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Anti-democratic, reactionary philosophy founded by Curtis Yarvin in 2007

The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement (sometimes abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, reactionary philosophical and political movement. In 2007 and 2008, Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, articulated what would develop into Dark Enlightenment thinking. Yarvin's theories were elaborated and expanded by Nick Land, who first coined the term Dark Enlightenment in his essay of the same name. The term "Dark Enlightenment" is a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment.[1][2]

The ideology generally rejects Whig historiography[3]the concept that history shows an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy[3]in favor of a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, including absolute monarchism and other archaic forms of leadership such as cameralism.[4]

In July 2010, Arnold Kling, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, coined the term "neo-reactionaries" to describe Yarvin and his followers.[1]

Neo-reactionaries are an informal community of bloggers and political theorists who have been active since the 2000s. Steve Sailer and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are contemporary forerunners of the ideology, which also draws influence from philosophers such as Thomas Carlyle and Julius Evola.[1]

Central to Land's ideas is a belief in freedom's incompatibility with democracy. Land drew inspiration from libertarians such as Peter Thiel, as indicated in his essay The Dark Enlightenment.[5][non-primary source needed] The Dark Enlightenment has been described by journalists and commentators as alt-right and neo-fascist.[3][6] A 2016 article in New York magazine notes that "Neoreaction has a number of different strains, but perhaps the most important is a form of post-libertarian futurism that, realizing that libertarians aren't likely to win any elections, argues against democracy in favor of authoritarian forms of government."[7]

According to criminal justice professor, George Michael, neoreaction seeks to save its ideal of Western civilization through adoption of a monarchical, or CEO model of government to replace democracy. And it embraces the notion of "acceleration", first articulated by Vladimir Lenin, but in the neoreaction version, the creation and promotion of ever more societal crises hastens the adoption of the neoreactive state.[8]

Other focuses of neoreaction often include an idealization of physical fitness, a rationalist or utilitarian justification for social stratification based on intelligence based on either heredity or meritocracy, an embrace of Classical philosophy, and traditional gender roles.[citation needed]

Neo-reactionaries sometimes decline to speak to reporters. When approached by The Atlantic political affairs reporter Rosie Gray, Yarvin attempted to troll her on Twitter, and blogger Nick B. Steves said that her IQ was inadequate to the task of interviewing him and that, as a journalist, she was "the enemy".[4]

By mid-2017, NRx had moved to forums such as the Social Matter online forum, the Hestia Society, and Thermidor Magazine.

In 2021, Yarvin appeared on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Today", where he discussed the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan and his concept of the "Cathedral", which he claims to be the aggregation of political power and influential institutions.[9]

Journalist Andrew Sullivan notes that neoreaction's pessimistic appraisal of democracy dismisses many advances that have been made and that global manufacturing patterns also limit the economic independence that sovereign states can have from one another.[10]

In an article for The Sociological Review, after an examination of neoreaction's core tenets, Roger Burrows deplores the ideology as "hyper-neoliberal, technologically deterministic, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, pro-eugenicist, racist and, likely, fascist", and ridicules the entire accelerationist framework as a faulty attempt at "mainstreaming... misogynist, racist and fascist discourses."[11] Moreover, he criticizes neoreaction's racial principles for their brazen "disavowal of any discourses" advocating for socio-economic equality and, accordingly, considers it a "eugenic philosophy" in favor of what Land deems 'hyper-racism'.[11]

Some consider the Dark Enlightenment part of the alt-right, representing its theoretical branch.[3][12] The Dark Enlightenment has been labelled by some as neo-fascist,[3] and by University of Chichester professor Benjamin Noys[3] as "an acceleration of capitalism to a fascist point." Land disputes the similarity between his ideas and fascism, claiming that "Fascism is a mass anti-capitalist movement,"[3] whereas he prefers that "[capitalist] corporate power should become the organizing force in society."[3]

Journalist and pundit James Kirchick states that "although neo-reactionary thinkers disdain the masses and claim to despise populism and people more generally, what ties them to the rest of the alt-right is their unapologetically racist element, their shared misanthropy and their resentment of mismanagement by the ruling elites."[13]

Scholar Andrew Jones, in a 2019 article, postulated that the Dark Enlightenment (i.e. the NeoReactionary Movement) is "key to understanding the Alt-Right" political ideology.[14] "The use of affect theory, postmodern critiques of modernity, and a fixation on critiquing regimes of truth," Jones remarks, "are fundamental to NeoReaction (NRx) and what separates it from other Far-Right theory".[14] Moreover, Jones argues that Dark Enlightenment's fixation on aesthetics, history, and philosophy, as opposed to the traditional empirical approach, distinguishes it from related far-right ideologies.

