/lit/ - Literature

>>6371912

I'll explain to you, what the Dark Enlightenment is, then.

It’s probably a lot funnier if you witnessed it in its formation, but basically it stems from the idea of the red pill in the matrix, which is taken by neo to escape from the simulated world he was in, and re-enter reality.

The irony that the matrix is a heavily postmodern film which was part-directed by a transwoman doesn’t seem to occur to the people who started using the analogy first, in some horrendous modern day imitation of the platonic cave allegory. at first it was mainly masculinists who started using it, so far as i can tell, with the red pill apparently being that all women are evil and deceptive, and misandry is Everywhere

Enter the “hero” of our story, “mencius moldbug”, a white middle class american reactionary nerd blogger. and i don’t mean reactionary in an old bolshevik all-capitalists-are-reactionaries way, i mean he literally identifies as a “neo-reactionary”. in one of his more notorious (and verbose) posts, he started using the analogy as a means of critiquing “universalism”, a category which lumps marxism, anarchism, humanism, liberalism, postmodernism and god knows what else all under one ill-defined label. he reserves a special amount of scorn for liberal democracy and for the media, which he calls “the cathedral” and sees as controlled by commies, basically.

Very soon he began to attract a cult following of similarly misguided rightists, who soon became “the dark enlightenment” and are possibly the only political movement in history to print magic: the gathering cards of themselves as a means of promotion. they’re nerds by the way. they also, much like libertarians, have a fondness for overdetailed graphs and political spectrums, and not getting laid.