January 19, 2025 - 6:30pm
Today marks the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration. His election victory in November sparked a cultural shift, plunging the American Left into an identity crisis. “Now is the time of monsters,” New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein wrote last week, quoting Gramsci. Referring to Trump’s return to office, as well as the AI boom, climate change, and falling global fertility rates, he added: “To look at any of these stories in isolation is to miss what they collectively represent: the unsteady, unpredictable emergence of a different world.”
Klein’s column presents a contradiction within the broader Left-wing zeitgeist. Progressives widely acknowledge that in practice — in terms of their ability to solve problems, influence institutions and win elections — Democrats have lost ground. But in theory, according to this school of thought, the party remains in the moral right on every issue.
Enter Curtis Yarvin, a monarchist, political theorist, and influencer of the Online Right. As the New York Times interview with him published this weekend puts it, “while Yarvin himself may still be obscure, his ideas are not.” The thinker’s conversation with the NYT’s David Marchese is in fact a masterclass in a very specific kind of persuasion: disenchantment.
When asked who he considers “enlightened” by his political theory, Yarvin replies: “Fully enlightened for me means fully disenchanted. When a person who lives within the progressive bubble of the current year looks at the Right or even the new Right, what’s hardest to see is that what’s really shared is not a positive belief but an absence of belief.” If support for Trump is any sign, significant fractions of the tech industry, online media, and cultural influencers are increasingly “fully disenchanted”.
Yarvin challenges the political and historical myths of the Left from a sympathetic lens. He treads across progressive moral taboos with help from Marchese, who brings up some of the writer’s most contentious past blog posts about white nationalism and race. One of Yarvin’s more controversial beliefs is that the US should be ruled by monarchy — a single individual with absolute power — rather than democracy or oligarchy.
The reason Yarvin cites for preferring this system is that “having an effective government and an efficient government is better for people’s lives.” He believes that the government can only be as productive as a private company by becoming governed like a private company, citing Apple as an example of a “monarchy” under his definition. This idea comes at a time when a cottage industry of Left-wing think tanks, journalists, and policymakers has formed around the concept of “state capacity” — creating a system that can execute on large government projects.
As the interview progresses, Marchese makes increasingly emotional outbursts about the aforementioned taboos: “I can’t believe I’m saying this”, “I can’t believe I’m arguing this”, “You call it cartoonish, I call it very morally clear.” Gaetano Mosca, an Italian political theorist often quoted by Yarvin, argues that these unquestioned statements are used to reinforce elite power. Mosca defines a “political formula” as “abstract principles through which the political elite justifies its own power, building around it a moral and legal structure”. Rather than being evidenced factual claims, these are slogans chanted to show power and obedience to power.
While the liberal-Left contingent long dominant within the Democratic Party has become largely disenchanted by these slogans, it remains invested in the political system which gave rise to them. Towards the end of the interview, Marchese expresses that he is unconvinced “why blowing up democracy, rather than trying to make it better, would somehow lead to better lives for people who are struggling the most”. Yarvin, for his part, argues that “people equate democracy with good government”, an error which weds them to the failing system in place.
After November’s defeat, Democrats must choose one of two desires: the desire to repeat the moral shibboleths of the 2010s, or the desire to win. If they choose the former, they will continue to lose ground in public opinion, government, and cultural institutions. If they choose the latter, they might have to consider Yarvin’s perspective in order to rebuild state capacity. The Democrats’ road back to power, and towards understanding what went wrong before, will require a reckoning with disenchantment.
Brian Chau is a mathematician, software engineer, and independent writer at cactus.substack.com.
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SubscribeA monarchy is nothing like a business like Apple is a business. Such modern businesses operate on investment open to everybody with the capital to invest, for which a board of directors is responsible and which the business assumes a limited liability. Everything in business is ruled by contracts, dividends and exchange. If a business fails it can liquidate and close shop, with most people walking away from it relatively unharmed.
Monarchy on the other hand is intrinsically linked to the Divine, is exclusive to those who the monarch deems worthy of being in its court and assumes complete liability. Monarchies are ruled by duties, honour and oaths over subjects for who circumstance of birth (not investment) puts on them an obligation where complete liability is assumed and for which, if it fails, great harm usually affects everybody involved. Most importantly the distinction between an investor and a subject is that the board of directors are not responsible for the investor themselves only their investment, a monarch is responsible for their subjects which includes every aspect of their life including their wealth.
Modern people – with their secular Rousseauian social contract view of the world – can barely even grasp concepts like duty or oaths that make monarchies possible. Which is why countries that do have monarchies in modern times are really just autocrats or glorified celebrities.
What Curtis is essentially proposing, probably without even realizing it, is much closer to modern China’s method of governance in which a single party of ‘directors’ rule a population that has been reduced to mere numbers on a spreadsheet and allotted a kind of social credit rating based on their ‘investment’ into the system. Such a similar outcome would result from Curtis’ ‘neo-monarchism’, it would essentially be rule by a bank not a monarch.
Somehow, to me, governance by a bank with its petty tyranny is more egregious and tortuous than the violent maliciousness of a dictator. I’d rather a bullet to the head than a life-long barrage of credit ratings, brown envelopes and cold calls.
You had me on board until your last hyperbolic sentence. Really? You’d rather a bullet to the head?
In principle? Yes. Obviously probably be far too much of a coward to choose death in reality, but anybody who has read Kafka knows that – at least intellectually – a swift death is preferable to a life long struggle against a bureaucratic machine. Or, as C.S. Lewis said, it is better to be ruled by robber barons than moral busybodies.
