Talk:Dark Enlightenment/Archive 1

Archive 1

Does this warrant an article?

Probably should be in the "21st century" section of Reactionary. Else more should be pulled out of there to here, with that as a short summary and this as the main article - David Gerard (talk) 16:10, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a specific subset of neo-reactionaries that has garnered some considerable coverage in journals and newspapers. It is also the topic of a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, although that mostly does not meet WP:RS. My gut says it warrants a stand alone article, however if there is going to be a merger I would say that it should have its own subjection under 21st Century. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Subset? It's much of a muchness as far as I can tell (from following them with some amusement, rather than with anything like a Wikipedia-quality RS) - "neoreaction" and "dark enlightement" seem approximately interchangeable in the sphere itself, though tending to the former. YMMV I suppose. Let's see how it goes as a separate article - David Gerard (talk) 20:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I've put "neoreactionary" as a bold header here and redirected the relevant topics here. The paragraph in reactionary should largely be shifted here and a better summary written for that article section - David Gerard (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Radical Traditionalism

Radical traditionalism seems to be a perfect fit here for the "See also" section. Any disagreements? 2601:A:6200:AAC:190F:99B4:7633:28C1 (talk) 04:27, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I think it's good for See Also. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Conservatism category

I don't think having the "Conservatism" series is appropriate. Is there any reliable source putting this in the conservative movement or worldview more than any other?73.172.99.131 (talk) 05:12, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that reactionary political view are generally considered a subset of the broader notion of conservatism. Certainly classical Toryism (monarchism) is so regarded in Britain and most of Europe. -Ad Orientem (talk) 05:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

If there were a separate "reactionary" subcategory of conservatism, this would definitely go there. Do we have enough for such a subcat? - David Gerard (talk) 11:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we are getting pretty close. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:57, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Enlightenment

May want to add some comparisons to the original Enlightenment and what features of that which DE advocates reject. For example, some of Hoppe's fundamentals:

"the natural equality of all men; the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid"

I believe they reject at least those three principles. Especially the first.

J1812 (talk) 10:07, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but do we have RSes? 'Cos at the moment this article is very skimpy on RSes, and rather more like a semi-vanity piece on a not-actually-very-notable Internet subculture. Needs the RSes - David Gerard (talk) 22:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

e.g. the EL forest, which I've cut down. Moldbug is frequently cited in RSes as the source of neoreaction as we know it, so his blog is arguably relevant; he and others cite the also-notable Hoppe, the libertarian whose desired end point was feudalism; but WP:EL is really quite harsh on what rates an EL, and a lot of what was here really doesn't rate it - David Gerard (talk) 16:03, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Yarvin and OpenWave

There's remaining evidence on the web he worked on it, though he didn't write the whole thing. Anyone know of anything that clearly sets it out? - David Gerard (talk) 09:17, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Looking at http://www.japaninc.com/ww49 he did a lot of work on it (and there's a lot of WAP related patents with his name on them) but the claim in the article was an overstatement, so I've removed it. And that article is literally the only thing approaching WP:RS on the matter, on a Google for "yarvin openwave" - David Gerard (talk) 10:25, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Multiple groups ?

Should this article be portraying multiple groups or as a loose term ?

I saw at theawl it portrayed not as a single "the movement" terms this article uses, but as a general grouping label, "less a single ideology than a loose constellation of far-right thought, clustered around three pillars: religious traditionalism, white nationalism, and techno-commercialism ". The Telegraph cite says similar, and the TechCrunch cite portrays it as lightly insulting term crafted by folks who dislike, and Spectator says the only unity is a discontent ...

In any event it seems not a "group" with membership or leaders, not a "movment" as something planned so suggestions for improvment please. Would the article do better to say it is "a broad term for" or something like that ? Markbassett (talk) 16:14, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Not such a broad term. Mostly it's a small Internet subculture. (Although the alt-right end (an odd cross of white nationalism and NRx jargon) did have a mainstream memetic success with "cuckservative".) Maybe a cluster is a better description - David Gerard (talk) 16:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

David Gerard - so what instead of movement in "reactionary movement that broadly rejects egalitarianism and Whig historiography. The movement favors a return to" ? I'm thinking that word is not a good match to cites and does not fit Webster "a series of organized activities working toward an objective", and it really is not a group in the sense of a membership list. Should the lede perhaps say the term is some mix of 'subculture' or 'general term' ? Markbassett (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Fusionism?

I am going to remove the "Fusionism" link in the See Also section, unless someone has a compelling reason to keep it. The views of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan have approximately nothing to do with the neoreactionary system of ideas. I mean, come on. Fusionism is just mainstream American conservatism. Pretendus (talk) 20:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Religion

David Gerard, why do you say a pile of traditionalist Catholics are in the Dark Enkightenment? What's your evidence?

According to the first reference found in The Baffler, "some are atheists".

According to the article by Nick Land, one of the leaders (Mencius Moldbug) is an atheist.

I don't think the movement supports religion.

69.127.248.215 (talk) 02:15, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• There are also many LaVeyan Satanists in the movement (such as Davis Aurini). Arguably Anton LaVey himself was a proto-neoreactionary; The Satanic Bible was essentially plagiarized from Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard.

Anders Breivik arguably anticipated the movement too; Breivik was agnostic about the existence of God but supported the Catholic Church because he believed it was the only force that could unify Europe (ignoring, of course, the fact that its actual membership is overwhelmingly non-European). The belief that traditional religion is a "noble lie"; not actually true, but sociologically useful and good for pacifying the masses (to paraphrase Karl Marx), seems common to a lot of these people due to their elitist and almost gnostic tendencies. I will edit the article to clarify this fact (that they may view certain religions as a good thing in society, but do not in general believe religious doctrines to be actually true, and they view "true believers" as superstitious degenerates). FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 06:13, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Could you give examples of people within the Dark Enlightenment movement who view religion as a noble lie? Did Dark Enlightenment figures praise Breivik? Do LaVeyan Satanists think religion is societally useful?69.127.248.215 (talk) 13:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Vox Day is a big fan of Breivik: [1]. Mencius Moldbug has also expressed a sympathetic view of him. [2]. FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 20:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The American Spectator ref specifically says: "They are Tridentine Catholic or Eastern Orthodox in religion, or else hard materialists." This seems accurate to me - I haven't encountered the Orthodox ones, but there's a pile of tradcats who buy into the DE. The religion as socially useful thing sounds very plausible to me, but we need a cite for this so I've marked it accordingly - David Gerard (talk) 15:12, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The source says: "or else hard materialists." So the movement is not clearly pro- or anti-religious. If you have no reference for your statement about religion being socially useful we shouldn't include it.69.127.248.215 (talk) 18:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, lots of hard materialists. But the religious contingent do exist and it's part of their DE-ness. I concur we need a source on merely positing it as instrumentally useful - @FiredanceThroughTheNight:? - David Gerard (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the proposed addition is inappropriate because:

1. LaVeyan Satanists do not think religion is societally useful.
2. Any Christians within the movement (and you say there are piles of them) would not think religion is a pious fiction.
3. You have no source for your theory about pious fictions.
4. One of the leaders of the movement, Nick Land, is strongly anti-Christian. See: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/198384.Nick_Land 69.127.248.215 (talk) 14:58, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Fundamentalism

Does anyone have a source for the neoreactionary ideology having any connection whatsoever? If not, I am going to remove the entry in "See Also." Pretendus (talk) 23:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

About some of the references

Dear Wikipedia,

do you really consider sound practice to include as "references" some article that simply expresses biased opinions as though they were "facts"? I mean, if a journalist is clearly a left-winger, how can one expect objectivity when he discusses an anti-cultural-marxism sub-culture? Reference sections should be authoritative and credible, you know...

Otherwise, keep up the good work! Cheers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.2.20.137 (talk • contribs)

Because they're the coverage we have from reliable sources. If a given source's actual claims are in fact provably systematically incorrect, that would be a different matter. But there's absolutely no requirement for the authors of sources to have the same views as the (decidedly fringe) political grouping they're covering - David Gerard (talk) 13:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Title of the page

I think that this article should be titled "Neoreaction" rather than "Dark Enlightenment". My rationale:

1) Dark Enlightenment applies mostly to Nick Land and his fans. This is like titling this page "formalism", coined by moldbug. Formalism & DE apply to subsets of the movement. Neoreaction is a broad term.

