Curtis Yarvin is not a well-known figure in American politics. But this “neo-reactionary” thinker and far-right blogger has emerged as someone who has significant intellectual influence over key figures in the incoming Donald Trump administration, particularly regarding potential threats to American democracy. .
Mr. Yarvin, who believes liberal democracy is a decadent enemy that must be dismantled, has intellectual influence over Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and is close to several of Mr. Trump’s potential appointees. In the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s election victory, the actions and rhetoric of Mr. Trump and his lieutenants closely resemble Mr. Yarvin’s public proposals to seize authoritarian power in the United States.
Trump’s legal actions against media critics, Elon Musk’s promise to cut government spending to the bone, MAGA base against Republican lawmakers who have criticized controversial candidates like Pete Hegseth Deployment is one such measure similar to elements of Yarvin’s expulsion strategy. American liberal democracy.
One of the venues where Mr. Yarvin articulated his strategy was on a podcast hosted by Michael Anton, the author and scholar whom President Trump appointed last week to a senior position under Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio.
In a post on Substack in July, Yarvin once described Vance as “a random politician I’ve hardly ever met,” but in October, The Verge reported, “I don’t know much about Vance’s thinking online. There is no one who shaped it.” The growing similarities between the incoming administration’s actions, especially Vance’s views, have raised questions about his influence.
Robert Evans, an extremism researcher and host of the podcast “Behind the Bastards,” recorded a two-part series about Yarvin.
“He didn’t fall out of a palm tree. He emerged into a world of right-wing media that has been talking about the evils of liberal media and corrupt academic institutions for decades,” he said.
“He influenced a lot of people in the incoming administration and a lot of other influential people on the right. But a lot of what he stands for is the same windmill that the Republican Party has been leaning on for a while,” Evans said. He continued.
“What is unique is the way he appeals to liberal-minded kids in the tech industry, rebranding or repackaging old reactionary ideas and ultimately getting some kids to embrace many far-right ideas.” “That’s the way it is,” he said.
“That’s what’s new about Yarvin and his real accomplishment.”
“A type of one-man rule.”
Anton and Yarvin’s May 2021 conversation was recorded for a podcast by American Mind, a publication of the powerful right-wing Claremont Institute, where Anton is a senior fellow and a Due to its growing influence, the Institute has been described as the “nerve capital of America.” America’s Right.”
On December 8, the Trump transition team announced that Mr. Anton would be appointed director of policy planning at the State Department. Anton also served as communications director for President Trump’s first term on the National Security Council from February 2017 to April 2018, resigning the day before neocon John Bolton was sworn in as national security adviser. did.
Even after leaving the first Trump administration, Anton did not abandon Trump and continued to write darkly about American liberal democracy.
In his 2023 essay collection Rising from Conservatism, edited by Arthur Milik, executive director of Claremont’s American Way of Life Center, Anton writes, “The United States reached its peak around 1965.” He said that Americans are “controlled by a network of conservatism.” unelected bureaucrats…senior executives in business, technology, and finance, the “experts” who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and the media personnel who monitor them.”
Anton divides it into sections with the headings “Universities have become evil,” “Our economy is fake,” “People are corrupt,” and “Our civilization has lost the will to live.” The discussion continued.
His conversation with Yarvin was ostensibly about his 2020 book, The Stakes. The book was also controversial on the right because of its long examination of authoritarian “Caesarism” as a solution to American decadence.
In the same book, he defined Caesarism as “a form of one-person rule…halfway between monarchy and despotism.”
However, he goes on to say that while “Caesarism is not a tyranny but, strictly understood, a regime that usurps a legitimate and functioning government,” Caesarism is “an authority justified in part by necessity.” He added that it was an attempt to implement “one-man rule,” in other words, “disintegration.” “This is the principle of constitutional governance in a republic,” he added, “a nation that is no longer capable of governing itself must still be governed.”
He writes that a “Red Caesar” may be attractive to the “Red Army” of the Republican coalition, but they are “relentlessly rhetorical, political, and increasingly physical, especially in blue states.” “The possibility of this happening is even higher,” he said. Rely on Caesar. ”
Anton stops short of openly calling for authoritarian rule, but generally the advantages of Caesarism include “continuity and stability,” “the possibility of avoiding conflict,” and “a tendency to create peace.” Yes,” he wrote.
“This is what we are trying to do.”
Yavin is the founder of the neo-reactionary or “Dark Enlightenment” movement, whose early ideas were developed in 2007 and 2008 under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug on a blog called “Unqualified Reservations.” He now writes the Substack newsletter under his own name, and the far-right group Passage Publishing recently published an anthology of his previous work.
The Guardian previously reported that Passage Publishing was founded by Jonathan Keeperman, a former lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, who previously worked under the pseudonym “L0m3z.”
