Dark Enlightenment

is one of the founders of the movement. Neo-reactionaries are an informal community of bloggers and political theorists who have been active since the 2000s. Steve Sailer and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are contemporary forerunners of the ideology, which is also heavily influenced by the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Carlyle, and Julius Evola. In 2007 and 2008, software engineer Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, articulated what would develop into Dark Enlightenment thinking. Yarvin's theories were elaborated and expanded by philosopher Nick Land, who first coined the term "Dark Enlightenment" in his essay of the same name. By mid-2017, NRx had moved to forums such as the Social Matter online forum, the Hestia Society, and Thermidor Magazine. In 2021, Yarvin appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Today, where he discussed the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan and his concept of the 'Cathedral', which he says is the current aggregation of political power and influential institutions that is controlling the country. Emerson Brooking, an expert in online extremism, said that "Yarvin escaped the fringe blogosphere because he wrapped deeply anti-American, totalitarian ideas in the language of U.S. start-up culture." In February 2026, Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land met for the first time in San Francisco. Influence in government Several prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians have been associated with the philosophy. Steve Bannon has read and admired Yarvin's work, and there have been allegations that he has communicated with Yarvin which Yarvin has denied. Bannon would later consider Yarvin an enemy, which Yarvin did not reciprocate. and Yarvin has claimed to have given staffing recommendations to him. Marc Andreessen has quoted Yarvin and referred to him as a "friend", and has connections to Thiel. In a 2021 interview, "Vance said Trump should 'fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it. Yarvin has praised Vance, stating "in almost every way, JD is perfect", but also considered his relationship with Vance overstated by the media, as they've rarely communicated. He also praised Trump for breaking from Republican practices of trying to "play ball and help the system work" and instead "trying to move all of the levers of this machine that he can move", though also stating "what he's doing is not at all what I would do with an opportunity like this. But I think that what I would do is probably not possible." It has been suggested that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, bears resemblance to RAGE, as advocated for by Yarvin. Land, when asked by the Financial Times if he approved of DOGE, said "the answer is definitely yes", having also endorsed Steve Bannon's goal of "deconstruction of the administrative state". In a report by The Washington Post, two DOGE advisors described Yarvin as an "intellectual beacon" for the department, with one saying, "It's an open secret that everyone in policymaking roles has read Yarvin." The report said that Yarvin, initially approving of the Trump administration, had become critical of DOGE. He cited its handling of the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, stating "Instead of fighting against these people because they're an enemy class who votes for the Democrats, you [should be] saying, 'Oooh, we have cookies for you. However, Tait said that Yarvin bears some responsibility for DOGE, saying, "It would have been created, probably, regardless. But he spent a good chunk of time creating a justifying framework for it." Political philosopher Danielle Allen said that DOGE is clearly based on Yarvin's work, and the outcome was the natural result of the shortcomings in Yarvin's views. CNN argues that Thiel, Andreessen, Vance and Anton do not deny that they are listening to Yarvin; however, they indicated that they do not accept all of Yarvin's theories: ==Beliefs==

Opposition to democracy Central to neoreactionarism's ideas is a belief in freedom's incompatibility with democracy, Hui notes that neoreactionaries consider the Enlightenment values of democracy and equality to be degenerative and limiting, respectively. Journalist Andrew Sullivan writes that neoreaction's pessimistic appraisal of democracy dismisses many advances that have been made and that global manufacturing patterns also limit the economic independence that sovereign states can have from one another. Support for authoritarianism Yarvin supports authoritarianism on right-libertarian grounds, saying that the division of political sovereignty expands the scope of the state, whereas strong governments with clear hierarchies remain minimal and narrowly focused. Yarvin's "A Formalist Manifesto" advocates for a form of "neocameralism" in which small, authoritarian "gov-corps" coexist and compete with each other, an idea anticipated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Academic Jonathan Ratcliffe describes the model as "a network of hyper-capitalist city states ruled by authoritarian CEO monarchs." He has described himself as a royalist, monarchist, and Jacobite; and has praised cameralism, Frederick the Great, Yarvin admires Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the US as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions. He additionally cites Dubai and Hong Kong as providing a high quality of life without democracy, stating "as Dubai in particular shows, a government (like any corporation) can deliver excellent customer service without either owning or being owned by its customers." Ana Teixeira Pinto describes the political ideology of the gov-corp model as a form of classical libertarianism, stating "they do not want to limit the power of the state, they want to privatise it." According to criminal justice professor George Michael, neoreaction seeks to perform a "hard reset" or "reboot" on democracy rather than gradual reform. Neoreactionary ideas have also been referred to as "feudalist" stating "if Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia." Time notes that Yarvin's proposal for a "Butterfly Revolution" envisions an internal coup to replace democracy with a privatized executive authority, which includes his RAGE proposal to "retire all government employees" in favor of loyalists. Scholars have described Yarvin's arguments as misrepresenting the historical record, and said that the historical autocracies he praises were considered deeply oppressive by their subjects. Yarvin, described by El País as a former progressive, with the educational system as a method for indoctrinating people into the Cathedral, enforcing compliance with progressive ideology and preventing them from thinking for themselves. Yarvin has endorsed arguments for black racial inferiority and says they are being suppressed by the Cathedral. and has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes. Vincent Le states "If Land is attracted to Moldbug's political system, it is because a neocameralist state would be free to pursue long-term technological innovation without the democratic politician's need to appease short-sighted public opinion to be re-elected every few years." Vox attributed such views to Land living in China's "techno-authoritarian political system" and his admiration for Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Yuk Hui considers sinofuturism to be a model for the movement's pursuit of technological progress which results from a perceived decline of the West. According to Hui, political fatigue leads people such as Land to look towards Asian cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore as examples of "depoliticized techno-commercial utopia". China is viewed as smoothly importing Western science and technology while Western innovation is constantly limited by the progressivism of the Cathedral. Hui considers this to be "simply a detached observation of these places that projects onto them a common will to sacrifice politics for productivity". Rejecting pacifism for what he perceives as a tendency to advocate for the rectification of injustices instead of seeking an end to armed conflict, Yarvin promotes the adoption of classical approaches to international law and the idea of "formalising the military status quo" as the most direct path to peace. He identifies the form of pacifism which prioritises "righteousness" instead of peace with the Calvinist doctrine of providence, and "ultracalvinism" as the ideological/theological basis for contemporary American interventionism. == Relation to other movements ==