2)Dark Enlightenment is definitely the lesser used of the two, both in ordinary discourse and among journalists (in the US at least). I don't have an hard evidence for this so it is, for now, clearly the weaker of the 2 points — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.112.229.223 (talk) 05:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Could have been either really, was created as "Dark Enlightenment" first. I'd slightly prefer we keep "Dark Enlightenment", it's somewhat broader than "neoreaction" (I have nothing of RS quality, but in discussions with the SF end of neoreaction they disclaim things like the alt-right which Nick Land has tried neologising as "heroic reaction" ... it's in flux really) - David Gerard (talk) 12:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Page move to Neoreaction

The majority of reliable sources seem to use the phrasing "neoreaction" or "neoreactionary movement". I'd support moving the page to either of these locations. Any thoughts? Denarivs (talk) 04:54, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Please Fix Inaccuracy

Hello Wikipedia editors; my name is Justine Tunney. I've noticed that this article makes an incorrect claim about me. I'd like to point out that I'm not associated with the Dark Enlightenment. I am not a "neoreactionary." I have never been any such thing. Here's proof: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9703134 I've talked to people who've identified with these terms. But certainly talking to people isn't grounds for inclusion in a Wikipedia article that could be potentially damaging to my reputation. Furthermore, the reference that's being used to back up this claim is a smear piece. It was written by Arthur Chu, who is a man well-known for being a biased political partisan. The article he wrote about me in the Daily Beast makes such absurd, ridiculous, and unsubstantiated claims, that no reasonable person could possibly interpret it as anything other than a work of pure fiction. Certainly Wikipedia would not want to cite such untrustworthy content. -Jartine (talk) 02:25, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi there. It looks like the focus will be on the unreliability of this piece by Arthur Chu. Since I can't find specifically whether The Daily Beast is considered a reliable source, nor is opinion apparently separated from fact, I believe the focus will have to be on the reliability of the daily beast.

Another short term approach - is there any reliable source you refuting this position? Framing this as 'Arthur Chu claimed X but was since refuted...' can be done with such a rebuttal. Deku-shrub (talk) 16:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

It seems obvious that there's major WP:BLP issues here to hang an accusation like this off a single source. Political stances aren't the same as, say, embarrassing incidents like getting arrested; barring rare circumstances, the person themself is the authoritative voice for their own opinions. This goes double for fringe groups. I'd say remove the sentence from the article entirely, and it's rather alarming for the veracity of the rest of the article that one of the main standard-bearers of the movement apparently doesn't even think they're part of it. (If there are a lot of sources on Jartine's membership and/or this is a notable topic of debate, then it might be fine to explain the debate with the proviso that the person themself disagrees with it, but right now there's just a single source tying her in, yet she's prominently in the 2nd paragraph. Yikes.) SnowFire (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Deku-shrub, please see the ycombinator link I provided. It links to to numerous tweets sent out on my twitter account over the years, plainly stating that I'm not a neoreactionary. Some of these tweets predate Arthur Chu's smear piece. As SnowFire said, I'm probably the best source you have available for mine own opinions. Thank you for being understanding. I really wish I understood why media sites have been so persistent in saying untrue things about me. This has been going on for almost three years now. I'm just an ordinary woman who has a job writing code for a tech company. Jartine (talk) 00:31, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I've removed it. We don't really need it and unless it can be solidly established at not an infringement of WP:BLP it's best 'err' on the side of caution. If anyone feels it should be replaced I strongly feel it should be discussed at WP:BLPN first. Not all reliable sources are always right. Doug Weller talk 07:51, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Tunney has advised people to read Moldbug, but has consistently asserted she's not part of NRx or the DE. Note that Chu's article at no point calls Tunney a neoreactionary, it talks about a larger political cluster that it places Tunney, neoreactionaries, MRAs and various other factions in; it's a source to apply carefully if at all for this article - David Gerard (talk) 11:52, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

My concerns

The American Spectator is a blog. The Baffler appears to be a satirical, pundit site, which does not bode well for consideration as reliable. And the Daily Telegraph article link appears to be broken. Besides that, it appears a couple of descriptions were cherrypicked to WP:COATRACK the article lead with criticisms. Support for monarchism and traditional gender role? Unfounded, super minority, fringe views on the characteristics of the movement. Some critics have labeled it neo-fascist? Yea, a lot of critics label a lot of things, but those labels don't end up in article leads, especially when there is (if the link not working is entirely on my side) only one source that mentioned it in passing. That is undue weight, and poor attribution of the article. DaltonCastle (talk) 20:26, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that The Baffler is a first and foremost a print magazine. I was holding a copy in my hands just last week. To call it a "satirical pundit site" is a mis-characterization. Political analysis is very much its "core business". I would consider it a reliable source. And just in case this wasn't completely obvious, the American Spectator is also a print magazine. It's been in print for almost a century. Mduvekot (talk) 21:11, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I am not seeing anything that remotely qualifies as a COATRACK. We don't exclude criticism from the article lead on any subject. This is an article about a fairly fringe political movement, most of whose adherents are quite open about their views which are IMO fairly represented. One could also peruse the primary source blogs run by the NRx crowd for confirmation of this. Nor is this an attack. I am a monarchist and I don't consider the term to be a pejorative. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:02, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Then this article should state that it is a pejorative term. DaltonCastle (talk) 22:29, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Why, when it is not? -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:01, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

The term was created by people who are critics of the alt-right movement, yes? In an insulting manner? DaltonCastle (talk) 02:28, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

That's not really a coherent claim - we don't add to well-cited descriptions "and they meant it negatively" - David Gerard (talk) 06:47, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Actually the term "Dark Enlightenment" (assuming this is what we are talking about) was coined by one of the founders of the movement and is widely embraced by its adherents. -Ad Orientem (talk) 12:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

So you are saying Nick Land is a member? DaltonCastle (talk) 16:23, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

It's not a political party with dues paying members. But yes, he is a prominent proponent and neo-reactionary theorist. Have you read his essay The Dark Enlightenment? -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:33, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

If you wanted to claim that the inventor of the term is not part of it, you could claim that I suppose ... - David Gerard (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

The naming takes an opinion on the matter

The term "Dark Enlightenment" was coined by author and philosopher Nick Land as a satirical play on words for the knowledge supposedly gained from the Enlightenment and lost during the Dark Ages.

it appears to take a stance on the subject using the title

71.105.96.61 (talk) 13:54, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

It's probably the most commonly accepted term used by subscribers. That's usually what we go with. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:28, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with OP that the name "Dark Enlightenment" is both confusing and non-NPOV. The political philosophy is typically referred to as the Neoreactionary Movement by both subscribers of it and critics of it. [1][2][3][4] User:Stephen Balaban -

Moving article.

[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement [2] http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/moldbug.htm [3] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ [4] http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephen Balaban (talk • contribs) 18:37, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing and external links

Moldbug's blog has been attested as important to the subject in sufficient RSes to put in, and Land's paper named the movement, but I can't see random blog sources as being a good idea unless they're attested in multiple RSes as being very important sources on the topic. So I would be strongly against linking just blogs even if they claim to be a good directory page, unless they have such an attestation.

Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ would be a nice one to link ... if it has attestation in RSes. Does it? - David Gerard (talk) 22:42, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

The Imaginative Conservative

Is this in any way either a source that passes WP:RS, or noteworthy in its own right? It looks like a blog. An informative one, but still not an RS - David Gerard (talk) 15:22, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Dark Enlightenment not Neoreaction?

It is not clear that these terms are interchangeable. Apparently there are people who claim to be part of the Dark Enlightenment but who do not identify as neoreactioneries. More sources needed? 2003:5B:4B0C:7CB2:64B:80FF:FE80:8003 (talk) 04:37, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Many use it interchangeably, some prefer one or the other. There's also the overlapping "alt-right", which is (approximately) white nationalism with some neoreactionary jargon thrown in. The trouble is that stuff meeting WP:RS is extremely thin on the ground, and we'd be reduced to synthesising an original-research article from individual NRx/DE blogs - David Gerard (talk) 09:14, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The terms "Dark Enlightenment" and "Neoreaction" are not interchangeable. The Dark Enlightenment encompasses a wide array of thinking and advocacy, while Neoreaction is a very narrow, purportedly philosophical school of thought. This network map — https://occamsrazormag.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/alt-right-dark-enlightenment.png — as found there and elsewhere (original source not available) provides a good outline of "Dark Enlightenment," while Neoreaction occupies mostly the portions on the left-hand side of the network map, with a explicit Roman Catholic and Monarchist associations. I recommend re-naming the article to "Neoreaction." Voodooengineer (talk) 20:32, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 5 June 2016

Dark Enlightenment → Neoreactionary movement

We should move this page to maintain NPOV. User:Stephen Balaban - 00:45, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

