In this essay, we aim to examine a new ideological and cultural phenomenon that is becoming increasingly visible at the state level in both Russia and the United States: the Dark Enlightenment movement. This movement represents a hybrid of illiberalism, techno-optimism, and Christian metaphysics.
We begin with a brief overview of the Western version of the Dark Enlightenment and its main theorists, with a particular focus on the political theology of Peter Thiel. We then outline several key parallels between the Dark Enlightenment and the ideas of the Russian conservative revolution. Finally, we offer a preliminary analysis of the first official event reflecting the Russian conservative elite’s aspiration to align with Western Dark Enlightenment thinkers: the Forum of the Future 2050, held in Moscow on June 9−10, 2025.
The Dark Enlightenment
The Dark Enlightenment, or Neo-Reactionary movement, emerged within libertarian circles in the UK and the United States, particularly among the tech elite of Silicon Valley and communities surrounding technology start-ups that advocate for the liberation of capital from state control and for the right to exercise individual freedom unbound by contemporary liberal ethics.
The movement formulates its critique of the liberal ethos through an explicitly anti-democratic, anti-gender, anti-immigrant, and anti-environmentalist platform. It rejects identity politics and state support for marginalized groups while simultaneously working to create alternative cultural frameworks and independent centers of knowledge production.
However, neo-reactionaries do not merely critique the present in the name of a techno-optimistic, corporate future; they also call for the restoration of certain political forms of the past—namely, the reintroduction of the sacred into politics. In doing so, they seek to overturn the very foundations of European modernity, which began with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the end of the Thirty Years’ War.
The movement takes its name from the 2012 manifesto The Dark Enlightenment by British philosopher Nick Land. In Land’s view, the humanism and rational governance of man proposed by the old («bright») Enlightenment of the 18th century has exhausted itself. It led to the catastrophes of the 20th century and is no longer capable of addressing the complexities of the present; instead, it obstructs the further development of humanity. Land speaks of «liberal degeneracy» as a force that holds back capitalist and posthumanist progress.
In his manifesto, Land cites Peter Thiel’s 2009 essay The Education of a Libertarian. Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur and tech investor, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and today one of the most influential supporters of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. In the essay, Thiel makes a crucial distinction between democracy and freedom, stating: «I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.»
In addition to Peter Thiel, the other key theorist of the Dark Enlightenment who significantly influenced Nick Land’s conception of Neo-Reaction is the American programmer and blogger Curtis Yarvin. Beginning in 2007, under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin used his blog Unqualified Reservations to critique modern liberal democracy and to envision a future grounded in what he called «capitalist feudalism» (as outlined in his Formalist Manifesto, 2007).
Yarvin developed the concept of neocameralism, which proposes transforming the state into a corporation. According to Yarvin, democracies are inherently inefficient and prone to corruption. Therefore, he argues for the establishment of a techno-autocracy or CEO-monarchy, in which a single CEO governs the state based on corporate management principles, emphasizing efficiency and direct accountability for leadership and outcomes.
Another important concept developed by Yarvin is the idea of the Cathedral. According to Yarvin, the Cathedral represents the intellectual forces that shape the neoliberal episteme—namely, universities, mainstream media, and the cultural elite—which systematically suppress alternative worldviews. In this view, the Cathedral is an obstacle to true progress, and it is precisely this hegemonic structure that the Dark Enlightenment seeks to challenge through its cultural war as the vanguard of a future political order.
Thus, the theorists of the Dark Enlightenment raise three fundamental questions that have attracted numerous followers to what was originally a countercultural movement:
- the relationship between freedom and democracy;
- the tension between humanism and technological progress;
- the return of the sacred and the eschatological into politics (and the Christian understanding of history as a collaboration between God and humanity).
All of these questions are addressed by Neo-Reactionary theorists, although certain dominant themes can be identified. The concepts of the Cathedral and neo-monarchy are primarily developed in the writings of Curtis Yarvin; the notion of non-human progress and the acceleration of capitalism are central to the work of Nick Land; and the return of metaphysics to politics is the key focus of Peter Thiel’s essays and public speeches.
What unites these thinkers is their countercultural ethos and their shared commitment to future-oriented political and philosophical projection.
Peter Thiel: The Political Theology of the Dark Enlightenment
How do these ideas relate to the Russian version of illiberalism? It appears that the closest parallel to the Russian version of the Dark Enlightenment can be found in the work of Peter Thiel, a student of René Girard, whom he encountered while studying philosophy at Stanford.
In his 2004 lecture The Straussian Moment, Thiel criticizes the West’s obsession with security, which, he argues, has led to the erosion of civil liberties. He argues that the catastrophe of 9/11 exposed the failure of economic rationalism and liberal political thought, as the attacks revealed the existence of a political reality rooted not in rational-economic motivations, but in religious ones. He writes:
«The most direct method for comprehending a world in which not all human beings are homo economicus would therefore appear to involve a return to some version of the older tradition.
[…]
Today, mere self-preservation forces all of us to look at the world anew, to think strange new thoughts, and thereby to awaken from that very long and profitable period of intellectual slumber and amnesia that is so misleadingly called the Enlightenment."
Thiel draws on the ideas of Carl Schmitt, René Girard, and Leo Strauss, describing America as the Katechon and linking the Enlightenment’s separation of politics from religion to the rise of the Antichrist. In other writings and interviews, he argues that the West, consumed by fear of the Armageddon, which became tangible in the nuclear age, has forgotten about the Antichrist.
During an October 2024 interview with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution (Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson), Peter Thiel suggested that the Antichrist could emerge by exploiting apocalyptic fears and offering a solution through global governance. He warned that such a figure or system would present itself as a savior, initially mimicking Christian values, but ultimately subverting them through the imposition of excessive state control.
