Deep dive into the Dark Enlightenment: Prophets of a New Order (1 Viewer)

[joluoto]

When you seek maximum liberty for yourself you will eventually realize that to maximize your own liberty would be it at expense of the liberty of others. For some people that's not a problem, but indeed a revelation. For some people from the Libertarian movement this "realization" has turned them away from the very concept of democracy itself. Democracy will never give them the liberty they want, too many other people in the way, with pesky rights that for some unfathomable reason should be respected. For some people that led to the conclusion that they as a natural aristocracy should rule as authoritarians over the unworthy masses. Recently language that just a few years ago was isolated to the dark corners of Reddit, 4chan and.... Stormfront has become regularly used by mainstream right wing politicians. Ideas of people like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land has reached the mainstream, as politicians who cite their work are elected to office. This is the Dark Enligthenment. But where does it come from? What ideas influenced it? What has these prophets of authoritarianism read and who are they citing. Let's explore some of the influences of the modern authoritarian right.

One of the first influences worth mentioning is the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A opponent of liberal thought, Carlyle instead subscribed to the theory of "Great Men", titans of history, heroes such as Cromwell and Frederick the Great, that should be allowed a maximum personal freedom on the expense of others, because the power of individualism triumph over the darkness of collectivism and democracy, and civilization does not rest on the many, but on the few exceptional. Carlyle further attacked utiliarianism and considered it nothing bu atheism in disguise, and was digusted by the social progress brought by the industrial revolution, and was of the opinion that labour needs to be fully under the control of the "Captains of Industry", because the masses themselves had no concept of what was good for them. Carlyle was also vehemently against both emancipation of the Jew as well as liberation of slaves. When it came to Jewish question Carlyle even wished English would throw off "the Hebraic old clothes of Christianity", or maybe dump Christianity altogether, as Carlyle considered Christianity way too Jewish. Carlyle also defended slavery and indeed is cited saying the following at an 1837 dinner party:
"It is a natural aristocracy, that of colour, and quite right that the stronger and better race should have dominion!"

So Carlyle's idea of heroic individuals who should not be constrained in their power by laws or rights of others is one of the inspirations of the modern alt right, another inspirational figure is for sure Julius Evola (1898-1974). Evola was a favorite philosopher of the Fascist government of Italy. And indeed Evola did not deny being Fascist, when asked about is after the war he happily answered that he was a "Super Fascist", above and beyond the limitations of Mussolini's Fascism. Evola drew inspiration from esoteric ideas, both from western esotericism and from Indian religions. He believed the world was in the Kali Yuga, a term he borrowed from Hinduism and means the Dark Age. It's an age of materialism, conflict and sin. To counter this age of darkness Evola called for a Primodial Rebirth, a return to a World of Tradition, a world based on authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience. Evola was atheist, he did not believe in a God, but rather in impersonal supernatural forces. Evola praised the Italian racial laws when they were introduced in 1938, as he had for some time though Mussolini should follow Hitler's example and save the Aryan race from the Jews. After Italy fell in 1943, Evola ended up working for the German puppet government in Salo, and after the war he functioned as the ideologue of the Italian neofascist far right. Evola believed in male supremacy over women, and that women should admit they were inferior to men, and that women seeking rights actually meant "robbing them the right to be women", and that women would only find true freedom if they embraced their biological identity as female and accepted total subjugation, as woman's husband was not only a lover and a friend, but a lord. Evola believed society consisted of four natural castes: Sacred Leaders, Warrior Nobility, Bourgeoise and Slaves. Likewise he believed all races and cultures of the world could be associated with one of the castes, with the Aryan race naturally the most spiritual fitting on the top as the Sacred Leaders (but also partly as Warrior Nobility), and the non- European races were associated with lower castes, and especially the black Africans were a race of slaves..... I will continue go through these dark thinkers in later posts.