Seasteading Prominent figures in the neoreactionary movement have connections to seasteading, the creation of sovereign city-states in international waters, which has been characterized as a way to execute the movement's ideas. Yarvin has connections to Patri Friedman, founder of The Seasteading Institute and grandson of Milton Friedman, and Thiel was once its main investor. has been compared to Yarvin's ideas. and Donald Trump's proposed "Freedom Cities". Supporters include Marc Andreessen, Michael Moritz, Shervin Pishevar, Established cities alleged to be part of the Network state include Próspera in Honduras French Polynesia, the Marshall Islands, Cryptocurrency and Web3 are central components of the project. The movement has been compared to Trumpism, with common ideologies including a belief in Strauss–Howe generational theory and hostility to left-wing politics, the news media and the administrative state. corporate monarchy, The Guardian has noted the community's ties to far-right groups and white nationalism. Surveillance capitalism Mother Jones cites Clearview AI and its founder Hoan Ton-That (who were in connection with Thiel and Yarvin) as an example of the Dark Enlightenment or neoreactionary thinking's influence on the development of surveillance technology. A 2025 anonymous letter of a group of self-described former followers of the neoreactionary movement warned that the movement advocated for "techno-monarchism" in which its ruler would use "data systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced algorithms to manage the state, monitor citizens, and implement policies". It further warned that Musk, in the context of his actions at the Department of Government Efficiency, was working "for his own power and the broader neo-reactionary agenda." Yarvin has outlined a vision for San Francisco where public safety would be enforced by constant monitoring of residents and visitors via RFID, genotyping, iris scanning, security cameras, and transportation which would track its location and passengers, reporting all of it to the authorities. The New Republic described the proposed surveillance system as "Orwellian". Journalist and pundit James Kirchick states that "although neo-reactionary thinkers disdain the masses and claim to despise populism and people more generally, what ties them to the rest of the alt-right is their unapologetically racist element, their shared misanthropy and their resentment of mismanagement by the ruling elites". Scholar Andrew Jones wrote in 2019 that the Dark Enlightenment is the most significant political theory within the alt-right, and that it is "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology. "The use of affect theory, postmodern critiques of modernity, and a fixation on critiquing regimes of truth", Jones remarked, "are fundamental to NeoReaction (NRx) and what separates it from other Far-Right theory". Despite neoreaction's limited online audience, Mulhall considers the ideology to have "acted as both a tributary into the alt-right and as a key constituent part [of the alt-right]." The term "accelerationism", originally referring to Land's technocapitalist ideas, has been re-interpreted by some into the use of racial conflict to cause societal collapse and the building of white ethnostates, which has been linked to several white nationalist terrorist attacks such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacres. Vox described Land's shift towards neoreactionarism, along with neoreactionarism crossing paths with the alt-right as another fringe right wing internet movement, as the likely connection point between far-right racial accelerationism and the otherwise unrelated technocapitalist term. They cited a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center investigation which found users on the neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff who cited neoreactionarism as an influence. In The Sociological Review, Roger Burrows examined neoreaction's core tenets and described the ideology as "hyper-neoliberal, technologically deterministic, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, pro-eugenicist, racist and, likely, fascist", and describes the entire accelerationist framework as a faulty attempt at "mainstreaming ... misogynist, racist and fascist discourses". He criticizes neoreaction's racial principles and its brazen "disavowal of any discourses" advocating for socio-economic equality and, accordingly, considers it a "eugenic philosophy" in favor of what Nick Land deems "hyper-racism". Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) which adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post. In the contemporary art world, art historian Sven Lütticken says that the popularity of Land's concepts has made certain art centers in New York and London hospitable to trendy fascism. == See also ==