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Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right
Librarian Note: This is the updated cover for ASIN B0782JDGVQ
On the ugly fringes of the Internet lurks the future of far-right jerks. They are called “neoreactionaries” or, more fancifully, the “Dark Enlightenment,” a term coined by Nick Land, an expatriate British exacademic philosopher cyberpunk horror writer whose unexpected turn towards far-right politics electrified a bunch of people on Reddit. He was inspired by the works of Mencius Moldbug, a pseudonymous blogger famed for calling for Steve Jobs to be made king of California and tasked with maximizing profit for the state, and also for claiming that black people make good slaves. Moldbug is more usually known as Curtis Yarvin, a Bay Area software engineer who got his start as a writer in the comment section of Overcoming Bias, a transhumanist blog featuring, among others, the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a crank AI scholar who thinks preventing his ideas for sci-fi novels from becoming reality is more important than preventing malaria, and who freaked out once when a computer program from the future threatened to hurt him. The confluence of these facts may or may not be the doom of humanity. And just wait til we work in Thomas Ligotti, Alan Turing, William Blake, Frantz Fanon, China Miéville, and Hannibal Lecter.
Neoreaction a Basilisk is a work of theoretical philosophy about the tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe. It is a horror novel written in the form of a lengthy Internet comment. A savage journey to the heart of the present eschaton. A Dear John letter to western civilization written from the garden of madman philosophers. A textual labyrinth winding towards a monster that I promise will not turn out to be ourselves all along or any crap like that.
On the ugly fringes of the Internet lurks the future of far-right jerks. They are called “neoreactionaries” or, more fancifully, the “Dark Enlightenment,” a term coined by Nick Land, an expatriate British exacademic philosopher cyberpunk horror writer whose unexpected turn towards far-right politics electrified a bunch of people on Reddit. He was inspired by the works of Mencius Moldbug, a pseudonymous blogger famed for calling for Steve Jobs to be made king of California and tasked with maximizing profit for the state, and also for claiming that black people make good slaves. Moldbug is more usually known as Curtis Yarvin, a Bay Area software engineer who got his start as a writer in the comment section of Overcoming Bias, a transhumanist blog featuring, among others, the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a crank AI scholar who thinks preventing his ideas for sci-fi novels from becoming reality is more important than preventing malaria, and who freaked out once when a computer program from the future threatened to hurt him. The confluence of these facts may or may not be the doom of humanity. And just wait til we work in Thomas Ligotti, Alan Turing, William Blake, Frantz Fanon, China Miéville, and Hannibal Lecter.
Neoreaction a Basilisk is a work of theoretical philosophy about the tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe. It is a horror novel written in the form of a lengthy Internet comment. A savage journey to the heart of the present eschaton. A Dear John letter to western civilization written from the garden of madman philosophers. A textual labyrinth winding towards a monster that I promise will not turn out to be ourselves all along or any crap like that.
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 24, 2016
About the author
Elizabeth Sandifer
23 books79 followersNote: This author previously published under the name Philip Sandifer.
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December 12, 2017
Since the book is now available to buy in full version (i.e. with additional essays), I’m expanding my review a bit.
Note: I read some of the essays in early versions.
Neoreaction a Basilisk is an incisive and funny look at various strands of the alt-right and some adjacent topics (like TERFs), that at the same time asks questions about the strategies the left should adopt in the face of reactionary backlash and the spectre of the climate change-caused crisis (or possibly extinction).
The main essay is an analysis of three thinkers that were influential in neoreactionary circles: Nick Land, Mencious Moldbug, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, but its second half becomes the cornerstone of Sandifer’s own proposals of what to do in the face of the fact that “we are fucked”, stressing, among other things, the radical potential of empathy.
The second one deals with Gamergate, starting with Sandifer’s sometime nemesis, Vox Day, and tracing the lies that became the foundation of this movement.
“Theses on a President” is a psychogeographic look at Trump, looking at where he grew up and how he made his fortune, and through that it becomes a cosmic horror story of a man who sacrificed his humanity for the appearance of power. This (along with John Higgs’ book on KLF) is one of the best examples of a genre I like to call “occult biography”, but it can also be read as a great lovecraftian story.
The essay on Austrian School (co-written with Jack Graham) offers a Marxist analysis and rebuke of libertarian thought, demonstrating how limited their conception of freedom really is. It’s a great read even before the authors bring up Erich Fromm.
The essays about lizard people might be my least favourite, probably because the nominal subject matter lacks the urgency of the rest of the collection, but it’s still very good and offers some interesting insight into the mentality of conspiracy theorists.
The TERF essay, on the other hand, might be my favourite. It offers an interesting explanation of why trans rights became such a focal point (and a point of contention) for the general movement for minority rights, points to the history of trans activism that the gay rights movement frequently tries to suppress, and then reaches for the writings of one of the trans-exclusionary radical feminists, Mary Daly, to show why transness is a vital category for leftist thinking in general.
The closing essay focuses on Peter Thiel and serves as a summation of the books argument against the alt-right.
Overall, it’s worth a read even if you’re not necessarily keen on delving into all the horrors that surround us (who could blame you?). Sandifer’s book is very, very funny, offers convincing take-downs of the ideas and people it takes on, and the constructs its own ideas about what we should do about all that, offering a glimmer of grim hope. We will be back; they can’t bury us forever.
Note: I read some of the essays in early versions.
Neoreaction a Basilisk is an incisive and funny look at various strands of the alt-right and some adjacent topics (like TERFs), that at the same time asks questions about the strategies the left should adopt in the face of reactionary backlash and the spectre of the climate change-caused crisis (or possibly extinction).
The main essay is an analysis of three thinkers that were influential in neoreactionary circles: Nick Land, Mencious Moldbug, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, but its second half becomes the cornerstone of Sandifer’s own proposals of what to do in the face of the fact that “we are fucked”, stressing, among other things, the radical potential of empathy.
The second one deals with Gamergate, starting with Sandifer’s sometime nemesis, Vox Day, and tracing the lies that became the foundation of this movement.
“Theses on a President” is a psychogeographic look at Trump, looking at where he grew up and how he made his fortune, and through that it becomes a cosmic horror story of a man who sacrificed his humanity for the appearance of power. This (along with John Higgs’ book on KLF) is one of the best examples of a genre I like to call “occult biography”, but it can also be read as a great lovecraftian story.
The essay on Austrian School (co-written with Jack Graham) offers a Marxist analysis and rebuke of libertarian thought, demonstrating how limited their conception of freedom really is. It’s a great read even before the authors bring up Erich Fromm.
The essays about lizard people might be my least favourite, probably because the nominal subject matter lacks the urgency of the rest of the collection, but it’s still very good and offers some interesting insight into the mentality of conspiracy theorists.
The TERF essay, on the other hand, might be my favourite. It offers an interesting explanation of why trans rights became such a focal point (and a point of contention) for the general movement for minority rights, points to the history of trans activism that the gay rights movement frequently tries to suppress, and then reaches for the writings of one of the trans-exclusionary radical feminists, Mary Daly, to show why transness is a vital category for leftist thinking in general.
The closing essay focuses on Peter Thiel and serves as a summation of the books argument against the alt-right.
Overall, it’s worth a read even if you’re not necessarily keen on delving into all the horrors that surround us (who could blame you?). Sandifer’s book is very, very funny, offers convincing take-downs of the ideas and people it takes on, and the constructs its own ideas about what we should do about all that, offering a glimmer of grim hope. We will be back; they can’t bury us forever.
Read
August 21, 2016Sandifer's counterblast against three alt-right thinkers as curious as they are dispiriting - Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug and Eliezer Yudkowsky. Now, you might notice that none of those names is especially famous, and as such it's debatable whether there was really any need for "a horror novel written in the form of a lengthy Internet comment"* taking them down. Indeed, perhaps the only things crazier than refuting these nutjobs at this length are, in order:
1) Being one of said nutjobs.
2) Being a disciple of said nutjobs.
3) Crowdfunding this lengthy refutation of said nutjobs.
And given 3) covers me, I can't really judge. But...it's Sandifer. And while I never entirely took to his core project, the TARDIS Eruditorum, the more out-there he gets the more I enjoy his stuff (consider the one previous book of his I've read and loved, Recursive Occlusion, which is the Kabbalah interpreted as a gloss on Doctor Who and vice versa, in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure book). And yes, this is fascinating and sometimes hilarious, thought-provoking in many places (linking the reading of Milton which interprets all speech as sin to Ligotti's post-Lovecraft notion of consciousness as the blind cosmos' great crime against us; an exploration of Blake's tangled cosmology which suggests it might yet be ripe for reappropriation and expansion), flat wrong in others (when Sandifer says "The one thing European culture is unique in never having experienced is being taken over by an outside culture" - well, even before I consider whether that doesn't rather take as read the answer to the vexed question of whether or not Russia counts as European, the first thing I thought was, what about Bhutan?). But a big part of what makes it so interesting is, in a sense, the narcissism of small differences. Obviously Sandifer is very different in some ways to these three stooges - he's not attempting to find new pseudo-rational justifications for racism and monarchism, or setting up nightmarish new variants of Pascal's Wager in which an evil AI comes back from the future to get you. But he does accept as a given that "we are fucked", and he does harbour grave doubts about the ultimate merits of liberal democracy as currently practised/travestied, and he's not even too sure that sentient life is worthwhile. Which means he's not picking his unholy trinity apart from any stating-the-bloody-obvious perspective of them being big meanies and somewhat mental to boot; he's really digging into the nuts and bolts of why they're so thoroughly wrong. Which, so help me, is exactly the sort of thing I find entertaining.
*This description is also a very wily get-out for the many infuriating editing errors which litter the text.
1) Being one of said nutjobs.
2) Being a disciple of said nutjobs.
3) Crowdfunding this lengthy refutation of said nutjobs.
And given 3) covers me, I can't really judge. But...it's Sandifer. And while I never entirely took to his core project, the TARDIS Eruditorum, the more out-there he gets the more I enjoy his stuff (consider the one previous book of his I've read and loved, Recursive Occlusion, which is the Kabbalah interpreted as a gloss on Doctor Who and vice versa, in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure book). And yes, this is fascinating and sometimes hilarious, thought-provoking in many places (linking the reading of Milton which interprets all speech as sin to Ligotti's post-Lovecraft notion of consciousness as the blind cosmos' great crime against us; an exploration of Blake's tangled cosmology which suggests it might yet be ripe for reappropriation and expansion), flat wrong in others (when Sandifer says "The one thing European culture is unique in never having experienced is being taken over by an outside culture" - well, even before I consider whether that doesn't rather take as read the answer to the vexed question of whether or not Russia counts as European, the first thing I thought was, what about Bhutan?). But a big part of what makes it so interesting is, in a sense, the narcissism of small differences. Obviously Sandifer is very different in some ways to these three stooges - he's not attempting to find new pseudo-rational justifications for racism and monarchism, or setting up nightmarish new variants of Pascal's Wager in which an evil AI comes back from the future to get you. But he does accept as a given that "we are fucked", and he does harbour grave doubts about the ultimate merits of liberal democracy as currently practised/travestied, and he's not even too sure that sentient life is worthwhile. Which means he's not picking his unholy trinity apart from any stating-the-bloody-obvious perspective of them being big meanies and somewhat mental to boot; he's really digging into the nuts and bolts of why they're so thoroughly wrong. Which, so help me, is exactly the sort of thing I find entertaining.
*This description is also a very wily get-out for the many infuriating editing errors which litter the text.
December 13, 2017
Review is of the Kickstarter edition from last year. This version has MORE content and has been through an additional round of edits, so it's probably even better :)
Let’s start by admitting I’m out of my depth here. According to the Kickstarter that funded this book, “Neoreaction a Basilisk is a work of theoretical philosophy about the tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe.” To say I am under qualified to talk about this book would be somewhat of an understatement. On the other hand, the KS also describes this book as “A book of horror philosophy about the end of the world, the alt-right, and an AI from the future that wants to torture you. Yes, you.” Which is the sound of the train slowing down just enough for me to risk jumping on board, I guess, though there’s every chance I will go kersplat in the attempt.
Still, let’s risk it.
I’m familiar with Dr. Sandifer’s work via his TARDIS Eruditorum blog, primarily - a project that watched every single Doctor Who TV story in existence, in order, and wrote about them, though it also encompassed far more than that - in fact, it told the history of British culture from 1963 to the present with Doctor Who as it’s chosen lens, basically. And as a Who fan, that’s always going to be catnip to me, basically. Sandifer covers, as you might fairly expect, a lot of ground in that project, but for my money, his writing was never finer, sharper, or more insightful than when he was taking on the subject of bullies.
Dr Sandifer really, really doesn’t like bullies.
Take, for example, this piece on Mary Whitehouse - in my opinion, the most brilliant and concise response to that campaigner, and the movements she represented, of any I’ve seen before or since. Notice too that this hits on an area of writing I will always find powerful - a fusion of the utterly and deeply personal with an understanding of wider political context and structures, and how the two relate. Also, anger. Because in the context of writing, anger is a gift.
So it may not come as a galloping shock to discover that Dr. S is also not a big fan of the Rabid Puppies hijacking of the Hugos. Because, well, bullies. To that end, he’s written what I again consider to be the best single post on this matter last year, in an essay called ‘Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons’ which I named as my non-fiction essay of 2015. And he’s since demolished Rabid Puppy founder Vox Day in a one on one debate concerning the relative merits of John C. Wright’s ‘One Bright Star To Guide Them’ and Iain Banks ‘The Wasp Factory', with Dr. S having the admittedly easier task of arguing in support of the book that isn’t god-awful (which, good job selling Vox on that).
Sidebar: To my mind the most telling exchange in that debate comes when, in the context of discussing notions of skepticism as relates to religious ‘truths’ Mr. Day says, with an apparently straight face ‘But Phil, you shouldn’t be skeptical about 2 + 2, should you?’. It’s a moment of such gobsmacking stupidity that Dr. S can be heard audibly floundering for a response, and I tragically cannot be heard yelling at the top of my lungs ‘you can be skeptical as you like about 2 + 2, and IT STILL WORKS! That’s the point of an ACTUAL truth, you idiot!’. I’m sure you had your own reason why that was a mind numbingly stupid statement, of course. You kind of have to admire an ability to be wrong on that many levels with that few words.
Anyhow, between the essay and subsequent podcast debate, Dr. S was well and truly on the radar of some fairly objectionable people - GamerGaters, Rabid Puppies, and the hulking trolls of the alt right and neoreaction in general. Whilst Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons eventually made it into book form as part of an essay collection at the end of 2015, I’d always suspected the alt right might be a subject Dr. S would return to, given his personal and political opposition to everything they stand for.
Which leads us, a mere 650 words after I began, to Neoreaction A Basilisk.
And the first thing to note is that Vox and the Puppies are entirely absent from this book. I mean, if you’re familiar with the arguments, and with Vox’s backstory, there’s a couple of deep-cut references that will raise a smile, but that’s not the primary focus of the book. Rather the book focuses on the writers and thinkers that Dr. S identifies as the key intellectuals behind the current Alt Right philosophy: namely, Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, and Eliezer Yudkowsky (the latter, just to be clear, emphatically not an alt.right thinker, but whose work heavily influenced the thinking of the other two).
So, critical disclaimer time: I’m not familiar with any of the source material here at all. This review will not speak to the veracity of the claims Dr. S makes about these thinkers. It can’t. I can’t. I don’t know. If you have a view on that, fine, and feel free to write in, but understand that I will not have a clue what you are talking about and won’t be able to make a determination either way as to the veracity of either your claims or Sandifer’s.
Of course, there’s a way in which that makes me, if not an ideal reader, at least firmly part of the intended target audience. Dr S has repeatedly stated that you don’t need to know the source material in order to enjoy the book, and indeed has repeatedly advised against reading Moldbug, as it’s (in Sandifer’s opinion) irredeemably awful writing (which, on the strength of the provided excerpts, I’d be inclined to believe him on).
What this book is - or at least, appeared to me to be at first - is a takedown of the alt.right based on the philosophy that you shouldn’t attack your enemy where he is weakest (like, say, at the point of some third-rate-thinker-if-first-rate-self-publicist like Vox Day) but instead go to where he is strongest, the intellectual bedrock, and start there. Again, I can’t speak to whether or not these chosen thinkers fit that bill, but the extracted arguments certainly indicate a level of thought that your average VD type is simply incapable of reaching.
What Dr. S then does is deploy other, existing thinkers/modes of approach to demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in each of the founding principles of these philosophies. If that sentence just gave you a headache, honestly, I don’t blame you - it’s giving me one, and I wrote it. But here’s the thing - it bloody works. Dr. S has an amazing gift for rendering complex and sophisticated arguments and propositions in an immediately readable and understandable way, deploying metaphor, unpacking terminology, and adding humor to expert effect. You really don’t need to know anything about philosophy (I basically don’t) to not just follow the conversation, but be entertained by it.
And of course, he also employs horror philosophy as part of his argument, which is why we're talking about this book here. Specifically, he talks about Hannibalism (which attempts to construct a working philosophical approach based on a close read of the recent three season run of ‘Hannibal’, which is as deliciously deranged as you’d expect) and the work of Thomas Ligotti, especially his non-fiction book ‘The Conspiracy Against The Human Race’, which if you’re anything like me you’ll know about primarily because all the best lines that Matthew Mcconaughey’s character Rust Cohle had in True Detective season 1 got ripped off from there (and if you already knew that, more power to you).
It’s dense, literate, intelligent stuff, but I reiterate it’s also brilliantly readable. Even when he goes into his inevitable Blake riff (Dr. S is a huge Blake fan, and it’s something of an in-joke at this point that any project of any size he writes about will end up having a Blake section), the explanations and inferences are crystal clear, and it all serves the overarching thrust of the piece. Similarly, his deployment of Ligotti vs. Land I found genuinely unnerving, as the scale and depth of Ligotti’s nihilism threatens to overwhelm not just Land, but everything else, too.
As to the wider horror context, it’s like this: The alt.right scare me. Gamergate as a movement troubles me. Vox Day doesn’t scare me… but the fact that he and his little gang have kids definitely does. Tribal hatreds are viral in nature, transmitted across generations, and while I’d argue our societal immune systems have never been stronger than they are right now, the fact remains these strains are still stubborn and pervasive. I’ll never not be a free speecher, but equally I therefore see it as an obligation to exercise free speech against toxic ideas and arguments. To, not to put too fine a point on it, argue with and against bullies.
This is my design, be it ever so humble and flawed and compromised.
So the notion of a book that attacks the foundational texts of those movements, and even more, in part deploys horror fiction and philosophy to do it was always going to appeal to me. And for my money, Dr. S is always at his best when he is employing his considerable intellect, powers of argument, and yes, most of all his passionate anger, in the service of delivering bullies an intellectual kicking.
Ultimately though, that ends up not being precisely what this book is about. Or at least not the full scope of it. And I have to be honest, the end of the piece plain got away from me, as I suspected it might (as, I further suspect, it may even have been intended to). Kersplat, in other words.
But what a damn ride!
So in closing, if this has piqued your interest, I feel pretty safe in saying this is probably something you need in your life. It’s an exhilarating, intellectually stimulating, and yeah, disturbing read.
Let’s start by admitting I’m out of my depth here. According to the Kickstarter that funded this book, “Neoreaction a Basilisk is a work of theoretical philosophy about the tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe.” To say I am under qualified to talk about this book would be somewhat of an understatement. On the other hand, the KS also describes this book as “A book of horror philosophy about the end of the world, the alt-right, and an AI from the future that wants to torture you. Yes, you.” Which is the sound of the train slowing down just enough for me to risk jumping on board, I guess, though there’s every chance I will go kersplat in the attempt.
Still, let’s risk it.
I’m familiar with Dr. Sandifer’s work via his TARDIS Eruditorum blog, primarily - a project that watched every single Doctor Who TV story in existence, in order, and wrote about them, though it also encompassed far more than that - in fact, it told the history of British culture from 1963 to the present with Doctor Who as it’s chosen lens, basically. And as a Who fan, that’s always going to be catnip to me, basically. Sandifer covers, as you might fairly expect, a lot of ground in that project, but for my money, his writing was never finer, sharper, or more insightful than when he was taking on the subject of bullies.
Dr Sandifer really, really doesn’t like bullies.
Take, for example, this piece on Mary Whitehouse - in my opinion, the most brilliant and concise response to that campaigner, and the movements she represented, of any I’ve seen before or since. Notice too that this hits on an area of writing I will always find powerful - a fusion of the utterly and deeply personal with an understanding of wider political context and structures, and how the two relate. Also, anger. Because in the context of writing, anger is a gift.
So it may not come as a galloping shock to discover that Dr. S is also not a big fan of the Rabid Puppies hijacking of the Hugos. Because, well, bullies. To that end, he’s written what I again consider to be the best single post on this matter last year, in an essay called ‘Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons’ which I named as my non-fiction essay of 2015. And he’s since demolished Rabid Puppy founder Vox Day in a one on one debate concerning the relative merits of John C. Wright’s ‘One Bright Star To Guide Them’ and Iain Banks ‘The Wasp Factory', with Dr. S having the admittedly easier task of arguing in support of the book that isn’t god-awful (which, good job selling Vox on that).
Sidebar: To my mind the most telling exchange in that debate comes when, in the context of discussing notions of skepticism as relates to religious ‘truths’ Mr. Day says, with an apparently straight face ‘But Phil, you shouldn’t be skeptical about 2 + 2, should you?’. It’s a moment of such gobsmacking stupidity that Dr. S can be heard audibly floundering for a response, and I tragically cannot be heard yelling at the top of my lungs ‘you can be skeptical as you like about 2 + 2, and IT STILL WORKS! That’s the point of an ACTUAL truth, you idiot!’. I’m sure you had your own reason why that was a mind numbingly stupid statement, of course. You kind of have to admire an ability to be wrong on that many levels with that few words.
Anyhow, between the essay and subsequent podcast debate, Dr. S was well and truly on the radar of some fairly objectionable people - GamerGaters, Rabid Puppies, and the hulking trolls of the alt right and neoreaction in general. Whilst Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons eventually made it into book form as part of an essay collection at the end of 2015, I’d always suspected the alt right might be a subject Dr. S would return to, given his personal and political opposition to everything they stand for.
Which leads us, a mere 650 words after I began, to Neoreaction A Basilisk.
And the first thing to note is that Vox and the Puppies are entirely absent from this book. I mean, if you’re familiar with the arguments, and with Vox’s backstory, there’s a couple of deep-cut references that will raise a smile, but that’s not the primary focus of the book. Rather the book focuses on the writers and thinkers that Dr. S identifies as the key intellectuals behind the current Alt Right philosophy: namely, Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, and Eliezer Yudkowsky (the latter, just to be clear, emphatically not an alt.right thinker, but whose work heavily influenced the thinking of the other two).
So, critical disclaimer time: I’m not familiar with any of the source material here at all. This review will not speak to the veracity of the claims Dr. S makes about these thinkers. It can’t. I can’t. I don’t know. If you have a view on that, fine, and feel free to write in, but understand that I will not have a clue what you are talking about and won’t be able to make a determination either way as to the veracity of either your claims or Sandifer’s.
Of course, there’s a way in which that makes me, if not an ideal reader, at least firmly part of the intended target audience. Dr S has repeatedly stated that you don’t need to know the source material in order to enjoy the book, and indeed has repeatedly advised against reading Moldbug, as it’s (in Sandifer’s opinion) irredeemably awful writing (which, on the strength of the provided excerpts, I’d be inclined to believe him on).
What this book is - or at least, appeared to me to be at first - is a takedown of the alt.right based on the philosophy that you shouldn’t attack your enemy where he is weakest (like, say, at the point of some third-rate-thinker-if-first-rate-self-publicist like Vox Day) but instead go to where he is strongest, the intellectual bedrock, and start there. Again, I can’t speak to whether or not these chosen thinkers fit that bill, but the extracted arguments certainly indicate a level of thought that your average VD type is simply incapable of reaching.
What Dr. S then does is deploy other, existing thinkers/modes of approach to demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in each of the founding principles of these philosophies. If that sentence just gave you a headache, honestly, I don’t blame you - it’s giving me one, and I wrote it. But here’s the thing - it bloody works. Dr. S has an amazing gift for rendering complex and sophisticated arguments and propositions in an immediately readable and understandable way, deploying metaphor, unpacking terminology, and adding humor to expert effect. You really don’t need to know anything about philosophy (I basically don’t) to not just follow the conversation, but be entertained by it.
And of course, he also employs horror philosophy as part of his argument, which is why we're talking about this book here. Specifically, he talks about Hannibalism (which attempts to construct a working philosophical approach based on a close read of the recent three season run of ‘Hannibal’, which is as deliciously deranged as you’d expect) and the work of Thomas Ligotti, especially his non-fiction book ‘The Conspiracy Against The Human Race’, which if you’re anything like me you’ll know about primarily because all the best lines that Matthew Mcconaughey’s character Rust Cohle had in True Detective season 1 got ripped off from there (and if you already knew that, more power to you).
It’s dense, literate, intelligent stuff, but I reiterate it’s also brilliantly readable. Even when he goes into his inevitable Blake riff (Dr. S is a huge Blake fan, and it’s something of an in-joke at this point that any project of any size he writes about will end up having a Blake section), the explanations and inferences are crystal clear, and it all serves the overarching thrust of the piece. Similarly, his deployment of Ligotti vs. Land I found genuinely unnerving, as the scale and depth of Ligotti’s nihilism threatens to overwhelm not just Land, but everything else, too.
As to the wider horror context, it’s like this: The alt.right scare me. Gamergate as a movement troubles me. Vox Day doesn’t scare me… but the fact that he and his little gang have kids definitely does. Tribal hatreds are viral in nature, transmitted across generations, and while I’d argue our societal immune systems have never been stronger than they are right now, the fact remains these strains are still stubborn and pervasive. I’ll never not be a free speecher, but equally I therefore see it as an obligation to exercise free speech against toxic ideas and arguments. To, not to put too fine a point on it, argue with and against bullies.
This is my design, be it ever so humble and flawed and compromised.
So the notion of a book that attacks the foundational texts of those movements, and even more, in part deploys horror fiction and philosophy to do it was always going to appeal to me. And for my money, Dr. S is always at his best when he is employing his considerable intellect, powers of argument, and yes, most of all his passionate anger, in the service of delivering bullies an intellectual kicking.
Ultimately though, that ends up not being precisely what this book is about. Or at least not the full scope of it. And I have to be honest, the end of the piece plain got away from me, as I suspected it might (as, I further suspect, it may even have been intended to). Kersplat, in other words.
But what a damn ride!
So in closing, if this has piqued your interest, I feel pretty safe in saying this is probably something you need in your life. It’s an exhilarating, intellectually stimulating, and yeah, disturbing read.
August 9, 2018
This book is an interesting document from a larger internet nerd fight. I don't recommend it as a clear explanation of the alt-right. it does provide a detailed close-reading of three major neo-reactionary figures, and a smack-down of racist paleo-libertarians, with connections to longer intellectual traditions. However, the writing style, a kind of ongoing performance of intellectual pwnage, makes the book harder to read than it needs to be. At times, the readings seem more aimed at ridiculing the book's subjects than explaining their ideas or why anyone would believe them. This can be satisfying on one level, which may be why the chapter on Trump works - because we are inundated with information about him all the time and don't need a basic explanation of who he is or what he's about. In the end, for me the snarky style became tedious and undermined the book's stated purpose.
March 30, 2021
I picked this one up on the strength of the author's essay dissecting Scott Alexander's writing style, which made the internet rounds a bit ago (and if you don't know who I'm talking about here, you definitely shouldn't read this). It was cool to see some of the "here is how you can take a nothing non-argument and make people feel like they're very smart and thoughtful for reading it" tricks laid bare. I like to read about nerd fights and I wanted more.
Unfortunately, the title essay was impenetrable. Not because there was too much academic jargon or arcane blog references; it was just too disorganized to keep track of what was going on. I suppose in a different setting I could have nodded along at the paragraph level and come away with the feeling that I had been very smart and thoughtful, comparing people who write shitty blogs on the internet to Milton, but eh.
Couldn't bring myself to wade through the rest of the essays either. Do you, a person who is alive in the year of our lord 2021 and presumably not yet writing a history PhD about Gamergate, really want to read someone's line by line analysis of a blog entry from 2014? You absolutely do not.
Unfortunately, the title essay was impenetrable. Not because there was too much academic jargon or arcane blog references; it was just too disorganized to keep track of what was going on. I suppose in a different setting I could have nodded along at the paragraph level and come away with the feeling that I had been very smart and thoughtful, comparing people who write shitty blogs on the internet to Milton, but eh.
Couldn't bring myself to wade through the rest of the essays either. Do you, a person who is alive in the year of our lord 2021 and presumably not yet writing a history PhD about Gamergate, really want to read someone's line by line analysis of a blog entry from 2014? You absolutely do not.
August 10, 2016
An overview of the creepy and insurgent Neoreaction movement, through an analysis of, according to the author, its three largest influences: British philosopher Nick Land, online essayist Mencius Moldbug and, surprisingly, technologist and ultra-"rationalist" Eliezer Yudkowsky. It is a rollicking argument that jumps from AI researchers to white supremacists to horror writers to William Blake. It helps connect the dots between techno-futurism and anti-democracy advocacy, between Satan myths and racism. It reads more like a cultural roller coaster -- or eloquent hundred page comment thread -- than a super clear and organized, point-by-point argument, but, as a jumping off point to get you thinking about these insurgent trends, it does the trick. If you are interested in a literary introduction -- with a sharp point of view -- to a dark corner of the alt-right politics fermenting online these days, this might be worth checking out.
April 12, 2017
A complete mess, but my kind of complete mess.
February 12, 2018
It says something about the state of play that the best book-length treatment of the altright qua altright that I have yet found was published online and written by a man best known for blogging endlessly about the television shows “Dr. Who” and “Hannibal.” But here we are!
Sandifer, a prolific blogger who operates in the space between nerd culture, Marxism, critical theory, and the occult, dives deep and wanders far. The bulk of the book is his grapple with the “neoreactionaries” or “dark enlightenment.” People on this end of the altright are blog-bound and unlikely to wind up in the streets wearing a softball helmet, but also the closest you get to an intellectual vanguard for the altright as a whole. He focuses on three figures: software engineer-cum-white nationalist monarchist Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin, former leftish critical theorist and current whacked-out prophet of fascist techno-apocalypse Nick Land, and a third figure who arguably doesn’t belong- AI blogger Eliezer Yudkowsky, who isn’t an open bigot or fascist but who does share certain elements of the neoreactionary imagination. Namely, all three produce works that could be understood as horror texts, both in terms of the feelings that produced them and the feelings they induce in others (including believers). Sandifer closely reads all three with a profoundly skeptical eye but a participatory spirit. Beyond the horror-show posturing, Sandifer tries to bring out the real weirdness, the Deleuzean “monster offspring” that lingers behind the (anti-)heroic fantasies and feverish system-building, and finds…
Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. He does something like a thirty page disquistion on Blake’s visionary poems (and before then loops in a number of other theorists, such as Frantz Fanon, Thomas Ligotti, and the aforementioned Gilles Deleuze) and god help me I lost track of what he was saying, and even looking at it again, still can’t tell. Sandifer clearly comes from the same whacked-out online horror/theory/geek-culture place that Land and to a lesser extent the others come from. “Send a maniac to catch a maniac,” as it’s said in scifi classic probably a little too basic for our boy. I’m fine with maniacs — some of my best friends, etc. — but it could use some editing, is all I’m saying.
As best I can make out, his conclusion is something like the following. If there’s one thing that freaks all three of his subjects out (with the possible exception of Land, the smartest of the lot, who might just be doing an elaborate bit) it’s the fear of infection by the Other and the collapse of established categories. They want the future but they don’t want it to be weird, or rather they want it weird in a way they can control. They’re not going to get their wish, Sandifer tells us. The general fucked-ness of the future means that they can’t control it any more than the rest of us can, and their brittleness won’t be an asset- isn’t, now. Whereas understandings based on radical empathy have proven to be considerably more resilient… though it might still not be enough.
Fair enough, but the whole thing could be clearer. As I hope the preceding indicated, it’s less that Sandifer winds up going down rabbit holes so much as the whole book is rabbit holes, and I get the idea Sandifer wouldn’t want it any other way. That’s fine; admirable in certain respects, even. You learn a lot, about the specific altright people he deals with (he does a similar, if much shorter, type of existential alley-oop with gamergaters, Austrian economics, TERFs, etc) and about all kinds of random stuff. He’s discursive, chatty even. It’s fun and reasonably quotable but not necessarily the most usable text in the world. And it’s notable that beyond a chapter on Trump, he sticks to the most Extremely Online portions of the altright spectrum. These are interesting to me but I find things get clearer and more grounded (and more interesting, for my money) when you bring things offline a little. But I don’t think Sandifer wants clear and grounded. This can be frustrating.
Still- at least here we have a work that takes the altright seriously as a subject of analysis. Much of the rest of the long-form writing on the subject essentially uses it as an occasion or frame for inter-left axe-grinding, or as an example or test-case for some other set of ideas. This proceeds in a spirit — a surfeit, if anything — of intellectual daring and passionate engagement. We need that, as well as rigor and a useful political analysis, to meet our weird, probably bad, future. ***’
https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...
Sandifer, a prolific blogger who operates in the space between nerd culture, Marxism, critical theory, and the occult, dives deep and wanders far. The bulk of the book is his grapple with the “neoreactionaries” or “dark enlightenment.” People on this end of the altright are blog-bound and unlikely to wind up in the streets wearing a softball helmet, but also the closest you get to an intellectual vanguard for the altright as a whole. He focuses on three figures: software engineer-cum-white nationalist monarchist Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin, former leftish critical theorist and current whacked-out prophet of fascist techno-apocalypse Nick Land, and a third figure who arguably doesn’t belong- AI blogger Eliezer Yudkowsky, who isn’t an open bigot or fascist but who does share certain elements of the neoreactionary imagination. Namely, all three produce works that could be understood as horror texts, both in terms of the feelings that produced them and the feelings they induce in others (including believers). Sandifer closely reads all three with a profoundly skeptical eye but a participatory spirit. Beyond the horror-show posturing, Sandifer tries to bring out the real weirdness, the Deleuzean “monster offspring” that lingers behind the (anti-)heroic fantasies and feverish system-building, and finds…
Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. He does something like a thirty page disquistion on Blake’s visionary poems (and before then loops in a number of other theorists, such as Frantz Fanon, Thomas Ligotti, and the aforementioned Gilles Deleuze) and god help me I lost track of what he was saying, and even looking at it again, still can’t tell. Sandifer clearly comes from the same whacked-out online horror/theory/geek-culture place that Land and to a lesser extent the others come from. “Send a maniac to catch a maniac,” as it’s said in scifi classic probably a little too basic for our boy. I’m fine with maniacs — some of my best friends, etc. — but it could use some editing, is all I’m saying.
As best I can make out, his conclusion is something like the following. If there’s one thing that freaks all three of his subjects out (with the possible exception of Land, the smartest of the lot, who might just be doing an elaborate bit) it’s the fear of infection by the Other and the collapse of established categories. They want the future but they don’t want it to be weird, or rather they want it weird in a way they can control. They’re not going to get their wish, Sandifer tells us. The general fucked-ness of the future means that they can’t control it any more than the rest of us can, and their brittleness won’t be an asset- isn’t, now. Whereas understandings based on radical empathy have proven to be considerably more resilient… though it might still not be enough.
Fair enough, but the whole thing could be clearer. As I hope the preceding indicated, it’s less that Sandifer winds up going down rabbit holes so much as the whole book is rabbit holes, and I get the idea Sandifer wouldn’t want it any other way. That’s fine; admirable in certain respects, even. You learn a lot, about the specific altright people he deals with (he does a similar, if much shorter, type of existential alley-oop with gamergaters, Austrian economics, TERFs, etc) and about all kinds of random stuff. He’s discursive, chatty even. It’s fun and reasonably quotable but not necessarily the most usable text in the world. And it’s notable that beyond a chapter on Trump, he sticks to the most Extremely Online portions of the altright spectrum. These are interesting to me but I find things get clearer and more grounded (and more interesting, for my money) when you bring things offline a little. But I don’t think Sandifer wants clear and grounded. This can be frustrating.
