Culture war

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A culture war is a form of cultural conflict (metaphorical war) between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology upon mainstream society, or upon the other. In political usage, culture war is a metaphor for "hot-button" politics about values and ideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters, such as those of public policy, as well as of consumption. As practical politics, a culture war is about social policy wedge issues that are based on abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle meant to provoke political cleavage in a multicultural society.

Etymology

Otto Von Bismarck (left) and Pope Pius IX (right), from the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch, 1875

Kulturkampf

The Kulturkampf (German pronunciation: [kʊlˈtuːɐ̯ˌkamp͡f]; lit. 'Cultural Struggle') was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between the Catholic Church in Germany led by Pope Pius IX and the Kingdom of Prussia, led by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as well as other German states. The Prussian church-and-state political conflict was about the church's direct control over both education and ecclesiastical appointments in the Prussian kingdom. Moreover, when compared to other church-and-state conflicts about political culture, the Kulturkampf of Prussia also featured anti-Polish sentiment.

In modern political usage, the German term Kulturkampf describes any conflict (political, ideological, or social) between the secular government and the religious authorities of a society. The term also describes the great and small culture wars among political factions who hold deeply opposing values and beliefs within a nation, a community, and a cultural group.

In the English language, the term "culture war" is a calque of the German word Kulturkampf ("culture struggle"), which refers to a historical event in Germany. The term appears as the title of an 1875 British book review of a German pamphlet.

Research

Criticism and evaluation

Since the time that James Davison Hunter first applied the concept of culture wars to American life, the idea has been subject to questions about whether "culture wars" names a real phenomenon, and if so, whether the phenomenon it describes is a cause of, or merely a result of, membership in groups like political parties and religions. Culture wars have also been subject to the criticism of being artificial, imposed, or asymmetric conflicts, rather than a result of authentic differences between cultures. Researchers have differed about the scientific validity of the notion of culture war. Some claim it does not describe real behavior, or that it describes only the behavior of a small political elite. Others claim culture war is real and widespread, and even that it is fundamental to explaining Americans' political behavior and beliefs. A 2023 study on the circulation of conspiracy theories on social media noted that disinformation actors insert polarizing claims in culture wars by taking one side or the other, thus making the adherents circulate and parrot disinformation as a rhetorical ammunition against their perceived opponents.

Political scientist Alan Wolfe participated in a series of scholarly debates in the 1990s and 2000s against Hunter, claiming that Hunter's concept of culture wars did not accurately describe the opinions or behavior of Americans, which Wolfe claimed were more united than polarized. A meta-analysis of opinion data from 1992 to 2012 published in the American Political Science Review concluded that, in contrast to a common belief that political party and religious membership shape opinion on culture war topics, instead opinions on culture war topics lead people to revise their political party and religious orientations. The researchers view culture war attitudes as "foundational elements in the political and religious belief systems of ordinary citizens."

Artificiality or asymmetry

Some writers and scholars have said that culture wars are created or perpetuated by political special interest groups, by reactionary social movements, by party dynamics, or by electoral politics as a whole. These authors view culture war not as an unavoidable result of widespread cultural differences, but as a technique used to create in-groups and out-groups for a political purpose. Political commentator E. J. Dionne has written that culture war is an electoral technique to exploit differences and grievances, remarking that the real cultural division is "between those who want to have a culture war and those who don't."

Sociologist Scott Melzer says that culture wars are created by conservative, reactive organizations and movements. Members of these movements possess a "sense of victimization at the hands of a liberal culture run amok. In their eyes, immigrants, gays, women, the poor, and other groups are (undeservedly) granted special rights and privileges." Melzer writes about the example of the National Rifle Association of America, which he says intentionally created a culture war in order to unite conservative groups, particularly groups of white men, against a common perceived threat. Similarly, religion scholar Susan B. Ridgely has written that culture wars were made possible by Focus on the Family. This organization produced conservative Christian "alternative news" that began to bifurcate American media consumption, promoting a particular "traditional family" archetype to one part of the population, particularly conservative religious women. Ridgely says that this tradition was depicted as under liberal attack, seeming to necessitate a culture war to defend the tradition.

Political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins have written about an asymmetry between the US's two major political parties, saying the Republican party should be understood as an ideological movement built to wage political conflict, and the Democratic party as a coalition of social groups with less ability to impose ideological discipline on members. This encourages Republicans to perpetuate and to draw new issues into culture wars, because Republicans are well equipped to fight such wars. According to The Guardian, "many on the left have argued that such [culture war] battles [a]re 'distractions' from the real fight over class and economic issues."

Culture wars by country

United States

This section is an excerpt from History of ethnocultural politics in the United States.[edit]

In the United States, ethnocultural politics or ethnoreligious politics refers to the pattern of certain cultural groups or religious denominations to vote heavily for one party. Groups can be based on ethnicity (such as Hispanics, Irish, Germans, etc.), race (White people, Black people, Asian Americans, etc.) or religion (Protestant and later Evangelical or Catholic, etc.) or on overlapping categories (e.g. Irish Catholics). In the Southern United States, race was the determining factor. Each of the two major parties was a coalition of ethnoreligious groups in the Second Party System (1830s–1850s) and also in the Third Party System (1850s–1890s).

Members of the American Indian Movement toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020.

1920s–1991: Origins

In American usage, culture war may imply a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. This usage originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into closer conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the States by people who earlier European immigrants considered 'alien'. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring Twenties, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith in 1928. In subsequent decades during the 20th century, the term was published occasionally in American newspapers. Historian Matthew Dallek argues the John Birch Society (JBS) was an early promoter of culture war ideas. Scholar Celestini Carmen traces the JBS's apocalyptic culture war rhetoric through the connections of Christian right leaders such as Tim LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly to the JBS and their founding of the Moral Majority.

1991–2001: Rise in prominence

James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, introduced the expression again in his 1991 publication, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed American politics and culture. He argued that on an increasing number of "hot-button" defining issues—abortion, gun politics, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, homosexuality, censorship—there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideological world-views. Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to as Progressivism and as Orthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example, Bill O'Reilly, a conservative political commentator and former host of the Fox News Channel talk show The O'Reilly Factor, emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" in his 2006 book Culture Warrior.

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez attributes the 1990s emergence of culture wars to the end of the Cold War in 1991. She writes that Evangelical Christians viewed a particular Christian masculine gender role as the only defense of the United States against the threat of communism. When this threat ended upon the close of the Cold War, Evangelical leaders transferred the perceived source of threat from foreign communism to domestic changes in gender roles and sexuality.