Historian Joe Mulhall, writing for The Guardian, described Nick Land as "propagating very far-right ideas."[15] Despite neoreaction's limited online audience, Mulhall considers the ideology to have "acted as both a tributary into the alt-right and as a key constituent part [of the alt-right]."[15]

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Dark Enlightenment - Wikipedia

The campaign for Pennsylvania governor between far-right Republican nominee Doug Mastriano and Democrat Josh Shapiro, the states current attorney general, has been one of contrasts.

The fundraising race has been no exception.

On track to shatter the record for campaign spending in a Pennsylvania governors race, Shapiros campaign received more than $25 million in contributions since June, according to his campaign finance report released Tuesday.

Mastriano, who has been largely ghosted by deep-pocketed Republican donors, raised only $3.2 million in the same period, according to records filed with the Department of State..

But in a race where Mastriano has overcome long odds before, Shapiros 8-to-1 fundraising advantage over the last three months doesnt mean the election is a foregone conclusion.

One Republican poll of more than 1,000 likely voters put Mastriano within 2 points of Shapiro. A Marist College poll, however, put Shapiros lead at 13 points.

Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County, won a crowded primary over members of his party distancing themselves from his call for a total ban on abortion and his involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

On the campaign trail, Mastriano has called for a rollback of same-sex marriage and transgender rights, the elimination of gender and race theory from public school curricula, cuts in public education funding, and a transition to school choice vouchers, and a rollback of environmental regulations to support fossil fuel production.

Meanwhile, Shapiro, of Montgomery County, and running mate Austin Davis, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor from Allegheny County, have promised improvements in education and job creation, measures to curb gun crime, protection of civil rights including access to abortion, and policies to foster business growth.

Campaign finance reports show Shapiro spent nearly $28 million since June, including $17 million on advertising, for a total of $38 million since the start of the campaign. Former Gov. Ed Rendell holds the longstanding record of $40 million for the largest sum spent in a Pennsylvania governors race.

Shapiro rolled into the final seven weeks of the campaign with nearly $11 million in cash on hand, according to the report which includes transactions through Sept. 19.

Mastriano spent just less than $1 million during the same period, and less than $2.4 million overall since January. Mastriano had nearly $2.6 million on hand as of Sept. 19, according to his report.

While Shapiro is saturating the airwaves, Mastriano has favored social media livestreams of his campaign stops and speaking to voters via Facebook. Many of Mastrianos largest campaign expenses are for campaign consulting, including $18,000 to $37,500, records showed.

Shapiros largest contributions came from the Democratic Governors Association in three payments totaling $5.1 million; Shapiro received $500,000 each from labor unions AFSCME, Laborers International Union, and Service Employees International Union; former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; and the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Associations political action committee.

Mastrianos largest individual contributions came from the founders of shipping and business supply company Uline, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who contributed a total of $1 million.

Among the individual donations Mastriano received is $500 from Andrew Torba, the founder of the alt-right social media site Gab, which has been criticized as a haven for bigoted and anti-semetic speech. It was the platform where the gunman accused of killing 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 posted about his plan minutes before the shooting.

Mastriano came under fire earlier in the campaign for paying $5,000 to Gab to engage with potential voters.

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Shapiro poised to break spending record in governor's race after raising $25M this summer - Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Jack Posobiec, an alt-right conspiracy theorist who promoted the false "Pizzagate" child sex ring in 2016 and promoted the "Stop the Steal" movement over the 2020 election, is scheduled to speak on the UL campus in October.

Posobiec's appearance is at the request of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette chapter of Turning Point USA, whose mission, according to its website is "to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government."