Still- at least here we have a work that takes the altright seriously as a subject of analysis. Much of the rest of the long-form writing on the subject essentially uses it as an occasion or frame for inter-left axe-grinding, or as an example or test-case for some other set of ideas. This proceeds in a spirit — a surfeit, if anything — of intellectual daring and passionate engagement. We need that, as well as rigor and a useful political analysis, to meet our weird, probably bad, future. ***’
https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...
May 23, 2019
This book is a hot mess, it's weird, self-indulgent, glib, sharp and wonderful.
The book is self-published and, unfortunately, it shows. It's basically a series of very long blog-posts that often seem to have gazed too long into the abyss of the alt-right blogosphere and mimic its ponderous style. It could really use a steady hand of an editor, someone to rein the author in. Someone to cut the extraneous material down, question some of her decisions or avenues of thought.
But there is much that is fun & very perceptive about the alt-right and alt-right-adjacent phenomena to make it worth your effort to power through some of the weaker parts.
The titular essay is the longest (basically, half the book) and also paradoxically the weakest: it links Mencius Moldbug, Nick Land, and with a surprising twist, Eliezer Yudkowsky, as the three thinkers important for the development of the diffuse movement of "neoreaction". The link, always an ambitious stretch, never quite coheres, but it does rhyme. But you will learn more than you ever cared to know about the alt-right intellectual influences, which Sandifer manages to expose in all their hilarious & horrible stupidity.
There are further essays on Gamergate, the Austrian School, Trump which are probably the strongest, shrewdest, and most acerbic & coherent. There is also an enjoyable short piece on David Icke and an essay on TERFs, which while probably very personal to the author, is also mostly a lost opportunity.
Overall, if you are interested in the unfortunate phenomenon of the alt-right (or 'neo-reaction'), then this book, despite its flaws, is indispensable. And I added a star just for how much fun I had reading it.
The book is self-published and, unfortunately, it shows. It's basically a series of very long blog-posts that often seem to have gazed too long into the abyss of the alt-right blogosphere and mimic its ponderous style. It could really use a steady hand of an editor, someone to rein the author in. Someone to cut the extraneous material down, question some of her decisions or avenues of thought.
But there is much that is fun & very perceptive about the alt-right and alt-right-adjacent phenomena to make it worth your effort to power through some of the weaker parts.
The titular essay is the longest (basically, half the book) and also paradoxically the weakest: it links Mencius Moldbug, Nick Land, and with a surprising twist, Eliezer Yudkowsky, as the three thinkers important for the development of the diffuse movement of "neoreaction". The link, always an ambitious stretch, never quite coheres, but it does rhyme. But you will learn more than you ever cared to know about the alt-right intellectual influences, which Sandifer manages to expose in all their hilarious & horrible stupidity.
There are further essays on Gamergate, the Austrian School, Trump which are probably the strongest, shrewdest, and most acerbic & coherent. There is also an enjoyable short piece on David Icke and an essay on TERFs, which while probably very personal to the author, is also mostly a lost opportunity.
Overall, if you are interested in the unfortunate phenomenon of the alt-right (or 'neo-reaction'), then this book, despite its flaws, is indispensable. And I added a star just for how much fun I had reading it.
August 15, 2019
This is a book of "philosophical" essays. The "philosophical" is the quotation marks because it's a bastardized kind of philosophy, of a kind not much different from that employed by the alt-right in terms of its technical properties. "It sounds like philosophy, so it must be so," kind of writing. Sandifer at least has the decency to note that "Neoraction a Basilisk" isn't an actual work of philosophy, but something she calls "theoretical philosophy" (what?), and a "horror novel". If the horror refers to the writing in this collection of essays, then I agree, this is indeed a horror novel.
This was clearly a book written in bits and pieces, with no editor or copy-editor in sight. The introduction is so terribly written its unreadable at parts. There's missing punctuation, sentences without an object, words that are clearly being misused and misplaced, etc. Sandifer doesn't appear to have even reread the introduction before publishing it as is.
The main essay, "Neoreaction a Basilisk" is foggy, long-winded, bewildering. An essay about stupid ideas being stupid should have been sharp, light, compact. Instead its a festering mess. The essays that follow are a little better, but still not good.
I recommend watching Contrapoints on YouTube instead of spending time and money on this book.
This was clearly a book written in bits and pieces, with no editor or copy-editor in sight. The introduction is so terribly written its unreadable at parts. There's missing punctuation, sentences without an object, words that are clearly being misused and misplaced, etc. Sandifer doesn't appear to have even reread the introduction before publishing it as is.
The main essay, "Neoreaction a Basilisk" is foggy, long-winded, bewildering. An essay about stupid ideas being stupid should have been sharp, light, compact. Instead its a festering mess. The essays that follow are a little better, but still not good.
I recommend watching Contrapoints on YouTube instead of spending time and money on this book.
November 23, 2019
A collection of writings about far-right and "dark enlightenment" oddballs on the fringe of online culture, and how their bizarre mythologies compare with the current shitstorm of fascist revivalism we live under. Sandifer writes in a style best described as "academic snark", and does her best to unpick, untangle and re-complicate her subjects' fears and fixations. The prose does get quite rambling at times, especially in the titular mega-essay, and the subject matter can get very distressing. But it's undeniably fun to follow Sandifer down these rabbit-holes, and along the way learn about Silicon Valley techno-fascism, William Blake's visions, and fake goths.
October 31, 2021
Some interesting and eye opening observations on the far-right thinking, but the books style is too partial for my taste. This is a collection of essays that have a deeply personal and emotional style, where the author does not hide her deep hate of racists and fascists. She even writes at one point "this is a leftist book", meaning that the perspective of the work is leftist and she expect the reader to already agree with her that racism and fascism are bad and must be destroyed.
But the deep analyses of far-right texts in itself are quite fascinating reading. There are some good nuggets of information here and there, but as overall work this is not the best book to understand far-right thinking. This is more like a complimentary book after reading some impartial introductory text on the topic.
But the deep analyses of far-right texts in itself are quite fascinating reading. There are some good nuggets of information here and there, but as overall work this is not the best book to understand far-right thinking. This is more like a complimentary book after reading some impartial introductory text on the topic.
July 8, 2018
Sandifer's overview and critique of the alt-right (in all its ghastly permutations) is elegantly written and beautifully acerbic.
In a series of essays which draw on philosophy, economics, gender theory and horror fiction (among other things), she conjures forth the monstrosity which lies at capitalism's endpoint, and isn't afraid to engage in the most dreadful speculations.
In a series of essays which draw on philosophy, economics, gender theory and horror fiction (among other things), she conjures forth the monstrosity which lies at capitalism's endpoint, and isn't afraid to engage in the most dreadful speculations.
April 1, 2023
In recent years, there has been a spreading darkness online, a weirder but no less important aspect of the fascist resurgence of the last decade. Due to some of my weird niche interests (alternate history, apocalyptic fiction, anomalous archeology), over the past eight or so years I found myself encountering some strange and disturbing words online, including “race realism” and “human biodiversity,” the “dark enlightenment,” and “neoreaction.” Despite being disturbed by these ideas, obvious euphemisms for racism and oppression, I never would have guessed that they were just the canaries in the coal mines of contemporary politics, the first stirrings of what would later be dubbed the “alt-right.”
With the explosion of Gamergate and the horrors of the primaries and the election of 2016, I was shocked at how what had seemed like some minor nobodies on the internet appeared to have birthed much of the background radiation of the Trump Administration. This is why I was so intrigued to read critical analyst Elizabeth Sandifer’s collection of essays Neoreaction A Basilisk, a work that delves deeply into these arcane and hideous online underworlds, and the connections they contain that link them to the mainstream.
Funded on Kickstarter in 2017, Neoreaction a Basilisk is a very weird little tome, but one that is very insightful of all the really weird, profoundly stupid threads that animate much of the far-right today. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so awful, and Sandifer analyzes it all in all of its awful, eerie weirdness, a weirdness that makes it difficult to turn away. All in all, this is some bleak, bleak stuff that Sandifer doesn’t sugar coat. She begins the first essay in her collection, for instance, with the statement “Let us assume we are fucked.” We hadn’t even seen 2020 yet!
There is a horrific, apocalyptic feeling throughout, both in subject matter and in the way Sandifer frames these topics. Looking back at the information and topics she discusses in Neoreaction A Basilisk, I found myself forgetting that she wrote much of this before even the election of 2016, and it feels all the more compelling. Like, this was the swirling, arcane cesspool that the last four years was birthed from.
Sandifer links the ideas of such strange, niche characters as fascist English philosopher Nick Land, pseudonymous reactionary Silicon Valley blogger Mencius Moldbug (aka Curtis Yavin), and Eliezer Yudkowski, a non-reactionary rationalist philosopher whose ideas nonetheless provided intellectual fuel for the fire, the very names that seemed to pop up when I first became aware of the budding horror of neoreactionary fascism in the years before 2016. From the bizarre quasi-religious Roko’s Basilisk hinted at in the title to the seething cosmic horror that was/is Gamergate to the perfidious nature of the Austrian School, Neoreaction a Basilisk delves into some obscure and confusing territory, and I often found myself just barely able to comprehend it all. While these deep literary rabbit holes we explore are often intriguing, it can become a bit difficult to follow at times. This is very much an almost self-consciously obscure work, diving deep into disturbing topics filled with strange correlations and connections.
There is something, though, that appeals to me about writing in such depth about the nexus where popular culture meets the dark urges of fascist ideology, and so much of fascist thought is completely bizarre, full of cockamamie ideas and geeking out about mythology and ancient history, for instance. I’m definitely glad I tracked down this book, and while perhaps I still am as mystified as much as ever, Sandifer provided some stark food for thought about the weird ideas festering beneath the rock of contemporary political culture.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
With the explosion of Gamergate and the horrors of the primaries and the election of 2016, I was shocked at how what had seemed like some minor nobodies on the internet appeared to have birthed much of the background radiation of the Trump Administration. This is why I was so intrigued to read critical analyst Elizabeth Sandifer’s collection of essays Neoreaction A Basilisk, a work that delves deeply into these arcane and hideous online underworlds, and the connections they contain that link them to the mainstream.
Funded on Kickstarter in 2017, Neoreaction a Basilisk is a very weird little tome, but one that is very insightful of all the really weird, profoundly stupid threads that animate much of the far-right today. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so awful, and Sandifer analyzes it all in all of its awful, eerie weirdness, a weirdness that makes it difficult to turn away. All in all, this is some bleak, bleak stuff that Sandifer doesn’t sugar coat. She begins the first essay in her collection, for instance, with the statement “Let us assume we are fucked.” We hadn’t even seen 2020 yet!
There is a horrific, apocalyptic feeling throughout, both in subject matter and in the way Sandifer frames these topics. Looking back at the information and topics she discusses in Neoreaction A Basilisk, I found myself forgetting that she wrote much of this before even the election of 2016, and it feels all the more compelling. Like, this was the swirling, arcane cesspool that the last four years was birthed from.
Sandifer links the ideas of such strange, niche characters as fascist English philosopher Nick Land, pseudonymous reactionary Silicon Valley blogger Mencius Moldbug (aka Curtis Yavin), and Eliezer Yudkowski, a non-reactionary rationalist philosopher whose ideas nonetheless provided intellectual fuel for the fire, the very names that seemed to pop up when I first became aware of the budding horror of neoreactionary fascism in the years before 2016. From the bizarre quasi-religious Roko’s Basilisk hinted at in the title to the seething cosmic horror that was/is Gamergate to the perfidious nature of the Austrian School, Neoreaction a Basilisk delves into some obscure and confusing territory, and I often found myself just barely able to comprehend it all. While these deep literary rabbit holes we explore are often intriguing, it can become a bit difficult to follow at times. This is very much an almost self-consciously obscure work, diving deep into disturbing topics filled with strange correlations and connections.
There is something, though, that appeals to me about writing in such depth about the nexus where popular culture meets the dark urges of fascist ideology, and so much of fascist thought is completely bizarre, full of cockamamie ideas and geeking out about mythology and ancient history, for instance. I’m definitely glad I tracked down this book, and while perhaps I still am as mystified as much as ever, Sandifer provided some stark food for thought about the weird ideas festering beneath the rock of contemporary political culture.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
June 29, 2019
When faced with the name Elizabeth Sandifer, any good Doctor Who fan (like me) will think of TARDIS Eruditorum, or “A Psychochronography in Blue.” Often political, regularly strange and always insightful, the series of blogs from beginning to present of Doctor Who is an incredible achievement. At once, it’s something of an unofficial history of the show, and a semi-mystical ritual in words, seeking to conjure up the spirit of Doctor Who, the implicit story-between-the-stories, the thing that animates the show from Doctor to Doctor. Neoreaction A Basilisk is something altogether different: less incantation and more walking-tour through the web of pathologies that make up neo-reactionary thought in the computer age. Nonetheless, both projects share a certain occultism that makes Sandifer’s brand so compelling.
First off, it took me ages to finish this. Which is absolutely nothing to do with the book: my March, April and most of my May has been taken up with the uni work (hence the failure to update the blog.) With that in the mind, the structure of eight separate essays was extremely useful, meaning I didn’t have to start the whole book or a massive section over again. Sandifer says there are no concrete and explicit connections between the essays beyond the general inquiry into the intellectual origins of the alt-right, and that’s true. But there are definitely themes of monstrosity, and an outrage at the sheer gall of the alt-right “intellectuals” who think they have anything to contribute. Sandifer is not just angry at their lack of substance, but at their lack of style.
Style is important to her, and her approach to writing has it in buckets. It’s a kind of caustically efficient style of writing that grabs attention and keeps it — her opening gambit is “Let us assume that we are fucked.” It’s that which informs her whole framework, the prospect that there’s no hope, that there’s something “out there” to get us, be it Roko’s Basilisk, climate change, reactionaries, a variant on transhumanism. From there Sandifer takes us on her tour of the neoreactionary pathology, making several stops along the way into topics she is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about. The pitstops at Paradise Lost and William Blake’s mythology are insightful, educational, and genuinely fascinating. The section in particular where Sandifer takes a deep dive in the concept of ‘the Devil as the first whig’ is a serious page-turner, and not just for the connections to Hannibal, which you should all go and watch.
My only real gripe is something Sandifer herself has acknowledged about her writing and is making an explicit effort to deal with, so I don’t intend to make it a huge point of contention. Indeed, it’s something I’m trying to rectify about my writing and vocabulary. She is very quick to use mental health terms like “insane” or “crazy” to describe the approach and pathologies of the alt-right and the systems she’s investigating. In some sense I sympathise — it’s genuinely difficult to think of better terms for the kind unhinged, malicious, violently un-tethered to reality thinking that characterises the alt-right. Nonetheless, I think it’s a responsibility on us as writers to find ways expressing it without resorting to linking malignant ideologies to mental illness, and I’m glad Sandifer has committed to doing so in future.
Overall, Neoreaction A Basilisk is such a compelling read that I can’t not recommend it. If you’re like me and are familiar with TARDIS Eruditorum than what you like about that, you’ll find in spades here. Neoreaction A Basilisk is more of a political and philosophical text overtly, but it deals in much the same themes and ideas in an extremely satisfying new direction. If you’re new to Sandifer’s work, though, it is still absolutely worth picking up for an idiosyncratic, properly singular dive into the mindset of the terrifying morons, threatening to take us all down with them.
First off, it took me ages to finish this. Which is absolutely nothing to do with the book: my March, April and most of my May has been taken up with the uni work (hence the failure to update the blog.) With that in the mind, the structure of eight separate essays was extremely useful, meaning I didn’t have to start the whole book or a massive section over again. Sandifer says there are no concrete and explicit connections between the essays beyond the general inquiry into the intellectual origins of the alt-right, and that’s true. But there are definitely themes of monstrosity, and an outrage at the sheer gall of the alt-right “intellectuals” who think they have anything to contribute. Sandifer is not just angry at their lack of substance, but at their lack of style.
Style is important to her, and her approach to writing has it in buckets. It’s a kind of caustically efficient style of writing that grabs attention and keeps it — her opening gambit is “Let us assume that we are fucked.” It’s that which informs her whole framework, the prospect that there’s no hope, that there’s something “out there” to get us, be it Roko’s Basilisk, climate change, reactionaries, a variant on transhumanism. From there Sandifer takes us on her tour of the neoreactionary pathology, making several stops along the way into topics she is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about. The pitstops at Paradise Lost and William Blake’s mythology are insightful, educational, and genuinely fascinating. The section in particular where Sandifer takes a deep dive in the concept of ‘the Devil as the first whig’ is a serious page-turner, and not just for the connections to Hannibal, which you should all go and watch.
My only real gripe is something Sandifer herself has acknowledged about her writing and is making an explicit effort to deal with, so I don’t intend to make it a huge point of contention. Indeed, it’s something I’m trying to rectify about my writing and vocabulary. She is very quick to use mental health terms like “insane” or “crazy” to describe the approach and pathologies of the alt-right and the systems she’s investigating. In some sense I sympathise — it’s genuinely difficult to think of better terms for the kind unhinged, malicious, violently un-tethered to reality thinking that characterises the alt-right. Nonetheless, I think it’s a responsibility on us as writers to find ways expressing it without resorting to linking malignant ideologies to mental illness, and I’m glad Sandifer has committed to doing so in future.
Overall, Neoreaction A Basilisk is such a compelling read that I can’t not recommend it. If you’re like me and are familiar with TARDIS Eruditorum than what you like about that, you’ll find in spades here. Neoreaction A Basilisk is more of a political and philosophical text overtly, but it deals in much the same themes and ideas in an extremely satisfying new direction. If you’re new to Sandifer’s work, though, it is still absolutely worth picking up for an idiosyncratic, properly singular dive into the mindset of the terrifying morons, threatening to take us all down with them.
February 9, 2023
One of my very favorite Internet fights is between kooky partisan hacks who intermingle science fiction with real life into a quasi-alchemical style of theory-fiction that is both scary and confusing if you don't know what you're stumbling into. If you're not careful, it's easy to get lost down their rabbit holes of crazy blog-style ramblings and start believing you are pulling back the curtain on some hidden reality. Whether you call it "wokeness", "redpilled", or "enlightenment" all depends on your political persuasion and starting assumptions. To the normie reader like myself, it's just literary MMA but with really smart trolls slap fighting. They each seem to think they are landing devastating blows that might permanently cripple all political enemies once and for all. And it's hilarious. Usually this plays out on Twitter or in the comments section somewhere, but here it's conveniently collected into monograph form for easy reading.
Philip Sandifer (now writing as a woman under a different first name I believe) puts up a valiant front against the so-called neoreactionaries such as Yarvin (the fighter in Sandifer's same weight class). Sandifer is still every bit the member of this fringe of writers, but helps make the whole project much more entertaining by offering some real competition. Just like their rivals, Sandifer is far too verbose for their own good. This book in particular is in desperate need of a copy editor as it's riddled with typos, unattributed quotes, and formatting problems. This would all be much more forgivable if played out on Reddit instead of book form. Still, it's a good match-up.
If you enjoy bonkers philosophical fights and culture war political peanut butter mixed with your science fiction realism chocolate, you might find it tasty. If not, stay far, far away from this weird confection.
Philip Sandifer (now writing as a woman under a different first name I believe) puts up a valiant front against the so-called neoreactionaries such as Yarvin (the fighter in Sandifer's same weight class). Sandifer is still every bit the member of this fringe of writers, but helps make the whole project much more entertaining by offering some real competition. Just like their rivals, Sandifer is far too verbose for their own good. This book in particular is in desperate need of a copy editor as it's riddled with typos, unattributed quotes, and formatting problems. This would all be much more forgivable if played out on Reddit instead of book form. Still, it's a good match-up.
If you enjoy bonkers philosophical fights and culture war political peanut butter mixed with your science fiction realism chocolate, you might find it tasty. If not, stay far, far away from this weird confection.
January 24, 2018
Particularly, I was disappointed, not so much because the book was bad, but maybe because my expectations were higher.
I didn't really liked the writing style. It made it difficult to read as the ideas in the sentences were often cut in the middle to make room for a myriad of examples that don't really serve to expand on the understanding of the situation, but rather makes it much harder to follow any train of though in the book.
I was also expecting that the book would elaborate on its title more.
It may be my fault to expect too much from it, but I was looking forward to a more theoretical engagement with the idea of "Neo-reaction" that would help us understand more about the Alt-right. Instead, the book reads more as a data collection about facts and news on when the alt-right acted.
I ended up feeling that if I had follow all of the Alt-rights antics on the news, there wouldn't be much to gain from reading this book.
I didn't really liked the writing style. It made it difficult to read as the ideas in the sentences were often cut in the middle to make room for a myriad of examples that don't really serve to expand on the understanding of the situation, but rather makes it much harder to follow any train of though in the book.
I was also expecting that the book would elaborate on its title more.
It may be my fault to expect too much from it, but I was looking forward to a more theoretical engagement with the idea of "Neo-reaction" that would help us understand more about the Alt-right. Instead, the book reads more as a data collection about facts and news on when the alt-right acted.
I ended up feeling that if I had follow all of the Alt-rights antics on the news, there wouldn't be much to gain from reading this book.
February 25, 2024
Ok, I originally gave this book 2 stars because it had SUCH intense “philosophy grad student’s tumblr blog” vibes. A multi page excerpt from the script to the Hannibal TV series shows up at some point! But in the 6 years since I’ve thought about the arguments constantly. I bring up the idea that AI doomerism is a philosophical horror trap, easy to argue into but hard to argue out, like antinatalism and the extinction movement. I draw on the book to explain why the rationalism and EA communities have been such fertile ground for far right recruitment.
In the current world, it’s worth reading even with the Hannibal script parts. The ideas stand strong.
In the current world, it’s worth reading even with the Hannibal script parts. The ideas stand strong.
October 19, 2016
This was a fairly strange book, if mostly because Sandifer goes off on long explorations of how his three subjects (Elizier Yudkowsky, Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land) relate to the T.V. show Hannibal and William Blake’s epic poems, neither of which I am experienced with. Other parts were funny and intriguing, and it was certainly worth my $3.34 pro-rated. Not recommended if you didn’t recognize any of the three neo-reactionaries mentioned earlier.
July 28, 2016
It has several interesting and clever bits but mostly I just feel annoyed that I helped Kickstart this. I feel like the best audience for this book is very small and does not include me.
December 28, 2018
As much as I enjoy shitting on Nick Land and Moldbug, I just couldn't get into the author's overly knowing style.
February 26, 2021
A book about people who need to log off, by a person who needs to log off.
July 28, 2020
This book is a philosophical bad acid trip, a crazed night ride through the perverse logic-space of the alt-right's intellectual foundations.
Every day, I wanted to talk about the insane ideas I was reading about—purportedly those ideas which form the deepest intellectual root of the alt-right. And every time I made to share my thoughts...it was impossible. How to explain that there is an entire philosophical political theory which rests on the supposition that the universe is finitely computable and that because of this, it must be the case that we are all simulations in memory of supercomputer that has run time backwards to create a universe simulation of its own creation, and that this super AI is rationally incentivized to influence our actions in the present through implicit threats of violence to infinite simulated copies of our minds? How can you start a casual "so what have you been reading lately?" with that AS A PREMISE to a much wider discussion?
So I can't cutely summarize this book. That would be impossible. I can say that I was, dare I say, impressed by the "intellectual rigor" of the mad, dark philosophers this book chronicles. I would be hard pressed to find the exact point in the argument chain where they each go off the rails into howling madness, antisemitism, fascism, etc. I think that is what has stayed with me, haunted me the most—how apparently flawless the logical deductions of these madmen are. See for yourself. Sure, I know that they're wrong and their conclusions unspeakably vile...and yet. I remember a Socratic dialogue (which one was it?) where the old sophist demonstrates his ability to reach more or less any conclusion from more or less any premise. I know well enough that logic can be subverted. But I'm telling you, these three have a real gift.
I went on to read the fiction work of Nick Land. It is fascinating and highly recommended. I couldn't stomach first order Moldbug or Yudkowsky.
Oh, also the writing is pretty terrible. It's self-indulgent to the extreme and much of substance is sacrificed at the alter of rhetorical flourish. At first it's actually quite fun and refreshing, but the novelty wears off. Apparently it was originally a bunch of blog posts, which shows. I've never been able to finish it all the way for this reason, despite several attempts.
I gained something valuable from this book, which is the knowledge that a select few on the alt-right see themselves as inheriting the mantle of enlightenment rationalism. These are people who will follow the oracle of deductive logic wherever she leads, no matter how abhorrent, and that they believe this makes them brave truth-seekers. And I get it. In so many ways, the identity politics of the left are intellectually mediocre, having been built on logical sand to fit the optics of the hour—and few on the left seem interested into shoring those foundations up, for fear of invoking doctrinal outrage from their fellow partisans. As a liberal and a philosopher, I'm not proud of the edifice of identity politics I'm supposed to defend. But it's a damn sight better than the howling madness born of Land, Moldbug, and Yudkowsky's dark logics.
Every day, I wanted to talk about the insane ideas I was reading about—purportedly those ideas which form the deepest intellectual root of the alt-right. And every time I made to share my thoughts...it was impossible. How to explain that there is an entire philosophical political theory which rests on the supposition that the universe is finitely computable and that because of this, it must be the case that we are all simulations in memory of supercomputer that has run time backwards to create a universe simulation of its own creation, and that this super AI is rationally incentivized to influence our actions in the present through implicit threats of violence to infinite simulated copies of our minds? How can you start a casual "so what have you been reading lately?" with that AS A PREMISE to a much wider discussion?
So I can't cutely summarize this book. That would be impossible. I can say that I was, dare I say, impressed by the "intellectual rigor" of the mad, dark philosophers this book chronicles. I would be hard pressed to find the exact point in the argument chain where they each go off the rails into howling madness, antisemitism, fascism, etc. I think that is what has stayed with me, haunted me the most—how apparently flawless the logical deductions of these madmen are. See for yourself. Sure, I know that they're wrong and their conclusions unspeakably vile...and yet. I remember a Socratic dialogue (which one was it?) where the old sophist demonstrates his ability to reach more or less any conclusion from more or less any premise. I know well enough that logic can be subverted. But I'm telling you, these three have a real gift.
I went on to read the fiction work of Nick Land. It is fascinating and highly recommended. I couldn't stomach first order Moldbug or Yudkowsky.
Oh, also the writing is pretty terrible. It's self-indulgent to the extreme and much of substance is sacrificed at the alter of rhetorical flourish. At first it's actually quite fun and refreshing, but the novelty wears off. Apparently it was originally a bunch of blog posts, which shows. I've never been able to finish it all the way for this reason, despite several attempts.
