Barbarism v. 2.0


Visualizing Neoreaction by Scharlach

I ran into the Dark Enlightenment a while back, and spent some time poking around among the various sites. Its proponents are also known as “Neoreactionaries”, which is an appealing term in itself. Among their characteristics are a distaste for modern politics and culture, skepticism about democracy, and an affinity for venerable and organically-formed traditions.

The culture they oppose is often labeled “The Cathedral”. It is the behemoth of progressive modernity that compels compliance through both incentives and punishments. On occasion I’ve called the same monster “The Empire”, in sardonic reference to the old Jefferson Airplane song “Greasy Man”:

Don’t change before the empire falls
You’ll laugh so hard you’ll crack the walls

In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden called it “The Combine”.

But whatever name it goes by, it is the trans-national engine of Political Correctness and Multiculturalism. It is lavishly funded, relentlessly promoted, and enforced by coercion when necessary. It is pushed by Western governments, the media, the Academy, major corporations, the central banks, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the United Nations, and numerous deep-pocketed private foundations. Its primary purpose — sometimes stated clearly but more often covert — is to usher in a New World Order of “global governance”. When that glorious Utopia arrives, only the government and billions of atomized individuals will remain. All other mediating institutions will have been vacuumed up by the omnipotent State.

Meaningful dissent against the Cathedral is not permitted, not even among ostensible “conservatives”. Just ask John Derbyshire. Or Jason Richwine.

The greatest punishments are reserved for any deviation from orthodoxy on race and ethnicity. National Review dutifully excommunicates any race-heretics from its cramped crypt in the cellar of the Cathedral. But other topics are also frowned upon, such as skepticism about global warming. Or home-schooling. Or the gold standard — dissidents on fiat money are laughed out of the nave and down the front steps.

If mockery fails as a deterrent, then more stringent persuasions are brought to bear, running from denial of funding through loss of employment to lawsuits and prosecution. The Cathedral will not be gainsaid.

The Dark Enlightenment fails to heed such strictures, and takes exception to the doctrines of the Cathedral. It had remained in relative obscurity, but recently came to the attention of at least two commentators in Britain. On January 20th, Jamie Bartlett, in his blog at The Telegraph, told his audience to be alarmed: “Meet The Dark Enlightenment: sophisticated neo-fascism that’s spreading fast on the net”. He considered it a possibly dangerous “niche movement” that needs to be watched.

Two days later, Tim Stanley, also blogging for The Telegraph, reassured his readers that “The ‘neo-fascist’ Dark Enlightenment is more sad than scary”.

Sober-minded citizens who wish to remain the shelter of the Cathedral’s portico may well wonder which reaction to these cranks and misfits is more appropriate. Should we be alarmed? Should we pity them? Or should we subject them to ridicule and scorn?

To help readers make up their minds, our British correspondent JP has compiled a selection of excerpts from the writings of prominent Neoreactionaries. He includes this brief introduction:

Why I like the Neoreactionaries

Leave aside the occasional long-windedness, the sometimes plain silly or even outlandishly alarming, the Neoreactionaries appear marked by a curiosity and openness to humanity and its doings that does not stop at barriers erected arbitrarily for whatever reasons.

In short, Neoreactionaries appear to like humans and humanity. This is refreshing, encouraging, and ultimately liberating after experiencing the intense dislike for hominids so often displayed by those who have fixed ideas what and what should not be. I recommend that you linger in the Neoreactionary biotope, soak up its atmosphere, emerge refreshed for battles and wars to come.

Below is JP’s anthology of selected Neoreactionary writings.