Michael Lunsford, executive director of the conservative government watchdog Citizens for a New Louisiana based in Lafayette, approached the university group with the suggestion they bring Posobiec in as a speaker, he said Friday.

Lunsford said his group is always trying to encourage "good conservative folks" from across the nation to speak in the Lafayette area. The COVID pandemic put a halt to that, but he thought Posobiec was a good fit.

Anthony Algeciras, president of the UL chapter of Turning Point USA, did not respond to messages Friday requesting comment for this story.

Posobiec worked for former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who he described as a mentor, rising to prominence on Twitter and through appearances on alt-right platforms such as Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, the anti-government conspiracy network Infowars and One America News Network.

Since Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center writes, "Posobiec has emerged as arguably the most active spreader of disinformation among all internet performers in the far-right social media ecosystem.

"He pushed the 'Pizzagate' lie in 2016, suggesting that Democratic politicians frequented a nonexistent pedophile dungeon below a Washington, D.C., pizzeria," the SPLC wrote.

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Posobiec has associated with authoritarians and neo-Nazis, has promoted anti-Jewish hate and said he associates with Oath Keepers.

The UL chapter of Turning Point USA "has taken the initial steps to host this event and is in the process of completing the necessary paperwork to do so," Eric Maron, UL senior communications representative, said in an email response to The Acadiana Advocate's inquiry Thursday.

The university, Maron said, "is committed to the free, safe and lawful expression of ideas. Open dialogue is fundamental to the Universitys academic mission and its role in advancing the public interest."

UL's Campus Free Speech Policy, he said, "is designed to ensure that events that involve the free exchange of ideas are orderly, safe and respectful.

"Maintaining an environment of rational and critical inquiry requires hearing a multitude of opinions," Maron added, "even those that may differ from each other and that may differ from our own as individuals."

A UL alum who goes by the handle BongWizarrd posted on the social media platform Reddit a letter he wrote to UL President Joseph Savoie, lobbying against the Oct. 24 Posobiec event, which he called "deplorable". He encouraged other UL alumni to do the same.

Contacted by The Acadiana Advocate on Friday, he requested to remain anonymous, citing heated exchanges and pushback he has received because of the Reddit post.

"If Posobiec is allowed to speak in October, it will greatly damage the racial relations of the students and faculty on campus," BongWizarrd wrote. "If Posobiec is allowed to speak, it will forever go down as a stain on the University's reputation."

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Alt-right conspiracy theorist, Stop the Steal and Pizzagate pusher ...

Russia's war in Ukraine has shown the defining political fault lines of our age to be fundamentally bogus. While the Kremlin represents the alt-right, and Europe stands for the politically correct liberal establishment, both sides ultimately are fighting over the spoils of a global capitalist system that they control.

LJUBLJANA The Canadian psychologist and alt-right media fixture Jordan Peterson recently stumbled onto an important insight. In a podcast episode titled Russia vs. Ukraine or Civil War in the West?, he recognized a link between the war in Europe and the conflict between the liberal mainstream and the new populist right in North America and Europe.

Although Peterson initially condemns Russian President Vladimir Putins war of aggression, his stance gradually morphs into a kind of metaphysical defense of Russia. Referencing Dostoevskys Diaries, he suggests that Western European hedonist individualism is far inferior to Russian collective spirituality, before duly endorsing the Kremlins designation of contemporary Western liberal civilization as degenerate. He describes postmodernism as a transformation of Marxism that seeks to destroy the foundations of Christian civilization. Viewed in this light, the war in Ukraine is a contest between traditional Christian values and a new form of communist degeneracy.

This language will be familiar to anyone familiar with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbns regime, or with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. As CNNs John Blake put it, that day marked the first time many Americans realized the US is facing a burgeoning White Christian nationalist movement, which uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America. This worldview has now infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career.

The fact that Peterson has assumed a pro-Russian, anti-communist position is indicative of a broader trend. In the United States, many Republican Party lawmakers have refused to support Ukraine. J.D. Vance, a Donald Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, finds it insulting and strategically stupid to devote billions of resources to Ukraine while ignoring the problems in our own country. And Matt Gaetz, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida, is committed to ending US support for Ukraine if his party wins control of the chamber this November.