 

[joluoto]

So if Carlyle brought the idea of unrestrained heroic individuals, Evola brought the creed that Democracy constitued a dark age, and that there existed a natural hierarchy of castes, that mirrors both society, and can be used to compared different cultures and societies to each other. The next person who influences the current radical right wing thinkers is the German- American economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949-). Hoppe is a member of the Austrian school of economics who even claims to have been a personal friend of Saint Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), and while they for sure at a time were alive at the same time, in 1973 when von Mises died, Hoppe would have been just 24- years-old, while von Mises was 92. So DOUBT. Hoppe rejects the idea of universal suffrage and argues that the franchise of voting should be limited to "elites". Because in a Democracy everyone will vote to get the most out of society, the State becomes debt ridden because of social programs, and thus the masses destroys the State and civilization as a whole. Instead society should be divided into small centralized unities ruled by authoritarian elites. Hoppe associates with white nationalists, but has never himself expressed white nationalist thought, but sometimes you can maybe see his views from the people he hangs out with, like Jared Taylor and Richard B. Spencer. Hoppe believes that monarchy would secure individual liberty better than democracy (for the rich, the liberty for people who are not rich does not matter to him). He argues that freedom requires the "freedom to discriminate" which inccludes the right to discriminate people based on race, nationality, religion and gender. Hoppe believed that kings and nobles were better suited to have a long term view on society and how to improve it, because they were not limited by popular approval or term limits, they had lifelong rule and then they passed it over to their decendants, so they had a reason to keep society working. In other words he argues for the privatization of government, where the CeO rules like a dictator, and is aided and adviced by his board or high level employees (nobles or elites), but the CeO still has the final word. He argues that the societal core has to be the family, and thus there can be no tolerance for aberrations from the norm, such as homosexuality, communism, hedonism or environmentalism, or indeed any lifestyle choice or way of thinking that contradicts the core of the family. He believes that true libertarianism is the complete privatization of society, and removal of any unwanted elements.

So Hoppe adds the idea of a modern monarchy, and a monarch who functions like a CeO, he bridges the gap between authoritarinism and libertarianism by claiming that true libertarianism has to be authoritarian by nature, and is a complete privatization of society and government. The last of the "older thinkers" we will take a look at before examining current Dark Enlightenment thinkers is Steven Sailer (1958 -), a writer and blogger, and VDARE columnist. Sailer revived the idea of scientific racism in the 1990s and 2000s by renaming the concept "human biodiversity", where he claims different "races" of humans have different biological attributes, and thus some will just be better and superior to others. He has severa times pointed out that African Americans tend to be poorer and less educated than Whites, which expresses a racial inferiority, and that they thus need "stricter moral guidance" from society. Sailer loves to use pseudoscientific language to make what he says sound more scientific and not just incredibly racist. To Sailer and his followers racism is not a ideology or a philosophy, it's a natural fact of life. Everyone is racist, they just refuse to aknowledge it. Racism is the natural way of life. Sailer also believes that homosexuality is a disease that in the future will be curable. What Sailer offers to the modern radical right is the guise of science, racism is not bad, it scientific fact. Races are not equal, and it can be scientifically proved according to them. So we have Carlyle's idea of unrestricted heroes, Evola's idea of natural castes and that Democracy constitutes a Dark Age, we have Hoppe with his idea of the Ceo Monarchy and finally Sailer who offers the disguise of science. And here we have the ingredients of the Dark Enlightenment we need when we move forward and dicuss the current dark thinkers and influencers.

 

[joluoto]

And thus we can finally start talking about Curtis Yarvin (1973 -). Yarvin is a software engineer, born from a Jewish father and a Protestant mother in Westchester (NY). In the 90s he worked for various tech companies and was inspired to read American Libertarian authors as well as Austrian school economics. In the early 2000s he had started his own software company named Urbit, that never really took off, but was supposed to develop a decentralized network of personal servers, but again, it never really took off, and is today only staying afloat due to investment from his friend and investor Peter Thiel (he will be important later). Yarvin has said he gave up on Democracy during the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" controversy in 2004 when John Kerry was accused of having lied about his military service (which was not true at all, Kerry has never lied about his military service), but Yarvin felt that media and politicians were corrupting the truth, which in his opinion was that Kerry had lied, by supporting Kerry and smearing Kerry's accusers. Thus he started a anti- Democracy blog named Unqualified Reservations under the pen name Mencius Moldbug. As Moldbug he wrote in a way that included alot of jokes, memes and pop culture references, historical references and offensive language in a way that especially talked to young men. His theory is built around US society being under the control of something he calls the Cathedral, which is his version of the Deep State. And we do need to define it further, because every radical thinker has their own idea what the Deep State actually is. The Cathedral according to Yarvin consist of not only government officials, elected legislators but also journalists and academics. The Cathedral is not a centralized conspiracy according to Yarvin, but a shared world view, that forms the intellectual mileu, by media institutions, universities and the government choosing to hire people with the same world view, which then becomes the dominating world view. Yarvin believes this can't be fixed gradually, but there must be a revolutionary hard reset, a rebooting of society. For that democratic institutions won't do, there need to be a strong leader with absolute power. He believes in a centralized government and a centralized economy managed by a CeO and his high level employees and his Board. The CeO would have full control, but is elected by the Board, that consist of large shareholders. You might start to see similarities with the ideas some of the gentlemen in previous posts had, this is because Yarvin has studied their ideas and adapted them into his ideology. Yarvin admires Deng Xiaoping for transforming China from a Communist dictatorship to a market oriented dictatorship, he also admires the city state of Singapore, and believe countries should be just small authoritarian city states. As Moldbug Yarvin also expressed suport for the view that races were biologically diverse and that some races were less intelligent, but still somehow claims he is no racist. He has also claimed that "some races are better suited for slavery than others", so definitely not racist at all.

