A Yarvin-Sized Fork in the Road

Curtis Yarvin currently wields huge influence over the President of the United States and his revolutionary administration. The Blob can no longer afford to remain blissfully ignorant of his existence

A couple of weeks ago—at the time of writing this article—the New York Times did an interview with the reactionary philosopher Curtis Yarvin. The interview was conducted by David Marchese, an NYU-educated journalist who runs a podcast featuring figures from our cultural and political milieu. Ironically—given the content of this essay—I’ll admit that this was the first time I’d encountered Marchese. Given the ideological chasm between these two men both Yarvin or Marchese were able to maintain a friendly conversation and neither seemed to be operating in bad faith. But what struck me was that Marchese seemed to have zero idea what Yarvin actually believed. Rather than engaging with the old Muldbug’s most interesting beliefs like the cathedral the conversation continually focused on Yarvin's monarchism and edgelord takes. It honest to god felt like Marchese had never actually read any of Yarvin’s most influential essays and was instead totally relying on 2nd hand analysis.

This is not to say that Yarvin “won” the encounter; he presented, as usual, as a somewhat incoherent speaker who failed to push back against the inevitable criticisms someone from David’s pedigree would bring up.

But the question of how one of the most influential political philosophers of the 21st century was basically unknown to the NYT has been worming its way around the inside of my head ever since I finished the interview. Because he is influential and he has been in rightwing circles for quite some time now. It wasn’t like Yarvin was invisible; he was right there for anyone with an interest in looking.

I for one have been trying to get my friends and family to believe in the existence of his influence for months but I’ve had as much luck as trying to convince them Santa is real. It has been vaguely Cassandraesque screaming at everyone I know that the incoming regime is serious and this man is their ideological father only to be given side eyed looks. Well for better or for worse I was right. The lady doth protest too much.

Of course it isn’t just the NYT who was ignorant this man even existed, a quick glance at google scholar shows how untapped the field of Yarvanese studies is.¹

I can think of only one explanation for how the prestige cultural tastemakers and information aggregators of our society—academia, the media, etc. (which I refer to as “the blob”)—were so blind, and it is this:

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