#119 Curtis Yarvin: The Tyranny of Democracy - The Case for Monarchy
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Curtis Yarvin — aka Mencius Moldbug — is the most controversial political thinker alive. In this interview, he lays out his honest analysis of how the modern West is ruled: not by democracy or elections, but by an entrenched oligarchy of institutions, academia, media and the permanent bureaucracy.
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Peter McCormack
Right? Curtis, good evening. Hello. I was in. I was in Las Vegas about week and a half ago, and my good friend, I went for lunch with him, and we were, I was bitching about the state of the UK, and he said, You need to go watch these interviews. Curtis jarvin and The New York Times, go and watch it.
Curtis Yarvin
So I went back to the hotel, watched it. And had you heard of me before? Vaguely
Peter McCormack
I heard the name, yeah, and I think I seen you because of the Constantine show, but like, I hadn't engaged with it because I hadn't known anything about you. But when I was talking about what's going on the UK, he was like, just go and watch this New York Times interview. It's brilliant. And I did. Then I watched the Tucker one, and then I think I watched, which is much older, which is, yeah, much older. But I think I watched. I basically spent about 24 hours watching everything. She's reached out to my guy, Joe, and you were in the UK, so I missed you there, and then he said you were in New York. So I said to Connor, we got to fly. We got to do this. I wanted to talk to you, and I tell you why. The reason? Well, there's loads of questions I've got, but one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I kind of came to this realization that I think we've lived in this world. Tell me if I'm wrong again, that as long as I've lived, things have always been kind of the same. So we kind of expect it to always say the same. But there is a reality that revolutions happen, things change, and we should at least discuss
Curtis Yarvin
that. And the more stagnant they are, the more suddenly they seem to change. And one way, you know, I was just up at Yale. I did a Yale Political Union event and a Federalist Society event about things which would have been utterly unthinkable a year ago, not even especially two years ago, where I did come to Yale two years ago, but it was like I had to sneak in, you know. And the way I was expressing this, you know, in my ypu speech, was that, of course, the obvious comparison is to the Soviet Union. But the thing about discarding the Soviet Union was that not only did you have to discard these leaders, not only did you have to discard this government, not only did you have to discard this system of government, but you had to discard the whole theory of government, and even to some extent a theory of man, in order to be rid of the Soviet Union. And one of the things you notice about that problem is you notice this sort of curious effect where big things are easier than small things. So actually, everybody in the mid 80s was thinking about, how do we reform the Soviet Union? How do we fix this? The grain harvest, comrade, it's too low. You know, our transistors are just fat. They're just fat transistors. There's just no good, right? We get these calculators from, you know, West Germany, and they're incredible. How do they make these things, right? You know? And you just have this feeling that you're losing, and you can sort of see like lose all around you. And you sort of want to push back against the lose, but you want to repair the fabric of the system. And you don't see, no actually, at a certain point, that was probably a long time ago, it's become much easier to replace it than repair it. But the thing is, when we're thinking about the age of these political ideas in the Soviet Union, they only had to throw out about 80 years of political history. In other words, basically the entire I mean, in the fall of the fall of the Soviet Union, there were still people that remembered Tsarism, right, you know. And I think the equivalent period for our system of government is actually about 400 years. So it's a bigger lift. And moreover, it's also a much bigger lift because the Soviets could, or thought they could, just revert to the Western system of government. It was very few people that said, like Solzhenitsyn said, Hey, no, not so fast. You can't just flip over to the Western system, because maybe the Western system isn't perfect either, you know, and nobody really heard that. He made this famous speech at Harvard in 1978 where he says this, and people are like, what the hell I thought you were supposed to be for? Like, freedom, man. You. Know, and so actually, like that flip over. You know, that flip over involves, basically, we don't even they thought, at least thought they had a model to go off of. We don't have a living model to go off of at all. We don't have anything, right? We don't have anything except, you know, huge piles of books written by dead people. That's basically what we have, huge piles of books written by dead people and some great technology. And those are sort of our ingredients. But I'm entirely convinced that, you know, that is the magnitude of change needed to, you know, to change the way we think about, the way we govern ourselves, in a way that will basically, and the acid test for that is, how can the West leap ahead of China?
Peter McCormack
And is it, for you, is that it's not that democracy has historically failed. It's just failing now because we've had such massive changes in technology, wealth,
Curtis Yarvin
social No, no, no, it was always a bad idea, you know. And well, I mean, the word democracy was considered, you know, it was a slur up until, really, the 19th century, right? You know, like you start to, you know, John Adams is will tell you that democracy is the worst system of government ever, right? You know, his second cousin, Samuel Adams might have praised it, but he might also have just dodged the word because it had such a bad name. You know, if you go to the page on Athenian democracy, the Wikipedia page, the last time I looked, I'm sure these things change all the time, but there's a quote about Athenian democracy from a modern scholar. And modern scholars are not, I think, generally, that good on the subject. But, you know, he's like, you know, it's sort of stunning that actually, people have spent the last, almost last 2500 years, trying to LARP this form of government, when every writing, extant writing we have from the period says that it was absolutely horrible and led to the fall of Athens, right? You know, I mean, and executed Socrates, right? And so you're like the question of why people keep being attracted to this starts to be a little like the question of why people, why rats, keep from being attracted to cocaine. Maybe the cocaine isn't actually so good for the rats after all, right, you know. And like, Can we, can we think that? Can we suspect it? Because, you know, Xenophon certainly thought it, you know. And, and the Plato, I mean, certainly thought it. Socrates probably thought it as, you know, the hemlock did whatever horrible thing it does to you know, yeah. So first of all, you have this word democracy. And when I was debating Professor Ruben rubenfeld at the ypu the other day, I grew there was not, it's like countervailing speeches, not enough, really, back and forth is kind of my criticism of the format. So I got, like, a minute as a general rebuttal. And one of the things, after hearing a lot of voices, including student voices on the subject, I was like, what I'm really convinced needs to be abolished is actually the word democracy, because the word is extremely meretricious. We can start by not using the word. Actually make a practice of basically not using, you know, the language of the jargon of the regime, or, you know, what you might call the tongue of Mordor, like, you know, somebody uses a word that starts with if and ends in arsity. In my presence, I grow, I kind of give them a look, right? You know, I'm like, You could have said variety. You're really entirely capable of saying variety in this situation. You know, there will be a time when it is appropriate to say this word, but not here, not now, right? And that's because you're sort of, you're you're invoking power when you use these words. The word democracy means legitimate, blessed government, right? How democratic is a government is? How blessed is it? And one of the sort of the easy kind of brain twisters which you can sort of use to unwrap your brain from this a little bit is notice that the words democracy and politics have opposite valence. So calling anything democratic is a compliment, calling it political is an insult. And I was talking to a professor the other day, he even started talking very seriously about the idea that we need democracy without elections. You know, most people will say, Well, I love democracy, but you know, does it really have to mean putting politicians in charge of the government? and here's how they'd look if humans vanished.
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Well, that's like, I've been recently arguing with a lot of people locally where I live, and the question I keep putting to everyone is like, name me one thing that's got better under the government in the last 20 years, and there's never an answer,
Curtis Yarvin
no, and moreover, there's never an answer. And you're also distracted by the cape rather than the matador, in a way, because, actually, as you probably know, you know, you know, yes, Minister, the thick of it that you know, that great tradition of, you know, very accurate, even when I was growing up as a child of the American Deep State, you know, I knew about Yes, Minister, because it was actually the only thing that sort of told the truth about my parents world in a very comic, you know, sort of way, right? And the reality is that Sir Humphrey Appleby is really in charge of everything. And the importance of Parliament or the Prime Minister, or Jim hacker MP, or even Jim hacker PM, to Sir Humphrey Appleby is, in a way, comparable to the importance of Charles the third, right? You have a fundamentally ceremonial form of government. And so what you're looking at is a system which is different from the USSR, but not as different as you might think. Moreover, the level of historical connections is extremely deep and intriguing. For example, did you know about your Prime Minister's summer vacation? No, in Czechoslovakia, I didn't know about, Oh yes, oh yes. You know Keir Starmer as a teenager was basically, you know, spent a summer in a program behind the Iron Curtain. Now, maybe he did that Fabian. Yes, we know
Unknown Speaker
Fabians. We know.
Curtis Yarvin
Did I mention that? We know? You know. Do you know their original logo of the Fabian Society? No, it is literally, I don't imagine how they did this. You can look this up. You will not believe me. This sounds like a BS internet myth. It is absolutely true. It is literally a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Peter McCormack
Connor, you got to find that for me. Bring it up. You got to find that. So he was probably crying during the Velvet Revolution. Oh shit, it is.
Curtis Yarvin
Bring that one up the top left. Oh yeah. Holy, you know. So, so, right, you know. So actually, we're dealing with a wolf here, you know, and like all of this sheep stuff. And you know, when the wolf in sheep's clothing addresses you is, will you not be kind and gentle fellow sheep? You know, you know that's not really you just you want to be a dog and not a sheep, basically.
Peter McCormack
So is democracy really there to allow the slide into socialism?