Pat Buchanan in 2008

During the 1992 presidential election, commentator Pat Buchanan mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination for president against incumbent George H. W. Bush. In a prime-time slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan gave his speech on the culture war. He argued: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." In addition to criticizing environmentalists and feminism, he portrayed public morality as a defining issue:

The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God's country.

A month later, Buchanan characterized the conflict as about power over society's definition of right and wrong. He named abortion, sexual orientation and popular culture as major fronts—and mentioned other controversies, including clashes over the Confederate flag, Christmas, and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the negative attention his "culture war" speech received was itself evidence of the United States' polarization.

The culture war had significant impact on national politics in the 1990s. The rhetoric of the Christian Coalition of America may have weakened president George H. W. Bush's chances for re-election in 1992 and helped his successor, Bill Clinton, win reelection in 1996. On the other hand, the rhetoric of conservative cultural warriors helped Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994. The culture wars influenced the debate over state-school history curricula in the United States in the 1990s. In particular, debates over the development of national educational standards in 1994 revolved around whether the study of American history should be a "celebratory" or "critical" undertaking and involved such prominent public figures as Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and historian Gary Nash.

2001–2012: Post-9/11 era

(from right to left) 43rd President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were prominent neoconservatives of the 2000s.

A political view called neoconservatism shifted the terms of the debate in the early 2000s. Neoconservatives differed from their opponents in that they interpreted problems facing the nation as moral issues rather than economic or political ones. For example, neoconservatives saw the decline of the traditional family structure as well as the decline of religion in American society as spiritual crises that required a spiritual response. Critics accused neoconservatives of confusing cause and effect.

During the 2000s, voting for Republicans began to correlate heavily with traditionalist or orthodox religious belief across diverse religious sects. Voting for Democrats became more correlated with liberal or modernist religious belief, and with being nonreligious. Belief in scientific conclusions, such as climate change, also became tightly coupled with political party affiliation in this era, causing climate scholar Andrew Hoffman to observe that climate change had "become enmeshed in the so-called culture wars."

Rally for Proposition 8, an item on the 2008 California ballot to ban same-sex marriage

Topics traditionally associated with culture war were not prominent in media coverage of the 2008 election season, with the exception of coverage of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who drew attention to her conservative religion and created a performative climate change denialism brand for herself. Palin's defeat in the election and subsequent resignation as governor of Alaska caused the Center for American Progress to predict "the coming end of the culture wars," which they attributed to demographic change, particularly high rates of acceptance of same-sex marriage among millennials.

2012–present: Broadening of the culture war

See also: List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests, List of changes made due to the George Floyd protests, and List of name changes due to the George Floyd protests

The J. E. B. Stuart Monument, defaced during protests in Richmond, Virginia, was removed on July 7, 2020.

In the early 2010s, the American right took issue with the perceived worldwide dominance of leftism in international politics and corporate activity, anti-nationalism, and secular human rights policies and activism not based on Abrahamic religious worldviews.

While traditional culture war issues, like abortion, continue to be a focal point, the issues identified with the culture war broadened and intensified in the mid-late 2010s. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Coddling of the American Mind, identified a rise in cancel culture via social media among young progressives since 2012, which he believes had "transformative effects on university life and later on politics and culture throughout the English-speaking world," in what Haidt and other commentators have called the "Great Awokening". Journalist Michael Grunwald says that "President Donald Trump has pioneered a new politics of perpetual culture war" and lists Black Lives Matter, U.S. national anthem protests, climate change, education policy, healthcare policy including Obamacare, and infrastructure policy as culture war issues in 2018. The rights of transgender people and the role of religion in lawmaking were identified as "new fronts in the culture war" by political scientist Jeremiah Castle, as the polarization of public opinion on these two topics resembles that of previous culture war issues. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum described opposition to wearing face masks as a "senseless" culture war issue that jeopardizes human safety.

This broader understanding of culture war issues in the mid-late 2010s and 2020s is associated with a political strategy called "owning the libs." Conservative media figures employing this strategy emphasize and expand upon culture war issues with the goal of upsetting liberals. According to Nicole Hemmer of Columbia University, this strategy is a substitute for the cohesive conservative ideology that existed during the Cold War. It holds a conservative voting bloc together in the absence of shared policy preferences among the bloc's members.

Hundreds of participants at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017; an event associated with the alt-right and neo-Nazi movements, regarded as a battleground in the culture wars.

A number of conflicts about diversity in popular culture occurring in the 2010s, such as the Gamergate controversy, Comicsgate and the Sad Puppies science fiction voting campaign, were identified in the media as being examples of the culture war. Journalist Caitlin Dewey described Gamergate as a "proxy war" for a larger culture war between those who want greater inclusion of women and minorities in cultural institutions versus anti-feminists and traditionalists who do not. The perception that culture war conflict had been demoted from electoral politics to popular culture led writer Jack Meserve to call popular movies, games, and writing the "last front in the culture war" in 2015.

These conflicts about representation in popular culture re-emerged into electoral politics via the alt-right and alt-lite movements. According to media scholar Whitney Phillips, Gamergate "prototyped" strategies of harassment and controversy-stoking that proved useful in political strategy. For example, Republican political strategist Steve Bannon publicized pop-culture conflicts during the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, encouraging a young audience to "come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."

Canada

Main articles: Political culture of Canada and Monuments and memorials in Canada removed in 2020–2022

The empty pedestal of the former John A. Macdonald monument in Montreal, left vacant after the statue of Canada's first Prime Minister was toppled during a 2020 protest and later removed.

Some observers in Canada have used the term "culture war" to refer to differing values between Western versus Eastern Canada, urban versus rural Canada, as well as conservatism versus liberalism and progressivism. The phrase has also been used to describe the Harper government's attitude towards the arts community. Andrew Coyne termed this negative policy towards the arts community as "class warfare."

Australia

See also: Australian history wars

During the tenure of the Liberal–National Coalition government of 1996 to 2007, interpretations of Aboriginal history became a part of a wider political debate regarding Australian national pride and symbolism occasionally called the "culture wars", more often the "history wars". This debate extended into a controversy over the presentation of history in the National Museum of Australia and in high-school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age regularly publishing opinion pieces on the topic. Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as "war porn" and as an "intellectual dead end".

Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating (in office 1991–1996) and John Howard (in office 1996–2007), became major participants in the "wars". According to Mark McKenna's analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library, Howard believed that Keating portrayed Australia pre-Whitlam (PM 1972–1975) in an unduly negative light, while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the monarchy and for the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the conservative Australian parties which had been barriers to national progress. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during the Second World War. Keating staunchly supported a symbolic apology to Aboriginal Australians for their mistreatment at the hands of previous administrations, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech of December 10, 1992 (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aboriginal people as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but declined to issue an official apology. Howard saw an apology as inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt", saying measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to colonial origins, including deference for ANZAC Day, for the Australian flag, and for the monarchy in Australia, while Howard supported these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke (PM 1983–1991) and Kim Beazley (Labor Party leader 2005–2006), Keating never travelled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided".

The defeat of the Howard government in the 2007 Australian federal election and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations with bi-partisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day; he also expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies. Subsequent to the 2007 change of government, and prior to the passage of the official apology, historian Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen.

Climate change in Australia is also considered a highly divisive or politically controversial topic, to the point it is sometimes called a "culture war".^[69][70]

The 2017 Same Sex Marriage Plebiscite was also a divisive topic within Australia with many supporters of marriage equality were targeted with Homophobic vandalism in the lead up to the Plebiscite.

Since the defeat of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, there has been a significant calls reignited from conservative politicians and commentators, including federal opposition leader Peter Dutton to oppose or scale down Indigenous Reconciliation, viewing customs such as Welcome to Country ceremonies and placing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags alongside the national flag as "divisive".

African continent

According to political scientist Constance G. Anthony, American culture war perspectives on human sexuality were exported to Africa as a form of neocolonialism. In his view, this began during the AIDS epidemic in Africa, with the United States government first tying HIV/AIDS assistance money to evangelical leadership and the Christian right during the Bush administration, then to LGBTQ tolerance during the administration of Barack Obama. This stoked a culture war that resulted in (among others) the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014.

Zambian scholar Kapya Kaoma notes that because "the demographic center of Christianity is shifting from the global North to the global South" Africa's influence on Christianity worldwide is increasing. American conservatives export their culture wars to Africa, Kaoma says, particularly when they realize they may be losing the battle back home. US Christians have framed their anti-LGBT initiatives in Africa as standing in opposition to a "Western gay agenda", a framing which Kaoma finds ironic.

North American and European conspiracy theories have become widespread in West Africa via social media, according to 2021 survey by First Draft News. COVID-19 misinformation, New World Order conspiracy thinking, QAnon and other conspiracy theories associated with culture war topics are spread by American, Pro-Russian, French-language, and local disinformation websites and social media accounts, including prominent politicians in Nigeria. This has contributed to vaccine hesitancy in West Africa, with 60 percent of survey respondents saying they were unlikely to try to get vaccinated, and an erosion of trust in institutions in the region.

United Kingdom

See also: Actions against memorials in Great Britain during the George Floyd protests

The statue of Robert Milligan on June 9, 2020, the day of its removal

A 2021 report from King's College London argued that many people's views on cultural issues in Britain had become tied up with the side of the Brexit debate with which they identify, while the public party-political identities, although not as strong, show similar alignments and that around half the country held relatively strong views on "culture war" issues such as debates on Britain's colonial history or Black Lives Matter; however, the report concluded Britain's cultural and political divide was not as stark as the Republican–Democratic divide in the US and that a sizeable section of the public can be categorised as having either moderate views or as being disengaged from social debates. It also found that The Guardian, as opposed to the centre-right newspapers, was more likely to talk about the culture wars.

The Conservative Party have been described as attempting to ignite culture wars in regard to "conservative values" under the tenure of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Others argue that it is the left who are engaging in "culture wars", particularly against liberal values, accepted words, and British institutions. Observers such as Johns Hopkins University professor Yascha Mounk and journalist and author Louise Perry have argued that the collapse in support for the Labour Party during the 2019 United Kingdom general election came as a result of both a media-induced public perception and a deliberate strategy of Labour of pursuing messages and policy ideas based on cultural issues that resonated with more university educated grassroots activists on the left of the party but alienated Labour's traditional working class voters.

An April 2022 survey found evidence that Britons are less divided on "culture war" issues than has often been portrayed in the media. The greatest predictor of opinion was how people voted in the UK's referendum on membership of the European Union, Brexit, yet even among those who voted Leave, 75% agreed "it is important to be attentive to issues of race and social justice". Similarly, even among Remainers and those who last voted for the Labour Party, there was moderately strong support for several socially conservative positions.

Europe

See also: "Polish death camp" controversy, Language policy in Ukraine, LGBT-free zone, Controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Moldova, Soviet imagery during the Russo-Ukrainian War, and List of monuments and memorials removed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Statue of Ivan Konev in Prague was removed in 2020.

In 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron promised that France would not erase elements of its history or remove statues of controversial public figures, saying "The Republic won't erase any name from its history. It will forget none of its artworks, it won't take down statues."

Several politicians, such as Poland's Law and Justice party, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Serbia's Aleksandar Vučić, and Slovenia's Janez Janša, have been often accused of fomenting culture wars in their respective countries by encouraging dissent, resistance to LGBT rights, and restrictions on abortion. One facet of the controversy in Poland is the removal of Soviet War Memorials, which is divisive because some Poles viewed the memorials positively as commemorations of their ancestors who died during World War II, while others felt negatively due to the oppression that some Poles experienced under the Soviet-backed Polish People's Republic. Culture war in Hungary is alleged by Kim Scheppele to be a disguise for democratic backsliding by Orbán. Ukraine also experienced a decades-long culture war pitting the eastern, predominately Russian-speaking, regions against the western Ukrainian-speaking areas of the country. LGBT rights are controversial in Poland, as exemplified by President Andrzej Duda's vow in 2020 to oppose both same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption.

Different interpretations of bitter events during World War II have become especially contentious in Poland since 2015, shortly after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. One disputed issue is whether Poland bears any responsibility for the Holocaust, or whether Poland was entirely a victim of Nazi Germany. This dispute is embodied by the "Polish death camp" controversy (involving concentration camps that had been built by Nazi Germany during World War II on German-occupied Polish soil) and an attempt to address that controversy with a now partly repealed law.

