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- First published on this blog in November, 2015
If you’re one of those people not yet not au fait with the internet phenomenon/subculture referred to as the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, perhaps the best way to describe it is with reference to its adherents favourite movie scene. This is the moment in The Matrix, when Neo is offered two pills – one blue, one red. The man offering the medicaments, Morpheus, informs Neo that the pills have different metaphysical powers. One of them, the blue one, will send him back to the artificial world of the Matrix (a computer simulation) that he is already familiar with, completely ignorant of the existence of the alternate (real) world. The other pill, the red one, will make it impossible for him to go back to the sleep of unreality. Upon taking it, he will tumble down the rabbit-hole of the truth, however ugly or traumatic he may find that truth to be. As you’re probably aware, Neo boldly chooses the red pill, and so begins the main action of the film. Well, Dark Enlightenment adherents view themselves as embarking upon a comparably journey to Neo’s, and will often refer to themselves as being ‘red-pilled’. But what truths exactly are they discovering? What reality have they entered that is hidden from the majority? The answer is complicated.
It is certainly accurate to say that the Dark Enlightenment is on the political right. Its followers have little sympathy for feminism or political correctness, and on matters of race and racial difference, their views tend to align with those advanced by the likes of Madison Grant and T.H Huxley. Furthermore, one of the labels embraced by the movement since their beginnings is ‘Neo-reactionary’; a pretty baggy definition, but one that clearly denotes a rightward bent.
Some press commentators have even suggested a fascist sentiment motivates the Dark Enlightenment subculture. Jamie Bartlett (writing for the Daily Telegraph), for example, describes the bloggers associated with the movement as ‘sophisticated neo-fascists’.
“Since 2012” he writes “…a sophisticated but bizarre online neo-fascist movement has been growing fast. It’s called “The Dark Enlightenment”… Supporters are dotted all over the world, connected via a handful of blogs and chat rooms. Its adherents are clever, angry white men patiently awaiting the collapse of civilisation, and a return to some kind of futuristic, ethno-centric feudalism… The philosophy, difficult to pin down exactly, is a loose collection of neo-reactionary ideas, meaning a rejection of most modern thinking: democracy, liberty, and equality… The neo-fascist bit lies in the view that races aren’t equal (they obsess over IQ testing and pseudoscience that they claim proves racial differences, like the Ku Klux Klan) and that women are primarily suited for domestic servitude. They call this “Human biodiversity” – a neat little euphemism. This links directly to their desire to be rid of democracy: because if people aren’t equal, why live in a society in which everyone is treated equally? Some races are naturally better to rule than others, hence their support for various forms of aristocracy and monarchy (and not in the symbolic sense but the very real divine-right-of-kings-sense).”
Is this a fair evaluation? I don’t think that matters. What does matter is why men (and presumably some women) find it necessary to hive off into subcultures in the first place. The Dark Enlightenment is clearly a reaction to the culture of extreme (and unnecessary) self-censorship by the academic and intellectual mainstream. We simply don’t talk about the important facts of the world for fear of alienating a single part of it. No, the races are not equal in average intelligence. Nor are the sexes equal. The first-born child is generally more intelligent than his/her younger siblings. The tall are more successful than the short. Women are physically weaker than men. Egalitarianism is a lie. And yes, even Democracy is a stupid idea when reduced to its fundamentals. For if the majority are wrong about something, then society is every bit as doomed with democracy as it would be with a wrong-headed dictator. Etc… Etc…
But creating subcultures around forbidden truths is a dangerous game. Whenever hives of thought arise, the trust generated by basic truth-telling grants the hive-leader authority over his/her followers. Having earned their trust with real (but publically denied) facts, he/she can then sprinkle any kind of abject stupidity on top. And if any mainstream condemnation of this stupidity comes about, it can be ascribed to ‘Leftism’ or the ‘blue pill’. “They told you the races were equal, so why listen to them when they say authoritarian monarchy is bad?”… “They told you affirmative action made sense, so why believe them when they say Jews aren’t in control of the government” Etc…
Denying self-evident truths risks handing intellectual authority to some very shady people indeed. The Dark Enlightenment must be replaced with a straightforward enlightenment. No ‘darkness’ is necessary.
