The term is introduced — within a highly critical frame — here. The almost perfect coincidence with techno-commercial NRx (or proto-Patchwork tendencies) is so striking that the adoption of ‘extrastatecraft’ as a positive program falls into place automatically.

Keller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines a new global network woven by money and technology that functions almost like a world shadow government. Though it’s hard to grasp the full extent of this invisible network, Easterling argues that it’s not too late for us to change it.

If it’s not too late to ‘change’ it, it’s not too late to intensify and consolidate it. Tech-comm NRx is obviously doing OK, if it already looks this scary.

Some chatter on various web channels about this event, which should be a great opportunity for exploring. To be clear about my participation (which has been open to confusion) — it consists of an intervention out of Cyberspace. (No chance of drinking dates in NY just yet, unfortunately.)

This is a nonlinear point, from my perspective, since the rapid development of telepresence is of obvious internal consequence to the recent intensification of Exit-oriented and neo-secessionist discussion. (Balaji S. Srinivasan brought this out very clearly in his October 2013 talk on the subject, from which this event takes its title.) Exit in depth — i.e. into the crypto-thickened ‘Net — is at the very least an important complement to more traditional notions of territorial flight. It also sustains a better purchase on the commercial principle which provides Exit with its fundamentalal model, and which can easily get lost among secessionist excitement and visions of technologically re-sculpted geographical space.

Some background to the event (and hints of choppy waters). Argument is, of course, the other side of the nonlinearity (a micro-enactment of the inclusive Democratic ideal), so it will be interesting to see whether on this occasion the controversy can remain productive in its own terms, rather than ‘merely’ stacking up the incentives to get Out.

This is not an easy subject for people to scan with calm, analytical detachment, but it is a crucially important one. It is among the rare topics that the Left is more likely to realistically evaluate than the Right. Much follows from the conclusions reached.

It can be fixed, provisionally, by an hypothesis that requires understanding, if not consent. Capital is highly incentivized to detach itself from the political eventualities of any specific ethno-geographical locality, and — by its very nature — it increasingly commands impressive resources with which to ‘liberate’ itself, or ‘deterritorialize’. It is certainly not, at least initially, a matter of approving such a tendency — even if the moralistic inclinations of gregarious apes would prefer the question to be immediately transformed in this direction. Integral Leftist animosity to capital is actually valuable in this respect, since it makes room for a comprehensive apprehension of ‘globalization’ as a strategy, oriented to the flight of alienated productive capability from political answerability. The Left sees capital elude its clutches — and it sees something real when it does so. By far the most significant agent of Exit is capital itself (a fact which, once again, politically-excitable apes find hard to see straight).

“It’s escaping! Let’s punish it!” Yes, yes, there’s always plenty of time for that, but shelving such idiocies for just a few moments is a cognitive prerequisite. The primary question is a much colder one: is this actually happening?

The implications are enormous. If capital cannot escape — if its apparent migration into global circuits beyond national government control (for non-exhaustive example) is mere illusion — then the sphere of political possibility is vastly expanded. Policies that hurt, limit, shrink, or destroy capital can be pursued with great latitude. They will only be constrained by political factors, making the political fight the only one that matters.

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From the moment of its inception, Outside in has been camped at the edge of the ‘reactosphere’ — and everything that occurs under the label ‘NRx’ is (at least nominally) its concern. As this territory has expanded, from a compact redoubt to sprawling tracts whose boundaries are lost beyond misty horizons, close and comprehensive scrutiny has become impractical. Instead, themes and trends emerge, absorbing and carrying mere incidents. Like climatic changes, or vague weather-systems, they suggest patterns of persistent and diffuse development.

Among these rumblings, the most indefinite, tentative, and unresolved tend to the aesthetic. Without settled criteria of evaluation, there is little obvious basis for productive collision. Instead, there are idiosyncratic statements of appreciation, expressed as such, or adamant judgments of affirmation or negation, surging forth, draped in the heraldic finery of the absolute, before collapsing back into the hollowness of their unsustainable pretensions. As things stand, when somebody posts a picture of some architectural treasure, or classical painting, remarking (or more commonly merely insinuating) “You should all esteem this,” there is no truly appropriate response but laughter. If there were not a profound problem exactly in this regard, NRx would not exist. Criteria are broken, strewn, and dispossessed, authoritative tradition is smashed, infected, or reduced to self-parody, the Muses raped and butchered. That’s where we are in the land of the dying sun.

An associated, insistent murmur concerns communicative lucidity. This is not solely a question of aesthetics, but in its quavering groundlessness, it behaves as one. It arises most typically as the assertion — initially unsupported and subsequently undeveloped — that clearly, ‘unnecessary obscurity’ should be condemned.

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Tribal politics excites the autobiographical impulse, which I’ll pander to for just a moment (without pretending to any particular excitement). My immediate ancestry is a quarter Scottish, and — here’s the thing — those grandparents were Wallaces. Seriously, they were these guys:

… but it’s my remaining three-quarters of mongrelized Brit that is leading this post to its destination. In particular, the 37.5% of English blood coursing through my veins is the part murmuring most enthusiastically for Scotland to vote ‘Yes!’ to departure this week.

Scotland is hugely over-represented in the UK Parliament, shifting the country’s politics substantially to the Left. While Scottish exit wouldn’t necessarily ensure a permanent conservative government — electoral democracy simply doesn’t work like that — it’s hard to argue that the result could be anything other than an ideological rebound of sorts, with the rump UK’s entire political spectrum shunting right. Since such an outcome would almost certainly prolong the viability of liberal democracy, perhaps even worldwide (due to contagion effects), it would be unseemly for any neoreactionary to get adrenalized about it. England would nevertheless undergo a minor restoration, conceivably broadening the political imagination in a modestly positive way.

Every increment of dynamic Anglo capitalism adds resources that will eventually be of great use — especially now, with public ledger crypto-commerce coming online. It is a grave error to become so fixated upon the death of the demotic power structure that positive techno-commercial advances are simply written off, or worse, derided as life-support apparatus for the enemy. Even a minor Anglo-capitalist revitalization would produce some deep value (as early, or creative destruction-phase Thatcherism did, amid its manifold failures).

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There are many, I know, who find obstinate invocations of NRx — as a micro-slogan, cultural brand, conflictual stance, or Schelling point — to be crude at best, and perhaps thoroughly deluded, or worse. It is as if, having tumbled into a vogue, one has become enthralled by it, locked into stuttering, mechanical, thoughtless repetition. Those most skeptical about the sign are most likely disposed to mournfulness about it, whether decrying it for congenital flaws, or lamenting its loss of intellectual productivity and direction.

Obviously, I disagree. NRx is still a cultural infant, far younger than the Millennium, even under the most mythically-creative extension of its genesis, and the cognitive ferment it catalyzes remains extraordinary. It has still scarcely begun. The ties of a consistent name are the very least that are required to concentrate it. NRx, whatever it turns out to be, needs lashing together, because explosions tend to fly apart — and it is unmistakably an explosion.

Creative coincidence, or convergent diversity, is the mark of a culture at work (which is to say, in process). Yesterday, September 3, demonstrated this vividly. Approaching the conclusion of a multi-aspected post on Dugin, ethnicity, religion, and the “dementia’ of being, NIO suggests:

Referring to Chaos would seem in this circumstance to be an option of incredible potential, indeed, if you look closely enough at NRx the hints are already there that Chaos is a central defining characteristic of the thought of all branches of the Trichotomy on multiple levels. Chaos creates order, in fact Chaos is also a form of order, just one which is not immediately understandable. [I will not fake an apology for the self-looping internal link, since it it is one that would in any case have been made here.]

