Neoreactionary movement

The neoreactionary movement (a.k.a. neoreaction, NRx, the Dark Enlightenment) is a loosely-defined cluster of Internet-based political thinkers who wish to return society to forms of government older than liberal democracy. They generally present their views as a revival of the traditions of Western civilization. Unlike ordinary reactionaries who nostalgically view the past as the good old days, neoreactionaries are futurists who are more critical of the past; for example, by rejecting the ideals of the Enlightenment while supporting a type of neo-feudalistic view of what society should be (libertarianism ruled by authoritarianism)."Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction" by Joshua Tait (2019) In: Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy, edited by Mark Sedgwick. Oxford University Press. . Pages 187-203. Along with rejecting the Enlightenment's ideals, the movement is antihumanist and nihilistic.
Many in the current wave of neoreactionaries are former libertarians who had concluded that freedom and the free market were fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy. Curtis Guy Yarvin (more commonly known by his pen name Mencius Moldbug), generally considered the founder of the current movement, describes his own journey as "from Mises to Carlyle" via Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an anarcho-capitalist who pushed feudalism as his desired end-state.From Mises to Carlyle: my sick journey to the dark side of the force by Mencius Moldbug (4 February 2010) Unqualified Reservations. It is an ideal belief system for soi-disant libertarians who realize that, regardless of the principles of freedom being the ostensible foundation of their ideology, they are unwilling to tolerate others' enjoyment of freedom.When Libertarians Make Me Want to Go Full Social Justice Warrior by Chris Hallquistn (February 1, 2014) Patheos (archived from March 12, 2014).
Neoreactionaries are the latest in a long line of intellectuals who somehow think their chosen authoritarian thugs wouldn't put them up against the wall. Possibly they hope to use the sheer volume of words as a bulletproof shield"the words are a bulletproof shield against insincere dabblers" by Mike Anissimov (8:51 AM - 24 May 2014) Twitter (archived from 27 May 2014 14:21:17 UTC). or consider themselves too competent, virtuous, and useful to end up one of the serfs.
It would all seem to be bullshit, though, because of what Joshua Tait calls "important tensions" within the ideology (specifically in Moldbug's writings), which could just as easily be ascribed to intellectual dishonesty from pushing unresolvably discordant ideas: futuristic libertarianism with monarchy/feudalism, and social liberalism on many issues but nonetheless antiprogressive.
The movement was once largely insignificant and mostly an object of curiosity. It has attracted some of the pseudo-intellectual pseudostatistics quoting variety of racists. It has helped serve as an ideological foundation for parts of the alt-right, although members of that group typically shun the practice of reading. 
More recently, Yarvin has been credited with informing the worldview of US Vice President J. D. Vance.The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview by Ian Ward (07/18/2024) Politico. Vance was a close associate of Peter Thiel, having worked for Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management as a "vulture capitalist" early in his career.J.D. Vance’s journey from San Francisco ‘Never Trumper’ to VP pick by Joe Garofoli & Shira Stein (July 15, 2024) San Francisco Chronicle. Thiel has also funded Moldbug at one point, and remains closely associated with Thiel as the "house political philosopher".Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets: They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics. by James Pogue (April 20, 2022) Vanity Fair.
==History==
Mencius Moldbug (who by day is software engineer Curtis Yarvin) of the prolix Unqualified ReservationsUnqualified Reservations is generally considered the founder of neoreaction as we know it. He started as a commenter on the right-wing blog 2Blowhards, and his first Unqualified Reservations post, "A formalist manifesto", was originally a guest post there.The Mencius Vision (22 April 2007) 2blowhards.com.
The subculture started amongst the San Francisco Bay Area technolibertarian subculture, particularly including the transhumanists — Moldbug commented extensively on Overcoming Bias, the predecessor of LessWrong; Michael Anissimov worked at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (now MIRI), which runs LessWrong; and for a long time, LessWrong was the only place you'd see these ideas unless you tripped over a neoreactionary blog.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, the founder of LessWrong, explicitly repudiated neoreaction,Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] (16 November 2012) LessWrong. citing Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ,The Anti-Reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander (20 October 2013) Slate Star Codex. and has continued to emphasize that he wants nothing to do with these people.217 notes by Eliezer Yudkowsy (8 April 2016) Tumblr. The neoreactionaries took umbrage at this and left, many to the comments on Scott's blog. However, even as their ideas are of no importance to Yudkowsky's, his ideas remain important to the formation of theirs.