D, LDN
Defend the Modern World 
Amen!
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The Telegraph is always so adept in discovering these “conspiracies” that don’t exist. It insults my intelligence to think that an honest journalist could actually write (with sincerity) about such a “neo reactionary” blue pill/red pill paradigm! Are we that stupid? I get the metaphorical implications but does it really ring true? I suspect that this whole “Dark Enlightenment” hyperbole is a load of BS cooked up by the usual suspects from the Ministry of Truth. The polarization continues. Some day, some where, something has to give. May god have mercy on them. They’re going to need it.
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On this occasion, the phenomenon really does exist. It has a following of millions. Still, it’s not a conspiracy, and I don’t know if ‘neo-fascism’ is an appropriate label. The Telegraph, as you say, isn’t always reliable.
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I guarantee you we exist sir.
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Excellent and informative. I have been wondering for some time now what people mean when they say they’ve taken the red pill. There is much wisdom in the Dark Enlightenment but also some fanaticism from very unpleasant types whose own society would be very dark but not enlightened. As you rightly say though, there is a need for a new Enlightenment though, one that vigorously challenges the various manifestations of Cultural Marxism.
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Thank you.
Indeed, I fail to see how an authoritarian monarchy counts as an ‘enlightened’ society. The frank misogyny of the DE is also extreme and regressive. Many want women to be as powerless as Saudi women. That’s not an advance.
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I am an somewhat active neo-reactionary, on other fora, using a different name. I’m not a Dark Enlightenment spokesman, but I might be able to answer some of your concerns.
The advantage we see in carving off a subculture are twofold.
The first is that we can discuss matters without having to constantly revisit / defend basic premises to newbs, infiltrators. or detractors. You’ll see that on the sub-reddit for Dark Enlightenment.
The second is that we can push the Overton Window to the right, and open up ideological space for more moderate thinkers, such as DTMW, to advocate pretty much the same agenda but from a more moderate position.
We redefine what is “extreme” by pushing at the extremities of public discourse – and thus right wing ideas become simply right-of-centre.
The analogy I use is this: For years in Egypt, it was considered Islamist, or fundamentalist, for women to wear the hijab (hair covering). Over time, the increased use of the niqab (full face covering) became the hallmark of Islamic fundamentalism, and wearing the hijab became something moderates did. To close the analogy, we discuss controversial issues that would be radical, but compared to us, DTMW, Mark Steyn. Bill Whittle or other thinkers can interact with the mainstream.
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While that makes sense, I’m very concerned by the anti-democratic spirit of many DE adherents. Discussing right-wing topics in a right-wing environment is fine and good, but anti-democratic sub-cultures are very limited as to where they can go. One needs to have a foothold in the mainstream in order to change things. Still, I appreciate the point about moving the Overton Window. That certainly needs to happen, since the ‘centre’ is now very much to the Left.
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> Denying self-evident truths risks handing intellectual authority to some very shady people indeed.
Nice try at scaring mainstream readers, but really, DE people aren’t shady, we represent the common sense that got left behind in the 50s (for most of us less-than-intellectuals. Yes, the moldbugs think it went south at the enlightenment). Trust me, it takes independence and a little courage to take up views that, if known, could cost you your livelihood. You can’t afford to be a sheep.
Plus you’ve got the spirit all wrong, spend time on /pol/ and therightstuff.biz. It’s not ugly, it’s liberating, a relief, fun and life-affirming (worth about 3 minutes). These ‘fun’sters may be lower-grade intellectually, but neither they nor the intellectual heavies like counter-currents.com and radixjournal.com are brewing anything too scary. It’s not your father’s KKK / skinheads, just loosening up the normies to let the truth back in. If you see extreme language it’s merely normal tribal drives gone primitive due to being repressed, per Jung.
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People in the 50s believed in democracy.
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Here’s the thing: The enlightenment as we know it was incomplete. It was based on some ideas that couldn’t fully be proven at the time, and some of which were completely disproven later yet we as a society still hold as dogmatic beliefs to our great detriment as a civilization.
Things like, yes, “equality.” Which as we know there are two definitions of. The sane definition, of opportunity and equal under the law, where everyone is given the same chances in life to try to be what they wish to be and we let the chips fall where they may. And then the insane communist definition where we try to force equal outcomes, requiring explicit discrimination against some to cook the numbers to be more “equal” which has a lot of disastrous results.
Things like affirmative action continue for generations upon generations for self-declared “minority” groups and we’re supposed to believe they’re equal in capability to those groups which, even though they’re in actuality being discriminated against, are the ones succeeding and being able to actually do the skilled work required to keep things running in any significant number. No end in sight for things like this, and of course you are a horrible “racist” if you even ask when enough is enough with things such as this.
Certainly there’s a degree of fascism (the actual definition of fascism based on the Italian word fascio — group, not that most people who cry “fascist!” even know what the word actually means) but again this is needed. Most people who subscribe to “red pill” type thoughts, which aren’t limited to Dark Enlightenment/Neoreactionary circles, are more of a realist bent. That is, if you’re familiar with Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” they are more the constrained vision types. (note: Yes Sowell is a black man but quite unique, I think his philosophy is one of the most important pieces of philosophy of the 20th and 21st century)
Whereas the lunatics that run the asylum currently are the unconstrained types who don’t base their decisions on any kind of data, any kind of observable reality or really anything other than idelogy and virtue signalling — “does this make me LOOK good as per current orthodox ideology if I invite hundreds of thousands of brown people into my first world country per year, far beyond native birthrates?” Doesn’t matter if they’re all Muslims who’ve openly stated they want to conquer the country and have 80% or more of them sit on welfare bringing more unsustainable debt on nations while they openly flout our laws on polygyny, setup parallel societies, rape, murder and commit crime at a rate similar to Africans in the United States, and so on. That they are a net drain and long term danger with no benefit other than to the rootless international banker and capitalist class (mostly Jews, by some strange coincidence that probably has nothing to do with why they’ve been ejected from so many countries so many times)–none of that matters to them. It doesn’t matter that if this keeps up in a few generations these people will start to actually attack their grandchildren and enslave, murder, or rape them when they outnumber us just like happened in Lebanon and any other country that has let a lot of them in. It’s a clear and present danger but thanks to the current idiotic ideology which you seem to be very uninterested in fighting in any way it’s set to continue until it’s too late unless a mass of people thinking along dark enlightenment lines rise up and create a new intelligentsia to oust the old.
For the (white, though some South Americans such as Chileans and east Asians subscribe) majority of adherents it’s even appropriate that fascism is an element. Whites are essentially facing genocide by policy via mass migration. We are the people who made the modern world run, yet our governments are forcing mostly hostile Africans, Arabs and other people incapable of any kind of real civilization into our civilization in unsustainable, insane numbers that threaten to replace us and are forcing us to pay for it in such a way that we can’t even really afford replacement level (2.1) sized families anymore. These groups imported have proven they’re incapable of anything resembling what we term civilization–see middle-east, see Africa, see especially Haiti and the repeated attempts to make that work and how it falls apart every time the whites leave.
The longterm effects of this will be things like World War 3, CIvil wars all across European countries flooded with these savages, brain drain caused by intelligent peoples who make actual scientific discovery not being able to reproduce in sufficient numbers/being killed off in a genocide, a confluence of wars and brain drain causing perhaps the eternal damnation of the entire species to a more primitive existence permanently as we run out of natural resources we currently utterly rely on and perhaps miss an opportunity to invent renewable, cleaner energy to power a hightech civilization perpetually, and so on. The stakes at this point are very fucking high.