• Comment How? Please make your case. Also, given the last discussion was just a few months ago, you should probably address all points raised therein - David Gerard (talk) 11:39, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
• Comment Here's the problem: the sources given above by the OP do not appear to be reliable. A search on Google Scholar does turn up more sources for "neoreactionary;" however, most of the articles use the term fleetingly, not defining it, or are using it to describe aspects of reactionary modernism, the philosophical underpinnings of which are not represented in this article (which may be part of the problem). It looks like the article has been previously purged of blog sources, so I don't think we should necessarily be adding more now. I'm looking at academic sources and I found a couple that attributed Curtis Yarvin as a NR, and a couple that attributed him with the DE. The other "forerunners" named in the article, I couldn't find anything. I'm somewhat inclined to support the move because the new title seems more accurate, but I would do so only if we can nail down some solid sources that clearly identify the people and philosophy in this article as neoreactionary. Otherwise if we did the move as it stands, down the line someone might want to move the article back to Dark Enlightenment and point to a lack of sources describing it as neoreactionary - and they'd be right. As it stands, we're at a wash. We may also wish to describe how this philosophy has seemingly arisen in tandem across Europe, the US and Australia (and how they differ, for example I don't believe Yarvin subscribed to monarchism, AFAIK). Here are the sources I found with Yarvin mentioned with the neoreactionary term: https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=629207990052763;res=IELLCC , http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/270.short . FWIW, a google scholar search for "neoreactionary movement" turns up quite a few articles on neoconservatism, which would seem to be an altogether different animal. Also, I don't quite understand the NPOV concerns raised by the OP. We need to look at what reliable sources say. <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 01:32, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose This was proposed less than six months ago and the discussion was closed with no consensus. I see no compelling argument being presented that is likely to establish a consensus this time around. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I've written previously, above, that Neo-Reaction is a subset of Dark Enlightenment. Neo-Reaction, so or similarly titled, is a movement with depth of content at this time, but perhaps lacks recognition as a movement. Regardless, I believe it is sufficient to argue that Neo-Reaction is more description of the organized portions of the movement. Dark Enlightenment is a moniker for a general trend in thought, and is not associated with organization. Since the Neoreaction movement is explicitly "passivist," it is unlikely to solicit the notoriety similar flash-in-the-pan movements, such as Occupy, rapidly accomplish despite plenty of written and published material. Examples of Neoreaction organization include the following. There is no equivalent coalescence under the heading "Dark Enlightenment." http://neoreaction.net/ http://hestiasociety.org/ http://www.socialmatter.net/ (Publication back to 2014) http://thefutureprimaeval.net/ http://vannrx.com/ http://baycarlyle.com/ http://mattforney.com/neoreaction-bryce-laliberte/ Voodooengineer (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposed Merger

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The Dark Enlightenment is described as an early school of thought in the alt-right Considering the term alt-right is more well known; the article goes into further depth. I think it would be useful to merge this page with that one, and have the term "Dark Enlightenment" re-direct to alt-right. This is my first time trying to do this, and I've read the guides on it, so I'm really, really sorry if I'm doing this wrong. :/ NimbleNavigator (talk) 14:00, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose good faith proposal. Alt Right is a term for which no one has really nailed down a firm definition and depending on who is doing the defining can mean any number of different things and serve as an umbrella term/group for all manner of disparate and often contradictory ideologies. Further the Dark Enlightenment has received sufficient coverage to be independently notable in its own right and justifies a stand alone article. On a side note you need to post proposed merge tags on Alt Right as well and direct the discussion to here. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:36, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. They're really separate strains, though closely related with a lot of interchange of ideas. (Perhaps someone can trace the discussions in the comments of 2Blowhards which inspired Yarvin to neoreaction, and relate them to what Richard Spencer was doing with Alternative Right ...) Third-party RSes are still trying to make sense of what is and isn't the "alt-right", also. I'd leave them separate for now. I wouldn't call a later merge impossible - David Gerard (talk) 00:32, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Though they are clearly closely related, identifying the two, or calling one a subset of the other, would be original research not justified by the sources, I think - Anissimov, a neoreactionary blogger quoted in the Anti-Neoreactionary FAQ, calls them "very different" here (although he also predicts, in that blog post, that neoreaction will be absorbed by the alt-right in the future). --greenrd (talk) 10:47, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose and recommend changing name of article to Neo-Reaction, for many of the reasons stated above, and to avoid ongoing confusion such as persists in this article. After re-name, recommend careful editing to delineate boundaries of Neoreactoin and very closely related movements that contribute or provide foundational ideas. Voodooengineer (talk) 17:38, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this is a possible right-wing path of Accelerationism that has adherents in the altright movement but it's not unifying and people, who refuse to identify as altright, may consider this concept as having merit. I've seen Nick Land tie this concept to Libertarians as he sees Libertarian thought ultimately precluding democracies. If you had to fold it in then Accelerationism would be the article as it's a possible future path. Alatari (talk) 05:48, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Neoreaction is not a national-populist movement like the alt-right. They are distinct. Pretendus (talk) 05:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I came here to learn about neoreactionism, not the alt right. I'd be happy to see text in the two articles describing their relationship to each other. To be honest the article needs a lot of work. There's more information in this Atlantic article than there is in the Wikipedia article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/ Arided (talk) 12:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Missing information

I've added a "missing information" tag. As of now, the article is not very detailed. Most of it is "name dropping", links pointing elsewhere, and jargon-laden phrases like Some critics have labeled the movement as "neo-fascist" and Steve Sailer and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are described as "contemporary forerunners" of the movement. Very little can be learned without some effort to explain the ideas of the people involved. Arided (talk) 12:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I've restored the external links that someone deleted. IMO they more than meet the guidelines in WP:EL. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Ad Orientem : Thanks, that's very useful. I've started a new section in the article, "Summary of core ideas", so far just a couple of block quotes from the essay by Land. I plan to add to it when I have time to read the rest of his essay. Arided (talk) 17:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Is this related to the "Dark Side of the Enlightenment" or is this a spurious link.

Here's a lengthy quote that seems thematically related, but I don't know if it a concrete link or a spurious one:

"Court de Gébelin advocated a monde primitif, by which he meant a root or primal age preceding the recorded history of the Greeks and Romans that was the source of global culture and knowledge. This hyperdiffusionist concern with a primal or golden age was also expressed in Court de Gébelin’s esotericism, which in association with his freemasonry included a belief that solar worship was the foundational religion. Beginning in 1773, Court de Gébelin produced a series of volumes for subscribers, under the title Monde primitif, in which he was determined to reconstruct the golden age through language, mythology and symbology. Court de Gébelin would best be remembered for turning the old French card game of tarot into a system of prognostication in the eighth volume of Monde primitif, published in 1781, on the basis that the card symbols were (to his mind) rooted in Egyptian mythology. In that same volume he compared Native American and Old World languages in an attempt to show that all of the world’s languages shared a deeper root that pointed back to the primitif, or primal, age. Court de Gébelin also knew Lafitau’s scholarship, as he cited him as a source on Indigenous languages of Canada. The similarity between Lafitau’s concept of premier temps and Court de Gébelin’s monde primitif is impossible to overlook, particularly when Lafitau had compared the role of the sun in Indigenous beliefs and Old World classical mythology. However distant the worldview of a Masonic Protestant with occult interests might otherwise have been from that of a French Jesuit (whose order, in a fresh round of politically motivated expulsions, had suffered a series of bans that became global under Clement XIV in 1773), Court de Gébelin must have known he shared with the late Lafitau an interest in proving a golden age at the root of all human culture."

Emphasis added, from pp. 118 to 119 of STONE OF POWER: DIGHTON ROCK, COLONIZATION, AND THE ERASURE OF AN INDIGENOUS PAST by DOUGLAS HUNTER, PhD thesis 2015, York University, Toronto.

There is a dead link with the text Scholar cites Antoine Court de Gébelin as an important figure of the "Dark Enlightenment" on Antoine Court de Gébelin's wiki page. I think the link is meant to point to the essay "Dark Side of the Enlightenment."

“The prevailing understanding of the enlightenment is one in which there was only scientific and rational thinking, but there was also a significant number of people contributing to the enlightenment who were absorbed in dubious scholarly pursuits like alchemy, mythology, astrology and secret societies.”

Also:

Edelstein explained that through an odd intermediary (Madame Blavatsky, one of the founders of Theosophy), this myth of a "Hyperborean Atlantis" became a touchstone of Nazi ideology. According to Edelstein, one of the most notorious among this crowd of unorthodox philosophes is Adam Weishaupt, the law professor, champion of Enlightenment philosophy, and founder of the infamous Illuminati, for whom he invented mysterious Masonic rituals in order to better do battle with the Jesuits.

