Neoreactionaryism

Neoreactionaryism
Basic Information
Aliases	DE NRx Neoreactionaryism Moldbugism Dark Enlightenment Formalism Post-Libertarianism Libertarian Autocracy State Hoppeanism State Capacity Libertarianism Neo-Jacobitism Geek Reactionarism Counter-Enlightenment 2.0 Ancap on steroids Hoppean on steroids Post-Right Libertarianism
Alignments	AuthRight to LibRight Culturally Far-Right Capitalists Reactionary Monarchists Individualists Nihilists
Ideological Influences
Influenced by	Anti-Communism Anti-Democracy Anti-Equality Absolute Monarchism Austrian School Authoritarian Capitalism Cameralism Carlyleanism Corporatocracy Georgism Hobbesianism Hoppeanism Jacobitism Kantianism Nietzscheanism Nihilism Patchwork Post-Modernism Reactionaryism Schmittianism Secularism Vilfredoism
Influenced	Alt-Right (Accused) Anarcho-Monarchism (Some variants) Bannonism Homoconservatism ( Thiel) Landian Accelerationism LesbiaNRx Neocameralism
Ideological Information
Notable Theorists	Americas Malcolm Pollack (1955-), USA Robin Hanson (1959-), USA Tyler Cowen (1962-), USA Stephen Hsu (1966-), USA Curtis "Mencius Moldbug" Yarvin (1973-), USA Nathan Larson (1980-2022), USA Michael Anissimov (1984-) Bryce Laliberte (1991-2022), USA Taftaj (2000-), USA James Donald / Jim (?), Canada Europe John Derbyshire (1945-), UK Nick Land (1962-), UK Peter Andreas Thiel (1967-), Germany Anatoly Karlin (1988-), Russia Asia-Pacific Meng Hu (?), Hong-Kong Spandrell (?) Unknown nydwracu (?) Nick B Steves (?) Al Fin (?) smartistone (?) Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (?)
Notable Ideas	Post-Libertarianism Formalism Royalism Neocameralism Cryptogovernance Cross-Listing Reservationism Automatism Popularism Literalism Algorithmism Officialism Redpills and Bluepills The iron polygon The Cathedral The Military-Industrial Complex The Corporate-Managerial Complex Red and Blue Empires RedGov BlueGov The Trichotomy Unprincipled Exception Types of Societies The Loyal Society The Society of Consensus The Open Society Malthusian Industrialism Ultracalvinism Cis-Democracy and Trans-Democracy Deep Right
Variations
Schools of Thought	Landianism Accelerationism Bionic Horizon Evolutionary Economics Foucauldianism Hyper-Racism Hyperstitionality Libidinal Materialism Lovecraftian Horror Memetics Nomadology Occult Post-Humanism Political Capitalism Second-Order Cybernetics Technocapital Cultism Teleoplexity Larsonism Alt-Right Alt-Right Libertarianism Anarcho-Capitalism Anti-Feminism Anti-Semitism Avaritionism Child Labor Drug Legalization Gun Rights Advocacy Homophobia Incelism Incestism Libertarian Fascism Manosphere Narcissism National Capitalism Nazism Neo-Nazism Nihilism Patriarchy Pedophilia Polygyny Legalization Social Darwinism Transphobia USA Libertarian Party (Disowned by the party) White Nationalism UR Moldbug Era (2007-2013) Austrian School Carlyleanism Classical International Law Evolutionary Economics Frederick the Great Thought Georgism Hobbesianism Hoppeanism Jacobitism James Burnham Thought Memetics Neocameralism Paretoism Nihilism Patchwork Post-Modernism Schmittianism Secularism GM Moldbug Era (2020-) Absolute Monarchism Aristocracy Autocracy Authoritarian Capitalism Bidenism (supportive) Bukeleism (Sympathetic) Deep Right Dengism Elective Monarchism Gaetano Mosca Thought Machiavellianism Mercantilism State Capitalism Timocracy Thielism Climate Skepticism Capitalist Transhumanism Homoconservatism Libertarian Conservatism National Conservatism Plutocracy Right-Wing Populism Karlinism Deep Ecology Malthusianism Noocracy Putinism Sinorealism State Liberalism
Character Information
Song	Tavish Finnegan DeGroot - The Wee German Lairdie

"Was royalism a perfect system? It was not. But if we imagine a world in which the revolutions and civil wars of the last four centuries had never happened, it is hard not to imagine that world as happier, wealthier, freer, more civilized and more pleasant."

