CNN —
Meet the man who has been advocating to replace American democracy with an all-powerful monarchy — and who has the ear of some of the most important people in Washington and Silicon Valley.
Curtis Yarvin is a computer engineer and entrepreneur turned political theorist, deemed the father of “dark enlightenment” — a school of thought that the best path forward for the United States is to consolidate as much power as possible in the chief executive and do away with most of the federal government (and most state governments) as we know it.
Yarvin has for years been a fixture of right-wing circles around Silicon Valley and counts tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen among his most prominent readers. He has a popular Substack with tens of thousands of subscribers and in recent years he’s been name-checked by Vice President JD Vance and appeared with popular right-wing podcasters Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk.
But in a lengthy conversation with CNN in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House in mid-May, Yarvin said his greatest power may lie in the future of politics, where he’s finding a growing audience, including some younger Trump administration officials as well as those disillusioned with democracy’s inability to solve big problems.
“The focus of authority is absolutely necessary to run any integrated system efficiently,” Yarvin said in the interview, summarizing why he believes such a monarch would be best for the country. “You could probably put any of the Fortune 500 CEOs in (the White House) and say, ‘OK, you’re in charge of the executive branch, fix this,’ and they’d probably do fine. They wouldn’t be Hitler or Stalin.”
Yarvin’s rise is alarming scholars and experts on democracy and dictators, who note with concern how his ideas about a strongman are gaining traction among young people.
In 2012, more than a decade before DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) became a known acronym, Yarvin advocated on his blog and in
, it would not do stupid things “like vanning grad students, which are populist wins but elitist losses.”Yarvin says he has no plans to enter politics and is focusing on his company Urbit, as well as growing his Substack.
“I’m just out there in the marketplace of ideas, and I think the marketplace of ideas definitely expanded in the last 10 years,” Yarvin said. “My goal is for people to just live in, to live in the real world.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.