Borderline Interesting - this is great material. To set context, I have spent since 2008 watching Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug (if your readers are googling people’s names). That’s his pseudonym, or was, to be accurate. You’ve obviously done your homework and pulled the very important facts together for the reader to conclude in no uncertain terms that there are certainly no coincidences in play here.
What I would encourage ALL readers of this *excellent* article to do is remember this: Yarvin is NOT A POLITICAL SCIENTIST, nor a SOCIOLOGIST, nor ANYONE with ANY credentials except the gray matter between his ears. His “salvation plan” through NRx is sooooooooooo full of holes and lacks sooooooo many details he leaves to “just working themselves out” that I can knock him over with a feather in a light breeze. I have spent money going to schools to learn, in no uncertain terms, why things “are the way they are.” Yarvin has not. I will challenge him to duel opposing views any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. His target state of NRx is one where a pattern of “try it now” thinking emerges: Over and over, new “government-as-a-service” will be propagated, expand, have its moment, and fail. Just like the same corporations he models his dictator rule by.
I am getting into the weeds already. The point is, THINK OF HIM AS A RHETORICIST - NOT A VISIONARY. His one skill is selling you on baffling bullshit that masks inherent WEAKNESS in design. It is not our “future” - and I point out that most billionaires attribute their success to PURE LUCK feeding WELL OVER 50% of it. Yarvin just caught a willing fish in Thiel, and that is why Andressen and Musk and Bezos and several others are all sharing their cash with him.
In a stunning way, if you really follow all that money+power+logic to its logical end, the whole NRx movement is a huge waste of time that has been tried, failed, and leaves so many elements of government+society+people unaccounted for, it doesn’t deserve the title of being a “movement” at all. Full stop. Thanks for reading.
Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it. I agree that nothing of Yarvin’s school of thought is new, it is simply newly packaged and differently distributed. He acts as catalyst for fascist ideas and has found in Silicon Valley’s libertarians a group of listeners. He brings his arguments across using very selective historic examples that serve his argument then and there. When you consider his whole body of work, he is constantly contradicting himself due to that. The only thing that I would frame different as you did is, that those things have been tried over and over again and have always failed - the same argument can be made for democracy - reactionaries are to a certain extent contrarian thinkers that underline what was good about what is gone. With that they willingly but sometimes unknowingly deliver the arguments for demagogues and their agendas, which have very much succeeded over and over again in history. Democracy dies in silence.
There is a better path forward. Your reader’s other responses merit a further discussion.
TBC, I’m no longer attached to liberalism or the Democratic Party. Both have failed to bring a contemporary vision to light for true debate. So I think elevating this above ideology is a necessary step in evolving as a country. This isn’t a choice between NRx and democracy. The cynicism has to go first though. We will get nowhere fast with that as an anchor point.
Only a desperate, halfwit idiot would allow clowns like Yarvin, Thiel, and Musk anywhere near the levers of federal power. They found the ultimate sucker in Trump and the country will suffer as a result.
don’t drag credentials into an argument in 2025. we had five years of STULTIFYING mass murder instantiated by people with credentials. i don’t give a flying FUCK anymore about credentials and you have no one but yourselves to blame. you don’t fucking LIE your way through a goddamned pandemic and BAN people because they are asking questions.
you could have held them accountable, you didn’t. so here we are.
Robert, I’m interested in the several levels of your response and would like to understand your perspective better. I must have said something about credentials that you think have rendered them irrelevant. From my perspective, I had a simple intent in saying that Yarvin’s rhetoric is political speech. Because he is qualified to speak politically, as anyone is who has beliefs, then taking his words in that context is fair game. I take no issue with them in that regard.