But does accepting Petersons premise that Russias war and the alt-right in the US are platoons of the same global movement mean that leftists should simply take the opposite side? Here, the situation gets more complicated. Although Peterson claims to oppose communism, he is attacking a major consequence of global capitalism. As Marx and Engels wrote more than 150 years ago in the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

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This observation is studiously ignored by leftist cultural theorists who still focus their critique on patriarchal ideology and practice. Yet surely the critique of patriarchy has reached its apotheosis at precisely the historical moment when patriarchy has lost its hegemonic role that is, when market individualism has swept it away. After all, what becomes of patriarchal family values when a child can sue her parents for neglect and abuse (implying that parenthood is just another temporary and dissolvable contract between utility-maximizing individuals)?

Of course, such leftists are sheep in wolves clothing, telling themselves that they are radical revolutionaries as they defend the reigning establishment. Today, the melting away of pre-modern social relations and forms has already gone much further than Marx could have imagined. All facets of human identity are now becoming a matter of choice; nature is becoming more and more an object of technological manipulation.

The civil war that Peterson sees in the developed West is thus a chimera, a conflict between two versions of the same global capitalist system: unrestrained liberal individualism versus neo-fascist conservativism, which seeks to unite capitalist dynamism with traditional values and hierarchies.

There is a double paradox here. Western political correctness (wokeness) has displaced class struggle, producing a liberal elite that claims to protect threatened racial and sexual minorities in order to divert attention from its members own economic and political power. At the same time, this lie allows alt-right populists to present themselves as defenders of real people against corporate and deep state elites, even though they, too, occupy positions at the commanding heights of economic and political power.

Ultimately, both sides are fighting over the spoils of a system in which they are wholly complicit. Neither side really stands up for the exploited or has any interest in working-class solidarity. The implication is not that left and right are outdated notions as one often hears but rather that culture wars have displaced class struggle as the engine of politics.

Where does that leave Europe? The Guardians Simon Tisdall paints a bleak but accurate picture:

Putins aim is the immiseration of Europe. By weaponising energy, food, refugees and information, Russias leader spreads the economic and political pain, creating wartime conditions for all. A long, cold, calamity-filled European winter of power shortages and turmoil looms. Freezing pensioners, hungry children, empty supermarket shelves, unaffordable cost of living increases, devalued wages, strikes and street protests point to Sri Lanka-style meltdowns. An exaggeration? Not really.

To prevent a total collapse into disorder, the state apparatus, in close coordination with other states and relying on local mobilizations of people, will have to regulate the distribution of energy and food, perhaps resorting to administration by the armed forces. Europe thus has a unique chance to leave behind its charmed life of isolated welfare, a bubble in which gas and electricity prices were the biggest worries. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently toldVogue, Just try to imagine what Im talking about happening to your home, to your country. Would you still be thinking about gas prices or electricity prices?

Hes right. Europe is under attack, and it needs to mobilize, not just militarily but socially and economically as well. We should use the crisis to change our way of life, adopting values that will spare us from an ecological catastrophe in the coming decades. This may be our only chance.

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What the Woke Left and the Alt-Right Share - Project Syndicate

Only 14 per cent of Capitol riots arrestees to date have been women, and yet women played key leadership roles that are important in understanding alt-right movements. Playing into gendered assumptions, researchers of the alt-right tend to characterize womens participation as passive, with the demographics of Capitol riots arrestees revealing the predominance of white, middle-aged, middle-class men.

However, in our research on digital media and disinformation related to the Capitol riots, we have found that women served key leadership functions in the organization and performance of the riots. They planned events, provided a gentler face for the alt-right, nurtured social cohesion among participants and shaped the direction of the riots.

One commonality between men and women in the Capitol riots was that the vast majority were white. Yet, white women straddle two intersectional identities, one dominant (whiteness) and one oppressed (female).

This allows them to choose when and how to enact each identity. Far-right movements tend to rely on traditional gender roles, contributing in this instance to womens adoption of the labels classic woman or tradwife roles based on sex-realism.