A second issue, also addressed by the partly repealed law, revolves around Poland–Ukraine relations. In the region, in passing a law to criminalize negative interpretations of the country's collaborationist nationalist movements during World War II, Poland is not alone, and Poland–Ukraine relations have suffered as a result of a similar law in Ukraine that was criticized in Poland for deflecting blame away from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and their massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

The empty plinth of a statue dedicated to Alexander Pushkin in Ternopil, Ukraine, April 11, 2022

Derussification in Ukraine is a process of removing Russian influence from the post-Soviet country of Ukraine. This derussification started after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and intensified with the demolition of monuments to Lenin during Euromaidan in 2014 and the further systemic process of decommunization in Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine gave a strong impetus to the process.

In 2024, the city of Vienna rejected a monument to Polish King John III Sobieski due to concerns about Islamophobia and anti-Turkish sentiment.

Intellectual dark web

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web

The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a loose grouping of academics and social commentators who oppose what they perceive as the influence of left-wing identity politics and political correctness in higher education and mass media. Individuals and publications associated with the term may reject what they view as authoritarianism and ostracism within academia, the (mainstream) science community, and progressive movements in Western countries. The stance may include opposition to deplatforming, boycotts, and online shaming, when perceived as threats to freedom of speech.

Origin and usage

Eric Weinstein in 2010

The term "intellectual dark web" was coined as a joke by mathematician and venture capitalist Eric Weinstein and popularized by New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss. It has been used to refer to various academics and social commentators who express concerns over the perceived excesses of left-wing identity politics and political correctness. Media studies scholar John Postill argues that Weiss's essay, titled "Meet the Renegades", was a "defining media event" that offered an identity and cast of characters for the "anti-woke" movement to follow.

The first recorded usage of the term was on a 2017 episode of Sam Harris's podcast, when Weinstein used it to refer to a group of thinkers, including Weinstein and Harris, who used digital media to offer alternatives to mainstream media narratives. This occurred after Weinstein's brother, biologist Bret Weinstein, resigned in 2017 from his position as professor of biology at the Evergreen State College in response to protests against his criticism of a campus event that asked white students to stay off campus, as opposed to the previous annual tradition of black students voluntarily absenting themselves.

Derek Beres argues for Big Think that other controversies, dating back to 2014, should also be viewed as antecedents to the IDW. These include a debate between Harris and Ben Affleck on Real Time with Bill Maher in October 2014, the publication of "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" by James Damore in August 2017, and Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson on Channel 4 News in January 2018, each of which related to controversial topics such as Islamic extremism and workplace diversity policies.

Membership and ideology

The IDW comprises an ideologically diverse network of commentators who share an opposition to left-wing identity politics and political correctness. They often claim to have been unfairly treated by mainstream media and higher education institutions, which they say have been pressured into avoiding controversial topics. Other issues of concern include postmodernism and "cultural Marxism", which are perceived as contributing to moral relativism and the suppression of free speech.

In her essay, Weiss characterized IDW members as "iconoclastic" and "academic renegades" who had found audiences online after being "purged" from institutions that had become "hostile to unorthodox thought". Eric Weinstein described the IDW as being opposed to "the gated institutional narrative" of the mainstream media and political elites. IDW figures often use alternative media, including podcasts and newsletters, to build identification with audiences who are disillusioned with mainstream media and politics by branding themselves as reasonable thinkers and reinforcing narratives of political polarization. According to Weiss, many IDW members have identified as atheist, including "New Atheists" Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and Steven Pinker. Commentators such as Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Joe Rogan, and Dave Rubin are also included. Other notable IDW members according to Weiss include Bret and Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Heather Heying, and Christina Hoff Sommers.

IDW beliefs overlap with those of the alt-right movement while tending to avoid explicit white supremacy and ethnonationalism. Similarities with the alt-right are seen in debates over gender identity, feminism, men's rights, and race science. IDW commentators tend to dismiss issues of transgender rights and racial and gender inequality as the concerns of leftist "social justice warriors" while welcoming some gay men, such as Murray and Rubin, into their ranks. A 2019 study by Ribeiro et al. examining patterns of user comments on YouTube videos described the IDW as a "gateway to the far right". Jacob Hamburger argues in the Los Angeles Review of Books that the IDW belongs to a neoconservative tradition of attacks on "political correctness" that began during the Reagan era, associated with commentators such as Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D’Souza, David Brooks, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz. Hamburger describes leftists along with liberals and progressives as the "primary adversaries" of the IDW.

Some IDW members describe themselves as liberals in opposition to what they perceive as the excesses and indifference of the American Left, while others lean to the right. Those who have been linked to the IDW are generally critical of what they perceive as "conformist" liberals, and some have been associated with the alt-lite and the alt-right. Political scientist Daniel W. Drezner argues that the IDW contributes to polarization because of its need to appeal to a primarily right-wing audience, despite the political leanings of individual members. The Guardian characterizes the IDW as an ill-defined movement composed of figures from both "the right and sometimes left extremes of the political spectrum" who share a belief in "hardcore libertarianism". This includes "mainstream intellectuals" such as Steven Pinker alongside "cranks and show-offs" such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones.

Nick Fouriezos of Ozy magazine describes IDW as "a growing school of thought that includes a collection of mostly left-leaning professors, pundits and thinkers united in their criticism of the modern social justice movement as authoritarian and illogical." Liberals who have been labelled as being part of the IDW often credit the European Enlightenment with vast improvements in human welfare since the 18th century, and see Enlightenment values such as freedom of speech and individual rights as threatened by both political correctness on the left, and Trumpism and religious conservatism on the right.

Reception

Criticism of the IDW has come primarily from the left and support from the right. Jonah Goldberg, writing in the National Review, said the "label is a bit overwrought", writing that it struck him "as a marketing label – and not necessarily a good one. ... It seems to me this IDW thing isn't actually an intellectual movement. It's just a coalition of thinkers and journalists who happen to share a disdain for the keepers of the liberal orthodoxy." Henry Farrell, writing in Vox, expressed disbelief that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro or neuroscientist Sam Harris, both claimed to be among the intellectual dark web by Weiss, could credibly be described as either purged or silenced. Weiss' fellow New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued there was an irony in claiming popular intellectual oppression by the mainstream while still publishing in the Times, among the most prominent newspapers in the nation. David French contended many of the critics were missing the point, and were instead inadvertently confirming "the need for a movement of intellectual free-thinkers."

In 2019, a study from the Federal University of Minas Gerais found a pattern of migration of viewers who comment on YouTube videos; they went from commenting on clips associated with the IDW and the "alt-lite" to commenting on more "right-wing and/or alt-right" videos. The study looked at over 331,000 videos that an algorithm had classified as right-wing, analyzed 79 million YouTube comments, and found a group that migrated from IDW channels to "alt-lite" channels, and then to alt-right channels. The subjects who left comments at an IDW channel were more likely to graduate, after a few years, to leaving significantly more comments on alt-right channels than the control group. The study's authors said they were not intending to "point fingers", but to draw attention to the effects of YouTube's recommendation algorithm.