Racialism, race realism or whatnot is also a core tenet because as we all know there is not a single society anyone can point to which has lasted and been stable for any significant period of time based on multiculturalism and multi-ethnicities, especially not ones that vary so wildly. The closest examples we have are things like Haiti in its founding, where the French leaders were slaughtered by blacks when original idiotic enlightenment values reached the colony. The place has been shit ever since no matter how many attempts have been made to civilize them–again once the whites leave it’s back to primitivism. And of course who can forget Brazil? Brazil seems to be the future of many of these states that invite many brown people to live with the whites. Corrupt, unstable, recently perhaps may even enter into a civil war. That was without Islam. With Islam? How do you think our societies will look in 50-100 years given birth rates and the unceasing immigration?
Something’s gotta give eventually, and so maybe you begin to see what exactly Dark Enlightenment/Neoreaction is, what it’s in response to, what the stakes are, and the raison d’etre of it all. This is by no means comprehensive but you may get the idea here of what it’s really all about. The big problem for now I think is that so many people are high time-preference and refuse to even consider current policies and how things will be in a generation, two generations for now. Our current politicians don’t even give a fuck about how things will be soon after they leave office. Which is of course why a lot of people will claim monarchy is better–because monarchs typically have a vested interest in not making decisions that will fuck up their countries, whereas our elected dictators that ethnically cleanse their own people from their own countries (and strangely never has there been a vote for it, although polls show something like 80% of Germans want no more immigration as an example–go figure) have no such compunction.
Peace.
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Here’s the thing: The enlightenment as we know it was incomplete. It was based on some ideas that couldn’t fully be proven at the time, and some of which were completely disproven later yet we as a society still hold as dogmatic beliefs to our great detriment as a civilization. Things we can now scientifically prove do disprove these bad ideas which haven’t been discarded, but we live in an anti-intellectual environment in which many so-called intellectuals are just frauds, they are whores of the establishment who do nothing that can be even described as academically rigorous.
Things like, yes, “equality.” Which as we know there are two definitions of. The sane definition, of opportunity and equal under the law, where everyone is given the same chances in life to try to be what they wish to be and we let the chips fall where they may. And then the insane communist definition where we try to force equal outcomes, requiring explicit discrimination against some to cook the numbers to be more “equal” which has a lot of disastrous results.
Things like affirmative action continue for generations upon generations for self-declared “minority” groups and we’re supposed to believe they’re equal in capability to those groups which, even though they’re in actuality being discriminated against, are the ones succeeding and being able to actually do the skilled work required to keep things running in any significant number. No end in sight for things like this, and of course you are a horrible “racist” if you even ask when enough is enough with things such as this.
Certainly there’s a degree of fascism (the actual definition of fascism based on the Italian word fascio — group, not that most people who cry “fascist!” even know what the word actually means) but again this is needed. Most people who subscribe to “red pill” type thoughts, which aren’t limited to Dark Enlightenment/Neoreactionary circles, are more of a realist bent. That is, if you’re familiar with Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” they are more the constrained vision types. (note: Yes Sowell is a black man but quite unique, I think his philosophy is one of the most important pieces of philosophy of the 20th and 21st century)
Whereas the lunatics that run the asylum currently are the unconstrained types who don’t base their decisions on any kind of data, any kind of observable reality or really anything other than ideology and virtue signalling — “does this make me LOOK good as per current orthodox ideology if I invite hundreds of thousands of brown people into my first world country per year, far beyond native birthrates?” Doesn’t matter if they’re all Muslims who’ve openly stated they want to conquer the country and have 80% or more of them sit on welfare bringing more unsustainable debt on nations while they openly flout our laws on polygyny, setup parallel societies, rape, murder and commit crime at a rate similar to Africans in the United States, and so on. That they are a net drain and long term danger with no benefit other than to the rootless international banker and capitalist class (mostly Jews, by some strange coincidence that probably has nothing to do with why they’ve been ejected from so many countries so many times)–none of that matters to them.