In 2012 Moldbug invented the acronym RAGE: retire all government employees. This he saw as the only solution to rid the government of the Cathedral. He also alluded to that there were flaws in the mythology of World War 2, and that Hitler only defended Germany from the Communist threat. He argued that the myth of World War 2 was invented by Western Communists who created a system of "political correctness" as a mechanism to persecute innocent racists and fascists. he aslo uttered the famous phrase:
"If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia."

Another invention of Moldbug was the use of the term "red pill" to symbolize someone who had joined this alternative right wing movement online, or as it was called, the alt right. In the mid 2010s Yarvin was outed as Moldbug, and he started to have troubles being invited into Conservative or Libertarian circles. He stopped bloggin for a while, but he would come back. But before we start discussing Yarvin further and people like Peter Thiel and JD Vance, this is a good place to start looking at other people in the alt right space influenced by Yarvin.

 

[joluoto]

Nick Land (1962 -)....not a person I look forward to talking about at all. He is a English philosopher so we are now for a short while on the other side of the pond, though he lives in Shanghai, China since 2017. And the question has always been whether he influenced Yarvin or Yarvin influenced him. Perhaps they both influenced each other. Nick Land is one of those persons who likes to portray himself as a really sigma level academic, and thus writes everything in as complicated language as possible, but most of the things he says means absolutely nothing. Land is mostly known for his idea of Accelerationism, and indeed there has been several ideas and movements going by that name, both on the political left and right, but for this exploration it's right wing accelerationism that is relevant. The accelerationism of Land is based on futurism, and it's basically that technological process should be embraced fully, there should be no limitations, and any regulations should be abolished and moral or ethical question trashed in order to accelerate the process of technological success. He believes that things like true AI and Cybernetics are just behind the corner, and it can be all achieved very fast through hyper capitalism, completely unregulated market capitalism. This he has written about since the 90s, but in the 2000s and 2010s his writings took a darker tone. In 2012 he wrote the long essay called The Dark Enlightenment where he named the ideology and argued that freedom is incompatible with democracy. And this sounds very much like Yarvin, and indeed Land hanged out on the same alt right forums as Yarvin, and definitely read the Moldbug blog. Land started more and more to comment on things like eugenics and scientific racism (human biodiversity), which he now claims are important parts of the Accelerationist process. Land also praised the Nazi Satanic terrorlike cult ONA (Order of Nine Angles) that embraces Accelerationist ideals. This was probably the death of his carreer as someone who could in any way be taken seriously outside alt right circles. Since Land moved to China he has been convinced China is the Accelerationis society he has dreamed of (it's not) and has become more open to the role of government in the Accelerationist Process, but also more convinced that what's needed is an authoritarian government, like the one in China. Despite all this China stuff, you'd think would make the alt right uncomfortable, Land is considered one of the main philosophers, and his essays are studied on alt right boards, and even his older texts of Accelerationism from before The Dark Enlightenment is now recontextualized to support the alt right ideological message. Since so much of the alt right comes from a tech background, the idea of free unrestricted technological process talks to them, the idea that the future will bring a Techno- Dictatorship where they are the architechts of progress.

 

[joluoto]

Of the alt right personalities and influencers that were inspired by Yarvin there are two worth mentioning. One of them is Milo Yiannopoulos (1984 -), a British (originally) political commentator but nowadays a houshold name of the American alt right. He worked for Breitbart 2014 to 17 (staring as a writer for the tech section), and became the face of the Gamergate controversy. That Yiannopoulos would become the center figure of a gaming related "scandal" (if you call the fact that women make, play and write about video games a scandal) was something of a surprise, since he had not held a high opinion on gamers, in contrast he had stated:
"Few things are more embarrassing than grown men getting over-excited about video games".