Dark Enlightenment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

The Dark Enlightenment, also called the Neo-Reactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and reactionary philosophical and political movement. It can be understood as a reaction against values and ideologies associated with Enlightenment,advocating for a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, such as absolute monarchism and cameralism. The movement promotes the establishment of authoritarian capitalist city-states that compete for citizens. Neoreactionaries refer to contemporary liberal society and its institutions as "the Cathedral", associating them with the Puritan church, and their goals of egalitarianism and democracy as "the Synopsis". They say that the Cathedral influences public discourse to promote progressivism and political correctness which they view as a threat to Western civilization. Additionally, the movement advocates for scientific racism, a view which they say is suppressed by the Cathedral.

Curtis Yarvin began constructing the basis of the ideology in the late 2000s, drawing upon libertarianism and Austrian economics along with thinkers such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Thomas Carlyle. Nick Land elaborated upon Yarvin's ideas and coined the term "Dark Enlightenment", applying it to his accelerationism as a means to achieve a technological singularity. The movement has also received contributions from prominent figures, such as venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Despite criticism, the movement has gained traction with parts of Silicon Valley, as well as with several political figures associated with United States President Donald Trump, including political strategist Steve Bannon, Vice President JD Vance, and Michael Anton.

The Dark Enlightenment has been described as part of the alt-right, as its theoretical branch, and as neo-fascist. It has been described as the most significant political theory within the alt-right, as "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology, and as providing a philosophical basis for considerable amounts of alt-right political activity. University of Chichester professor Benjamin Noys described it as "an acceleration of capitalism to a fascist point". Nick Land disputes the similarity between his ideas and fascism, saying that "Fascism is a mass anti-capitalist movement", whereas he prefers that "capitalist corporate power should become the organizing force in society". Historians Angela Dimitrakaki and Harry Weeks link the Dark Enlightenment to neofascism via Land's "capitalist eschatology", which they argue is grounded in the supremacist theories of fascism. Neoreactionary ideas have also been described as "feudalist", or "techno-feudalist".

History

Curtis Yarvin is one of the founders of the movement.

Neo-reactionaries are an informal community of bloggers and political theorists who have been active since the 2000s. Steve Sailer and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are contemporary forerunners of the ideology, which is also heavily influenced by the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Carlyle, and Julius Evola. In 2007 and 2008, software engineer Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, articulated what would develop into Dark Enlightenment thinking. Yarvin's theories were elaborated and expanded by philosopher Nick Land, who first coined the term "Dark Enlightenment" in his essay of the same name.

By mid-2017, NRx had moved to forums such as the Social Matter online forum, the Hestia Society, and Thermidor Magazine. In 2021, Yarvin appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Today, where he discussed the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan and his concept of the 'Cathedral', which he says is the current aggregation of political power and influential institutions that is controlling the country. Emerson Brooking, an expert in online extremism, said that "Yarvin escaped the fringe blogosphere because he wrapped deeply anti-American, totalitarian ideas in the language of U.S. start-up culture."

Influence in government

Several prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians have been associated with the philosophy. Steve Bannon has read and admired Yarvin's work, and there have been allegations that he has communicated with Yarvin which Yarvin has denied. Bannon would later consider Yarvin an enemy, which Yarvin did not reciprocate. Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump's second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin's ideas, and Yarvin has claimed to have given staffing recommendations to him. In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize influence over the Trumpian right." Marc Andreessen has quoted Yarvin and referred to him as a "friend", also investing in his startup Tlon and urging people to read him.

According to historian of conservatism Joshua Tait, "Moldbug's relationship with the investor-entrepreneur Thiel is his most important connection." Max Chafkin described Yarvin as the "house political philosopher" for Thiel's circle of influence (or "Thielverse"), including people such as Blake Masters, and Yarvin has referred to Thiel as "fully enlightened". Vanity Fair noted that both have been influential in the New Right and the National Conservatism Conference. Thiel had also invested in Yarvin's Tlon.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence and has connections to Thiel. Prior to his election to the Vice Presidency, JD Vance cited in his 2022 Senate Campaign Yarvin's "strongman plan to 'retire all government employees,' which goes by the mnemonic 'RAGE.'" In a 2021 interview, "Vance said Trump should 'fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'" Yarvin has praised Vance, stating "in almost every way, JD is perfect", but also considered his relationship with Vance overstated by the media, as they've rarely communicated. He also praised Trump for breaking from Republican practices of trying to "play ball and help the system work" and instead "trying to move all of the levers of this machine that he can move", though also stating "what he’s doing is not at all what I would do with an opportunity like this. But I think that what I would do is probably not possible."

It has been suggested that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, bears resemblance to RAGE, as advocated for by Yarvin. Land, when asked by the Financial Times if he approved of DOGE, said "the answer is definitely yes", having also endorsed Steve Bannon's goal of "deconstruction of the administrative state". In a report by The Washington Post, two DOGE advisors described Yarvin as an "intellectual beacon" for the department, with one saying, "It's an open secret that everyone in policymaking roles has read Yarvin." The report said that Yarvin, initially approving of the Trump administration, had become critical of DOGE. He cited its handling of the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, stating "Instead of fighting against these people because they’re an enemy class who votes for the Democrats, you [should be] saying, 'Oooh, we have cookies for you.'" However, Tait said that Yarvin bears some responsibility for DOGE, saying, "It would have been created, probably, regardless. But he spent a good chunk of time creating a justifying framework for it." Political philosopher Danielle Allen said that DOGE is clearly based on Yarvin's work, and the outcome was the natural result of the shortcomings in Yarvin's views. CNN argues that Thiel, Andreessen, Vance and Anton do not deny that they are listening to Yarvin; however, they indicated that they do not accept all of Yarvin's theories:

An advisor to Vance denied the vice president has a close relationship with Yarvin, saying the two have met 'like once.' Thiel, who did not respond to a request for comment, told The Atlantic in 2023 he didn't think Yarvin's ideas would 'work' but found him to be an 'interesting and powerful' historian. And earlier this year [2025], Andreessen, who also did not respond to a request for comment, posted on X that one can read 'Yarvin without becoming a monarchist.'