My guess is that this is a spurious link but it's an interesting terminological clash, with some rich ideas in it. Arided (talk) 01:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Libertarian is NOT "right-wing".

I am getting really tired of seeing this kind of thing on Wikipedia.

Libertarianism is neither Right-wing or Left-wing, and is definitely not "conservative". Leftists tend to confuse it with right-wing because Libertarians are for small government, but it has few other similarities to the political "right" or conservatism.

Therefore the statement "coupled with Libertarian or otherwise right-wing or conservative" is wildly inaccurate. The use of "otherwise" lumps libertarianism in with right-wing and conservatism, which is simply incorrect. This sentence seems to be trying to say "anything but Left". But it does so in an egregiously erroneous way. -- Jane Q. Public (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

You probably need to talk to Murray Rothbard about it first - David Gerard (talk) 00:07, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

That comment was uncalled for, and also inaccurate. Murray Rothbard's ideas were important to Austrian economics, but he was never a mainstream "Libertarian". He was always on the fringes and in fact he eventually left the Libertarian Party, where he was never comfortable, to form his own real right-wing movement.

Please research your subject before attempting snide comments. That one failed. -- Jane Q. Public (talk) 07:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Libertarianism has Right- and Left-wing varieties (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/), but otherwise I do agree that this talk of Libertarianism as always-right-wing is a form of disinformation that is spread all over Wikipedia and ideally should be corrected everywhere it appears. Donjoe (talk) 17:39, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 6 March 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. I asked for more evidence a couple of weeks ago, but no further conversation has ensued. With the weak oppose and a couple of "slight preference" for current title, I don't see a strong consensus here. (non-admin closure)  — Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

---

Dark Enlightenment → Neo-reactionary movement – More popular term Deku-shrub (talk) 17:43, 6 March 2016 (UTC) --Relisted.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:56, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

• No objection, either is fine as primary location. I slightly prefer "Dark Enlightenment" but ehh whatever. I'd suggest "Neoreactionary movement" without the hyphen - David Gerard (talk) 11:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose In my experience the term Dark Enlightenment is the one preferred and more commonly used by those who subscribe to the philosophy. However my evidence for this is, admittedly, anecdotal. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
• No objection, agree with David Gerard. Also, I guess it'd be more clearly representing what the ideology is to somebody who doesn't know what the Dark Enlightenment means. Connor Machiavelli (talk) 23:28, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
• Relisting comment - it would be useful to see some more solid evidence on this. @Deku-shrub: you say that the proposed term is "more popular". Can you point to some evidence for that? Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 09:56, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

• No objection, agree with David Gerard, Connor Machiavelli, and Amakuru. Amakuru, please do a search on these pages for the terms "Dark Enlightenment" and "Neoreactionary", you'll see that the term "neoreactionary" is strongly preferred and "neoreactioary movement" appears more frequently. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com, http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/, http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/moldbug.htm, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement User:Stephen Balaban - 18:56, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

I feel that the term "neoreactionary" has significantly more use, though I don't have any sources backing that claim up at this time. Power~enwiki (talk) 06:50, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Lovecraft influence

Can someone find a source for this, I am pretty sure there is a HPL influence within NRx. I am particularly thinking of the nihilism, the page on Nick Land specifically mentions HPL as an inspiration. And it is easy to spot nihilism within NRx, look at the Moldbug quote that "ethics are fundamentally aesthetic". I also know that Lovecraft was a racist and had far-right political views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.47.106.148 (talk) 13:38, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

It really shows in Nick Land's fiction, Phyl-Undhu and Chasm - David Gerard (talk) 09:03, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Do we have any more info about Dark Enlightenment symbols?

Smooth alligator (talk) 17:08, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

DYK

Hi Smooth alligator. Nice work on the article. When you are done with your expansion you might want to consider sending this up as DYK nomination. -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:29, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if there's a lot more to put in the article. #Dark_Enlightenment#Summary_of_core_ideas needs to be converted from quotes into regular prose. Problem is, once an article or section starts down the road to becoming a quotefarm, it's easy to just keep tacking on more quotes rather than rectifying the situation. The neocameralism article has been having problems lately and this one could be at risk of the same.

Copyright is tough because on the one hand, people are very strict about how everything has to be sourced, and how what you write has to accurately reflect what the sources say; but on the other hand, if you don't paraphrase, it can be removed as a copyvio. Yet in paraphrasing, you may distort the precise meaning that the authors were going for in choosing those exact words. Smooth alligator (talk) 00:58, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

You have my sympathy. But please, if in doubt err on the side of caution with copyright. It's one of those things where very little slack is cut. I have seen good editors get blocked for copyvios. I will try to keep an eye on neocameralism. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:53, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, if worse comes to worst, the neocameralism article can probably be merged into some other article.

The irony is, the online magazines and other sources being cited probably don't mind if 98 characters of their prose get used in our wiki articles, since the result is that traffic gets driven to them. It boosts their pagerank, attracts people to see the rest of what they have to say, etc. It's for that reason that people come down so hard on anything that looks like WP:SPAM. So constantly we are having to walk many fine lines.

I was just telling a buddy of mine, "I have a new meme for people who are sticklers about copyright: 'muh 98 characters'"

It's another reason why it's better to just use academic journals when they're available. Usually they're behind a paywall, and therefore you'll get fewer accusations of spamming or violating copyrights.

Okay, that was a productive venting session. Back to work! Smooth alligator (talk) 02:06, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

DYK, cont'd

@Ad Orientem: The thing about DYK is that whatever you use as your hook has to be well-supported. But it seems like a lot of the literature on the Dark Enlightenment consists of either (1) primary sources such as Curtis Yarvin or Nick Land or (2) outsiders saying "these are a bunch of fascists, racists, etc." or "We notice a lot of people in the alt-right seem to have been influenced by Dark Enlightenment ideas, and that people talk about the Dark Enlightenment in alt-right comment sections." I'm having a little trouble figuring out what would be the best hook to use, that could survive the scrutiny over at Template talk:Did you know. Smooth alligator (talk) 16:20, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

External links

I chose the external links based mostly on what was listed at http://greyenlightenment.com/measuring-the-influence-of-nrx-bloggers/ and http://takimag.com/article/overreacting_to_neoreaction_nicholas_james_pell Smooth alligator (talk) 06:08, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Nice work on this cluster of articles. The only problem I can see is extensive cites of NRx blogs as primary sources - the trouble is, this stuff is barely covered in actual RSes. (Curtis Yarvin has been getting a lot more lately, which is useful.) And there's plenty of internecine squabbles in NRx e.g., what Grey Enlightenment says is important is just some guy on a blog saying what he likes. Also, the NRx blogs take Moldbug as a model for writing, so churn out this stuff by the megaword, and using primary sources at all risks cherrypicking or synthesis from a vast corpus by necessity. I think we need to take care not to take the primary sources at face value and to take care to avoid primary research. If all primary sources and non-RSes were removed from the article or consideration for the article, what would we have? Not much less, I think, and it would be more robustly sourced - David Gerard (talk) 20:46, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Which NRx thinkers prefer monarchy to corporate rule?

I mostly see a lot of advocacy of corporate rule. Smooth alligator (talk) 21:03, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Monarchism, especially of the traditional sort, is generally a semi-separate branch of the NRx movement. Classical conservatives and political legitimists exist in almost every country that once had a monarchy and even in some that never did such as the United States. There are monarchist societies in most European countries. In those states where monarchy has been abolished there are groups agitating for restoration. In most cases however these monarchist movements are with an eye on a sort of constitutional monarchy similar to what exists in Great Britain and Sweden. Public support for restorationist movements varies. Oddly some of the polling I have seen suggests that support is strongest among those under 30. It is also often tied to religious traditionalism, especially among Catholics and Orthodox Christians. The SSPX has a strong core of monarchists, especially in France. The Russian Orthodox Church is openly and unambiguously monarchist. There are quite a few monarchist blogs and pro-monarchy websites/essays out there. Among intellectuals I believe that Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Ludwig von Mises are generally believed to have favored monarchy. See also A Monarchist Reading List and In This Great Service: A Theological and Political Defense of Monarchy. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:29, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Mises's opinions on monarchy. He wrote, "The alternative to the democratic principle of selection through popular election is the seizure of power by ruthless adventurers." However, this was in a book on bureaucracy and in the context of saying, "The ultimate basis of an all-round bureaucratic system is violence." Maybe in his view, in a less bureaucratic society, rule by a monarch or the method of selecting the ruler wouldn't be such a big deal because more economic decisions would be left to the people.

Leland Yeager writes: "True enough, some classical liberals, like Thomas Paine (1791) and Ludwig von Mises (1919), did scorn hereditary monarchy and did express touching faith that representative democracy would choose excellent leaders and adopt policies truly serving the common interest."

