I first heard about Dark Enlightenment or the Neoreactionary movement probably a decade ago, but I was an Obamabot and just thought "Huh, weird, anyway".
I finally sat down and spent a few hours reading An Open Letter to Open Minded Progressives. Especially as someone who already had tried to rid himself of progressive thoughts and beliefs, it was quite a ride.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives/
Overall I find his ideas and arguments fascinating. The claim that our modern progressives as the direct heirs of Protestantism/Whigs is quite the claim, but I think it makes sense. The way that he lays out the history of the Whigs and the Tories and their respective religious factions and how the Whigs won and that their religion and ideology is the literal foundation of our culture to me rings at a bare minimum as partially correct.
It just makes too much sense that something like the Inner Light doctrine would naturally evolve into "No human is illegal", or whatever slogan they're throwing around about how we're all exactly equal and the same. Even the sect I was raised in (Mormonism...I know) experimented in communistic communes and I can't even tell the difference between Mormons (The heads of the church, not necessarily the individual adherents) and Globalists anymore, which I think was inevitable due to the way that they proselytize globally.
When he brings up the Malvern Conference I honestly was speechless. A giant representative coalition of American Christians came together to produce a document demanding No Borders, One World Government, International Control of all Armies and Navies, etc, is almost unbelievable. Unless he's correct that whether folks are aware of it or not, nearly all of us are Whigs, who would make argument for such things and have consistently for hundreds of years?
I assume some people here have read him before, what do you think? I find his diagnosis and historical narrative of our country incredibly persuasive, but I'm not sold on his prescription (Restoration of the Stuarts). If nothing else, I am quite moved by the argument that we're all Whigs. Obviously not literally 100% of Americans, just like 99%.
That is a false choice, rejecting the left and the establishment right does not require me to adopt every batty ideology that falls outside the Overton Window.
How about taking their idiocy and replacing it with something intelligent, not more idiocy.
Painting anyone outside of the Overton window as "alt-right" is a tool of the establishment. If you want to call him a "monarchist idiot" then at least there's something to work with there.
That certainly was not my intent. If he is a monarchist and not a white nationalist Groyper type, then he is not alt-right and I was incorrect in my recollection.
He's Jewish but many of the early people who would go on to be called "alt-right" overlapped with his audience. I think this comes from Richard Spencer's old site publishing (or re-publishing?) some of his early articles.
He basically advocates for any royal line to sieze back power or be restored to power, the method doesn't matter too much. He specifically names the princes of Lichtenstein as an unbroken chain of power than has been very successful.
Obviously Lichtenstein is like 50 people or whatever, so scale definitely plays a factor there as to why they are still monarchist. This also was a 2008 essay and I have not read any more of his work. This is not what I find interesting though. It's his diagnosis, not his prescription, that lights my mind afire.
Really, I would describe him as right of the alt-right. A true reactionary who wants to roll back every progressive victory which is quite the statement when he's also positing that America beating England was a success of the progressives. It's hard to refute that though when you look into exactly who the "Dissenters" were and what their religion and ideology was. You look over the list of sects of who they were and it's a list of the original settlers of America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters
When you read what a Tory from the 1700's had to say about the Dissenters, it's basically the same thing you would hear from conservatives about progressives today if perhaps even more violent.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yCoLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage&client=safari&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=How%20just%20will%20such%20&f=false (PG. 142-143 gives a good enough picture)
You can call these ideas idiocy if you want, but to me it seems to be an accurate description of the political and religious factions which fought in the American Revolutionary War that I had a very whitewashed understanding of. Really, I was under the impression that most of early americans were hyper-capitalistic hyper-religious libertarians of some sort, but only the religious part seems to hold up when contrasted with historical documents. Every one of his sources that I've cracked open, I've found that he wasn't distorting their words. I haven't read all his sources, as they are many, but every single one I checked to make sure he wasn't bullshitting me was just literal and direct quotations.
Really, just read pg142-143 and tell me if you think if it is a conservative ranting about progressives destroying his country and faith. To me this is a very persuasive argument for why we view progressives as religious, because they always have been. It simply seems to add up that advocating for a religion outside of the church of england and for the destruction of the monarchy would probably be the definition of progressivism in 1700's England.