Curtis Yarvin

Neoreactionaryism, also known as the Dark Enlightenment (Shortened to NRx and DE respectively), is a broadly reactionary, economically and culturally far-right and civically varied (But prominently post-libertarian) ideology, however, some (Such as Joshua Tait) say that NRx (Mencius Moldbug) is reactionary only in regards of politics, while maintaining positions usually described as socially progressive. NRx originates from the writing of a couple right-wing bloggers from the late 2000's and early 2010's.

Neoreactionaryism opposes democracy, egalitarianism and the common consensus that the progress of history leads to liberty and enlightenment and the abolition of absolutism in favor of democracy and/or constitutional monarchy, considering itself the antithesis of enlightenment thought. It is in favor of the re-adoption of systems of governance such as absolute monarchy and cameralism, or the formation of other systems such as neocameralism.

NRx is often associated with "race-realism", but despite what mainstream sources make an impression of, this is not included in the theory and may be confused on first glance because of risky wording (See hyper-racism).

NRx has also been described as "neo-fascist" by journalists and commentators and is accused to be a major influence on the modern "alt-right" movement. However, NRx theorists typically denounce the "alt-right" and fascism.

Beliefs

The neoreactionary movement's ideological foundations consist of multiple ideas that are discussed between NRxers but may or may not be shared by all of them.

These include, but are not limited to:

Post-Libertarianism

Post-libertarianism is a school of thought stemming from libertarianism that posits that the rule of law is always a necessary step to maintain individual liberty and that since law can only emerge from order, fully embracing the state is an unconditional good towards a freed society. Despite being at odds with "generic" libertarians on the issue of state capacity, post-libertarians are in full agreement with other libertarian ideas, such as affinity towards free markets, opposition to state control of information and skepticism in regards to foreign intervention.

Formalism

Formalism is the belief that actual power and recognised power (Especially in the form of ownership) should align as closely as possible, making allocation of scarce resources stable and predictable, reducing violence socially and between particulars. It advocates to map out existing power relations in "informalist" societies and offering powerful institutions some kind of official compensation to terminate corruption. Formalists are especially skeptical of democratic forms of government, favoring ones based on ownership.

Royalism

Royalism, sometimes called "legitimism", is the general belief that absolutist systems of governance work best, especially when the line of succession is clear and that rulers explicitly run the state in their personal interest as their property (Which reflects Moldbug's criticism of republican dictatorship). Royalists don't favor a particular mode of succession, some preferring something akin to an elective monarchy (See neocameralism below), while others may stand for hereditary and/or divine-right monarchy. It is less so an indication of a particular view on the de jure process of monarchies than it is support for the de facto "virtues" of monarchism, i.e. stability and order, which NRxers generally associate with freedom and a healthy society.

Neocameralism

Main article: Neocameralism

Neocameralism is a form of government proposed by Mencius Moldbug and further developed by other thinkers as a replacement for enlightenment-inspired ("demotist") and medieval systems, judged too violent and insecure. Neocameralism is structured around the joint-stock corporate governance model, where shareholders, through a board or not, elect an accountable, fiduciary "monarch-CEO" (Which Moldbug calls a "delegate", based on the corporate title used by colonial-era Quakers) with unlimited executive, judicial and legislative power, that they think will best maximize their shared profits by managing the state in the most Pareto-efficient manner. Non-fungible-token (NFT)-based shares, permissive action links (PAL) on the military's weaponery and cryptographic decision and command chains (CDCC) ensure that sovereignty remains secured in the hands of shareholders at all times, such cryptographic measures being reminescent of sociétés anonymes (SAs).