Curtis Yarvin
Democracy again. If we stop, if we stop using this word, yeah, we will immediately feel much better. So let me explain how to stop using this word. Okay, there are, in fact, two things very, you know, discrete and understandable things that we know by common names for which we use the word democracy interchangeably. These two things are at war with each other. So it's as if we use the same word for elves and Orcs or something. Right as soon as you disambiguate this very slippery word democracy, you can split it into two things in contemporary political language that will immediately be understood whenever you are tempted to say democracy. Say either populism, which is a somewhat slippery word, but we'll sort of get back to that and roll it up, or meritocracy. Okay, okay. So, you know, having one word for populism and meritocracy allows Soros world to basically, you know, go around the continent claiming that he's for democracy when actually he believes that politicians should have no power at all, right? And, and, you know, this is not a new phenomenon. This is a, this is a century long phenomenon. And what happens even before communism, in the sort of Fabian period broadly, which is the late, you know, late, of course, 19th century. You know, the way I like to basically, really get inside the head of a tradition is go back in time far enough where I actually like it. So basically, my personal Guru is an English writer named a Scottish writer named Thomas Carlyle, okay, who I recently learned, actually, I think he's pronounced it Carlisle, which is very weird to me, but I'll just keep saying Carlisle. There's a town in the north of England called Carlisle. Yes, yes, yes, and absolutely fabulous writer. And even though I think the his work that I like the most is actually some of his least read work, but the i. John Ruskin, whose name you might, you know, recognize, is a student of Carlyle's. And the ruskinites spark this sort of, you know, Ruskin is basically an influencer, right, as is Carlyle, in his own way. Ruskin is really an influencer. And so there's this, like, late 19th century cult of Ruskin. And the ruskinites, you might recognize, kind of the Arts and Crafts movement is related like Art Nouveau, but also the Fabians come out of the ruskinites. So in America, there's a group called the liberal Republicans, also known as the mugwumps. So my favorite writers, Henry Adams, might recognize the name. Charles Francis Adams Jr, probably don't recognize the name his brother. Even better. Brooks Adams, amazing. Brooks Adams, total critic of democracy. He writes this like so Henry Adams wrote a novel called democracy, which is really about how awful politics is. Published it anonymously, because that was the times. You know. Henry Brooks Adams wrote the law of civilization and decay, which is this kind of spinkarian rant. Bear in mind, these people are all great grandsons of John Adams, right there, and grandsons of John Quincy Adams. This is the great. These are great American hereditary aristocrats, like the frickin Kennedys. Let's so like, imagine, like, if, like, you know, the editor of the New Yorker is also, you know, a member of the Kennedy family, right? You know. So this is like intense, like aristocracy, concentrated, superpower aristocracy. These people basically look at politics and what we now call the Gilded Age. They would have said, the great barbecue. And I'm going to confine this to the sort of the American side. There's a parallel English side. These people look at American politics in this period they see that is disgusting and corrupt and basically creates things like sort of, so Lincoln is sort of this revolutionary figure, and Thaddeus Stevens, who follows Him, is still more Thaddeus Stevens is never president. He's leading the country from out of the Senate. This is the period of radical reconstruction, just insane piece of the 20th century that dropped into the 19th imposes basically Third World Government in the American South. People are like, Oh my God, you know. Like, you know, they'd never seen the third world before, but they saw it, you know. And you know that basically retreats as revolutions do, and comes into sort of the Gilded Age, where, if you drive around New York, basically everything cool was sort of built in this between, like, you know, 1850 and 1950 basically, and, you know, they look at the, you know, the way they're governed under literal democracy. Literal democracy, meaning populism, meaning politicians are in charge of the government. So literal democracy. Politicians are in charge of the government, and what do they do? They're idiots. They steal, they run political machines. They're Boss Tweed. You've probably heard the name Boss Tweed. So what you basically get, you know, here's this beautiful mechanism that John Locke is fantasizing about, or whatever. And what you actually get, you know, is a bunch of Irishmen electing Boss Tweed. They were a little bigoted. Let's face it, you know, like they had a very like, you know, the level of racism you need to despise, you know, the Irish is like a very high level of racism that isn't really available today, right? So these are bigoted people, and they're, you know, profoundly aristocratic, prejudiced in any every way, they consider themselves absolutely superior to everyone in the world, except maybe certain people in London. And they're probably right about all of these things. And they're like, this is a shit show. And so they're basically like, you know what we're gonna do? We are gonna relearn the lesson of Plato. And we are becoming, gonna become a new Guardian class. And we feel ourselves to be entirely capable and righteous and ready to rule. We know how this is done. We know it's not Boss Tweed. There's a coming world of science. We're going to rule scientifically, and it's going to be amazing, right? And again, this is before, this is turn of the century stuff, and into that comes also there. So there's a sort of statesman, like energy, and then there's this, like religious missionary, like mainline Protestant missionary world that you know once basically feels the same sense of aristocracy, but also believes it can literally turn everyone in the world into the same kind of aristocrat. And we have adopted that wholly unfounded, actually objective scientific belief is woven very deeply into the basis of our culture, and there's no evidence for it whatsoever. And so, you know, this is their kind of that is one strain in it, and that strain sort of grows the strongest over time until it, you know, basically leads to where we are. But of course, you know, there's this aristocratic strain. You know, when really the first generation of American progressives, these are progressives with, like, a capital P progressive has been a euphemism for communists. Is roughly. The 1930 my grandparents were communists. They used that euphemism. That's normal, right? Communist actually means you're a member of the party. Progressive means you're a supporter of the party. While there was a party, there's no longer really a party. But that's just like cancer going from like a centralized mass to a decentralized mass, you know? So in any case, that's the back story, basically, is that aristocrats were like, You know what? Literal democracy, populism is not working, so we need to invent basically this platonic oligarchy, which we're going to call democracy, because, for the same reason that the United Kingdom is still called a kingdom, although, frankly, it's not sad, yeah, we're sad, yeah. And the it is sad. And the I was just reading Blackstone on the laws of the king, maybe more about that later. But the, in any case, this, these platonic aristocrats basically, were like, All right, we are going to govern in a statesman like way, but we are going to be the first ever to bring science into statesmanship. Thus was born the world of social science, this idea that we can be governed by numbers and formulas, you know. And you know, things, concepts like, even like GDP, or even the way we measure inflation, these are wholly 20th century concepts. They were introduced in an absolutely thriving America, and just obviously thriving America. You've seen pictures of the streets in the 20s, even the 30s, you know. And I'm just like, you know, if this was the and you came to, if this was where the rule you followed brought you of what you use was the rule, right? You know, they have all of this social science, all of this kind of scientific and basically pseudo scientific, you know, intellect that's put together in mimicry of the obvious triumphs of actual science. And of course, this is done on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is not, you know, like, I mean, the Soviets are only minor deviation from this. Basically, they're really part of the same phenomenon. And the and it was thought basically. And you find, again, if you go farthest back, you find this thought most clearly that these platonic guardians, these Fabians, these professors, etc, etc, you know, they're living the pure life of the mind in the ivory towers. You've heard of the marketplace of ideas. They're buying, they're selling, they're in the marketplace of ideas, right? It's all good, right? And, and, you know, and in the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas triumph, right? You know, like truth will always defeat fiction. Well, here is the problem. This is the fundamental flaw with this design, because they seem to have solved the problem of who watches the watchdogs forever and ever perfectly. And what they were going to do is they were going to take the disgusting sewer of Gilded Age politics, and they had identified this pure, clean glacial lake, and they were just going to open the drain in the lake and let the lake rush into the sewer and just clean it out with, you know, 50,000 pounds of, you know, pressure per square inch, all this disgusting stuff would be removed. And it was an absolutely wild idea, as wild as any of my ideas today, that, like professors, would be running the country in like 1900 right? And they had this wild, visionary, brilliant idea, because they knew that they were capable of ruling, and they knew that there were 30 IQ points, 50 IQ points, I don't know, Boss Tweed, right? You know, guy probably doesn't even read, you know, he's like his mark. He sounds like his mark. I don't know, you know, and like the so it seemed like a real no brainer to them, and they forgot only one thing. There was only one technical one small technical error that doomed this utopia, which is that there wasn't a valve in the pipe, and so water flows downhill, but ideas are not really like that. And especially, what really loves to flow uphill is power. And so they thought that if they put the world of ideas in control of power, and the world of ideas which was pure, in which basically the best idea would win. You know, here's a wonderful demonstration of this. I got something that everybody, every intellectual, should own, which is a Victorian encyclopedia. I honestly do not know how they did encyclopedias with Victorian technologies, chambers, encyclopedia from the 1870s how do you do an encyclopedia without computers? I don't know. You know, that's like saying, How do you like record music like before electricity, right? I have no idea, right, you know. And yet they kind of manage, you know, and the and this is 12 volume, encyclically, very full, interesting encyclopedia, really, this beautiful picture of the past, right? And then, because it's actually hard to update, and it's. Wikipedia without computers, right? You know they would do, you know, the 12th edition would be like the 11th edition. Actually, I also have a 12th edition Britannica, which also does this. The 1911 Britannica is really a great one, and but you the 12th edition is much cheaper and just has some supplemental volumes. The 1911 Britannica is like Wikipedia, if every entry was written and edited by leading scholars in the field and whose names are actually, like, visible there, it's an incredible document. And the in any case, I'm reading the supplement on like chemistry, and the supplement on chemistry, like, three or four years later is like, you know, we've been thinking a lot about chemistry, and we've decided that, you know, it's no longer right. You know, we were writing water as H O, but really it is correct to write it as h 2o and they're just like, oh, yeah, we'll just fix that, right? You know, today, if there would be like this, like lifelong, generational struggle between the H O people and the H 2o people and the H O people would know that if they lost that struggle, they would lose their jobs, their careers, their livelihood, probably their wives, right? You know. And like, you know, they would not give up, you know, they would. They would fight tooth and nail for HL, like, HL would be absolutely stuck. That's the way that 21st century science works. Victorian science, which created this guy in modern world without which we have nerd they're like, Oh yeah, it's H, it's H duo, right? You know, that's the way it's supposed to work, right? You know? And but the way it actually works in this system, now that you've taken this beautiful life of the mind with the academics, like dancing around the fairy groves and the robes and toning and having symposiums, right? Which is clearly the way it's supposed to be, is that now everything, because, basically, power matters. Everything is a bureaucracy. Everything has the structure, and even worse, the ideas. There's a conflict of interest. The ideas that prevail are no longer the best ideas, because, actually, there's another, you know, evolution. Evolution, you know, the marketplace of ideas, is based on evolution, and evolution is the survival of the fittest. It's not the survival the best. It's not the survival of the smartest. It's the survival of the fittest. Evolution can make you dumber as well as smarter, stronger, as weaker, as well as stronger, smaller as well as bigger. There is no like trend line in evolution, right? And the what happens when you basically connect, you know, the beautiful blue lake of ideas, without any valve whatsoever, to the you know, incredible sewer of Power is power just comes rushing back up the pipe because power wants to flow uphill, and just huge bubbles of sewage start appearing in your beautiful alpine lake. We call this sewage communism, basically. I mean, there's a number of words for it, but communism is good one and the but it's not a specific set of ideas. It's a way that ideas evolve in this context. And the way that ideas evolve is suddenly, you know, it's not survival of the truest anymore. It's survival of the most relevant. Because actually, suddenly the quest in academia becomes the quest for funding and the quest for power and the quest for relevance. Because, actually, because your ideas can control government policy directly, right, impact really matters. Like, you know, when you're in this ivory tower, you want to be doing something that is relevant to power. And I think there's no better illustration of this, and this was the illustration I used, you know, much more quickly I'm sadly at ypu the other day at Yale, I was basically like, let's think about virology. Now, the thing is, when we think about virology, I think we can all agree that virology is a public good, because actually defending our species, or the whole species really, against viruses, is not unlike defending the earth against asteroids or aliens. You've heard of this alien spaceship that's going to come kill us in a couple months, probably three eye Atlas, probably not, but you never know. And, and it could render a lot of this stuff, frankly, pretty irrelevant, but let's keep on you know, like, you know, and the probably not, and it's probably just academic puffery. I suspect it's a big comment, but, um, it's a really big it's a really big comment. I suspect it's just a comment. And also the nickel and the tail is in the wrong direction. It's probably just because this is long, thin thing, yeah, but that's just because the exposure is stretched so it looks like a cylinder. Of course, it doesn't mean it's not a cylinder. The tail is also pointing in the wrong direction, as though it was like a deceleration jet. It's probably nothing. I wouldn't worry. I wouldn't worry. Don't worry. Um. Um, and again. There's no way. There's no way we're hell again. Anyway, anyway, off of aliens. Yeah, aliens. You know what happens in virology? Is a nice case in point, because the nominal goal of virology is to defend us from viruses. Yes, so if you have no conflicts