Yarvin provides a Hoppe quote here, "Despite the comparatively favorable portrait presented of monarchy, I am not a monarchist and the following is not a defense of monarchy. Instead, the position taken toward monarchy is this: If one must have a state, defined as an agency that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and of taxation, then it is economically and ethically advantageous to choose monarchy over democracy."

In that same essay, Yarvin describes himself as a royalist, but in this other essay, he notes that neocameralism is a refinement of royalism.

Speaking of Anissimov, this isn't a reliable source or anything, but it says, My prediction is that Michael Anissimov will be the first person purged from the neoreactionary inner circle. Why? Because he is the only one among them who is pointing to a historical form of government--monarchy--and saying, "Hey, that could work." The rest are certain that they can come up with something better and altogether new. Smooth alligator (talk) 23:55, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Orwell citation

George Orwell also used the term "neo-reactionary" in 1943, in an As I Please column for Tribune. I'm not sure this is really relevant to the article, unless we're going to have a section about other kinds of neoreactionaries. Smooth alligator (talk) 07:29, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning as a prior usage of the term, by a vastly more notable writer - I think we need it somewhere - David Gerard (talk) 16:35, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

There's general agreement, though, that NRx as we know it today began in 2007. Maybe it could be woven into the history section somewhere, which talks about some of NRx's predecessor ideologies. Smooth alligator (talk) 16:58, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Since there's no Dark Enlightenment noticeboard,

I'm just gonna note here that the Michael Anissimov article is up for deletion. The problem with Anissimov is that he gets quoted a lot here and there and has played leadership roles in a lot of organizations and summits, but has rarely been the center of attention. His influence seems to be more indirect; he'll make a comment that maybe impacts the thinking of someone who's writing a paper, but that's not the kind of stuff that leads to a lot of detailed articles being written either for or against Anissimov himself. Basically, if you want to be Wikipedia-notable, you need to be a better publicity hog than that. Smooth alligator (talk) 19:04, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Can we make a Dark Enlightenment noticeboard? - Scarpy (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, we can probably use Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism as a noticeboard for NRx stuff. The thing about NRx, though, is that it's more like a fusion of conservatism, libertarianism, and futurism. So there's something in it to repel everyone! Smooth alligator (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Are there actually fascist neoreactionaries? And if so, who are they?

The media says a lot of entertaining stuff about fringe movements, but when they don't name names, I get skeptical. There could just be random alt-right people wandering into NRx blogs and posting stuff that isn't really representative of the NRx community. Smooth alligator (talk) 01:35, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The whole movement is fringe. Sorting out who is and isn't in or out and to what degree is synthesis and not really our job. Not helped by the alt-right being full of trolls. This is another reason I think we need to go hard on third-party RS coverage only, and leave primary sources out of it. The big problem is that the sort of RS we'd need in order to address your question doesn't seem to actually exist as yet - proper journalistic or academic coverage of the alt-right is patchy enough, NRx is largely unexplored territory. (Neoreaction A Basilisk won't help either, annoyingly.) - David Gerard (talk) 10:45, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Using secondary sources comports more with Wikipedia guidelines. Whether it gets us more accurate and less biased information, I'm not sure. Sometimes the secondary sources are less believable than the primary sources because the secondary sources are written by people who aren't part of the movement, are possibly only researching the movement to write an article, and have their own agenda and biases (just like the people involved in the movement have their own agenda and biases).

The secondary sources are kinda like Margaret Mead writing Coming of Age in Samoa. She may have misled, or been misled. The people who know best what really goes on in Samoa are probably those who actually live or lived in Samoa. If we ask the ones who are still there, maybe a lot of times they have a bias in favor of their country; while if we ask the ones who left, maybe they have a bias against their country (because they disliked it enough to leave).

If Wikipedia just wants to CYA by being able to say, "Hey, if there's misleading stuff in our articles, don't blame us; blame the secondary sources we relied on" then relying on secondary sources works great. But people who are actually in the know will roll their eyes when they see Wikipedia repeats the same misinformation that was in the academic papers and mainstream press. It was only recently that the Daily Mail was disallowed from being used on Wikipedia, but there are a lot of secondary sources that have their own Daily Mail-ish tendencies to want to dramatize and mislead.

At the same time, even Wikipedians who are in the know often have a reason to want to pretend to believe the secondary sources, because for example, if a secondary source is saying a fringe movement is a bigger deal than it really is (more dangerous, or more influential, or whatever) then that helps the topic seem more notable. Poor Mike Anissimov never had an article written in a secondary source about how he's the leader of a transhumanist cult possibly numbering in the thousands (if the secondary source goes by some metric like Facebook followers) that maybe is going to try to take over the world (hey, it's only a slight stretch of the truth). He languishes in obscurity because no one wanted to write a clickbait news article about what a scary villain he is. (If you're trying to change the world, sometimes it's better to be viewed as a scary villain than as a nobody.)

If Wikipedia had solved the problem of bias and misinformation, Jimbo probably wouldn't be trying to create Wikitribune. But that won't solve the problem either, since it's just going to be another news outlet, the only difference being that it'll tend to reflect the biases of Jimbo and its other backers, rather than, say, Rupert Murdoch. A news article, like any telling of history, is an interpretation of facts, and tends to highlight some facts while downplaying or omitting others. Jimbo or whoever is in charge will be telling the reporters "Go check out this lead" or "Nah, don't bother checking out that lead."

The average reporter or academician probably didn't read Unqualified Reservations in its entirety but maybe they went on the Internet and looked up some parts that people said were particularly controversial or whatever. For example, I think I've seen the part about how he's not exactly allergic to white nationalist literature quoted many times. It probably takes a lot of reading to grasp the subtleties of his thinking and place a statement like that in its proper context, especially since he's putting forth a fairly comprehensive worldview that questions a lot of assumptions. It's kind of like when a sci-fi writer is creating a whole new universe that you have to understand in order to understand the meaning of events that happen within it. Smooth alligator (talk) 14:48, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Are NRx and/or neocameralism forms of libertarianism?

Michael Anissimov describes neocameralism as "similar to standard libertarianism, except with a more authoritarian flavor."

Most neoreactionaries, though, probably don't regard themselves as libertarians, and most Libertarians probably would want to distance themselves from NRx, the same way they're trying to distance themselves from the alt-right, since their association with alt-right ideas gets them negative press coverage. The press coverage often speaks of a pipeline from libertarianism to the alt-right, and some in NRx describe themselves as postlibertarians. Smooth alligator (talk) 22:43, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Not sure how much potential this sidebar has to get very full of links

but it looks cool. Smooth alligator (talk) 03:06, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Are NRx and/or neocameralism feudalist?

Matthew Shen Goodman was saying, "NRx is a call to return to some variant of monarchy, aristocracy, or what’s called neocameralism, in which the state is a joint stock corporation divvied up into shares and run by a CEO to maximize profit. This last option, Moldbug’s ideal, is not so much a return to either of these other forms of government, but a sleek corporate feudalism hybridizing the two."

In school, they always taught that under feudalism, serfs were tied to the land. In contrast, one of the fundamental ideas of neocameralism is "no voice; free exit". Yet at the same time, another idea of the Dark Enlightenment is that entry into some communities might be restricted on the basis of, say, race. Your ability to exit one community depends on your ability to enter other communities, since you have to live somewhere. (This was brought up at /r/DebateDE.) Smooth alligator (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

You're getting pretty deep into the original research mode of thought here. Wikipedia really isn't the place for that. Picture this article after a strict cull to third-party RSes - David Gerard (talk) 12:35, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

The kind of use I make of original research is, if a secondary source says something that my original research reveals to me isn't true, then I will just use my editorial discretion to refrain from adding that information to the article. (Or I'll look harder for a secondary source rebutting the inaccurate information from the other secondary source, and then include both points of view.) But I won't actually put original research into an article. Smooth alligator (talk) 18:57, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

In case any admins care

I filed a request over at MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#econlog.econlib.org.2Farchives.2F2010.2F07.2Fthe_neo-reactio.html. Smooth alligator (talk) 16:55, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Serious source tagging and cleaning needed

This is becoming an extensive article on NRx that is cited largely to blogs, primary sources and non-RSes. It's an interesting writeup, but it's looking to me less and less like anything Wikipedia is for. It needs serious culling to actual third-party reliable sources, and not to primary sourcing. If that results in a skimpy article, that will be because this is not a very notable subject - David Gerard (talk) 09:56, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I concur somewhat. I do think some primary sources can be referenced, provided we are very careful about SYNTH. However at the moment I think the article is becoming overly weighted with them. It might be better to link some of the obviously important primary sources under External Links and let the reader peruse them if they wish. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:37, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Obviously the solution is to get a writeup with all this info published somewhere then we can use it as a reference ;-) - David Gerard (talk) 15:20, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I will call the New York Times and see if they are interested in a possible story. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Well this just sucks

