Its potential risks are still under deliberation. However, with the risk of stable totalitarianism growing due to the rapid development of AI (rough calculations by 80000 Hours estimate the possibility of “entrenchment” due to AI at ~25%) digging deep into both the when and the why behind the movement is crucial for preventing authoritarianism before it can take root in our governments.
The origins
“You ask (...) for some Noah Chomsky. What you’ll get is blue pills soaked in Red #3.” The blog Unqualified Reservations, started by Curtis Yarvin or “Mencius Moldbug” in 2007, promised the truth and only the truth. The epistemic approach was further propped up by the writer’s encouragement to “add your own salt” – bring your preexisting beliefs and question everything stated. Most importantly, it gave the reader agency – a phenomenon in dire scarcity among citizens left disgruntled by the ongoing Iraq War, the rising number of draftee casualties only leading to dropping approval ratings year after year – from a 75% approval rating in 2003 to 41% four years later in April (Gallup), when the first blog post appeared on the internet. Yarvin fed off the feelings of complacency. His early blog posts advocated for replacing democracy with a corporate state, where power would flow not from the people, but from formal ownership. Later writings veered toward “scientific racism” and thinly veiled authoritarianism. To Yarvin, democracy was a decaying symbolic theater, his beliefs mimicking the likes of Nietzsche and his skepticism of herd morality and mass opinion. Instead, he wanted to run the U.S. government like a machine – clarity over fairness, formal ownership, and minimizing violence through rule. The Dark Enlightenment is the very antithesis to the 18th-century Enlightenment, abandoning secular optimism in favor of neo-monarchist realism.
The movement was never meant to go viral. Despite being picked up by niche subcultures on Reddit and 4chan, its ideal citizen is not the average voter but the hyper-rational elite—those who feel alienated by mass politics and disillusioned by democratic drift. As Yarvin put it, the movement was designed “by geeks for other geeks.” The “Dark Enlightenment” left the average person powerless, instead fitting under the “submission” of the dominance/submission dichotomy. But fringe ideas don’t need mass appeal to wield power; they just need elite adoption.
Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures, has long criticized democracy as incompatible with freedom. Through Founders Fund, he invested in Urbit, Yarvin’s personal server platform. Yarvin, in turn, has acknowledged privately coaching Thiel. Vice President JD Vance, similarly backed by Thiel, "has cited Yarvin as an influence himself". Meanwhile, in 2023, the venture capitalist Marc Andreseen released the essay “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” that advocates for accelerationism and rejects political polarization, mimicking Yarvin’s rationalist rhetoric.
And yet, despite the stated rejection of the polarities of politics, it’s hard to argue for the movement’s apoliticism. After all, can any set of beliefs be deemed apolitical if it includes guidance for redesigning governance top-down and permeates the complex web of those who yield the power and money to govern? The Dark Enlightenment, first and foremost, calls for a “reordering” of power and abolishment of chaos they assume to be associated with democracy. But is any order better than the alternative?
Why now?
The Dark Enlightment emerged in a post-Iraq vacuum, but its relevance surged after three converging shocks:
The 2008 financial crisis. Caused by, in part, financial deregulation along with a variety of other factors, the 2008 crisis led to millions losing jobs and savings, government budgets being slashed to compensate, and the subsequent underfunding of social services. For many, it exposed democracy as a tool for corporate capture rather than citizen accountability.
COVID-19 pandemic. From supply chain breakdowns to chaotic school closures to conflicting advice from scientists and officials, the pandemic only amplified pre-existing mistrust in public institutions. The world was unprepared. And the citizens noticed.
AI + crypto boom. As Artificial Intelligence and blockchain took off in the 2010s and 2020s, some began to imagine an entirely new system. Crypto offered alternatives to national currencies. AI promised governance by hyper-rational systems rather than flawed humans. Movements like the “Network State” – “(...) online community (...) that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition (...)” advocated for abandoning fixing broken democracies and building entirely new nations. Many became convinced a restructuring was necessary.
What’s at stake
In 2022, Yarvin laid out a plan he called RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. He believed that a future Trump administration should terminate the entire nonpolitical civil service and replace it with loyalists. Federal funds would be impounded and redirected. If courts blocked unconstitutional orders, they should be ignored. By April of the inaugural year, Yarvin argued, the free press and universities must be curtailed or abolished outright.
The parallels to real life are clear. Over 30,000 federal employers – from the National Park Service to the FDA have been fired as part of DOGE’s efforts to maximize government efficiency. Donald Trump’s portrayal of himself as a “king” on his platform Truth Social mimics the pursuit of “monarchy” described by Yarvin.
Yarvin once declared that “no brand or building can survive,” mirroring Silicon Valley’s ethos to “move fast and break things.” But what’s being built in place of broken systems increasingly looks like the very “tech elite rule” “Moldbug” calls for. And if, as the Futurist Marinetti once said, “War is the hygiene of the world,” then what we’re seeing now may not be just an ideology, but preparation for a new order.