of interest. If you're working in a system entirely without conflicts of interest, then you will be striving every day to defend humanity from viruses. You will not be striving every day to infect humanity with viruses. And the idea that you would infect humanity with viruses will be very atrocious to you, and yet somehow we did, conceivably, actually, you know, the issue with covid isn't so much, you know, I don't think anyone has a really serious case that it was intentional. I think we're looking at second degree murder here at most, which is a pretty minor crime. On the other hand, 20 million people is kind of a lot of the world. They were going to die anyway, so negligence, yeah, negligence, but, like, kind of big time negligence, and also the behavior after the negligence really should have been, Oh, my God, we screwed up. Here's the Wuhan virus database. Where's the Wuhan virus database? Here's the we totally screwed up. We own it. You know, I am personally gonna, like, shave my head and retire to a monastery. I did not mean to kill 20 million people, but I did. That's how it went down. That is not how we saw them behave. And there was money to be made, yes, but the money is the least important thing. I'm less worried. I'm more worried about how this happened and why this happened. And I would first point out that it is entirely possible. Let's give the wet market people there do. It's entirely possible that, as Jon Stewart put it, you know, a bat metapangolin, and they fell in love. And if you've seen the Jon Stewart episode, like two minutes of Jon Stewart, my God, the man is a genius. I don't know who wrote that for him. They wrote it perfectly. He delivers it perfectly. And I'm like, I will put I will forget the rest of Jon Stewart's entire career for that one clip. Okay, I'll just forget it. I'll pretend it didn't happen, you know, and the but maybe it was a coincidence. But even if it was coincidence, in their private slack messages, some of these virologists basically looked at this grant and it's like, wow, this looks like a recipe for covid. So they made a recipe for covid, and they were cooking it. Maybe the recipe didn't turn out, and covid just happened independently because of bat metapangolin in Wuhan, where there are no bats. Okay, okay, okay, you know, right? It's possible. It's possible. But the real issue is, basically, in terms of government policy, is the cost benefit of this work from the perspective of the nominal interest of virology, because the idea that actually there's been, there's no benefit whatsoever, has been demonstrated for this gain of function work. Actually, people just kind of wave their hands and say, Well, science is good. Knowledge is good. Wasn't that the motto of in the animal house? Yeah, science is good. Trust us. Science is good, more money. Please. Trust the science more money, please. Right? You know, and that's the way echo Health Alliance was essentially going about its work like and there's an interesting story actually behind echo Health Alliance, if I can diverge for a second and just, you know, just as a way of illustrating the like, absolutely diabolical effects of eliminating that valve between the life of the mind and power. Are you familiar with named Geron? Gerald Durrell, no. Lawrence Durrell. No. Lawrence Durrell was a famous author of the early 20th century. He wrote the Alexandria quartet and other famous literary works his brother Gerald Durrell, whose books I read a ton of as a kid, because I grew up in like a Commonwealth countries where Gerald Durrell was everywhere. Was a zoologist, and he was a most engaging essay essayist, and he went to basically various decaying corners of the soon to be defunct British Empire, and collected cute, fuzzy animals and brought them home to a zoo that he established in Jersey, not New Jersey, but jersey and Lovely, lovely writer, delicious experiences. Kids, love animals, etc, etc. And this business of collecting, there's a, you know, show that was huge in the US, you know, the Durrell family, something, something, you know, based on his life in Corfu as a child, beautiful, romantic. So Durrell, basically, of course, we live in the era of what you call, I believe, the quango. We call it the NGO, and he founds a quango. And the purpose of his quango is to go and collect little fuzzy animals and breed them, and, like, restore and save the species from the like, disastrous collapse of Africa, or whatever right which he never, of course, mentions. He's not political. And this is all very good and true. And he funds this alliance called the Wildlife Trust, which goes, maybe you can see where I'm going with this, pay me not, which goes to, you know, and goes and collects wildlife. And, of course, he goes old and passes away. And he is replaced as the leader of the Wildlife Trust by his successor, also an ecologist, a man named Peter dazak. And Peter dazak realizes that the purpose of an NGO is not to actually collect cute, funny, you know, monkey babies. He collects money, but to get grants. Yeah. And he's like, actually, you know, the thing about spider monkeys or whatever is that are not relevant, but, you know, it's relevant viruses. And so the Wildlife Trust becomes echo Health Alliance, and they start to get, like, Pentagon grants for hunting viruses. And this really kicks into high gear, of course, after SARS one, because SARS one is a real wet market escape. And so everyone this is why the where the wet market came from. It's just what everyone was looking for. It's, you know, ascertainment bias and so this creates basically echo Health Alliance, which basically goes to the bat caves in southern China and Yunnan, and is like, how can we find more of these bat coronaviruses to establish that they could be a threat to humanity? Because actually, if they're a threat to humanity, we should study them, because they're a threat to humanity. Now, the problem with these bat viruses is they're actually bat viruses. Actually, each bat is infected with, like, several coronaviruses. So, so, like, there's a whole lot of coronaviruses, most of them you could, like, snort them, you know, in pure powder, and they do absolutely nothing because they're bat viruses. But sometimes they mutate. And the mutation is a random thing, you know, it's a cosmic ray, comes out of space, alters, changes a G to an A or something. You know, how can we predict that's going to happen? That was the name of one of these studies predict. Well, one way to predict that that could possibly happen is to mutate them ourselves. How could they possibly mutate? And it's like, you find you're like, you know, a 10 year old son, you know, you come home and your 10 year old son is setting fire, you know, to the kitchen curtains. And you're like, Kevin, what are you doing? He's like, science. And you're like, science is like, well, you know, science says that over 40% of house fires start in the kitchen. What if the curtains caught fire. Could we get out? Could the dog? Could the dog get out, you know, and that's when you realize that you have a problem, right? You know, we have a problem like that. We have to talk about Kevin, you know. You know, Kevin has a name, and his name is Peter dazak. And Peter dazak has actually shut down echo Health Alliance and founded a new organization under a different name, right? And which is now, you know, going out and getting grants actually. You know, the importance of coronavirus has only been proven by these events. There are more virus hunters than ever. Moreover, you know, if you think, well, Trump will save us from this. Well, all right, so I forget his name, unfortunately. But, you know, Fauci is out. Yeah, you know, Fauci had a somewhat checkered record with AIDS as well, as you might, as you might recall, and got away with it, though he what, you know, the amazing, you know, genius. There's a kind of Moriarty level criminal genius, of not only inventing this thing, but actually successfully covering it up. Yeah? I mean, oh my god, right, you know. And, and, like, what a genius, right? And the you have to, you know, salute them in the same way that, you know, you're just like, you know, wow, how does Ted Bundy do all those things? Or, like, Hitler, amazing graphic design, right? You know, Fauci, right? You know, amazing bureaucrat, Master bureaucracy, Emperor of virology, for 30 years. You know, the Robert Moses of virology, there will never be anyone like him, you know, and, but he's replaced by, all right? And they're working on actually shutting down gain of function research. They're working on this. They are trying. They're seriously trying. You know, unfortunately, the person that they replaced, and I don't think they're funding any more coronavirus research. And the fellow who replaced Fauci actually got Michael burger, or something like that, as the chief of virology, is also a great virologist who made his who showed his greatness. You know, most a lot of scientists have this, like one great idea that makes their name, right? And his great idea was, what if, holy cow, he was in the bath. He was in the shower one day, and it came to him, we could resurrect the 1918 flu. Absolutely. You think I'm fucking joking. I'm not fucking joking. And he's like, I know what we'll do in Alaska. We'll go to Alaska. I swear to God, I'm not making this up. We will go to Alaska. And in the permafrost in Alaska, there must sing, there must be bodies of people who died from the 1918 flu. We can exhume the bodies. We can dig them up. We can restore the virus, and we can study it. And he literally did exactly this, and it made his frickin career. And that is who is running virology today, right? So, you know, basically. Like, you know, the famous New Yorker cartoon of like, the audience is, like, you know, what do these dumb pilots know about flying? You know, let's elect the captain. You know, that's literal democracy, yeah. Okay, here we have meritocracy, right? And the thing is, you know, and if you generalize across, what happened here, what you see is that basically, you have, by saying, you know, defining the way virology is funded according to the impact of the science you've invertently, you've inadvertently created. There's this famous effect that happened in the Raj in India, the Cobra problem, where, you know, the Raj was like, well, people are being bitten by snakes. We need to stamp out Cobras. Let's bring, how about a bounty for every Cobra head you bring in? So, you know, what did the Indians do? You can guess, they started farming cobras, right? You know. And so virology has turned into virology, this unimportant, this small part of you know, we virology is good, but honestly, we haven't really solved viruses. We could probably do without it. Virology has turned into this massive Cobra farm that killed 20 million people. And then I'm like, do you suppose this affects other aspects of government as well? And I'm like, Wow. You know we had this policy of expanding NATO to the east. Now we could figure out why we wanted to expand NATO the East. We had to expand NATO to the east. Like any addict, we kept promising the Russians we would not expand NATO to the east. And then we expanded NATO to the east. Right? And why? You know, many experts, there were actually the people who should be running virology today, people like Richard E Wright and his name names, Richard E bright people are warned against, not only gain of function research, but these specific coronavirus experiments. Like, if there were a marketplace of ideas that worked like these guys would never like they would be entitled, by law, to three blow jobs a day. I don't know something. You know, it was just like the people who weren't against covid and were not listened to like the idea that these people have not been granted, even by the Trump administration, simply the right to fire anyone they like and basically recommend anyone they like for prosecution that would be their appropriate way to handle this right. You know, in a system that was actually as self correcting as we think this system is, but it does not appear to be very self correcting, does it? You know? And so that's meritocracy. Meritocracy has basically said we are going to evolve all of the ideas in this marketplace of ideas to be as powerful as possible. But it's not a real marketplace. Well, it is a real marketplace. It's just a marketplace that's rewarding things that you and I don't happen to really like. It is a real marketplace,
Peter McCormack
but it's a marketplace financed by an infinite money printer.
Curtis Yarvin
Well, there's that, there's that, certainly, but it is actually supported even more so, I mean, it's sort of part of the state, in that sense, the infinite money printer is a problem. We should get to that. Yeah, we should get to that. But even if the system was running on hard money, it would still have a very serious problem. Yeah,
Peter McCormack
but it's where the hard money comes from. it's like, it's like, it's like, your analogy with Apple, Apple would only focus so,
Curtis Yarvin
so, so let me, let me rephrase what you're saying in a way, when you're running a government on soft money, yeah, you have lost a source of self correction that is very powerful. You have lost the corrective effect of. Reality, because you were actually able to borrow infinitely, and because you were able to borrow infinitely, especially if you have the global reserve currency, because your great grandparents conquered the world, okay, you know you basically have, you have a spectacularly unaccountable state, and your spectacularly unaccountable state is basically free of any of real like constraints on the bizarre pseudo evolution of this marketplace of ideas so it can go almost infinitely crazy. But
Peter McCormack
it but his goal also is self preservation. So its goal is to direct the funding towards the things that helps preserve it and convince
Curtis Yarvin
people. Well, the thing is that you don't want to like it's a purely decentralized mechanism, and that's what makes it so powerful. So when people, you know, when we when we sort of think in the way of this sort of kind of 400 year old way of thinking. We have this sort of anti autocratic way of thinking. We're always looking for conspiracies and powers. Actually, what makes progressivism so powerful and so dangerous is that it's genuinely a spontaneous order. It actually doesn't have a center. It doesn't need a center. It doesn't push, it pulls or either it doesn't push, it sucks, right? And so actually, like what you see in this marketplace of ideas, is the temptation of power, and if you remove it's not the pressure of censorship, it's the temptation. It's the seduction by which the most sexy ideas are the most powerful ideas you know. Fast forward to the present. You know, what is sexy? How can like watching like, you know, the new PT Anderson movie, which you know, is reviewing, just a video for the spectator. How can the new PT Anderson movie make like 60s violence, you know, in the 21st Century seem sexy. It's almost impossible. I don't think it succeeds, but the fact that you can even try to make you know communism feel sexy today is incredible like and that basically speaks to a fundamental sexiness of the idea of the thing, which keeps recurring despite the evidence, as I was saying earlier, about Athenian democracy, that it really just doesn't work. And so everything at every level, is sort of seduced by power and many of the tropes, and this is one of the reasons for sort of the huge failures of basically libertarianism. Because I'm, you know, I literally read, I think, everything that Mises and Rothbard wrote, I'm definitely a recovering libertarian. You know, I've had every flavor of this whiskey. And, you know, libertarian sort of keeps failing. And this is, in a way, related to its leftist origins, because libertarianism, 200 years ago, was classical liberalism, and it was on the left and, you know, understanding that the fact that it was on the left sort of means that it's kind of, it has a kind of flaw, in a sense, basically, is what pushed me. This is a good example of why it's not just sufficient to wind the clock back to like 1965 or 1940 or some other period. You know, even to wind the clock back to 1776 is a mistake, because the American Revolution is fundamentally leftist, and all of these leftist tropes sort of, see seep, in a mythical way, into, for example, American conservatism, and kind of fatally poison it because it's trying to fight leftism with leftism. Actually, the nature of this leftism is the sense in which sort of all ideas are kind of corrupted in a way that makes these kind of malignant ideas seem more powerful. So for example, in France in the 1770s big American craze, big anglophilia. People are like, wow, the American Revolution. That's freaking cool. That's punk. You know, Lafayette goes over to fight in the revolution. Like, how punk is that? Like, that's seriously punk, right? You know, everyone cool was into these new English ideas of like, democracy and elections and constitutional, the very least constitutional monarchy. And you know, who got infected with this, like, you know, covid of the mind is Louis the 16th himself. The revolution, as they say, was first in the mind of the king. You know, Louis the 16th was like, Wow, this, like, constitutional democracy seems to work really well in England. Actually, the kings have had their power removed basically since, you know, for almost 100 years at this time. But he's like, he just wants to tinker with those little locks. He's just kind of a nerd, right? And he's like, oh, yeah, pretty cool. English, constitutional democracy. Like, three years later, he's like, where did my body go? Right? And because, make no mistake, there's no such thing as decapitation. They're actually removing the body. Yeah, right. You know? And, but it's over very quickly. So, you know, basically, like, these toxic ideas. Why do these obviously toxic ideas flourish in the French marketplace of ideas, in the world of, like, Dangerous Liaisons, French, you know, aristocrats who are, like, you know, have, you know, 13 mistresses and, like, live in this, like, very sweet, you know, and rich way, it's the French Revolution. Doesn't come from the peasants, it comes from the aristocracy, right? And it comes from the aristocracy trying to imitate the English system of government, which, again, is one of these. Basically, it's just like, you know, what were the philosophs, you know, doing? What was Voltaire doing at that time, he was basically doing gain of function in, like, political science, and this creates a virus whose effects are like, still sweeping the globe today. Like, left versus right originates in the French Revolution. You know, the color red is a revolutionary color originates in the French Revolution. Like, you know, it's still, actually, you know, we're still in the age of that revolution. In fact, it's very easy to identify political tropes today that are directly related to tropes in England, literally 400
