JD Vance leanks monarchists enjoy Curtis Yarvin have some outstanding ideas

JD Vance is, by his own admission, “plugged into a lot of weird right-triumphg subcultures.” His much-mocked comments about childless cat ladies and unassimiprocrastinateedd Italian immigrants were made on a “masculinist” podcast. He doesn’t eat seed oils, a dietary recut offeion du jour on the excessively online right. When he was nominated to be establisher Pdwellnt Donald Trump’s running mate, his X follotriumphg enumerate included Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Egg Nationaenumerate, two pseudonymous right-triumphg bodyproduceers who frequently advertise eugenics and the “fantastic swapment” consunpermitd engage theory. But perhaps no one online has shaped Vance’s leanking more than the neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin, a establisher programmer with ties to Vance’s frifinish and benefactor Peter Thiel.

Yarvin — who blogged under the name Mencius Manciaccessbug in the aughts and is now on Substack — has been a far-right accessible inalertectual of sorts for a lengthy time. His oeuvre includes musings about the correlation between race and IQ, calls for a “comfervent dictator” to run the US, and posts enjoy “Why I Am Not A White Nationaenumerate” (becaengage white nationalism is “a very ineffective political device for solving the very authentic problems about which it protests”). He once wrote that the neo-Nazi alarmist Anders Breivik, who ended dozens of people in a series of aggressions in Oslo, Norway, was ineffective becaengage he “didn’t even produce triple digits.”

There’s a tfinishency to not achieve people enjoy Yarvin solemnly. He and other far-right bloggers enjoy Bronze Age Pervert position themselves as provocateurs and couch their toil in absurd metaphors — it sounds inherently ridiculous to publish cautionings about a guy who produces lengthy essays about gloomy elves. And if you do achieve them solemnly, they’ll say they were fair trolling. But if you see past his edgelord posture and baroque prose, Yarvin has spent the better part of a decade clearly describing what he wants: a dictatorship.

Yarvin is most normally associated with the neoreactionary shiftment, whose adherents consent — as Thiel wrote in 2009 — that freedom and democracy are incompatible and that democratic regulatements and bloated federal bureaucracies should be swapd by alerted autocratic regimes.

Until relatively recently, Yarvin’s name was not brawt up in mainstream political discourse. But his ideas about undercutting democratic examines on authoritarian power have struck a chord with the current Reaccessiblean ticket. While Vance hasn’t espoengaged Yarvin’s more excessive ideas — and foreseeed won’t — he clearly hanciaccesss parts of the neoreactionary creed in high watch.

In a July Substack post, Yarvin denied that he’s had a “meaningful sway” on Vance. Yarvin referred to Vance as a “random normie politician whom I’ve nakedly even met.” (He has a penchant for italics.) “While I adore the senator and I leank he has some potential,” Yarvin wrote, “he is challengingly a ‘frifinish’ of mine and I can’t imagine I have swayd him.”

Years before he was the Reaccessiblean vice pdwellntial nominee, however, Vance discneglectly touted that sway. “So there’s this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these leangs,” Vance shelp on a right-triumphg podcast in 2021. Vance didn’t stop at a modest name-drop. He went on to elucidate how establisher Pdwellnt Donald Trump should reproduce the federal bureaucracy if reelected. “I leank what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every one midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and swap them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief fairice has made his ruling. Now let him utilize it.’”

This “piece of advice” is more or less identical to a proposal Yarvin floated around 2012: “Retire All Government Employees,” or RAGE. 

As depictd by Yarvin, RAGE’s purpose is to “reboot” the regulatement under an all-mighty executive, a sort of debugging. Yarvin sees elections as ineffective methods for political alter becaengage, while the head of state and their political assignees may alter, the nurtureer bureaucrats (who, in Yarvin’s watch, are repartner calling the shots) stay put. “If Americans want to alter their regulatement, they’re going to have to get over their dictatorphobia,” Yarvin shelp in the 2012 speech in which he depictd RAGE. Yarvin has since toned down the dictator rhetoric (he more recently called for a “monarchy of everyone”), but the underlying principle remains unalterd. For Yarvin, democracy is an illusion: elections produce people leank they have a say in what happens, but the Cathedral, his catchall term for journaenumerateic institutions and elite universities, runs everyleang. Monarchy, in this theory, is the only genuine regulatement. 

RAGE tolerates clear parallels to Trump’s war aachievest the “meaningful state” of federal bureaucrats. In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order that streamlineped engagement protections from certain federal positions “of a self-promisedial, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating chapter.” Federal agencies would also be helpd to engage staffers who pledged dedicatedty to the pdwellnt. The new policy was called Schedule F, after the new engagement categruesome it would have produced had Biden not aborted the order unwiseinutively after taking office.

Schedule F was a radical idea cloaked in the sanitized language of the federal bureaucracy. Its goal was to intensify power in the pdwellncy and undercut what Trump (and others on the far right) refer to as the meaningful state and what Vance has repeatedly referred to as “the regime.” The regime goes beyond liberals or Democrats — it includes mainstream politicians from both parties whose primary goal is to uphanciaccess our current political order.

Yarvin’s Cathedral achieves this argument a step further, extfinishing the cabal beyond Congress, the White Hoengage, and the courts; the media and elite universities are part of it, too. Where other right-triumphgers back efforts to achieve over universities and elite institutions and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Yarvin has written that these tactics will foreseeed only “upgrasp betterive cultural power.” He’s comfervent of an all-or-noleang doomer; his ultimate vision is an American monarchy run by a “national CEO,” or in Yarvin’s own words, “a dictator.” (Trump, honordly, has shelp he would not be a dictator in office “except for day one.”)

And if Trump triumphs, Yarvin’s RAGE proposal could be back on the table. Schedule F is among the dozens of policy proposals buried in the 2025 version of the Heritage Foundation’s proximately 1,000-page Mandate for Leadership. If carried out, it could sway tens of thousands of federal engageees. Schedule F is legpartner dubious, but as Politico has elucidateed, the current produceup of the Supreme Court could permit for it to go forward anyway.

If the courts don’t side with Trump, Vance has recommended as recently as this year, he should progress anyway. “If the elected pdwellnt says, ‘I get to regulate the staff of my own regulatement’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says ‘You’re not permited to do that’ — enjoy, that is the constitutional crisis. It’s not wantipathyver Trump or whoever else chooses to do in response,” Vance tanciaccess Politico months before becoming Trump’s vice pdwellntial nominee.

Heritage Foundation pdwellnt Kevin Roberts sees the leank tank’s role as “institutionalizing Trumpism” and is a frifinish of Vance, whom he’s referred to as “one of the directers — if not the directer — of our shiftment.” Under Roberts, Heritage has shed its establisher identity as a home for free trade fanatics and Reagan Reaccessibleans and has filledy leaned into an ultranationaenumerate MAGA ethos. Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts’ book Dawn’s Early Light, whose accessibleation date was pushed back from September until November — after the election. 

Heritage isn’t alone in this alteration. The right-triumphg leank tank ecosystem has been endly remade in Trump’s image since 2016. The far-right fringes have now achieven over the mainstream, putting forth an exclusionary vision of America and who belengthys in it — one in which nuclear families are led by an all-mighty executive who is accountable to noleang and no one. The Claremont Institute, once neutrpartner traditional, is now the self-styled inalertectual MAGA brain depend. Michael Anton, a establisher Trump administration official and Claremont fellow, wrote about Bronze Age Pervert’s book for the Claremont Rewatch of Books; his appraise noticed he had been gifted a imitate by Yarvin. 

Yarvin is by no uncomfervents Vance’s only sway. As Politico’s Ian Ward has written, Vance’s worldwatch has been shaped by a variety of right-triumphg leankers, including Catholic inalertectual Patrick Deneen and French philosopher René Girard, but it’s also been swayed by people enjoy Thiel and Yarvin. If you streamline away the veneer of esteemability provided by Heritage and Claremont, the layers of irony behind which Yarvin hides his watchs, and the academic credentials of Vance’s other sways, the excessive nature of their proposals becomes impossible to neglect.

Vance is clever enough not to cite Yarvin in accessible now that he’s the vice pdwellntial nominee, and he hasn’t accessiblely helped some of the blogger’s more disgusting watchs. But that doesn’t uncomfervent he’s not plugged in.