Reservationism

Reservationism is an epistemology proposed by Moldbug to promote an use of reason which is neither reducing or transcending it. It aims to counter "automatisms", tendencies for people to follow one or more overly specific cases of reason and apply them to everything subconsciously, and wrongly so. The most common types identified are:

• Popularists, who assume that reason stems from how fashionable ideas are, the most common being the truest. They tend to support democracy and populism. They are considered to be the most annoying.
• Literalists, who claim that reason originates from how immemorial ideas are, the most ancient being the truest. They tend to support fundamentalism and traditionalism. They are considered to be the most stupid.
• Algorithmists, who posit that reason comes from how mathematizable ideas are, the most formulaic being the truest. They tend to support scientific policy and algocracy. They are considered to be the most pernicious.
• Officialists, who state that reason comes from how official ideas are, the most propagandized being the truest. They tend to support state media and censorship. They are considered to be the most dangerous.

As said above, NRxers notice that people can often follow several automatisms at once, depending on the social context they live in. For example, someone living in a deeply religious uniform community is likely to be both a popularist and a literalist, assuming that the overwhelmingly widespread, perennial beliefs around them are true, or alternatively, a person existing within a highly technical and partisan city is predisposed to follow simultaneously algorithmist and officialist ideas at once, convinced of the virtue of governmental experts in their procedures. Moldbug affirms that all combinations can and do exist in the world, with varying degrees of repartition and intensity.

Neoreactionary Neologisms

The neoreactionary movement came up with a lot of neologisms to describe various concepts. Neologisms are perhaps the most influential thing to come out of the movement, appearing in political discourse outside of its own sphere.

The neologisms include:

The Cathedral

The Cathedral, within the context of neoreactionary discourse, is a term used to refer to a society's intellectual elite, meaning a group of people who are able to decide what the average person thinks is true or false, right or wrong and important or unimportant. Historically, this role was fulfilled by religious institutions, hence the usage of the term "cathedral". This is intentionally contrasted with the institutions that fulfill the role of the cathedral in the modern age, that being schools, universities, the media and the entertainment industry, who largely market themselves as secular. It is worth noting that the cathedral (In its contemporary incarnation) is not a formal institution that people belong to, but rather an informal, decentralized network of leaders of the before-aforementioned institutions that happen to agree on most important matters (Harvard, The New York Times, Disney and The Guardian rarely disagree, for example), unlike the "deep state" conspiracy theories advanced by populist groups, claiming the consensus is rather centralized and conscious.

Pills

• Redpill - Within the context of neoreactionary discourse, a "redpill" is any realization or experience that disconnects an individual from the established "cathedral". The term is a reference to the popular film trilogy The Matrix.

The concept of the redpill is THE most influential term to come out of the NRx movement, being practically ubiqutous within political discourse on both the left, right, centre and beyond. The term "redpill" spawned many off-shoots, generally named after the specific realisation the redpill provides (Including terms like blackpill (Pessimism), whitepill (Optimism), greenpill (Parnamormalism) and more) and also the combination with the term "based", forming "based and redpilled". The various pills have also expanded into apolitical contexts, especially in dating (Examples of dating-specific pills being the purplepill and the dogpill) and fitness (Examples of fitness-specific pills includes the onionpill).

A variation on the term "redpill" to have actually come out of the NRx movement is the term "clearpill" which is the concept that the best way to come out to political conclusions is to separate yourself from current political factions you have an emotional attachment to and think about policies and systems in an outside context.

The iron polygon

The iron polygon is an extension of the concept of the iron triangle. It describes a system of interlocking societal institutions that mutually reinforce each other to maintain the status quo of a particular political order. The iron polygon consists of three main institutions: the cathedral, the corporate-managerial complex and the military-industrial complex.