 an evil Nietzschean British philosopher who blogs at Outside In,Outside In coined the term "Dark Enlightenment". He was the co-founder of the "Cybernetic Culture Research Unit", a genuinely fascinating "rogue unit" at Warwick University whose concerns primarily revolved around pounding techno and shedloads of pills;Renegade Academia: The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit by Simon Reynolds (November 3, 2009) Energy Flash. after a particularly horrible bout of amphetamine psychosis, he took a hard rightward turn and wrote the essay "The Dark Enlightenment." He later resigned from Warwick University after suspicions arose that he was dealing cannabis to students.Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in by Andy Beckett (11 May 2017 00.30 EDT) The Guardian. He is an apostle of accelerationism, a movement that, in his view, seeks the "indefinite acceleration of capitalism".Nick Land: On Williams and Srnicek #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics by S. C. Hickman (Feb. 15, 2014) Dark Ecologies (archived from February 17, 2014). He was an affiliate of The New Centre for Research and Practice,People The New Centre for Research and Practice (archived from December 27, 2014). until he was fired for disparaging comments about Muslims and immigrants. The organization said, "We decided to stop working with him because we believe we should all preserve our energies for fighting right-wing, white nationalist, alt-right ideologies and philosophies and their political consequences in actual life. We hope you will join us in this spirit."The New Centre, Statement on Nick Land, Facebook, Mar. 29, 2017
Other significant participants include Michael Anissimov of More Right.More Right (archived copies). Vox Day was happy to be considered part of this movement in 2013,Neoreactionary space by Vox Day (April 27, 2013) Vox Populi (archived from July 31, 2014). though he ridiculed the term "dark enlightenment" as media hype in 2014.The phony Dark Enlightenment by Vox Day (January 26, 2014) Vox Populi (archived from May 21, 2017).
The term "neo-reactionary" (with a hyphen) was used in passing by Moldbug in 2008,OL3: the Jacobite history of the world by Mencius Moldbug (May 1, 2008) Unqualified Reservations.OLX: a simple sovereign bankruptcy procedure by Mencius Moldbug (June 19, 2008) Unqualified Reservations. but was first used as a name for the movement as a whole by libertarian blogger Arnold Kling in July 2010.The Neo-Reactionaries by Arnold Kling (Jul 18 2010) EconLog.A formalist manifesto by Mencius Moldbug (April 23, 2007) Unqualified Reservations (archived from April 27, 2021). Kling's usage was quickly adopted by the subculture.
The movement came to the world's attention (outside the Bay Area and LessWrong) courtesy of a November 2013 TechCrunch article, "Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries".Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries by Klint Finley (9:00 PM PST • November 22, 2013) TechCrunch. Corey Pein suggests in The Baffler that neoreaction is an outgrowth of Silicon Valley techno-libertarianism, citing statements by Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman, and Balaji Srinivasan that reflect neoreactionary ideas without using neoreactionary terminology;Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich by Corey Pein (19 May 2014) The Baffler. he concludes that neoreactionaries, and Silicon Valley libertarians in general, are overgrown manchildren with a crippling lack of self-awareness. Matthew Walther, at The American Spectator, finds them "silly but not scary", a "harmless product of the Age of Twitter", and prescribes alcohol, football, and P. G. Wodehouse.The Dark Enlightenment is Silly, Not Scary by Matthew Walther (Jan. 21, 2014) The American Spectator. Presumably he means real, American, gridiron football; soccer would only make them worse.
(The term "neo-reactionary" was also used by George Orwell in 1943As I Please by George Orwell (24 December 1943) Tribune. to refer to conservatives who felt that human nature was not perfectible and that any societal changes were not worth pursuing.)
==Forerunners==
===Early===
An early forerunner of neoreaction was the effort of ideologues in the southern United States in the 1850s to justify slavery. This was later tagged the "reactionary enlightenment":Political Thought in America: Conversations and Debates by Philip Abbott (2009) Waveland Press, 4th ed. .
Many neoreactionary positions — including the technophilic transhumanist crossover — are anticipated in the from 1908, particularly:
Anissimov is a big fanJulius Evola Sequence by Michael Anissimov (February 15, 2014) More Right (archived from 22 May 2015 12:34:41 UTC). of Italian 20th-century neo-fascist philosopher Julius Evola.
According to Jeffrey Herf, "reactionary modernism" in the Weimar era was a similar movement, which he called a "technological romanticism"; its key feature was "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy".Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich by Jeffrey Herf (1984) Cambridge University Press. . This reactionary modernism enthusiastically endorsed technological ideas from telecommunications to eugenics while expressing disdain for democratic ideas and looking for a return to a rigid social order.