But Milo found Gamergate to be the perfect vehicle for a favorite hobby of his, attack and harrass women. For this he started to become recognized by the emerging alt right. In 2017 BuzzFeed published leaked emails that revealed Milo (yes I am referring to him as Milo because his surname is to damn difficult) and his ghostwriter Allum Bokhari regularly solicitated stories and ideas from various alt right and Neo Nazi personalities, including Curtis Yarvin. Milo's carreer as far right figure continued from here, in 2017 he spent a evening singing karaoke songs with Richard Spencer and a bunch of Neo Nazis where they made Sieg Heil salutes, and chanted Trump! Trump! Trump!, especially since they realized the staff of the Karaoke bar became nervous about their presence. Milo has many controversial views. He is gay, but he also supports anti- gay language and legislation. He has said that 13-year-old boys should have sex with adult men, which is more than a little disturbing. This actually forced him to resign from Breitbart. He has claimed there is a overlap between homsexual men and pedophilia, considering he is a homosexual man and his previous statements, I am wondering whether he is talking about himself. He has many times shown hate and disgust of journalists and said he "can't wait for vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists down on sight". Milo is also very anti Islam and has several times stated the entire religion, not just a few indviduals is a threat to the US, and has claimed the threat to women and gay men is not Islamists, nor terrorists or radicalists, but mainstream Muslims. Besides Muslims he has a long standing hate of women and feminism, and has claimed feminists are ugly lesbians, and that the feminist movement is "man-hating", and has proclaimed his birthday to be the "World Patriarchy Day":

Besides being gay himself, and also not religious, he has several times stated homosexuality is a sin, and embraced conversion treatment (which he himself never has attended, despite him being gay). Though in 2021 he actually claimed to be ex-gay, so who knows, maybe he went to a conversion treatment in secret or something. He is also involved in the Kanye West presidential campaign, first together with Neo Nazi Nic Fuentes, but since Fuentes bailed, Milo who also had bailed was rehired to run it in 2023, but the campaign never went anywhere. While Milo is more of a clownish character who never really has showed any interest in the pseudo intellectual philosophies of the alt right, he is still a household name, probably a name more peope have heard than Curtis Yarvin. And this is something to consider. Yarvin is not known outside the circles, he doesn't make headlines. That's left to people like Milo who pulls stunts and claim things in a much more public setting.

 

[joluoto]

In 2017 Politico reported that White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon (1953 -) had read Yarvin's blog and opened a line between Yarvin and the White House through intermediaries. And this should not be seen as surprising, as Bannon was from the same alt right milieu as Yarvin, and has definitely been at the same forums on the Internet and probably read his blog since the Moldbug days. Bannon needs no introduction, he is well known for Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica, his stint as Trump advisor, and his grift to pretend to be building a border wall. Bannon has a background as an investment banker before moving over to media and entertainment and eventually became one of the founders of Breitbart. Bannon himself describes himself as a Reaganite and a Populist. He is quite to the right of Reagan though, and Curtis Yarvin is often mentioned as one of the influences of Bannon's thinking. Bannon has also during a trip to Italy where he visited Italian far right movements (many with ties that goes back to Fascism) where he namedropped Julius Evola as one of his influences. Another of Bannon's main influences he has praised is Alexander Dugin, Putin's main ideologue. There is not really too much more to say about him, Bannon is a very public figure, his ecapades are well known. But I think it's useful to know that Yarvin was an influence on him, because when we return to Yarvin and his current activities it's good to have in the back of our heads that he already had influence people like Land, Yiannopoulos and Bannon and was in many ways one of the head ideologues of the alt right movement.

 

[joluoto]

So Yarvin was not blogging for a while during the early Trump years, but he was watching the 2016 election result at his friend Peter Thiel's house. Peter Thiel (1967 -) is a German born American entrepeneur and venture capitalist. He is the main financer of Curtis Yarvin. Thiel was one of the PayPal guys (a group of rich young men who made their name running PayPal in the early 00s, includes people like Elon Musk and Max Levchin). He is also a big geek, and for example named one of his companies Palantir after an artefact in Lord of the Rings. Thiel has been an opponent of "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" since the 90s, and were one of the co-authots of The Diversity Myth (1995). By 2009 Thiel officially claimed in an essay he no longer believed that freedom and democracy are compatible. Where have heard that before? Thiel's backing of ideas that are sometimes very openly anti- LGBTQ can be seen as very strange, considering he is gay himself, and has backed gay rights, and is a backer of the Republican gay rights organisation GOProud. Thiel has been in Yarvin's circles at least since 2011, when Thiel for the first time invested in one of Yarvin's startups.

