makes a distinction between formal and real meanings of political institutions and texts. For example, a formal meaning is the stated or public meaning of a text or institution; the real meaning, however, is how the institution or person actually operates or what they really intend.
For example, Augustus Caesar was never, what most people today would imaging, Emperor. Augustus did no more, than “restore the Republic.” He observed the ancient customs, paid the Senate respect; yet he was, in reality, the absolute ruler. He had legal power, and his power was justified over the years by a slow, careful, piecemeal process. Augustus, nevertheless, had absolute power: he made all the key decisions.;that was the reality or real meaning of Augustus’s Rome. In other words, the formal meaning surrounding Augustus was not the same as the real meaning of Augustus’s power and purpose.
USG is a constitutionally limited republic. Or, now, it mostly refers to itself as a democracy. In a democracy, power rests ultimately with the people. The government is there to serve the people and execute their wishes. That is the formal meaning of America.Moldbug, AKA Curtis Yarvin, could well end up in the Parthenon (Greek alas) of great Jewish thinkers like Jesus, Paul, Maimonides, Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Ayn Rand, and, well, thinker-doers like Lenin and Trotsky. — @ImperialEnergy on MoldbugThe real meaning is different, however. Moldbug often coins new words and phrases. In the following, I will select one of his lesser known terms.
In America, as in all Western democracies, we have three groups. Firstly, we have Tribalists. Tribalists vote for…..the tribe (there are many tribes). They might vote along racial, religious or ideological lines, but it is self-interested in the sense that they want power, or have influence over policy that benefits their tribe.
The second group are Populists. Populists vote for “common sense” things like what’s good for the nation, and what’s right and proper, and what America “really” is (as they imagine it from the Constitution).
The third group are the Institutionalists. What they vote for is to continue the system; however, and this point is central: their real task in democracy is to keep the Populists from getting control of the government. The Institutionalists are believers in elite, “responsible” government. What this means is that responsibility is what the New York Times, Harvard and Hollywood considers it to be.
Power in the United States is distributed among the universities, the Press, civil service, judges, NGOs and foundations, political parties and, lastly, politicians. These groups, most notably, universities, the Press and foundations provide the intellectual justification and propaganda for the regime. Meanwhile, it is the civil service, the true (and unelected and unaccountable) government that really runs the country. This is the real meaning of power in America.
The Democrat party is the “inner party” in America. When it wins the election then everything runs “smoothly” which means the civil servants get on with running the country. If the Republican Party, the “outer party”, wins the election, then a little bit of friction exists between the civil servants and the Republicans.
The purpose of the Republican Party (and conservative intellectuals) is to act as a controlled opposition (whether they know and accept this or not) for the Democrats. The Republican Party exists to control and appease the populists, and to serve as a temporary release valve for the Democrat Party. Moldbug, once quipped that how useful it would have been for the Soviet Communist Party to have had a controlled opposition. Thus, the idea of democracy in America, and even more so in Europe, is a sham.
The next claim by Moldbug is also of central importance to his work.
Moldbug claims that the Institutionalists form an alliance with the Tribalists to beat the Populists. (This is called the “high-low” alliance.)
Thus, there is, at least, a three-way group competition for power in America (a triumvirate). The ruling powers are, of course, the Institutionalists, and the Populists have little if any power. Firstly, they are, despite their declining numbers, the majority. Furthermore, they have the guns. Finally, it is they who operate the military – which allows them simply to slow the rout, but not reverse it.
This leads us to one of Moldbug’s other key claims. USG has, not one, but two, competing governments: the Blue state and the Red state government. Red state is, essentially, the Military. Blue state is everything else, but its “global headquarters” is the State Department, its “intellectual headquarters” is Harvard University.
Like with the first Triumvirate of Rome, this system is fairly stable, though Moldbug ( his key writings are from in 2007-2009) writes that the system is starting to decay — which happened in Rome with the death of Crassus. Indeed, I am pretty sure than Moldbug said somewhere that by 2016 when Hilary is becoming President, America will only have a few more years to go.
The next major plank in Moldbug’s system is the Cathedral and its practice of Lysenkoism.
Moldbug charges the Cathedral with not only promulgating lies and propaganda but also engaging in, what is in effect, religious persecution. He calls it religious persecution, because, non-ironically, he claims that the beliefs of the modern-day progressive movement (who populate it) — from Chomsky to Obama to Charles Strossel — are memetic descendants of Protestantism — Puritan Protestantism to be exact -the Puritanism of Calvin and Cromwell. Thus, Moldbug claims that today’s progressives are today’s version of modern mainline Protestantism.
He claims that American Protestantism (especially the Eastern, Northern variety) evolved because of the separation of church and state, which caused the memes (or beliefs and values) to “mutate” in order to get into power, so as to continue their reproductive cycle (“infecting” or “enlightening” minds).
Evidently, he considers this to be a disaster.
Moldbug does not just engage in criticism, however. The man proposes an entirely new, and somewhat untested political system, he has called it, as he does with many of his key concepts, a variety of things, but I shall refer to it as Neo-Royalism.
Neo-Royalism is, in essence, a combination of two kinds of governance: an absolute monarchy, and the joint stock corporation. The purpose of a Government is to provide good customer service, by doing so it turns a profit. Thus, it has no incentives to do “stupid shit.”
How does Moldbug’s plan to get this system — which he calls the New Structure to replace the current one, which he calls the Modern Structure? In short, he plans a Restoration — regime change.
Of course, my presentation here is grossly simplified for you, the reader, to grasp the essential points.
To recap:
Moldbug is basically what you get if you cross Murray Rothbard and Thomas Carlyle; Mises with Machiavelli and Mencius (the Chinese one); Bertrand De Jouvenal with James Burnham; and, lastly, Frederick The Great with Lee Kuan Yew.
[The above is from https://darkreformation101.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/the-dark-reformation-part-1-modern-life-is-rubbish/comment-page-1/#comment-499]
Moldbug
Category:Politics