Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and work of Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin), an American programmer and blogger. His blog, Unqualified Reservations (2007–13) became the basis of the small but instructive “neoreactionary” movement. With its origins in programmer culture and radical libertarianism, Moldbug’s thought is antiprogressive, antiegalitarian, and antidemocratic. He advocates a monarchic government for an otherwise “open” society. Drawing on Austrian school economics, “elitist” theory, and the reactionary tradition, most prominently Thomas Carlyle, Moldbug argues that progressive elites produce a “universalist” culture to reinforce their power. According to Moldbug, the universalist-democratic regime is inefficient, divorced from reality, and doomed to collapse into chaos. Moldbug and neoreaction were harbingers and archetypes of web-based antiegalitarian movements that mobilized irony and epistemological critiques against the Left. They indicate a growing antidemocratic animus on the American Right, especially among radical libertarians, and the importance of digital activism for right-wing activism in the twenty-first century.