Yarvin has consistently held overtly anti-democratic beliefs over the years. The autonomy of the republic has already ended. Actual power is exercised oligarchically in a small number of prestigious academic and media institutions, which he calls “cathedrals.” And rigid democracy should be replaced by a rigid hierarchy led by a single person in the role of monarch or CEO.
He also believes that modern liberal democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction.
J.D. Vance said in a 2021 podcast interview with far-right influencer Jack Murphy: Basically, you have to accept that everything will fall into place. ”
Vance added: “The job for conservatives now is to preserve as much as possible and actually rebuild the country in a better way when the inevitable collapse comes.”
In 2022, Vox called Yarvin “the person who has spent the most time thinking about exactly how the U.S. government could be overthrown and replaced.”
Yarvin suggests that would-be American dictators should campaign for their authoritarian agenda and gain electoral power. They should purge the federal bureaucracy in a push that Yarvin coined as “rage” (meaning “retire all government employees”).
They should ignore court decisions that try to bind them. They need to bring Congress to its knees by mobilizing the populist base against recalcitrant members. And liberal or mainstream media organizations and universities should be shut down immediately.
Given the post-election period and preparations for President Trump’s return to the White House, Mr. Yarvin’s plans appear to be less fanciful than the 2021 plans he had for Mr. Anton.
In that podcast recording, Yarvin provides a condensed presentation of the program he has developed at Substack and other venues.
In the middle of the conversation, Anton says to Yarvin, “You’re essentially advocating for the old way of doing things, where someone legally gains power through elections and then uses it illegally.” He said and added: Is that happening? ”
“That’s not illegal,” Yarvin responded, adding, “You just declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address.”
Yarvin continued: Where does that mission come from? It basically comes from saying, “This is what we’re going to do,” and then doing it. ”
Trump promised to carry out a wide range of anti-democratic or authoritarian moves throughout his 2024 campaign, and he effectively followed through on these promises. President Trump has threatened to declare a state of emergency in response to the US immigration crisis.
President Trump also vowed to pursue retaliation against individually named opponents, including Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and spoke out about sending US troops to deal with the “enemy within.” He spoke extensively.
Later in the recording, Yarvin said that after a hypothetical authoritarian president takes office in January, “we can’t continue to have the past of coming from Harvard and the New York Times beyond probably the beginning of April.” He later expanded on this idea, saying, “The idea that I could become Caesar, seize power, and operate someone else’s Ministry of Reality is patently absurd.”
“Machiavelli would be quick to tell you that’s a stupid idea,” Yarvin added.
Although Trump is not yet in power, he has taken on media companies and launched lawsuits against some broadcasters, including the Des Moines Register, CBS, and ABC, the latter believing legal experts can defeat the networks. The lawsuit was settled for $15 million.
Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor-elect J.D. Vance and those in the wider MAGA orbit, such as Christopher Rufo, have identified the university as their main ideological enemy, and Rufo has been seen as an image of Christian nationalism. He is helping rebuild the New College of Florida.
In 2022, Vance told Vanity Fair: We need something like a debirthing program, a deawakening program. ”
The Guardian reported in August that Vance said in a podcast recording: That’s university. ”
Elsewhere in the podcast with Anton, Yarvin spoke about the need to mobilize the party’s base, or rank-and-file supporters, to the cause. Yarvin hypothesized that this could be achieved using an app that supporters could download and receive instructions when an opponent is identified.
Yarvin said the fictional US dictator would use the app to “recreate the Sons of Liberty style, quote-unquote protests.”
The Sons of Liberty was the name of the underground cadre who pushed back against British rule prior to the American Revolutionary War. One historian wrote that their methods amounted to “mob terrorism.”
While there is no Trump app comparable to what Yarvin envisions, pro-Trump social media organizations have already channeled the MAGA base’s ire against Republican Rep. Joni Ernst, a self-proclaimed sexual assault survivor. He has expressed skepticism about Pete Hegseth’s nomination. He has been accused of sexual misconduct.
“Her replacement is a sign that Trump’s MAGA base is ready, willing, and able to bully Republicans into following his desires,” the New York Times said in an article about Ernst’s resignation earlier this month. “It suggests that.”
The recommendation Yarvin asked the president to make was for a sharp and sudden concentration of police power.
“Basically, we have to be willing to say that with this regime change, there will be a period of temporary uncertainty and we need to resolve this in a very peaceful way. “What that means is basically a state of emergency in the White House,” he said.
“This means the president basically has direct control over all law enforcement agencies and basically declares a state of emergency in every state,” he added.
In September, President Trump said on the campaign trail that crime would end “immediately” if there were no-holds-barred crackdowns on “a really wild, disgusting” and “violent day.”
“It’s been a tough hour, and I mean it’s been really tough, but the word will spread quickly and it’ll be over soon. It’ll be over immediately,” Trump added.
