Why It's Called a Coup: Dark Enlightenment Influence On Trumpian Musk Philosophy

How The Core Values of MAGA Reflect Dark Enlightenment Philosophy

Why Its Called a Coup: Dark Enlightenment Influence On Trumpian Musk Philosophy

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Trump’s administration and Musk’s growing influence reflect Curtis Yarvin’s neo-reactionary philosophy, which advocates for a technocratic monarchy over democracy.
Peter Thiel, a major political donor, has aligned with Yarvin’s ideology, funding politicians like J.D. Vance to push for an autocratic government led by tech elites.
Yarvin outlined a seven-step plan for dismantling democracy, which closely parallels Trump and Musk’s recent actions, including bureaucratic purges, court defiance, and media suppression.
The coup’s endgame is the creation of corporate-run, decentralized network states that replace national governance with oligarch-controlled techno-monarchies.
While decentralization can empower communities, the current trajectory risks replacing federal oppression with corporate dominance unless it is reclaimed for grassroots, cooperative governance.

Plato would be pissed to find out we got tech lords instead of philosopher kings. But while we have a techno oligarch posturing over the president during oval office press conferences, let's beg the question; what in the actual fuck?

*President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk, accompanied by his son X Æ A-Xii, addresses the media in the Oval Office at the White House. (AP pic)*

There's no precedent for the amount of political overreach Trump and President Musk--sorry, President Trump and Musk, have committed in such a short time for their coup. But you're probably thinking, Derek you're taking the word coup way too lightly. That's, like, a thing with forced entries, ar med intimidation, and property damage type of deal. But what if I told you that technology changed the face of political violence so that it can happen quietly with a few keystrokes? And what if I told you it wasn't improv, but a Dark Enlightenment philosophy prescription dispensed by the White House?

Hey sexy,

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I. What is Dark Enlightenment, and who is Curtis Yarvin?

I have a feeling pushing prescriptions isn't what Gunna meant when he said "pushin' P." Nonetheless, Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx) represents an anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian reactionary movement. That's a lot of big words to describe folks that don't think we're all equal or fit to vote. Naturally, MAGA Republicans seem to love it. To their credit NRx and its sister philosophy, Accelerationism, have been notoriously infectious infiltrating and radicalizing militias through the end-to-end encrypted chats on Telegram.

Dark Enlightenment was founded by U.S. blogger, Curtis Yarvin, who also went by the pen name Mencius Moldbug. The blog, Unqualified Reservations, was home to anti-democratic views from 2007 to 2014 before he began his Substack newsletter, Gray Mirror, in 2020 which he continues writing to this day. He's known for being a peculiar libertarian who was socially liberal, but politically fascist. Claiming that some ethnicities were better suited for slavery probably didn't help that reputation. Calling democracy a failed experiment, the nerd believes a techno monarchy could restore justice in the U.S. Democratic liberalism is a Matrix-like totalitarian failed experiment in his point of view. He believed that that the only way for the U.S. to move forward from its failed democracy is to shed its dictator phobia.

Cute intro, I know.

He's the guy that gave the western world the notion of the "red pill" from The Matrix as a metaphor for shattering progressive illusions. Something I'm sure you're familiar with from its popularization in the cyber "manosphere". NRx also gave us such notions as "the Cathedral," or an amalgamation of academia and mainstream media colluding to sway public opinion with progressive values, and that its commitment to equality and justice erodes social order. Yarvin called it the Cathedral as a parallel to the way religious institutions deliver religious dogma to fanatical worshippers.

Opting for passivism, the philosopher blogger claimed engaging in political activism was a waste of time, and that progressivism would fail without right-wing opposition. As though reactionaries are necessary for the progressive mission. Instead he called for designing new "architectures for exit" in preparation for a "hard reset" or national "reboot." Clearly a big fan of computers and science fiction. I'm sure he watched The Matrix more than a few times.

In the vacuum of the fall of democracy, Yarvin prescribed neo-cameralism. A philosophy based on Frederick the Great of Prussia. The Matrix-loving blogger considered democratic governments as inefficient and wasteful. This is already starting to sound like Musk's DOGE, but we're not even there yet. Don't get too far ahead of me. He believed that wastefulness could be remedied by cameralist sovereign joint-stock corporations who elected a CEO-monarch with total power, but who rules at their pleasure. I'm sure nothing could go wrong giving a competitor total power while expecting them to rule in your favor. Unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, Yarvin believed this ruler would have clarity to rule more efficiently.