Recalling that NIO explicitly invokes the ontological depths of Chaos — its Hesiodic as well as metaphysical density — it is especially remarkable to find, on the same day, an intricate post by E. Antony Gray, which advances an innovative tripartite schema as the key to the aesthetic core of NRx. This text, too, culminates in a call for an integrative expedition into chaos, staged out of the void:

… the ‘face of the deep’ in Genesis is a primordial unformed, unseen void; That it is called ‘water’ in the Septuagint Greek lets us know something about the peculiar state of Chaos in the Void. The Void is thus Darkness but not shadow (a shadow is a deprivation of light caused by an object) but rather the substrate of all existence, only properly ‘unseen’ when no physical light is present. [… ] Chaos is substantial where disorder is insubstantial. Chaos is the ‘quintessence’ of things, chaotic itself and yet always-begetting order. Breaking down disorder, since disorder is maladaptive. Exit is a way to induce bifurcation, to quickly reduce entropy through separation from the highly entropic system. If no immediate exit is available, Chaos will create one.

To denounce the exhaustion of NRx is an absurdity. It is an exploratory departure, scarcely initiated. To cling to its sign is to subscribe to its impulse, and to set out …

This (via Mangan) is such naked precious metals propaganda — and yet it’s so right.

… markets are behaving exactly as one would expect at the end of a major economic era. That is, markets are totally divorced from the reality of what is going on both economically and geopolitically. Markets are now in a manic phase, driven by false hope and momentum. […] It clearly helps that many economic figures are manipulated and therefore totally inaccurate. If we add to this the most massive money creation in history, we can be certain that these are not normal times. […] We are experiencing the beginning of a hyperinflationary period, with hyperinflation, so far, being noticed only in financial markets, property markets, and other key assets such as art and classic cars. […] And currencies will continue their decline to zero. Continued money printing will guarantee this. And we have to remember that the major currencies don’t have far to go since they are down between 97 and 99 percent in the last hundred years. As currencies start the next major phase of decline we will experience hyperinflation in all parts of the economy. This hyperinflation will be happening in most major countries. …

It’s not just that the analysis is solidly grounded in an obdurate realism (this is the raw economics of Gnon), it’s also that:
(a) Gold is the traditional medium of economic-regime exit, and therefore
(b) This discourse is immediately anti-politics (or resistance).
It says: Get out! That’s not a message to be easily decrypted for representational content, because it’s a war cry.

How does a hyperinflationary collapse begin? With a flight to gold. There’s going to be hyperinflation — flee to gold. It’s a circuit. The Cathedral’s economic authorities are entirely justified in considering such messaging aggressive (even ‘terroristic’), in the specific mode of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people listened, they’d bring everything crashing down.

It’s no less crucial to understand that, by inversion, the voice of central monetary authority is equally incapable of isolating the communication of objective information from the continuous flow of psychological operations. When the state monetary apparatus speaks, it exercises effective power. It commands. The sole value of fiat currency lies in a popular habit of obedience, which the state money power systematically sustains. There is no other usage of macro-economic signs.

‘Buy gold’ is a counter-revolutionary instruction to participate in the destruction of the state money system.

(… and now we have Bitcoin too.)

As argued here before, Outside in firmly maintains that the distinctive structural feature of NRx analysis is escalation by a logical level. It could be described as ‘meta-politics’ if that term had not already been adopted, by thinkers in the ENR tradition, to mean something quite different (i.e. the ascent from politics to culture). There’s an alternative definition at Wikipedia that also seems quite different. This congested linguistic territory drives NRx to talk about Neocameralism, or Meta-Neocameralism — the analysis of Patchwork regimes.

From this perspective, all discussion of concrete social ideals and first-order political preferences, while often entertaining, locally clarifying, and practical for purposes of group construction, is ultimately trivial and distracting. The fundamental question does not concern the kind of society we might like, but rather the differentiation of societies, such that distinctive social models are able — in the first place — to be possible. The rigorous NRx position is lodged at the level of disintegration as such, rather than within a specific disintegrated fragment. This is because, first of all, there will not be agreement about social ideals. To be stuck in an argument about them is, finally, a trap.