• The Cathedral refers to the institutionalized power of the mainstream media, academia and the government bureaucracy, which neoreactionaries see as an interconnected network that perpetuates a progressive and egalitarian ideology. The Cathedral's power is derived from its ability to control the flow of information and shape public opinion.
• The Corporate-Managerial Complex is the second institution in the iron polygon and it includes large corporations, the financial sector and the managerial class. The neoreactionaryies view this complex as an essential component of the iron polygon, since it helps maintain the dominant political order by providing resources, expertise and access to power.
• The Military-Industrial Complex is the third institution in the iron polygon. It includes the military, defense contractors and the intelligence agencies. According to the neoreactionaryies, the Military-Industrial Complex provides the necessary force to maintain the political order and protect the interests of the ruling elite.

Together, these three institutions form the iron polygon, which the neoreactionaryies believe is a self-reinforcing system that is resistant to change or reform. The iron polygon ensures that power remains in the hands of the ruling elite.

Red and Blue empire

Also called the red and blue empires/governments, clipped to RedGov and BlueGov, it is a specific power analysis of U.S. politics. It is the notion that the United States is not under the control of a single government, but rather of two each with their own internal and foreign policies, those being the military and police-based "red empire", represented in the U.S. congress by the Republican Party and the blue empire based around every other part of the iron polygon, represented by the Democratic Party.

Triangles

The triangle represents many things to neoreactionaries in terms of political theory, namely, Spandrell's triangle (The trichotomy), modern division of power within republican states and contemporary political theory.

The Trichotomy

The trichotomy, inspired partly by the "three estates of the realm" which existed during the middle ages, shows the 3 poles of neoreactionaryism: The techno-capitalists, ethno-nationalists and theonomists/traditionalists. These, as the three estates did, are supposed to balance each other.

The techno-capitalists, the libertarian branch of neoreactionary thought, is supposed to protect the freedom of individuals. The ethno-nationalists, populist-oriented, are meant to protect the nation where these individuals coexist, and the theonomists are meant to guide and order that nation toward a higher moral and metaphysical aim. Each estate has its own hierarchy, but they nonetheless overlap.

Republican division of power

Modern republicanism is based on the division of power within government and this has, in most republican states, resulted in the creation of three powers. It is here that neoreactionaries see resemblance, once again, with the three estates.

The judicial system is identified as the theocratic branch of the government, "consulting their ancient texts, intoning solemnly to convey the weight of their holy power as they decide what is moral and right for the nobles and commoners" as Nick Land puts it. The executive branch is more closely related to the nobility, or capitalists in modern western nations. Lastly, the congress is meant to represent the third estate and is thus identified by it.

Political theory

The political triangle.

This political model is used by the blogger Poseidon Awoke to explain contemporary politics, where the first estate (The "theonomists", which order society towards moral aims, towards "utopia") have descended into what neoreaction calls "the Cathedral", which Poseidon considers "hyper-calvinist", identified as the left of the triangular model. Thereby, the left is unipolar and converges to a single point, while the right (Identified as realism, as opposed to utopia) diverges into two points. It is bipolar, divided between individualists (The nobility and capitalists) and collectivists (The working class and nationalists).

Unprincipled Exception

An unprincipled exception is a policy that violates some absolute principle of ethics held by the policymaker,but is not openly acknowledged as such a violation.

Types of Societies

Moldbug says there are 3 types of societies, according to their relationship between opinion and authority.

• The Loyal Society is one where public opinion is a matter of state security. Thoughts are categorised in two: bad thoughts, that are dangerous to the safety of the state, and good thoughts, that are useful or irrelevant to the state. People are punished for expressing bad thoughts, and rewarded for expressing good ones. The state supports a set of official information organs which is used to install "good thoughts" and prevent and/or prohibit the spread of "bad thoughts" into the population.
• The Society of Consensus is a society in which the press and media controls the authority. Its hallmark is the phenomenon of spontaneous coordination, which consists of an information system which in all other respects resembles that of a loyal society, but which is not responsible to any central authority or institution, and operates mostly unconsciously.
• The Open Society is a society where a free market of divergent ideas and institutions compete with one another on the basis of which is closer to reality.