Peter McCormack
years ago. But when the pitch falls come out, we have a bad king. It's easy. It's very easy to replace it with a whole new system. But when we have one bad government, we just replace it with another bad
Curtis Yarvin
government we actually can't replace. So going back to Aristotle's three systems, monarchy, the government of one, literally, let's just use the literal word monarchy, the government of one. Queen Elizabeth, the first monarchy, Hitler monarchy, Stalin monarchy, Kim Jong, un monarchy, even the terrible monarchy. Khufu, who built the pyramids, monarchy, 98% of human history, monarchy. That's the normal thing. That's what you get when you stop digging. Yeah. Okay, so right now, we're in a hole, and we're very deep in the hole. But first of all, it's essential to understand that when you value all time periods equally, you know, as the great German historian Leopold von ranke said, all eras stand equal before God. That was he was not a Nazi. It was before then. So we can say him, you know, all eras, you know, stand equal before God. Is one of rank is great, you know, utterances, the other one is to tell history as it really was. And when we tell history as it really was in all era, stand equal before God, suddenly we're not restricting ourselves to, you know, a sample of monarchs. It's like Hitler and Stalin. Hitler and Stalin certainly exist, but so does Louis the 10th, and we are not weighting Hitler above Louis the 10th for some weird reason. We are actually when we look at Hitler and Stalin, we're looking at monarchy in the age of democracy, which is indeed a very problematic era for monarchy and a lot of different senses. But you know when you so that's monarchy. Oligarchy, the rule the few. The definition of that oligarchy can be, can take many forms. Our oligarchy is essentially what previous periods would have called a theocracy. Now it's an atheistic theocracy, but essentially you can basically follow the ideology of Harvard all the way from 1636 today, and say there isn't really an aspect of American culture from 1636 to now that has like deviated from harvardism in any way where harvardism is always a leading indicator, everything else becomes harvardism. The south, the South is different. The South becomes harvardism. Everything is harvardism. And so to basically chart an intellectual history of the United States, it is entirely sufficient to chart an intellectual history of Harvard. Harvard, by the way, is actually, I didn't know this until, like, a few months ago, when I found it accidentally, seriously implicated in the Salem witch dress. And the, not even the witch hunting, is new, yeah, right, you know. And so, you know, that's your you know, this is why I'm like, 400 years Okay, that would bring us to, you know, 2036 which hasn't quite happened yet, but, yeah, you can identify basically, sort of cracks in the old regime that appear well before 1636 but you're in England, not America, yeah, you know. And so that's basically theocracy, oligarchy, meritocracy, the rule of Harvard. These are all basically the same things, right? And then you have, you know, true, literal democracy, the rule of the demos of the many. And basically, when you're looking at the rule of the many, it's very attractive in a lot of ways. It's sort of emotionally good. We all want to believe that all men are created equal, even though, you know, I guess I would say I kind of compromise on that point and say, I can't really say that all men are created equal, but I would say that all identical twins are created equal. But I'll go with that. I'll go with that. I mean, you know, yeah, but even there, you see differences, right? You know? But. But, but that's a good baseline, right? You know.
Peter McCormack
And the you're saying, you know, with democracy, everyone gets a vote, but everyone's got a brain. Well,
Curtis Yarvin
you know, not even everyone. I mean, see, here's the problem with remember the New Yorker cartoon of, like, the passengers electing the pilot, and New Yorkers like, wow, democracy is a really dumb idea, and I gotta agree with that to be honest, right? You know, I'm basically like, you know, the conflict between oligarchy, literal oligarchy, the conflict between meritocracy and populism, is a very simple way to understand, you know, this conflict. Surely, you know a couple that is always fighting, and you know, you talk to your friends, both of them right, and you understand where they're coming from. And you're like, you know, really, the problem with this relationship is that he's right about her, but also she's right about him. And you're just like, do they deserve each other? I don't know, but like, he's right about her and she's right about him. And you see that, basically, when you understand most conflicts from a sort of global perspective, usually your answer is, in some ways, some ways, you know, they're like, you know, sort of huge errors. So, you know, in like World War Two, for example, the main charge of the Nazis is they're fighting against the international Jewish conspiracy, which doesn't exist. The main idea of the allies is they're fighting against the Nazi plot to take over the world, which also doesn't exist, right? And it doesn't exist. Go to a Wikipedia bring up a wicked the Wikipedia page for Nazi foreign policy debate. See, say so Nazi foreign policy debate. So basically, imagine if you're talking so when Americans were fighting like my grandfather were fighting in World War Two, they were basically like we're fighting against Hitler's plan to take over the world. But my favorite part of this page is the part where, yeah, yoke and thieves. Yoke and thieves. Basically, here's the evidence for here's the evidence from a serious historian for Hitler's plan to dominate the world. The evidence is he liked really big buildings. And people who want to dominate the world also like really big buildings.
Peter McCormack
Hold on. Let's read it. The other arguments for the case of the globalist jock and tease has been noted. Say that plans for world domination can be seen Hitler's ideology of displaying power, the creation of magnificent buildings, the use of propaganda to demonstrate German strain. Come on with the message to create the right to 1000 years clearly shows Hitler's aspirations through the future. I mean, that's obviously a terrible
Curtis Yarvin
argument. That's a very imagine if that was, imagine if that was the best argument for, like, the reality of the Holocaust. You and I, the Holocaust is one of the best documented events in human history, right? You and I would have to be if that was the best evidence for the Holocaust, I would go out on the street and scream, the Holocaust didn't
Peter McCormack
happen. Yeah. But there was, there was certain expansionism in the war.
Curtis Yarvin
Sure, there was expansionism in Eastern Europe. You know, who else expanded in Eastern Europe? Frederick the Great. You know, how much George Washington worried about Fred the great? Not at all. Right, so, you know, essentially, you're like, basically, you know, in that war was so screwed up that, you know, even then, even in that situation, the number one argument, as expressed at the time of the Germans, is we are fighting against the international Jewish conspiracy. The number one argument of the Anglo Americans is we are fighting against Hitler's plan to take over the world. Those arguments are both completely bogus. However, arguments like two through 10 on both sides are basically Correct. Yeah, I don't know what that is. So for example, you know, argument number two on the Allied side is, by the way, they're doing a lot of human rights abuses. Yeah, also true. You know, I could go arguments through arguments two through 10 on the Nazi side, but we would, we would probably get bogged down in that shit. Yeah, you know, and, but argument number one on both sides is just complete crap, right? It's just absolute crap. There's no international Jewish conspiracy. I'm sorry, grapes, it doesn't exist, right? But, like arguments two through 10, you know, that's a little more interesting. You know, in any case, basically you see these just like the world, and what we call the age of democracy is just like thrust into these delusions. Because the set of delusions is spread in the demos, as opposed to the aristos, as opposed to the oligarchy. There's a completely different set of forces that dictate, like the success of a meme on Facebook, which is what we're actually looking at when we look at true, literal democracy, not grasp, not astroturf democracy, but grassroots democracy. You know the truth is that astroturf really astronomically. Sucks and basically gave us covid, right? And that's just an example. Like, all over the government, all over the way we think about politics and power is these ideas that have been evolved for 100 years to be as powerful as possible and often bear no resemblance to reality, are basically what is like, you know, look at our ideas about criminal justice. Why do you know, look at our ideas about, like, teaching reading in schools. All of these ideas you know, get, you know, just become like sinister parodies of themselves, until education becomes anti education. Bill Ayers become the Weather Underground guy becomes like the leader of our educational system. Like insane things are happening in every direction, because we took the cold alpine lake and we connected it to the sewer, and we didn't put in a valve, but we are there now. So like,
Peter McCormack
you know, there's one per I won't name that. There's one, there's one person I spoke to that was interviewing you, and they were like, oh, but that is crazy. It's like crazy right wing ideas. But bear with me, but it's like crazy right wing ideas. What the hell are you doing? But at the same time, there's a growing number of people who want to listen to Curtis jarvin Discuss democracy, and there's that word again, yeah, but they want it. But they want it. Well, they want to hear you talk about why you don't believe in democracy, why it's failed. And like, if we just look at the UK is a great example. Yeah, at the moment, it's, it's so fucked. We're so
Curtis Yarvin
fucked. Imagine you had told any Englishman from before 1900 the story of the UK, which is a word that nobody used, by the way, nobody said UK, they said Britain, or they said England.
Peter McCormack
And let me just finish, yeah, like, we're so fucked at the moment that in the space of a few short years, a party that never existed looks like it's going to win the next election, and it's 2029 Yeah, in 2029 but they've come, they've come from like nowhere to dominating the political discourse. And look, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people who will say, Yes, nothing's going to change. Nothing ever happens. But the reason happens, but the reasons it's happened is because of all faith in the Left Party, they've lost all faith in the Conservatives labor. It's like they need something new. But at the moment, sorry, bear with me. There's something new is it's a new color party. It's not a new idea. And what it is that you're at least just saying, Look, can we at least just have the conversation that this idea is a terrible idea. That's that's what you're basically do.
Curtis Yarvin
You know the term wig history? No, that's wig with an H right? And wig history in which is identified or described as such by the historian Herbert Butterfield in the 1930s I believe, is basically this sort of belief in, like, monotonic progress and, like, it was really a lot of Whig history comes from just watching the progress of technology, which is actually totally extrinsic to government. Like every form of 20th century government in major nations seems to have done quite well with this. You know, it's not like the Nazis were bad at science. It's not like the Soviets were bad at science, you know. So using science as an endorsement of our system of government is pretty lame when you know, the US basically stole the Nazi rocket program and used it to go to the moon, right? And then you're like, oh, yeah, science. We do science universe. You know that the Tom Lehrer line about Wernher von Braun, you never knew Tom Lehrer, he was this great. He was a mathematician and comic song writer, an amazing figure, huge figure among American nerds for the last 30 years. He recently passed away. He put, because he was a nerd, He put all his lyrics in the public domain. And there's a great one about Wernher von Braun, who is, of course, the director of the Nazi rocket program, who's promptly in 1945 moved to America and becomes the director of the Apollo program. Literally directs the program that puts Neil Armstrong on the moon like he doesn't even lose his job, right? He just moves to Alabama. And the line is, you know, we remember the Tom very Tom Lehrer line, you know Wernher von Braun. You know Wernher von Braun, you know, the rockets go up. Who knows why they come down? It's not my department says Wern brown. So the Nazis actually pretty fine at science, right? You know, and like, they're still Nazis, right? They still like the Holocaust, that's a real thing, right, you know? And, and so actually taking credit for the rise of science, people are like, Oh, well, you don't want democracy, you know. But democracy invented antibiotics. I'm like, that's true. But the Nazis rockets, you know,
Peter McCormack
yeah, but, like, I think what I'm trying to get into is there, is, like, in the election in the UK, we're fucked. There's no agreement anything. I had the conversation with my son on the way over because I'd had an argument with somebody, and he was like, everyone's replaying the same arguments each other. There's no agreement on anything. And people are looking for an escape valve. You've hit rock bottom. Well, yeah, you've hit rock bottom. Where's the escape valve? Where's the therapy? Like
Curtis Yarvin
you're not therapy, yeah. Are we gonna build, you know, the labor anthem, you know, till we build Jerusalem and England's green and pleasant land? You ever heard that one?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and we used to have to sing it
Curtis Yarvin
at school because you live in a communist country.
