Curtis Yarvin wants to replace American democracy with a form of monarchy led by a ‘CEO'

CNN

4 days ago

Meet the man who has been advocating to replace American democracy with an all-powerful monarchy — and who has the ear of some of the most important people in Washington and Silicon Valley.
Curtis Yarvin is a computer engineer and entrepreneur turned political theorist, deemed the father of 'dark enlightenment' — a school of thought that the best path forward for the United States is to consolidate as much power as possible in the chief executive and do away with most of the federal government (and most state governments) as we know it.
Yarvin has for years been a fixture of right-wing circles around Silicon Valley and counts tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen among his most prominent readers. He has a popular Substack with tens of thousands of subscribers and in recent years he's been name-checked by Vice President JD Vance and appeared with popular right-wing podcasters Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk.
But in a lengthy conversation with CNN in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House in mid-May, Yarvin said his greatest power may lie in the future of politics, where he's finding a growing audience, including some younger Trump administration officials as well as those disillusioned with democracy's inability to solve big problems.
'The focus of authority is absolutely necessary to run any integrated system efficiently,' Yarvin said in the interview, summarizing why he believes such a monarch would be best for the country. 'You could probably put any of the Fortune 500 CEOs in (the White House) and say, 'OK, you're in charge of the executive branch, fix this,' and they'd probably do fine. They wouldn't be Hitler or Stalin.'
Yarvin's rise is alarming scholars and experts on democracy and dictators, who note with concern how his ideas about a strongman are gaining traction among young people.
In 2012, more than a decade before DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) became a known acronym, Yarvin advocated on his blog and in speeches for a radical reshaping of the federal government with an idea that he dubbed RAGE, or Retire All Government Employees. In 2022, he laid out his idealized version of how the Trump administration could gain 'absolute sovereignty' for the good of the country with teams of 'ninjas' who would 'drop into all the agencies in the executive branch' and 'seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections' and in many cases, in defiance of court orders.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it is strikingly similar to what DOGE has been doing in Washington — although not to the extent Yarvin wishes. And while Yarvin's ideas seem horrifying to those who believe in a liberal democracy with checks and balances, Yarvin says democracy has proven too weak to address America's biggest problems and that his ideas for a new system of government are necessary for the country's survival.
In certain corners of Silicon Valley or the very-online right, Yarvin is a household name. Thiel has helped to fund some of his business ventures, such as Urbit, an open source software project that seeks to decentralize the internet with each user hosting their own personal server. Andreessen has called Yarvin a 'good friend.' Vance has personally cited Yarvin's work in interviews.
'There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's written about (how to root out certain ideologies). So one is to basically accept this entire (country) is going to fall in on itself,' Vance told the podcaster Jack Murphy in 2021. 'The task of conservatives right now is to preserve as much as can be preserved, and then when the inevitable collapse of the country comes, ensure that conservatives are able to sort of help build back the country in a way that's actually better. … I think that's too pessimistic and too defeatist. I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left.'
While Yarvin denies he is the 'mastermind of the Trump administration,' and told CNN he is not in close contact with Vance, he says he is closer with certain Trump administration officials like Michael Anton, the director of policy planning at the State Department, who has known Yarvin for years and featured him on a podcast he hosted in 2021 while at The Claremont Institute. Yarvin says he has even made a staffing recommendation. The State Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Thiel, Andreessen, Vance and Anton have all publicly indicated they don't necessarily accept or follow all of Yarvin's theories — but they are listening to him. An advisor to Vance denied the vice president has a close relationship with Yarvin, saying the two have met 'like once.' Thiel, who did not respond to a request for comment, told The Atlantic in 2023 he didn't think Yarvin's ideas would 'work' but found him to be an 'interesting and powerful' historian. And earlier this year, Andreessen, who also did not respond to a request for comment, posted on X that one can read 'Yarvin without becoming a monarchist.'
Yarvin also claims to be on Signal chats with members of the Trump administration and other influential individuals across politics, business and tech.
But Yarvin says his biggest sway is with the people who will be in positions of power in a few more years.
'I think most of my influence on the Trump administration is less through the leadership and more through the kids in the administration, who read my kind of stuff because my audience is very young,' Yarvin said. 'I think that actually one of the great benefits of the Trump administration is … bringing in the kind of new fresh blood and people, like, seeing the way that DC works.'
In Yarvin's utopia, the monarch, who he says should operate like a startup CEO, would be held accountable by some sort of corporate board — but not by the average citizen.
'I don't believe in voting at all,' he told the New York Times in January.
According to Yarvin's worldview, the cadre of elite institutions like academia and media (what he deems 'The Cathedral') should be done away with, while the worthy and smart individuals inside those institutions should be brought into the fold of the new order.
When asked how to prevent any leader from turning into the next Hitler or Stalin, Yarvin argues that most examples of monarchies 'don't generally see a Holocaust' and that today's general population doesn't have the same type of 'barbarism' of the past.
'You need to concentrate that power in a single individual and then just hope somehow that this is the right individual, or close to the right individual,' Yarvin says.
