Curtis Yarvin

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Curtis Guy Yarvin
Mencius Moldbug.jpg
Yarvin's speaker biography photo from the 2012 BIL Conference
Born (1973-06-25) June 25, 1973 (age 50)[1]
Residence San Francisco, California, U.S.
Nationality American
Other names Mencius Moldbug
Alma mater
Website Unqualified Reservations
School

Curtis Guy Yarvin (born June 25, 1973), also known by his pen name Mencius Moldbug, is a Jewish-American computer scientist, political theorist, and neoreactionary thinker.[1] His writings have played a foundational role in the formation of the neoreactionary movement.[5] He is the creator of the Urbit computing platform,[6][7] through his startup company Tlon (backed by Peter Thiel),[8] and the author of the blog Unqualified Reservations.

Yarvin's work on neoreaction inspired English philosopher Nick Land to brand the wider neoreaction-sympathetic movement the Dark Enlightenment.[9] Neoreaction and the Dark Enlightenment form part of the philosophical underpinnings of the alt-right.[1][10]

Life

Yarvin dropped out of a graduate computer science program at U. C. Berkeley in the early 1990s[11] and helped code a WAP browser for a large startup in 1998, making enough money to support his life as a scholar for several years.

Philosophy and politics

Yarvin originally called his political philosophy of insisting on the alignment of property rights with political power formalism,[9][12] from the concept of legal formalism, although he later renamed it neocameralism, explaining, "The word is mainly picked for its Google virginity, but it should also be reminiscent of cameralism, the governing philosophy of Frederick the Great, whose Anti-Machiavel is good reading for anyone wondering what went wrong in the 19th and 20th centuries."[13]

The label "neo-reactionary" was applied to Yarvin's philosophy by Arnold Kling in 2010 and adopted by Yarvin's followers;[9] Yarvin accepts the label but self-labels as "restorationist", explaining that the restoration he has in mind is a sovereign bankruptcy with restructuring to produce "a new era in which secure, responsible and effective government is as easy to take for granted as tap-water you can drink, electricity that is always on, or a search engine that returns porn only if you searched for porn."[14] Yarvin differs from monarchist neoreactionaries in that under his proposed system, neocameralism, governments would be organized as joint-stock republics.[15]

Although Yarvin once considered himself a Misesian, he later became a Carlylean. He notes, "When I went from Misesian to Carlylean, my vision of the ideal state did not change. I, and others like me, want to live and should be able to live in a liberal regime of spontaneous order, which is not planned from above but emerges through the natural, uncontrolled interaction of free human atoms. Hayek in particular, though no Mises, is eloquent here. What my conversion to the cult of Carlyle has changed - completely - is my understanding of the means by which this free society must be achieved."

Yarvin describes himself as a royalist because, he says, "all organizations, big or small, public or private, military or civilian, are managed best when managed by a single executive. Hence: royalism. However he or she is selected, the title of such an executive, in a sovereign capacity, is King - or, at least, anything else is a euphemism."[16] He prefers his refined form of royalism, neocameralism, because it eliminates hereditary rule in favor of hiring the best executives regardless of bloodlines or nationality. While finding "libertarian government an extremely desirable outcome" he notes he does not consider himself a libertarian because, he says, "as a moral imperative, or a political design, or a historical tradition, libertarianism does not strike me as an effective means to this end."[17] Rather, he views neocameralism as a more effective way of achieving libertarian goals by aligning self-interested financial responsibility with moral responsibility.[18]

Yarvin also describes himself as an extremist[19], a pronomian (pro-law).[20] and a Jacobite (not to be confused with Jacobin).[21] He denies being an anarchist,[22] an anarcho-capitalist,[23] an anti-Semite,[24] a fascist,[25] or a white nationalist.[26] He views progressivism as the opposite of his philosophy,[27] explaining that in his view, "Right represents peace, order and security; left represents war, anarchy and crime" and that he has chosen "to construct a very clean value system in which order is simply good, and chaos is simply evil."[28]

Yarvin has viewed former U.S. President Donald Trump as having "no ideology at all" but has said that he would like to see "a CEO with a real track record of strategic execution in a large enterprise — an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos — running against Trump" regardless of ideology.[29]

Public attention

Yarvin came to public attention in February 2017, when Politico magazine reported that Steve Bannon, who served as White House Chief Strategist under then-U.S. President Donald Trump, read Yarvin's blog and that Yarvin "has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary..."[30] The story was picked up by other magazines and newspapers, including the Atlantic, the Independent, and Mother Jones.[31][32][33] Yarvin commented, "I have never met Steve Bannon or communicated with him, directly or indirectly."[34]

Controversy

Yarvin's opinions have been described by some as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. Yarvin himself maintains that he is not a racist because, while he doubts that "all races are equally smart," the notion "that people who score higher on IQ tests are in some sense superior human beings" is "creepy". He also disputes being an "outspoken advocate for slavery",[6][35] but has argued that some races are more suited to slavery than others.[36] Yarvin regards the idea of human neurological uniformity as "a mutated and metastasized version of the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Basically, all humans must be neurologically uniform because we all have the same little piece of God inside us" and argues, "Thus what we call hate speech is merely a 20th-century name for the age-old crime of blasphemy."[37]

In 2015, his invitation to speak about Urbit at the Strange Loop programming conference was rescinded following complaints made by other attendees.[38][35] In 2016, his invitation to the LambdaConf functional programming conference resulted in the withdrawal of five speakers, two subconferences and several sponsors.[6][39]

Personal life

Yarvin's father is Jewish.[40] He has two children with his late wife, Jennifer Kollmer (1971–2021), who died in San Francisco on April 6, 2021 as a result of complications caused by hereditary cardiomyopathy.[41] On April 7, 2022, Yarvin announced that he was engaged again.

References

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  30. Johnson, Eliana and Eli Stokols (February, 2017) "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read." Politico. (Retrieved April 17, 2017.)
  31. Gray, Rosie (February 10, 2017) "Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement." The Atlantic. (Retrieved April 17, 2017.)
  32. Revesz, Rachael (February 27, 2017) "Steve Bannon ‘connects network of white nationalists’ at the White House." The Independent. (Retrieved April 17, 2017.)
  33. Levy, Pema (March 26, 2017) "Stephen Bannon Is a Fan of a French Philosopher...Who Was an Anti-Semite and a Nazi Supporter." Mother Jones. (Retrieved April 17, 2017.)
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  41. https://graymirror.substack.com/p/jennifer-kollmer-1971-2021

External links

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