Peter McCormack
Hello, wake up. But the point is, it's like people are looking for that escape valve, but if the escape valve is discussing the idea that maybe this democracy is a bad idea, it's like, well, we can't have that discussion.
Curtis Yarvin
That's exactly what it was like in the Soviet Union in 19 787, to say maybe communism was actually a bad idea. Yeah, maybe actually the whole thing was a mistake. And maybe, you know, it's like, I was talking to a Frenchman once, like, 10 years ago, and he's like, Well, yeah, French Revolution is very complicated. You know, we had a good the first revolution was a good revolution, and we had a bad revolution. I'm like, my friend, my brother in Christ. Have you ever heard of Occam's razor? And the, I won't say who was enlightened, but hopefully it helped, you know, yeah, and like, you know, Occam's Razor is just like, What? What if, actually, what if all of this sort of, you know, you know, one thing that I find that sort of super interesting when I go and debunk the past was a couple of things I find. Could you type into the browser window the phrase, go up to the browser bar and type the phrase true history of the American Revolution. True history of the American Revolution. Oh, wow. It's a book called the true history of the American Revolution. You might want to click on that. Click on the old page, images, true history of the American Revolution with Sidney George Fisher. Sidney George Fisher, I'd never heard of this person. I don't know how I found this book, but you found it. But When? When? When do you think, just from looking at that page, when do you think that book was
Peter McCormack
published? Well, I mean, I can see Alexander Hamilton, sure, but anyone can quote Hamilton. When do you think it was put you think it was published? I don't know. You might tell me recently, 1903 oh shit,
Curtis Yarvin
oh shit. 1903 very old, right? And, you know, I look at this book and I start reading this book, you can flip the page images. There's a really nice there's a really nice line in there. Wait, wait, back, go back. Read the first read the first
Peter McCormack
paragraph, okay, the purpose of the history of the revolution is to use the original authorities rather more frankly, as has been the practice with our historians, they appear to have thought it advisable to admit from the narratives a great deal, which seems essential. All right, this comes back to the point is like the winners of the war get to write the history,
Curtis Yarvin
that's right. And so if you scroll, if you scroll down a little bit, whatever we go to the next page. We're getting into too into the weeds here. Go to the next page. There's the at the end of the introduction to this. Keep going.
Unknown Speaker
Okay,
Curtis Yarvin
go up. Go up. Yes at the start the sentence, the start of the go to the previous page. All right, go to the bottom. Before I discovered the admissions, start reading there,
Peter McCormack
okay, before I discovered the emissions of our standard keep going on. Histories always felt as though I was reading about something that never happened, and that was contrary to the original experience of human nature. I could not understand how a movement which was supposed to have led to such a deep uprooting of settled thought and custom, a movement which is supposed to have been one of the great epochs of history, could have happened like an occurrence in a fairy tale. I could not understand the military operations, and it seems strange to me that they were not investigated, explained and criticized, like those of Napoleon's campaigns of our own civil war. It was never single a civil war, obviously, yeah, I was never satisfied until I spent a great deal of time in research burn into the dust of the hundreds of brown pamphlets, newspapers, letters, personal memoirs, documents and publications of historical societies and the interminable debates of Parliament, which, now that the eyewitnesses are dead, constitute all the evidence that has left us of the story of the revolutions. Those musty documents painted a very vivid picture upon my mind. And I wish I had the power of painting the picture as the original. All right. Stop, stop,
Curtis Yarvin
stop. So you can go deeper. This rat hole is very deep. It is a beautiful rat hole. And like those sentences left a very deep impression on my mind, because actually, he tries very hard to paint that picture. And you're just like, Oh, wow. That never made sense to me before, right, you know? And I'm just basically the American Revolution is the Vietnam War in the 18th century. It is essentially a domestic political conflict which becomes a war overseas. And because it is fundamentally based on a domestic political conflict, that war does not make sense militarily, like the Vietnam War. And there's actually a recent book by an English historian named. Robert Harvey that I just found randomly in a used bookstore. And I'd been going around saying, the American Revolution is the Vietnam War in the 18th century. And I read this book, which was clearly published several years before I had sent anything of the like on the internet. And he's like, you know, guys, here's the here's the answer, the American Revolution is the Vietnam War in the 18th century. And so you're just like, basically, you just break this whole thing in, and it's like, if you go when you want to criticize. The funny thing is that if you want to talk to Americans and criticize their picture of the American Civil War or the World War Two, both of which to they ascribe deep emotional importance to, is a very tricky prospect, and you can do this, and there are very important revisions that need to be made. But, you know, you are constantly stepping on people's emotions, but they don't give a crap about the American Revolution, right? And so, actually, like, basically, you know, just the fact, I mean, you know, step back a second, and, you know, think about, imagine you grew up in like, lower slobovia, right? And, you know, all your life, you'd heard about the glorious slobovian revolution, George slobovich, you know, wouldn't, you know, cut down the cherry tree or whatever? And you're just like, wow. You know, this really sounds like mythical cult of personality, propaganda history, but, you know, the alternative is communism, so I guess I'll believe in my mythical propaganda. You know, history, and then, you know, suddenly slobodia invents a search engine, and you go to your slurch engine, and you type in true history of the slobovian revolution, and you get that, and you're just like, wait a second, you know, you just broke my brain with a book from, you know, three, right? And there's a lot more where that came from. And so, you know, essentially, when you reject, you know, 400 years of, like, shitty, politicized history, which has been politicized in almost exactly the same way as
Peter McCormack
virology, actually, well, there's that word, again, politicized, but
Curtis Yarvin
politicized because power has corrupted it, because basically the fact that history matters leads to historians. And this was, you know, if you kept reading, you would you encounter Sidney George Fisher. I have no idea who this person was saying. Exactly what I just said is that essentially, when you take a field of inquiry and you say, this field of inquiry, previously pure, is going to have an impact on the world, the fact that it has an impact on the world has an impact on that marketplace of ideas, and basically our system of government was built by people who did not recognize or understand that reality, which is just a fundamental engineering fact of political science. They just left a term out of their equation.
Peter McCormack
And everything is just narrative. Everything is just
Curtis Yarvin
narrative, and that narrative has evolved to be as powerful as possible,
Peter McCormack
but it's almost like then that couple you talked about the couple before that argue all the time, but they spend their whole life together, and all their friends are like, you guys, like, why haven't they broken up? And that's basically what this democracy is. Then, yeah,
Curtis Yarvin
it's democracy, if you split the word democracy into meritocracy and populism. Democracy is just meritocracy versus populism. And you're sort of, you know, and you're just like, you know, both of these things really suck,
Peter McCormack
but like, the company doesn't want to split up even having the conversation with the vast majority of people that, yeah, this democracy thing is a terrible idea. It's like, Whoa, we're not gonna do that.
Curtis Yarvin
No, and actually. But the thing is, everybody who believes democracy is great believes either that populism is great or the meritocracy is great. But they also, all of them, believe that either populism is awful or meritocracy is awful, and so actually just splitting the word in half into its reality, and not letting it retain this fatal ambiguity allows you to basically, sort of defeat each of these things in detail. And so you can say to the populace, okay, dude, you're so right about universities and newspapers. You know the lying press, you know the mainstream media. They lie all the time. It's like, very true. They really suck. And like, I want to, like, speak to you and like, understand that you just have this deeply felt intuitive sense that these people cannot go on governing us, that this is absolutely corrupt and absolutely impossible and absolutely sucks. And let me explain to you why you're right about this using like, big words and the marketplace of ideas and so forth and then, but you got to be like, on the other hand, you know, let's, let's look at what like memes win on Facebook, right? And you're just like, actually, you know, are you really going to run the government based on. What memes work win on Facebook. Because, you know, Elon Musk, for example, is big believer in, you know, literal democracy. You know, he once posted like, Vox Populi, Vox day, like, what the people believe must be true. I'm like, I don't see it. No, I just don't see it. I just don't see it, right, you know. And so, actually, you know, here is the problem you have this couple who is right about each other. And as Aristotle said, there's only two form, oh, wait, there's a third form of government, which has been used basically by 98% of regimes for all of history. Moreover, this third form of governance, which is monarchy, which is basically just a description of an org of a pyramid shaped org chart is not only used by 98% of governments in history, it is used by all effective organizations in the world today.
Unknown Speaker
It's used in our home. It is
Curtis Yarvin
used Absolutely it is the family. If you buy this phone, it comes in a box saying designed in California by Apple, assembled in China. All right, that is three organizations, California, Apple and China. And among those organizations are two monarchies and two one party states. China and California obviously are the one party states. China and Apple are obviously the monarchies. And if you imagine, and if you say, well, one party states are bad. Well, you know, California's pretty nice place, actually. And if you imagine the government of California, not through a contractor, but literally itself, imagine Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, designing an iPhone. Imagine it assembling an iPhone. It's like, imagine like, imagining like chickens inventing algebra, right, you know. And so you're basically like, actually, go to see a movie. It has a director that's a monarch. Go to a restaurant. There's a chef that's a monarch. You know, go to a chain restaurant. It has a CEO who monarchically comes up with the recipes. Imagine if, like, you know, say what you want about Chipotle. If you had Chipotle, it's all right, it's all right. But imagine if the customers of Chipotle voted on the chipotle recipes. Yes, yes. You can imagine that. What did Chipotle last under those in that situation? Well,
Peter McCormack
that's why my home with my kids isn't a
Curtis Yarvin
democracy, exactly. And so, you know, essentially,
Peter McCormack
you know, but by the way, my children have their pitchforks. They do, they do. They do. And I'm sorry also, if you don't like Chipotle, you don't go to Chipotle.
Curtis Yarvin
So, you know, monopolies are harder. You know, this was something that was very accurately pointed out by Professor Jones in our debate earlier today. Actually, the constraints of the this is why I think that, like small not only are small states better than big states, like, you know, the best periods in human history, the most generative, amazing, you know, periods have been like large numbers of competing small states. Moreover, these small states compete basically in two ways. They compete in trade, of course, because they're like, essentially businesses competing for export markets, but they also compete by making war. And unfortunately, war has devolved into this, like, inhuman thing, of like, press a button and kill people, joystick drone hunting videos. I don't know why. Actually, Ukraine hasn't basically allowed, like, anyone over the Internet to, like, operate drones and kill Russians that would abuse be the insane, like, that's the modern Yeah, exactly like it was like, Fortnite, yeah. People would pay. People would pay. They would pay to actually be virtually on the front lines and operate drones that kill people. And then the Russians would do it too. It's
Peter McCormack
like, it's like a murder of hostel. And you've seen the film, hostel. No, what are they? Where they bid, they bid to torture people. It's like a, it's like a merger between hostel and fortnight.
Curtis Yarvin
This could happen next week. Yeah, actually, someone in the Ukraine, could watch this video and be like, Gosh, darn, that's a good idea.