In this interview, Thiel cites A Short Tale of the Antichrist by Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853−1900)—one of the earliest Russian dystopias, published in 1900—in which Solovyov depicts the Antichrist as a figure who seduces humanity through promises of order, peace and security.
Thiel envisions a path forward for the West through resistance to ideological state control (drawing on the Straussian strategy of esoteric reading) and the advancement of AI technologies. In his view, these tools can enable the Christian West to prevail in the ongoing religious conflicts without becoming a mirror image of its enemy. For Thiel, this means preserving Christian culture while resisting the temptation of the Antichrist, who promises safety at the cost of freedom. It is from this political-theological worldview that Thiel founded Palantir Technologies.
In his 2015 article Against Edenism, Thiel connects the Christian concept of theosis (i.e., the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and deification) with techno-optimism:
«Science and technology are natural allies to this Judeo-Western optimism, especially if we remain open to an eschatological frame in which God works through us in building the kingdom of heaven today, here on Earth — in which the kingdom of heaven is both a future reality and something partially achievable in the present.»
Peter Thiel’s project, where techno-optimism is combined with the idea of the Katechon—the force that holds back the coming of the Antichrist—provides a conceptual foundation for a potential alliance between American and Russian illiberal forces. The concept of the Katechon plays a central role in Thiel’s analysis of AI technology, as that which is capable of restraining the Antichrist may also, paradoxically, hasten his arrival.
In Russia, the concept of the Katechon was introduced into political and cultural discourse in the mid-1990s by Alexander Dugin, who, like Peter Thiel, draws on this idea from Carl Schmitt. In a recent interview with Metametrica, Alexander Dugin revealed that representatives of Thiel had met with him before the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Dugin, they discussed Thiel’s interest in the ideas of the Conservative Revolution, Eurasianism, and that Thiel had read Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics. A meeting between Thiel and Dugin in Moscow was reportedly in the works.
Thiel—and specifically his article The End of the Future (2011)—is cited in a new programmatic document by the Tsargrad Institute, Russia’s leading conservative think tank:
«Over the past 60−70 years, no genuine scientific or technological breakthroughs have occurred. The first to draw attention to this was the leader of American right-wing technocrats, Peter Thiel. In his article The End of the Future, published back in 2011, he noted that ‘we are no longer moving faster.’»
This document was presented at the Forum of the Future 2050 in Moscow in June 2025.
Forum of the Future 2050: Techno-Optimism and Traditionalism
On June 9−10, the Forum of the Future 2050 was held at the «Lomonosov» Innovation Cluster of Moscow State University. The event was organized by the Tsargrad Institute, founded by Konstantin Malofeev in 2023. Its stated goal is to formulate strategic visions for Russia’s development in the post-liberal era and to model a digital and technological future.
The Forum of the Future 2050 is the largest event organized by the Tsargrad Institute to date. It was held with the support of several major Russian state corporations and tech companies, including Roscosmos, the Federation of Auto Modeling Sports of Russia (FAMS), Robbo, and others.
This event can be viewed as the first official forum of the Russian and American Dark Enlightenment, bringing together key technocrats and Christian traditionalists. In addition to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Tsargrad Institute Director Alexander Dugin, the Forum featured prominent figures from both the Russian and Western conservative (illiberal) spheres, including Jeffrey Sachs, Alex Jones, George Galloway, Errol Musk, Peter Tolstoy, Alexey Chadayev, Sergei Pereslegin, and others.
The main topics discussed at the Forum included foreign policy and national interests, culture and traditional Christian values, advanced technologies, science and space exploration, demography, and education.
The Tsargrad Institute prepared a report titled Russia 2050: A Vision of the Future, which outlines potential scenarios for Russia’s development as a superpower in the emerging post-liberal era:
«The era of liberal globalism and unipolarity is coming to an end. It is being replaced by a new multipolar world. We are entering a new ‘concert of great powers’ — a time of intense competition among the empires of the 21st century.
The global anti-liberal shift signals humanity’s entry into the post-liberal era, as well as a return to normalcy. The initiator and leader of this process within the global majority is Russia.
[…]
A symbol of the anti-liberal turn in the West is the Trump revolution and the phenomenon of Trumpism."
This document presents a hybrid of Traditionalism and Futurism, where proposals for replacing migrant labor with robots and planning missions to Mars coexist with the doctrine of the Katechon, autocracy, and the sacralization of the head of state. It states:
«In the 21st century, Russia’s mission as the Restrainer (Katechon) is:
— to regulate the balance of strategic interests and to maintain international security and a just world order based on adherence to universally recognized principles of international law;
— to uphold global security and prevent humanity from descending into global war, chaos, and unrest;
— to defend Christianity and Orthodoxy, as well as traditional institutions and values—religion, family, classical culture, and so forth."
The Forum of the Future 2050 is the first high-profile media event to highlight the shared goals of Russian and Western Tech-Right.
Thiel’s and Yarvin’s ideas and projects are now widely discussed across various Russian platforms and are being conceptualized as a new «Manhattan Project.» Several meetings of the EFKO Philosophical Circle have been devoted to this topic, featuring prominent conservative theorists such as Mikhail Remizov and Boris Mezhuev. While noting that Palantir has assisted Ukraine since the first days of the war, Russian analysts nevertheless acknowledge the importance of Thiel’s techno-theological thought and his critique of contemporary liberalism.
This mutual interest and shared vision of the future as a form of technological authoritarianism grounded in a Christian civilizational project should be taken into account when analyzing the relationship between Putin and Trump and their respective administrations.
