The Mind Behind Vance

Daily Kos, Aug. 10, 2024.

Behind these pro-oligarchy Silicon Valley personalities there is a common denominator. His name is Curtis Yarvin, the philosopher of anti-democracy, oligarchy, racism and much much more.

Right-Wing Blogger Curtis Yarvin Is Wrong. Democracy Is Good

Curtis Yarvin’s name has been popping up a lot lately. In journalist Max Chafkin’s new book The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, Yarvin is described as the “house political philosopher” of right-wing billionaire Thiel’s “budding movement.” That label picked up some plausibility when two Thiel-funded Senate candidates, one successful (Ohio’s J. D. Vance) and one not (Arizona’s Blake Masters) expressed admiration for Yarvin on the 2022 campaign trail.

Many people would call Yarvin a “fascist.” Ask him, and he’ll deny it — though not by professing his love for the universalist ideals of the Enlightenment, but by pointing out that “autocratic” ideals were common long before the birth of fascism. However precisely you classify his ideology, Curtis Yarvin is bad news. He’s a racialist crackpot openly contemptuous of democracy, and it’s disturbing to see a billionaire, two politicians, and a prominent cable news host nodding along to Yarvin’s nonsense.

The Reactionary Prophet of Silicon Valley

How the blogger formerly known as Mencius Moldbug came to exert a quiet influence on the corporate and political far right. This from Wikipedia and his quotes from Wikiquote;
Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger. He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).[1][2][3][4]

In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and on his later Substack page called Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment[5] that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.[6]... + Comments,
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