By 2018 Yarvin started to blog again, now under his own name. When Trump tried and failed to overturn the election result of 2020, Yarvin's ideas of regime change in the US suddenly became relevant. Meanwhile Thiel who was no stranger to finance political campaigns had set his gaze on two of his former employees: Blake Masters and JD Vance. With their eyes on two senate seats for the 2022 election, in Arizona for Masters, and in Ohio for Vance. Meanwhile Yarvin was telling anyone who wanted to listen how Trump should run on a campaign to assume absolute power, because he was convinced people are tired of the Congressmen and Bureaucrats and wants real leadership. He also revived RAGE (retire all government employees) as an important cornerstone for a second Trump presidency, and an obligatory step to dismante The Cathedral. With 2022 approaching Thiel formed a close inner circle consisting of Yarvin, Masters and Vance, so both Masters and Vance knows Yarvin personally have aknowledged it and identified Yarvin as a friend. Masters lost his race in Arizona, but Vance became US Senator for Ohio, and later Trump's Vice Presidential pick for 2024. Never have the Dark Enlightenment been this close to power and influence. Peter Thiel is also a huge influence on Vance, it was Thiel who convinced Vance to convert to Catholicism. Vance has supported the idea to "fire every civil servant and replace them with our people" that sounds alot like Yarvin's RAGE. The same language also came up in Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration by the Heritage Foundation. With Vance right behind Trump and Project 2025 as the blueprint, Yarvin and Thiel are closer than ever to their ultimate goal of dismantling American democracy.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

This probably belongs in BLOGS but no matter, it's a very well done expose.
Is this your work?
Even if not, still well done and well thought out.
Thanks for sharing it.

 

[joluoto]

This probably belongs in BLOGS but no matter, it's a very well done expose.
Is this your work?
Even if not, still well done and well thought out.
Thanks for sharing it.

Yes, I have been reading articles, surfing wikipedia and listened to podcasts about this for some time, and needed to get it out.

 

[GIJane]

Yes, I have been reading articles, surfing wikipedia and listened to podcasts about this for some time, and needed to get it out.

So......... just reading other peoples work and paraphrasing. Got it. Wrote many a paper like that in College.

 

[joluoto]

I am going to add a few thought I had recently. Hoppe and Yarvin both assumes that a monarch or a CeO would have more interest and more drive into actually making the country better, because they have no term limits and no chance of being voted out of office, and of course will hand the country over to their descendants. In which Universe do these people live? Since when has any authoritarian leader cared much about their country? Or a CeO cared about his corporation? They care about THEMSELVES, and nothing else. They will do what is best for themselves even if it's terrible for the country or company they run. We have seen this so many times, rich and powerful people, especially those that never have to answer to anyone (a CeO at least theoretically has to answer to the shareholders, unless the company is private, but again the Dark Enlightenment people certainly doesn't want alot of unworthy normies owning shares in their little fiefdoms), they do not give a fig about anything but themselves.

 

[Michael Cole]

I am going to add a few thought I had recently. Hoppe and Yarvin both assumes that a monarch or a CeO would have more interest and more drive into actually making the country better, because they have no term limits and no chance of being voted out of office, and of course will hand the country over to their descendants. In which Universe do these people live? Since when has any authoritarian leader cared much about their country? Or a CeO cared about his corporation? They care about THEMSELVES, and nothing else. They will do what is best for themselves even if it's terrible for the country or company they run. We have seen this so many times, rich and powerful people, especially those that never have to answer to anyone (a CeO at least theoretically has to answer to the shareholders, unless the company is private, but again the Dark Enlightenment people certainly doesn't want alot of unworthy normies owning shares in their little fiefdoms), they do not give a fig about anything but themselves.

The ideal would be to have interest in the country or company over self. The problems occur when we try to define "interest."

This is easier to do the smaller the group. A family is more likely to agree on things than a tribe, town, city or state. The larger the group, the more dissent will be found. A king can't please everyone.

With a company, the objective is to survive and possibly thrive. If...and this turns out to be a big if...if a CEOs performance is tied to compensation, then he should think of himself. The principle behind free trade is everyone working in his own self-interest (however one chooses to define that), and the economy follows as everyone's best interests are leveled out with compromise.

Sadly, that's not how things do work.