In France, after the Dreyfus affair, taking inspiration from thinkers and scholars such as the positivist Auguste Comte and Frédéric Le Play and basing on his strong nationalism, came to support a corporatist society (based on corporations, not businesses but groups such as provinces and guilds), where the Catholic Church would give moral guidance (Maurras was himself agnostic until the last days of his life) and whose head would be the king, basing on history, which was for him a guide for his "organising empiricism", to describe monarchy as the form of government which made France great and the Reformation and the Enlightenment as the forces responsible for weakening the country because of their insistence on the individual rather than tradition.Nationalism, Positivism and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics 1890–1914 by Michael Sutton (2002) Cambridge University Press. . From the 1890s, various Catholic thinkers had been advancing distributism, a similar but more moderate corporatist doctrine.
In opposition to these reactionary ideas, in his 1927 book The Treason of the Intellectuals, attacked those intellectuals who betrayed their intellectual vocation to become advocates of ultra-nationalism and the adversaries of intellectual liberalism; its lament that "our age is indeed the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds" foreshadows what happened in the 1930s when fascism rose up against Enlightenment values.The treason of the intellectuals & "The Undoing of Thought" by by Roger Kimball (December 1992) The New Criterion.
===Recent===
In some ways, neoreaction flows out of the a blend of countercultural ideas from the 1960s with libertarianism and The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (1995) The HRC Archive. 
In the Francophone world, the thought of also anticipates neoreaction in several particulars. Faye calls his ideas archeofuturism; this "calls for 'the re-emergence of archaic configurations' – 'pre-modern, inegalitarian, and non-humanist'" and advocates traditional spirituality and concepts of sovereignty while hoping for a technological utopia. This, by Faye's reckoning, is the only way to defeat "the American party", which he continues to identify with egalitarianism and democracy.Foreword to Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism by Michael O'Mara (2010) Countercurrents. (Faye wrote in 1999, so he had the opportunity to acquaint himself well enough with recent U.S. history to know better.) Faye also spoke at a conference hosted by the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance.
==Writing style==
The main thing neoreactionaries do is blog. One common feature of the movement is a long-winded — ridiculously long-winded — and oblique prose style, eager to show off its mastery of historical trivia; it seems more than politics at times. This is right-wing politics taken to an extreme: radical, deliberately "transgressive" posturing in obscurantist prose. The formulated utilitarian view of human life that is reflected in the writings of neoreactionaries is anticipated by sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in their text Dialectic of Enlightenment, holding that the elevation of reason over other human values tends to treat people as a means to an end, and elevates Progress to an unquestioned good.Theodor W. Adorno: 2. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Lambert Zuidervaart (2015) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments by Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno (2002) Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3632-4.
For example, Moldbug responded to Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion by writing a seven-part sequence of posts in September 2007, totaling 37,941 words, in which he conclusively proved, step by step, thread by thread, detail by detail, that Dawkins was, for all his protestations of atheism, in fact… a cultural Christian!How Dawkins got pwnd by Mencius Moldbug (c. Sep 2007) GitHub Gist. Dawkins stated the same thing in December 2007 in four words: "I'm a cultural Christian".Dawkins: I'm a cultural Christian (Last Updated: Monday, 10 December 2007, 14:43 GMT) BBC. (No doubt provoked by Moldbug's stirring rhetoric.) Moldbug's central thesis was a sort of genetic fallacy on steroids, where he thought that if he could show a modern idea descended from a particular idea hundreds of years earlier, it could be treated as substantially the same.
Moldbug's early "The magic of symmetric sovereignty" (19 May 2007)The magic of symmetric sovereignty by Mencius Moldbug (May 19, 2007) Unqualified Reservations . is short, comprehensible, and gets its point across in 1,666 words, rather than barely getting started in that much space. Its thesis is that totalitarian sovereignty would work well if it were unassailably secure. His arguments are made of handwaves and holes, but the interesting bit is the libertarian-style thinking, in which all the hard bits of politics and why humans are complicated are handwaved away because he wants so much for his reasoning to reach his desired conclusion. If something looks like an insufficiently-explained logical leap, don't assume he'll get around to properly explaining himself later. Much as per Yudkowsky's style on Overcoming Bias and LessWrong, the apparent references lead to references leading to references, and hardly ever resolve to clear and well-supported substantiation.
Despite the pretensions of being a philosopher, Moldbug is not beyond committing egregious fallacies. In a 2011 column, he committed the balance fallacy by equating Nelson Mandela with Anders Behring Breivik:Right-wing terrorism as folk activism by Mencius Moldbug (July 23, 2011) Unqualified Reservations (archived from 16 Mar 2019 01:09:48 UTC).
This is a woefully stupid statement. Breivik did not commit war; he was an 'army' of one. Here Moldbug falsely calls modern Norway communist when it is, in reality, a democratic constitutional monarchy. Moldbug also neglects to say that Apartheid South Africa was an ethnocracy that brutally oppressed the majority black population.