It doesn’t matter to them that if this keeps up in a few generations these people will start to actually attack their grandchildren and enslave, murder, or rape them when they outnumber us just like happened in Lebanon and any other country that has let a lot of them in. It’s a clear and present danger but thanks to the current idiotic ideology which you seem to be very uninterested in fighting in any way it’s set to continue until it’s too late unless a mass of people thinking along dark enlightenment lines rise up and create a new intelligentsia to oust the old. And it must happen SOON. Many people know this. That is why there is explosive growth of “red pilled” types, whether they be men’s rights, alt-right, neoreactionary/DE, what have you. They are replacing the old, intellectually decrepit and ineffectual cuckservatives.
For the (white, though some South Americans such as Chileans and east Asians subscribe) majority of adherents it’s even appropriate that fascism is an element. Whites are essentially facing genocide by policy via mass migration. We are the people who made the modern world run, yet our governments are forcing mostly hostile Africans, Arabs and other people incapable of any kind of real civilization into our civilization in unsustainable, insane numbers that threaten to replace us and are forcing us to pay for it in such a way that we can’t even really afford replacement level (2.1) sized families anymore. These groups imported have proven they’re incapable of anything resembling what we term civilization–see middle-east, see Africa, see especially Haiti and the repeated attempts to make that work and how it falls apart every time the whites leave.
The longterm effects of this will be things like World War 3, CIvil wars all across European countries flooded with these savages, brain drain caused by intelligent peoples who make actual scientific discovery not being able to reproduce in sufficient numbers/being killed off in a genocide, a confluence of wars and brain drain causing perhaps the eternal damnation of the entire species to a more primitive existence permanently as we run out of natural resources we currently utterly rely on and perhaps miss an opportunity to invent renewable, cleaner energy to power a hightech civilization perpetually, and so on. The stakes at this point are very fucking high.
Racialism, race realism or whatnot is also a core tenet because as we all know there is not a single society anyone can point to which has lasted and been stable for any significant period of time based on multiculturalism and multi-ethnicities, especially not ones that vary so wildly. The closest examples we have are things like Haiti in its founding, where the French leaders were slaughtered by blacks when original idiotic enlightenment values reached the colony. The place has been shit ever since no matter how many attempts have been made to civilize them–again once the whites leave it’s back to primitivism. And of course who can forget Brazil? Brazil seems to be the future of many of these states that invite many brown people to live with the whites. Corrupt, unstable, recently perhaps may even enter into a civil war. That was without Islam. With Islam? How do you think our societies will look in 50-100 years given birth rates and the unceasing immigration?
Something’s gotta give eventually, and so maybe you begin to see what exactly Dark Enlightenment/Neoreaction is, what it’s in response to, what the stakes are, and the raison d’etre of it all. This is by no means comprehensive but you may get the idea here of what it’s really all about. The big problem for now I think is that so many people are high time-preference and refuse to even consider current policies and how things will be in a generation, two generations for now. Our current politicians don’t even give a fuck about how things will be soon after they leave office. Which is of course why a lot of people will claim monarchy is better–because monarchs typically have a vested interest in not making decisions that will fuck up their countries, whereas our elected dictators that ethnically cleanse their own people from their own countries (and strangely never has there been a vote for it, although polls show something like 80% of Germans want no more immigration as an example–go figure) have no such compunction.
Peace.
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I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. The Enlightenment (especially the American Enlightenment) was flawed in many important areas. We now know the notion of equality to be scientifically invalid. However, other elements of modernity that DE members dislike are essential prerequisites of civilisation. Sexual equality doesn’t mean the sexes are equal, but only that they have equal opportunities to prove themselves. I for one think the UK would be in ruins if voters had rejected Margaret Thatcher in favour of Neil Kinnock in the Eighties. Some women are exceptional, some aren’t. To sort one from the other requires a liberal meritocracy.