But anyone can start a blog and write some crackpot pages. Don't look at me like that. So the real question is, why does Yarvin's insane philosophy matter? And how is it tied to the Trump administration?

low-angle photography of metal structure — Photo by Alina Grubnyak / Unsplash

II. What is Yarvin's relationship to Thiel? And what is Thiel's relationsip to J.D. Vance?

Enter Peter Thiel. The tech lord owns Palantir, a surveillance company pervasively servicing government agencies from the CIA, to the FBI, ICE, and Homeland Security. Peter Thiel has called Yarvin his "house philosopher." Yarvin even watched the 2016 election from Thiel's home where they celebrated the Palantir CEO's successful $1.25 million campaign donation with champagne. Rumored to not be completely on board with the niche libertarian agenda, Yarvin reportedly assured Brietbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos that he's been coaching Thiel and he's fully enlightened, but likes to proceed cautiously.

Inspired by neo-reactionary sentiments, Thiel was heavily interested in installing J.D. Vance as vice president due to his alignment with Yarvin's philosophy. In fact, Thiel invested $15 million in Vance's senator campaign. The single largest contribution to a senator campaign in U.S. history. Because of Vance's Yarvin-inspired parroting Thiel saw him as not merely a passive insurance on the possible death of an aging and ailing president, but an active proposition to signal the GOP on the vision of a post MAGA Republican Party subservient to tech "broligarchs". Moreover, Yarvin's 2022 work The Butterfly Revolution, published behind a paywall on his blog Gray Mirror, directly addressed Trump on how to proceed with achieving a U.S. coup.

man in black coat wearing sunglasses — Photo by Gayatri Malhotra / Unsplash

III. What is The Butterfly Revolution?

It's a 7 step thought experiment that looks awfully familiar to today's headlines. Let's parallel each step of The Butterfly Revolution with Trumpian Musk actions we know are already underway.

Step 1: Campaign on autocracy - Yarvin dictates that Trump should phrase his autocratic ambition as destroying an inefficient and unworkable system.

Trump has openly said he'd be a dictator on day 1, and that he'd install CEO Elon Musk over the Department Of Government Efficiency to streamline corrective action over federal inefficiency. Trump's CEO dictator appointment bypasses congressional and judicial oversight. Congress is yet to confirm Musk in any capacity to the administration. Which hasn't stopped DOGE from seizing confidential data from USAID and the Treasury Department in the name of efficiency.

Step 2: Purge the bureaucracy - RAGE was coined by Yarvin in 2022 which stands for Retire All Government Employees. The intention is to replace them with loyalists that answer to a CEO type leader he likened to a dictator, and reduce the friction of the dictator's orders being executed by federal agencies. Yarvin directly addresses this suggestion to Trump, who he correctly predicted would win the 2024 election. Musk appears to be using RAGE as a playbook for DOGE page for page.

The president has, in fact, been on a rampage you've probably noticed in your notifications where he's sweeping federal agents and commissioners out of their offices. Even democrats that he worked with well in the past, who now see him as radicalized since his last term, have been canned. The move is reminiscent of Schedule F which Trump signed into law in October 2020 which removed protections for civil servants that don't demonstrate enough loyalty to the president. Biden immediately rescinded this law upon taking office in 2021, however Trump has said he has plans to bring it back. DOGE has been gutting teams, demanding mass resignations, locking employees out of offices, and threatening mass layoffs. At the same time, Musk has been recruiting young impressionable men who owe their loyalty to him and Thiel.

Step 3: Ignore the courts - J.D. Vance has parroted Curtis Yarvin's admiration for Andrew Jackson's reaction to the Madison V Marbury court case that allowed the judiciary to block the other branches from actions it deemed unconstitutional. To which Jackson replied, "the Chief Justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it." However, recent developments show us this audacity might not even be necessary since the supreme court just allowed presidential immunity last year in 2024. Which grants absolute immunity for for core official acts, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts. A distinction the court has not defined very well leaving space for misuse.

Trump is not only ignoring the courts, but MAGA faithful on Twitter have applauded this abuse further encouraging their leader to ignore the courts.

Step 4: Co-opt congress - Leverage billionaire campaign funds to fix senate seats with loyalists to reduce congressional resistance to a Trumpian takeover.

