Amanda Marcotte claims to have published a definitive list of the weirdest people on the internet, but I think she’s wrong, and has missed a few. She hasn’t crossed swords with fanatical astrologers, New Age solipsists, or Presuppositionalists yet, apparently.

And the first item on her list might strike you as a bit odd.

1. Anti-male circumcision obsessives. No, not people who are simply opposed to circumcising babies. I’m talking about the people who act like removing a foreskin is one of the greatest human rights abuses of all time, on level not just with the much more serious female circumcision but also with slavery and the Holocaust and who tend to use the word “mutilated” to describe it. Most of them are misogynists whose eagerness to construct an edifice of male oppression has completely overwhelmed any concern that their weirdness is permanently destroying any ability to have a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of circumcision. Because of the combination of gender weirdness, sexual obsessions, bad faith, and lack of all proportion, they get the number one spot.

But then you read the comments, and most of it is dominated by…anti-male circumcision obsessives. It’s like they’ve crawled out of the woodwork specifically to substantiate the validity of Marcotte’s ranking.

This is not to say that anyone should approve of circumcision. Personally, I consider it cosmetic surgery (in most cases — there are unusual conditions under which it’s medically necessary) that ought not to be inflicted on small children, but I don’t consider it crippling or significantly damaging to sexual activity. Which means I’ll probably get hate mail from both the loons who want to make it mandatory for every one, and the loons who regard it as tantamount to castration.

Remember the Dork Enlightenment? It’s this bizarre ‘movement’ consisting largely of head-up-their-asses libertarian types with a fetish for the kind of medieval world they played in their Dungeons & Dragons games…but they’ve got Silicon Valley money and have happily embraced cult recruiting techniques, so they’re also somewhat dangerous. One escapee from the Dark Enlightenment has posted his account on a Catholic blog.

The Dark Enlightenment Exposed

I first heard about the Dark Enlightenment (aka “Neo-Reaction” or just “Reaction”) last year, the year after I graduated from college and was interning at a conservative think tank. I briefly become involved with the Dark Enlightenment and then left the movement in disgust. Here is what I learned:

– The Dark Enlightenment is controlled by what the media call “Sith Lords”. You have more public Lords like Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land, but there are even some Lords up higher whose names are not revealed. They say the Master Lord says ‘Et Ego in Arcadia’ which is an anagram for ‘Tego Arcana Dei’ (“I hide the secrets of God”).

– But only the media call them ‘Sith Lords’. In Inner Speak, they will often use phrases like the Men of Númenor or the Eldars.

– I never met any of the higher Eldars, but I did once meet an Eldar in Training. I don’t know his real name but people called him Legolas. He had long blond hair, was dressed like a 19th century count, and wore a pendant that had both a Christian Cross and Thor’s Hammer on it.

– The movement is a weird mixture of ethno-nationalists, futurists, monarchists, PUAs (“pick-up artists” like Chateau Heartiste), Trad Catholics, Trad Protestants, etc. They all believe in HBD (what they call “human biodiversity” i.e. racism) but disagree on some other minor points.

– The religious people in the movement (both Christians and pagans) practice what is called “identitarian religion” (religion that doesn’t deny ethnic identity).

– Some of the rising stars of the Dark Enlightenment on the internet seem to be Radish Magazine, Occam’s Razor Mag, and Theden TV.

– The Dark Enlightenment allegedly has millions of dollars of money to play with. They have a couple big donors. One is rumored to be a major tech tycoon in Silicon Valley. They actually had a private 3-day meeting on an island which was furnished with a French chef, etc. Different forms of formal attire were required for each day (tuxedos, 3-piece suits, etc), and some weird costumes were required too (capes, hoods, etc) — which sound like a pagan cult. (I wasn’t at this function but heard about it.)

– I was initiated into the first stages of the Dark Enlightenment, which involved me stripping down naked so people could “inspect my phenotype”. I was then given a series of very personal questions, often relating to sexual matters. I was then told to put on a black cape. (I really regret doing this but at the time I was younger, more impressionable and eager to please.)

– For the initial oath taking, everyone must swear on a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species, just to show their fidelity to HBD. After that, for the later oaths, seculars will swear again on Darwin, while Christians will swear on the Bible, and pagans on the Prose Edda or Iliad.

– At one of the meetings I heard someone continuously chanting “gens alba conservanda est” (Latin for “the white race must be preserved”) and then others were chanting things in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Old German, but I don’t know those languages so I can’t remember exactly what they were saying.

– They also have all their own secret handshakes, and their own terminology [like the Cathedral ("political correctness"), thedening ("re-establishing ethnic group identity"), genophilia ("love of one’s own race"), NRx ("neoreaction"), etc.].

– On the philosophical level, this movement is not entirely original. Much of it is borrowed from the Identitarian movement in Europe. They also all detest democracy. They are not trying to be a “populist movement” but are only trying to convert other elites to their way of thinking.

This whole movement is like a secret cult, which is why I left. Also, because of the valiant and brave efforts of people on the net exposing this movement, I saw this cult for the evil it truly is. Please stay away from it.

There has to be a typo in there: Radish Magazine is an organic food/healthy living site which almost certainly has no connection to the pasty-pale Hot Pockets-gobbling clientele of the Dark Enlightenment. [I stand corrected: there is also a Dark Enlightenment associated Radish Mag.] I think the writer meant Taki’s Magazine, which with Occam’s Razor Mag and Theden are among the more popular sites for neo-racists. Visit them at your peril — they will fill you with rage.

You might also notice the overlap between the Dark Enlightenment dogma and HBD dogma. They’re all championed by biological ignoramuses who think they understand evolution, but really don’t — and they happily trumpet their bigotry as scientifically justifiable. Here’s one list of the shared beliefs of both HBD and the Dark Enlightenment. Really, it’s just old-fashioned racism of the sort Houston Stewart Chamberlain would have endorsed, right down to their muddled love/hate relationship with science — evolution is only useful if it can be twisted to agree with their preconceptions, while they yearn more for religious justifications, especially the Identitarian religion they want to practice.

Another area of overlap is with the MRA/PUA crowd, as noted above. Lately, the obnoxious kooks who flood my email and twitter accounts with ‘proof’ that I’m an evil feminist have taken to sending me links to places like Taki’s Magazine. Apparently, I’m supposed to see the mad scribblings of John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer as evidence that science shows that I’m wrong about everything. Some of them don’t even seem to be aware of the racist tone of their sources (but I could be wrong), and are cherry-picking from the reactionary right to find just the bits that agree with their views on women.

The Dark Enlightenment, with their contradictory name, are looking pretty dark, at least. It seems to be the fulminating cloaca of the internet, where all kinds of sewage drifts to mingle and react to produce a cloud of noxious fumes. The only responsible thing to do is…flush.