Looks like Smooth alligator was a sock of a long banned user. I am not stunned by that news. They seemed to have a rather advanced grasp of Wikipedia for such a new user. But still, it sucks. In theory we should roll back everything they did here. But I am not going to do that. As far as I can tell all of the editing was constructive and frankly, reverting it all would be more trouble than it's worth. However I may do some selective trimming given the heavy reliance on primary sources. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:50, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. I noted this. I support the idea of rollback and deletion per DENY but there is a case to be made for the constructive edits made to be retained. The editor involved needs to get right with the WMF, rather than continue to sock. This is a new subject to me so perhaps you would be best-suited to double-check for any cleanup. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:59, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Article's turned into primary-sourced rubbish

There are extensive sections of near-impenetrable he-said he-said sourced to primary sources, blogs and far-right unreliable sources. This really isn't Wikipedia-quality sourcing. I've gone through and done a quick tagging - if any of this can be shored up with reliable sourcing, that'd be great, else IMO it's time for a cull - David Gerard (talk) 16:42, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Cleanout done. If any of the missing claims can be backed by an RS, that'd be super-helpful - previous version - David Gerard (talk) 12:59, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

The slang word "edgy" doesn't fit in well with an encyclopaedic tone

Equinox ◑ 20:08, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

It's per the source. We can't arbitrarily accord this thing more gravitas than the sources do - David Gerard (talk) 21:28, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

I suppose so: I'd still consider putting it in quote marks though, just as a newspaper might, when quoting a slangy source. Equinox ◑ 00:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I have WP:BEENBOLD or what not. Equinox ◑ 21:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Works for me - David Gerard (talk) 22:23, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

This article doesn't define the subject and relies too heavily on primary sources

Hi, I just came hear to read about the subject and I feel confused rather than informed. As with so many neologisms and new fringe movements, this page is a bit of a mess. Too many primary sources and does not read like an encyclopaedic entry. At times the language is tendentious and weasely (has been described as/Some critics have also labelled/considers itself/Proponents generally also espouse), too much weight is given to unremarkable people and ideas that are simply not noteworthy, hence the high number of primary sources. The lede is all but impossible to make sense of, it's a dogs breakfast of assertions, as someone who knows nothing about the subject this article has left me scratching my head, what on earth is the Dark Enlightenment? Is it a reactionary movement? An anti-democratic movement? An anti-liberal movement? The antithesis to the Enlightenment? A neocameralist movement? A joint-stock republic? A conservative movement? An economically nationalist movement? A Socially conservative movement? A traditionalist movement? A monarchist transhumanism movement? A Catholic anarchist movement? Part of the alt-right movement? A post-libertarian movement? A futurist movement? A post-libertarian futurist movement? anti-libertarian movement? An authoritarian movement? All of the above? (I kid you not, check for yourselves, those are all mentioned...in the lede, it's bonkers!!) This article does not give a clear and concise description of the subject and is poorly cited. It should be reduced to statements of fact from experts or deleted all together (with the small amount of encyclopaedic content added to the reactionary article's 21st century section, which reads poorly at the moment) Bacondrum (talk) 01:41, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I think you're laying blame on Wikipedians where there are at least three other possible causes. (1) The topic is difficult to understand for WP:IS and they write poorly on it, (2) the topic is often deliberately misunderstood by WP:IS, (3) the topic itself is a dog's breakfast. I think there's some truth to all three. - Scarpy (talk) 15:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not blaming anyone. Bacondrum (talk) 19:59, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Cleanup and removal of unreliable citations, Nazi websites etc

So, I was WP:BOLD and cleaned out all the blogs, random opinions, original research and assertions made by people no one has ever heard of. These citations and assertions are not encyclopedic by any measure, there was a bunch of claims supported by an article from a neo-Nazi website: Taki's Magazine. Please be careful to cite the article properly, don't do original research and make the article readable...it wasn't, it really didn't make any sense at all. Bacondrum (talk) 04:00, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I think you need to tread carefully here. Claiming that Taki's is neo-Nazi could run afoul of BLP as well as NPOV. It is certainly not so described in our article on it which labels it as paleo-conservative and libertarian. That kind of claim makes me wonder what you have done to the article and why. I am going to have a close look tomorrow. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:51, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

A publication generally doesn't fall under WP:BLP; and we're not required to be neutral on talk pages or when describing sources. More generally, I think that if we were going to use it at all, the weight WP:DUE to it would be very low for a number of reasons. It's not particularly mainstream and has a clear, unambiguous POV; this makes it unlikely that anything citable only to Taki's is worth covering in any depth (and if we have a better source, we should just use that one.) Perhaps it could be used for a sentence or two with in-text attribution that makes its affiliation clear, but citing large portions of the article to it is clearly WP:UNDUE even if it's usable as a source. And I'm not necessarily convinced it is - it's only come up on WP:NPOVN once or twice before, but both times it clearly wasn't viewed very highly. It strikes me as the sort of source that could only really be used for the opinions of its writers, presented as opinions, and which isn't high-profile enough (or lacks the reputation) to make the opinions published there particularly noteworthy. Those kinds of sources don't have very many uses. --Aquillion (talk) 05:11, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

All of the above. I am 100% fine with calling Taki's white supremacist and well within the neo-Nazi sphere, particularly on a talk page. If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck it's not philosophically impossible it's a platypus, but WP:SPADE. And my goodness, read the Taki's Magazine article - "The website garnered some controversy in 2013 after it published articles in support of the Greek Neo-Nazi political party Golden Dawn." ffs. So Takimag's use as a source of opinions on NRx/DE would be within the context of it being in that category of publication - David Gerard (talk) 09:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I should clarify that for a time that read "Greek far-right political party Golden Dawn" (hence why Ad Orientem saw no mention of the term when they glanced at the page earlier); it had previously read neo-nazi but with a dubious tag, and another editor changed it to far-right a few months ago. I changed it back earlier because the editor who first took it out had recently been outed as a long-banned sockpuppeteer (see here, a talk thread on the page where they were most active, for details) and because at a glance the one remaining secondary source used neo-nazi, but I hadn't noticed that another editor had reinstated the change in the intervening period after an objection, and that one secondary source didn't directly mention takimag, so there's now likely to be some back-and-forth on that page now as we hash out new sources, what they say, and which to go with. --Aquillion (talk) 18:25, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

You've done good, the article was all but unreadable before - David Gerard (talk) 09:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks David! Bacondrum (talk) 11:13, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of whether Taki's is a neo-nazi outlet or just an extreme right outlet, it's not a reliable source. Read it, it's clearly not of use for anything. Bacondrum (talk) 11:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Concur; Taki's blog is not a reliable source. Whether we call this particular quacking water bird a duck or not is irrelevant to the discussion of its reliability. Simonm223 (talk) 13:25, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Taki RFC

So just to put this Taki issue to bed, I've made an RFC regarding reliability here Bacondrum (talk) 04:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

This assertion

I believe this assertion should go:

"The embryo of the neoreactionary movement lived in the community pages of LessWrong."

A paper, published on a wordpress blog by an unknown author of little to no notability, isn't a reliable source. It's also not written in an encyclopedic tone ie: "the embryo of" "lived in the". Bacondrum (talk) 22:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

That isn't a wordpress blog and the notability of the author is irrelevant. I agree it should be rephrased. VQuakr (talk) 00:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

It is a wordpress blog. Notability absolutely matters, whether or not the author is an expert is relevant, we don't publish random, unqualified opinion, especially not sourced from a wordpress blog. I'm glad we can agree that the phrasing is not up to scratch. Bacondrum (talk) 00:34, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Notability is the guideline for determining whether we should have an article on a given topic. WP:RS is the guideline regarding reliable sources. Coverage in reliable sources is needed to establish notability, but it doesn't work the other way around. The notability of a source or author is irrelevant to a discussion about reliability. The source has an editorial team; it is not some random person's blog. VQuakr (talk) 01:34, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

I get the difference between notable and reliable, but the first does inform the second. This is a problem on lots of new articles about these kinds of fringe ideas and people, their pages end up being a dogs breakfast of random opinion and experts that no one has ever heard of. As a rule of thumb, if a commentator, academic or journalist isn't widely published in a reliable source then we should be cautious when using them as a source. We need to look at their notability, we can't publish every assertion made by every Tom, Dick and Harry, we need to be discerning, quality content from respected experts in related fields are what is needed, not "experts" who no one has ever heard of. Everyone's an expert these days, at least in my homeland, around 9million people or more than half the adult population has completed a degree, and there are more than 100,000 people with a PHD in Australia. Their work is not inherently good quality or reliable, that's why we look to established, respected and notable academics, not just any one with a certain level of education.

