I probably shouldn’t make fun of what they call themselves — these people are dangerously wrong. An in-depth article on Vox dissects the Alt-Right, the Dark Enlightenment, the Neo-Reactionaries, or whatever the heck they call themselves today. There’s Mencius Moldbug, and Nick Land, and HBD Chick, and 4-chan, and anti-semitism, and Milo Yiannopoulous, and Donald Trump, and Gamergate — all different flavors of shit mixed into the ugliest ice cream cone ever.
There isn’t much glue holding this conglomeration together, other than elitism and hatred of others and a mass of privilege that allows them to afford being insufferable douchebuckets.
Scott Alexander (who’s cited in the piece) did it better.
Phil Sandifer is writing a book on the subject, covering the intellectual ground between Eliezer Yudkowsky (who is not a neoreactionary, but shares tremendous idea-soup commonality with them), Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land. (I’m beta-reading and copyediting the book.) Here’s today’s excerpt, and here’s a previous excerpt.
Well… one thing they’ve got going for them? It sure is a nice change to see someone harking back to something other than the good old days of 1950 – they’re thinking more of 1650. Mmmm, life sure was better when smallpox was around.
…while I’m commenting – Mencius Moldbug? Wasn’t he the final boss character in the Tomb of the Lich Lord?
I had to look up this moldbug person, never heard of them before, remaining very sheltered by my rock.
All I get from it is “White Male Privilege!”.
Are these guys ever going to learn that just because you can shit on someone else, doesn’t mean you’re an exceptional person?
It seems like a huge amount of “I’ve got mine. Therefore I am wonderful. I am elite. PS – you suck.”
They’re wanna-be aristocrats. Back when I was reading a lot of political philosophy I noticed one thing: people seem to think that their group ought to be the one in charge. Even Plato thought that the philosophers should be kings (yeah, imagine how that would work!) and the rich think rich people should be king. And the kids of the rich people think that they should be king… Etc. It’s quite an amazing thing how: “born in the right place/time, got lucky” translates into “self-made genius ought to be king.” I almost respect the thugs more: “by the might of my right arm, I am king. Any Questions?”
Did it ever occur to these technocratic fools that the variability of democracy is a feature, not a bug? And that “durable law” can be an invitation to tyranny? I can agree that democracy has its weaknesses and corruptions; but these self-styled “neo-reactionaries”, and particularly this self-named fungus-insect, seem to think that a good government is one that has its tyranny — its “effectiveness” — designed and built-in from the ground up. Like a “good” corporation, it will be blind to or uncaring about the damage that it does as long as it can fool the public, hide its true costs of doing business, increase the bottom line, and keep the shareholders ignorant and happy.
What they claim to want is a “nondemocratic system with rule-driven succession” — like a corporation. But even corporations can fail, due to human weakness and too much democracy at the shareholder meetings. Surely they can find an even more consistent source for their “real, durable law.” How about a theocracy? No, not techie enough. Maybe a computer program? There’s the ticket! The Forbin Project, anyone? I’m sure the surviving shareholders (if any) will give their approval.. as ordered.
BCE? or milliseconds after the Big Bang?
What they claim to want is a “nondemocratic system with rule-driven succession” — like a corporation
I,.e.: an aristocracy.
These idiots don’t understand the difference between “meritocracy” and “aristocracy” but that’s because they assume that because they were lucky enough to be born in the age where they stumbled into being successful at whatever they did, that they are special and deserve success. Therefore (waves hands) their descendants do, too. Because, genetics, or something.
