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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2025-02-19 12:07:02+00:00.
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Last week, Keep_Track documented the steps Elon Musk is taking to unilaterally shut down government agencies. Now, we’ll look at the philosophical underpinnings of his entire DOGE operation.
Curtis Yarvin
Curtis Yarvin is a relatively obscure figure among legacy media. Unless you’ve trawled the depths of the alt-right blogosphere, you’ve probably never heard of him. But it is imperative that you know who he is now that his acolytes are running the most powerful country on earth.
Yarvin is a founding member of a specific wing of alt-right political theory called the neoreactionary movement, sometimes abbreviated to NRx, and frequently referred to by adherents as the “Dark Enlightenment.” Describing the movement as a whole is difficult due to the wide range of beliefs that meld together in online right-wing forums, but the broad strokes combine:
- Accelerationism: the belief that capitalism and technology must be massively sped up and intensified to destabilize existing systems, cause a collapse, and ultimately create radical social transformations
- Techno-Utopianism: the belief that unbridled technology can create the perfect society—at least, for those who control it
- Monarchism/neo-monarchism: the belief that absolute power should be wielded by a single sovereign
In Yarvin’s formulation, the resulting theory calls for a political movement to install a monarch, who he likens to a CEO, to dismantle democratic institutions and liberal (in the philosophical sense) power structures in order to create a technology-infused neo-feudal society that privileges an aristocracy made up of people like him—elite programmers and tech founders—while oppressively controlling the unworthy masses.
- As far-fetched as it sounds, no, Yarvin is not joking about any of this. Writing under a pseudonym earlier in his career, Yarvin described trying to think of a “humane alternative to genocide” to do away with the “underclass” of “unproductive members of society.” What he landed on was to “virtualize them” in “permanent solitary confinement” with “an immersive virtual-reality interface” to “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”
Application to the Trump administration
For as much as Yarvin has been associated with Trump, he’s not actually a very big fan of the president. “Caesar was an Olympian. Trump should be on Ozempic,” Yarvin wrote last year. What Yarvin does like about Trump is his cult and the blind dedication of MAGA to follow their leader in any undertaking, no matter how illegal or unconstitutional.
Charlottesville and January 6 were the last lame breaths of what John Adams called “mobocracy” in America. Just as monarchy cannot exist when the king is five years old, mobocracy—that is, revolutionary democracy—cannot exist when the “mob” just wants to grill.
Under the rules of revolutionary democracy, that the state is the motor of revolution means that Trump must become a revolutionary martyr—energizing his supporters by provoking the state to treat him unjustly. Like, say, MLK Jr.
Yarvin goes on to state that “ideally,” for the purposes of his revolution, “Trump would be murdered” or “assassinated,” so his followers (described as “used-car dealers, general contractors, small-town investment advisors”) will “arm themselves and demand the new Trumpenreich.” Trumpism, not Trump the living human being, is required to bring about Yarvin’s ideal world.
However, as we all know, the actual assassination attempts on Trump’s life failed, and Trump the person is in office. Faced with this reality, Yarvin concedes that Trump cannot be “the brains” of his new regime. Someone else needs to be brought into the administration to conduct the revolution:
Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
For Trump, being President will be exactly like it was—all the photo-ops and more—without any papers to sign, “decisions” to “make,” etc. The CEO he picks will run the executive branch…
Enter Elon Musk, the “Dark MAGA” (read:Dark Enlightenment) CEO pulling the strings behind Chairman Trump. As CEO, Musk’s job is to enact the changes necessary to end democracy and usher in a new era of techno-monarchical rule.
A Trump who was confident enough to act as America’s chairman of the board, not America’s CEO—who could pick an amazing CEO, ready, willing and able to take unlimited executive authority over all federal, state and local agencies, corporations and institutions—could truly make America great again.
The way the duo could go about “truly making America great again” in neoreactionary fashion is laid out in Yarvin’s blogs and across a couple of podcast interviews, as summarized by Vox two years ago.
Campaign on instituting autocracy, and win
A would-be monarch like Trump should openly tell voters he will assume absolute power if elected.
Yarvin: To escape the sickening, ever-growing coils of DC’s Gordian knot, American voters have only one realistic option. They need to elect a President who clearly states his intention and preparedness to take over the entire American government, assuming plenary power—not just in response to any specific event or emergency, but immediately upon his inauguration (when his democratic authority is at its strongest).
- Last year, Trump exhorted “Christians” to “get out and vote, just this time,” promising: “You won’t have to do it anymore…You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
- Trump said he would use the military to handle what he called “the enemy from within,” explaining that he isn’t worried about chaos from his supporters or foreign actors, but instead from “radical left lunatics.” “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he added.
- When right-wing radio host Glenn Beck asked Trump if he would lock up his opponents in a second term, Trump responded, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.”
- Trump “pledged” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
Being elected after telling the nation your true intentions will provide a mandate for doing away with democracy and instituting an authoritarian rule, Yarvin writes.
Politically, democracy is required because only democracy has the political power to put a monarchy in place. That is: winning an election, with a mandate to truly rule…the only way for democracy, today, to defeat oligarchy is to elect a monarchy. What’s cool is that this is actually completely legal. Even if it wasn’t, we could do it any time.
- “The beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive,” Trump said of his 2024 presidential victory
- Marco Rubio said, “the Senate is going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning electoral college landslide…and a mandate."
- Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) said Americans did not need to see the Matt Gaetz ethics report when Trump nominated him as Attorney General because “the American people knew the kind of mandate they were giving Donald Trump when they elected him.”
- Elon Musk affirmatively retweeted a post claiming that “President Trump received a clear mandate from …
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