I’m afraid you took the hyperbole a bit too seriously. Many proclaim it is ‘better to die standing than live on your knees’, but most bend the knee anyway.
This article says nothing and fails to give the reader a context for or overview of Curtis Yarvin’s ideas.
Come on Unherd, you can do better.
State capacity is created by war. This is the tragedy.
The world view of the progressive left has been shown to be morally and politically bankrupt.
It’s been a long time coming. The alternative view isn’t extremist, simply based upon reality. It makes no difference if so-called “intellectuals” on the left make a revisionist case, their mindset is inextricably woven into the failed narrative the West has suffered from these past three decades. Yep, we got complacent… and forgot that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.
Time to regroup. The breathing space afforded by Trump’s victory needs to be used to inhale the oxygen of freedom once again.
And breathe…
I don’t think the answer is increasing the volume of abstract jargon.
The true answer lies in the words of the great sage, John Robin Biden when he read a bunch of stuff off the teleprompter for the final time.
That’s a fact, Jack not hyperbole.
Very interesting. A rare insight into the mind of a progressive liberal.
And oh what a mess. What will all the progressive liberals have to say as the Far Left tide goes out?
Something like this article. It will be self-pitying and pointless.
Please Unherd spare us from anymore of this.
Yarvin. Treated like some seer or prophet.
IMHO Yarvin is just some striking windbag.
Subtract the ‘Monachy’ routine from his patter and you just have a family standard
neo lib.
There is a populist project or an elite project.
The first says it is an instrument of the people, but has other secret masters.
The latter doesn’t even pretend to work for the people.
In the absence of a democratic revolution in which the regime is dismantled and returned to health by the people
Trump is the best of a bad bunch
So benign dictatorship is best? I thought that idea was exploded a long time
As Juvenal said 2000 years ago ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes’.
Sadly, Yarvin is too verbose to be an effective prophet. He’ll need a transcriber and editor.
We never chose democracy because it’s a good system of governance but because it shouldn’t be a terrible one. Dictatorship could be fantastic but more likely, esp in the medium term, it will be appalling. Most people would, reasonably, prefer mediocrity to the risk of Terror.
Will our Democracy stay mediocre? Not convinced.
The UK isn’t a democracy. Did anyone get what they voted for in last year’s election? Don’t think so.
The point of democracy is not to ensure a government with popular support. That almost never happens. It is to be able to remove a government which is widely disliked.
What’s that saying? Democracy is a flawed system; just a lot less flawed than anything else..
The liberal left does not dominate the Democrat party; the progressive left does.
Progressive ideas are fatuous, destructive, and predictably result in terrible outcomes. “Defunding” the police and “de-prosecuting” crimes led to rising crime rates. “Ending fossil fuels” led to soaring costs for groceries and utilities. Open borders led to a refugee crisis. Massive amounts of debt financed spending also led to massive levels of inflation, with very little to show for it all.
Democrats should return to the party they were – the party of labor, civil rights and liberties, and urban affairs. That would resonate with voters. Six figure electric cars and homeless encampments do not.
Currently they’re the party of campus radicals, their kookier professors, and others who think socialism is a fine idea. As it turns out, it isn’t, and things like wildfires, terrorist attacks, crime, and basic economics will often appear, reminding everyone that sensible, responsible, competent governance shouldn’t be thrown away in order to somehow enact a state sponsored utopia.
Disenchantment. I don’t know why anyone listens to a word Moldbug says. He is a bafflegab provacateur.
”The [ progressive’s ] road back to power……will require a reckoning with disenchantment.”
What it will require is a reckoning with progressivism. Don’t hold your breath.
Dubious
Why am I not given the ability to reply to a comment? Also why do some articles show me as “signed in” and others as someone who needs to subscribe? You get your $5.99 a month from me as my PayPal account clearly shows. Get it together Unherd. WTF
I just wanted to post that T-Bone’s first sentence made me do a spit-take. Hahahha.
No one who actually does anything cares a whit about the yammerings of Curtis Yarvin. He’s nonsensical.
Monday morning newsroom on the day of a new era is a vague article which says little and doesn’t clearly make whatever point it has.
“While the liberal-Left contingent long dominant within the Democratic Party has become largely disenchanted by these slogans,…” is the 3rd repeat of this without defining what are the slogans the writer is talking about.
I think the summary is the progressive Left still believe they are right about everything even though they don’t know what to believe anymore.
UnHerd need to do better!
I’m still trying to figure out what exactly the various windbags mean when they say ‘disenchantment’.
Oh dear. How academics love to over-complicate.
Under the Clintons the Democratic Party switched its allegiance from the labor unions to Wall Street. Soros became the largest donor, closely followed by Larry Fink of BlackRock and, in 2020, by the fraudster Bankman-Fried. That simple fact explains what has happened – the open border, rampant inflation, the Floyd riots … All of it. Bankers like Soros and Fink thrive on chaos and the profligacy of big government. Productive people like Musk and every small business owner need small government and stability.
It will take the Democrats at least a generation to get back to their roots. I suspect the Labour Party will be gone after the next UK election, and for the same reasons.
Every thought presented in this piece is pathological, all the way down…
Just drivel. Listen to the moral reasoning of Kemi Badenoch for goodness sakes and wake up.
Yarvin seems eager to dream the “China Dream”—happiness as Order above all.
I also remember what a pompous oaf he was when interviewed by UnHerd’s Flo. Hope she told him to F*@# orf afterwards.