Is this not simply Dynamic Geography, of the Patri Friedman type? As a parallel post-libertarian ‘meta-political’ framework, it is indeed close. The thing still missing from Dynamic Geography (as currently intellectually instantiated), however, is Real Politik (or Machiavellianism). It assumes an environment of goodwill, in which rational experimentation in government will be permitted. The Startup Cities model, as well as its close relative Charter Cities, have similar problems. These are all post-libertarian analyses of governance, at a high logical level, but — unlike NRx — they are not rooted in a social conflict theory. They expect to formulate themselves to the point of execution without the necessity of a theoretical and practical encounter with an implacable enemy. ‘Irrational’ obstruction tends to confuse them. By talking about the Cathedral, from the beginning, NRx spares itself from such naivety. (Sophisticated conflict theory within the libertarian tradition has to be sought elsewhere.)

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In an alternative universe, in which there was nobody except Michael Anissimov and me tussling over the identity of Neoreaction, I’d propose a distinction between ‘Inner-‘ and ‘Outer-Nrx’ as the most suitable axis of fission. Naturally, in this actual universe, such a dimension transects a rich fabric of nodes, tensions, and differences.

For the inner faction, a firmly consolidated core identity is the central ambition. (It’s worth noting however that a so-far uninterrogated relation to transhumanism seems no less problematic, in principle, than the vastly more fiercely contested relation to libertarianism has shown itself to be.) Inner-NRx, as a micro-culture, models itself on a protected state, in which belonging is sacred, and boundaries rigorously policed.

Outer-NRx, defined primarily by Exit, relates itself to what it escapes. It is refuge and periphery, more than a substitute core. It does not ever expect to rule anything at all (above the most microscopic level of social reality, and then under quite different names). The Patchwork is for it a set of options, and opportunities for leverage, rather than a menu of potential homes. It is intrinsically nomad, unsettled, and micro-agitational. Its culture consists of departures it does not regret. (While not remotely globalist, it is unmistakably cosmopolitan — with the understanding that the ‘cosmos’ consists of chances to split.)

Outer-NRx tends to like libertarians, at least those of a hard-right persuasion, and the gateway that has enabled it to be outside libertarianism is the ideological zone to which it gravitates. Leaving libertarianism (rightwards) has made it what it is, and continues to nourish it. ‘Entryism’ — as has been frequently noted — is not a significant anxiety for Outer-NRx, but far more of a stimulation and, at its most acute, a welcome intellectual provocation. It is not the dodgy refugees from the ZAP who threaten to reduce its exteriority, and return it to a trap.

The Outside is the ‘place’ of strategic advantage. To be cast out there is no cause for lamentation, in the slightest.

Some notable attempts to dial back the NRx commitment to exit over voice, as inherited from Moldbug, have been seen recently. (I think NBS was crucial in advancing this argument, but I couldn’t find his post immediately — I’ll link to it if someone nudges me helpfully.) It’s undoubtedly a central discussion throughout the reactosphere at the moment.

Some preliminary thought-gathering on the topic:

(1) Exit is a scale-free concept. It can be applied rigorously to extreme cases of sociopolitical separation, from secession to extraterrestrial escapes. Yet these radical examples do not define it. It’s essence is the commercial relation, which necessarily involves a non-transaction option. Exit means: Take it or leave it (but don’t haggle). It is thus, at whatever scale of expression, the concrete social implementation of freedom as an operational principle.

(2) As a philosophical stance, Exit is anti-dialectical. That is to say, it is the insistence of an option against argument, especially refusing the idea of necessary political discussion (a notion which, if accepted, guarantees progression to the left). Let’s spatialize our disagreement is an alternative to resolution in time. Conversations can be prisons. No one is owed a hearing.

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