Barbarism — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4a

In much of the Western world, in stark contrast [to cities of the western Pacific Rim], barbarism has been normalized. It is considered simply obvious that cities have ‘bad areas’ that are not merely impoverished, but lethally menacing to outsiders and residents alike. Visitors are warned to stay away, whilst locals do their best to transform their homes into fortresses, avoid venturing onto the streets after dark, and — especially if young and male — turn to criminal gangs for protection, which further degrades the security of everybody else. Predators control public space, parks are death traps, aggressive menace is celebrated as ‘attitude’, property acquisition is for mugs (or muggers), educational aspiration is ridiculed, and non-criminal business activity is despised as a violation of cultural norms. Every significant mechanism of socio-cultural pressure, from interpreted heritage and peer influences to political rhetoric and economic incentives, is aligned to the deepening of complacent depravity and the ruthless extirpation of every impulse to self-improvement. Quite clearly, these are places where civilization has fundamentally collapsed, and a society that includes them has to some substantial extent failed.

The Cathedral — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

The self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service. A term coined by blogger Mencius Moldbug. The Cathedral has no central administrator, but represents a consensus acting as a coherent group that condemns other ideologies as evil. Community writers have enumerated the platform of Progressivism as women’s suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of senators, labour laws, desegregation, popularization of drugs, destruction of traditional sexual norms, ethnic studies courses in colleges, decolonization, and gay marriage. A defining feature of Progressivism is that “you believe that morality has been essentially solved, and all that’s left is to work out the details.” Reactionaries see Republicans as Progressives, just lagging 10-20 years behind Democrats in their adoption of Progressive norms.

Clans — hbd*chick blog, 5 April 2013

There is a vast amount of literature that considers the importance of the family as an institution. Little attention, however, has been given to the impact of the family structure and its dynamics on institutions. This limits our ability to understand distinct institutional developments — and hence growth — in the past and present. This paper supports this argument by highlighting the importance of the European family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history and reflects on its growth-related implications.

“Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth: The Origins and Implications of Western Corporations,” Avner Greif, American Economic Review, May 2006, pgs. 308-09

Note: hbd = Human Biodiversity

Complementarity — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

The view that “men and women complement one another as separate parts that together make up a composite whole.” Also called complementarism. Related to the empirical view that men and women have different psychologies and are thus suited to different, complementary roles in society. Both men and women are seen as responsible for contributing “civilizing influence” to society as a whole, beginning with the atomic unit of society, the family. Among Reactionaries, most strains of feminism are seen as exacerbating male-female conflict and mortgaging long-term social vigour for the fleeting rewards of frivolity, hypergamy, and juvenilism. By the same token, misogyny, adultery, domestic abuse, fatherly irresponsibility, and the incessant whining of “men’s rights activists” are frowned upon as encouraging the same conflicts. Reactionaries acknowledge that securing the future depends on raising children in a stable and nurturing environment with a father and mother, and that the selfish desires of parents are secondary to this central goal. Without children, a culture simply self-terminates. Idolizing childlessness is a form of cultural suicide.

Cult — Mencius Moldbug — Unqualified Reservations, 11 October 2007

Universalism, in my opinion, is best described as a mystery cult of power. It’s a cult of power because one critical stage in its replicative lifecycle is a little critter called the State. When we look at the big U’s surface proteins, we notice that most of them can be explained by its need to capture, retain, and maintain the State, and direct its powers toward the creation of conditions that favor the continued replication of Universalism. It’s as hard to imagine Universalism without the State as malaria without the mosquito.

It’s a mystery cult because it displaces theistic traditions by replacing metaphysical superstitions with philosophical mysteries, such as humanity, progress, equality, democracy, justice, environment, community, peace, etc.

None of these concepts, as defined in orthodox Universalist doctrine, is even slightly coherent. All can absorb arbitrary mental energy without producing any rational thought.

Dark Enlightenment — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

A new intellectual current made up of Reactionary components. The unifying factor of the Dark Enlightenment is a critique of Democracy, bluntly summarized by Peter Thiel when he wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” The “Dark Enlightenment” is a term coined by British philosopher Nick Land, who explicated the concept in his Dark Enlightenment sequence. This sequence, along with the writings of Mencius Moldbug, make up the core literature of the movement. The Dark Enlightenment is a Reactionary project that rejects modernity, universalism, and Democracy in favour of Traditionalist, particularist, and aristocratic values. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with “neoreaction” or “neoreactionary”.