Beliefs

Opposition to democracy

Central to neoreactionarism's ideas is a belief in freedom's incompatibility with democracy, with Land having stated "Democracy tends to fascism". Yarvin and Land drew inspiration from libertarians such as Thiel, particularly his statement "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" in a Cato Unbound essay. Yuk Hui additionally notes Thiel's contribution to the 2004 conference “Politics and Apocalypse” in which he argued that the U.S. needed a new political theory in the face of 9/11, which marked the failure of the Enlightenment, and that democracy and equality had made the West vulnerable. However, when asked by The Atlantic about Yarvin, Thiel opined that trying to radically alter the current U.S. government was unrealistic. He also suggested that Yarvin's methods would lead to Xi's China or Putin's Russia. Hui notes that neoreactionaries consider the Enlightenment values of democracy and equality to be degenerative and limiting, respectively. Tait considers Yarvin to have "a complex relationship" with Enlightenment values, as he adopts a secular and rationalist view of reality while rejecting its key political ideals of equality and democracy. Sergio C. Fanjul contrasts the movement's far-right critique of the Enlightenment with the Frankfurt School's critique of the Enlightenment as a Eurocentric prelude to colonialism and war.

Yarvin told Vanity Fair: "The fundamental premise of liberalism is that there is this inexorable march toward progress. I disagree with that premise." A 2016 article in New York magazine notes that "Neoreaction has a number of different strains, but perhaps the most important is a form of post-libertarian futurism that, realizing that libertarians aren't likely to win any elections, argues against democracy in favor of authoritarian forms of government." Journalist Andrew Sullivan writes that neoreaction's pessimistic appraisal of democracy dismisses many advances that have been made and that global manufacturing patterns also limit the economic independence that sovereign states can have from one another.

Support for authoritarianism

Yarvin supports authoritarianism on right-libertarian grounds, saying that the division of political sovereignty expands the scope of the state, whereas strong governments with clear hierarchies remain minimal and narrowly focused. Yarvin's "A Formalist Manifesto" advocates for a form of "neocameralism" in which small, authoritarian "gov-corps" coexist and compete with each other, an idea anticipated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Academic Jonathan Ratcliffe describes the model as "a network of hyper-capitalist city states ruled by authoritarian CEO monarchs." Yarvin claims freedom under the system, known as the "Patchwork", would be guaranteed by the ability to "vote with your feet", whereby residents could leave for another gov-corp if they felt it would provide a higher quality of life, thus forcing competition. Land reiterates this with the political idea "No Voice, Free Exit", taken from Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty model in which voice is democratic and exit is departure to another society:

"If gov-corp doesn’t deliver acceptable value for its taxes (sovereign rent), [citizens] can notify its customer service function, and if necessary take their custom elsewhere. Gov-corp would concentrate upon running an efficient, attractive, vital, clean, and secure country, of a kind that is able to draw customers."

Yarvin has advocated for a "dictator-president" or "national CEO". He has described himself as a royalist, monarchist, and Jacobite; and has praised cameralism, Frederick the Great, and Thomas Carlyle. He is also influenced by Austrian economics, particularly Hoppe, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek. Ava Kofman credits Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed with pushing Yarvin away from standard libertarian thought, with authoritarianism scholar Julian Waller saying "it's not copy-and-pasted, but it is such a direct influence that it's kind of obscene". Patrick Gamez notes that Land is "simply catching up to Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Peter Brimelow, and assorted other radically right-wing libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, committed to 'cracking up' the democratic nation-state in favor of an 'ethno-economy.'"

Yarvin admires Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the US as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions. He additionally cites Dubai and Hong Kong as providing a high quality of life without democracy, stating "as Dubai in particular shows, a government (like any corporation) can deliver excellent customer service without either owning or being owned by its customers."

Andy Beckett stated that NRx supporters "believe in the replacement of modern nation-states, democracy and government bureaucracies by authoritarian city states, which on neoreaction blogs sound as much like idealised medieval kingdoms as they do modern enclaves such as Singapore." Ana Teixeira Pinto describes the political ideology of the gov-corp model as a form of classical libertarianism, stating "they do not want to limit the power of the state, they want to privatise it." According to criminal justice professor George Michael, neoreaction seeks to perform a "hard reset" or "reboot" on democracy rather than gradual reform. Neoreactionary ideas have also been referred to as "feudalist" and "techno-feudalist". Yarvin's proposals are not fully detailed beyond philosophy and general principles, and the economic ability to leave and the willingness of other locations to accept immigrants are not generally considered. Andrew Jones criticized his arguments as "vaguely defined and often factually incorrect".

The process of instituting authoritarianism

Yarvin describes his proposals as a modern version of monarchy and advocates for an American monarch dissolving elite academic institutions and media outlets within the first few months of their reign, stating "if Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia." Time notes that Yarvin's proposal for a "Butterfly Revolution" envisions an internal coup to replace democracy with a privatized executive authority, which includes his RAGE proposal to "retire all government employees" in favor of loyalists. While conceding that it may not be possible, he stated that, were he in Trump's position, he would take executive control of government institutions such as the Federal Reserve, keeping those "that have a very clear role and are not politicized in any way" while disposing of others such as the State Department. He advocates constitutionally challenging laws such as impoundment control, birthright citizenship, and Marbury v. Madison, potentially defying the courts if it were necessary and "unifying". However, he also stated "if you're doing that in a situation where the vibe is like, 'This is going to be the first shot in the civil war between red America and blue America' ... I think it’s bad", considering Trump and America "unready for that level of change".

He suggested in a January 2025 New York Times interview that there was historical precedent to support his reasoning, asserting that in his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt "essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I'll take it anyway. So did FDR actually take that level of power? Yeah, he did." The interviewer, David Marchese, remarked that "Yarvin relies on what those sympathetic to his views might see as a helpful serving of historical references — and what others see as a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact." Scholars have described Yarvin's arguments as misrepresenting the historical record, and said that the historical autocracies he praises were considered deeply oppressive by their subjects.

The Cathedral

Neoreactionaries refer to contemporary liberal society and institutions which they oppose as the "Cathedral", considering them the descendant of the Puritan church, and their goals of egalitarianism and democracy as "the Synopsis". According to them, the Cathedral influences public discourse to promote progressivism and political correctness, and its adoption of liberal humanism is the primary reason for an alleged decline of Western civilization. A neoreactionary online dictionary defines the Cathedral as "the self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service", with an agenda that includes "women’s suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of senators, labor laws, desegregation, popularization of drugs, destruction of traditional sexual norms, ethnic studies courses in colleges, decolonization, and gay marriage." Yarvin views it as an oligarchy of educated elites competing for status, and has accused Ivy League schools, The New York Times, and Hollywood of being members.

Land and others argue that enforcement of political correctness by these institutions means that they are a religious entity, hence the term 'Cathedral'. Yarvin, described by El País as a former progressive, describes these institutions as a "twentieth-century version of the established church", with the educational system as a method for indoctrinating people into the Cathedral, enforcing compliance with progressive ideology and preventing them from thinking for themselves. Yarvin defines a church as "an organization or movement which tells people how to think", and includes schools as churches.

The concept of the Cathedral has been described as "fundamental to the alt-right's understanding of the humanities". Academic Andrew Woods describes the Cathedral as one of two central ideas that enable the alt-right to dismiss criticism, the other being cultural Marxism. He writes that both ideas function to pre-emptively neutralize attempts at refutation, and that they are especially used to delegitimize critical theory. The Cathedral allegedly "seeks to delude the American public" while amassing power and influence, and critical theory is portrayed as the ideological justification for the pursuit of power. Progressive thought is seen as a disguise for power-seeking, and Woods says that Yarvin takes advantage of the inability to prove the unconscious desires of others to argue that "everyone's primary motivation in life is their craving for greater power." El País compared the concept to QAnon and its claims of a deep state.

Race

Neoreactionaries endorse scientific racism, a pseudoscientific view which they refer to as "human biodiversity". Land coined the term "hyperracism" to refer to his views on race; he believes that socioeconomic status is "a strong proxy for IQ" rather than race specifically (though he acknowledges a correlation between race and socioeconomic status), and that meritocracy, particularly space colonization, will "function as a highly-selective genetic filter" that propagates mostly (but not strictly) Whites and Asians. Roger Burrows, writing for The Sociological Review, stated "In Land's schema, the consumers ‘exiting’ from competing gov-corps quickly form themselves into, often racially based, microstates. Capitalist deterritorialization combines with ongoing genetic separation between global elites and the rest of the population resulting in complex new forms of ‘Human Bio-diversity’. He described Land's views as eugenicist and compared them to those of The Bell Curve.

According to Land, the concepts of hate speech and hate crimes are simply methods to suppress ideas that contradict the Cathedral's dogma. He says that statements described as "hate speech" are not related to hatred but are simply a type of defiance of the Cathedral's religious orthodoxy. The suppression is carried out by the "Media-Academic Complex" because the ideas are seen as reflecting a "heretical intention". Yarvin has stated, "Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff", believing it to simply be an ineffective tool for "the very real problems about which it complains." Yarvin has endorsed arguments for black racial inferiority and says they are being suppressed by the Cathedral. He has said that some races are more suited to slavery than others and has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes.

Accelerationism

One of Land's goals with neoreactionarism is to drive accelerationism. Roger Burrows stated of Land's interpretation of Yarvin, "The Dark Enlightenment itself might be best thought of as the application of Land’s accelerationist framework to Moldbug’s neocameralism." Land views democratic and egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and a technocapital singularity, stating "Beside the speed machine, or industrial capitalism, there is an ever more perfectly weighted decelerator ... comically, the fabrication of this braking mechanism is proclaimed as progress. It is the Great Work of the Left." Vincent Le states "If Land is attracted to Moldbug’s political system, it is because a neocameralist state would be free to pursue long-term technological innovation without the democratic politician’s need to appease short-sighted public opinion to be re-elected every few years."

Vox attributed such views to Land living in China's "techno-authoritarian political system" and his admiration for Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Land has referred to Lee as an "autocratic enabler of freedom", and Yarvin has also praised Lee. Yuk Hui considers sinofuturism to be a model for the movement's pursuit of technological progress which results from a perceived decline of the West. According to Hui, political fatigue leads people such as Land to look towards Asian cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore as examples of "depoliticized techno-commercial utopia". China is viewed as smoothly importing Western science and technology while Western innovation is constantly limited by the progressivism of the Cathedral. Hui considers this to be "simply a detached observation of these places that projects onto them a common will to sacrifice politics for productivity". Land has advocated for accelerationists to support the neoreactionary movement, though many have distanced themselves from him in response to his views on race.

Formalism

In the inaugural article published on Unqualified Reservations in 2007, entitled "A Formalist Manifesto", Yarvin used the term "formalism" for his ideas, advocating for the formal recognition of the realities of existing power by aligning property rights with current political power as a solution to violence. Courtney Hodrick, writing for Telos, stated "in his view, all politics are individual property relationships and the social contract is an agreement between citizen-consumers and governor-owners. Your consent to an agreement such as 'I won’t kill anyone on the street,' he explains, is 'just your agreement with whoever owns the street.' This agreement means that the owner of the street may use violence to enforce this agreement, just as individuals may use violence to defend their own property. His concern ... is deciding who has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. But rather than concern himself with justifying legitimacy politically or metaphysically, Moldbug calls for a naturalization of existing property relations." Yarvin describes the U.S. as "an big [sic] old company that holds a huge pile of assets, has no clear idea of what it’s trying to do with them, and is thrashing around like a ten-gallon shark in a five-gallon bucket", advocating formalism as a solution:

"To a formalist, the way to fix the US is to dispense with the ancient mystical horseradish, the corporate prayers and war chants, figure out who owns this monstrosity, and let them decide what in the heck they are going to do with it. I don't think it's too crazy to say that all options—including restructuring and liquidation—should be on the table."

Yarvin rejects democracy as "ineffective and destructive" and attributes the successes of the post-World War II democratic system to its actually being "a mediocre implementation of formalism". He describes democratic politics as "a sort of symbolic violence, like deciding who wins the battle by how many troops they brought". Rejecting pacifism for what he perceives as a tendency to advocate for the rectification of injustices instead of seeking an end to armed conflict, Yarvin promotes the adoption of classical approaches to international law and the idea of "formalising the military status quo" as the most direct path to peace. He identifies the form of pacifism which prioritises "righteousness" instead of peace with the Calvinist doctrine of providence, and "ultracalvinism" as the ideological/theological basis for contemporary American interventionism.

Relation to other movements

Seasteading

Prominent figures in the neoreactionary movement have connections to seasteading, the creation of sovereign city-states in international waters, which has been characterized as a way to execute the movement's ideas. Yarvin has connections to Patri Friedman, founder of The Seasteading Institute and grandson of Milton Friedman, and Thiel was once its main investor. Thiel has also advocated the use of cyberspace, outer space, and the oceans to outstrip traditional politics via capitalism in order to realize libertarianism. Land has quoted Friedman in stating that "free exit is so important that…it [is] the only Universal Human Right".