The important question to ask is: Who is Adam Riggio? Nobody, I googled him, can't find anything other than the paper cited in the article and a few tweets. Then why are we considering him a expert or authority on the subject? No idea.

We may have to just agree to disagree on this one. Bacondrum (talk) 02:20, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

• There's more to WP:RS than that. Just stating that they have editors is not enough - what's their fact-checking process? How do they handle retractions or corrections? Are they treated as a reliable source by other sources? Either way, I think we should try to find a better source. This one is a book review from the online supplement of a journal - is that really a good enough source to make such a sweeping statement? --Aquillion (talk) 02:43, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

It's not a particularly contentious or sweeping statement being supported, either. VQuakr (talk) 12:47, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

The ref given here is to a review of another author's work, which I believe is where the assertion came from. I think I read the original at some point in the past though I can't recall when or where. Will dig around a bit. Simonm223 (talk) 14:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Her original essay is apparently paywalled behind a kickstarter I definitely didn't back, so I'm not sure where I read it. However while I don't have that, I'd suggest Social-Epistemology, notwithstanding their website architecture, appears to be an academic RS. [3] Simonm223 (talk) 14:48, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Adam is a he not a her. Published on a blog, unknown author, and it's a review. Not a RS. If you could find the original work that'd be a different story. Thanks for having a look. Bacondrum (talk) 21:56, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

It's a peer-reviewed academic source. You're harping on the CMS they use as if this makes a difference. It really doesn't - David Gerard (talk) 05:55, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Unknown author published on a wordpress blog, it's a review of the only work to have made the claim, not the original claim. - it's not a RS. Also, if the claim was verifiable surely we wouldn't need to use such an obscure source. Bacondrum (talk) 07:34, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Show us even one single source besides the wordpress one that makes this claim, on it's own this source doesn't cut it. Bacondrum (talk) 07:35, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bacondrum: sorry for the lack of clarity. I'm referring to the author of the original essay that the source under discussion is a review of. If you look a few comments up I'd offered to try to find a link to it as I believed a lot of what was sourced from the article on Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective was in fact from the original essay. The essayist who wrote the thing reviewed is a woman. That said, I have to reiterate that, notwithstanding their webhosting software, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective is an academic source and not a "wordpress blog".Simonm223 (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

ETA: Specifically Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective is the online critical response supplement to Social Epistemology - it's a top-shelf academic source for philosophy and social sciences, not a "wordpress blog." Simonm223 (talk) 12:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Aquillion: Social Epistemology has an impact factor in the mid-20s (H-Index of 24 according to Scimago). If their online suppliment doesn't constitute an academic RS I'd suggest no online suppliment anywhere does. Simonm223 (talk) 12:58, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bacondrum:Adam Riggio is a professor of philosophy at McMaster University. He's writing about philosophy in this review so he's operating within his area of specialty. Simonm223 (talk) 13:06, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Bacondrum, I get that you really hate this source for some reason. But you're just incorrect about whether it counts as an RS for Wikipedia purposes. It completely does, and it's reasonably clear that consensus is against you here - David Gerard (talk) 18:50, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Hey mate, sorry if I've been too stubborn, you are correct, it is a RS. I don't hate the source, I just thought it was another questionable or lackluster citation on a contemporary far-right article, there's often a lot of them, as there was on this page...but clearly I was wrong this time. Cheers Bacondrum (talk) 23:40, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, I can see that it's not just some random guy on wordpress. Thanks Simonm223 Bacondrum (talk) 23:35, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Use of http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/ as a citation

I have concerns about using the website that is written by the author of the movement to describe the movement without some form of statement saying something like "Those who subscribe to the movement feel that" or something to that effect. Does anyone have any other thoughts? 2001:4898:80E8:B:F160:25E0:5631:28E5 (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

To translate, this user wants to avoid using a blog created by Nick Land as a citation about the general tenets of the philosophy.

I believe it is a reliable source given that it is a primary source. Nashhinton (talk) 18:32, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Please don't speak for me, I can speak for myself. My concern relies on the fact that taking an organization's word for how to describe said organization without a preface is concerning to me. As an example, take a group like ISIS. They would claim that they are the word of god. We would rightfully say "This group claims" before such a statement. This is an extreme example, but I am trying to use it to illustrate the point that taking what a group says about themselves at face value can be concerning. The other citation is probably enough, don't you think? 2001:4898:80E8:B:F160:25E0:5631:28E5 (talk) 18:38, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@Nashhinton: The defining element of a primary source is that it's made by someone who has a conflict of interest. "I believe it is a reliable source given that it is a primary source" means that you never read the relevant policy. See WP:PRIMARY before you keep working to turn this article, which is supposed to be unbiased, into an advertisement for Land's extremist philosophy. 2600:1700:B7A1:9A30:A4EE:4873:FD0E:E744 (talk) 18:41, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the dynamic IPs, the independent secondary source that is already supporting that content is preferable to a primary source. Thedarkenlightenment.com is listed as an external link for readers who want to learn more directly from the movement. Schazjmd (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2019

There is no conflict of interest if I'm providing a citation about the general tenets espoused by one of the philosophy's founders. Is it a conflict of interest to add a citation from The Doctrine and Covenants on the article, Articles of Faith (Latter Day Saints)? I also provided a secondary source.

And yes, Land in my opinion is a nutjob, but still it wouldn't make sense not to add a primary source from the person who essentially created the philosophy. I think Ray Kurzweil is a nutjob, so does that mean we should delete all the sources from 'The Singularity is Near' on the article, Technological Singularity? Nashhinton (talk) 20:07, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Don't call people nutjobs on Wikipedia.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I'm, sorry, let me instead use the word, 'extremist', like what User talk:2600:1700:B7A1:9A30:A4EE:4873:FD0E:E744 said. Nashhinton (talk) 20:14, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Also, you 2 should be thanking me for adding citations to prevent edit warring from Ken, but as soon as I attempted to aid in the construction of Wikipedia, immediately I'm attacked and told to avoid using specific words, like nutjob. Nashhinton (talk) 20:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I apologize if you feel attacked, that was not my intention. I realize editing Wikipedia can be very frustrating, but please remember, when someone objects to an edit you have made, they are not attacking you. I do not think you are a nutjob, and I do think you are trying to improve the article. The only point at which we disagree is the source you want to add. Please don't take it personally. 2001:4898:80E8:B:F160:25E0:5631:28E5 (talk) 20:26, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Also, I feel like there should be a better citation besides the one linked. Nashhinton (talk) 20:44, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay but do you understand that multiple editors have objected to this specific source? Surely there must be others you can use. Also please, I know we keep asking you and I'm sure it's annoying, indent your comments. It's hard to read otherwise. 2001:4898:80E8:B:F160:25E0:5631:28E5 (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Nashhinton http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/ is not a reliable source for anything other than quotes directly attributed to Land, these need to be direct quotes, not statements of fact. Also, you have been edit warring, please stop. Bacondrum (talk) 22:16, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Not trying to edit war, and I apologize if I have been doing that, it's just that there's too much drama on here lately. I will now resort to talk pages instead of reverting. Nashhinton (talk) 22:56, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

"Whig histriography"

The phrase "whig histriography" appears in the lede section, but is not explained there or elsewhere in the article. Now that it's been referenced, could someone please restore the explanation of what it means to that sentence? It was:

– the concept that history shows an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy –

I'd restore it myself, but I've already been accused of "edit warring", and I'd rather not create a ruckus. Thanks, Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:53, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ad Orientem: since you were concerned that the rejection of whig histriography remained in the lede, you might be interested in explaining that concept to the readers of the article by restoring my parenthetical? Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:56, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

This is significant and IMO belongs in the article, probably in the lead. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:08, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm happy to restore that. It shouldn't have been removed, the fact that it had been removed got lost in all the disruptive editing that's been going on here. Bacondrum (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

New source: Joshua Tait (2019)

An insightful chapter titled "Mencius Moldbug and the Reactionary Enlightenment" has been written by Joshua Tait in: Key Thinkers of the Radical Right, edited by Mark Sedgwick (available to download you know where). I'm currently working on other articles based on other chapters, so I share the source to contributors over here. Azerty82 (talk) 09:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Just read through the chapter, it looks good and very usable - David Gerard (talk) 10:42, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

the book is great too and only £20, getting this one fwiw - David Gerard (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Looks great, thanks for the recommendation, I'll use it for sure..."Thinkers of the Radical Right" is a bit of an oxymoron, lol. Bacondrum (talk) 00:18, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Ha! <g> Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:07, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

A movement?