Democracy — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4e

Democracy might begin as a defensible procedural mechanism for limiting government power, but it quickly and inexorably develops into something quite different: a culture of systematic thievery. As soon as politicians have learnt to buy political support from the ‘public purse’, and conditioned electorates to embrace looting and bribery, the democratic process reduces itself to the formation of (Mancur Olson’s) ‘distributional coalitions’ — electoral majorities mortared together by common interest in a collectively advantageous pattern of theft. Worse still, since people are, on average, not very bright, the scale of depredation available to the political establishment far exceeds even the demented sacking that is open to public scrutiny. Looting the future, through currency debauchment, debt accumulation, growth destruction, and techno-industrial retardation is especially easy to conceal, and thus reliably popular. Democracy is essentially tragic because it provides the populace with a weapon to destroy itself, one that is always eagerly seized, and used. Nobody ever says ‘no’ to free stuff. Scarcely anybody even sees that there is no free stuff. Utter cultural ruination is the necessary conclusion.

Demotism — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

Rule in the name of the People. The term has been recently popularized by Mencius Moldbug. Democracy and Communism are seen as two types of Demotism. Reactionaries view Demotism as a form of mob rule, where politicians pander to what they see as the popular will, rather than making their own decisions as independent leaders. A quote of unknown attribution, which first appears in print in 1951, sums up the Reactionary view on Demotism: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” Reactionaries see the Reign of Terror and Stalin’s Purges as classic consequences of Demotism. Though monarchies have historically persecuted religious and ethnic minorities within their borders, none have shed blood on the scale of the French or Russian Revolutions and their subsequent purges. Quoting Erik von Keuhnelt-Leddihn: “The renaissance of democracy marked the beginning of the Age of the “G”— guillotines, genocide, gaols, gallows, gas chambers and Gulags.”

Empirical claims of Neoreactionism — Michael Anissimov, 21 September 2013

1.   The United States (and indeed, the entire West) has been moving further and further to the Left consistently since the French Revolution at least. We are leftist radicals by the standards of our forefathers. Our forefathers were radicals by the standards of their forefathers. Hard mode: America is a communist country.
2.   Britain has been on the Left for considerably longer than most of Continental Europe. This has led the Anglosphere to the idea that a parliamentarian system, rather than a monarchical one, is normal. In contrast, areas like Russia, the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Germany had monarchies until 1918, and so see authoritarian systems as considerably more normal. This is part of why leaders like Putin are so very popular in Russia. This also gives Americans an unusual bias against more authoritarian systems; rebellion for its own sake, rather than in service of any higher goal.
 


Dark Enlightenment Visual Tricohotomy by Nick Steves

Hate — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 3

‘Hate’ is a word to pause over. It testifies with special clarity to the religious orthodoxy of the Cathedral, and its peculiarities merit careful notice. Perhaps its most remarkable feature is its perfect redundancy, when evaluated from the perspective of any analysis of legal and cultural norms that is not enflamed by neo-puritan evangelical enthusiasm. A ‘hate crime’, if it is anything at all, is just a crime, plus ‘hate’, and what the ‘hate’ adds is telling. To restrict ourselves, momentarily, to examples of uncontroversial criminality, one might ask: what is it exactly that aggravates a murder, or assault, if the motivation is attributed to ‘hate’? Two factors seem especially prominent, and neither has any obvious connection to common legal norms.

Firstly, the crime is augmented by a purely ideational, ideological, or even ‘spiritual’ element, attesting not only to a violation of civilized conduct, but also to a heretical intention. This facilitates the complete abstraction of hate from criminality, whereupon it takes the form of ‘hate-speech’ or simply ‘hate’ (which is always to be contrasted with the ‘passion’, ‘outrage’, or righteous ‘anger’ represented by critical, controversial, or merely abusive language directed against unprotected groups, social categories, or individuals). ‘Hate’ is an offense against the Cathedral itself, a refusal of its spiritual guidance, and a mental act of defiance against the manifest religious destiny of the world.

Secondly, and relatedly, ‘hate’ is deliberately and even strategically asymmetrical in respect to the equilibrium political polarity of advanced democratic societies. Between the relentless march of progress and the ineffective grouching of conservatism it does not vacillate. As we have seen, only the right can ‘hate’. As the doxological immunity system of ‘hate’ suppression is consolidated within elite educational and media systems, the highly selective distribution of protections ensures that ‘discourse’ — especially empowered discourse — is ratcheted consistently to the left, which is to say, in the direction of an ever more comprehensively radicalized Universalism. The morbidity of this trend is extreme.

Because grievance status is awarded as political compensation for economic incompetence, it constructs an automatic cultural mechanism that advocates for dysfunction. The Universalist creed, with its reflex identification of inequality with injustice, can conceive no alternative to the proposition that the lower one’s situation or status, the more compelling is one’s claim upon society, the purer and nobler one’s cause. Temporal failure is the sign of spiritual election (Marxo-Calvinism), and to dispute any of this is clearly ‘hate’.

Leftism — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

The Reactionary Right sees Leftism as an ideology that seeks to tear down exceptionalism and Traditional structures so that the lowest common denominator can satiate their feelings of envy and pathological altruism. A capitalist, leftist society primarily legitimizes accomplishment in only a couple domains — money and hedonism — at the expense of all higher values, including long-term societal stability. Instead of encouraging individual accomplishment, Leftism is driven by a “leveling dynamic” summarized by the pithy slogan “everyone gets a trophy”. Social “progress” is defined in terms of maximizing short-term individual hedonism at the expense of general societal health. Promoting an “anything goes” mentality, the end result is a cloud of largely indistinguishable, atomized individuals, rather than anything resembling social coherence or strength. “Culture” is seen as a fluid construct, to be thrown out casually and replaced with a new alternative at the slightest whim. Moral and cultural relativism reigns. No system can be seen as better than any other, lest the proponents of the inferior system take offense.

Mencius Moldbug — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

An influential blogger who breathed new life into the intellectual Far Right with his distinctive long-winded and mercurial monologues on politics and history, primarily written from 2007-2010. Moldbug is seen as the intellectual founder of the “neoreactionary” movement, a term coined by a blog commenter in 2009 and popularized by economist Arnold Kling in 2010. Moldbug’s most important sequences are his “Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives,” “A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations,” and “A Formalist Manifesto,” about a couple hundred pages in all. The near-complete Moldbug corpus is 4,470 pages long and is available as an ebook. Very few of Moldbug’s fans have read anywhere near his entire corpus; reading a couple hundred pages will give you the idea.

Neoreaction — Michael Anissimov’s Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

The novel reactionary movement that developed starting in 2007 around the writings of Mencius Moldbug, with the term itself coined by a blog commenter in 2009. Neoreaction has a more analytical, abstract approach to Traditionalist Right thinking than historical Reaction. Neoreaction can be seen as a part of the Reaction in general, with which it has a complicated relationship. Ultimately, the goal of neoreaction is to provide a concrete body of political and administrative policy which can be used to form a new government.

OLXI — Mencius Moldbug — Unqualified Reservations, 26 June 2008

Dear open-minded progressive, perhaps you were horrified by OLX.

I mean, I did propose the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law, and the transfer of absolute power to a mysterious figure known only as the Receiver, who in the process of converting Washington into a heavily-armed, ultra-profitable corporation will abolish the press, smash the universities, sell the public schools, and transfer “decivilized populations” to “secure relocation facilities” where they will be assigned to “mandatory apprenticeships.” If this doesn’t horrify you, I’m not sure what would.

And do I even mean it seriously? Or am I just ripping off Daniel Defoe? Dear open-minded progressive, perhaps you have come to realize that your narrator is not always a reliable one. He has played tricks on you in the past. He will probably do it again. The game is deep, and not for the unwatchful.

Outbreeding — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4d

The tireless ‘hbdchick’ is the crucial resource on this topic. Over the course of a truly monumental series of blog posts, she employs Hamiltonian conceptual tools to investigate the borderland where nature and culture intersect, comprising kinship structures, the differentiations they require in the calculus of inclusive fitness, and the distinctive ethnic profiles in the evolutionary psychology of altruism that result. In particular, she directs attention to the abnormality of (North-West) European history, where obligatory exogamy — through rigorous proscription of cousin marriage — has prevailed for 1,600 years. This distinctive orientation towards outbreeding, she suggests, plausibly accounts for a variety of bio-cultural peculiarities, the most historically significant of which is a unique pre-eminence of reciprocal (over familial) altruism, as indicated by emphatic individualism, nuclear families, an affinity with ‘corporate’ (kinship-free) institutions, highly-developed contractual relationships among strangers, relatively low levels of nepotism / corruption, and robust forms of social cohesion independent of tribal bonds.

Progressive Idealism — Mencius Moldbug — Unqualified Reservations, 20 May 2007

Okay. So the planet is a one-party state ruled by the PIs. Progressive Idealism is of course the idealism of the Allies of World War II, and the faith of today’s Brahmin caste. What we know as politics is mere squabbling between Progressive-Idealist factions. Even Communism is probably best understood as a PI splinter group. Like all good parties the Progressive Idealists have a colour, and that colour is grey. There are no red states or blue states. There are only pinkish and bluish greys. Moreover, Progressive Idealism is a nontheistic branch of Christianity, specifically its Unitarian (American) and Nonconformist (British) sects, both of course dating back to the Puritans, who were the first to construct the integrated political, educational and religious system whose much-improved descendant now holds Planet Three in its icy, inexorable grip.

Professor Dawkins — Mencius Moldbug — Unqualified Reservations, 4 October 2007

My belief is that Professor Dawkins is not just a Christian atheist. He is a Protestant atheist. And he is not just a Protestant atheist. He is a Calvinist atheist. And he is not just a Calvinist atheist. He is an Anglo-Calvinist atheist. In other words, he can be also described as a Puritan atheist, a Dissenter atheist, a Nonconformist atheist, an Evangelical atheist, etc, etc.

This cladistic taxonomy traces Professor Dawkins’ intellectual ancestry back about 400 years, to the era of the English Civil War. Except of course for the atheism theme, Professor Dawkins’ kernel is a remarkable match for the Ranter, Leveller, Digger, Quaker, Fifth Monarchist, or any of the more extreme English Dissenter traditions that flourished during the Cromwellian interregnum.

Frankly, these dudes were freaks. Maniacal fanatics. Any mainstream English thinker of the 17th, 18th or 19th century, informed that this tradition (or its modern descendant) is now the planet’s dominant Christian denomination, would regard this as a sign of imminent apocalypse. If you’re sure they’re wrong, you’re more sure than me.

Reactionary — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

It is important to recognize that the term “reactionary” was coined as an epithet, referring to French monarchists. When modern-day reactionaries use the term, they are not necessarily advocating literally returning to a status quo ante, but moving society in the direction of forms based on order, higher aesthetics, hierarchy, stability, peacefulness, aristocracy, tradition, cultural coherence, family, and the like. The steps in this direction have to be tailored to a specific time and place, based on perennial principles in harmony with human nature rather than literally turning back the clock. Rather than a chaotic “sandbox” of clashing cultures warring through democratic proxies, reactionaries aspire to an “oak” society that fosters strong interpersonal trust, monoculture, and a unified vision.

