The dashed hopes of neoreactionary Curtis Yarvin, the inspiration behind Elon Musk's Doge

Before it became Elon Musk's mission, demolishing the federal civil service was Curtis Yarvin's dream.

A Silicon Valley computer engineer and blogger who calls for the replacement of American democracy with dictatorship, Curtis Yarvin has spent several years plotting a plan to attack what he calls the “cathedral” of elite power and connivance. Long before the rise of Doge, Yarvin had devised his own acronym for the downsizing of the bureaucracy: Rage, for “Retire All Government Employees.”

Although he claims never to have met Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin nonetheless exerts significant influence over the Doge's grand cost-cutting project. "There is collusion between the media, universities, and the federal government ," says one Doge advisor. "These people have taken over the state, which they are using to expand their power. And that scares us a lot. We need to reduce the influence of the 'cathedral'."

It's not every day that a neo-monarchist influences disruptive federal policymaking via the Substack platform. But Curtis Yarvin, 51, isn't claiming victory. He's even surprisingly harsh on the Doge, whom he compares to an orchestra of chimpanzees struggling to play Wagner. In his eyes, the Doge's attitude toward federal officials resembles that of men who flex their muscles to hide their insecurities and scare off potential sexual partners. "The worst part of the Doge is this 'incel' [involuntarily celibate] side of him who's furious at the girl who won't sleep with him ," Yarvin points out. "That's not a sign of power."

This cocktail of analogies borrowed from various registers is characteristic of Yarvin, whose posts—which dissect American politics by distilling references to Shakespeare and Stalin as well as to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the ^8th Dimension [the 1984 science fiction film]—are now required reading for the internet far right. Among his most prominent readers are Vice President J.D. Vance and two pro-Trump Silicon Valley investors, Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.

Even in a political culture accustomed to extremes, Curtis Yarvin navigates the margins. He has written that former South African anti-apartheid figure Nelson Mandela was a terrorist comparable to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, called President Roosevelt a more effective autocrat than Hitler, and advocated replacing the world order with thousands of “sovereign, independent mini-countries, each governed by its own anonymous corporation that would disregard the opinions of its inhabitants.”

Despite his informal role as éminence grise to the Doge and certain government figures, Yarvin now claims that Musk and Trump are foolishly alienating the very government experts whose favor they should be currying favor with. Yarvin's disappointment with the Doge's record has a surreal quality, as if Marx had lived long enough to accuse the Bolsheviks of misreading Das Kapital . It's also a lesson in the dangers of translating the often far-fetched digital rhetoric that has shaped the American far right into concrete policy.

Joshua Tait, a historian of conservatism, finds it surprising, but not illogical, that Curtis Yarvin displays mixed feelings about putting his ideas into practice. Despite his gloomy portrayal of democracy, Yarvin has always had a surprisingly optimistic view of what the federal state could accomplish. “I wonder if it’s this utopian streak that puts him at odds with the Doge’s motto of ‘blowing the progressives’, ” the historian observes. Still, Yarvin’s ambivalence “sometimes lacks intellectual coherence.”

As the Doge puts the finishing touches to his mission—leaving behind a crippled but still restive civil service and savings far short of the $2 trillion [€1.7 trillion] announced—Yarvin bears at least some responsibility for this outcome. Joshua Tait asserts:

“I think he’s the one behind the Doge. He spent a lot of time creating the frame.