Curtis Yarvin (photo, left; profile here), 51, grew up as a prodigy and became a software developer, which doesn’t make him important.
Yarvin’s influence derives from his blogging and radical political views. He’s worth posting about because J.D. Vance, the 2024 GOP vice presidential nominee, is a follower.
The New Republic did an article on him (here), because Peter Thiel and Vance listen to him. In other words, Vance hangs out with the two most repulsive denizens of Silicon Valley.
Yarvin asserts he was kidding when, back in 2008, he suggested processing unproductive people into biodiesel. He explained that simile “just helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve … a humane alternative to genocide.”
Yarvin calls himself a “neo-reactionary.” His ideas are terrifying. He’s anti-democracy and pro-dictatorship. He’s spoken approvingly of slavery.
He promotes setting up a patchwork of corporations as absolutist monarchies, in territories seceded from the United States, where people would have no say. These places would be surveillance states, and their tech overlords could “arbitrarily decide to cut off citizens’ hands,” alluding to the Saudi punishment for thieves.
Voters who only know Vance as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” are missing the big picture, which is this:
“Since entering politics, Vance has publicly praised—and parroted—Yarvin’s ideas. That was worrying enough when Vance was only a senator. Now that he could soon be a heartbeat away from the presidency, his close ties to Yarvin are more alarming than ever. Superficial analyses of why certain tech billionaires are aligning with Trump tend to fixate on issues like taxes and regulations, but that’s only part of the story. Tech plutocrats like Thiel and Elon Musk already have money. Now they want power—as much as money can buy.
“Stories about Vance tend to focus on his hardscrabble Ohio roots, but his relationship with Thiel—and his stint in San Francisco—are key to understanding his politics. Vance owes his meteoric rise to Thiel, who largely bankrolled it … Vance is a Thiel creation. And like his billionaire benefactor—who once wrote, ‘I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible’—Vance embraces a radical ideology hell-bent on destroying government as we know it. And they got these ideas, at least in part, from Yarvin … some of his most extreme ideas echo Yarvin. They’re both fond of political purges, for instance. …
“Vance did not get this extremist ideology from his Appalachian upbringing or—needless to say—Yale Law. It was incubated in America’s tech capital, San Francisco, where he forged crucial ties with Thiel, Yarvin, and David Sacks, the longtime Thiel associate and pro-Putin crusader who recently hosted a Trump fundraiser at his mansion in Pacific Heights. And if Vance ends up in the White House, it will be with $45 million in monthly campaign contributions from Musk, who already made a $44 billion in-kind contribution by gutting San Francisco-based Twitter and transforming it into a right-wing misinformation weapon.”
Is there a Republican leader in the wings more dangerous than Trump? Yes. Absolutely yes! His name is James David Vance, and he wants to be the next Vice President of the United States. Would you vote for him and this?
