That’s no statue, that’s Mark Shea!

In which Mark Shea gets trolled so hard, it’s a wonder he didn’t turn to stone. You absolutely MUST read A Reader Writes of his Experience Among the Dark Enlightenment Types:

The thing about nascent movements like this is that it’s hard to know
when to pay attention and when to ignore them. If you ignore them they
can grow in the dark, like mushrooms on dung.  If you make too much
fuss, you can attract idiots–particularly extremist idiots–who
automatically assume that anything normal people find objectionable must
be awesome, radical, and “not PC” and therefore good.  But of course,
cannibalism is not PC either and embracing something simply and solely
on the basis that it is a “reaction” is one of the stupidest things
humans can do. You can’t build a life on protest and reaction.  You have
to be for something, not merely against something.  And at the end of
the day, the only real core of DE “thought” is to be for racialism.

Much of the stuff written above describes a sect that brings out
belly laughs. Eldar? Men of Numenor?  Seriously? Tolkien would have
these overgrown D and D players’ guts for garters if he heard they were
exploiting his work for their deplorable cultus. Particularly since
(which is my main concern about them) they are using his work as a grab
bag of code words for their deep-rooted racialist heresy.

I first heard about the Dark Enlightenment (aka “Neo-Reaction” or
just “Reaction”) last year, the year after I graduated from college and
was interning at a conservative think tank. I briefly become involved
with the Dark Enlightenment and then left the movement in disgust. Here
is what I learned:


– The Dark Enlightenment is controlled by what the media call “Sith
Lords”. You have more public Lords like Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land,
but there are even some Lords up higher whose names are not revealed.
They say the Master Lord says ‘Et Ego in Arcadia’ which is an anagram
for ‘Tego Arcana Dei’ (“I hide the secrets of God”).


– But only the media call them ‘Sith Lords’. In Inner Speak, they will often use phrases like the Men of Númenor or the Eldars.

– I never met any of the higher Eldars, but I did once meet an Eldar
in Training. I don’t know his real name but people called him Legolas.
He had long blond hair, was dressed like a 19th century count, and wore a
pendant that had both a Christian Cross and Thor’s Hammer on it.


– The movement is a weird mixture of ethno-nationalists, futurists,
monarchists, PUAs (“pick-up artists” like Chateau Heartiste), Trad
Catholics, Trad Protestants, etc. They all believe in HBD (what they
call “human biodiversity” i.e. racism) but disagree on some other minor
points.


– The religious people in the movement (both Christians and pagans)
practice what is called “identitarian religion” (religion that doesn’t
deny ethnic identity).


– Some of the rising stars of the Dark Enlightenment on the internet
seem to be Radish Magazine, Occam’s Razor Mag, and Theden TV.


– The Dark Enlightenment allegedly has millions of dollars of money
to play with. They have a couple big donors. One is rumored to be a
major tech tycoon in Silicon Valley. They actually had a private 3-day
meeting on an island which was furnished with a French chef, etc.
Different forms of formal attire were required for each day (tuxedos,
3-piece suits, etc), and some weird costumes were required too (capes,
hoods, etc) — which sound like a pagan cult. (I wasn’t at this function
but heard about it.)


– I was initiated into the first stages of the Dark Enlightenment,
which involved me stripping down naked so people could “inspect my
phenotype”. I was then given a series of very personal questions, often
relating to sexual matters. I was then told to put on a black cape. (I
really regret doing this but at the time I was younger, more
impressionable and eager to please.)


– For the initial oath taking, everyone must swear on a copy of
Darwin’s Origin of Species, just to show their fidelity to HBD. After
that, for the later oaths, seculars will swear again on Darwin, while
Christians will swear on the Bible, and pagans on the Prose Edda or
Iliad.


– At one of the meetings I heard someone continuously chanting “gens
alba conservanda est” (Latin for “the white race must be preserved”) and
then others were chanting things in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Old
German, but I don’t know those languages so I can’t remember exactly
what they were saying.

Now that was some epic artistic cruelty, so much so that one almost suspects the dark hand of Roissy. Thank the Divine Rainbow for Mark Shea, saving the world from nonexistent movements since 2014! Then again, as a media-identified Sith Lord, perhaps that’s merely what I want him to think….