Elon Musk of SpaceX, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, and Mark Andreesen of Andreesen Horowitz (all of whom have expressed interest in Yarvin's philosophy) have invested over $164 million into this election cycle.

Step 5: Centralize police and powers - Yarvin posits that President Trump should call a state of emergency and take direct control of law enforcement agencies, federalize the national guard, and effectively create a national police force that absorbs local bodies.

The president has already shown similar actions in his first term during the BLM protests in light of the George Floyd tragedy. Using the national guard, and the FBI, Trump was able to make protestors disappear violating their civil rights to demonstrate.

Step 6 - Shut down elites - This step seeks to suppress and replace the earlier mentioned cathedral of academia and media outlets pontificating equality and justice.

POTUS has promised that after returning to office he'll fire the radical left accreditors who allow colleges to be dominated by Marxism, and accept applications from those willing to impose standards that align with his values. He's also proposed Agenda 47 to monitor universities of "civil rights violations" with the ability to fine them up to the full amount of their endowment. A move that would enable the president to put a university like Harvard out of business overnight. He's also spoken at length about about the government's licensing of broadcast airwaves, and threatened to revoke licenses of existing stations 15 times. This move is at the benefit of Musk, who owns Twitter, and has been taking every opportunity to undermine and subvert legacy media to elevate his social media platform which creates a massive echo chamber of loyalists that empower their agenda.

"It's frankly disgusting that the press is able to write whatever they want." --President Donald Trump

Step 7: Turn out your people - Yarvin idealizes public demonstrations of support for the president whenever a federal agency attempts to obstruct the expansion of his power.

January 6th, anyone? While the insurrection was the most memorable example, Trump's charisma allows him to draw swaths of MAGA to his support whenever he needs it. And the loyal following is waiting on any excuse to show their support. Resistance to the expansion of his rule will undoubtedly bring out more supporters to the streets to show their democratic support for the dictator.

grayscale photo of the city of new york times newspaper — Photo by little plant / Unsplash

IV. What are the larger goals of the Dark Enlightenment coup after it's accomplished?

Decentralized tech cities. Or as Trump has called them, freedom cities. Curtis Yarvin originally referred to them as Patchworks or Patches. Let's consider Patchwork from Yarvin's own words:

"The basic idea of Patchwork is that, as the crappy governments we inherited from history are smashed, they should be replaced by a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents' opinion" – Curtis Yarvin

So this Patchwork is designed to be the rebooted version of U.S. governance where the new operating system, so to speak, will be installed. These tech dictatorships will implement all seeing surveillance, biometric IDs, and military grade security to protect them. Yarvin has a bleak opinion on what to do with the poor in his techno monarchy fantasy. He's jokingly described grounding them up into biodiesel fuel to power vehicles. They'll have to hire an award-winning PR team to pull that off. But he's planned on putting them in virtual reality prisons as a humane alternative to genocide to get the effect of mass murder without the social stigma. Hard sell Yarvin: hard sell.

"Since wards are liabilities, there is no business case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form. Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses. Okay, just kidding. [...] However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder but without any of the moral stigma." – Curtis Yarvin

Of course, this sounds like some wildly insane crackpot energy that shouldn't be taken seriously. Except it is. It's being taken seriously enough that tech broligarchs are pouring millions of dollars into project Praxis, which is exactly the vision of Patchwork. Praxis is a network state founded by Mark Andreessen, Sam Altman, Balaji, and Peter Thiel. It's funded through their shared capital fund Pronomos Capital which is dedicated to funding the creation of network cities. The Praxis website reads:

"As local communities dissolve and Nation States stumble, Network States will ascend. Soon, Network States will be your most important group affiliation, passport, and community. Network States will represent Citizens controlling trillions dollars of assets, represented on their native asset registries. We'll watch the flippening of Network States over Nation States in real time. Network States will coalesce neighborhoods and build cities. The next global superpower will be a Network State. The next America will be onchain." – Praxis website

Flippening is a word. Not a word either of us would've come up with. But it's the word of the nerd. And the bird says, this points to a possible "flip" in the leading crypto. Specifically referring to the cyber beef between Bitcoin and Ethereum. If Ethereum could out run Bitcoin. Why did a Twilight meme just come to mind?