Peter McCormack
But like, Curtis, if I go home to the England after this, I'm like, Yeah, Curtis, onto something. Yeah, I fucked this democracy thing. Like, if I, if I try and explain that to any of my friends or family leftist, they're, they're, they're gonna be disgusted, like, and so, in a way, but let me finish the point. They disgusted. Like, you cannot take this idea or what like democracy is like, we more must have an opinion the first, but the conservative friends, I mean, I think he's got a point, but he's
Curtis Yarvin
going too far. But, you know, not always, not always, not always. And this is why, basically, you know, Confucius had this great line. You know, not enough people cite Confucius, but great man, Confucius. Confucius had this great line about the rectification of names. He was basically like to repair the state. And, you know, Chinese governance in Confucius's day had many of the same problems that it has today. He's like, basically, he's sort of with Orwell on this. He's like, basically, Orwell is, like, the main problem in politics is we are confused by the words that we use. We need to just we. Need to fix the words, because we have all of this Orwellian, like, good speak language this. This is why I don't say the word that starts with div and ends in adversity, right? And, you know, if I want a lot of different kinds of flowers in a bouquet, I would be like, I want a lot, like, a lot of variety of flowers, right? You know, and I advise everyone to do that is like, instantly helpful. Do not use that word. And, you know, but the word democracy just by having these two opposed meanings, where people democracy really means legitimate, it means powerful, it means you have the right to rule. And so people like fight over this word. You know, the Populists are like, No, we're the real democracy. George Soros is like, No, I Emperor Palpatine. I'm the real democracy, right? You know, and, like, you know, civil society, that's the real democracy. And he is, you know, you can see where he's coming from. I respect where he's coming from. His views on populism are very unsympathetic. You know, Tommy Robinson's views on George Soros are also very unsympathetic. And, you know, frankly, I believe they both kind of have a point, right? You know? And this is why I'm a monarchist. I'm basically, like, actually, your first step is to basically split these things apart. Then when you're talking to your leftist friends, say, all right? When you say democracy, you're really arguing over who owns this word, which means we're in charge North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, that is three synonyms for democracy and one place name, and it's monarchy and like, so just don't do that, right? You know, stop with that stuff, right? And like, you know, let's sort of look at this situation objectively. Let's say that we agree that when we say democracy, we mean these two things, meritocracy and populism. And then talk to your leftist friends and basically say, Yeah, we agree about populism. You know, maybe you can even use slurs, talk about the Gammons or something, you know, the Chavs, you know, you know, get contemptuous with them. Wear a long sleeve shirt to hide your tattoo. The tattoos are fine, actually, you know, but like, there's a little bit of, like, it's the conservatives who hate the tattoos. You know, when I was at the, you know, the festival in England, wonderful festival, wonderfully organized, where I debated Alistair Campbell and which is now available online. You could bring it up even, you know, and you know, I haven't watched I never watched myself. My wife liked it, but she likes everything, so who knows, maybe I totally, you know, flamed out, but I think I did okay. I certainly didn't get but I'm only gonna hope that you give him a hard time.
Unknown Speaker
I did, but in a nice I love this look. They started with the philosopher.
Curtis Yarvin
Don't even, don't even, let's not even go there. Let's shut up with that. Don't
Peter McCormack
lead with Curtis Yeoman anymore. They were like the god the philosophy behind JD, Vance.
Curtis Yarvin
It's so bad. Everyone needs to stop with that right away. Yeah, but you know, there's a pejorative against land, sure, I know, and that's why I haven't talked with them in ages. And I don't want to either, you know, and like the the more and, and it's the, but in any case, the, you know, one of the things they did very nicely at the rather cringely named how the light gets in festival, was the security, I thought was very good. And the security consisted of me being followed around by a fellow who, you know, basically, if I had to guess, I would say that he was a mill wall supporter. Okay? And like you, he had many tattoos, but unlike you, many of them were on his face. And I felt very comforted by the presence of this. I believe you would call him a Yabo. And he seemed like a good sort, a very good chap, you know. And like, actually, like, I realized that many, if you go to, you know, in this was in North London. And actually, in North London, they don't like the Yabo so much, or so,
Peter McCormack
I'm told. Was it? Was it? Were you in Islington? It was Hampstead. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, this is our champagne socialist. There was all the crowd
Curtis Yarvin
was all champagne socialist. We voted for man down me. It was hardcore champagne socialists. So imagine me debating Alastair Campbell in front of 200 champagne socialists. Amazing, amazing. No, I, you know, I'm just care about, first of all, in a situation like that, your goal is not, actually, I mean, you would love, of course, to have this happen, but he's not going to let it happen. Your goal is to not make Alistair Campbell look bad. Your goal is just to make yourself look good, and that is also the best way to try to make Alistair Campbell look bad, because he is, of course, going to try to make you look bad. And you just have to be completely insouciant about it. And that's the secret for if you ever find yourself in a room with Darth Vader and you're like, where's my lightsaber? That's how you do it.
Unknown Speaker
Kind of. Guy. I don't think I'm gonna get to spend
Curtis Yarvin
any time, you know. I don't think so. I would be lovely if he would come on your show.
Peter McCormack
But, yeah, I think I've called him a war criminal too many times. Yeah, she I had a very
Curtis Yarvin
different approach to Alistair Kimball. I was like, you know, Alistair, like you and I have something in common. We both supported the invasion of Iraq, and then I go on to explain why I feel this was a mistake and like I learned something from it, and then inviting him to do the same, which, of course, he does not do.
Peter McCormack
No, he has to rationalize it. And then go swimming and talk about trees Exactly,
Curtis Yarvin
exactly. And that's how you deal with Allison Campbell, right? You know. Okay, it was good. It was fine. I do it again, you know, okay, probably with a few beers, but, but, okay, so, so, you know, if I can, just, if I can summarize my response to that question, you know, your friends are going to be horrified. And basically, the way to, you know, make friends and influence people, this is something, by the way, that the late Charlie Kirk was brilliant. He would be like, You got to start with agreement. You got to find a point of agreement. And once you find a point of agreement, you are on the same side as the person. You can work from there. And basically, if you can say, Look, you know, I completely agree with you about populism, it is ridiculous that the passengers should elect some rando to fly the plane, right? You know, that is basically absurd, and let's agree with that, because the main force of basically both sides is hitting the other this is the truth that they feel, that they have that the other side doesn't have. And in this case, what's fortunate is that it's kind of basically an accurate truth. Like World War Two is really fucked up because both sides are like, have this like, lie that they're basing everything on. And, you know, that's one of the things that makes that war really uniquely horrible, is that both sides are fighting for a lie. It's insane. Actually, the great book on World War Two that everyone should read is a book by probably our greatest author, a man named Nicholson Baker, and he wrote a book called human smoke which contains none of his own words. It is entirely plagiarized, and it consists entirely of tweet length excerpts arranged chronologically from World War Two. And the great conclusion that you get from this book, which is basically the introduction to the true study of the 20th century, is that World War Two was not a Marvel movie. And once you're ready to accept that World War Two was not a Marvel movie, you are ready to study history. And until then, you are just a child and you should be kept out of the library. And that is my strong feeling. And if you want to break past that, read, human smoke is a great book by one of our greatest writers. I've written it down and published by, I mean, hugely published, like, amazing, you know, like, this is not a fringe alternative book. This is not a book where you freak out if, like, somebody might see it on your bookshelf. This is, like, completely conventional,
Peter McCormack
but look, Curtis, if you're right, if you're right, like, we need to stop this shit now. But, but
Curtis Yarvin
the it's but you can't just stop the show. I need to start something else.
Peter McCormack
Well, that's the point. It's not a palatable idea. Like people aren't gonna, we're not gonna wake up as a nation. Have enough people go, Yeah, this is a terrible idea. We need to, we need to bring back a monarch, certainly not what we've got. Charles is king, because that would be a terrible monarch. But, well, what if? What if? You know, but I feel like it comes through force.
Curtis Yarvin
Well, two things, let me just throw this out there. What if Charles the third is not really the legitimate King, because 1688 was illegitimate. If you agree that 1688 was illegitimate, then the legitimate throne of England runs through a complicated, you know, strain of princesses and whatever, until it winds up in the kings of Bavaria. And from the kings of Bavaria, it flows, actually to one of today's few working monarchs, who actually is an absolute working monarch, and not just a crown Kardashian, which is Hans autumn, the second of Liechtenstein. And actually the true, what if the true monarch of England is, I believe his name is Prince Joseph Wenzel, who is the son of Hans Adam, and was the first true prince of the Stuart lineage to be, ever be born in England. Okay, now, setting that aside, setting that aside, you know, the reality is that monarchy means a lot of different things. It means, basically, it simply means, you know, unitary authority over the state. You can have an elected monarch. You can have a monarch elected by a royal family. Of course, in the private sector, we have these pseudo states called corporations, and we see, so here's an example of the, you know, the question of monarchy. I was, I got, I did this. I thought, actually was done. It was very well done. You know, my New York Times interview, right? And he asked me in that interview, I'm, like, defending the idea of monarchy. And I'm like, you know, actually, like, you know, my favorite monarchy, the most important monarchy today is a fifth generation absolute hereditary monarchy called The New York Times. I love that and you know, but here's what actually happened, you know, behind the scenes of that moment. So I'm basically like, you know, and look at the New York Times, which is a fifth generation absolute hereditary monarchy. Actually, the way that works is super interesting. The New York Times has a dual class share structure, Class A and Class B shares. Anyone can buy Class B shares on the exchange, and they, you know, get, you know, dividends, or if the New York Times deigns to pay dividends, but they have no power over the corporation. Power of the corporation is held entirely by the holders of Class A shares, who are all the descendants of Adolf ox, and he has quite a few descendants. And interestingly, the system is very similar to a system that you know exists at the sovereign level, which is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which very similar power, although it's much more informal, is held by the descendants of even Saud. Even Saud believed in polygamy. So there's, there's really quite a few descendants of even Saud, but they managed to come together and, you know, elect, you know MBs, you know, right? You know MBs, elect, not elect, but choose, not elect in a formal process. But they choose MBs, you know, tell me, how are you know, we know how presidents are chosen, but how are presidential candidates chosen? You know, that's fair. You know, all removed. We want the formal process, but we actually don't care about the formal process. We just want good results. We just want a good government, right? And say what you want. I mean, you know, honestly, there's a couple of different perspectives. I can see why people have varying opinions about MBs. Because, for example, you know, they call him, you know, Mohammed Bonesaw, for a reason, right? There was this case of Khashoggi, you know, who? I mean, it's really rather, I'm so torn on this. It's really rather a sad story, because you know this guy was, you know, he's an exile, right? He leaves Saudi Arabia. He's left this life behind him, but he wants to get married to his girlfriend. To do that, he needs a divorce to do that, he's in Turkey. He needs to go to the Saudi Embassy to get some paperwork. He goes to the Saudi Embassy. Just shows up unannounced. He's like, I need this paperwork. They're like, Oh well, thinking very quickly. We don't have this ready. You need to come back in a week. He comes back in a week. You know, there's this assassin. His girlfriend is outside the embassy watching, right, and there's a Saudi assassination team inside, and they sees him as soon as he you know, you know, gets upstairs, they sees him. They literally, you know. They rip his clothes off. They saw him apart with a bone saw, you know, the body, whatever has never been found. And then someone to fool the security cameras comes out of the embassy wearing his clothes, okay, and the dark, okay, dark. But on the other hand, on the other hand, he was a journalist, sorry.
Unknown Speaker
Dark, I know, I know.
Curtis Yarvin
But in any case, you know, actually, he wasn't really a journalist. Was he was a Saudi power player, and this is really what makes it like he hadn't actually left that life behind. He was still a player. And so it was a gang hit on a gangster. He didn't even write his own stories. He they were basically ghost written for him by Qatar. He was a former like, you know, number three guy the Saudi intelligence, right? You know, this is a gang hit on a gangster, and this is the real reason. I'm actually not sad. I know many journalists. I love many journalists. Many of them are beautiful people. They can usually write English, which this guy basically could not do. So there's that. But on the other hand, it's a good it's a good bit.
Unknown Speaker
But I don't know why people say you're controversial.