On a level that involves a historical perspective, Yarvin does not begin his logical chain of thought taking into consideration historical facts gained over 3,000+ years of tribal autocratic rule. His logic jumps from a system where one person is the sole decision maker for the good of a patchwork (mini kingdom), and people are free to come and go to other patchworks as they desire. They can be “cancelled” in one mini-kingdom for crime or other arbitrary law that’s applicable to that kingdom, and through the security of blockchain, have that distinction transfer to every other kingdom in a realm. That alone creates a set of logical problems which Yarvin never addresses, and so, becomes utopian and at that point, impractical until its deficiencies are addressed.
By “invoking credentials” I meant to put in big bold 256-point print that he’s not demonstrating the qualities of any first-year political science major, let alone a visionary that he halfway claims that he is.
I sense you have some disgust at the idea of invoking credentials as connected in some way to murders of some kind (Palestine?) going unaccounted for. Can you please connect that thought to anything I wrote, or the OP wrote, with how a system of NRx corporate entities functioning like monarchies would:
A) acknowledge those murders were their responsibility to identify, judge, and hold the guilty accountable, then, B) ensure that all other corporate leaders of other monarchies in the system would agree with the findings of the first, and then C) assume responsibility that the state inherits for detaining and caring for, or executing and disposing of the criminals you’re (I think?) implying exist in an existing system? I’m honestly interested in your answer, because Yarvin’s theories are incomplete in this regard, and he does not fully go through an end-to-end case anywhere in his works. Nor do his peers in related works. For me, it appears to be a large hole that needs addressed. Thank you.
Thank you for a riveting essay. I always comfort myself that at no time anywhere in the world has a system of pure intellectual governance ever survived for long. That is probably because 99.99 percent of those governed are not perfect thinkers and eventually bring it down. That applies to politics and religion. It is almost like the average wealth creating family going from rags to riches and back in three generations. Children of the privileged tend to rebel against their elders and lose their parent's work ethic. Musk is heading in that direction, as far as I can tell.
In physics you would call that entropy, in the and a measurement of disorder or randomness in a system, tending to increase over time in isolated systems. You can reverse everything, yet the level of entropy will always grow.
I'm by no means an expert in Carlyle, but I've read enough of him and about him to doubt Yavin's one-dimensional take. He was at times an anti monarchist, a critic of lasses-Faire economics, and suspicious of democratic institutions. M. H Abrams put it thus: "His position is bewilderingly difficult to classify." In bringing this up I am not attempting to redeem Carlyle or shift perception of him, but instead question how successful a thinker Yavin can be when even the first two pages of an introduction to Carlyle illustrates more nuance than Yavin finds in his own model thinker.
This has become a part of the mainstream dialog. Bit by bit, someone publishes their take on these realities. So much of the behavior and actions of the current American Administration align to Yarvin and other extreme views. Everything from The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 draws from this ideology and the notion that America is the breeding ground for a new world order that is exclusionary of many. Not really the agenda of post WWII America and for the countries that bought into a Global Liberal Democracy that see humans as just that, it is time to rally together and stand up for this ideology. For the Americans within this catastrophic turn of events, we encourage you to stay strong. When you stand up to the beast your country is becoming, we will be there to support you. We can not let the world return to the exclusionary order it was.
I came across this connection between Theil, Andreessen, Yarvin, Vance, etc. recently when I was trying to map dark money and influence on the right. Even though Yarvin downplayed the Vance connection, it’s certainly concerning how well the current situation with the Trump administration fits the model Yarven (in his contradictory and confusing way) pushes for.
Borderline Interesting - this is great material. To set context, I have spent since 2008 watching Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug (if your readers are googling people’s names). That’s his pseudonym, or was, to be accurate. You’ve obviously done your homework and pulled the very important facts together for the reader to conclude in no uncertain terms that there are certainly no coincidences in play here.