The idea that such a strongman leader is worth the risk deeply alarms scholars and experts on democracy and dictatorship, some of whom find Yarvin such a 'distasteful character' that they refused to speak with CNN about him.
But others say he needs to be addressed because of his growing popularity.
Harvard University professor Danielle Allen, an expert on democracy and political theory, said at a debate with Yarvin earlier this month at the Harvard Faculty Club that 'it is not the case that autocracies over the course of history have delivered good for human beings, they have consistently violated freedom.'
'No absolute power is ever accountable,' she said. 'Absolute power inevitably corrupts, tramples on, persecutes freedom. So the question that we have right now is not whether to have democracy and protection of freedom, but only how to have that.'
Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN that while some authoritarian states may initially have rapid growth, empirical evidence shows 'democracy increases GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run, mostly through improved education and health, and reduced social unrest.'
And while a modern American dictator 'might not introduce a Holocaust,' Treisman warned more likely the country would see 'a corrupt and irresponsible oligarchy, with a declining economy and massive capital flight.'
And, Treisman notes, without widespread elections, the opposition is more likely to resort to violence, where leaders become more repressive.
'The leader may start off quite well-intentioned, but the dangers inherent in his position drive him towards tougher controls,' Treisman said.
Yarvin speaks admiringly of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, whose government suspended some civil rights and arrested roughly 100,000 people in recent years in what Bukele said was a mass crackdown on gangs. Those moves triggered 'concern' from the US State Department under the Biden administration and condemnations from human rights groups who say many of those arrested were detained on tenuous grounds, like for having a certain tattoo.
But Yarvin said a loss of due process and mass arrests is worth the results, if it means one can move more safely on the streets.
'You have to maximize the benefit of society,' Yarvin said, noting 'snap decisions' must be made about whether to fire a weapon or detain a person. 'In order to create overall order, those decisions have to be made quickly, in a way that is often erroneous.'
Yarvin, who isn't an academically trained historian, writes the third most popular newsletter on Substack's 'History' leaderboard, after podcaster Darryl Cooper and Columbia University historian Adam Tooze.
Yarvin's nontraditional background and renegade fringe ideas are what makes him appealing to a new generation.
After her debate with Yarvin, Allen wrote in the Wall Street Journal that she chose to participate because his ideas have followers and 'that's what makes them dangerous.'
'I've been surprised by Mr. Yarvin's influence among Harvard students,' she wrote.
Tickets to the debate sold out quickly, Harvard Junior Charles DeMatteo, who helped to organize the event as the then-chair of the John Adams Society, told CNN in an interview.
'I know a lot of my friends who want to be political, take (Yarvin) very seriously,' he said.
It's not like Yarvin has Ivy Leaguers following his every direction, DeMatteo said, and he believes many only agree with parts of Yarvin's theories. But DeMatteo said that for a generation that spent several of their formative years of high school in Covid-era lockdowns, Yarvin mirrors their disillusionment in institutions, one that is not reflected in their college courses.
'I know that this idea (of a powerful central leader) is becoming far more popular among younger people because they've seen a dysfunctional government. They've seen what happens in particular in local institutions that they believe are hostile to them, and they think this is really a solution that hasn't been tried,' DeMatteo said.
Yarvin's writings, perhaps unsurprisingly, have also sparked controversy. In 2015, Yarvin's appearance at a software engineering conference was canceled after uproar over his writings on race.
While Yarvin denies being a racist and told CNN he believes a Black person could easily be the American monarch he dreams of, he has written that 'I am not exactly allergic' to White Nationalist arguments and has argued that Black people had better lives under slavery in the US than in the immediate years after.
Asked by CNN if he believed some races are better than others, Yarvin said he believes some races are inherently better at certain skills than others, but that he 'absolutely' believes a Black person could be the sovereign to one day lead the United States. Yarvin argues certain races have different 'averages' of skill set whether it be for chess, basketball or governance.
Yarvin rejects the 'blank slate theory' that humans are entirely shaped by their experiences, and said there is no way one could 'kidnap full-blooded Australian Aboriginal babies from the outback and bring them to Brooklyn and raise them in the Ethical Culture Society and send them to the Dalton School and everything would just be hunky-dory.'
Asked if he believes certain races would be better at governing than others, Yarvin said certain races may better 'at doing anything, but those are only averages, and those averages are very, very loose.'
Even with some parallels between the Trump administration's actions and Yarvin's writings, he says he is rather disappointed. The administration, he says, is barely scratching the surface of the change that he thinks actually needs to be done.
'I think that if you basically take anything complicated and you try to do 10% … you're probably not going to result in anything good,' Yarvin says.
Some of the Trump administration's moves have led to outright scorn by Yarvin – such as their detaining of foreign students in the US and deporting them for their opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
'If the administration's mind is clear,' Yarvin wrote this year, it would not do stupid things 'like vanning grad students, which are populist wins but elitist losses.'
Yarvin says he has no plans to enter politics and is focusing on his company Urbit, as well as growing his Substack.
'I'm just out there in the marketplace of ideas, and I think the marketplace of ideas definitely expanded in the last 10 years,' Yarvin said. 'My goal is for people to just live in, to live in the real world.'