"The modern global system, once the greatest power in the history of man, has become a brittle, jerry-rigged contraption incapable of carrying out the most basic functions. Against a rising tide of crises, Nation States' managers are scrambling to hold their system together. As these governing institutions continue to degrade, people will come to realize that no one is truly on their side, that they are abandoned by the very system meant to serve them. In this moment of recognition, they will understand that their survival and prosperity depend not on existing structures, but on banding together with others in an increasingly fractured world. Simultaneously, the internet's tools for alignment, coordination, and funding are only getting more powerful. As Nation States falter, Network States become inevitable." – Praxis website

And Praxis isn't even the only network state Pronomos is funding. Praxis isn't even the most developed one on their roster. We have Prospera in Hondruas, Afropolitan in the African diaspora, Itana in Nigeria, and Metropolis in Palau. It's already happening. They're getting a foot in the door, and they have to be stopped.

If corporate cities from the industrial era have taught us anything, it's that the rights of the workers are the last thing on their minds. Not to mention Yarvin's mentions of the poor are blatantly in the most uncharitable light possible, as we've already seen with his genocide substitutions. Citizens in American corporate cities were paid just enough to live there, but not enough to save and move outside of the corporate city. The land, the homes, and the groceries were all owned by the same company that employed them. So they would pay the employees who then spent that money on rent and food that would send the money back to their employer.

a swiss army knife sitting in a box of gold coins — Photo by rc.xyz NFT gallery / Unsplash

V. Is Decentralization Inherently Bad?

The entire premise of Patchwork lies on the foundation of decentralization. But is it inherently bad? This is where we get into my personal reaction to the neo-reactionary movement (NRx).

I've written at length about decentralization on this blog specifically because of its benefits. My exposure to decentralization began with Fediverse social media apps like Mastodon and Bluesky. I appreciated the lack of ads and algorithms trying to hook me into dopamine-addicted doom-scrolling.

I felt a more purposeful and meaningful presence on those apps where people mostly just engage to align, collaborate, and share intel on things that matter to them. I love that they're tamper-proof by the government because they're not hosted on a centralized set of servers owned by an individual company. Rather, instances of Mastodon are hosted on private servers around the world where each is able to communicate with the other making a government shutdown like the TikTok ban much more difficult.

Decentralization is a tech value appreciated by the left and right. Albeit for very different reasons. It represents a shift in power that can either benefit the people or its lords. It's merely a foundational vehicle that technology can operate on, but doesn't have any inherent rule of governance. That governance comes from whoever is hosting it.

We've discussed how Praxis seeks to implement decentralized Patches or network states that would be governed by techno monarchs. But is there another way to govern decentralized localities?

The issue lies in how the movement of power is oriented after local communities adopt decentralization. In a Praxis network state centralized federal power is diminished to almost nothing. Meanwhile corporate overlords become responsible for your governance. In my point of view this is merely a shift in oppressors. Instead of a federal oppressor we'd have a technocratic oppressor.

But we don't need any lords per se. We could just govern ourselves. If we the people are in control of our decentralization, production, and distribution then localities can decide their own fate. And nobody knows best about your neighborhood than you and your neighbors. It could also lead to a decrease in the culture wars where the left and right stop fighting for dominance of federal law, and everyone can choose a cultural city that fits their personal values. Something we see clearly drawn out in special interest Mastodon servers which make it easier for artists, tech developers, gamers, etc. to find their tribe of collaborators. Your locality could establish its own rule of law that fits the collective culture of your people.

Communism. I'm basically getting at communism. The political ideology has failed in several examples around the world throughout history. But I think that's because folks tried to adopt it on a federal level where it might be better suited on a local level. Things that conservatives find wasteful on the federal level, like feeding and clothing the poor, could be more solidly enforced on a local level. Who's going to stop your neighborhood from collectively gathering resources to help the needy? It would be a more respectable version of charity because you and your tribe would be taking personal responsibility for the marginalized in your own community as something everyone can choose to opt in to rather than federally mandated.

Decentralization is something everyone wants, whether it's leftists and liberals or libertarians and MAGA. Some version of it is on the horizon, and the question we all need to be asking ourselves is, "what kind of world do I want to live in?" Because the choice is knocking on our door. Should our communities be run by technocratic oligarchs like Musk? Or should they be operated under the personal responsibility of folks who live and work there?

by Derek Guzman

Independent journalist on tech, art, and philosophy