What I would encourage ALL readers of this *excellent* article to do is remember this: Yarvin is NOT A POLITICAL SCIENTIST, nor a SOCIOLOGIST, nor ANYONE with ANY credentials except the gray matter between his ears. His “salvation plan” through NRx is sooooooooooo full of holes and lacks sooooooo many details he leaves to “just working themselves out” that I can knock him over with a feather in a light breeze. I have spent money going to schools to learn, in no uncertain terms, why things “are the way they are.” Yarvin has not. I will challenge him to duel opposing views any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. His target state of NRx is one where a pattern of “try it now” thinking emerges: Over and over, new “government-as-a-service” will be propagated, expand, have its moment, and fail. Just like the same corporations he models his dictator rule by.
I am getting into the weeds already. The point is, THINK OF HIM AS A RHETORICIST - NOT A VISIONARY. His one skill is selling you on baffling bullshit that masks inherent WEAKNESS in design. It is not our “future” - and I point out that most billionaires attribute their success to PURE LUCK feeding WELL OVER 50% of it. Yarvin just caught a willing fish in Thiel, and that is why Andressen and Musk and Bezos and several others are all sharing their cash with him.
In a stunning way, if you really follow all that money+power+logic to its logical end, the whole NRx movement is a huge waste of time that has been tried, failed, and leaves so many elements of government+society+people unaccounted for, it doesn’t deserve the title of being a “movement” at all. Full stop. Thanks for reading.
Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it. I agree that nothing of Yarvin’s school of thought is new, it is simply newly packaged and differently distributed. He acts as catalyst for fascist ideas and has found in Silicon Valley’s libertarians a group of listeners. He brings his arguments across using very selective historic examples that serve his argument then and there. When you consider his whole body of work, he is constantly contradicting himself due to that. The only thing that I would frame different as you did is, that those things have been tried over and over again and have always failed - the same argument can be made for democracy - reactionaries are to a certain extent contrarian thinkers that underline what was good about what is gone. With that they willingly but sometimes unknowingly deliver the arguments for demagogues and their agendas, which have very much succeeded over and over again in history. Democracy dies in silence.
There is a better path forward. Your reader’s other responses merit a further discussion.
TBC, I’m no longer attached to liberalism or the Democratic Party. Both have failed to bring a contemporary vision to light for true debate. So I think elevating this above ideology is a necessary step in evolving as a country. This isn’t a choice between NRx and democracy. The cynicism has to go first though. We will get nowhere fast with that as an anchor point.
Which reader responses are you referring to? Following with interest.
Only a desperate, halfwit idiot would allow clowns like Yarvin, Thiel, and Musk anywhere near the levers of federal power. They found the ultimate sucker in Trump and the country will suffer as a result.
People would not fall this dystopian world!
But the extreme wealth allowed to coalesce in our society, without proper taxation and accountability, may try to force it on the Sleeping masses!
Americans are slowly waking up to the Tech Bros and their desire for total control!
NOW IS THE TIME! STIKE THE OLIGARCHS!
Politically, Lower court judges need to make their move! Call Musk as a witness! If he doesn’t show, issue an arrest warrant!
Stop slow-walking defense of the CONSTITUTION!
Economically , Americans must use their muscle to bring down the U.S. ECONOMY to impress on these nihilistic assholes, Americans have had enough!
If you can’t DAZZLE them brilliance then BAFFLE them with BULLSHIT is the perfect saying
don’t drag credentials into an argument in 2025. we had five years of STULTIFYING mass murder instantiated by people with credentials. i don’t give a flying FUCK anymore about credentials and you have no one but yourselves to blame. you don’t fucking LIE your way through a goddamned pandemic and BAN people because they are asking questions.
you could have held them accountable, you didn’t. so here we are.
cope.
Robert, I’m interested in the several levels of your response and would like to understand your perspective better. I must have said something about credentials that you think have rendered them irrelevant. From my perspective, I had a simple intent in saying that Yarvin’s rhetoric is political speech. Because he is qualified to speak politically, as anyone is who has beliefs, then taking his words in that context is fair game. I take no issue with them in that regard.