The Network State

See also: City of Starbase Incorporation election and Free State Project

Balaji Srinivasan's proposal of the Network State, a plan for technology executives and investors to remove themselves from democracy and create their own sovereign states, has been compared to Yarvin's ideas. Journalists have described Srinivasan as a leader of the neoreactionary movement and a friend of Yarvin. Srinivasan had also messaged Yarvin suggesting potentially using the Dark Enlightenment audience to dox reporters. Comparisons have also been made to Galt's Gulch from Atlas Shrugged and Donald Trump's proposed "Freedom Cities". Supporters include Marc Andreessen, Garry Tan, Peter Thiel, Michael Moritz, Patrick Collison, Patri Friedman, Roger Ver, Naval Ravikant, Joe Lonsdale, Bryan Johnson, the Winklevoss twins. Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, Shervin Pishevar, Brian Armstrong, and Vitalik Buterin. Proposed cities alleged to be examples of the Network State include California Forever, Praxis, Telosa, Neom, Liberland, and Elon Musk's Starbase City. Established cities alleged to be part of the Network state include Próspera in Honduras and Itana in Nigeria. Other locations of interest include Greenland, French Polynesia, Palau, South Asia, Ghana, the Marshall Islands, Panama, the Bahamas, Montenegro, Costa Rica, and Rhode Island.

Cryptocurrency and Web3 are central components of the project. Its legal framework also involves special economic zones, and foreign investors have used Investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the case of Próspera. The movement has been compared to Trumpism, with common ideologies including a belief in Strauss–Howe generational theory and hostility to left-wing politics, the news media and the administrative state. Critics have described these projects as a form of neocolonialism, corporate monarchy, or white saviorism. The Highland Rim Project, located in Tennessee and Kentucky, is a Christian nationalist community influenced by the Network State and was proposed by New Founding, a Christian venture capital firm that received funding from Andreessen and is connected to the Network State venture capital firm Pronomos Capital. The Guardian has noted the community's ties to far-right groups and white nationalism.

Surveillance capitalism

See also: Surveillance capitalism

Mother Jones cites Clearview AI and its founder Hoan Ton-That (who were in connection with Thiel and Yarvin) as an example of the Dark Enlightenment or neoreactionary thinking's influence on the development of surveillance technology. A 2025 anonymous letter of a group of self-described former followers of the neoreactionary movement warned that the movement advocated for "techno-monarchism" in which its ruler would use "data systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced algorithms to manage the state, monitor citizens, and implement policies". It further warned that Musk, in the context of his actions at the Department of Government Efficiency, was working "for his own power and the broader neo-reactionary agenda." Yarvin has outlined a vision for San Francisco where public safety would be enforced by constant monitoring of residents and visitors via RFID, genotyping, iris scanning, security cameras, and transportation which would track its location and passengers, reporting all of it to the authorities. The New Republic described the proposed surveillance system as "Orwellian".

Alt-right

The Dark Enlightenment has been described by journalists and commentators as part of the alt-right, specifically as its theoretical branch. Journalist and pundit James Kirchick states that "although neo-reactionary thinkers disdain the masses and claim to despise populism and people more generally, what ties them to the rest of the alt-right is their unapologetically racist element, their shared misanthropy and their resentment of mismanagement by the ruling elites".

Scholar Andrew Jones wrote in 2019 that the Dark Enlightenment is the most significant political theory within the alt-right, and that it is "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology. "The use of affect theory, postmodern critiques of modernity, and a fixation on critiquing regimes of truth", Jones remarked, "are fundamental to NeoReaction (NRx) and what separates it from other Far-Right theory". Moreover, Jones argues that Dark Enlightenment's fixation on aesthetics, history, and philosophy, as opposed to the traditional empirical approach, distinguishes it from related far-right ideologies. Historian Joe Mulhall, writing for The Guardian, described Land as "propagating very far-right ideas." Despite neoreaction's limited online audience, Mulhall considers the ideology to have "acted as both a tributary into the alt-right and as a key constituent part [of the alt-right]." Journalist Park MacDougald described neoreactionarism as providing a philosophical basis for considerable amounts of alt-right political activity.

The term "accelerationism", originally referring to Land's technocapitalist ideas, has been re-interpreted by some into the use of racial conflict to cause societal collapse and the building of white ethnostates, which has been linked to several white nationalist terrorist attacks such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacres. Vox described Land's shift towards neoreactionarism, along with neoreactionarism crossing paths with the alt-right as another fringe right wing internet movement, as the likely connection point between far-right racial accelerationism and the otherwise unrelated technocapitalist term. They cited a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center investigation which found users on the neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff who cited neoreactionarism as an influence. Land himself has called the neoreactionary movement "a prophetic warning about the rise of the Alt-Right".

Fascism

Journalists and academics have described the Dark Enlightenment as neo-fascist. University of Chichester professor Benjamin Noys described it as "an acceleration of capitalism to a fascist point". Nick Land disputes the similarity between his ideas and fascism, saying that "Fascism is a mass anti-capitalist movement", whereas he prefers that "capitalist corporate power should become the organizing force in society". Historians Angela Dimitrakaki and Harry Weeks tie the Dark Enlightenment to neofascism via Land's "capitalist eschatology" which they describe as supported by the supremacist theories of fascism. Dimitrakaki and Weeks say that Land's Dark Enlightenment was "infusing theoretical jargon into Yarvin/Moldbug's blog 'Unqualified Reservations'".

In The Sociological Review, Roger Burrows examined neoreaction's core tenets and described the ideology as "hyper-neoliberal, technologically deterministic, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, pro-eugenicist, racist and, likely, fascist", and describes the entire accelerationist framework as a faulty attempt at "mainstreaming ... misogynist, racist and fascist discourses". He criticizes neoreaction's racial principles and its brazen "disavowal of any discourses" advocating for socio-economic equality and, accordingly, considers it a "eugenic philosophy" in favor of what Nick Land deems "hyper-racism". Graham B. Slater wrote that neoreaction "aim[s] to solve the problems purportedly created by democracy through what ultimately amount to neo-fascist solutions."

Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) which adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post. In the contemporary art world, art historian Sven Lütticken says that the popularity of Land's concepts has made certain art centers in New York and London hospitable to trendy fascism.