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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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We finally hit reset, Mencius Moldbug had an unqualified podcast with the NYT. I can distinctly remember back in 2019 when the word NRx got you looked at with suspicion, now the guy who NRx has gone past, the pioneer is getting mainstream awareness. Moldbug is not the force he once was and his older stuff is where his talents lie but seeing him on NYT still makes me feel like that the horizon is indeed made of canvas.

This can also mean that Yarvin has sold out but I still find that highly unlikely, his views have influenced me a lot, a lot of you reading this too must feel this way. Will we have Nick Land next, will the thermidor continue? who knows, for now, Neo reaction arrives from the future.

In a sense this is just the continuation of his normalization after he got on Tucker's show (back when that was part of Fox News). I wouldn't read too much into it.

What's interesting is how past NRX the right wing is today. Most dissident rightists accept much of what Moldbug says, and it's even accepted dogma up to the vice president elect, but almost none of them consider themselves part of a NRX movement or anything like that. And most of the ones that did at any point have since moved on.

Yarvin has managed to become a sort of instrumental toolbox of ideas lying around waiting to be picked up by any would be counter-elite, and this seemed to have worked. And yet very few of the people who did pick up his toolbox take him seriously, despite using the tools.

He reminds me of Julius Evola in that way.

My grandfather used to say that there's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care about getting the credit.

How would he know?

He's the guy who actually discovered nuclear fission. But you probably haven't heard of him.