The Washington Spectator

02/12/2025

Those of us who have followed this space have known about Curtis Yarvin for years. Yarvin has received extensive coverage, and a simple internet search will yield many primers on his writing which appeals primarily to terminally-online, fascism-curious young men on the autism spectrum. Yarvin believes that democracy doesn’t work and should be replaced by autocracies led by CEO-monarchs. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Balaji Srinavasan, and other prominent tech investors cite Yarvin’s work; he has spoken of a “Butterfly Revolution” strategy to capture, subvert, and takeover a sovereign state as a means to installing a new totalitarian government.

A group of whistleblowers familiar with the “Neoreactionary” movement (sometimes called “Dark Enlightenment”) recently released a memo directed at government and the media explaining in detail how Musk’s moves reflect Yarvin’s philosophy, and the attendant danger. Gil Duran, a reporter who follows these topics, suggests that Musk is clearly inspired by Yarvin’s ideas but is in many ways shooting from the hip and improvising. While Yarvin prescribes the hiring of experienced technical experts to run government under an omnipotent CEO King, Musk, by contrast, is hiring inexperienced child jihadis who will not question him.

Musk has been obsessed with payments since the 1990’s and his early work with PayPal and x.com. He has spoken extensively over the years about how payments are just another kind of information flow. With his control over X and current efforts to acquire TikTok, he is laying the groundwork for totalitarian control of the information sphere, not only through social media but through payments. At minimum, Musk’s penetration of US Treasury banking records may offer him deep insights about how to roll out such a network and at worst case, may give him total control over how it is used and who actually gets paid going forward.