On a Monday evening last May, Danielle S. Allen, a political theorist at Harvard, strode into the university’s Faculty Club wearing sneakers and a bright orange blazer. The occasion was a debate with the blogger Curtis Yarvin, alias Mencius Moldbug, organized by Passage Publishing — a boutique press, aimed at neo-reactionary highbrows, whose books serve up edgy views on race and paeans to masculine vitality, among other more exotic species of right-wing iconoclasm.
“You’ve got Dark Enlightenment and Bright Enlightenment,” Allen said chipperly in her opening remarks, gesturing at her opponent’s black leather jacket. The debate’s subject: Which is better for America: democracy or concentrated executive power?