After early-period commenters kept calling out his ridiculous misuse of basic terms and glaring factual errors, Moldbug adopted his better-known style, in which he spends a few thousand words redefining English to make his striking theses (e.g., "America is a communist country"Technology, communism and the Brown Scare by Mencius Moldbug (13 September 2013) Unqualified Reservations.) less transparently ludicrous.
Later neoreactionaries write similarly, assuming a certain background cloud of assumptions they never quite get around to fully backing up. Actual checkable claims frequently turn out on inspection to be completely wrong (per Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ.)
==Positions==
[[File:Pol cultural Marxism conspiracy flowchart.jpg |thumb|300px|A diagram posted to 4chan /pol/ outlining the origins and effects of Cultural Marxism, i.e. the Jews did it. This was reposted with approval on neoreactionary blog More Right as "Infographic of the Cathedral", though with the bit about Jews trimmed. Curiously absent: The Beatles.]]
Hostility to modernity and democracy is the main point of agreement among neoreactionaries. Moldbug writes that:Open Letter to Progressives, pt. 3: The Jacobite history of the world by Mencius Moldbug (May 1, 2008) Unqualified Reservations (archived from April 16, 2021).
Moldbug's fondness for 'order' seems oddly timid and disconcerting in a wannabe edgelord drawn to white nationalism for its "transgressive" qualities; if order is all that important, it raises the question 'what's wrong with the order we already have?'
Land, by contrast, shows no such timidity and instead seems to wish to move ahead full tilt into realms of existential horror where humans lose their human qualities at the nexus of genetic engineering and AI interfaces.
Still, it seems that for both writers, the chief attraction of white nationalism is that it is the least polite form of politics, one of the few that retains its potency pour épater les bourgeois. That, and being massive racists.
The fondness for the deliberate transgression of social norms is difficult to reconcile with the authoritarian polities these writers profess to admire.Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays On and Around the Alt-Right by Elizabeth Sandifer (2017) Eruditorum Press, 2017.
Echoing traditional libertarian concerns, they assert that democracies are necessarily less financially stable than autocracies in general and monarchies in particular: that a king will be "fiscally responsible" because the king has a property interest in the kingdom. The ideal model would appear to have been to make Steve Jobs the king of California as if Silicon Valley were a model that could be applied to the rest of the world. The actual But so it goes.
Another common position, shared by Moldbug and Land, is hostility to empathy as a factor in political philosophy. This, too, is a reflection of their shared libertarian roots, with its reverence for property and markets as legalistic constructions and their shared preference for the airy abstraction of computer code over human relationships. A lack of, and direct hostility to, empathy is a defining characteristic of alt-right groups in general — e.g., Gamergate. The hostility to empathy is evidence of neoreactionaries' misunderstanding of Boethius, the main intermediary between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. Just as Ignatius Reilly misunderstood Boethius, so neoreactionaries and Reilly are like the fool who thought himself wise:
While the various figures in the neoreactionary scene may partake of its tropes to varying degrees, their not-entirely-consistent broad themes include:
Michael Anissimov proposes the following six tenets as the core beliefs of neoreaction:
Dalibor Rohac, a mainstream libertarian (Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute), finds the neoreactionary movement frightening based on its anti-immigration rhetoric, distrust of democracy, rejection of egalitarianism, love for dictators (Vladimir Putin in particular), and distrust of capitalism.Europe’s Neoreaction Is Scarier than You Think: European neoreaction–with which the American variety shares much of its intellectual pedigree–is patently insane, well‐​resourced, and increasingly powerful. by Dalibor Rohac (August 6, 2014) Cato Institute.
===The Cathedral===
Moldbug's idea of "the Cathedral" is a recurring theme; it is a "distributed conspiracy", one that treats feminism, democracy, and other "progressive" causes, and the general worldview of educated Westerners as the current world's version of an established church:A gentle introduction to Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug (January 8, 2009) Unqualified Reservations (archived from April 15, 2021).
Even if there's something like this that you could be persuaded to see, it's hard to imagine a proper conspiracy without conspirators. What Moldbug describes looks more like a culture: a broadly shared set of associated social values embodied in shared institutions, symbols, and practices. If you are reading this, you probably live there. This is what he's against.
===Transhumanism===
One of these ideas is not like the others. This one comes from neoreaction's links to the Bay Area transhumanist subculture. This is why neoreactionaries showed up on LessWrong.