Universalism — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4

Moldbug turns continually to history (or, more rigorously, cladistics), to accurately specify that which asserts its own universal significance whilst ascending to a state of general dominance that approaches the universal. Under this examination, what counts as Universal reason, determining the direction and meaning of modernity, is revealed as the minutely determined branch or sub-species of a cultic tradition, descended from ‘ranters’, ‘levelers’, and closely related variants of dissident, ultra-protestant fanaticism, and owing vanishingly little to the conclusions of logicians.

Ironically, then, the world’s regnant Universalist democratic-egalitarian faith is a particular or peculiar cult that has broken out, along identifiable historical and geographical pathways, with an epidemic virulence that is disguised as progressive global enlightenment. The route that it has taken, through England and New England, Reformation and Revolution, is recorded by an accumulation of traits that provide abundant material for irony, and for lower varieties of comedy. The unmasking of the modern ‘liberal’ intellectual or ‘open-minded’ media ‘truth-teller’ as a pale, fervent, narrowly doctrinaire puritan, recognizably descended from the species of witch-burning zealots, is reliably — and irresistibly — entertaining.

Whig History — Michael Anissimov — Neoreactionary Glossary, 19 September 2013

A form of historical revisionism that seeks to portray all of history as inevitably improving up until the present regime. A form of “history is written by the victors”. Obviously, the present system has every incentive to portray itself as superior to all past systems. Reactionaries point out this is not the case, and actually see present society in a state of severe decline, pointing to historically high levels of crime, suicide, government and household debt, increasing time preference, and low levels of civic participation and self-reported happiness as a few examples of a current cultural and historical crisis. The demographic crisis in First World countries is cited as another example of decline.

White vulnerability — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4

Moderate or measured concern offers no equilibrium for those who cross the line, and begin to self-identify in these terms. Instead, the path of involvement demands rapid acceleration to a state of extreme alarm, or racial panic, conforming to an analysis focused upon malicious population replacement at the hands of a government which, in the oft-cited words of Bertolt Brecht, “has decided to dissolve the people, and to appoint another one.” ‘Whiteness’ (whether conceived biologically, mystically, or both) is associated with vulnerability, fragility, and persecution. This theme is so basic, and so multifarious, that it is difficult to adequately address succinctly. It encompasses everything from criminal predation (especially racially-charged murders, rapes, and beatings), economic exactions and inverse discrimination, cultural aggression by hostile academic and media systems, and ultimately ‘genocide’ — or definitive racial destruction.

White Nationalism — Mencius Moldbug — Unqualified Reservations, 22 November 2007

I am not a white nationalist. However, judging by the comments on the Ian Smith elegy, some of my readers are. For this week, I was going to put up another post in the Dawkins series, but Thanksgiving is coming and traffic should be light, so I thought it might be fun to wade into this wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I am not a white nationalist, but I do read white-nationalist blogs, and I’m not afraid to link to them. The undisputed champion in this department is Larry Auster. I am also fond of Vanishing American, John Savage, New Sisyphus, Age of Treason, and Old Atlantic Lighthouse. The two central organs of intellectual white nationalism in the US are American Renaissance and VDare. If there is a European equivalent, it is probably Brussels Journal. On all these sites, you’ll find thoughtful, well-written commentary that will expand your mind. I’m not sure all these writers would accept the white-nationalist label — this is just my own description.

Zombie-tolerance — Nick Land — The Dark Enlightenment: The Complete Series, part 4d

Gnaw off other people’s body parts and it might be hard to get a job — that’s the kind of lesson a tight-feedback, cybernetically intense, laissez faire order would allow to be learned. It’s also exactly the kind of insensitive zombiphobic discrimination that any compassionate democracy would denounce as thought crime, whilst boosting the public budget for the vitally-challenged, undertaking consciousness raising campaigns on behalf of those suffering from involuntary cannibalistic impulse syndrome, affirming the dignity of the zombie lifestyle in higher-education curriculums, and rigorously regulating workspaces to ensure that the shuffling undead are not victimized by profit-obsessed, performance-centric, or even unreconstructed animationist employers.

