Neoreaction
The Core Argument
Neoreactionary thought was born within the renewal of the American right at the end of the 2000s. Its point of departure was the publication of a manifesto by its principal founder, Curtis Yarvin, a software engineer writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, who presented himself as a disillusioned libertarian. Its constitution as a movement followed a second text, published in 2012 by the British accelerationist philosopher Nick Land, which gave the current its enduring nickname: “The Dark Enlightenment.”
An important point before any definition of neoreaction is that it is not an institutional or academic current. Like the alt-right, which emerged at the same moment, it developed informally across blogs and digital forums as an intellectual “constellation”: a dense ensemble of persons, ideas, theories, problems, and documents in interaction with one another. It is, more precisely, a digital constellation, composed of authors writing mostly under pseudonyms.
As its name indicates, neoreaction is a revival of reactionary thought. Neoreactionaries consider conservatism, like libertarianism, to be a dead end, since both come to terms with the democratic game: liberal democracy must instead be overthrown. For Yarvin, the state is neither the expression of a general will nor the sum of individual interests: it is simply a corporation that owns the territory over which it is sovereign. And since a corporation is best run by a chief executive, the regime he proposes (“neocameralism”) is a monarchy governed by a CEO. Democracy cannot be reformed into this; it must be disposed of by an elitist coup. The coup runs through the destruction of what Yarvin calls the “Cathedral,” the academic-media complex that ideologically constrains democratic rulers: dismiss all federal civil servants, nationalize the media before cutting off their funding, defund the universities. The slate is wiped clean, in an operation Yarvin imagines on the model of a liquidation.
There are, of course, internal nuances: not every author shares each of these positions, nor grants them the same weight. For example, Nick Land argues that the regime change is only a step towards a higher goal, that is, the acceleration of technocapitalism. However, five components nonetheless appear decisive at the scale of the constellation:
1. The conviction that natural hierarchies exist. Insuperable inequalities – determined by social, racial, and sexual constants – structure human societies; recognizing them entails a naturalist “realism” that draws in particular on IQ studies. From these hierarchies neoreactionaries infer a radical elitism, which sets them squarely against the populism of the alt-right.
2. A deep anthropological pessimism. Violence is an ineradicable component of human societies; the essential role of politics is therefore the management of conflict, security being the necessary condition of prosperity. Hence a “political realism” in the Hobbesian tradition: the neoreactionary is above all a “partisan of order,” and regards theories of social justice as deceptive idealism.
3. An absolute detestation of democracy. Democracy is seen as a political formula incapable of guaranteeing security and prosperity, and which ensures the triumph of a corrupt elite, maintained in power by the collusion of political, media, and intellectual milieus. The system must be definitively overthrown and replaced by a monarchy.
4. The claim of a right to exit. The principal libertarian survival within neoreactionary thought: the possibility of leaving the state of which one is a citizen to join or found another community, which is a compensatory proposal for the end of political rights. The neoreactionary monarchy no longer conceives of its members as citizens but as customers of a service, free, if dissatisfied, to turn to another, better-performing state.
5. An optimism toward technology. Authors differ as to the weight they give this element, but many perceive democracy and progressivism as veritable brakes on the development of technocapitalism. The neoreactionary transition is then envisaged as a path of acceleration toward a transhumanist future.
Philosophical Roots
The first root is the reactionary tradition itself, provided one distinguishes reaction from conservatism. The conservative defends the status quo: moral values, majority culture, and traditional hierarchies, perceived as so many safeguards against violence and anarchy. A partisan of stability, however critical of modernity’s excesses, accepts the constraints of democracy and defends his positions within its framework. The reactionary refuses that compromise: it is too late, modernity has already gone too far, and the regime must be overthrown in order to reestablish a legitimate traditional order. In the philosopher Jean-Yves Pranchère’s terms, the conservative is animated by a “will to preservation,” the reactionary by a “will to reconstitution.”
What distinguishes neoreaction from other reactionary trends, such as the alt-right or postliberalism, is its libertarian origin. More specifically, neoreaction can be understood as a derivation of paleolibertarianism. In addition to the absolute primacy of individual rights and liberties, the market economy, and the reduction of the state to a minimal role, libertarians such as Murray Rothbard came close to the paleoconservatives, with whom they shared the critique of military interventionism and hostility to the federal state. From that rapprochement came a generation of reactionary libertarians known as the paleolibertarians, gathered around the Mises Institute. As shown by Quinn Slobodian and Sébastien Caré, paleolibertarians defended reactionary, inegalitarian and secessionist positions.
It was Hans-Hermann Hoppe who took paleolibertarianism furthest. His Democracy: The God That Failed (2001) holds liberal democracy to be fundamentally incompatible with the principles of libertarianism. Hoppe defends the complete suppression of the state, adding, provocatively, that if one had to resign oneself to the existence of a state, monarchy would be economically and ethically preferable to democracy. His position opened the way for a new generation ever more explicit in its rupture with democracy. Patri Friedman, grandson of the economist Milton Friedman, became the advocate of the Seasteading project of floating micro-states on the ocean, writing in Cato Unbound that while democracy is “the current industry standard,” it “is ill-suited for a libertarian state.” His initiative was financed by the billionaire Peter Thiel, who in the same symposium confessed: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” If democracy is no longer an acceptable regime, then it must be overthrown and replaced by something else: it is precisely this post-libertarian perspective that made the emergence of neoreactionary thought possible.
To Know More
Caré, Sébastien. “Le paléolibertarianisme aux États-Unis : genèse, doctrine et stratégie d’un hypolibéralisme hyperconservateur”. Revue Française d'Histoire des Idées Politiques, 61/1 (2025): 179-216.
Craib, Raymond. Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age. PM Press (2022).
Hermansson, Patrik, David Lawrence, Joe Mulhall, and Simon Murdoch, The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the 21st Century?, Routledge (2020).
Land, Nick. The Dark Enlightenment. Imperium Press (2023).
Land, Nick. Xenosystems. Passage Press (2025).
Miranda, Arnaud. Les Lumières sombres. Comprendre la pensée néoréactionnaire, Paris, Gallimard (2026).
Pranchère, Jean-Yves. “Le défi réactionnaire”. In Rémi Brague, Sauver?, Presses Universitaires de France (2023) : 297-322.
Rosenberg, James. “Reactionary Bricolage: Curtis Yarvin and Postliberalism.”Theory, Culture & Society, 43/4 (2026): 81-98.
Slobodian, Quinn. Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Zone Books (2025).
Smith, Harrison, and Roger Burrows. “Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit.”Theory, Culture & Society, 38/6 (2021): 143-166.
Tait, Joshua. “Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction.” In Mark Sedgwick (ed.), Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy. Oxford University Press (2019).
Yarvin, Curtis. Unqualified Reservations, Vol. I. Passage Press (2022).
Yarvin, Curtis. Unqualified Reservations, Vol. II. Passage Press (2025).
