Whatay (long) read:
“Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America”, The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile or https://archive.ph/zo6Vk).
On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44184305
#USA #America #Trump #CurtisYarvin #Politics #FarRight #DissidentRight #MenciusMoldbug #NeoReactionary #Monarchy
@DonEstep Here is some background information from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment) and especially RationalWiki (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement). The “dark enlightenment” is clearly very dangerous.
Its core idea that freedom is incompatible with democracy, especially with their supporters' insistence on “freedom”, explains a lot.
I’m so done listening to #CurtisYarvin, aka #MenciusMoldbug. (Last time: #Triggernometry #podcast.) Don’t let me ever read or hear from him again.
I’ve given him enough opportunities already to defend his views and proposals, but specific ideas and policy proposals he has zero. There’s a limit to how much hand-waving one can do and historical anecdotes one can point to before coming back down to earth and to actual reforms.
It’s not that he’s sometimes dog-whistling, it’s that dog-whistling is all he does, devoid of any content.
Stop slipping away, stick your neck out, and answer direct questions. Here’s a good heuristic for him and his followers: if straight answers to specific issues sound absurd or alarming (dictatorship? racial hierarchies? state surveillance? empire?), there’s a non-negligible probability that your ideas are wrong.
@gasull This week I listened to this #CurtisYarvin interview by #MichaelMalice (over several days, while working, not focused).
In it, #MenciusMoldbug says he’s #rightwing because he’s for order and not for chaos. As in: more secure streets and fewer homeless people is more orderly. Who could argue against that?
Some of the other easy examples he fails to mention are: one human race giving the orders while the other races do the work is also more orderly than the “chaos” of mingling all skin colours; there’s more order in a society with no drugs than in a society where people seek inspiration and comfort and silliness in drugs. Top-down autocratic hierarchies definitely generate more “order” than voluntary agreements between peers. Heterosexual relationships, mandatory marriage and monogamy are “order”, while free love and tolerance are more chaotic. etc.
To me, more signs that he’s a very dangerous and charismatic demagogue. Shamelessly dog-whistling to advance the most retrograde of causes :(
The renowned blogger Curtis Yarvin, also known by his former pen name Mencius Moldbug, returned to the podcast to bend my mind on the politics of COVID, the meaning of a Biden presidency, and a host of other issues that I thought I knew well. No one makes me think harder. Sign up to participate in
@xahlee #ScottAlexander tried to summarise neo-reactionary thought, such as that of #MenciusMoldbug, here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/
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