The word movement appears throughout this article. Is the dark enlightenment really a movement? Is it a political movement (a social group that operates together to obtain a political goal) or a social movement (a coordinated group action focused on a social issue)? Movement implies many people working together to achieve a common goal, but only two people are in the dark enlightenment "movement" as far as I can tell. Those two people are Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. The article says "Neoreactionaries are an informal community of bloggers and political theorists....," but aside from Land and Yarvin, no others are mentioned by name (except as precursors to the "movement"). Who's in the no-reactionary community? Who besides Land and Yarvin is in this movement? Unless editors can drudge up the names of other neo-reactionary thinkers or doers in the "movement," the word movement should be dropped from this article. Two people do not constitute a "movement." Chisme (talk) 16:44, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

"subculture" may be more appropriate. It is/was more than two people, though possibly not more than two with Wikipedia articles - 17:34, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it's a subculture. A movement suggests something much more significant. Bacondrum (talk) 23:14, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I like the "subculture" idea too. In a similar vein, "Dark Enlightenment" is also a Wikipedia category. Should this category be dropped? It has only three entries (Land, Yarvin, and the topic itself). To be a bona fide category, shouldn't it have more than three? Chisme (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely, I agree it's a couple of people, the subject is barely notable enough to justify an article. Bacondrum (talk) 23:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

"Sub-culture" is a specific sociological term, so we would need a citation from a reliable source that called it that. On the other hand, the majory of the refs in the article refer to it as a "movement", although New York magazine does so ironically, with scare quotes. As far as I can tell, none of them refer to it as a sub-culture. Given this, "movement" would seem to be the most apt term, although I agree it overvalues the size of it. Perhaps we should consider using "philosophy" throughout, since most of the refs use this in alteration with "movement", and "philosophy" doesn't imply any claims about size or cultural or political importance. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:27, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

An ideology? Subculture has the same issues as movement. Bacondrum (talk) 01:48, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

We could alternate "philosophy" and "ideology" or "political ideology" -- the alteration to avoid monotony. Both would be accurate, and supported by the sources. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:50, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds much better. Bacondrum (talk) 09:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

See also

That "see also" section is ridiculously sprawling. We have categories for this sort of thing, surely. Why do each of these apply? - David Gerard (talk) 20:26, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Mencius Moldbug.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Removal

I have removed the following paragraphg from the "Crticism" section, because it is exceedingly difficult to understand. I'm far from stupid and I couldn't make out at all what the writer was attempting to convey. In fact, it verges on double-talk:

Despite Yarvin's fervent espousal of neo-cameralism—the political reformation qua a government-cum-corporation polity—critics remain pessimistic with regards to the concentration of "sovereign power in the hands of a single individual", explicitly fearful of it becoming an accelerant for "tyranny and catastrophe". And though Yarvin, who is quick to antecedent empire of Frederick the Great, claims that the corporate-political restructuring will foster a freer state, the ideology, in essence, is a demand for the re-domestication of economic and political power, "an outcry in the face of a dialectical transformation of globalization." Together, the autocratic re-institution and renouncement of international integration underscore neoreacton's radical separation from Enlightenment-era principles and the accompanying events, particularly those that catalyzed the global deterritorialization necessary for modernity's 21st-century configuration, such as the "eighteenth-century critique of Christianity...[and] the colonial predations of Europe in the nineteenth century". And though a reexamination of civil and political rights are not intrinsically deleterious per se, but, here, the abandonment of egalitarian tenets signifies an attempt to restore "the lost past" of pre-democracy nation-states, and marks a re-formalization of "institutionalized racism".

I invite the editor who added it to attempt to re-write it in clear, straight-forward understandable English. You're writing to a popular audience, not to academics or specialists, please write is so people can take in the information you wish to convey. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:45, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Use of "archaic" in the lead

I would argue that calling the forms of leadership they espouse 'archaic' is justified, since they have been wholly superseded and the conditions in which they existed have drastically changed/are non-existent in our day and age. Its use here is not biased, since e.g. cameralism is archaic (or at least, the political scientist who would argue otherwise has yet to be found). I know that with reactionaries, this is contentious, but I think omitting the label would be WP:FALSEBALANCE. TucanHolmes (talk) 12:50, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

What do the Dark Enlightenment actually have to say?

This whole page almost completely lacks any description of what Land and Yarvin actually think and write. This is troubling, because there is a LOT of criticism of what they have said, but without telling us what is actually being criticized. It's very odd to see every single section of the page go to great pains to remind us that "commentators" have called them alt-right, but with no indication of why that is.

As a good example - The neo-reactionary lot directly reject the notion of egalitarianism. They don't believe that egalitarianism is possible or desirable; they think attempts towards it are both doomed to failure and also inherently bad. These are some eyebrow raising claims! Knowing what the claim is helps you to understand just how extreme these people are, and explains why they are called racist and misogynistic and so forth. These descriptions are not wrong at all, they are fair extrapolations of what the authors have said themselves, and with more context that can be made clear.

They also reject democracy because, to their mind, it is inevitably a tyranny of the majority which can simply overrule liberty by a vote. They argue that popular consent is not enough, and that in any case this is simply a veneer over an elected tyrant. They aren't authoritarian as such; they think ALL forms of statism are authoritarian, including democracy. They do want a state, so they would consider themselves to be in the authoritarian school, because any non-anarchist would be to their view. Again, these are some wild claims which are extremely heterodox. They are not people who are rejecting the freedom of democracy for some kind of dictator; they view democracy as a dictator too, and want to swap it for a dictator more their taste. This is an important difference, and helps to explain why they get called fascists by people who don't agree about the nature of democracy.

These are people who have published books and put out blogs about their thoughts. They are not shy about putting their views out there. So why is this article only able to summon up a single citation from the people who's work is being described? Why is there seemingly no interest in putting their views on the page which describes them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.168.35.70 (talk) 15:05, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree. It is a peculiar characteristic of Wikipedia to avoid directly addressing the subject in such cases. Benjamin (talk) 09:52, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia goes by reliable secondary sources. If you can find any reliable secondary source that will uncritically summarize their insane fascist beliefs, feel free to add it yourself. Good luck finding one, though. No reliable source will bother to seriously consider any of the fringe nonsense these lunatics believe in, even for a minute. 46.97.170.112 (talk) 11:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

completely lacks any description of what Land and Yarvin actually think and write. The first paragraph of the lead would appear to sum it up, it also contains links to Land and Yarvin, you'll find additional detail there, that's generally how a wiki works. Acousmana 12:09, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Classification as "a philosophy"

The introduction describes Dark Enlightment as "a [...] philosophy". I'd argue that this is a colloquialism with unclear meaning. There's a clear definition for philosophy but not for a philosophy (which is semantically just the negation of a connected, rational philosophical discourse and therefore a negation of the idea of philosophy). I'd suggest to call it a political movement. --Jazzman (talk) 09:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Unsure about the classification as "a [...] philosophy", but calling it a political movement would definitely be more wrong, since there is no "movement" behind it. It's just a small group of people spinning ideas around, some of which entered the right-wing discourse and influenced actual movements, but the Dark Enlightenment itself doesn't have the necessary characteristics. TucanHolmes (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

"School of thought"? Editor2020 (talk) 01:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, it's not really a school either I think. Does "political movement" require a group to be big? If that was the only questionable aspect I'd happily take it over "a philosophy" which shouldn't be used in an Encyclopedia at all for the reasons described above. --Jazzman (talk) 16:54, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

How about " intellectual tradition", as suggested at School of thought. Editor2020 (talk) 21:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Steve Sailer?

I don't believe the inclusion of Steve Sailer as a forerunner of DE is accurate, or supported by the citation 148.75.130.220 (talk) 01:01, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

It is explicitly supported by the citation. Grayfell (talk) 06:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

The cited work merely asserts the claim, very briefly, and includes a link to Sailer's wikipedia page. The work provides no examples, quotations, citations, or anything else in support of the claim. The citation may be explicit but it is nowhere near adequate. The claim itself is simply false: Sailer's work does not emphasize political theory and his political commentary generally takes mainstream notions of parliamentarian/representative democracy for granted. 104.162.68.113 (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Recent VOX article on Curtis Yarvin

Of possible interest to editors watching and/or editing this page... Who is Curtis Yarvin, the monarchist, anti-democracy blogger? - Vox. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:40, 28 October 2022 (UTC)