Is NRx dead? I hope not. But it seems as of early 2017 or so, there has been a decline in quantity of NRx-related blog content. Such decline parallels what I perceive to the be the overall post-2017 decline of the alt-right, and although NRx and the alt-right are not the same, they are similar in that both represent a defection from mainstream right-wing thought.
But also, many bloggers have moved to Twitter, some examples being Spandrell, Alrenous, and the most popular by far of all, Nick Land. Generating interesting, original content is hard, and there is the possibly that everything that needs to be said pertaining to NRx has already been said. Also, Twitter makes it easy to immediately broadcast what is on one’s mind, without the time commitment of writing a blog post, and a 140-character tweet that is stripped of superfluous language can pack a bigger punch than a bloated article. Because Twitter is a social network, Tweets have more viral potential than articles.
As for the decline of ‘tech-comm’ and the rise of ethnonationalism, which I wrote about as early as 2015, here some thoughts:
1. From 2012 to early 2014, NRx was heavily influenced by the writings of Moldbug, specifically about neocameralism. Moldbug’s premise is that the the U.S. government is like a corporation, but one that is broken and in need of restructuring. But the problem is, both the left and the right, perceive corporations as too powerful already. A nation/world ruled by the likes of Google and Faceborg seems pretty unappealing to many people, so one can understand the unpopularity of tech-com, versus ethno-trad. An economic argument for corporatism, even if fundamentally sound, is unlikely to clear the emotional hurdle that is the general distrust of large corporations and corporatism. But also, ethno-trad is inclusive (racial, ethno, class, and religious solidarity), whereas tech-com is exclusive (wealth inequality, meritocracy, atomistic and individualistic, competition instead of cooperation, individual cognitive differences, etc.).
2. The Syrian refugee crisis, the rise of Islamic terror and ISIS, and growing opposition to immigration (as well as the general perception that the GOP is caving in on immigration) were contributing factors to the post-2014 decline of tech-comm and the rise of ethno-trad, but also the rise of the alt-right.
3. The closest thing presently to neocameralism and the overall ‘NRx vision’ is perhaps the United Arab Emirates and Suadi Arabia, which have absolute monarchies, and Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco, valued at between $2 trillion and $10 trillion, blurs the lines between between being a independent company and an extension of the government.
4. Neocameralism may work best, as shown in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for small, homogeneous populations with IQs between 85-95, and are hence are easier to manage, than Europeans, that have IQs between 95-105 and tend to be more ethnically and culturally diverse and have a streak for rebellion.
5. The odds of anything resembling neocameralism being implemented in the U.S. are zero, at least not within our lifetimes. Maybe in 50-70 years Google and the rest of the tech giants will have enough power and money to either ‘buyout’ the US government or create their own sovereign state, sorta like Aramco but much bigger. This makes such discussions purely theoretical, whereas ethno-trad is more practical and involves things that are already happening (such as immigration).
6. NRx is not just about reaction. For example, Nick Land seems to be deferential to high-IQ contrarian and esoteric types, regardless of their position on the left-right spectrum, but he also likes also scientists, physicists, and mathematicians, too. He shuns normies and normie discourse. Nick’s association with ‘dark enlightenment’ philosophy has less to do with promoting far-right ideology, than as a forum to discuss views that are outside of the purview of the simplistic/reductionist left-right dichotomy. He seeks the circuitous when others seek the simple and direct. The philosophy is sorta a smokescreen to keep normies out but also to signal to non-normies. It’s not just Nick–the ‘expanded universe’ of NRx is farther reaching than just five or so blogs, but includes ‘weird Twitter’, obscure WordPress blogs, Tumblr, and smart millennials on sites such as hacker News and Reddit who are ‘woke’ about accelerationism and HBD but don’t identify as reactionaries or are politically-motivated. This is related to the shared narratives concept. This is ‘good’ because sometimes opinions from the ‘left’ can be as insightful, if not more, as those from the ‘right’, but other times it can be overdone. It’s like, yeah, Jonathan Haidt is a reasonable liberal, but by that categorization, so too were Lokke, Mills, Hayek, Smith, and Voltaire, but the problem one finds with classical liberalism is it has no mechanism to prevent it from devolving into social-justice liberalism (in an upcoming post, I’ll try to explain in further detail the connection between classical liberalism and social-justice liberalism).