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Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
What a surprise to learn this powerful wizard of the Dark Enlightenment is just another needy dork
This week's issue of the New Yorker features a long, fascinating profile of the rightwing blogger and software developer Curtis Yarvin, by the writer Ava Kofman. Yarvin has, for about a decade and a half now, been a highly influential figure on Silicon Valley's anti-democratic right – a once fringe cohort that has lately become its political centre of gravity. Initially published under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin's ideas are extreme even by the standards of the American right. His central claim is that democracy is inherently unworkable, because the vast majority of people are simply not smart enough to collectively direct the course of their nations. He himself has labelled his political philosophy – and I can barely type these words without cringing – 'the Dark Enlightenment'. The ideal form of government, for Yarvin, is a kind of neo-feudalism, in which a CEO-monarch, advised and assisted by a 'cognitive elite', rules over a populace who are granted precisely one right: if they don't like their lives under the rule of that particular CEO-monarch, they can move to another that better suits their idea of the good life. Naturally, Yarvin is also a firm believer in so-called 'race science' – the entirely unscientific belief that humans can be divided into races, and that there is a correlation between intelligence and genetic traits such as skin colour. I first encountered Yarvin eight or nine years ago, when I was writing about the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whose anti-democratic beliefs were becoming increasingly influential in Silicon Valley. Yarvin's software company Urbit was funded by Thiel, and he was at that time viewed, as Kofman puts it, as the 'court philosopher of the Thiel-verse', exerting a strong rightward pull on Thiel's own political views. Yarvin has become an increasingly mainstream figure in recent years. His centrality to the American new right was the focus of an article in Vanity Fair in 2022, and last year he was the subject of a lengthy interview in the New York Times Magazine, for which he was photographed in a leather motorcycle jacket, affecting an air of strenuous moodiness. JD Vance has cited him as a political influence, and his ideas about dismantling the federal government – mass firing of civil servants, cessation of formal international relations, ending all foreign aid – are generally recognised as an inspiration for Elon Musk's Doge. Mountainhead, the new film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong about four tech billionaires plotting to overthrow the US government, is scattered with recognisably Yarvinian ideas that have been barely tweaked on the satire dial. READ MORE And yet for all that, I was sceptical of the idea of a magazine profile of Yarvin – especially when that magazine was the New Yorker. This is a publication whose cultural prestige, and reputation for intellectual seriousness, can't help but rub off on even the most critically handled of subjects. I suspected that the form itself was somehow ill-suited to the subject matter, and that such a profile might only serve to further legitimise Yarvin, and to popularise his profoundly contemptible ideas. (Readers who are familiar with my own work outside of this weekly column – and, now that I think of it, even within it – might find themselves concluding that this concern about directing attention toward dubious subjects is a bit rich coming from me. Fair point, I suppose.) [ A Thread of Violence by Mark O'Connell: A brilliant exercise in the uncanny Opens in new window ] But as soon as I read the profile, those concerns mostly disintegrated. Part of what has long made Yarvin a seductive prospect for the right was the sense, until fairly recently, that he was an aloof and elusive figure, issuing transgressive political ideas from the shadows like a reactionary pamphleteer. Kofman's article is valuable, and compelling, because it dismantles this myth without even particularly seeming to go out of its way to do so. She paints a closely observed portrait of a deeply unappealing man, whose self-aggrandisement and apparent insecurity emerge as two sides of the same narcissistic coin. The article illustrates, among other things, an important truth: that an over-investment in the idea of intelligence per se, and in particular the obsession with IQ as a measure of personal worth, is almost always a symptom of a stunted intellect. As a kid, Yarvin attended a summer camp for 'talented youth', and his general affect – his former trivia champ's insistent display of general knowledge, his mistaking blunt-force debating skill for a lively and subtle mind – remains very much that of the superannuated precocious child. Though it's hardly the point of the article, it functions as a dire warning to any parent who might be tempted to skip their child ahead in school. (Yarvin was initially homeschooled, and later skipped three grades ahead of his peers, a formative experience which seems to have proven all but fatal to his personality.) As a PhD student in Berkeley, we learn, he was sometimes referred to as 'helmet-head', because he often wore a bicycle helmet in class; the joke among his peers was that it prevented new ideas from penetrating his mind. One of the most perceptive insights in the profile comes from Yarvin's ex-fiancee. She suggests that his embrace of a provocative ideology might be a 'repetition compulsion', a psychic defence allowing him to reframe the ostracisation he felt as an unpopular, nerdy kid. 'As America's most famous living monarchist, he could tell himself that people were rejecting him for his outre ideas, not for his personality.' [ Donald Trump should kill off the myth of the first 100 days for good Opens in new window ] Kofman takes Yarvin's ideas seriously, not in order to inflate their value, but to put them in their proper place, and to lay bare their flimsiness. She never does anything so obvious as outright ridiculing Yarvin's undercooked reactionary philosophy; she merely describes it. In the neo-feudalist system he delineates, for instance, problems such as legitimacy, accountability and orderly succession would be handled by a secret board of directors. 'How the board itself would be selected is unclear,' writes Kofman, 'but Yarvin has suggested that airline pilots – 'a fraternity of intelligent, practical and careful people who are already trained on a regular basis with the lives of others. What's not to like?' – could manage the transition between the regimes.' Reading Yarvin's plan for his ideal polity, as the English writer James Vincent put it in a social media post, 'is like listening to an imaginative child explain how their Lego fort is governed'. One interesting subtext of the profile is Yarvin's apparent distressed realisation – and here again, the reader must read between the lines – that he is being outmanoeuvred by a writer who happens to be not just smarter than him, but also a young woman. Kofman quotes a series of texts he sends her about her reporting, telling her that her 'process is slack', and that she may be 'too dumb to understand the ideas'. The problem, of course, for Yarvin is not that she doesn't understand the ideas, but that she understands them perfectly well – and that she understands him, too. As risible as his ideas might be, they are increasingly influential, and increasingly dangerous. And there is real value in exposing those ideas to proper scrutiny, in pulling back the curtain to confirm that the great and powerful wizard of the Dark Enlightenment is in fact just an insecure and needy dork wearing a bicycle helmet in class.
News18
a day ago
- Politics
- News18
Musk Vs Trump: Dark MAGA Conspiracy Theory Sparks Fears Of Tech-Backed Coup In US
Last Updated: The 'Dark MAGA' theory claims Musk and other tech elites aim to replace Trump with a CEO-style leader, raising fresh questions amid Musk's public feud with the former president. Elon Musk's now-deleted post claiming Donald Trump's name appears in sealed Jeffrey Epstein files has sparked new scrutiny and reignited a conspiracy theory that links the Tesla CEO to a wider tech elite allegedly working to reshape American politics. The theory, dubbed 'Dark MAGA," suggests Musk was never truly backing Trump but was instead part of a secretive tech elite aiming to replace him with a CEO-style leader of their choosing, reports by the Daily Beast and the Daily Mail said. Musk's now-deleted post accusing Trump of being named in Jeffrey Epstein's files has only intensified speculation. The tech mogul claimed the documents have been kept secret before allegedly quietly erasing the post. The theory stems from Musk's symbolic shift during the 2024 campaign, where he was frequently seen wearing the black 'Dark MAGA" cap, a twist on Trump's red MAGA branding. Conspiracy theorists now argue this was always a signal and Musk's way of declaring he had infiltrated the movement with a different agenda. According to believers of the conspiracy, a shadowy network of billionaires including Musk and Peter Thiel, often referred to as the 'PayPal Mafia," want to dismantle democracy and transform the US into a corporatocracy led by a tech-appointed figurehead. Their supposed top pick? Vice President JD Vance. The firestorm erupted after Musk shared, then deleted, a tweet saying: 'Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT." He later doubled down by sharing a resurfaced 1992 video showing Trump partying with Epstein, adding only an inquisitive emoji. The explosive post caused chaos online before Musk allegedly abruptly took it down. Responding to the allegation, JD Vance firmly rejected the claim, stating, 'Absolutely not, Donald Trump didn't do anything with Epstein." Vance also struck a conciliatory tone toward the Tesla boss, saying, 'I hope eventually Elon comes back into the fold." The feud between Musk and Trump reached boiling point after Musk blasted the president's multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spend bill. In response, Trump warned he might cancel Tesla and SpaceX's government contracts to cut the deficit. Musk shot back, threatening to begin decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft which is a vital link in NASA's space missions. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon took things further, urging the president to seize SpaceX using national security laws and punish Musk for disloyalty. Bannon called Musk a tech oligarch trying to 'hijack the republic." Adding fuel to the theory is the involvement of Curtis Yarvin, a coder-turned-philosopher whose 'Dark Enlightenment" ideas have reportedly influenced Silicon Valley's elite. Writing under the name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin advocates for replacing democracy with a monarch-like CEO government, where billionaires call the shots, elections vanish, and the bureaucracy is gutted, according to the report by the UK-based Daily Mail. Advertisement The overlap between these views and Musk's real-world role in the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is striking. Under DOGE, more than 2.5 lakh government jobs have already been axed since Trump returned to power in January. top videos View All Meanwhile, JD Vance, who some believe is the group's chosen successor to Trump, continued defending the president, calling recent attacks 'corporate media lies". He said Trump was far more disciplined than critics claim, and that the gap between perception and reality is 'maybe the single biggest disconnect". About the Author Shankhyaneel Sarkar News18's viral page features trending stories, videos, and memes, covering quirky incidents, social media buzz from india and around the world, Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : donald trump elon musk MAGA Location : Washington D.C., United States of America (USA) First Published: June 07, 2025, 21:01 IST News viral Musk Vs Trump: Dark MAGA Conspiracy Theory Sparks Fears Of Tech-Backed Coup In US
Metro
a day ago
- Politics
- Metro
What to know about 'Dark MAGA', the theory about tech bosses in government
Red hats with white stitching have become synonymous with one person in recent years: Donald Trump. His 'Make America Great Again' caps are donned proudly by supporters and even former advisors – Elon Musk wore a customised version, reading 'Trump Was Right About Everything!' earlier this year. At a rally during Trump's campaign, Musk even joked: 'I'm not just MAGA, I'm dark MAGA.' The remarks were likely tied to his increasingly dark attire, including an all black version of the MAGA hat. But some have connected this to a fringe conspiracy theory about a government takeover involving tech bosses – and his public fallout with Trump has fanned the flames. The term dark MAGA comes from a theory known as 'dark enlightenment'. The theory is believed to come from Curtis Yarvin, 51, a computer coder who claims tech bosses will overthrow the government and install a CEO to run things. Seems outlandish, right? Not for everyone. The theory has gained traction in recent years as Trump cosies up to tech bosses – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were all at his inauguration, by personal invitation. And the theory is fringe – but parts of it are eerily 'coming true'. It mentions mass firings of federal employees, fear tactics to distract the masses and elections deemed 'obsolete'. Washington institutions have reportedly been briefed about 'Dark Enlightenment', or 'Dark MAGA', as it's become known. The first major cracks in their relationship showed at the end of last month on what turned out to be Musk's last day in the White House. The Tesla CEO had become bolder in expressing his dissent over Trump's budget and tax cut bill, currently making its way through Congress. Asked about Musk's disapproval of his 'Big, Beautiful Bill', the US president told reporters: 'Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will ever again.' Musk responded, lashing out further overnight, branding it a 'disgusting abomination' that will explode federal budget deficits. More Trending 'Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,' he wrote on X. The criticism quickly escalated into an all-out brawl between the pair, each on their own social media sites, Truth Social and X, or in press conferences. But it was Musk's tweet – linking Trump with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein – that has caused the most controversy. He alleged that the Republican leader is featured in the secret government files on rich and powerful former associates of the sex offender, reigniting long-running conspiracy theories. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Zelensky refutes Trump's take on war and calls Putin 'murderer who came to kill the kids' MORE: Donald Trump calls Elon Musk 'the man who has lost his mind' and won't talk to him MORE: Donald Trump's new anti-terror chief is a 22-year-old former gardener
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Vance Sucks Up to Trump to Deny He's Part of Musk Coup Plot
J.D. Vance was forced to reaffirm his allegiance to President Trump after Elon Musk backed a call for the vice president to replace his boss. A spat between Musk and Trump over the president's 'big beautiful bill,' which the Tesla CEO denounced as a 'disgusting abomination,' has blown up into an all-out MAGA civil war, with Musk and Trump dramatically trading blows in public. On Thursday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO replied 'Yes' to a post by an X user who asked: 'President vs Elon. Who wins? My money's on Elon. Trump should be impeached and Vance should replace him.' Musk publicly mused about starting a political party, and told his followers in a bombshell allegation that Trump was named in the Epstein files, signing off by saying: 'Have a nice day, DJT!' He added in a follow-up post, 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' Vance also features in a conspiracy theory called 'Dark Enlightenment' or Dark MAGA" that suggests a secretive cabal of tech titans is plotting to blow up the government and rule as a giant corporation with a CEO instead of a president. The Silicon Valley plotters, including Musk, chose Vance as the person who would take over when Trump is toppled, according to the theory. Trump has yet to address the latest allegations personally. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying: 'This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' because it does not include the policies he wanted.' As the drama escalated, Vance posted a picture teasing a Friday appearance on the podcast of Trump-friendly comedian Theo Von. 'Slow news day, what are we even going to talk about?' Vance joked. In a follow-up post, the vice president added: 'President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I'm proud to stand beside him.' Musk and Trump's alliance began to unravel after the GOP-controlled House of Representatives narrowly passed Trump's flagship budget proposal last month. Before that, Musk had pushed Trump's agenda by leading his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative within the administration tasked with cutting government spending and jobs. Musk publicly attacked Trump's bill on the grounds that it would undermine his work with DOGE by adding trillions to the U.S. budget deficit. But on Thursday, Trump claimed that Musk was really upset about the effect the bill will have on his electric vehicle company, Tesla. 'I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' the president added.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The Dark MAGA Conspiracy Where Musk Destroys Trump and Democracy
In 2020, Elon Musk told The Wall Street Journal that the 'government is simply the largest corporation.' For the man who has everything, what else would he want? The attempt by the world's richest man to both reduce and reboot the sprawling federal bureaucracy whiffed miserably. No boss ever gets popular by firing a workforce, especially when the sums don't add up. But Thursday's incendiary X attacks on Donald Trump may have revealed a more sinister method to Musk's madness. It may lead down dark corridors way beyond the shocking upheaval of the current administration. Musk, after all, is not a person to give up without a fight. Elon has been compared to Brutus as he sticks a $420 billion knife into the president's back with his relentless posts. But Brutus killed Caesar to protect the Republic. Musk's goal may well be to destroy it. The clue is in Musk's black MAGA caps. He wasn't thinking of a golden era. It was the dark before the dawn. We are perhaps not far off from seeing the Dark MAGA conspiracy theory involving Musk come to life. It goes like this: A secret cabal of tech bros was plotting to usurp Trump and turn the United States into a giant company run by a CEO they would install in his place. The whole concept started to gain traction after JD Vance was chosen as Trump's running mate. Vance wasn't Trump's choice. Donald wanted Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. Musk wanted Vance, and so did PayPal founder Peter Thiel. Their multi-million-dollar campaign war chest was dependent on the choice that Trump got pushed into. According to the 'Dark MAGA' or 'Dark Enlightenment' theory, Vance was groomed by Silicon Valley billionaires as Trump's successor. He was their man in government. He was their sleeper. The theory has its roots in Musk and Thiel's involvement in PayPal, the company that launched their fortunes. Other PayPal executives went on to lead other tech firms as part of a so-called 'PayPal Mafia.' The supposed guru of the Dark Enlightenment movement was Curtis Yarvin, 51, a Brown-educated, one-time pony-tailed computer coder. He preaches that the media and academia are a 'Cathedral' that secretly controls the country. Harvard was the deep state ruler. The New York Times was the devil. You can see where this is going. Under the alias of 'Mencius Moldbug', Yarvin wrote a 120,000-word blog called 'An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives.' It lobbed a hand grenade at the heart of democracy as long ago as 2008. At that time, the U.S. was enthralled by the idea of 'Hope,' instilled by the election of Barack Obama as president. Democracy was at the very heart of Obama's philosophy. Yarvin believed differently. He argued that America should be run by a 'monarchy' presided over by a dictator CEO. Federal employees would be fired in such quantities that the government would no longer be manageable. Elections would be deemed obsolete. Policies would engender fear and distract the population. The Dark MAGA or Dark Enlightenment theory says it is the remit of the tech billionaires to run the world because they are the only ones with the resources and the know-how to fix it. To Yarvin, who likes to philosophize in computer idioms, democracy was 'outdated software' and government needed a 'reboot.' For years, Yarvin's views were marginalized and ridiculed. Then, in 2025, they began to become a reality. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, an adviser to Trump, has cited Yarvin, as has Musk. Yarvin, often referred to in this geeky techie circle as the 'Dark Elf' philosopher, was invited to the inauguration. He has appeared on shows with Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk. Steve Bannon is an admirer. His theories became Executive Orders. They found a home in the Trump administration. But Trump was the messenger of chaos. Musk was the arbiter. Some of Washington's biggest institutions have been briefed about Dark Enlightenment. They are taking it seriously. We may have expected the great bromance between the president and his prince to end, but few expected it to be so vicious. In a matter of hours, Trump was facing a challenge to his authority that could damage him more than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris ever could. Musk's virulent opposition—taking the gloves off with a reference to Jeffrey Epstein, for example—poses an existential threat to the presidency. Trump thought long and hard about reacting to Musk's outspoken opposition to his 'big, beautiful bill.' But he couldn't help himself. He is the scorpion. He will sting because that's his nature. Musk will win, because that's his. The swords are drawn now. The Trump Show has taken a much darker turn. The great irony is that Donald Trump could represent the last bastion of democracy in a country built on the very idea of freedom. Because if you are going to put money on the winner in this fight, Musk has it all.
