The Silicon Valley Royalist: Unpacking Curtis Yarvin’s Vision for a CEO America

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Once an enigmatic figure in the early 2000s, an obscure blogger known only as Mencius Moldbug began to ripple through the tech world, particularly in Silicon Valley. His core philosophy was startlingly radical: egalitarianism, he argued, was the root cause of most of the world’s profound ills and instability. Moldbug proposed a drastic overhaul of governance, advocating for nothing less than the complete dissolution of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law. In their place, he envisioned the appointment of a powerful CEO-in-chief, whose singular mission would be to transform the entire government into an ultra-profitable corporation. He was acutely aware of the perilous path his ideas suggested. Clearly, if he or she turns out to be Hitler or Stalin, he once wrote, we have just recreated Nazism or Stalinism. Yet, despite this stark warning, he remained convinced that any political system deriving its legitimacy directly from the people was inherently doomed to perpetual instability. Critics, understandably, were quick to label him a techno-fascist, though Moldbug himself preferred the more refined, if equally provocative, title of royalist.

Mencius Moldbug was eventually unmasked as Curtis Yarvin, a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur based in San Francisco. His provocative ideas quickly gained traction…