Plato (who was not a fan of democracy) pointed out that it’s got problems, and he was right. Aristocracy, however, now that we understand family genetics a bit better and have a slightly improved grasp on the nature/nurture question – is a non-starter unless you want oligarchy. And these alt-right weenies want oligarchy. As usual, with them as the oligarchs. What they don’t understand, because their world is the narrow confines of their mom’s basements and 4chan is that the real oligarchs are the ones who own all their toys and are allowing them to play with the shinies to distract them because they are suckers. They are “useful idiots” banging the drum of aristocracy and oligarchy because it looks mighty good to them from where they sit, at the feet of the real oligarchs, who are tossing them table scraps in the form of gluten-free starbucks fuckallottachocollatacoolwhippalotta lattes and iPwn and lots of broadband porn. They haven’t put 2+2 together yet and realized that their figureheads are idiots (FFS, look at the donald’s tweets – they make Richard Dawkins seem brilliant by comparison. Because he is. And he is an asswipe.) These guys have an important role in the oligarchy. It’s called: “Court Jester 2.0”
qwints. #1
That is a fairly thorough dissection of these peculiar people’s ideas, though I did note that its author is no fan of the present hostelry, going so far as to say
“Let me be clear here. There is no excuse for the sort of extremist folk social justice crusades one can find on Tumblr or Twitter or Freethought Blogs. With a few treasured exceptions they are full of nasty and hateful people devoid of intellectual integrity and basic human kindness, and I am suitably embarrassed to be in the same 50%-or-so of the political spectrum.”
I’m not sure what “extremist folk social justice crusades” were going on here in 2013, but if somebody could point me to where all the trophies and severed heads are kept it might keep me quiet for another few hours…
@cartomancer , Scott Alexander had a few problems with FTB in 2013 – that it was part of an internet blog culture that got basic facts wrong in pursuit of a narrative (see posts like his “lies, damned lies, and facebook” series), that it hosted people who used tactics to silence their opponents (which referenced the Greg Laden incident and the SciAm blogs drama from that time), and finally (though it wasn’t referenced there by name) he took issue with the graitutious nastiness that was common here (think porcupines)
Ignatius J. Reilly rides again.
“monarchy”?
Sounds like a great idea to me but then I’ve lived under a monarchy all my life.
Still, I suspect it’s too late for the USA to adapt to a reasonable monarchy within the next few centuries. It takes time to develop the customs and constitutional mores.
I think these neo-whatever idiots fail to realise that one thing a decent functioning society needs is different power loci.
I think that may have been a major downfall of communism. It gathered all power to itself and there were no centres of dissent that could oppose unreasonable or idiotic policies.
It also looks like the neo-whatsits have a grasp of history equal to that of George W. Bush.
Note to neo-idiots, do not believe Hollywood movies actually are history.
Marcus Ranum @6:
Case in point. (Summary: 20-year-old college student is the founder and CEO of an organization of “30 global influencers” including such celebrities as General Stanley McChrystal and Selena Gomez. How does a 20-year-old pull that off? What possible skills or insights could he have at that age that would justify him leading a think tank or whatever this vaguely-defined organization is? Well, turns out that daddy is a rich Silicon Valley venture capitalist….)
@13 krkrideau (and others above): Mary (Mother) Jones said “capitalism is the fervent belief that the world’s greediest, meanest, and most selfish people will invariably act for the benefit of everyone else.” But hey, Everyday Low Prices!
@screechymonkey
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damned impressed by his ability to think up “unlimited limited”!
I have to wonder – in finding that half of the world’s population is under 25, did anybody at Helena check what percentage of the world’s population is under 12? And should we change the fact that so many of them are left on the sidelines of the world’s most powerful organisations? (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not of the opinion that anyone under the age of 25 should be barred from such positions of influence, but I was one myself not all that long ago, and I knew a lot of other people who were also under 25. I’m having trouble counting off my first hand the number of us who were rational or experienced enough to deserve it (and while I can count in ternary on my fingers, I am not doing that now).)
From what I understand about neoreaction, it seems like Libertarianism with the (pretense of) commitment to liberty sucked out. They take Libertarian arguments about “incentives” to a logical extreme and argue that a hereditary monarchy will govern well because they have the most incentive to do so. Needless to say, this argument has more holes than Swiss cheese.