Over recent decades, a computer programmer and prolific internet commenter has risen from the obscurity of forums and pseudonymous blogs to the pages

The Dubious History of America’s Most Famous Monarchist

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2025-01-22 18:30:08

Over recent decades, a computer programmer and prolific internet commenter has risen from the obscurity of forums and pseudonymous blogs to the pages of this newspaper, as a friend to Vice President JD Vance and as a person who influences many of the people who influence President Trump.

Posting as Mencius Moldbug, Curtis Yarvin built a small but influential following among the more reactionary segments of the tech elite, providing them with an elaborate and conspiratorial vision of a nation under the heel of a tyrannical and suffocating liberalism, a broad group of individuals and institutions he calls “the Cathedral.” The path to national renewal, Yarvin argues, is to unravel American democracy in favor of rule by a benevolent C.E.O.-monarch drawn from a cadre of venture capitalists and corporate oligarchs.

With views like these, it is not difficult to understand how Yarvin won the admiration of powerful patrons. He does little more than tell them what they want to hear. If he had been born a minor noble scrounging for influence in the court of Louis XIV, he would have been among the first to exclaim the absolute authority of the king, to tell anyone who would listen that yes, the state, it’s him.