Curtis Yarvin
There you go. I've just made an enemy of all journalists for all time, you know, you know, actually, you know, let me say positive things. And this is one of the things I said to, you know, Marchese. I was just like, actually, in all of these institutions, everywhere, in these very deeply, darkly corrupted institutions that have like been evolved by this sort of power craving into like the opposite of their purpose, whether they're doing virology or education or diplomacy. Everywhere in these institutions, you will find these little points of light who are like individual people who actually believe in the real mission. These are the virologists who question, basically, gain of function research. You know, these are the diplomats who said, Well, maybe we don't need to expand NATO to the east. These are, you know, the educational people who are like, well, maybe we actually need to teach children to read, right? You know, everywhere you find these like little crazy people, yeah, they're crazy to try to exist within these professions, but they exist, and they basically are, like, very careful, and some of them are very good. And actually some of the top journalists in the world are, like, totally based and absolutely wonderful. Yeah, that's the reality the you know, but the majority not so much. The
Peter McCormack
Khashoggi thing reminds me of what Dave Smith said recently. He was talking about the Jimmy Kimmel incident, and he said, what you have to understand is, like, Jimmy Kimmel is the regime. Yeah, he's not an independent
Curtis Yarvin
No, no, you're not. You're not pushing back. People are starting to understand that. They're starting to basically see this kind of shape of power in a way. You know, it's like one of the things that Yeltsin did in the fall of the Soviet Union, which, as a 15 year old, I'm watching this. I've been like, reading the, you know, economist and the Herald Tribune for like, you know, seven or eight years or something. And I'm like, he bans the Communist Party. I'm like, Who bans parties? Like, bad people ban parties. It's bad to ban parties, right? He bans the Communist Party. And actually, this is what needed to be done. Because actually this institution is not the New York Times is not a free market institution, okay, the New York Times is a government agency. If it was actually the Department of Information, if actually, if it was literally identified as a government agency, you would instantly realize, number one, it is the most powerful agency in the government. Number two, like the idea that the New York Times can basically take information from any other part of the government and steal it and sell it, makes no sense if it's a private company, but makes complete sense if it is the most powerful agency in the government, actually, in the kind of founding document of 20th century journalism, which is a book by the great Walter Lippmann called public opinion, 1922 which everyone should read. There's, it's what's one of the things that's remarkable is that he compares journalism to an intelligence agency. And he's like, these are the same thing. And you're just like, all right, you're off your wait, yeah, not off your rocker and so actually, like, yeah, you know, treating when you see, here's the thing about regime change, is that you're basically in this world where you're just like, you've lost all hope. And it's like, really good that you've lost all hope, because you sort of reach rock bottom, and you're just like, your last idea is like, you know, there's just nothing I can do. And then you have this idea, well, maybe I could quit, and it seems so impossible and so difficult, and you've tried so hard before, like, maybe you can just quit, right? And just quitting involves giving up a lot of these glittering ideas and a lot of this feeling of like, wow, you know, I play guitar so much better when I'm on cocaine and, you know, all of these things. And you just actually have to say, No, you know, you have no other alternative but to just a pin in these sort of sweet, glittery concepts that are so meretricious when you dig into them that seem to mean so much to you. And basically say, you know, yeah, what if we've actually just been making a huge mistake for the last 400 years? 100 years.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, so All right, fine, yes, fine.
Peter McCormack
Have I bludgeoned you into submission? Yeah? Because, no, because I came with an open mind. Because, like, let's discuss everything. There you go. Let's just discuss everything. There you go. Like the person who said to me today, who has been. I'll talk about it afterwards. Was didn't like the fact that I was going to talk to you. It's like, well, why can't we discuss it? It might be a terrible idea, but if you talk about monarchs, but you also talk about, like a CEO, yes, and to most people that they're entirely different things. Monarchy is a little bit hereditary. You can get the bad king, whereas a CEO, you get a bad CEO, they kind of it's easy to get rid of them,
Curtis Yarvin
like, not always. So for one example, not always. So here's an example. Remember I talked about the governance structure of the New York Times? Yeah, well, actually, the only people that can get rid of King Sulzberger are the descendants of Adolfo ox. But it actually goes even further than that. So you know, the governance of meta, Facebook is actually far more absolutist than that. No one can get rid of Mark Zuckerberg. He has all the Class A shares,
Peter McCormack
yeah. But people can just stop buying the New York Times, stop reading it, or stop, you know, stop using
Curtis Yarvin
Facebook. There are always essentially, and so when you see that effect, peasants, yeah, when you see that effect of basically what you're saying, in a way, is, ultimately, if a thing sucks, I'm a CEO myself, right? I know what it is to be a CEO. I never succeeded huge. Yeah, I'm a CEO. And the the we can get into that, um, you know, it's related to your other interest and the and, you know, if you're in the world of the of the CEO, basically, of like, the startup CEO, which is a very intense way to be CEO, because, you know, there's a line in Ben Horowitz's startup, you know, book which is, or an acronym which is wfio, which means what we're forked. It's over, you know. And everyone who has run a startup has like, multiple, like, wfio moments, exactly, right, you know. And so, you know, you know, to be a king in these, like, dire kind of straits, it's like being King Alfred of England. Like King Alfred must have had, if you remember anything about King Alfred back in the eight hundreds, or whatever, he had a lot of WFO moments, right? You know, Churchill had his wfio moments, right? You know? And so that energy, that sort of temper of competition, needs to be supplied. It doesn't need to be supplied to any organization, because monopolies can kind of, monopolies kind of suck, in a way, but they're still, they still have incentives. They're still responsive. You know, the CEO of pg&e still cares what you know, which is our electric company, which is private, for some reason, still cares about how much money, how many dividends he sends out to his shareholders. Occasionally, there's still tension that need for tension is essentially really important in any kind of, you know, governance system and any structural system, because without tension, things just collapse, in a way. And so the best level of tension you get from sort of various kinds of competitive governance, and there's a lot of ways, you know, you know, for example, you know, countries compete to have, you know, a balance of trade, you know, like we're currently getting reamed by China, like, you know, in that way. And when Donald Trump says we're losing a trillion dollars a year to China, like, he's absolutely right, that is the correct terms in which to describe it, right, you know, he I would, truthfully, I would go, I could spend an hour explaining why, just by the way he talks in that way, Donald Trump understands economics better than 99.99% of professional you know economists, even though that makes me sound like a sport of Kim Jong, un professional economists, or Keynesian economists, economics professors. Okay, economics profession propaganda. Well, you know, yeah, I just had, it's not out yet, but I just recorded a very wonderful conversation with Lord Skidelsky, the biographer of Keynes. And we discussed Keynes and Mises and many other fun things. But we can go in the Austrian economics and crypto direction anytime we
Peter McCormack
will get there. But on this point, it's like, okay, so selling the idea of a hereditary monarch, is going to be feel like a backwards step to some people. Selling the idea of a CEO of a country is a little bit easier. But what? But how does it happen? What are the guardrails? Who is the board that can remove them and they suck. Like, what's the reality of it?
Curtis Yarvin
The reality of that? So, so first of all, the reality is that we normally, you know, we LARP the past unthinkingly, yeah, a lot when we think about politics. And so the first reality is like, how do we get the public to endorse something that seems crazy to them? And my answer to that is, have you met the public? You know, we live in the with the craziest, most frivolous public ever. You know, there's a great black mirror episode where they elect a cartoon character. Have you seen that one? God, I've seen nearly every episode. I don't think it's not very memorable. It's not like the one where the Prime Minister fucks the pig. That's episode one. It's bad. That's the worst Black Mirror.
Peter McCormack
Of all, but it's kind of real, because we all sat there going, well, if I was Prime Minister, would I fuck that pig to save the
Curtis Yarvin
princess? Well, it's true. It's true kirstar, I mean, but, you know, probably fuck the pig anyway. I'm probably gonna go to jail now for that. Well, just don't go back, you know. But, yeah, I have to go, yeah. I'll visit
Peter McCormack
you. Back to my point. Back to my point. Yeah, well, back to my question. Just like
Curtis Yarvin
so the first answer to your question is, actually, we live in the most nihilist we have the most nihilistic and frivolous public ever. And if you look at basically, forget, you know, the boomers, the silent generation, even my own beloved Gen X, you were probably born in like the late 70s, maybe 878, 73 I love Gen X. Gen X power, right? You know, forget Gen X. Forget the millennials. Let's just focus on the Zoomers. Yeah, you know. And the thing is, basically the Zoomers, you know, if they're in this, like, boring world, right? And there's a red button on the wall, and the red button says, if you press this button, everything will change. You know, I don't think anybody but a Zoomer will press the button, but a Zoomer will be like, Why the fuck not anybody but a Zoomer will be like,
Peter McCormack
well, it could get much worse, what year is Zoomer?
Curtis Yarvin
I think even the younger Zoomers, the Zoomers who are like teenagers in you know, Zoomer is Oh, Connor is you? Yeah. But the later, the later Zoomers, the later Zoomers are the most radical, right? Yeah.
Peter McCormack
Like, come on, let's put Connor on the spot. Connor, you're a Zoomer. You can press a red button
Curtis Yarvin
and red button and be like, All right. You know, in an instant, in an instant, why would you press the button? Why not? Why not? Why not? Right? Why not? Why not? And so when we think of democracy, we think of like this New England town hall with people like, how do we establish a more perfect union for ourselves and our posterity? And like, the Zoomer, like vibe is, like, why not? Right, you know. And so actually, the key to basically, sort of, and in a real regime change. Here's the thing about a real regime change. In a real regime change, everyone's life changes, you know, if you weren't in, you know, East Germany in 1985 and 1995 you had a different life. Your life was different, right? And you know the idea of having an election, having some event, because all this has to happen through elections, does it Yes? Well, pretty much, yes, it does. And I'll explain why in a second, it does happen through civil war. No, no, it can't. And that's really the most disturbing fact. It can't happen through civil war. It can happen through civil war because when you look at societies that were actually capable of civil war, they had something that we don't have, which is boss. They had men who had all been in fights. How many fist fights have you been in? How many fist fights? Not recent? Yeah, maybe when you were younger. But, like, you know, no camera phones recording. There were camera phones recording new Zoomers, not so much, you know. Like, if you
Peter McCormack
look at what depends on your perspective, you know,
Curtis Yarvin
and but the thing is, fundamentally, we are one of the most non violent and most least self violently organizing populations in history. If you look, for example, at the, you know, in France, they had a thing right before covid. Remember the gi lejon, the yellow jackets in France? Yes, yes, yeah. They were basically like they had studied democracy. You know, it's okay if you use quote mark. They studied democracy in school. And they knew that the way you changed the government of France is to get a lot of people together in Paris and have them make a lot of noise. And they got together, it was like waving the orange paddles for the carcass. They got together in Paris. They had this brilliant idea that every French driver, as I discovered when I fell asleep on the wheel in France, every French driver has to have a yellow vest in their car. And they're like, uniforms. I'm like, who's had this idea before? Right? You know,
Unknown Speaker
they're more than that. You have to have a warning sign in the back, yeah.
Curtis Yarvin
But they only use the yellow vest, right? You know, because it was an improvised uniform. And suddenly a mob became an army, which is what happens when you wear a uniform. A mob became an army. And they're like, We have this army of people, and we're going to get together in Paris, and things are going to change. And they got together in Paris and nothing happened. And they're like, all right, that was Act One. We're going to come back for act two next weekend. And I think they got up to, like, act 50 or something, and then covid happened, and everybody called the whole thing off, right? You know? And that's why, basically, you can't have political change through, like mass movements, is that the energy just isn't there and hasn't been there for a long time. You know, if you look at England. 500 years
Peter McCormack
ago, Don but that's that's a non violent civil war, like, if a civil war happens here in the US, like Republicans are getting their
Curtis Yarvin
guns out. Oh no, no, no. None of these people has ever shot at a human being. You know, none of them knows how to shoot at a human being. The Tea Party in America, exactly the same thing. You got a lot of people together. You know what? They didn't even litter. Okay, so the leftist at least litter. They didn't even litter. So
Peter McCormack
is a better example of where this has happened and could happen. Is bukele a good example?
Curtis Yarvin
Bukele is a better example because bukele was elected through the normal electoral process, and then he carried out what in, you know, it's Spanish, it's called an auto golpe, which means an Oracle, yeah, and so rules a bit. He was elect, as did our, you know, the much revered American president, Franklin Delano, Roosevelt.
Peter McCormack
And I took a quote from that, by the way, where is the one? I mean, I took a few, but in the event that Congress shall fail to take one of these two causes, and in the event that the National Emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear cause of duty that will then confront me, I shall ask Congress for one of the remaining instruments to meet the crisis,
Curtis Yarvin
executive power to wage war, wage a war
Peter McCormack
against the emergency as the great As the power would be given to me, for, in fact, invaded by a foreigner. He said, like, give me the power of, fuck you. I'm gonna do anyway.
