From time to time, I have been checking in on this blog, which I’m led to believe is a popular neo-reaction site. This site, from what I gather, is a clearing house of some sort for what is lumped into the NRx bucket. I have not followed the neo-reaction thing closely for a while, but I try to pay attention to it.

I can’t say I was ever a big fan. That’s not to say I’m against it. I just don’t have strong opinions about any of it. I’m not even sure “it” is a thing or just a catch-all term for opinion that does not fit the popular templates. Put another way, anyone who thinks egalitarianism is ridiculous and is not all that concerned about being called a heretic, gets lumped into the neo-reactionary bucket.

Years ago I found  Mencius Moldbug and decided his thing was probably not for me. The main reason is I am not sitting around reading 16,000 word blog posts. I’ve been doing this internet thing in one fashion or another since the 80’s and I’m not easily impressed. In the early days there were a lot of young males thinking they were going to change the world. They’re old men now and the world has not changed. That and I’m not much of a joiner.

I’ve written before that there’s a Dungeons and Dragons quality to a lot of it. Maybe it is the endless fascination with the return of monarchy that has me thinking that many of these guys watch Game of Thrones dressed as their favorite character. Maybe it’s that there’s so much overlap with the Vox Day world. I don’t know, but stuff like this is so common with the self-professed neo-reactionary types I think I’m on the right track with the D&D angle.

Recently, there’s been some sort of disruption in the NRx universe. I don’t know enough about it to comment on the particulars, but it appears that they had formed some sort of little club or secret society and now there is a power struggle within that club. Free Northerner reports on it here and Nick Land comments on it here. I have no idea what any of it means, but there it is.

Steve Sailer often points out that fringe movements are often cluttered with misfits and weirdos. The reason is these people have no home in more stable movements so they are available for recruitment by the new thing. There’s also the fact that new mass movements are by their nature opposed to the orthodox and mainstream. That means they are the natural home to the unorthodox and the strange. Some of those people will be crazy.

That’s probably why I’m getting a Judean People’s Front –  People’s Front of Judea vibe reading about whatever it is that’s going on with these people. Inside these movements, the issues loom large, dominating the minds of the participants. Outside the movement these fights seem weird and comical in their triviality. It’s like watching ants fight over a crumb. Entertaining, but wholly unimportant.

The funny thing is the great wave about to sweep over social science and therefore political science is biological realism, driven by genetics and processing power.Technology is cracking open the secrets of human biology and big data is casting a light on the dark corners of social behavior. This should be a the salad days for a philosophical movement that rejects the Standard Social Science Model.

As I said at the start of this post, I don’t follow it closely enough to understand the details of their struggles. My guess is they are running into the problem that all fringe movements face and that’s a lack of agreement over most everything, other than enemy. They all agree that multiculturalism and globalism are unworkable, but that’s where the agreement ends. Building a coherent philosophy from that is impossible.

That’s the challenge that awaits biological realism. The kabbalistic new faith that has emerged around the principles of egalitarianism, anti-racism and multiculturalism may be irrational and at odds with observable reality, but it fills the spiritual void of the ruling classes. You don’t defeat a spiritual movement with facts and reason. You offer an alternative.

Maybe that’s why obscurantism is so common amongst NRx bloggers. Moldbug was maddeningly long winded and often incoherent. He invested a lot of his time in creating an aesthetic, rather than making points. Like the Beats and their clove cigarettes, NRx spends a lot of time signalling to one another. It is the sense of belonging that makes them tick, not the intellectual rigor of their arguments. It’s church for dorks.