I gained something valuable from this book, which is the knowledge that a select few on the alt-right see themselves as inheriting the mantle of enlightenment rationalism. These are people who will follow the oracle of deductive logic wherever she leads, no matter how abhorrent, and that they believe this makes them brave truth-seekers. And I get it. In so many ways, the identity politics of the left are intellectually mediocre, having been built on logical sand to fit the optics of the hour—and few on the left seem interested into shoring those foundations up, for fear of invoking doctrinal outrage from their fellow partisans. As a liberal and a philosopher, I'm not proud of the edifice of identity politics I'm supposed to defend. But it's a damn sight better than the howling madness born of Land, Moldbug, and Yudkowsky's dark logics.
March 26, 2021
Ran into some neo-reactionary accelerationist creeps on Twitter today reminded me of this book I read a couple of times. They had all the markers references to Mencius Molburg sporting the Nietzsche and Schopenhauer references, striking the pose of brooding pessimistic world-weary romantics longing for the void and wanting to take everyone else with them. You know, right-wing creeps pretending to be intellectuals. I don't know they want to put on a scary facade because they read Machiavelli's line about being feared is more reliable than being loved in politics. I get the pessimism angle it looks really cool to some to pretend to be a really nihilistic soul in a dark world that just knows too much. I mean Goths and vampire stories are a thing. The pessimism pose is alluring and bad boy politics adds to the danger. I get it. But it's as dumb as the Maga fools they think they are orchestrating for their dark enlightenment. Jesus Christ, they think they are Ann Rice characters for the techno singularity. get over yourselves. God these people suck but they are more like Dunning-Kruger Zombies who let thus spake Zarathustra go to their heads. Slow on the pick-up like Zombies rather than Aristocratic vampires of their conceits but there are too damn many of them.
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following reviews
READING PROGRESS
April 1, 2020 – Started Reading
October 31, 2020 – Finished Reading
March 8, 2021 – Shelved
Like ∙ flag
following reviews
READING PROGRESS
April 1, 2020 – Started Reading
October 31, 2020 – Finished Reading
March 8, 2021 – Shelved
May 19, 2020
I started this book almost literally a year ago-Memorial day to be precise- and I tore through 60% of it at the beach the following weeks, starting at the TERF chapter then circling back around to GamerGate. Chapter 2 onwards are very good reads- even if you know a lot about the topics like I did, Sandifer adds lots of interesting analysis to make it worth your while. They're all separate essays connected with the metaphor of the Basilisk, so if you want to start with, say, the Lizard People to determine if its the book for you, there's no penalty of understanding.
As for chapter 1,
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and they start talking to you about something interesting that you've never heard of, and for the first 20 minutes you're like "ok, this is cool," but then it drones on a little too long, and you're subtly looking at the clock, and at one point it's starting to annoy you cause it just sounds like one big literary flex on how much they've read, but when its finally over you take a deep breath and are like "well at least I got a little bit out of that" then start watching Netflix? Yeah, that's the first 40% of the book. It's why it took a year to finish.
I suggest starting from GamerGate onward, then circling back around to chapter 1 when you're ready. It's worth the read, it just needed an editor.
As for chapter 1,
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and they start talking to you about something interesting that you've never heard of, and for the first 20 minutes you're like "ok, this is cool," but then it drones on a little too long, and you're subtly looking at the clock, and at one point it's starting to annoy you cause it just sounds like one big literary flex on how much they've read, but when its finally over you take a deep breath and are like "well at least I got a little bit out of that" then start watching Netflix? Yeah, that's the first 40% of the book. It's why it took a year to finish.
I suggest starting from GamerGate onward, then circling back around to chapter 1 when you're ready. It's worth the read, it just needed an editor.
March 20, 2020
I can see why some people might not like Sandifer’s terse, English-lit-PhD style of writing, but once you get into it, the collection of essays provides something that can only be described as truly insightful. Yeah, it’s discursive—but that allows Sandifer to make some incredible links between a bunch of at-first disparate threads.
In the years since, Neoreaction has fortunately become a little less prominent. It was never the forefront, or the point—the alt-right were in many ways the publicising arm of neoreaction (rather than neoreaction being the intellectual arm of the alt-right), but thankfully the downfall (for now) of the alt-right have brought some of these overwhelmingly fucked ideas down with them.
But I think even if Neoreaction becomes irrelevant, a lot of the core ideas here will stay on. An analysis of the outsized power these ideas were able to have, as well as the tech industry that they were inextricably tied to, is probably going to remain relevant as long as said industry has not only corporate, but cultural power. We’ll see.
I docked a star because, while the titular essay is as close to perfect as you can reasonably get, the remainder of the essays (particularly Theses on a President) are a little weak.
In the years since, Neoreaction has fortunately become a little less prominent. It was never the forefront, or the point—the alt-right were in many ways the publicising arm of neoreaction (rather than neoreaction being the intellectual arm of the alt-right), but thankfully the downfall (for now) of the alt-right have brought some of these overwhelmingly fucked ideas down with them.
But I think even if Neoreaction becomes irrelevant, a lot of the core ideas here will stay on. An analysis of the outsized power these ideas were able to have, as well as the tech industry that they were inextricably tied to, is probably going to remain relevant as long as said industry has not only corporate, but cultural power. We’ll see.
I docked a star because, while the titular essay is as close to perfect as you can reasonably get, the remainder of the essays (particularly Theses on a President) are a little weak.
March 8, 2021
Ran into some neo-reactionary accelerationist creeps on Twitter today reminded me of this book I read a couple of times. They had all the markers references to Mencius Molburg sporting the Nietzsche and Schopenhauer references, striking the pose of brooding pessimistic world-weary romantics longing for the void and wanting to take everyone else with them. You know, right-wing creeps pretending to be intellectuals. I don't know they want to put on a scary facade because they read Machiavelli's line about being feared is more reliable than being loved in politics. I get the pessimism angle it looks really cool to some to pretend to be a really nihilistic soul in a dark world that just knows too much. I mean Goths and vampire stories are a thing. The pessimism pose is alluring and bad boy politics adds to the danger. I get it. But it's as dumb as the Maga fools they think they are orchestrating for their dark enlightenment. Jesus Christ, they think they are Ann Rice characters for the techno singularity. get over yourselves. God these people suck but they are more like Dunning-Kruger Zombies who let thus spake Zarathustra go to their heads. Slow on the pick-up like Zombies rather than Aristocratic vampires of their conceits but there are too damn many of them.
August 18, 2019
I'd been looking forward to this one for a while... I kickstarted the original PDF version (well, I only funded at a PDF level anyway) and then once it was clear a new paperback edition was coming out I waited and got that one to read. Love the cover art, especially for this edition, incidentally. The result is just as great as I'd hoped from reading Sandifer's longer-form work on her blog; it's an incisive, often quite nuanced, quite funny, or both, reading of some of our recent intellectual malaises, or maybe more specifically the dark hole in the Internet where some of those things first crawled out of.
It is, almost perversely (the kind of perversely I think both Sandifer and Blake would appreciate) almost ferociously fun to read, as well as being a great whacking download of some important information and context. Highly recommended.
It is, almost perversely (the kind of perversely I think both Sandifer and Blake would appreciate) almost ferociously fun to read, as well as being a great whacking download of some important information and context. Highly recommended.
May 17, 2021
Neoreaction a Basilisk is a book that is difficult to read in a literal sense. When you have a passing understanding of the subject at hand, it's much easier to decipher what is actually being said, and when you don't, it becomes like reading another language that is similar enough to one you understand that you can decipher it, but it just takes a lot of time.
That is from someone who understood the book. If you're able to decipher it, it's an excellent piece of theory criticism with fun asides and examples pointing out just how devoid of reason neo-reactionaries truly are.
Still, the first part of my review looms over the entire book. I can't really recommend this to anyone who isn't already deeply interested in reading it.
That is from someone who understood the book. If you're able to decipher it, it's an excellent piece of theory criticism with fun asides and examples pointing out just how devoid of reason neo-reactionaries truly are.
Still, the first part of my review looms over the entire book. I can't really recommend this to anyone who isn't already deeply interested in reading it.
August 14, 2021
tbh I didn't follow all of it but enjoyable nevertheless. Funny and biting.
> Being Wikipedia, most of this is almost right.
> His other magnum opus is an epic Harry Potter fanfiction entitled Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that, while obviously sounding completely ridiculous, can’t really be condemned in stronger terms than “it’s not much worse than Atlas Shrugged.”
> Put another way, maybe the neoreactionaries are right and we’re going to have to shoot some people; if so, let’s shoot them first.
> The history of the world consists of a lot of wealthy assholes sleeping with each other and killing people. Changing up which assholes slept with and killed who doesn’t actually make much of a difference.
> Being Wikipedia, most of this is almost right.
> His other magnum opus is an epic Harry Potter fanfiction entitled Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that, while obviously sounding completely ridiculous, can’t really be condemned in stronger terms than “it’s not much worse than Atlas Shrugged.”
> Put another way, maybe the neoreactionaries are right and we’re going to have to shoot some people; if so, let’s shoot them first.
> The history of the world consists of a lot of wealthy assholes sleeping with each other and killing people. Changing up which assholes slept with and killed who doesn’t actually make much of a difference.
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