Additional Charts

Personality

NRx isn't an outspoken person and will generally prefer to hang out on the internet. He does not generally have a positive attitude towards things and can be portrayed as rather apathetic.

How to Draw

Flag of Neoreactionaryism

1. Draw a black ball with eyes.
2. Draw a gold trinity knot.
3. Draw a circle around it.
4. Above and below the circle, draw 2 lines of increasing length from it.

Relationships

Partners

• Neocameralism - My son and predilect system.
• Landian Accelerationism - Son, why does the sun take so long to die?
• Austrian School - My grandfather who taught me economics.
• Hoppeanism - My father, taught me about the benefits of monarchies, cultural reactionarism and political decentralization.
• Reactionary Libertarianism - Very good beliefs, dad! You should be writing in my blog.
• Braunism - Fellow free-marketer absolute monarchist.
• Homoconservatism - I have taught you well, Thiel.
• National Libertarianism - You're in the right direction, I know one day you will take the pill.
• Libertarian Monarchism - Hans-Adam II is one of my favorite autocrats.
• Powellism - An excellent man that revolted against the cathedral but was defeated by his psychological warfare.
• Dengism - Post-Deng China is an ideal model for free market statism.
• Lee Kuan-Yew Thought - Singapore is based and you're on the list of good autocrats.
• Social Darwinism - "When individualism and absolutism cooperates."
• Hayekism - I like your skepticism about democracy and your openness to other forms of government, also we both enjoy Austrian economics and Carl Schmitt.
• Jacobitism - I'm in favor of reinstating the Stuarts to the British crown.
• Carlism - Spanish Jacobites, I need to say more about why I like him.
• Leopold II Thought - You made a formalist state and even if you're part of the worst of colonialism, you still are far better than the majority of the governments Congo ever had.
  

Outer Party

• American Model - "The fact that an institution is old and has carried the respect of large populations for decades or centuries, is always a reason to honor and respect it. [The fact that] you oppose Washington, the real organization that exists in the real world, does not mean that you oppose America, the abstract symbol. ... It does not mean that you want to burn or abolish the flag, etc."
• Anarcho-Capitalism - "Rothbard is surely one of the ten top philosophers of the twentieth century".
• Democratism & Republicanism - Manipulated by the Inner Party.
• Neoconservatism - The army of the Inner Party.
• Mediacracy - The Press-Controlled State, also controlled by the Inner Party.
• UKIP - Used to resist the Inner Party, but it went nowhere since they have made Brexit done.
• Reactionary Liberalism - "What could an old whig be, if not a reactionary progressive?"
• Big Tent Liberalism - "I want to put Joe Biden entirely in charge of the government".

Inner Party

• Neoliberalism - Master of the Inner Party.
• Social Democracy - Bait and switch tactic.
• Reactionary Socialism - Socialist, but anti-enlightenment? You confuse me. Ruskin is epic, though.
• Neo-Enlightenment - My opposite, but we both like Kant and Austrian economics.
• Anarcho-Monarchism - It will be good when you realize you're just LARPing and embrace the state. Anarchy is fundamentally opposed to monarchy. In fact, the whole point of monarchy is to keep power under a centralized structure. At this point, you're just engaging in retarded thinking.

The Cathedral

• Socialism - The brain of the cathedral.
• Progressivism - The voice of the cathedral.
• Catholic Theocracy - Literally lives in a cathedral.
• Constitutionalism - Liberal garbage that only intensifies the current anarchy—nothing sacred, just a failed project by democracy to form a cohesive government, yet leading to economic shambles