Curtis Yarvin
Yeah? Basically, right. He's like, give me the power. And he's like, the most revered president in American history by Democrats and Republicans alike today, right? And so, you know the idea that this is like, and he basically rules as a dictator for life, more or less, yeah, with your little issues, he's not 100% Hitler. He's like 70% Hitler. And of course, he doesn't kill the Jews. He has that for that, although he does reject every opportunity to save the Jews. You know, you know, for example, there's something the I don't know, great, but very successful novelist Michael Chabon has a book that was written in the 80s called the Yiddish policeman's union that is Southern an alternative world where something called the Slattery plan was successful. The Slattery plan was a plan by a guy named Slattery who worked at the Department of the Interior, who, in like 1938 or so, proposed, what if we just, you know, I understand that most Americans don't like Jews, and we don't like Jews, and we don't want to let in the Jews, but what if we actually, you know, it was a brilliant idea, like that permafrost idea I mentioned earlier, also involved Alaska. He's like, what if we let all the Jews go to Alaska, then they won't bother Americans who are basically anti semitic at this time. This is true, and we'll just let them into Alaska, and Alaska will be filled with Jews instead of, like, polar bears or whatever. Where's the downside? FDR turns us down flat. FDR is like, No, we can't do that, yeah? Because FDR is like, basically, well, like, you know, FDR did not really like Jews himself. And FDR is like, well, Hitler says he has a Jewish problem. Am I in the business of solving Hitler's problems for him? I don't think so. Yeah. And so, like, actually, you know, to say that FDR was not involved in genocide is, like, really, no, actually. Like, there's something very dark there. Yeah, and so, like, you know, and that's that, but, yeah, you know, FDR is first inaugural is just like, all right, you elected me president. Guess what? I'm going to be a real president. If you look at FDR, is platform that he runs on. He's basically governs as the opposite of his platform, because the Democrats are America's like traditional conservative party, let's not forget. So if you look at the 1932 Democratic platform, it's like, small government, lower taxes, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's a traditional Democratic platform. That's how that inversion happens, right? And so he's just like, all right, there's a crisis. I'm going to take absolute power. But the thing is, he also had this whole revolution of the elites behind him. Remember how he's talking about the Fabians, the progressive Republicans? He's like, I'm going to have a revolution, and I'm going to hand power to this aristocracy which is ready, willing and able to assume power and to govern and knows exactly what it would do with it. And you know who is not quite ready and willing and able to assume that same level of power, despite popular belief is Silicon Valley. They've gotten a little closer, but they're not there yet. Well, it's
Peter McCormack
interesting. You should say that, because there is a fracturing of the elites right now. There is a, like a new wave of elites, where someone like Marc Andreessen says, Do you know what? I'm not going to be with the I don't want to go to those dinner parties.
Curtis Yarvin
It's at a very young it's at a very young stage. It's much earlier than most people suppose, and it's much more timid and much more unready to rule than most people suppose. But it is vaguely it is the only thing, and it's different, of course, in time, but is the only thing that is sort of comparable in any. Way to those progressive elites that I was talking about.
Peter McCormack
But it is a new sort of, like, it's like, there's a Peter Thiel, there's Marc Andreessen, there's your good mate. JD, Vance, I'm joking, but what I'm saying is, there was a, there's a break now,
Curtis Yarvin
there's a you can, but you can, you can glimpse something distant, but it sort of still doesn't know, like, you know, think about the dog that caught the car. You know, if someone says to these people, all right, you know, we all surrender. The New York Times surrenders, you know, whatever you're in charge of, everything. You know, you're the publisher of the New York Times, President of the United States, the president of Harvard. You're in charge of everything. What do you do? I'm not sure we really know yet, and that's actually one of the most significant problems.
Peter McCormack
But is there like a first mover advantage where some of these people are fracturing away from the because they're still elites, whatever they are, they're still the rich people. They still do what the fuck they want. But there's like this fracture in there, like of people who realize that this democratic system is failing, and if the demo, if the pitchforks come out, they're in line to be taken Yeah. Are they? The brighter people are realizing we need to
Curtis Yarvin
pitch the pitchforks are a myth. The pitchforks don't exist, and that is one of the most disturbing facts about the world that we live in. But like, what? Historically, they're a myth. No, in the present day, the
Peter McCormack
current pitchfork is, is a vote or a
Curtis Yarvin
tweet, yes, yeah, yes. But literal pitchforks do not exist. Well, we replace pitchforks with votes, yeah? But actually, in the past, they had both pitchforks and votes, and the threat was, if you ignored the vote, then the pitchfork would come out. And now that threat has become Toothless, yeah, and that is a big reason, and that cannot be changed, and it is a big reason why votes also have become Toothless. Because, you votes used to be a threat of the pitchforks. You know, in a way, England 500 years ago, was more democratic than England today. Because in England 500 years ago, London, 500 years ago, you know, the mob was, you know, there's no standing army. The mob is almost irresistible. It's very problematic. And so if the London mob, like the apprentices, you know, rumor runs around the apprentices that you know, the Germans in the steel yard are undercutting true born Englishmen in the wool trade, well, there's only one solution. Let's get together and kill all the Germans. And they would basically do this, you know, they would have pogroms, right? You know. And
Peter McCormack
the mob now wants to maintain the system rather than
Curtis Yarvin
the mob now doesn't have any force like the last London riots you had, first of all, to the extent that anybody riots at all. Remember the London riots, 2011 Yeah,
Peter McCormack
on South London. Were you in them? Were you? Oh, they were. They were fucking
Curtis Yarvin
idiots. Yeah, sure. And they did not have any political capacity. They were not going to storm Whitehall and establish an alternative government, you know. And you know, that's an underclass riot also January 6, which was not an underclass riot, which was a riot of the lower middle classes, was also not going to storm the Capitol and establish an alternative government. And you know, immediately, you know, order an armored core to arrest Barack Obama or something.
Peter McCormack
But the mobs we have now like we went to London for the Tommy Robinson free speech March. We went to observe. We went to see it. And there was every attempt to keep it as peaceful as possible. Tommy himself came forward and said, Be peaceful. Don't drink, don't put on face masks. There was one clash where they shepherded people to a wrong place, and a bunch of idiots threw some bottles. It lasted 20 minutes. It wasn't good. It was a front page of The Daily Mail of 100,001 event is like, you know, meanwhile, but when the black rise, rap matters, right happened, or the Gaza protests happened, like, those are pro government rights. Those are pro government things. What I'm saying the mob now. There is a mob now, and it's a pro government Okay,
Curtis Yarvin
so the pro government mob is obviously completely irrelevant and just there to basically torment the people. The anti government mob actually has political potential in theory, but it has zero capacity for violence. So in 1934 in France, for example, not to get all Putin on you, but there's 1934 in France. There is an event where, basically the French right, and there is a number of sort of quasi, you know, Nazi, like, armed forces on the French right, including, you know, the quad de feu, the cross of iron, you know, like, and these are World War One veterans, huge numbers of them, right? These are blood hardened people. They will do anything right. And you know, they're, it's like the Gilly Jean, you know, the mass in Paris, and then the leader of the quad, the few, Colonel de la rock intent, incredibly hard name everything, but the naming goes very hard here. Colonel de Roque is like, do we storm the presidential palace and form a new government? And Colonel de la Roque is like, No, we're peaceful and democratic. And so they all go home, right? You know? And like, we should look at the people of Nepal, you know. And that determines the. Direction that France goes. And so the idea that Tommy Robinson, you know, God bless his heart, is going to storm Whitehall, you know, if even somebody throws a bottle, you know, if even there's like some gobbles with facial tattoos, you know, Tommy doesn't like it, and nor should he, right? And so actually, the idea that violence can save you in any way, shape or form, or that violence can, oh, you know, defeat these governments. You know, has always been a myth in a way, actually. You know, an intact state can always resist any level of violence, and intact if the state, at the time of the storming of the Bastille or the Russian Revolution had been healthy, storming out of the Winter Palace. These things never would have happened. And so this is why,
Peter McCormack
because of Western because we're Western nation, there's a Western nation where we're just seen it in Nepal, domesticated.
Curtis Yarvin
We've been castrated. We've been like, you know, D in a way that the removal of violence from the daily life of like ordinary people is just like, is actually a dehumanization. If you were an Elizabethan aristocrat, you were expected to be able to kill people with a sword. It was like a totally normal thing, right, you know. And if you were like a commoner, it was just like, I mean, the murder rates were like, very high at this time, right? You know, you were rough people. And the reason that democracy, literal democracy, comes into existence, is that is a formalization of this mob power, just as monarchy is a kind of formalization of the influence of like a great military leader. And when that force vanishes, the power becomes symbolic. And this is why, you know, we have all of the symbolism of democracy today, but actually, because there is no potential for mob violence, fundamentally, the government does not have to listen to the people. And this is why you see this kind of turbulent opposition to like mass migration in England today, and you know, Shabana Mahmood, he feels free to just totally ignore it, because, like, what can they do to her? They can't do anything to her. What can Tommy Robinson do to Shabana Mahmood? Nothing, right. He might as well be a gnat in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. As far as Shabana Maud is concerned. Now, Nigel Farage, that's a different story, right? And that's why, basically, that is why, actually, in this sort of moment, the question of, do you start winning elections, and then actually doing the FDR thing of saying, we won the election, so we're actually in charge of the government. Whoa, you won the election. But that doesn't mean you're in charge of the government. Like, well, right? You know, we have the civil service for that. Yeah, we have the civil Yes, sir. Humphrey Appleby is, like, yes, Minister, very good, you know. Like, yes, you're in charge of the government, right? You know, and, you know, and, you know. But an accent more plummy than any, I could ever emulate, right? You know. And, and the accents. I love British accents, my gosh, you know. And especially the high tone, you know, RP ones. Does anyone still speak RP? Can you emulate the RP? I don't know what you mean by RP. Receive pronunciation the Queen's English talking like Queen Elizabeth the Second in like, 1960
Peter McCormack
I don't think I could, but you know what it would sound like if you tried? I don't want to make an attempt the queen. But what I will say is that my, I think my podcast career was quite successful because I had a large American audience. And they respect,
Curtis Yarvin
they love a British accent. And I definitely, if you got a little bit more plumbing, they might respect it more. You're a little bit like, you know, is that an estuary accent that we got going on here?
Peter McCormack
Well, so my bitcoin podcast did very well in the US. And I definitely accentuated my British accent a bit more when I learned it was a, it was a cheat code. Girls love it. Well, dude, when I used to travel, to travel, sorry, son, my podcast, in my single days, I would get to America, my Tinder description
Curtis Yarvin
British, yeah, suddenly, six foot four, many such cases, right?
Peter McCormack
Yeah, but the British accent does work, yeah, but not in Britain, because people go, Oh no, he's just a dumbass,
Curtis Yarvin
yeah, but if, but if, but if, but if, you sounded like an eaten old boy. You know, I think that still has a certain effect.
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I think so. I don't think the Geordie, the Brummie, some of the other public events as well, but yeah, if you can speak slowly and politely and like
Curtis Yarvin
Sir Humphrey, upwardly, Oh, you're so beautiful. Yeah, exactly, it does work.
Peter McCormack
But where were we that? Okay, so look, but I'm going back to the point where point really.
Curtis Yarvin
So what is really important is to basically say we don't have this backup of overthrowing the government through violence. We actually need to change the government by winning elections. And the ability to win elections is slipping away as basically very. Servile and devoted populations are imported. That is the reality of the political shape of the moment. You only have a certain amount of time to win that. So
Peter McCormack
we got a three year window of opportunity for one, a new party, which looks like it could be reform, but they then, they really have to be Trump two, rather than Trump one,
Curtis Yarvin
indeed? Well, no, they have to be like Trump four or from five. Okay, so right in there, yeah, they have regarding a lot of the law all the way, I would say that, you know, if you want to, you know, people often look at sort of a problem with restricted range. So if you're looking at, you know, there's a range of, there's a Boolean question, a range between zero and one. One of the easiest ways to sort of trap people is to, you know, get them of thinking of, oh, point one is one or 0.01. Is one. And then when they get to 0.01, they're like, I won. No, actually, like, you're just, you know, just zoomed in a little too much, straight to one. And straight to one, there's an excellent there's a very easy way to define straight to one that is very satisfactory, that you know cannot be argued easily against by our friend, the lib and that is to say that actually the power, the level of sovereignty that you need to hand to Prime Minister Farage, is essentially the level of power that was held by Allied military government in Germany in June 1945 the.
