The Dark Enlightenment, or the neoreactionary movement—also known simply as neoreaction and abbreviated NRx by its proponents—is an anti-democratic and reactionary movement. It broadly rejects egalitarianism and the view that history shows inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment (thus, it is in part a reaction against "Whig historiography"). The movement favors a return to older societal constructs and forms of government, including support for monarchism or other forms of strong, centralised leadership such as a "neocameralist CEO", coupled with a libertarian or otherwise conservative approach to economics. Some critics have labeled the movement as "neo-fascist". Proponents generally also espouse socially conservative views on such matters as gender roles, race relations, and migration.
Contents
A 2013 TechCrunch article describes "neoreactionaries" as a term applied to, and sometimes a self-description of, an informal "community of bloggers" and political theorists who have been active since the 2000s. Steve Sailer and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are described as "contemporary forerunners" of the movement, and neoreactionaries are also said to draw influence from philosophers such as Thomas Carlyle and Julius Evola.
Some consider the Dark Enlightenment an early school of thought in the alt-right.
Summary of core ideas
Some of the impetus for the neoreactionary movement comes from libertarians like Peter Thiel, as indicated by Nick Land's long essay The Dark Enlightenment:
One milestone was the April 2009 discussion hosted at Cato Unbound among libertarian thinkers (including Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel) in which disillusionment with the direction and possibilities of democratic politics was expressed with unusual forthrightness. Thiel summarized the trend bluntly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Land expands on these themes as follows:
For the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative. The subterranean current that propels such anti-politics is recognizably Hobbesian, a coherent dark enlightenment, devoid from its beginning of any Rousseauistic enthusiasm for popular expression.
Etymology
In 2007 and 2008, American computer scientist Curtis Yarvin, writing under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug, articulated what would develop into Dark Enlightenment thinking. Yarvin's theories were later the subject of English author and philosopher Nick Land, who first coined the term "Dark Enlightenment" in his essay of the same name. The term "Dark Enlightenment" is a play-on-words for the knowledge supposedly gained in the Enlightenment. According to Land: "Where the progressive enlightenment sees political ideals, the dark enlightenment sees appetites"—on the view that the tendency of sovereign power (in democracies) is to devour society.
Yarvin first used the term "neo-reactionary" as an adjective in this context. He had originally called his ideology "formalism", but Arnold Kling used the term "The Neo-Reactionaries" as a noun in July 2010 to describe Moldbug and fellows and the term was quickly adopted by the subculture.
George Orwell also used the term "neo-reactionary" in 1943, in an As I Please column for Tribune.