Read more: Tradwives: the women looking for a simpler past but grounded in the neoliberal present

Sex-realism is the notion that women are biologically different from men and thus cannot be equal; while not considered subordinate, traditional roles for women are prescribed. Included in this alt-right form of feminism are race-based pressures to reproduce white children, associated with the racist rhetoric of Make America Great Again.

Women who participated in the Capitol riots performed traditional gender roles intersecting with racist rhetoric and actions. Our study of womens participation at the Capitol riots identified four key groups: mobilizers, QAMoms (female QAnon conspiracy adherents), militias, and martyrs.

Women played key roles in the organization of the Jan. 6 protest, with Women for America First (W4AF) serving as key mobilizers of the march-turned-riot.

In the weeks before the Capitol riots, W4AF held a 20-city bus tour with Bob Cavanaugh, a county commissioner in North Carolina saying, allegedly jokingly: Wed solve every problem in this country if on the 4th of July every conservative went and shot one liberal.

Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also served as an instigator of the riot, posting on the far-right social network Parler and inciting protesters to interfere with the peaceful transition of power. She posted she needed a grassroots army, in a promoted parley that garnered 39 million views, 240,000 upvotes and 12,000 comments.

Mobilizers such as W4AF and Greene are typically well-known, well-funded women who operate behind-the-scenes, exercising a great deal of agency or social power.

Women characterized as QAMoms, may be actual mothers and/or they may act as mothers of the movement. They have been introduced to conspiracy theories like QAnon, which exploit the nostalgia of an idealized past, through hashtags like #SaveTheChildren.

On the surface, this hashtag represents a movement against child sex trafficking, but it has been repurposed by QAnon and QAMoms to promote the far-fetched conspiracy that deep-state Democrats are a cabal of sex-trafficking satanists.

Women drawn to the alt-right through conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns were seen at the Capitol riots leading prayers, providing first aid, organizing food and assuming stereotypical mothering roles. While playing into traditional gendered roles, these forms of mothering are also displays of leadership and social agency.

Alt-right women also, perhaps surprisingly, organize and participate in militias. Jessica Watkins, who served in the U.S. army in Afghanistan, was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy for her alleged leadership role in the Capitol riots.

Watkins is transgender, and has been subjected to transphobic inhumane treatment in prison, up to and including being housed naked in a brightly lit cell for several days.

She is alleged to have actively recruited members from the Ohio State Regular Militia that she had founded, and to have planned a military style takeover of the Capitol. Watkins was seen during the riots dressed in military garb and moving with militia members in military stack formation.

Shaped by military training, women who participate in and lead militias performed skilled leadership activities in the riots, such as directing and leading others to attack police lines or scale walls, in their alleged attempt to overthrow the state.

At the Capitol riots, some participants dressed up and performed the roles of famous patriotic women. Others like Watkins were at the forefront of the incursion into the Capitol building.

One of the most dramatic deaths of the day was such a woman. Ashli Babbitt, a business owner and self-styled QAMom, was shot attempting to climb through a window to gain access to lawmakers in the House lobby.

Babbitt was immediately claimed as a martyr by far-right groups, barely moments after her death and against the wishes of her family. The outgoing POTUS Trump himself characterized her as having died at the hands of a corrupt government despite the fact that he himself was President at the time of her death.

It may seem nonsensical for women to work against their own interests in supporting Trump, a man accused of sexual assault and misogyny. An explanation is contained within sex-realism, a particular worldview that many QAMoms hold. Instead of pointing to structures of patriarchy as oppressive, sex-realism is used by alt-right women to scapegoat immigrants and people of colour those below them in societys constructed racial hierarchies.

For tradwives, it may be easier to blame outsiders than to confront the fact that oppressive structures and behaviours may be enacted within their very families.

Yet, with the rise of global populism, we should not risk overlooking the contained agency of women participating in alt-right movements, where they mobilize disinformation, reinforce the traditional gender binary, promote conspiracies and enact racism.

The leadership of alt-right women ultimately paves the way for the escalating racist violence of male counterparts within the groups they lead, nurture and mother.

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Mothers of the movement: Leadership by alt-right women paves the way for violence - The Conversation