As enlightened zombie-tolerance flourishes in the shelter of the democratic mega-parasite, a small remnant of reactionaries, attentive to the effects of real incentives, raise the formulaic question: “You do realize that these policies lead inevitably to a massive expansion of the zombie population?” The dominant vector of history presupposes that such nuisance objections are marginalized, ignored, and — wherever possible — silenced through social ostracism. The remnant either fortifies the basement, whilst stocking up on dried food, ammunition, and silver coins, or accelerates the application process for a second passport, and starts packing its bags.

Endnotes:

16 thoughts on “Barbarism v. 2.0

  1. The Dark Enlightenment’s philosophical perspective could also be viewed as a socio-political isomer of Guillaume Faye’s concept of Archeofuturism: “The attitude that approaches the future in terms of ancestral values, believing that notions of modernism and traditionalism need to be dialectically transcended.”

    “Archeofuturism opposes both modernity and conservatism, seeing them as versos of one another and believing that modernity is backward looking, having failed to realise either its ideals or great projects. Techno-science, for example, is incompatible with modernity’s humanitarian and egalitarian values. The twenty first century will see the resurgence of struggles that bourgeois and western cosmopolitan ideology thought it had long ago buried; identitarian, traditionalist and religious conflict; geopolitical fissures; ethnic questions posed at a planetary level [and] battles over scarce resources…”

  2. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Barbarism v. 2.0

  3. Thanks Baron, that is an excellent read. I really am amazed how some folks can see through the murk of our society and not only undersand it to such a depth, but the same folks can provide a better explanation, one that even I can grasp, if only barely.

    So, with what all of what the above says, when would the last cultural peak have occured? The definition of ‘cultural peak’ being the first thing to address, preferable by such folks as Moldbug, Anissimov, GOV luminaries and such.

    • I would suggest, JPB, that it was not a peak but a narrow ( in historical terms) plateau that levelled off a hundred years ago this year and then ran flat for a couple of decades before beginning its descent into the moral and cultural twilight we exist in today.

      • perfectly described. That deserves to be illustrated, perhaps with a medieval sense of perspective in order to show its true precedents.

        • oh, I forgot: the illustration would need allegorical embodiments of the Good, the True and The Beautiful since I think we have been blinded to their existence by a never-ending plethora of the Bad, the False, and the Ugly. We have been ordered to refer to the depths of degradation as “edgy”.

          Yeah. So ‘edgy’ that their sharp places are making our children bleed.

  4. I’m scratching my head over this. One of the best arguments against Islamism, and its aim of establishing a worldwide caliphate, is that without the checks of democracy and free speech, it would be difficult, if not impossible (at least without a bloody revolt), to prevent the inevitable abuse of power which always accompanies a dictatorship, secular or theocratic.

    Unless the proponents of a Dark Enlightenment have found a way of ensuring that the leaders of the society they envisage are not only intelligent (many brutal oppressors have been extremely bright) but virtuous, there is no alternative to making democracy work as well as we can, and the actual Enlightenment was just the beginning. It won’t be easy, but as Churchill said, while democracy is a bad form of government, all the others are worse.

    • Democracy in its modern form can hardly be a defence against islamisation. In fact, it is rather the opposite. Modern Western democracy is based on a totally secular, i.e. materialistic view of the world and human nature. Therefore, it is aggressively anti-Christian.

      But Christianity is the soul and the life of European and some other civilisations. Having thrown out Christianity the West destroyed the source of its life force. Every new generation of Westerners is weaker, more self-centred, more short-sighted and more neurotic than the preceding one.

      But the worst thing is the loss of purpose. A person raised in the spirit of secular ‘values’ sees his or her whole life just as an opportunity to consume as many goods and services as possible, to have as much fun as possible before death which is seen as the end to everything.

