Warning: This post is long, weird, and deeply unsettling. But if you want to understand the digital necromancer whispering monarchist sweet-nothings into the ears of America’s worst people, buckle in. Also, sources are hyperlinked in many places but there’s an extensive bibliography at the end.
If you haven’t heard of Curtis Yarvin, congratulations on having hobbies. But you’ve probably encountered his ideas—filtered through MAGA talking points, tech bro delusions, or the meat-grinder that is Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Yarvin, better known to the darker corners of the web as Mencius Moldbug, is a software engineer who decided democracy was a failed experiment and that what America really needs is… a king. Preferably installed like a software update.
No, really. That’s the elevator pitch.
What started as a fringe blog post circa 2007 has, over time, metastasized into something far more dangerous: a body of pseudo-intellectual ideas that wormed their way into parts of the Trump movement, the “New Right,” and the bloodshot eyes of Peter Thiel-funded libertarian overlords who want to run society like a GitHub repo.
🧠 Moldbug’s Manifesto: Patch Democracy, Reboot Monarchy
Yarvin’s original thesis, delivered over hundreds of rambling, footnote-riddled blog posts, goes something like this:
• Democracy is a lie.
• The American system is a sham controlled by a “Cathedral” (his term for universities, media, and the civil service).
• Progressivism is a theocratic cult.
• The cure? Corporate monarchism. A CEO-king who owns the government and runs it for profit, efficiently, like Apple. But with tanks.
It’s the political theory equivalent of saying, “What if we replaced the DMV with Palantir and gave it nukes?”
Yarvin isn’t exactly calling for pitchforks in the street—he’s too smug and socially averse for that. What he wants is resignation from democracy. He wants you to accept that you’re a consumer, not a citizen, and that governance should be a subscription service managed by elites who don’t need your vote—only your obedience.
🦠 Contagion: How Yarvin Infected the Right
If Yarvin’s ideas had stayed buried on blogspot, we could laugh and move on. But here’s the kicker: people started listening.
And not just Reddit trolls and crypto bros. We’re talking actual power players:
• Peter Thiel has publicly praised Yarvin and bankrolled politicians and causes that reflect his anti-democratic vibes.
• Blake Masters, Thiel’s hand-picked Senate candidate, echoed Yarvin’s disdain for democracy in multiple statements and essays.
• J.D. Vance casually referenced Yarvin-adjacent ideas while chasing his own weird populist-techno-authoritarian fusion.
• Michael Anton, of “Flight 93 Election” infamy, was reading Yarvin back in his Claremont days and helped bridge the gap between West Coast esoterica and East Coast wannabe aristocrats.
Even Steve Bannon, no stranger to ideological dumpster fires, has dipped into Yarvin’s style of anti-establishment nihilism—though Bannon prefers a louder, bloodier flavor.
And then there’s the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”, a roadmap for authoritarian takeover cloaked in Republican branding. Strip away the suits, and it’s Yarvin’s dream: crush the administrative state, install a powerful executive, purge the bureaucracy, and answer to no one but your donors.
🪞 Why This Isn’t Just LARPing
It would be easy—comforting, even—to dismiss Yarvin as just another online crank. But cranks with wealthy friends and influence over policy become problems.
His writing appeals to a very specific—and very dangerous—type of person:
• Disillusioned tech bros who think voting is beneath them
• Libertarians who confuse feudalism with freedom
• Reactionaries who long for a past that never existed
• Pseudointellectuals who like their fascism with citations
It also fits perfectly into a larger strategy: undermine confidence in democracy by flooding the discourse with “respectable” alternatives that all, coincidentally, involve unelected strongmen.
What makes Yarvin especially poisonous is how plausible he tries to sound. He doesn’t rant; he lectures. He frames autocracy as “efficiency,” monarchy as “stability,” and freedom as “an illusion sold to the masses.”
That veneer of sophistication makes his ideology more seductive—and more insidious—than the usual jackboot-and-salute crowd.
👨💻 Aesthetics of the Anti-State
Yarvin’s ideology is tailor-made for the Silicon Valley crowd:
• It sounds “disruptive.”
• It hates regulation.
• It fetishizes order.
• It replaces public accountability with private control.
It’s monarchy-as-startup: install a visionary founder, give him absolute control, and hope the product doesn’t kill everyone.
Ironically, it also mirrors the very “Cathedral” Yarvin claims to hate. He writes like a postmodernist professor with a Reddit addiction. It’s all layers of irony, obscure citations, and self-referential garbage meant to dazzle the easily impressed and discourage critical thinking.
🏛️ The Threat of Yarvinism in Power
Let’s be blunt: Yarvin’s vision is incompatible with democracy, the Constitution, and any form of collective governance that doesn’t involve corporate shares and armed guards.
But it’s not incompatible with where parts of the American right are headed.
If Trump—or a more disciplined successor—regains power with a compliant Congress and an ideological mandate from outfits like Heritage, don’t be surprised when Yarvin’s name starts popping up again. Not as a blog curiosity, but as a philosophical foundation for dismantling democracy by executive fiat.
Already, his fingerprints are showing up in proposals to:
• Fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists
• Centralize executive power with minimal checks
• Repeal or ignore judicial rulings
• Treat dissent as disloyalty
• Recast governance as a business, not a public service
This isn’t abstract. It’s a playbook. And it’s being studied.
🧼 Final Thoughts: Moldbug Wears No Clothes
Curtis Yarvin wants to be the dark wizard behind the throne, whispering monarchist mantras into the ears of tech billionaires and presidential hopefuls.
But here’s the truth: he’s a man with a laptop, too much free time, and a fetish for control disguised as theory. His ideas aren’t revolutionary—they’re regressive. His vision isn’t bold—it’s borrowed from a centuries-old playbook written in blood and crowned in gold.
And yet, in a broken system where charisma beats competence and strongmen are back in style, even the most asinine ideologies can find traction.
So watch this space. Pay attention to who’s citing Yarvin. Watch who uses phrases like “the Cathedral,” or talks about CEOs as rulers, or thinks liberal democracy is just “mob rule.”
Because behind the irony, the blog posts, and the pseudo-clever memes, there’s a very old idea trying to reassert itself:
You don’t get a say.
Further Reading: