Mark Carrigan<p><strong>Digital elites and reactionary modernism</strong></p><p>From Wikipedia: </p><blockquote><p><strong>Reactionary modernism</strong> is a term first coined by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Herf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Jeffrey Herf</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#cite_note-1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">[1]</a> in the 1980s to describe the mixture of “great enthusiasm for modern <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">technology</a> with a rejection of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Enlightenment</a> and the values and institutions of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">liberal democracy</a>” that was characteristic of the German <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Revolutionary_movement" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Conservative Revolutionary movement</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Nazism</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#cite_note-Herf-2" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">[2]</a> In turn, this ideology of reactionary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">modernism</a> was closely linked to the original, positive view of the <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderweg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Sonderweg</a></em>, which saw Germany as the great <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Central European</a> power, neither of the West nor of the East.</p></blockquote><p>From <a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed?" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">John Ganz</a> on this <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Peter Thiel op-ed</a>:</p><blockquote><p>When Thiel writes about a “war on the internet” and “the internet” that had “begun our liberation,” the natural assumption is to assume that he’s speaking figuratively, that this is a metonym or synecdoche meaning “people on the internet.” But let’s say he’s being literal: for Thiel, the internet is a subject, it is doing something and the machines, <em>The</em> Big <em>Machine</em> has agency—it is “agentic,” as the tech people like to say. This is the viewpoint of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">“Dark Enlightenment”</a> and “neo-reaction,” which forms part of Thiel’s intellectual milieu. The belief is that a technological singularity is coming and the elect must work to accelerate it. The state must organize itself like an enterprise for this work to be completed. Progress, which is hampered by democracy, must have an authoritarian state to continue unabated. This is, of course, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">reactionary modernism</a>: a belief in technological advances without the sentimental baggage of the Enlightenment.</p><p><a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed?" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed</a></p></blockquote><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/accelerationism/" target="_blank">#accelerationism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/modernism/" target="_blank">#modernism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/modernity/" target="_blank">#modernity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/peter-thiel/" target="_blank">#peterThiel</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/technology/" target="_blank">#technology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/the-internet/" target="_blank">#theInternet</a></p>