Charlottesville
March 30, 2023
The red pill and blue pill represent a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the blue pill. The terms originate from the 1999 film The Matrix.
As political metaphor
The concept of red and blue pills has since been widely used as a political metaphor, especially among libertarians and conservatives in the United States, where "taking the red pill" or being "red-pilled" means becoming aware of the political biases inherent in society, including in the mainstream media, and becoming an independent thinker; while "taking the blue pill" or being "blue-pilled" means unquestioningly accepting these supposed biases.
The concept is also used among leftists to refer to members of the alt-right and others who subscribe to extremist right wing beliefs or conspiracy theories.
The first known political use of this metaphor was in the 2006 essay "The Red Pill" by University of Colorado sociology professor Kathleen J. Tierney, in which she argued that those who felt that the U.S. government had a poor response to Hurricane Katrina should "take the red pill" and realize that "post-September 11 policies and plans have actually made the nation more vulnerable, both to natural disasters and to future terrorist attacks."
The metaphor has been popularized by neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin. He first used it in a 2007 blog post (writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug) titled "The Case Against Democracy: Ten Red Pills", in which he argues that trying to convince a Westerner that democracy is bad is like trying to convince "a Catholic in 16th-century Spain... to stop believing in Catholicism", but then offers ten "red pill" arguments (along with their "blue pill" counterparts) to make the case against democracy.
The choice between taking a blue or red pill is a central metaphor in the 2011 Arte documentary film Marx Reloaded, in which philosophers including Slavoj Žižek and Nina Power explore solutions to the global economic and financial crisis of 2008–2009. The film also contains an animated parody of the red/blue pill scene in The Matrix, with Leon Trotsky as Morpheus and Karl Marx as Neo.
In 2017, political activist and commentator Candace Owens launched Red Pill Black, a website and YouTube channel that promotes black conservatism in the United States. The term is used as a metaphor for the process of rejection of previously believed leftist narratives.
In May 2020, Elon Musk tweeted "Take the red pill", agreeing with a Twitter user that it meant taking a "free-thinking attitude and waking up from a normal life of sloth and ignorance". Ivanka Trump retweeted this, stating "Taken!" Lilly Wachowski, a director of The Matrix, responded to this exchange with "Fuck both of you".
Black pill and white pill
The metaphor of the "black pill" was first popularized by the incel-related blog Omega Virgin Revolt. In this parlance, being red-pilled means recognizing social realities like male oppression and biological realities like female hypergamy, while being black-pilled means believing that there is little that low-status or unattractive men can do to improve their prospects with women.
This metaphor was extended to political matters, where, after becoming red-pilled (recognizing, and then rejecting, the dominant political narratives), one can then become black-pilled (being resigned to the view that these narratives will forever hold), or white-pilled (believing that forces like the internet will lead to more independent thought.) This metaphor has been embraced by commentators including the anarchist Michael Malice, whose 2022 book The White Pill advocates the latter point of view.
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