      This is a suicidal philosophy. If life has no purpose beyond consumerism, than it is hardly worth living. Many people in the West nowadays suffer from a feeling of emptiness, their existence seems pointless to themselves. No amount of democracy, human rights, fun and games, etc. can fill this horrible void.

      Therefore, to many Islam comes as an answer. It is easier to accept for a modern Westerner as it is a much more primitive, rationalistic religion with a very clear set of rules to be followed. It has a very simple black-and-white moral view of the world, unlike Christianity with its much more nuanced approach to morality and its defiance of human logic. That is why so many Europeans convert to Islam nowadays.

      There is also much sensuality in Islam, which makes it more attractive to people, raised in the ideology of sexual revolution, than traditional Christianity with its asceticism.

      So, it is the ideology underlying secular democracy, with its naive faith in the infallibility of human reason and its intrinsic materialism that is paving the way for islamisation of the West. Only return to traditional Christianity in its fullness can save Western societies from the aggression of Islam – or something worse, for that matter. For, as they say in Russia, a holy place is never empty.

      • Much of what you say makes sense, Anton: but as an (I hope) non-aggressive secularist, I reject your solution as a similar, albeit milder, alternative to the imposition of Islamic values. Is it really beyond the wit of man- and woman- to devise a structure which retains the best our of Judeo-Christian heritage, without the belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster or equivalent?

        The great boon- and challenge- bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment is to allow humans to be fully adult and responsible for their actions, without reference to imposed external authority. The appeal of any would-be unelected power, religious or secular, is the chance to abnegate responsibility for our behaviour, so that we don’t have to think for ourselves; in other words, to become infantilised. I prefer to try to be an adult.

    • Democracy is the means of our demographic destruction. In the UK alone there are 25,000 organizations that legally exclude whites. LEGALLY. Try to form some sort of explicitly white club (no not a Neo-Nazi party club) and you’ll be in front of a magistrate in a heart beat.

  5. Part of a comment by troutjacki on 3 Feb 2007 to a post at GoV worth repeating here:

    I would put the New Deal as the watershed event that began the Europeanization of Liberalism. The Roosevelt Administration was riddled with Socialists, Communists and even some Fascists who undermined the Democratic Parties commitment to classical notions of Liberalism and replaced them with European concepts. There is a famous story of Labor Secretary Francis Perkins who upon her first exposure to New Deal concepts remarking that it sure sounded a lot like Mussolini’s Fascism then American democracy. By the end of the Vietnam war Liberalism had evolved to its European meaning. It is also interesting that the new Liberalism found a home in the Democratic Party which throughout its history was the more conservative party. The Republican Party has always championed classical Liberalism.

    At Paul Weston’s Questioning the Sanity of Liberals

    https://gatesofvienna.net/2007/02/questioning-the-sanity-of-liberals/

    • I agree to a certain extent, JP. The second part of the New Deal process, 1935 through 1938, with the Wagner Act and the Fair Labour Standards Act thus empowering the Trades Unions in unforeseen ways, could arguably be the tipping point at the end of the plateau shaped cultural peak I hypothesised above, and whence the descent into mediocrity and complete political mendacity began.

      However it is worth bearing in mind that the New Deal came about as a response to the Great Depression and, ostensibly, its causes, and I would opine that in the minds of many of the movers and shakers who brought it about it was not necessarily their intent to bring about our total cultural implosion in the form of the empowerment of a parasitical and violently predatory underclass or the other long term effects that it has imposed – particularly the Islamification of the West.

      And, on the subject of long term effects, and them sometimes coming full circle, what is intriguing me at the moment is that one of the abiding images of the Great Depression is that of Bankers and other financial big players throwing themselves off of tall buildings, and I am wondering if anyone else has noticed the sudden plethora of similar incidents occurring around the world of late – could they perhaps know something we don’t?

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