Essay Club: Cryptocracy by John Carter

"In the managerial state, power is deliberately opaque."

There are so many great writers on Substack. In last month’s Essay Club we discussed In Praise of the Gods, an essay by Substack local Simon Sarris, which I’ve re-read several times since it was first published. It’s excellent, and I was pleased to see that it resonated with many of you, too.

Today we’ll be discussing Cryptocracy by John Carter, another Substack local who writes over at Postcards from Barsoom. Cryptocracy really caught my attention when it was first published. It’s likely to be more divisive than some of our previous essays, as it’s more explicitly political than anything we’ve covered before, but I encourage you to read it regardless of where you stand politically. It’s a fascinating and well-written essay, and takes less than 20 minutes to read.

Neuroshima by Michael Michera. This piece was included in John Carter’s original essay, and represents the sinister tech-savvy hivemind of the modern elite.

John Carter himself is a bit of an enigma. He describes himself as follows:

“Martian Wyrdlord. Blood memory enjoyer. Solarian barbarizer. Atlantean DNA activator. Portal dowser. Filosofictionalist.”

Beyond this, all I can tell you is that Carter is a Canadian scientist and writer (obviously). I suspect this is intentional on Carter’s part—people who write from a non-establishment right-wing perspective often choose to muddy their identities, as writing about these topics often carries a risk of being ‘cancelled’, fired, or even fined or imprisoned, depending on where you live.

Instead of trying to guess at Carter’s identity, then, let’s talk about his work. He writes about a variety of topics related to politics, culture, and current events. His style is direct, provocative, increasingly experimental, and often infused with evocative, techno-futuristic imagery. Cryptocracy has a particularly Lovecraftian vibe—fitting, I think, for an essay on shadowy, all-seeing elites—and is in my opinion one of his best essays. Let’s dig into it.