Further Information

Literature

• An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives by Curtis Yarvin
• A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations by Curtis Yarvin
• Moldbug on Carlyle by Curtis Yarvin
• Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century by Curtis Yarvin
• How Dawkins Got Pwned by Curtis Yarvin
• A Formalist Manifesto by Curtis Yarvin
• The Case Against Democracy: Ten Red Pills by Curtis Yarvin
• Why Do Atheists Believe In Religion? by Curtis Yarvin
• The Essential Idea of Leftism by Curtis Yarvin
• The Genius of the New Deal Design by Curtis Yarvin
• Two Kinds of Repeaters by Curtis Yarvin
• The Antisingularity by Curtis Yarvin
• The Iron Polygon: Power in the United States by Curtis Yarvin
• Our Planet is Infested with Pseudo-Atheists by Curtis Yarvin
• The Magic of Symmetric Sovereignty by Curtis Yarvin
• Understanding Racial Idealism by Curtis Yarvin
• Popularchy: Rule of the People by Curtis Yarvin
• Limited Government as Antipropertarian Idealism by Curtis Yarvin
• The Fnargland Grand Challenge by Curtis Yarvin
• Principles of the Deep Right by Curtis Yarvin
• A Brief Explanation of the Cathedral by Curtis Yarvin
• A Techno-Pessimist Manifesto by Curtis Yarvin
• Three Questions for Richard Hanania by Curtis Yarvin
• Heroin Liberals and Cocaine Conservatives by Curtis Yarvin
• The Inflation Economy by Curtis Yarvin
• Propaganda by Curtis Yarvin
• Big Tech has No Power At All by Curtis Yarvin
• Salvador as a Startup State by Curtis Yarvin
• You Can Only Lose the Culture War by Curtis Yarvin
• Biden/Harris 2024 by Curtis Yarvin
• The Dark Enlightenment by Nick Land
• Crypto-Current by Nick Land
• Xenosystems Fragments by Nick Land
• Hyper-Racism by Nick Land
• Crypto-Current: Bitcoin and Philosophy by Nick Land
• Quibbles with Moldbug by Nick Land
• The Problem of Efficient Political Order by Neal Devers
• Absolutism and Localism by Neal Devers
• The Slow History Case Study Methodology by Neal Devers
• Three Types of Property by Neal Devers
• The Law of the Jungle by Neal Devers
• On Going Against the Consensus by Neal Devers
• Rules for Brotherhood by Neal Devers
• You May Not Be Interested In Politics, But Politics Is Interested In You by Raymond Brannen
• You Can't Save the World without Civilization by Raymond Brennan
• The Obedient Rebels by Harold Lee
• The Hippie-Conservative Synthesis by Harold Lee
• Best of Neoreaction, by neoreaction.net
• Nathan Larson for Congress campaign manifesto by Nathan Larson
• The Katechon Hypothesis by Anatoly Karlin
• Biological Leninism by Spandrell
• Sow Distrust, and Profit by Spandrell
• Hong Kong and the Perils of Nativism by Spandrell
• The Reactionary Tax Code by Spandrell
• Tucker Carlson's War Against Woke Capital and the Future of the Right by Spandrell
• The Intelligence Question by Spandrell
• China's CRISPR Babies Might Have Wasted our Last Chance by Spandrell
• Patriarchical Sexual Law by Spandrell
• The Wars of the Sexes by Spandrell
• The BAP Trap by Spandrell
• Black Swans of Common Knowledge by Spandrell
• The Incel Question by Spandrell

Articles

• In the Shadow of the Hegemon by Gavin Faulkner

Wikipedia

• Neoreactionary movement
• Curtis Yarvin
• Nick Land
• Peter Thiel
• Nathan Larson

Websites

• Unqualified Reservations (UR)
• Grey Enlightenment
• Bloody Shovel 3
• The Dark Enlightenment
• Gray Mirror

Videos

• Ben Shapiro: What is the Dark Enlightenment? by politicalInsights
• Accelerationism, The Dark Enlightenment and The Strange Life of Nick Land by Sisyphus55
• Critical Based Theory #8 | Ancient Liberty and The Dark Enlightenment by Lotuseaters
• Why Democracy doesn't Work Explained with Chess-Curtis Yarvin by cache
• Talking $%#@! About neoreactionary Curtis Yarvin by Sitch & Adam and ShortFatOtaku
• Peter Thiel on Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti Classical Liberalism by Oxford Union

Channels

• Charlemagne
• Spanish Neocameralist
• Paleopolitica y Cultura
• cache
• Voz Soberana

Gallery

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