First published in The Conversation and republished with their approval.
Since the inauguration of Donald Trump and his subsequent policy measures, the name of an intellectual movement has emerged that is said to be the secret inspiration behind the new administration: neoreaction, also referred to as the “Dark Enlightenment.” At the head of this movement is blogger Curtis Yarvin, very close to Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen (billionaire and informal advisor to the president), as well as political figures like Vice President JD Vance and administration officials like Michael Anton. Yarvin is said to have inspired Elon Musk’s DOGE as well as the Gaza plan. Determining the precise influence of neoreactionary ideas on the new administration is difficult without an in-depth field investigation. However, we can already examine neoreactionary thought. Where does it come from? What are its normative proposals? In other words, what is the political theory of neoreaction?
Where Does Neoreaction Come From?
To fully grasp the specificity of the neoreactionary movement, we must recognize it as a genuine intellectual counterculture. Neoreaction emerges online, through blogs and forums, and through the virtual meeting of two key figures: Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. We can identify two founding moments in the structuring of the neoreactionary constellation.
Yarvin presents himself as a committed but disillusioned libertarian. The mistake of libertarians, he argues, is that they see their ideology as “the culmination of democracy,” whereas democracy is fundamentally “inefficient and destructive.”
In April 2007, Curtis Yarvin, an American engineer, launched his blog Unqualified Reservations under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. His first post, “A Formalist Manifesto,” clearly outlines his political project. In it, Yarvin presents himself as a committed but disillusioned libertarian. Libertarianism, which aims to limit or abolish the state in favor of unregulated liberalism, is here an “extremely obvious idea” that “has never been successfully implemented.” The mistake of libertarians, he argues, is that they see their ideology as “the culmination of democracy,” whereas democracy is fundamentally “inefficient and destructive” (Yarvin acknowledges his intellectual debt to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a disciple of Murray Rothbard).
Between 2007 and 2008, thanks to a provocative style and prolific output, Yarvin built a base of readers, mainly from American libertarian circles. Firmly rejecting progressivism as one of the reasons we cannot rid ourselves of democratic absurdity, Yarvin defines himself as a reactionary, or even neo-, post-, or ultra-reactionary. The term “neoreactionary” will be adopted around 2010 to describe neoreaction as a full-fledged intellectual movement.
Firmly rejecting progressivism as one of the reasons we cannot rid ourselves of democratic absurdity, Yarvin defines himself as a reactionary.
The second key moment is Nick Land’s discovery of Yarvin. Land is a former philosopher from the University of Warwick and a leading figure of the CCRU, an avant-garde intellectual collective. Advocating an accelerationist perspective, Land criticizes the “miserabilism” of the left that tries to contain capitalism’s harmful effects—instead, we should embrace and intensify its motion. This unconditional accelerationism leads him to adopt a pro-capitalist position and to become interested in Yarvin’s thought. Starting in March 2012, on his blog Urban Future (now deleted), he published a series of articles titled “The Dark Enlightenment.” This series will give neoreaction significant online notoriety and help establish it as an intellectual counterculture.
Neoreactionary Political Theory
If there is a neoreactionary political theory, it is found in Yarvin’s writings; he, from his first post, declared his ambition to “build a new ideology.” While Yarvin presents it as a development of libertarianism, he describes it as formalist and neocameralist. Let us try to explain these terms.
The goal is not to reimagine a fairer social order but to strengthen the existing one. This approach, which Yarvin calls formalism, is focused solely on constructing an efficient political engineering system.
The fundamental element of Yarvin’s thinking is the question of the efficiency of political systems. A political model is good if it manages to avoid violence—that is, the emergence of conflicts with uncertain outcomes. In this framework, politics is a struggle between order and chaos, within which “good is order.” Any other concern, such as poverty or climate change, is insignificant. The goal is not to reimagine a fairer social order but to strengthen the existing one. This approach, which Yarvin calls formalism, is focused solely on constructing an efficient political engineering system. From this formalist standpoint, Yarvin analyzes the American state as a massive enterprise bogged down in inefficiency. Because political leaders are stuck in democratic mysticism and obsessed with social justice, American politics lacks coherence. No one really knows who is in charge or for what purpose.
Yarvin proposes abandoning democracy and restructuring the government as a sovereign corporation (sovcorp), run by a CEO.
To solve this, Yarvin proposes abandoning democracy and restructuring the government as a sovereign corporation (sovcorp), run by a CEO. This CEO would make government decisions based on what is most effective for ensuring the state’s prosperity. And if you are not satisfied with the services of that government, you are free to choose another. For Yarvin, this formalist response is essentially a return to absolute monarchy. He therefore calls himself a “royalist” or “restorationist” and sees the government-corporation CEO as nothing more than a monarch. According to him, monarchy is an extremely stable political form, unlike democracy. Yarvin calls his model neocameralism, in reference to the cameralism of Frederick II of Prussia (a mercantilist theory tied to monarchy, aiming to increase the state’s economic prosperity). However, old cameralism is not Yarvin’s only reference—he views city-states like Dubai and Singapore as prototypes for future neocameralist states.
Avoiding Confusion: Neoreaction, Conservatism, Alt-Right, Accelerationism
To avoid misunderstanding the ideological nature of neoreactionary thought, it is important to clear up some intellectual confusions.
First, although Yarvin is a defender of order, this is not simply conservative thought. Yarvin does not promote the preservation of moral or religious values (he presents himself as an atheist or nontheist). He harshly criticizes conservatives who, being the corollary of progressives, are incapable of thinking about power as it is. According to Yarvin, conservatives are inherently tied to democracy. The reactionary nature of Yarvin’s thought lies in the desire to dissolve politics into authoritarian economic engineering (he praises, in this regard, the prosperity and “relative absence of politics” in Singapore, Dubai, and Hong Kong).
Although neoreaction and the alt-right share a rejection of traditional conservatism, the two movements should not be confused. The alt-right is ethnonationalist, in that some of its factions explicitly promote the idea of white racial superiority. Neoreaction, by contrast, is formalist and elitist. Neoreactionaries despise populism as inherently democratic: any political change must come from above. Of course, these intellectual constellations are not impermeable and may converge strategically. Thus, when Yarvin denies being a supremacist, he hastens to add that he still reads them with interest.
Neoreactionaries despise populism as inherently democratic: any political change must come from above.
Neoreaction is sometimes equated with accelerationism because of its connection to Nick Land. While the two currents converge, we must be precise. Land is an accelerationist before he is neoreactionary. He views neoreaction as an effective tool to destroy the “great braking mechanism” that is progress, but still sees it as “accelerationism with a flat tire.” Conversely, although Land undeniably contributed to neoreaction’s popularity, Yarvin does not cite him and remains largely impermeable to the accelerationist perspective. Neoreactionary thought is, above all, a thought of order.
Like any intellectual constellation, neoreaction is marked by internal contradictions.
While we have sought to define and contextualize neoreactionary thought through its leading figure, Curtis Yarvin, it would be a mistake to view it as a unified or homogeneous ideological bloc. Like any intellectual constellation, neoreaction is marked by internal contradictions—a subject we intend to explore further in the near future. Beyond the recent attention it has received lately, the political success of reactionaries will likely depend on their ability to carry their project beyond these contradictions.
Arnaud Miranda holds a PhD in political theory (Sciences Po) and is a specialist in the history of political thought. His dissertation, defended in December 2024, focused on the notion of decadence in contemporary political thought. His current research deals with the international circulation of neoreactionary ideas. He has also been a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford (2022) and the University of Cambridge (2022).