On a level that involves a historical perspective, Yarvin does not begin his logical chain of thought taking into consideration historical facts gained over 3,000+ years of tribal autocratic rule. His logic jumps from a system where one person is the sole decision maker for the good of a patchwork (mini kingdom), and people are free to come and go to other patchworks as they desire. They can be “cancelled” in one mini-kingdom for crime or other arbitrary law that’s applicable to that kingdom, and through the security of blockchain, have that distinction transfer to every other kingdom in a realm. That alone creates a set of logical problems which Yarvin never addresses, and so, becomes utopian and at that point, impractical until its deficiencies are addressed.
By “invoking credentials” I meant to put in big bold 256-point print that he’s not demonstrating the qualities of any first-year political science major, let alone a visionary that he halfway claims that he is.
I sense you have some disgust at the idea of invoking credentials as connected in some way to murders of some kind (Palestine?) going unaccounted for. Can you please connect that thought to anything I wrote, or the OP wrote, with how a system of NRx corporate entities functioning like monarchies would:
A) acknowledge those murders were their responsibility to identify, judge, and hold the guilty accountable, then, B) ensure that all other corporate leaders of other monarchies in the system would agree with the findings of the first, and then C) assume responsibility that the state inherits for detaining and caring for, or executing and disposing of the criminals you’re (I think?) implying exist in an existing system? I’m honestly interested in your answer, because Yarvin’s theories are incomplete in this regard, and he does not fully go through an end-to-end case anywhere in his works. Nor do his peers in related works. For me, it appears to be a large hole that needs addressed. Thank you.
Thank you for a riveting essay. I always comfort myself that at no time anywhere in the world has a system of pure intellectual governance ever survived for long. That is probably because 99.99 percent of those governed are not perfect thinkers and eventually bring it down. That applies to politics and religion. It is almost like the average wealth creating family going from rags to riches and back in three generations. Children of the privileged tend to rebel against their elders and lose their parent's work ethic. Musk is heading in that direction, as far as I can tell.
In physics you would call that entropy, in the and a measurement of disorder or randomness in a system, tending to increase over time in isolated systems. You can reverse everything, yet the level of entropy will always grow.
I'm by no means an expert in Carlyle, but I've read enough of him and about him to doubt Yavin's one-dimensional take. He was at times an anti monarchist, a critic of lasses-Faire economics, and suspicious of democratic institutions. M. H Abrams put it thus: "His position is bewilderingly difficult to classify." In bringing this up I am not attempting to redeem Carlyle or shift perception of him, but instead question how successful a thinker Yavin can be when even the first two pages of an introduction to Carlyle illustrates more nuance than Yavin finds in his own model thinker.
This has become a part of the mainstream dialog. Bit by bit, someone publishes their take on these realities. So much of the behavior and actions of the current American Administration align to Yarvin and other extreme views. Everything from The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 draws from this ideology and the notion that America is the breeding ground for a new world order that is exclusionary of many. Not really the agenda of post WWII America and for the countries that bought into a Global Liberal Democracy that see humans as just that, it is time to rally together and stand up for this ideology. For the Americans within this catastrophic turn of events, we encourage you to stay strong. When you stand up to the beast your country is becoming, we will be there to support you. We can not let the world return to the exclusionary order it was.
I came across this connection between Theil, Andreessen, Yarvin, Vance, etc. recently when I was trying to map dark money and influence on the right. Even though Yarvin downplayed the Vance connection, it’s certainly concerning how well the current situation with the Trump administration fits the model Yarven (in his contradictory and confusing way) pushes for.
Wealth is an illusion. Take it down.
Good piece, thanks for this. In your paragraph on Spengler, there may be a typo -- I think you want monarchy instead of "monarch?"
Yes, thank you.
Sadly this is what the majority of American swing state voters wanted again
It seems to me that the future of the US will resemble the Game of Thrones more than any technoparadise.
I’m actually pretty fine with all this & expect a high ranking position ;-)
I will publish additional essays in the coming weeks.