Mencius Moldbug: And The Basement Dwelling Oligarchs
Image clip from New York Times Podcast February, 2025
Curtis Yarvin—who dubs himself Mencius Moldbug, a cockroach by any name—has managed to enthrall a concerning faction of America's right-wing and Silicon Valley’s wealthier echo chambers with his ideological fantasies. Yarvin’s central premise is that American democracy is beyond repair and must be supplanted by a technocratic monarchy modeled on Silicon Valley startups, headed by an authoritarian chief executive.
The "Dark Enlightenment": Fascism in Passé Hipster Clothing
Yarvin's theories underpin the neoreactionary or "Dark Enlightenment," movement. Despite its edgy branding—suggesting a recalled energy drink pitched at basement dwellers—this movement repackages dusty authoritarian impulses with tech jargon, explicitly rejecting Enlightenment ideals like equality, popular sovereignty, and democratic governance. Instead, it promotes authoritarian, hierarchical rule under a technocratic king. It's corny sci-fi, absurd politics, and philosophically juvenile, rooted in a romanticized fantasy-gamer worldview where "daddy" remains firmly in control.
Writing on his blog Unqualified Reservations, Yarvin spearheaded NRx by excoriating modern democracy as a failed experiment. He depicted the current Western system as irredeemably corrupt – dominated by a progressive secular religion he nicknamed “the Cathedral,” composed of universities, media, the bureaucracy, everyone not of his opinions. This concept echoes conspiracy-laden reactionary themes: Yarvin hallucinates a cabal of liberal institutions engineering public opinion and policy, thwarting true freedom. His solution is to “reload” the system entirely. In Yarvin’s ideal history-reboot, enlightened despots or CEOs would take over nations and run them as efficiently as profitable companies.
The Fatal Flaw of Techno-Monarchy
Yarvin's central proposal—replacing democracy with an authoritarian, technocratic monarchy—isn't revolutionary; it’s a dustbin, discredited proposition. Concentrating unchecked power in a single individual invariably breeds corruption, incompetence, and abuse. This doesn't even require a second thought for anyone with a passing familiarity with history or human beings. One might think a self-proclaimed intellectual would recognize this pattern throughout human civilization, but apparently, Yarvin believes adding MacBooks and GitHub repositories somehow immunizes his monarchy from the universal corruptions of absolute power.
Perhaps most concerning is how Yarvin's authoritarian fantasies have found receptive audiences in tech oligarchs Musk, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. Probably others too. Thiel's recent Financial Times op-ed criticized democratic governance while advocating for institutional transformations that align suspiciously well with Yarvin's anti-democratic stance. Thiel's high school-level rhetoric, laced with conspiratorial undertones and disdain for democratic norms, bears Yarvin’s unmistakable—and embarrassingly juvenile—influence.
Similarly, Palantir CEO Alex Karp echoes Yarvin's anti-democratic sentiments in his recent book, "The Technological Republic," arguing for increased integration between tech companies and governmental structures—effectively proposing to sideline democratic processes in favor of technocratic decision-making by unelected tech executives. This represents an escalation of corporate and state power that undermines fundamental democratic principles of representation and accountability.
We must loudly and consistently question the escalating promises of technological perfectionism, especially from those who fail to appreciate and learn from the profound complexity, adaptability, and evolutionary depth inherent in nature itself. Being blind to the best of teachers, how then could they know anything?
A glaring moral contradiction underlies Yarvin’s worldview: he rails against the supposed propaganda and “mind control” of liberal institutions, yet his own proposed system would consolidate propaganda power even more ruthlessly. Under a Yarvinian regime, the CEO-sovereign would likely control media, education, and narrative to maintain order—an ultimate, centralized Cathedral imposing its will. In practice, his program is less about principle than power: if it’s “the right people” in charge—an enlightened dictator or oligarchs of his choosing—then force and deception are justified. This situational ethics undercuts any high-minded intellectualism in his work, exposing it as power-worship dressed in theory’s clothing. I am ashamed that I am giving any air time to the stupidity — but when such people have the ear of power hungry billionaires, you have to take them seriously.
Ultimately, Yarvin’s political vision is a recycled mix of history’s worst ideas—absolutism, imperialism, oligarchy—draped in droll snickerings and contrarian assertions — look deeply into my eyes fanaticism. Strip away the provocation, and what remains is a template for a harsher, less free world—one that would likely collapse under its own incompetence.