The following is a very brief introduction to the Dark Enlightenment and neoreaction. The following information is not sufficient to understand them, but can provide a brief summary.
What is the Dark Enlightenment?
The Dark Enlightenment (DE) is a reactionary movement against the untrue progressive shibboleths that dominate our society. The fundamental premise of DE is that men are not equal.
Beyond that fundamental premise, there is little agreement. Among those included under the Dark Enlightenment banner are reactionaries, paleo-conservatives, paleo-libertarians, Christian traditionalists, formalists, monarchists, fascists (in the non-pejorative sense), tribalists, ethno-nationalists, nihilists, hedonists, masculinists, science enthusiasts, and many others.
The uniting link between these disparate ideologies is opposition to one or more of the progressive enlightenment sub-ideologies of democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, feminism, multiculturalism, modernity, etc., which dominate our society.
A map of the Dark Enlightenment (Note: Not everyone identified as part of the DE, self-identifies as such):
What is neoreaction?
Neoreaction (NRx) began to coalesce around the writings of the blogger Mencius Moldbug,who brought forth a strong critique of modernism during a period of prolific writing in 2007-2009. Following that period, Moldbug’s rate of writing began to decline, but others, such as Foseti, kept producing neoreactionary critique. Neoreaction experienced strong growth in 2012-2014 period becoming a large internet presence.
(NRx) is a part of the dark enlightenment. Neoreactionaries believe that due to the acceptance of enlightenment values modern society is in the midst of a long-running moral and material decline. The exact point of when this decline began is disputed; three notable dates in the decline are the trial and execution of of Charles I in 1649, the American Revolution in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789.
Neoreaction is fundamentally a critique of modern society with no agreed-upon shared goals beyond criticism. It emphasizes the values of subsidiarity, tradition, natural hierarchy, and biological realism and strongly condemns the modern values of democracy and egalitarianism, and the corrupt ideologies spawning from them. Neoreaction could be cladistically be categorized as post-libertarian, as many neoreactionaries are former libertarians who realized that democracy and freedom are incompatible.
Neoreactionaries reject democratic activism and politics and there is no neoreactionary political program. Some neoreactionaries are creating plans to build traditional communities, some to influence elites to install a reactionary political system, and some believe collapse is inevitable, and wish only to preserve knowledge of the reasons for it for those rebuilding in the aftermath.
As for the ideal neoreactionary state, neoreactionaries are divided. There are three major streams of thought in the neoreactionary thought:
- Theonomists: This group is composed of traditionalists, mostly Christian, but with some secularists and religious non-Christians. It envisions a society centred around natural law, religion, patriarchy, and/or monarchy. This group envisions establishing a monarchy and/or theocracy based on traditional principles.
- Ethno-nationalists: This group focuses on ethnic solidarity as the building block of society. They envision a society formed around tribal communities.
- Techno-commercialists: This group focuses on the the free market and the principle of exit. They envision a society consisting of a patchwork of small states controlled by for-profit, joint-stock corporations competing for customer-citizens.
The theonomist and ethno-nationalists tend to heavily overlap and generally have minimal disagreement with each other as tribalism, theocracy, and monarchy are fairly compatible; most differences are of emphasis. Most intra-ideological conflict arises between the former two streams and the techno-commercialists, as techno-commercialist goals are not always compatible with traditional community.
Despite some media reports to the contrary, neoreaction is not monarchy. Many neoreactionaries are monarchists, but many aren’t. The neoreactionary ideology goes much deeper than monarchy.
The neoreactionary fusion:
