Pandering to the wealthy and powerful is nothing new. Making the wealthy and powerful care even less about the harm they inflict on the public - and offering a “theory” of uncaring as wisdom - is quite clever.
I endured watching a 2-hour interview of Yarvin by Daniel Pinchbeck, and found Yarvin insufferable. He appears to do verbally what you’ve stated he does in his writings - attempt to overwhelm you with anecdotes from various sources and pummel you into submission to his quite boring rants. Pinchbeck is a very thoughtful person who had to yell at Yarvin to get him to stop talking for merely a few moments - and then had to yell at him again, and again. Yarvin is - in a word - rude. Absolutely an egocentric jerk, obsessed with IQ as the core measure of a person. He is not that smart. He is a clever, tricky sociopath. Sociopaths are very smart at manipulating naive people. Sociopaths have no core morals beyond raw control of others to gain advantage.
Beware of naive submission to sociopaths and their politics. They are everywhere these days.
Yes, they are very cunning and you often find them seeking positions of power, because what better place to manipulate lots of people. (Trump, Musk, and Vance all come to mind.)
Yarvin is that guy you went to high school with who is sits in a dark corner of the bar clutching a copy of Nietzsche. A self styled "philosopher" with no training in philosophy, he's read every book in the library and understood none of them.
So I took the bait (though none was actually proferred) and paid a visit to “The Gray Mirror”. [Yarvin’s Substack Blog] Read his “Gaza, Inc.” and “The Pleasure of Error” posts just to get a taste and, not surprisingly given your description of his writing, I immediately and repeatedly screamed to no one in particular, “Just get to the fucking point already”. As someone who practiced law in New York for more than forty years, you always knew that briefs drowning in the kind of verbiage that dominates Yarvin’s writing were written in the hope that the judge and opposing counsel wouldn’t notice that they had nothing to offer in support of their position. Sure there may be tidbits of relevant argument to by mined but the mere fact that one had to dig to find those tidbits meant that on balance opposing counsel had nothing offer value to offer. So, too, is the case with Yarvin.
That is not to say, as you eloquently point out, that many will nevertheless take the use of big words, historical and literary references (often obscure though I do like his reference to Hari Seldon) and coming at the same attempted point from different starting points to believe that something important is being said and attention needs to be paid. And, regrettably, as you note, attention is being paid by.
While I understand his basic premise, the idea that he seems to vest so much in Donald Trump as the tip of his spear is, I believe, a major failing of his attempt to impose his grandiose notions of his supposed intellectual power over a reshaping of American governance. Seeming to draw parallels between FDR and Trump and the former’s ability to get things done because of his competence and “moral energy”. Yarvin seems to believe that Trump is also imbued with the same traits, writing, “Trump 47 is not cutting the Gordian knot. Not yet, anyway! But rather than untangling it gingerly, like a ‘90s Republican, as though it was electrified (it was electrified), **he is grabbing it with both hands and ripping out big hunks.**” (emphasis added). Much of the article expresses the same view of Trump as though he, in fact, is the god-like figure towering over a new Gaza Strip imagined in that sickening video pushing Trump’s vision of a reimagined Gaza (which, by the way, Yarvin completely endorses in his “Gaza, Inc” piece) instead of the damaged human being that he is. Trump, you can be sure, knows nothing of Curtis Yarvin, his theories, his supposed philosophy or the credit he claims for creating the framework within which Trump is operating. Indeed, I would expect Trump to be highly suspicious of Yarvin’s claims because of Yarvin’s claim to being the brains behind the throne. Yarvin, it seems, places an extraordinary reliance upon Trump being able to bring life to his vision and while it should be clear to everyone that Trump is just a mouthpiece…a vehicle for the Russell Voughts and JD Vances of the world to use to further their own agendas (more about Vance in a moment), placing so much reliance on such an imperfect human as Trump is an invitation to failure and, at least in Yarvin’s writings about the current state of affairs that seems to be exactly what he is doing. That is, at least, to a point, given his concluding comment, “When he Trump] gets tired of the Deep State, Trump can print money to build a New State. Legally, according to the Constitution. **Of course, he still needs to win politically…**”
That last comment does appear to recognize that amidst the efforts at obfuscation, Yarvin may recognize that regardless of the coldness of his calculation there is still a human element that cannot be ignored. That unavoidable fact applies to Trump and to Vance who is almost certainly a key player in this nightmarish drama. With Thiel serving as patron for both Yarvin and Vance it is a near certainty that they all expect that at some point, Vance will ascend to the throne that they are in the process of preparing. As with Trump, however, the human element cannot be ignored and the chance of falling short a possibility given Trump’s propensity for, well, being Trump. While the torch may at some point be passed to JD Vance, you can be assured that his chances of winning politically are more problematic than they are for Trump. Indeed, while Trump has millions of adoring fans. I suspect that few hold the same regard for Vance. And, again, therein lies the rub for Yarvin, Thiel et al. It is all well and good to conjure an ideology that transform a democracy into a tech-based feudal state, as Yarvin himself said, “[H]e still needs to win politically”
Well put. The next step is to connect the ideas that Yarvin is spouting, to the PayPal Mafia, especially people like a Peter Thiel. Yarvin’s ideas are being implemented by Musk and others, so we can only assume they only scratched the surface of his thinking as well.
I managed to sit through the first of two interview videos with Thiel, and I was immediately struck by how much he functions on his Neo-Christian faith. He speaks like a true believer, and is expecting the doom spelled out in Revelations to happen. And if he has his way, he wants to accelerate Armageddon’s arrival.
It is a frightening prospect that someone with wealth and influence should be actively seeking the end of days, so that he and the other believers can live in paradise. But if you connect Yarvin’s desire to be the power behind the King, with Thiel’s seeking the Anti-Christ, his actions begin to make sense. By destroying the democratic government of the most powerful nation on the planet, you can set up your own kingdom and be on of the Kings that meets at the plains around Megiddo.
The Q’Anon movement functions in a similar vein. For people who have never been taught philosophy and how to recognize the errors in another person’s thinking and arguments, it becomes an easy sell to make them miss the distinction between fire hose and what’s coming out of it.
I would guess that much of this sort of apocalyptic fantasy is the result of the problems associated with having more wealth and power than the human mind can comprehend. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, I would also say that extreme wealth corrupts the mind extremely.
Again, thank you for your analysis. I look forward to your future writings.
Mike: In this period of time, when our attention span is supposed to be exceptionally short, your writing keeps me riveted. Whenever I finish an article of yours, I feel like more of the smoke has been cleared from my brain. I have had many conversations with my son, who believes our country and political system is rife with corruption, trying to defend the concept of democracy. I wish I could defend my beliefs as eloquently as you do.
I appreciate your efforts to engage with Yarvin but I have to take issue.
The thesis of this piece is that Yarvin's thought is obscure. I'm not sure why you think so. He's long-winded and given to cutesy allusions to his own private concepts, but his ideology is astonishingly simple and (to his credit) he is very clear about it:
- order is good, disorder is bad
- this overrides all other moral principles
- the way to ensure order is with radically centralized power (absolute monarchs or monarch-like CEOs)
- as a corollary, anything that distributes power (like democracy) is bad
That's basically it. While these ideas are terrible and childishly simplistic, there's nothing obscure about them, and he pretty much spells them out.
I think you need to re-read Mike’s essay; he doesn’t say Yarvin ‘is obscure’, he said that Yarvin uses a torrent of rhetorical and often irrelevant flourish and tangential references to *hide* his core illiberal philosophy, that without those flourishes, most people reading them would quickly dismiss them.
OK, maybe this is not worth arguing about, but my point was that he does not really hide his philosophy, it's right out there. I've been tracking this guy since 2007 so maybe my perspective is skewed, but there is really no mystery. If the theorizing about centralization of power isn't clear, the places he puts forth as examples of good governance (Singapore, Dubai, apartheid South Africa, historical monarchies, and the occasional nod to Nazi Germany) should be.
I think most people can't wrap their heads around the idea that an educated person would hold these views, and certainly not that a major political party should be under their influence, but that's where we are.
I think you may be misunderstanding the central argument of my essay. I'm not claiming that Yarvin hides his conclusions or that there's any mystery about what political systems he admires. In fact, I acknowledge that his ultimate goal (essentially advocating for a form of monarchy or corporate governance) is relatively straightforward.
My analysis focuses on something different and more subtle: how his rhetorical approach functions as a mechanism of persuasion that's far more sophisticated than simply stating his preferences for Singapore or historical monarchies.
When I describe Yarvin's writing as a "waterfall" that doesn't persuade but drowns, I'm not suggesting he's hiding his views. Rather, I'm examining how the form of his communication—the overwhelming volume, the labyrinthine references, the strategic complexity—serves to erode readers' critical faculties and democratic commitments before they even encounter his explicit conclusions.
The danger isn't in what Yarvin wants (which, as you correctly point out, he states fairly openly in various essays), but in how he makes readers receptive to those anti-democratic ideas. His writing doesn't just present arguments to be evaluated—it creates an immersive experience that gradually dissolves the reader's capacity for democratic thinking itself.
In my earlier work, I've directly addressed Yarvin's neocameralism and his explicit political preferences. But this essay is specifically examining his rhetorical technique as a form of epistemic manipulation—one that doesn't rely on hiding his conclusions but on exhausting the reader's resistance to them through a torrent of references, cynical observations, and apparent erudition.
The sophistication of Yarvin's approach isn't that he conceals his beliefs, but that he understands something profound about persuasion: changing what people think often requires first changing how they think. His writing serves not just to communicate ideas but to reshape the reader's entire epistemological framework in ways that make his anti-democratic conclusions seem inevitable rather than abhorrent.
That's why understanding his rhetorical strategy matters as much as understanding his explicit political positions. It's not about uncovering hidden views; it's about recognizing how certain rhetorical techniques can function as powerful tools for eroding democratic commitments and critical thinking itself.
"In Yarvin's world, [...] there are no moral absolutes, no democratic principles worth defending. There is only power, hierarchy [...]."
And he wants to replace that world with one in which there are no moral absolutes, no democratic principles worth defending. There is only power, hierarchy. Dime-store Nietzsche indeed!
Well I did watch the full 50 minutes, so I guess I'm brilliant <snark>, and my brilliance is demanding that I point out that although Schachtel may have watched the full press conference, he apparently had the volume off for the first 40 minutes -- unless of course he equates Trump's lying and gaslighting with being "very respectful and cordial," and Zelenskyy's honesty and clarity with having "ignited a firestorm."
* Trump spoke about "the tremendous death" that has taken place, without mentioning the context. Zelenskyy provided the context by reminding Trump that "They (Russians) came into our territory." Trump ignored him.
* Trump went on to say, "It (the war) should have never started," while just casually skipping over WHY the war started. Honestly, I don't know how Zelenskyy refrained from grabbing Trump's scrotum and pulling it up over his head.
* And later Trump blathered on about the structural state of Ukraine, and Zelenskyy pointed out that Trump's description was not entirely accurate. Zelenskyy then gave a fuller description of how things are in Ukraine, and then brilliantly reminded everyone that "Maybe it is Putin that is sharing this information that he destroyed us."
Although I know that none of what I've written is the point of Mike's post, I would nevertheless encourage everyone to watch the full press conference. The body language alone is worth your time. But I will warn you, leave time for a shower afterwards.
Thanks for cutting through the bulls**t. I moved to Silicon Valley almost 40 years ago from the midwest and am surrounded by people who work in tech. These Yarvin sycophants do not represent us and create a toxic image of Silicon Valley. Their whole theories and musings have a despairing lack of any kind of empathy for humanity or understandings of healthy society. It’s like they are imagining their own video game come to life while not realizing what’s the real end game? They get to create their own cathedral of power? What happens when someone else gets to choose? It’s a fantasy by those who feel they are immune to any kind of consequences either because they are insulated by wealth or their own sociopathic narcissism.
I think we can make a parallel with cults ideas and systems of thinking. Only that cults are about installing and maintaining domination of a few over a limited community, sucking up this community ressources.
Here, they are playing on a world scale, with the support of top capitalists, international mafias, and main dictatorships ...
Thanks for taking the time to do all the thinking and writing (and for voluntarily exposing yourself to that much Yarvin).
I'm going to be that guy who walks by in a hurry and doesn't engage, except to nod, think, "Truth!" and be glad someone gets it.
But in passing, I'll mention an idea that popped up periodically as I read this: the resemblance of Yarvin's "red-pilling" technique to multi-level organization building, i.e. cult recruitment. Sucking in initiates using misdirection and concealment of the end goal, then purporting to lead them "behind the curtain" through step-by-step revelation, while demanding greater buy-in at each level, is a common pattern of exploitive hierarchies, from multilevel marketing schemes (Amway) to faith cults (Scientology, Opus Dei), "wellness" cults (Falun Gong), sex-slave cults (Nexum), and apocalyptic separatist cults (Jonestown, Branch Davidian). Whether the predominant nature of the cult is economic, spiritual, sexual, or overlapping, the commonalities are top-down authority (as a value, means, and goal); a founding in-crowd at the top (which is generally using the spoils of the system to maintain its power and its lavish lifestyle); a charismatic appeal often centered on one person; and the technique you describe of using imputation of ignorance and controlled revelation to establish a position of power and to draw the target in.
It might be worth exploring the commonality between those types of hierarchical cults and the new one we face now. What's new about this one is the scale of the power and wealth that the tech/AI revolution affords them, and the size of their target--representative government itself, the postwar world order, and the idea of the rule of law (other than feudal law of the manor).
I have trouble with the notion that Yarvin's garbage deserves the word "intellectual" or "logic" or even "ideas." He's not using logic, it's pure emotion behind a glittering web of misdirection. Look closely and that glitter is just holes in the fabric.
It merits repeated emphasizing that Yarvin views his own target audience not as fellow future aristocrats, but as future subjects. All his redpill framing is not intended to awaken the worthy to their rightful power; it's to get them feeling so betrayed by the defenders of democracy that they come to view those who make no pretense about their desire to rule without consent as comparatively virtuous in their transparency.
Yarvin is relying—whether he understands it or not—on an ancient quirk of the brain’s reward system: We respond to, remember, and learn most dramatically from what violates our expectations. Our strongest opinions about people, ideas, and institutions are shaped by the ways in which they surprise us. This dynamic is ripe for exploitation by bad actors. It’s why gambling is addictive. It’s why the asshole boyfriend is hard to leave (he apologizes sometimes, so I know he can change!). It’s why Joe Rogan can say 99 falsities and his audience will only remember the one thing he got right. It’s why grifters like Jimmy Dore can rake in millions accusing Democrats of “selling out” while nakedly advertising his own willingness to do so and making good on that promise the moment NRx sugar daddy Peter Thiel offered him a place in his disaffected-leftist-to-alt-rightoid pipeline.
Reliably good actors, by the same token, are only ever a minor lapse away from outrage. The strong negative feelings of disappointment and betrayal that follow these subversions create profound biases in attention that may be very difficult to see around. A professional journalist can get 99 things right and be tarred irredeemably for the one thing they get wrong. Kamala Harris can be better than Trump for Palestinians on every conceivable metric, but insofar as she’s part of an administration perceived as having already let Gazans down, the desire to punish her—and Biden by extension—will, for many, eclipse any rational concern over what Trump has in store for the region and its people.
This is precisely the sort of response Yarvin is trying to provoke toward democracy. His rhetoric leans heavily on the supposed true motives of the Cathedral elites because he needs his audience rage-blind to the fact that what he’s offering them in democracy's stead is an even worse deal for the vast majority. Let us grant Yarvin’s sweeping cynicism in its totality. Let’s agree that the pageantry of representational governance, of institutional checks and balances, of liberal norms and values is only a fig leaf over the animalistic power-hunger smoldering at the bottom of every human heart. Grant all that. A fig leaf is still a barrier. These norms and institutions really *do* hinder unilateral rule, irrespective of the secret desires of the Cathedralites—hence why Yarvin’s acolytes are so preoccupied with dismantling them in the name of “efficiency” (Efficiency of *what,* exactly? Efficiency for *whom*?).
At the end of the day, the choice offered by NRx is between (1) governance by self-serving elites who want to exploit you but are hobbled by bureaucratic red tape, a largely independent rule of law, and the need to deliver tangible results to the electorate; and (2) governance by self-serving elites who want to exploit you with no such restrictions. Yarvin knows no rational person would choose (2) over (1), so he has to either convince his audience that they’ll be among the new ruling elites or get them so worked up over the “unmasked” selfishness of the current elites that they’d sell their own souls to anyone who can credibly promise heads on pikes.
Wow, thanks for taking the time to write this piece. It just made a whole number of things I couldn’t sort out click into clarity. I know a number of very educated and intelligent people - some family - who, whether they know it or not are deeply influenced by this thinking. I’ve been learning about the Yarvin > Thiel > Vance > Trump connection over the last year but didn’t make the leap to understanding why or how these seemingly intelligent people have fallen for this all so deeply. What also freaked me out is I have a friend way out in conspiracy land, a wildly intelligent tech dude who has been off grid for two decades — and your descriptions of Yarvin and pals could BE him 😳 I can barely speak to him without ending up so enraged I want to break things, all that non-stop firehouse of pseudo- intellectual technobabble, condescension and obfuscation of Truths that I will NEVER understand, says he.
Not any more, certainly. It’s hard to completely disconnect from people you have lots of history with but once they go off the rails, it’s better to let them go.
Pandering to the wealthy and powerful is nothing new. Making the wealthy and powerful care even less about the harm they inflict on the public - and offering a “theory” of uncaring as wisdom - is quite clever.
I endured watching a 2-hour interview of Yarvin by Daniel Pinchbeck, and found Yarvin insufferable. He appears to do verbally what you’ve stated he does in his writings - attempt to overwhelm you with anecdotes from various sources and pummel you into submission to his quite boring rants. Pinchbeck is a very thoughtful person who had to yell at Yarvin to get him to stop talking for merely a few moments - and then had to yell at him again, and again. Yarvin is - in a word - rude. Absolutely an egocentric jerk, obsessed with IQ as the core measure of a person. He is not that smart. He is a clever, tricky sociopath. Sociopaths are very smart at manipulating naive people. Sociopaths have no core morals beyond raw control of others to gain advantage.
Beware of naive submission to sociopaths and their politics. They are everywhere these days.
Julianne,
Yes, they are very cunning and you often find them seeking positions of power, because what better place to manipulate lots of people. (Trump, Musk, and Vance all come to mind.)
Best comment of all, Julianne.
Yarvin is that guy you went to high school with who is sits in a dark corner of the bar clutching a copy of Nietzsche. A self styled "philosopher" with no training in philosophy, he's read every book in the library and understood none of them.
In college, those folks favored black turtlenecks and smoked Gauloises. We called them PIB's (people in black).
So I took the bait (though none was actually proferred) and paid a visit to “The Gray Mirror”. [Yarvin’s Substack Blog] Read his “Gaza, Inc.” and “The Pleasure of Error” posts just to get a taste and, not surprisingly given your description of his writing, I immediately and repeatedly screamed to no one in particular, “Just get to the fucking point already”. As someone who practiced law in New York for more than forty years, you always knew that briefs drowning in the kind of verbiage that dominates Yarvin’s writing were written in the hope that the judge and opposing counsel wouldn’t notice that they had nothing to offer in support of their position. Sure there may be tidbits of relevant argument to by mined but the mere fact that one had to dig to find those tidbits meant that on balance opposing counsel had nothing offer value to offer. So, too, is the case with Yarvin.
That is not to say, as you eloquently point out, that many will nevertheless take the use of big words, historical and literary references (often obscure though I do like his reference to Hari Seldon) and coming at the same attempted point from different starting points to believe that something important is being said and attention needs to be paid. And, regrettably, as you note, attention is being paid by.
While I understand his basic premise, the idea that he seems to vest so much in Donald Trump as the tip of his spear is, I believe, a major failing of his attempt to impose his grandiose notions of his supposed intellectual power over a reshaping of American governance. Seeming to draw parallels between FDR and Trump and the former’s ability to get things done because of his competence and “moral energy”. Yarvin seems to believe that Trump is also imbued with the same traits, writing, “Trump 47 is not cutting the Gordian knot. Not yet, anyway! But rather than untangling it gingerly, like a ‘90s Republican, as though it was electrified (it was electrified), **he is grabbing it with both hands and ripping out big hunks.**” (emphasis added). Much of the article expresses the same view of Trump as though he, in fact, is the god-like figure towering over a new Gaza Strip imagined in that sickening video pushing Trump’s vision of a reimagined Gaza (which, by the way, Yarvin completely endorses in his “Gaza, Inc” piece) instead of the damaged human being that he is. Trump, you can be sure, knows nothing of Curtis Yarvin, his theories, his supposed philosophy or the credit he claims for creating the framework within which Trump is operating. Indeed, I would expect Trump to be highly suspicious of Yarvin’s claims because of Yarvin’s claim to being the brains behind the throne. Yarvin, it seems, places an extraordinary reliance upon Trump being able to bring life to his vision and while it should be clear to everyone that Trump is just a mouthpiece…a vehicle for the Russell Voughts and JD Vances of the world to use to further their own agendas (more about Vance in a moment), placing so much reliance on such an imperfect human as Trump is an invitation to failure and, at least in Yarvin’s writings about the current state of affairs that seems to be exactly what he is doing. That is, at least, to a point, given his concluding comment, “When he Trump] gets tired of the Deep State, Trump can print money to build a New State. Legally, according to the Constitution. **Of course, he still needs to win politically…**”
That last comment does appear to recognize that amidst the efforts at obfuscation, Yarvin may recognize that regardless of the coldness of his calculation there is still a human element that cannot be ignored. That unavoidable fact applies to Trump and to Vance who is almost certainly a key player in this nightmarish drama. With Thiel serving as patron for both Yarvin and Vance it is a near certainty that they all expect that at some point, Vance will ascend to the throne that they are in the process of preparing. As with Trump, however, the human element cannot be ignored and the chance of falling short a possibility given Trump’s propensity for, well, being Trump. While the torch may at some point be passed to JD Vance, you can be assured that his chances of winning politically are more problematic than they are for Trump. Indeed, while Trump has millions of adoring fans. I suspect that few hold the same regard for Vance. And, again, therein lies the rub for Yarvin, Thiel et al. It is all well and good to conjure an ideology that transform a democracy into a tech-based feudal state, as Yarvin himself said, “[H]e still needs to win politically”
Dear Mr. Richman,
Well put. The next step is to connect the ideas that Yarvin is spouting, to the PayPal Mafia, especially people like a Peter Thiel. Yarvin’s ideas are being implemented by Musk and others, so we can only assume they only scratched the surface of his thinking as well.
I managed to sit through the first of two interview videos with Thiel, and I was immediately struck by how much he functions on his Neo-Christian faith. He speaks like a true believer, and is expecting the doom spelled out in Revelations to happen. And if he has his way, he wants to accelerate Armageddon’s arrival.
It is a frightening prospect that someone with wealth and influence should be actively seeking the end of days, so that he and the other believers can live in paradise. But if you connect Yarvin’s desire to be the power behind the King, with Thiel’s seeking the Anti-Christ, his actions begin to make sense. By destroying the democratic government of the most powerful nation on the planet, you can set up your own kingdom and be on of the Kings that meets at the plains around Megiddo.
The Q’Anon movement functions in a similar vein. For people who have never been taught philosophy and how to recognize the errors in another person’s thinking and arguments, it becomes an easy sell to make them miss the distinction between fire hose and what’s coming out of it.
I would guess that much of this sort of apocalyptic fantasy is the result of the problems associated with having more wealth and power than the human mind can comprehend. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, I would also say that extreme wealth corrupts the mind extremely.
Again, thank you for your analysis. I look forward to your future writings.
One has to wonder if Yarvin or one of his acolytes isn't behind QAnon.
I find Yarvin and any interpretation of him exhausting.
I see good vs evil in how a government, religion, corporation, family or individual treats the vulnerable.
Mike: In this period of time, when our attention span is supposed to be exceptionally short, your writing keeps me riveted. Whenever I finish an article of yours, I feel like more of the smoke has been cleared from my brain. I have had many conversations with my son, who believes our country and political system is rife with corruption, trying to defend the concept of democracy. I wish I could defend my beliefs as eloquently as you do.
🙏✌️
I appreciate your efforts to engage with Yarvin but I have to take issue.
The thesis of this piece is that Yarvin's thought is obscure. I'm not sure why you think so. He's long-winded and given to cutesy allusions to his own private concepts, but his ideology is astonishingly simple and (to his credit) he is very clear about it:
- order is good, disorder is bad
- this overrides all other moral principles
- the way to ensure order is with radically centralized power (absolute monarchs or monarch-like CEOs)
- as a corollary, anything that distributes power (like democracy) is bad
That's basically it. While these ideas are terrible and childishly simplistic, there's nothing obscure about them, and he pretty much spells them out.
I think you need to re-read Mike’s essay; he doesn’t say Yarvin ‘is obscure’, he said that Yarvin uses a torrent of rhetorical and often irrelevant flourish and tangential references to *hide* his core illiberal philosophy, that without those flourishes, most people reading them would quickly dismiss them.
Agreed. Our hero is describing Yarvin's obscurantist style, not saying his thinking is obscure.
OK, maybe this is not worth arguing about, but my point was that he does not really hide his philosophy, it's right out there. I've been tracking this guy since 2007 so maybe my perspective is skewed, but there is really no mystery. If the theorizing about centralization of power isn't clear, the places he puts forth as examples of good governance (Singapore, Dubai, apartheid South Africa, historical monarchies, and the occasional nod to Nazi Germany) should be.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted/
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/05/fnargland-grand-challenge/
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2010/03/divine-right-monarchy-for-modern/
I think most people can't wrap their heads around the idea that an educated person would hold these views, and certainly not that a major political party should be under their influence, but that's where we are.
I think you may be misunderstanding the central argument of my essay. I'm not claiming that Yarvin hides his conclusions or that there's any mystery about what political systems he admires. In fact, I acknowledge that his ultimate goal (essentially advocating for a form of monarchy or corporate governance) is relatively straightforward.
My analysis focuses on something different and more subtle: how his rhetorical approach functions as a mechanism of persuasion that's far more sophisticated than simply stating his preferences for Singapore or historical monarchies.
When I describe Yarvin's writing as a "waterfall" that doesn't persuade but drowns, I'm not suggesting he's hiding his views. Rather, I'm examining how the form of his communication—the overwhelming volume, the labyrinthine references, the strategic complexity—serves to erode readers' critical faculties and democratic commitments before they even encounter his explicit conclusions.
The danger isn't in what Yarvin wants (which, as you correctly point out, he states fairly openly in various essays), but in how he makes readers receptive to those anti-democratic ideas. His writing doesn't just present arguments to be evaluated—it creates an immersive experience that gradually dissolves the reader's capacity for democratic thinking itself.
In my earlier work, I've directly addressed Yarvin's neocameralism and his explicit political preferences. But this essay is specifically examining his rhetorical technique as a form of epistemic manipulation—one that doesn't rely on hiding his conclusions but on exhausting the reader's resistance to them through a torrent of references, cynical observations, and apparent erudition.
The sophistication of Yarvin's approach isn't that he conceals his beliefs, but that he understands something profound about persuasion: changing what people think often requires first changing how they think. His writing serves not just to communicate ideas but to reshape the reader's entire epistemological framework in ways that make his anti-democratic conclusions seem inevitable rather than abhorrent.
That's why understanding his rhetorical strategy matters as much as understanding his explicit political positions. It's not about uncovering hidden views; it's about recognizing how certain rhetorical techniques can function as powerful tools for eroding democratic commitments and critical thinking itself.
Hmmmm radically centralized power looking at history alone is unstable , and is disordered .
"In Yarvin's world, [...] there are no moral absolutes, no democratic principles worth defending. There is only power, hierarchy [...]."
And he wants to replace that world with one in which there are no moral absolutes, no democratic principles worth defending. There is only power, hierarchy. Dime-store Nietzsche indeed!
"Dime-store Nietzsche"... is a brilliant summation of Yarvin's psychotic ranting. Thanks.
Captures the poem of his that I read, too.
Well I did watch the full 50 minutes, so I guess I'm brilliant <snark>, and my brilliance is demanding that I point out that although Schachtel may have watched the full press conference, he apparently had the volume off for the first 40 minutes -- unless of course he equates Trump's lying and gaslighting with being "very respectful and cordial," and Zelenskyy's honesty and clarity with having "ignited a firestorm."
* Trump spoke about "the tremendous death" that has taken place, without mentioning the context. Zelenskyy provided the context by reminding Trump that "They (Russians) came into our territory." Trump ignored him.
* Trump went on to say, "It (the war) should have never started," while just casually skipping over WHY the war started. Honestly, I don't know how Zelenskyy refrained from grabbing Trump's scrotum and pulling it up over his head.
* And later Trump blathered on about the structural state of Ukraine, and Zelenskyy pointed out that Trump's description was not entirely accurate. Zelenskyy then gave a fuller description of how things are in Ukraine, and then brilliantly reminded everyone that "Maybe it is Putin that is sharing this information that he destroyed us."
Although I know that none of what I've written is the point of Mike's post, I would nevertheless encourage everyone to watch the full press conference. The body language alone is worth your time. But I will warn you, leave time for a shower afterwards.
I couldn't bear to watch it, but my well educated and informed forty-year-old daughter did and came to exactly the same conclusion as you do.
Watched it in full - in no way does reality align with the post from X - that’s gaslighting
Indeed it is.
Thanks for cutting through the bulls**t. I moved to Silicon Valley almost 40 years ago from the midwest and am surrounded by people who work in tech. These Yarvin sycophants do not represent us and create a toxic image of Silicon Valley. Their whole theories and musings have a despairing lack of any kind of empathy for humanity or understandings of healthy society. It’s like they are imagining their own video game come to life while not realizing what’s the real end game? They get to create their own cathedral of power? What happens when someone else gets to choose? It’s a fantasy by those who feel they are immune to any kind of consequences either because they are insulated by wealth or their own sociopathic narcissism.
Very insightfull, thanks.
I think we can make a parallel with cults ideas and systems of thinking. Only that cults are about installing and maintaining domination of a few over a limited community, sucking up this community ressources.
Here, they are playing on a world scale, with the support of top capitalists, international mafias, and main dictatorships ...
Thanks for taking the time to do all the thinking and writing (and for voluntarily exposing yourself to that much Yarvin).
I'm going to be that guy who walks by in a hurry and doesn't engage, except to nod, think, "Truth!" and be glad someone gets it.
But in passing, I'll mention an idea that popped up periodically as I read this: the resemblance of Yarvin's "red-pilling" technique to multi-level organization building, i.e. cult recruitment. Sucking in initiates using misdirection and concealment of the end goal, then purporting to lead them "behind the curtain" through step-by-step revelation, while demanding greater buy-in at each level, is a common pattern of exploitive hierarchies, from multilevel marketing schemes (Amway) to faith cults (Scientology, Opus Dei), "wellness" cults (Falun Gong), sex-slave cults (Nexum), and apocalyptic separatist cults (Jonestown, Branch Davidian). Whether the predominant nature of the cult is economic, spiritual, sexual, or overlapping, the commonalities are top-down authority (as a value, means, and goal); a founding in-crowd at the top (which is generally using the spoils of the system to maintain its power and its lavish lifestyle); a charismatic appeal often centered on one person; and the technique you describe of using imputation of ignorance and controlled revelation to establish a position of power and to draw the target in.
It might be worth exploring the commonality between those types of hierarchical cults and the new one we face now. What's new about this one is the scale of the power and wealth that the tech/AI revolution affords them, and the size of their target--representative government itself, the postwar world order, and the idea of the rule of law (other than feudal law of the manor).
I have trouble with the notion that Yarvin's garbage deserves the word "intellectual" or "logic" or even "ideas." He's not using logic, it's pure emotion behind a glittering web of misdirection. Look closely and that glitter is just holes in the fabric.
Thank you for this one Mike!
It merits repeated emphasizing that Yarvin views his own target audience not as fellow future aristocrats, but as future subjects. All his redpill framing is not intended to awaken the worthy to their rightful power; it's to get them feeling so betrayed by the defenders of democracy that they come to view those who make no pretense about their desire to rule without consent as comparatively virtuous in their transparency.
Yarvin is relying—whether he understands it or not—on an ancient quirk of the brain’s reward system: We respond to, remember, and learn most dramatically from what violates our expectations. Our strongest opinions about people, ideas, and institutions are shaped by the ways in which they surprise us. This dynamic is ripe for exploitation by bad actors. It’s why gambling is addictive. It’s why the asshole boyfriend is hard to leave (he apologizes sometimes, so I know he can change!). It’s why Joe Rogan can say 99 falsities and his audience will only remember the one thing he got right. It’s why grifters like Jimmy Dore can rake in millions accusing Democrats of “selling out” while nakedly advertising his own willingness to do so and making good on that promise the moment NRx sugar daddy Peter Thiel offered him a place in his disaffected-leftist-to-alt-rightoid pipeline.
Reliably good actors, by the same token, are only ever a minor lapse away from outrage. The strong negative feelings of disappointment and betrayal that follow these subversions create profound biases in attention that may be very difficult to see around. A professional journalist can get 99 things right and be tarred irredeemably for the one thing they get wrong. Kamala Harris can be better than Trump for Palestinians on every conceivable metric, but insofar as she’s part of an administration perceived as having already let Gazans down, the desire to punish her—and Biden by extension—will, for many, eclipse any rational concern over what Trump has in store for the region and its people.
This is precisely the sort of response Yarvin is trying to provoke toward democracy. His rhetoric leans heavily on the supposed true motives of the Cathedral elites because he needs his audience rage-blind to the fact that what he’s offering them in democracy's stead is an even worse deal for the vast majority. Let us grant Yarvin’s sweeping cynicism in its totality. Let’s agree that the pageantry of representational governance, of institutional checks and balances, of liberal norms and values is only a fig leaf over the animalistic power-hunger smoldering at the bottom of every human heart. Grant all that. A fig leaf is still a barrier. These norms and institutions really *do* hinder unilateral rule, irrespective of the secret desires of the Cathedralites—hence why Yarvin’s acolytes are so preoccupied with dismantling them in the name of “efficiency” (Efficiency of *what,* exactly? Efficiency for *whom*?).
At the end of the day, the choice offered by NRx is between (1) governance by self-serving elites who want to exploit you but are hobbled by bureaucratic red tape, a largely independent rule of law, and the need to deliver tangible results to the electorate; and (2) governance by self-serving elites who want to exploit you with no such restrictions. Yarvin knows no rational person would choose (2) over (1), so he has to either convince his audience that they’ll be among the new ruling elites or get them so worked up over the “unmasked” selfishness of the current elites that they’d sell their own souls to anyone who can credibly promise heads on pikes.
What I'm getting from this is Mr. Yarvin has simply repackaged the "divine right of kings" claim for the modern era of tech broligatchs. Wild!
...And his method of intellectual overwhelm fits right into our era of "big data". A sheer volume of information that a human mind cannot process.
Wow, thanks for taking the time to write this piece. It just made a whole number of things I couldn’t sort out click into clarity. I know a number of very educated and intelligent people - some family - who, whether they know it or not are deeply influenced by this thinking. I’ve been learning about the Yarvin > Thiel > Vance > Trump connection over the last year but didn’t make the leap to understanding why or how these seemingly intelligent people have fallen for this all so deeply. What also freaked me out is I have a friend way out in conspiracy land, a wildly intelligent tech dude who has been off grid for two decades — and your descriptions of Yarvin and pals could BE him 😳 I can barely speak to him without ending up so enraged I want to break things, all that non-stop firehouse of pseudo- intellectual technobabble, condescension and obfuscation of Truths that I will NEVER understand, says he.
Ugh.
Doesn't sound like a "friend" from your description, Helene.
Not any more, certainly. It’s hard to completely disconnect from people you have lots of history with but once they go off the rails, it’s better to let them go.