Some neoreactionaries will attempt to reconcile transhumanism and singularitarianism with taking the rest of society back several hundred years. The case made by Anissimov, who also takes Roko's basilisk seriously,In the Mouth of Madness reply by Michael Anissimov (December 17th, 2013) Outside In. "People are being foolish by not taking the basilisk idea seriously." comes down to open, unapologetic elitism, arguing that transhumanism and the Singularity are the logical conclusions of various emerging technologies but that the "common people" are too driven by narrow-minded self-interest to use them responsibly, and that the end result of "unrestrained technological power in the hands of the masses" would be not merely the collapse of civilization but quite possibly the extinction of the human race. Therefore, a new aristocracy should be created to restrict the use of these advanced technologies to a privileged elite because they are the only ones who can be trusted to use them for the betterment of society.Reconciling Transhumanism and Neoreaction by Michael Anissimov (23 May 2013) MoreRight (archived from 14 Feb 2015 10:19:23 UTC).
Nick Land, meanwhile, comes to it from the opposite direction, seeing democracy, egalitarianism, human rights, and everything else described above as "the Cathedral" as inhibiting progress towards the Singularity. Land's journey to neoreaction came about largely after spending time living in China, during which he grew enamored of its totalitarian, technocratic system and came to see it as more efficient and dynamic than liberal democracy, praising Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew as among the great leaders of the modern age.Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world. by Zack Beauchamp (Updated Nov 18, 2019, 9:15am EST ) Vox.
Despite Yudkowsky rejecting neoreaction, MIRI's goal closely resembles the neoreactionary goal: a single sovereign Friendly artificial intelligence ruling human space for all time for the good of all.Coherent Extrapolated Volition LessWrong wiki.
In Moldbug's proposal — a world divided up into libertarian anarcho-monarchies, informed by pickup-artist patter (the world made Gor!), among many little autonomous princedoms governed by kings, aristocrats, or dictators — you may have trouble placing bets about how long the Internet would hold up. If 300 baud was good enough for Jesus Christ…
==Achievements==
The movement has a proud history of great achievements, such as lengthy blog posts, even longer blog posts, and, occasionally, tweets. (More Right used to have an ongoing series on Neoreactionary Accomplishments; parts one to six listed blogging, parts seven to ten listed blogging about hypothetical governance structures: "intellectual accomplishments are real even though stupid people don’t understand them.") They also argue amongst themselves on Tumblr. There is the occasional schism, purge, warning of entryists,A Response to (the Accusations of) Entryism (March 29, 2015) tteclod. and claim of true neoreaction.Official Statement on the Leadership of NRx 'Hestia Society (archived from 23 May 2015 19:50:44 UTC). Purge of Anissimov and claims ownership of "neoreaction".
The excessive verbiage of the movement is reminiscent of Ignatius Reilly's "dozens of Big Chief tablets", of which "Ignatius thought smugly that on their yellowed pages and wide-ruled lines were the seeds of a magnificent study in comparative history." In the case of Reilly, at least, this amounts to a kind of mental masturbation that is hard to distinguish from the physical act."Dunces and Dialogue: Ignatius J. Riley's Menippean Misreadings and Onanistic Annotations of Boethian Philosophy" by Anthony G. Cirilla (2020) In: Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, edited by Leslie Marsh. Lexington Books. ISBN 1498585477. pp. 141-158.
Some of Moldbug's proposals — unsurprisingly — sound like a computer programmer reducing people to objects who have no agency, quirks, or independent motivations, then announcing, 'I solved that intractable problem!' When next to no one is taking Moldbug seriously, it amounts to mental masturbation. A case in point is Moldbug's plan for world peace.An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives. Chapter 5: The Shortest Way to World Peace by Mencius Moldbug (May 15, 2008) Unqualifed Reservations (archived from April 27, 2001).
Elsewhere in his vast explanation of his simplistic idea, Moldbug basically announces, hey, I'm smart ("From a semiotic perspective (I didn’t go to Brown for nothing, kids)…"), and I can baffle you with my sesquipedalianism (e.g., "Empsonian edge") and Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur (e.g., "uti possidetis juris)!
==Whitewashing==
Yarvin/Moldbug has lost interest in political blogging and now fatuously claims that he was merely interested in getting people to read old books and was not doing politicsI'm Curtis Yarvin, developer of Urbit. AMA. r/IAmA (c. 2019) Reddit. — while elsewhere in the very same discussion, not disputing having written in 2007 that he'd sat down in his garage and decided to come up with a new ideology, or the question's fawning suggestion that Moldbug had "succeeded" (presumably referring to Donald Trump).
