The Dark Enlightenment

This post at vocative.com (which Southern Man cannot recommend because they require you to log in through Facebook or Twitter to leave comments) provides a dire warning about the "creepy" new Internet movement known as Dark Enlightenment, who are supposedly neo-anarchists eagerly awaiting the fall of Western Civilization or something like that. At any rate they provide a convenient graphic of the bloggers who exemplify this extremest viewpoint.

Southern Man is eclectic and there's not really a section in the Dark Enlightment for "people who post pictures of their family and friends" but put him somewhere between "Christian Traditionalist" and "Masculinity" and not too far from "HBD." Just above Education Realist will be fine.

The names look rather like Southern Man's blogroll, don't they? And this map it will look even more like Southern Man's blogroll when he goes through the ones he's not familiar with and evaluates them as blogroll-worthy, which will save you the time of trying to root them out yourself. In the meantime here's a rough overview of this map of the Dark Enlightenment...

Naturally we must kick off our discussion of this creepy new Internet movement with the Christian Traditionalists, who desire a return to the clear and plain teachings of the Holy Bible and despair at the watered-down, non-judgemental, prosperity-centric feel-good message of today's commercialized and feminized church. Wow, that's really creepy. Southern Man is even now working up a fairly scathing series of posts in this area (concerning the watered-down, non-judgemental, prosperity-centric part, not the creepy part).

The Femininity bloggers are, by and large, married anti-feminist women who assert that a return to traditional relationships and gender roles is best for both men and women. Many are Christian and advocate scripture-based relationships; for example, SSM (who isn't on the chart but should be) would be on the bridge between Christian Traditionalists and Femininity.

The Masculinity bloggers also advocate a return to traditional roles and opine that the best road to a rich, full life is through self-improvement (with focus on diet, exercise, acquisition of skill and knowledge, and passion about what you do) and that the best way to attract and hold a good woman is through understanding how women actually view men and relationships (as opposed to what they say) and acting accordingly. The "Red Pill" meme is a constant theme among the latter group. The far edge of Masculinity are the PUA bloggers (e.g. Roosh) who focus on little more than casual sex but often provide keen insight into relationship issues and personal growth; Roosh himself is an advocate of learning foreign languages as an expression of self-improvement. The MGTOW and paleo movements are offshoots of Masculinity.

The Human Bio-Diversity (HBD) crowd states the obvious: there are measurable, quantifiable differences between both the sexes and the races. Naturally they're all a bunch of doubleplusungood sexist rascist bigoted thoughtcriminals. The chart correctly places Chateau Heartiste between Masculinity and HBD but Southern Man would move him up near Taki as CH also touches on Political Philosophy and Economics.

The Economists who can actually do math realize that the out-of-control spending, endless borrowing, and burgeoning welfare states of the Western nations will come to an ugly end, probably sooner rather than later, and discuss not so much how to stop it (many hold that we've already gone over the cliff and are just waiting to hit the ground) as much as how to survive in the coming brave new world of economic and social collapse. Southern Man was led to this map by Captain Capitalism happily crowing about his inclusion in the Dark Enlightenment; his book Enjoy The Decline is an extreme but lucid view of how to weather the oncoming storm.

The Techno-Commercialists and Futurists (Instapundit is a glaring omission here) take a more optimistic view: that capitalism, free markets, and emerging technologies will overcome the lethargy, inefficiency, and stagnation of the State and usher in a new techno-centric world in which goods and services are plentiful and cheap. But Southern Man sees a dark side here - a growing pool of young men who won't ever find jobs as unskilled labor is replaced by automation and technology.

And that takes us around to the Political Philosophers and Secular Traditionalists and Ethno-Nationalists, with whom Southern Man is less familiar (although he does read Derbyshire, whose views are frequently discussed by others on the blogroll) but he will visit them and add those as he sees fit.

Dark Enlightment, eh? To Southern Man they look more like people with clear minds and open eyes. He would be pleased to be named among them.