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| Mark Shea, through a glass darkly |
In recent months, the term "Dark Enlightenment" has, for some reason, become the go-to phrase among mainstream types attempting to make some sense of the ragtag coalition of defiant anti-establishment types who comprise our movement. What's notable, of course, is that mainstream types are deigning to notice us at all. Even if their appraisals tend to be sneering, sniggering, and dismissive, they nevertheless for some reason feel the need to acknowledge our undeniable presence in a manner that they never have before.
One of the more sanctimonious obsessors over the DE lately is the eternally odious neo-Catholic blogger Mark Shea. Shea's classic MO is to rant against his enemies, before banning them from defending themselves in his comment boxes, only permitting his inexplicably numerous minions to heap on further abuse. (Full disclosure: one of our editors' scaps with Marky Mark and his Fun Bunch go way back: for details, take up and read!)
Shea has vent his spleen against the infernal DE in several recent posts, in typically intemperate language. But Shea's one-track mind causes him to become embarrassingly gullible when he is in his full-on "hate" mode. So when someone wrote him a breathless expose about the demonic doings of Dark Enlightenment" members, Shea took the obviously spoofy piece at face value, as is plainly apparent from his appended commentary. In other words, Shea got himself punk'd! Below is the link to the blog post on Shea's page, provided for your merriment. But should the Shea-man opt to cover his shame by deleting his blunder, never fear, O reader! It is reproduced below in full.
One of the more sanctimonious obsessors over the DE lately is the eternally odious neo-Catholic blogger Mark Shea. Shea's classic MO is to rant against his enemies, before banning them from defending themselves in his comment boxes, only permitting his inexplicably numerous minions to heap on further abuse. (Full disclosure: one of our editors' scaps with Marky Mark and his Fun Bunch go way back: for details, take up and read!)
Shea has vent his spleen against the infernal DE in several recent posts, in typically intemperate language. But Shea's one-track mind causes him to become embarrassingly gullible when he is in his full-on "hate" mode. So when someone wrote him a breathless expose about the demonic doings of Dark Enlightenment" members, Shea took the obviously spoofy piece at face value, as is plainly apparent from his appended commentary. In other words, Shea got himself punk'd! Below is the link to the blog post on Shea's page, provided for your merriment. But should the Shea-man opt to cover his shame by deleting his blunder, never fear, O reader! It is reproduced below in full.
(Update: the post originally was followed by a comment section in which many readers pointed out Shea's error, expressing varying degrees of delectation at the masterfully-executed punkage on display. "Let them have their fun," Mark Shea grumbled, in response, before removing all comments and disabling the comment section a few minutes later... Seems that maybe after all just a bit too much "fun" was being had at his expense!)
Below, the merry prankster's words are in italics; Shea's response is in regular print.
A Reader Writes of his Experience Among the Dark Enlightenment Types
A Reader Writes of his Experience Among the Dark Enlightenment Types
February 13, 2014 By Mark Shea 66 Comments
The Dark Enlightenment Exposed
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.
- They also have all their own
secret handshakes, and their own terminology [like the Cathedral
("political correctness"), thedening ("re-establishing ethnic
group identity"), genophilia ("love of one's own race"), NRx
("neoreaction"), etc.].
- On the philosophical level, this
movement is not entirely original. Much of it is borrowed from the Identitarian
movement in Europe. They also all detest democracy. They are not trying to be a
“populist movement” but are only trying to convert other elites to their way of
thinking.
This whole movement is like a secret
cult, which is why I left. Also, because of the valiant and brave efforts of
people on the net exposing this movement, I saw this cult for the evil it truly
is. Please stay away from it.
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. Here’s what Tolkien actually thought of racialist bullshit:
When J.R.R. Tolkien published The
Hobbit on September 21st, 1937, it was immediately met with critical
acclaim and high levels of commercial demand.
Naturally, in the ensuing months,
publishing houses around Europe contacted Tolkien to enquire about translating
and publishing the acclaimed popular novel in their respective tongues. The
Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening was on the verge of printing its own
German-language version of The Hobbit, when suddenly they requested
written documentation of Tolkien’s Aryan heritage. This request so infuriated
Tolkien that he penned a letter to his publisher and friend Stanley Unwin. It
read:
I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch (aryan) origin from all persons of all countries?
Personally, I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print… I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.
Of the two letters which Tolkien
went on to draft for Rütten & Loening, one did not even acknowledge their
request for racial documentation, and the other rebuked completely their racist
ideology and historically baseless appropriation of the label “Aryan.” While we
do not know which one Stanley Unwin eventually sent, the latter is reproduced
below. It was dated July 25th, 1938.
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by “arisch.” I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
These words and the surrounding
commentary are sourced and adapted from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
as well as Humphrey Carpenter’s fantastic book, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography.
It’s funny: Tolkien and his work were
extremely popular among Nazi elites who were fixated on his academic writings
about Germanic history and the Old Norse dialect. The sentiment, however, was
hardly reciprocated, as the comments above evince. In a letter to his son Michael,
which he penned on June 9th, 1941, Tolkien wrote,
I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler … Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.
My sympathies are entirely
with Tolkien, and the DE’s sympathies are entirely with Hitler’s in
continuing to ruin, pervert, misapply and make still more accursed the
noble northern spirit Tolkien loved.
My reader’s experience points out
what is the real focal point of DE crap amidst whatever boutique
monarchist fantasies and silly rites and esoterica may occupy the elitists,
fringe nuts, Reactionary Catholics and cocky college sophomores in the Vanguard
of History attracted to this BS: the heresy of racialism and the grave sin
of pride. It also shows why the movement is gaining ground among the
young: because it appeals to pride and uses the grievances of
conservatives against “the Cathedral” (a bogeyman compact of PC lefties,
holders of ordinary Christian morality, minorities imagined to threaten
“the Real America”, and most normal decent people) to tell post-Christian
conservatives that they are Special and the herd (most of the human race) are to
be dismissed with Nietschzean hubris by the Ubermenschen.
Some will, with some legitimacy,
point out that the kindest word you can use to describe the antics and ideas my
reader describes is “whackadoodle.” True. So, for that matter, were
the antics and ideas of the sundry racist sects, movements, crack-brained
secret societies and kooks who constituted the ridiculous esoterica that
fascinated Himmler. Had National Socialism never gained the force of arms
it would have been–from a sociological and political perspective–absolutely
hilarious. From a spiritual perspective, however, it would have remained
as spiritually deadly as ever because it was rooted–as DE is rooted–in the sin
of pride and racism.
So do I think DE will become a
national movement of serious power? I’m skeptical of this. But so
what? I do think that it is already making inroads among young people
like my reader and that those under its sway are in grave spiritual
danger. There are lots of trendy ideas about that don’t have to lead to
mass murder in order to kill the soul.
Catholics should not touch this
absurd filth with a barge pole. That it is absurd does not make it one
whit less filthy.
Oh. And “Hey girl! I want to inspect
your phenotype” has to be biggest Loser Nerd Living in the Basement
Endlessly Watching “Triumph of the Will” Warning to Women in
Human History. The people most obsessed with passing on their
Master Race genes always seem to be the ones who can’t get a date. As
ever, the first line of defense against such people is laughter. “The
devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.” – St. Thomas More