This misdirection/doublethink might have something to do with having launched a quixotic startup, Tlon, developing a system called Urbit to "compete with the internet", and his infamous views — which he has conspicuously neither taken down nor repudiatedI'm Curtis Yarvin, developer of Urbit. AMA. (c. 2019) Reddit (archived from 21 Feb 2021 07:53:18 UTC). — are hanging over his startup like a radioactive anvil of his own forging. It does not help matters for Tlon that Urbit was described in a sympathetic review as being "complicated for even the most seasoned of functional programmers",Can Urbit Reboot Computing? Urbit seeks to distill computing into its lightest and purest possible form, leaving the user in control of more processes than previously afforded. by Andrea O'Sullivan (6.21.2016 12:00 AM) Reason. indicating that after years, Urbit is not likely to even reach Linux or BitTorrent levels of popularity. In other words, Tlon appears to have been wingnut welfare for Yarvin, paid for by his broligarch buddy Peter Thiel.
Yarvin was disinvited from one technical conference in 2015 after someone brought his odious views to the organizers' attention.Curtis Yarvin submitted a talk in the Strange Loop 2015 Call for Presentations. … In 2016, after his talk proposal was accepted at the functional programming conference LambdaConf, via a blinded (i.e., anonymizing) review process, two sub-conferences canceled in protest,The Typelevel Summit in Boulder is Cancelled (Mar 24, 2016) Typelevel.Structural and Behavioral Foundations of Programming Languages PRlConf (archived from March 3, 2016). sponsors pulled out,Lambda Conf (archived from March 21, 2016). Seven sponsors listed.Lambda Conf (archived from March 26, 2016). One sponsor listed. and speakers withdrew.
However, he doesn't have much interest in keeping up the pretense for very long — in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, when asked why communist software developers were not socially shunned like him, he responded that it is not hard to see who really has power in society.I'm Curtis Yarvin, developer of Urbit. AMA. r/IAmA (c. 2019) Reddit. Yes, that's right, according to his Cathedral theory, the commies won the Cold War — due to cultural Marxism — and America is now "a communist country".How to respond to hostile media inquiries by Curtis Yarvin (March 31, 2016) Medium (archived from December 28, 2016).
LambdaConf itself has become a rallying point for the alt-right, with a fundraiser organized by ClarkHat of the totally neutral Status:451 (which is not a neoreactionary blog, it just posts articles promoting neoreactionCiting 'Open Society,' Racist Programmer's Allies Raise $20K on Indiegogo: After a backlash against a speaker's racist views cost LamdbaConf several sponsors, allies responded with a surge of crowdfunding support. The snowballing controversy pits advocates of diversity in tech against those who demand unfettered free expression. by Tess Townsend (Apr 5, 2016) Inc.) and pushed heavily by the totally neutral Eric S. Raymond,This may be the week the SJWs lost it all by esr (2016-04-03) Armed and Dangerous. premised on a completely unevidenced backstab myth that activist SJWs forced the original sponsor pullout. John deGoes of LambdaConf refused to provide evidence of this claim without payment for his time,given @jdegoes was unable to present *any* evidence of claimed SJW attacks on Lambdaconf sponsors when asked, confusion is order of the day by RationalWiki (5:06 AM - 23 May 2017) Twitter. In response to John De Goes' tweet, "Pay me for my time and I'll give you tweets proving sponsors were attacked. Otherwise do your own research." (archived from 23 May 2017 12:39:49 UTC). despite having already been funded handsomely based on it.Save LambdaConf …and an open society Indiegogo (archived from July 28, 2017). Of course, almost none of these new fans care about functional programming, and 348 actual functional programmers, including leading lights of FP, have repudiated themStatement on LambdaConf 2016 (April 8th, 2016) GitHub. (and were then attacked by Vox Day and Eric RaymondThere’s a blacklist of social justice warriors, and I can’t believe I'm not on it by Peter Bd (Feb 29, 2020, 8:45 am) Daily Dot.). DeGoes also explained his views on "diversity" with a post that can only be described as Social Justice Time Cube, in which he attempts to derive "inclusivity" from first principles, including made-up jargon and explanatory diagrams.Final Statement on the LambdaConf Controversy by John A De Goes (April 11, 2016). For LambdaConf 2017, they invited truly neutral Red Pill MRA Ed Latimore,Response to John De Goes by Travis Brown (July 25, 2020). not to talk about functional programming but who will "will inspire you to conquer your fears… of learning FP, & maybe living too!"λc17 Keynote: In his professional speaking debut, @edlatimore will inspire you to conquer your fears… of learning FP, & maybe living too! by Lambda Conference (12:21 PM · Mar 2, 2017) Twitter (archived from 20 Jun 2021 20:44:47 UTC).
