If anyone is wondering about the actual views and arguments of Moldbug and his neoreactionaries, they were covered and responded to by economist blogger Noah Smith here.
The crux of it (and something I never saw quite covered in all the essays bouncing around) is
"Essentially, neoreaction is the dream of a society of mostly white people, living in a hierarchy based both on group membership (aristocratic lineage, gender, race) and individual ability (IQ). The neoreactionaries do not demand total racial purity. But many seem to think that if multiple races live in the same country, the races should be placed in a hierarchy of power, status, and freedom, apparently based on the average IQ of their racial group. Since the movement is about European traditionalism, it's not clear whether white people would be given a special place in the hierarchy, even above those groups whose average IQ is higher than that of whites.
As for women, many neoreactionaries appear to want them to return to traditional social roles - homemaking and child-rearing - and to submit more willingly to the sexual desires of men. Finally, there is some sense that within these group boundaries, the neoreactionaries might want a limited meritocracy - in other words, maybe the smart should rule. However, some neoreactionaries (particularly Anissimov) praise the idea of aristocracy, apparently believing that naturally superior people would manage to win the titles of nobility, and that their descendants would remain superior.
In other words, the neoreactionaries want the West to be a lot like the Ming Dynasty, but for white people. I've often thought of Europe as "the China that never quite made it"; neoreaction seems like the latest manifestation of a dream that refuses to die. "
The neoreactionaries aren't interested in the Enlightenment as a set of fundamental ideas, but as a time in history they find congenial: after the scientific revolution, before democratic, industrial capitalism steamrolled the aristocracy.
They are like an alternative version of the Society for Creative Anachronism, re-imagining the Enlightenment historical period in ways that leave out the things they find icky but that are in fact inevitable consequences of the times. For SCA that's reimagining the High Middle Ages without the plague. For neoreactionaries it's reimagining the Enlightenment without the end of slavery, or the rise of individualism and democracy.
For those of us who pursue Enlightenment ideals rather than Enlightenment historical accidents, they are an unfortunate bunch. SCA members would feel the same way about anyone who was serious about bringing back feudalism, or reducing society to "warriors, priests and peasants."
Most neoreactionaries I know don't care much for the Enlightenment at all. Some pine for monarchy, others for Skynet, still more for the farm. A difficult bunch to generalize, united only by their shared (but uneven) disdain for democracy, (post-)modernism, and egalitarianism.
Getting the views of neoreactionaries from Noah Smith is like getting the views of Luther's 95 Theses from Pope Leo X. How about, you know, just reading Moldbug?
Looks like this person edited their comment. Anyway, you're right, Noah Smith is one of the less objective filters you could seek to fairly summarize a right-of-left-of-center viewpoint.
Life is too short to do a lot of silly things like veg on junk TV or fart around on Twitter or read the entire Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality all day yet I admit that I sometimes persist.
Moldbug is a strange and fascinating bird that is not immediately meant to be understood, but experienced. There really is no one else like him. For those with a taste for the antiquated charm of letters filtered for the post-post-modern generation, he writes entertaining and challenging essays that lets us peek behind the lacquered veneer of modern society to get a feel for what it is that we don't realize we have forgotten. He is certainly not for everyone, but a "fascist racist sexist anti-Christ" he is decidedly not.
Seriously, any interest I've ever had in whatever he's talking about has been stymied by his lack of concision, even simple methods like the pyramid style which allows for the full treatment. When this blew up I tried reading, then skimming the Carlyle essay, couldn't make myself (and I am somewhat interested in learning about political philosophies I'm not yet familiar with, and of course the peculiar institution is a very important thing to those of us in the US). A bit like the Wheel of Time when the plot stopped.
In contrast, I devoured the full UR archives over the course of a couple weeks. In this context, his verbosity is a feature, not a bug, because it's people like me Moldbug was trying to reach.
I never claimed it was a wikipedia entry. Just that if you were interested in what the views expressed by neoreactionaries were, here's one source I read about it.
And? The question is not "how fringe is Yarvin's politics," the question is "does the fact that he has fringe politics mean he should be kicked out of a conference where he would not be speaking about politics."
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/neoreactionaries....
The crux of it (and something I never saw quite covered in all the essays bouncing around) is
"Essentially, neoreaction is the dream of a society of mostly white people, living in a hierarchy based both on group membership (aristocratic lineage, gender, race) and individual ability (IQ). The neoreactionaries do not demand total racial purity. But many seem to think that if multiple races live in the same country, the races should be placed in a hierarchy of power, status, and freedom, apparently based on the average IQ of their racial group. Since the movement is about European traditionalism, it's not clear whether white people would be given a special place in the hierarchy, even above those groups whose average IQ is higher than that of whites.
As for women, many neoreactionaries appear to want them to return to traditional social roles - homemaking and child-rearing - and to submit more willingly to the sexual desires of men. Finally, there is some sense that within these group boundaries, the neoreactionaries might want a limited meritocracy - in other words, maybe the smart should rule. However, some neoreactionaries (particularly Anissimov) praise the idea of aristocracy, apparently believing that naturally superior people would manage to win the titles of nobility, and that their descendants would remain superior.
In other words, the neoreactionaries want the West to be a lot like the Ming Dynasty, but for white people. I've often thought of Europe as "the China that never quite made it"; neoreaction seems like the latest manifestation of a dream that refuses to die. "