Peter Thiel, Would-Be Philosopher King, Takes on Democracy

"We have only one problem. The problem is: our billionaires are n—ers. They may be rich. But they're n—er rich. The nature and function of their wealth is profoundly negrous. You can probably name exceptions. I can too. But in every way, the exceptions prove the rule"

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/po...

The real ("red pill", lol) dynamic is that rightist and leftist are essentially modes of thinking. Rightism favors deductive thinking - simple rules to follow including a social status hierarchy, a fundamentalist axiomatic conception of rights, etc. Leftism favors inductive thinking - analysis of the qualitative outcomes of given rules, avoiding formalism because every abstraction necessarily leaves something out, etc.

BOTH are required to actually fully analyze situations, otherwise you're only using half your brain!! Political propaganda emphasizes one mode of thinking while making you tune out the other (helped along because what it implies is uncomfortable, especially as you become less used to thinking that way).

But neither one makes for a full social theory on its own. Try to implement an all-encompassing "leftist" society (eg communism), and formal hierarchical rightist structures necessarily remain at the top asserting central control - the revolutionaries certainly aren't going to pack up and go back to their previous lives. Likewise, try and implement an all-compassing "rightist" society and informal bottom-up movements necessarily crop up seeking autonomy from the overbearing top-down control [1].

As such, the neoreactionary movement might have had worthwhile constructive results if they had succeeded at getting one of these so-called philosopher kings into a position of political leadership. There are a lot of things that are broken about our society, with political incentives keeping them stuck in local minima (in the computational NP-hard sense) [0].

However instead, when the neoreactionaries got a taste of political power they did exactly what every other political movement does - compromise their values to serve power. Putting on my Moldbug-thinking hat and reading Yarvin's "The Butterfly Revolution" was downright shocking. The only way you get from reactionary populism red in tooth and claw to enlightened hierarchical rule is through societal collapse, regardless of how you dress it up in flowery prose.

[0] This is a failure mode of a leftism. The corresponding failure mode of rightism is terrible destructive orders being dictated from an incompetent dictator...

[1] I think to the extent that the neofascists are aware of this, they think they are going to be able to keep it contained with digital authoritarianism, surveillance, and "AI". It fits their pattern of reading books but not understanding their lessons (specifically here sci-fi tech dystopias).