Yarvin finally left Urbit in 2019, leaving Tlon to try to recover its reputation and paper over the fact of its creator, but Yarvin still has a substantial financial stake in the company as well as a substantial amount of address space on Urbit.Who Owns the Stars: The Trouble with Urbit by Francis Tseng (2019) Distributed Web.
==Alt-right==
The "alt-right" mob is the less intellectual end of neoreactionary discourse and is delighted to be so. These are the people who have wholeheartedly embraced overt racism, misogyny, neo-Nazi affectations, bullying, and trolling of chan culture as a lifestyle. You'll find them on /pol/, My Posting Career, or The Right Stuff; they were a sizable fraction of Gamergate's more radical and uncouth sections. They also popularized "cuckservative" as a term of abuse for those on the right who are deemed not racist enough.
The label originated with Richard Spencer's white nationalist magazine/blog Alternative Right, nicknamed "AltRight".
Their advantages over the Moldbuggian strain are shorter blog posts and an actual sense of humor (such as it is). Whether they're primarily neoreactionaries who are into white nationalism or white nationalists dressing their ideas up with neoreactionary jargon is probably a distinction without a difference. They tend to think that neoreactionaries use too many words and aren't keen on Yarvin being Jewish.
The term has become more generally used for Trump supporters who think swastikas are good; in this context, it's just a hip name for white supremacists.
==Kidding/not kidding==
There is some evidence that Moldbug was just writing a satire in his Unqualified Reservations — his frequently humorous tone, his former use of the joke publisher name "TRO LLC", and his citation of the anti-Tory pamphlet by Daniel Defoe The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. However, this should all be viewed as a deflection because of the money trail from Austrian school libertarian Peter Thiel to Curtis Yarvin. Appropriately enough for neoreactionaries, the idea of 'Is it a joke or not?' does appear throughout the Middle Ages.Kidding/not kidding: a medieval sense of humour by Jamie Kreiner (March 23, 2016 at 8:33 am) History Extra, BBC (archived from April 29, 2024).
===2021 coup===
When the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot was no more than a twinkle in the eye of Trump World, post-Moldbug Yarvin posited the idea of a coup on November 8, 2020, the day after the election was called for Joe Biden by news organizations. Yarvin's description vaguely followed what was to follow: fake electors, ignoring the will of Congress and the Supreme Court, then calling the military out against the civilian institutions.Reflections on the late election by Curtis Yarvin (Nov 8, 2020) Gray Mirror.
==In popular culture==
===A Confederacy of Dunces===
Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, fully anticipated the modern neoreactionary blogger by fifty years. Down to the fondness for A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations Mencius Moldbug (2009). and his traditionalist Catholicism:
Sometimes, history starts as a farce. It's a fantastic novel that fully lives up to the hype. Neoreactionaries don't find it funny at all. You'll enjoy it.
And reading Unqualified Reservations in sequence with A Confederacy of Dunces, one can see why Moldbug, in particular, does not enjoy the retroactive skewering that he received from Dunces before he was even born.Also Moldbug writes like Ignatius P Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces by Jeremy McLellan (12:07 PM · Jul 1, 2018) Twitter (archived from 21 Jun 2021 04:33:49 UTC).
But a skewering of Moldbug can even be found in Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, written c. 524 CE, regarding the philosopher who thought himself wise:The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, translated by Victor Watts (1999) Penguin Books. Revised edition. .
===Sovereign===
Sovereign by the sequel to her first book, Dreadnought, is a young adult superhero novel in which the titular super-villain is an explicitly neoreactionary billionaire in the vein of Sovereign by April Daniels (2017) Diversion Books. . His master plan involves controlling who has superpowers to (re)establish what he sees as the ‘natural’ social order. Needless to say, said order features Sovereign as the eternal god-king, wearing a literal crown and sitting on a literal throne aboard his personal Seastead, Cynosure — which is itself crowned with a trio of skyscrapers, one of which is called Moldbug Tower.
===The Corporation Wars===
The Corporation Wars trilogy by has (among other things) left accelerationists (Axel) and neoreactionaries (Rax) fighting insurgencies against each other in the immediate future on an Earth wrecked by climate change and technological progress, as well as in the far future around a star being colonized by robots (that can only be piloted with uploaded human minds). Admittedly MacLeod doesn't spend that much time looking at neoreactionary ideas (or left-accelerationists, for that matter); the books instead spend much more time focusing on concepts like alien/artificial intelligence or the possibilities unlocked by simulating human consciousness.