I completely and consistently oppose the influx of Muslims into Europe, but this is not (for me, at least) a racial thing. It is strictly cultural. Black Christians have integrated well into both Europe and America, and this fact cannot be altered retroactively. Do DE adherents recommend that we cleanse the entire West of non-Whites in order to maintain ‘biodiversity’? Who would honestly wish this kind of social chaos? It would be the end of everything liberal, freedom-loving people hold dear.
With that said, immigration from the Muslim world must stop, and measures must be taken to reverse the progress of Islamisation already made.
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It may be necessary to remove most all non-whites from our parts of the world. Blacks in America, the group given the longest to “integrate” are not even compatible. They violently victimize whites to the point where, if you control for population percentages, works out to something like 200:1. The amount of issues they cause is astronomical and arabs are no different when you look at the UK’s stats.
Most liberal ideas are not that good, anyway. They’ve led to nothing but decay. The so-called sexual revolution and the followup of no-fault divorce, for example.
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I will note that I find Dark Enlightenment to be largely devoid of Jewish conspiracy BS. The intellectual caliber of the movement is pretty high.
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Perhaps it’s my inherent bi-racial bias speaking here…but this “whites vs the rest”/empire-lost/systemic(percieved!)victimization BS has gotten a tad out of bloody control, mostly due to the obsolescent cognitive underpinnings of such concepts. Using what you see in the mirror to underpin percieved injustice (whether correct or false) is simply analytical lazyness. In this day and age, as much as some would try to deny it, the might makes right hierarchy isn’t defined by gender skin color race creed religion nationality etc….power is defined and employed by intellectual capacity. As someone mentioned earlier, yes ” we” definitely exist and thinking we can be identified based on superficial and limited classifications or observable dichotomies is why we already won this “class warfare” battle. “We” don’t always get along, agree or even like each other most of the time, but I believe (perhaps incorrectly but I doubt it) that we respect each other based on the content between our ears, NOT our bank accounts or appearances….that’s just the experience and observations of one of “our kind”. I welcome any thoughts (especially contradictory ones) on the matter….
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I agree.
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Regarding the authors original posting….the “darkness” is an unintended and unavoidable side-effect of the very basic fact that all are NOT created. I have an unfair IQ over my fellow man by a statistical average of nearly 50 points (in the US), it doesn’t make me “better” as a human, just more intellectually capable and I did not earn that advantage nor do I feel entitled to rule others because of it (in fact I dislike the very thought of leadership) but I would be betraying my “race” (the real meaning of the term) if I sat back and did nothing (in whatever capacity) if I could use my intellect to help others (even against their will if I deem it necessary…nobody ever said taking responsibility was easy…just right. Which brings me to my final point on the subject which will no doubt result in flaming but I don’t really care and its a point that needs to be voices (even if totally rejected by most)…..>
“Democracy” is, without a doubt, one of the WORST ideas ever conceptualized in all of human history! Yeah, I said it.
Most people are not qualified to govern themaelves, let alone make life/death decisions for the rest of mankind…yet those idiots are “democratically elected” all the time…Plato had it right (those who wish to lead should never be permitted to do so) which leaves us with our current predicament and a world in which the fool leads the wise because we let them for some reason….
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Democracy might work if voting was something one needed to qualify for – say, by an exam to demonstrate sufficient awareness of the issues at hand. I’m aware this will never be implemented, but it’s an idea I’ve always sympathised with.
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Agreed. Now, how do you proposing that Control-Z / legislative undo button in Congress/parliament/Bundestag/diet/etc without a bunch of self entitled douchbags claiming to represent the people start trying physically lift you out of session like some very amusing European politicians have literally attempted to (personally, I can only WISH cspan was so damn entertaining , alas some filibustering twat with a Paula Dean cookbook is the zenith of Americans parliamentary dissent . another profoundly representative example of the pathetic state of the union
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