Talk:Dark Enlightenment

Image of Yarvin?

I feel an image of Yarvin would be helpful, if nothing else to provide a face to the name mentioned in the article. There's one already on his wikipedia page. Also relevant would be an image of Nick Land. Thoughts? JBrahms (talk) 12:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

What value would that add to the article? We're not supposed to use images just to have images. TucanHolmes (talk) 19:04, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@TucanHolmes Most articles about philosophical movements have pictures of their most prominent thinkers. 2601:681:8800:D710:AE4B:A131:FBA6:98A7 (talk) 22:27, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

That might be true, but why should we also add an image to this article, based on that justification alone? What value would it add to this article, and where should such an image be placed? Just adding an image because similar articles have similar images is, as a rule of thumb, not a good motivation for adding images in the first place. Do you have any suggestions for e.g., which image of Yarvin we should use? Wikimedia Commons has two images of Yarvin.

I wouldn't use the one used at Curtis Yarvin; it appears to me overly promotional (might even have been taken specifically for that purpose), and while that is okay-ish for a biography article, I feel like it would be inappropriate in an article about the ideologies espoused by him.

We don't seem to have any usable images of Nick Land, so the question of his inclusion is moot. TucanHolmes (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, an image of Yarvin and Land should be the at the very top of this article. These two were the principal figures behind these ideas. How does one technically put two pictures next to each other in such a way? Monárquico1975 (talk) 11:17, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

The article is beyond repair

This is full of liberal propaganda pretending to be "neutral" and any attempts to fix it are being instantly reverted. This article is not to be trusted and is yet another sign that Wikipedia is not meant to provide useful information. Photon2003 (talk) 07:05, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Which parts of the article are "liberal propaganda"? Do you have reliable sources to back up your claims? TucanHolmes (talk) 19:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

For starters, the ideology is deemed neo-fascist, and the source is a single quote from an unrelated professor only attributed to that article with no further context. Then later, a second, stronger, source says the movement is only possibly fascist in nature, disputing the affirmative declaration of fascism. The beliefs of Land and Yarvin are cited directly a combined total of 3 times, while critics are amplified much more, with circular reasoning as the justification for this JeanJohnJones (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Exactly on point. 2603:8000:3302:3403:C51B:F569:F69E:9006 (talk) 06:57, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

No article is beyond repair if it documents a notable and otherwise valid topic.

That said, I’ve pointed out some more substantive issues in a new section below.

RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 18:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh god another one getting angry Wikipedia isn't conservative enough for them 83.31.233.168 (talk) 17:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

After having read this article you can tell it's mostly leftist propaganda.

I'm so tired of the leftist and right bickering while everything has to be framed in their narrative from one side or the other.

For the Left everything has to be based on racism, sexism, etc.. because they don't want to have conversations on power and control which they are also attempting to accumulate and hold forever in a fascist way.

Don't think they flood the country full of migrants ignoring the disenfranchisement of voters and the harmful effects it's had on US citizens and try to patronize it or sweep it under the run. They don't care because they view it as votes forever.

Because of this everything has to be put into this narrative and it's a real disservice to this discussion.

Where every liberal nobody makes a statement on this work and calls it "racist" or "fascist" ignoring the real conversation of power and control and the effects of freedom and what is actually being said and the points they are making.

There is some truth to the article. The Dark enlightenment has a belief that "freedom and democracy are not compatible", but choosing to ignore how or why they come to these beliefs to simply call it "racist" etc... and ignoring the real issues isn't helping form either a point of view of the argument, or an argument against it, which is what most of this article is. It's not an article about what Dark Enlightenment is but simply one of calling it racist and trying to dismiss it as "bad". Which is frankly intellectually dishonest.

The truth is thinking things like "freedom and democracy are incompatible" is dangerous. But it's no less dangerous than ignoring how they got to this thought process by simply calling it "racist." There are legitimate points that they raise. The collusion of a billionaire owned media that has lied to the people endlessly pushing false narratives to control the people. Absolute corruption in government by the left. Spoon feeding children propaganda through the department of education and then threatening the parents calling them domestic terrorist when they call out children reading sexually explicit books or having drag shows, and frankly pushing their narrative on the whole public as well at every turn. Which is leading to companies and the government getting sued for discrimination by whole subsets of the population aka white people, asians, jews. While the left continues to push politics of hate like the anti-sematic rhetoric they fuel.

Fact is one could say the left is little more then the facilitator of this movement. Even today they would release a cop killer into the public, express sorrow for a guy trying to stab people getting shot in Boston, but nothing for the people inured in the stabbing, and continue to ruin women's sports with some trans ideology.

There is a reason it's call reactionary. The real fear here and what is really being missed is the reality that the left and the right are two sides of the same coin, pushing the country into an authoritarian model on purpose.

The rest of us are stuck in the middle with no where else to turn.

Articles like this aren't helping because you simply feed into it by echoing the propaganda instead of having a real conversation into the fact that it's a theory of power and control where elites rule the world and those with money get a voice and the rest of us are told to "walk" aka choose another place to live, if we don't like it.

The only color of this theory that matters is green. The discussions of power and control and how the people have non and no recourse in either this theory or what we call "democracy" is completely lacking. 2603:6010:9B02:1702:F07D:9A5:9A4B:7A4F (talk) 18:50, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

There are quite a few more sources connecting "Dark Enlightenment" to neofascism than just one if you look in the article body. Can you please identify reliable sources with a different viewpoint? Simonm223 (talk) 19:00, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

"elites rule the world and those with money get a voice and the rest of us are told to "walk" " Elites always come up on top. Social stratification is an essential element of civilization. Dimadick (talk) 10:31, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I read the first half of this rant and there is nothing about how to improve the article (which is the purpose of this page), then I lost interest. Is there any relevant content or can it be deleted? --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:40, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Dark Enlightenment and Neo-fascism

This is getting ridiculous. The Dark Enlightenment is not a 'neo-fascist' movement. They do not have any meaningful ties of intellectual heritage that would link them together, and adding the 'Neo-fascism' infobox and category is nothing short of defamatory vandalism. It seems that none of the editors who are encouraging this crude plastering of misinformation have bothered to actually familiarise themselves with the topic. AFEG64 (talk) 06:02, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia goes by WP:RS, which in this case especially means WP:IS. Your opinions are not reliable, and Wikipedia is not a platform for publishing original research, nor is it a platform for public relations. See also WP:NONAZIS. Grayfell (talk) 06:17, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

The sources linked very much lack rigour in their explanation of this claim. If an opinion piece published by an independent source states that Henry Kissinger was a Dengist because both he and Deng Xiaoping were proponents of Realpolitik, that does not make it true. If someone else publishes an article making the same claim to a different independent source, that still doesn't make it true. Your substitution of any direct acknowledgement of and/or attempt at refuting what I've said by the bare claim that 'reliable (independent) sources disagree' suggests that you are unwilling to demonstrate any actual understanding of the topic, perhaps because you are unable to do so.

Other than that, your awkwardly-placed mention of WP:NONAZIS seems like little more than a half-baked attempt at ragebait. To imply that disputing the link between Dark Enlightenment and Neo-fascism somehow makes me a 'Nazi' (despite the fact that adherence to one of the aforementioned movements is in no way required for someone to do so) is so incredibly obtuse that I wonder if you are not intentionally trying to add fuel to the fire. AFEG64 (talk) 07:50, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Not getting involved in this (I don't really have an opinion). But just to be clear on the aspersions, ironically, you're the one explicitly violating WP:NONAZIS by violating WP:CRYRACIST. He gets to disagree in good faith on an issue. You should probably strike that. Just10A (talk) 23:56, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

I wish I was an intellectual, like Curtis Yarvin likes to call himself, so I could reconcile all the seeming contradictions of what he talks about, especially now that his star appears to be rising in some powerful circles. That said, I am also aware some have characterized him as a pseudo-intellectual, so maybe that might explain why I don't see much coherence in what he says. But on balance it seems Dark Enlightenment means reverting to the pre-Enlightenment, except with tech bro elites like Thiel and Andreesen with crypto, and corporate CEO oligarch monarchs, or something. What would you suggest as a better descriptor in the infobox? soibangla (talk) 07:12, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

The Dark Enlightenment movement is, though unusual compared to others within the same category, undoubtedly reactionary. The 'Neo-fascism' infobox should not be there. If there is no relevant infobox, then I suppose the article will have to do without one. AFEG64 (talk) 07:54, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

No you're mistaken. When people as significant as Noys calls your movement fascist in explicit language that's already a strong reliable source. Then we have a lot more after Noys. The infobox stays. Simonm223 (talk) 13:20, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

1. Who says the Dark Enlightenment is my movement? Why do you make these assumptions? I could very well dispute, for example, that Bernie Sanders is not a Bolshevik while being neither a supporter of his campaign nor a Leninist — as long as I am familiar enough with both of them to know so. Alternatively, I could be either of the two, and still have a valid case to argue against that claim, as long as my logic is sound and the interpretations I make are not significantly biased. I'm not doing this because I want to defend the reputation of D.E. (which, as far as I'm aware, isn't good to begin with) but because I am familiar enough with its foundational texts and familiar enough with the origins of fascism to know that they have nothing to do with each other.

2. Noam Chomsky said that Russia's war in Ukraine was "massively provoked", does that make it true? After all, he's a very well-published author and internationally recognised, much more so than Noys. This page cites an article that quotes Noys many times, but where exactly these quotations are taken from remains unclear, and whatever Noys's reasoning behind these assertions may be (and however true they may be), such explanations remain largely absent from the article. I should also mention that you (too) should not rely on "Noys (et al.) said so", especially since if the arguments behind this claim that D.E. is 'Neo-fascist' are so rigorous and plainly evident, I would expect that its proponents could re-iterate and defend it in their own terms. AFEG64 (talk) 02:11, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Ok since you're new I'll assume you just haven't learned yet but this is the thing: especially for contentious labels like correctly identifying fascists as fascists, Wikipedia will always go by what reliable sources say. Our policies, particularly WP:OR, explicitly prohibit us from doing otherwise. So, no, I both need not and, in fact, should not digress from what the reliable sources say. Simonm223 (talk) 13:02, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

• An IP is repeatedly removing the neo-fascist template from the article (in addition to apparently trying to purge the article of references to fascist thinkers who played a role in the formation of Dark Enlightenment philosophy.) All these things are well-sourced in the article and none of the sources indicate that they're controversial; additionally, many of the things that they've added are unsourced and in some cases demonstrably wrong (eg. claiming that Yarvin coined the term "Dark Enlightenment", which contradicts all secondary sources and which they cited to a primary paper by Yarvin written a year after Land's Dark Enlightenment essay.) We have to go by what the sources say; and nobody has actually presented any sources contradicting the connection to fascism, which is well-attested in the sources to the point where it's a major part of the topic's notability. --Aquillion (talk) 17:02, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

  There are whole chapters of books like Neoreaction: A Basilisk about this. Simonm223 (talk) 17:06, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Another user has removed it. Given the sudden rush of attention on this article from new users or ones who haven't edited in a long time, it seems possible that it has either been linked somewhere or that we're dealing with WP:MEAT / WP:SOCK issues (an editor was blocked for sockpuppetry here just a few weeks ago.) Either way, though, it might be a good idea to expand the relevant sections of the body. --Aquillion (talk) 05:22, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I've added two more academic sources to the body section on the relationship to fascism. Simonm223 (talk) 13:15, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I've also requested some page protection measures be put in place. Simonm223 (talk) 13:19, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Yarvin is not a neo-fascist. That's a tendentious label. Highly uncharitable. Monárquico1975 (talk) 11:21, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

The statements regarding Yarvin are all sourced to multiple high-quality sources per our extant policies. If you believe that these sources mis-characterize him I would recommend providing reliable sources that propose a different viewpoint. Simonm223 (talk) 11:45, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, I found another peer-reviewed source that openly calls Yarvin a fascist while doing some research for an unrelated article. I am considering including it on this page. Simonm223 (talk) 12:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Actually I was mistaken, it wasn't one of the peer-reviewed sources. It was: TRUMP'S WORLD. By: LEHMANN, CHRIS, Nation, 00278378, Jan2025, Vol. 320, Issue 1 But you may not know about the figure who's served as a fascist pied piper to Vance and scores of other Silicon Valley heimat bros: the pro-slavery monarchist Curtis Yarvin, who blogs under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. Simonm223 (talk) 13:01, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Naming consistency?

The name used for the ideology jumps back and forth between "the Dark Enlightenment", "neo-reactionary", "neoreactionary", "neoreaction", and "NRx", both within quotes and oustide. I get staying loyal to the source for quotes, and I think "neoreactionaries" is probably the best term for followers (really the only one, barring just adding "supporters" to the other names which feels clumsy), but should the article be more consistent with the name of the ideology itself outside of quotes? Shredlordsupreme (talk) 06:53, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Merge article with Obscurantism

It's the same religious terrorism as what al-Qaeda et al. were doing in Afghanistan, just because it's a bunch of Christians who are mostly American doing the religious terrorism doesn't make it any different. 2A07:B941:E40:0:0:0:1:5D (talk) 13:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think this proposal follows any sort of logic. A lot of these particular far-right figures are atheists. Simonm223 (talk) 14:00, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

They are two seperate philosophies. One might argue there is overlap, but that is WP:OR so far as I know. Iknowyoureadog (talk) 04:00, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 3 April 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn. See Special:Permalink/1283821891. – robertsky (talk) 00:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

---

Dark Enlightenment → The Network State – The Network State is the common name. While Dark Enlightenment is the historical underpinning of the network state movement, it isn't used as often. Iknowyoureadog (talk) 03:25, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

If someone knows of a better way to do this (i.e. if there's a template for multiple moves that allows for including redirects) then please let me know. Absent that, I have proposed the following:

1. Move the article currently titled Dark Enlightenment → The Network State

2. For the two redirects (Network state and The Network State) either convert both to a disambiguation page for the article mentioned above and Balaji's book The Network State (currently a section of the article about him).

See redirect discussions:

• Network state
• The Network State

Iknowyoureadog (talk) 03:48, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.