==In real life==
===Pontificators on parade===
Stung by accusations that they are spending their lives doing for words what Bitcoin does for electricity, Nyan Sandwich of MoreRight The Future Primaeval organized an in-person meetup group called Phalanx, a "reactionary fraternity for the cultivation of masculine virtue and the development of social and moral capital."Introducing Phalanx by Nyan Sandwich (19 October 2014) More Right (archived from April 14, 2015). (A previous version of the announcement apparentlyThe EntitleMen: techno-libertarian right wing sockpuppets of silicon valley (Oct. 29th, 2014 05:54 pm) graydon2 (archived from November 4, 2014). also proposed to "practice game", but this was deleted.) The plan was "not to directly engage, but to become strong and worthy", so we're sure this would have been just fine and accept Nyan's assurance"Aware. Not going to let slimy fascists monopolize all the good semniotic real estate." by Nyan Sandwich (November 3, 2014 at 2:29 am) Slate Star Codex. that any are nothing to worry about.
In 2016, a little-known London art gallery called LD50 (presumably named after the toxicology measurement of the same name) held an exhibition and series of talks that didn't so much inquire into neoreactionary and alt-right thought as provide a propaganda platform for its adherents.Dalston art gallery accused of promoting fascism by Felix Petty (20 February 2017, 5:15am) Vice. Indeed, one exhibit consisted of nothing but videos of neoreactionary literature read out by avatars — ranting crudely disguised as art? The events were organized in secret, according to one of the speakers, Brett Stevens, a far-right Islamophobe who had been quoted by terrorist Anders Breivik in his manifesto and who subsequently praised Breivik as "brave" after the latter murdered 77 Norwegians, mostly young social democrats, in cold blood.Art gallery criticised over neo-Nazi artwork and hosting racist speakers by Hannah Ellis-Petersen (22 Feb 2017 02.00 EST) The Guardian. The poorly-attended events probably led to far more protesters visiting the gallery, when anti-fascist locals subsequently found out about them, than actual attendees.
===Neo-feudalist examples===
A precedent for this seemingly-heterogenous neo-feudalist mixture of libertarianism and authoritarianism was the libertarian right's support for Augusto Pinochet's murderous dictatorship in Chile.
Yarvin has embraced Dubai's authoritarian-feudalist model for semi-independent states-with-states.[https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/05/urs-plan-to-fix-iraq/ 
UR’s plan to fix Iraq] by Mencius Moldbug (May 16, 2007) Unqualified Reservations.
More recently, Russia has resembled a neo-feudalist state, in which Vladimir Putin is the state autocrat controlling oligarchs who run corporate fiefdoms.Russia’s Neo-Feudal Capitalism by Anders Åslund (Apr 27, 2017) Project Syndicate. Dissent to this scheme has been repressed by state-sponsored assassinations,Russian assassinations send chilling message of impunity by Doug Klain (Mar 12, 2020) Atlantic Council. violence,FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning (December 14, 2020) Bellingcat. prison, and exile. Russian neo-feudalism has perpetuated so-called 'legal nihilism', i.e., opposition to the rule of law at all levels of society.Who Are the Legal Nihilists in Russia? by Kathryn Hendley (2012) Post-Soviet Affairs 28(2):149–186. doi:0.2747/1060-586X.28.2.149. Unsurprisingly, neoreactionaries have embraced Putinism.Bears Will Never Steal Your Car: Reacting To The Neoreactionaries by Matthew Shen Goodman (June 9, 2015) Leap.
==See also==
==External links==
;The primary sources
*Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug
*The Dark Enlightenment by Nick Land
;LessWrong on neoreaction
Scott Alexander has written extensive examinations of neoreaction, as he knows a lot of the players personally. These include:
*Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous Planet Sized Nutshell — an honest attempt to describe neoreactionary beliefs sympathetically
*The Anti-Reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander, generally regarded as the definitive takedown
;Other discussions
*Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries, by Klint Finley.
*Monarchists, Neo-Reactionaries, and Neo-Fascism. Noah Millman, at The American Conservative.
*Why are U.S. conservatives so obsessed with monarchies?. Matt K. Lewis, at The Week.
*The Dark Enlightenment: The Creepy Internet Movement You’d Better Take Seriously. Matt Sigl, at vocativ.
*The Dark Enlightenment Is Silly Not Scary. Matthew Walther, at Spectator.
*Neoreactionary Miracles on Ice, by B.W. Rabbit (a bizarre neoreactionary fantasy about establishing a utopia in cloud cuckoo land Antarctica)
*Toward a Neoreactionary Aesthetic, by E. Antony Grey.
*Thoughts on the Neoreactionaries, by Noah Smith.
*Occupying the Throne: Justine Tunney, Neoreactionaries, and the New 1%, by Arthur Chu.
*"The Darkness Before The Right", by Park McDonald.
*Alt-Right Explained by Vox.
*Alternative Right by antifascistnews.net
==Notes==
==References==
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