The New Right Wants to Scale Slavery, I guess
Thomas Carlyle meets Ancient Roman Empire meets Founder Mode
Hello again friends.
A few notes before we dive in.
I want to thank you for the support you gave me after the last piece! (So the first piece of the series, but last piece I published. You get it!) I received donations from fifteen of you. Wow! Thank you. I wish I could write for fifty hours a week without worrying about earning money. And I know that every dollar you send my way is a dollar you could have used somewhere else. It’s just … I am so grateful.
Pocket Observatory is an independent website. Which means my work is dependent on the support of readers like you, not the whims of billionaires like Jeff Bezos.
Which is good since Bezos kills pro-democracy work at the publication he funds!
And thank you, every single one of you, that read the piece. To all of you that sent it to your friends, your family, that posted it to your instagram.
These people are trying to build a world made of the worst bits of human history. And like not just the worst bits - also the stupidest bits. Which makes it worse, imo. They’ve integrated their framework into our courts, our culture. How can anyone hope to knock their world off its axis? But then when so many of you read, so many of you share, I don’t know…it helps me remember that there are a lot of us.
I am not naive. I understand that there is much that has happened and much that will happen that we can’t keep from happening, even though we are a majority. But we can work to protect each other the best we can. The best I know how to protect you and me and mine and yours is sharing information. So I will keep doing the best I know. It is clear to me that so many of you are doing the best you know too. That brings me such hope.
Now a note about the style of this series.
I am used to writing and re-writing my pieces until they are little polished stones. The nature of this series does not allow me that luxury. There is very little time and so much to say.
I have the topic and research for each day put together. One of day’s prompts is: How does Christian Nationalism relate to Christ? That day alone has 86 pages worth of notes! But I am not trying to write about everything I’ve learned about any of this. I am trying to write about what I learned that seems to matter most in these days leading up to the election. And so I am trying to write each newsletter on the day it goes out. This way I can include the information that seems the most relevant in the moments closest to publishing.
I hope this also keep each piece somewhat digestible. Because of the way I am writing this series, it is going to feel immediate (I hope) and it’s also going to be very informal. A little like I am talking something through with you.
Unfortunately, the threat posed by these people won’t go away when the election is over - no matter who wins. So I will return to all of this and write about it the way I usually do in the future.
Okay. Here we go.
Read the first piece in the series here.
Today, we’re going to talk about Curtis Yarvin, a man held in high regard by JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and the rest of the coalition of the creepy. Which is too bad, because Yarvin's main thing is that he really, really wants you to know that slavery is good, actually.
JD Vance cites Yarvin by name in interviews. And he references Yarvin’s ideas pretty much every time he opens his mouth. Peter Thiel, the billionaire who funded JD Vance’s political rise and employed him before his political rise - is also very into Yarvin! In fact! He introduced Vance to Yarvin!
The Information reported that Peter Thiel and Marc "let's burn all the nation-states to the ground" Andreessen have hosted Yarvin at their homes. And their funds - Founder’s Fund and Andreessen Horowitz have invested in Yarvin’s work.
In Vanity Fair, it was reported that Peter Thiel watched the 2016 election results with Yarvin. Yarvin had an office in Trump tower during Trump’s presidency. Yarvin and Thiel worked together to try to get their favorites - including Network State Maximalist Balaji Srinivasan - into Trump’s administration.
And like, can I just quickly say, I cannot believe these men are threatening our survival. They are just so fecking dim. One of the biggest indictments of unfettered financialization is the villains it produces. Akratic and vicious simpletons. Like, what you are about to read is so, so dumb. I can’t believe we have to take these men seriously! But we do! Because they are doing real harm in pursuit of their stupid ideas.
Anyways.
Yarvin is a fool. He’s a 4Chan Sophist King. He sounds like Mr. Collins - if Mr. Collins was a member of an edgelord clergy and had been distinguished by the patronage of Thomas Carlyle. Yarvin tries to use Matrix anti-fan fiction and irony to distract people from what he’s actually saying. But he’s not very good at it. So, despite his best efforts, t’s always obvious he said what he said.
And what Yarvin says over and over again is: Democracy is bad. Authoritarian rule is good. And slavery is a requirement of a well-ordered society.
Yarvin is very into overturning the US government and installing a “CEO of America” - which is really just an absolute sovereign. Yarvin advocates for a “Caesar-like figure” to take presidential power and “replace it with a monarchial regime run like a start-up.” Vance is all in. Which is concerning! Since he is currently very very close to being able to take presidential power. (25th amendment, anyone?)
Vance is always referencing Yarvin’s ideas. But he’s also sometimes referencing Yarvin by name!
“So there’s this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things,” Vance said on a right-wing podcast in 2021. Vance didn’t stop at a simple name-drop. He went on to explain how former President Donald Trump should remake the federal bureaucracy if reelected. “I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” - The Verge
Now I think it is very important to note what Vance is referencing here! In 1832, the John Marshall-led Supreme Court held that the Cherokee were a “domestic, dependent nation”that was subject to federal law, but not state law. Obviously, there were big problems with the domestic, dependent, subject to federal law situation. Still, the Cherokee hoped this ruling would protect them from being forcefully removed from the land they held in Georgia. And it should have.
President Andrew Jackson was incensed by the Supreme Court’s decision. He’s often quoted as having said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” But he really wrote,“The decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.” Which is also very bad.
Either way, the US military wasn’t used to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling. The U.S. military was used to enforce Georgia’s violent displacement of the Cherokee, and many other Indigenous Peoples. That catastrophic displacement is called The Trail of Tears. That is what Vance is referencing here. The apocryphal crowing of a president who believed state’s rights included ethnic cleansing.
We are in a late republican period,” Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with. - Vanity Fair
Okay, so we’ll circle back to the one-man rule stuff later in the series, but can we just get a grip on what Yarvin means when he says an ideal society has slavery? Because Vance has gone on record and said he wants to follow Yarvin's whole topple democracy plan. So like... does Vance's philosophical muse mean an ideal society has ACTUAL slavery?
Yes.
Yarvin means actual slavery.
Yarvin cites pro-slavery thought leader Thomas Carlyle a lot. Carlyle is the guy who spent the 19th century popularizing The Great Man Theory. He claimed that some men are born GR-R-R-R-EAT and that all of human history flows around them. He said these men were Heroes, just like Hercules. Yeah. And these tech guys with their little training schedules and fight clubs think they are Great Men, who are Heroes, just like Hercules. (Who is going to tell these fecking idiots that the heroes were the bad guys in Greek mythology?)
Thomas Carlyle hated democracy and loved slavery, often toasting to the dominion of white enslavers at posh British dinner parties. Despite being Scottish and not living in America, Carlyle was obsessed with protecting American chattel slavery. He was distressed by the growth of the abolition movement. Couldn't these people see that liberty meant being free to enslave people!? (No, but for real that's what Carlyle and Vance think liberty is and we will get to that Sunday night.)
The abolition movement grew for many reasons. One of them was that white people finally chose to become aware of enslaved people’s humanity and the systemic brutality of slavery. (Yes! It was always a choice to ignore the humanity of humans! Even in the "olden days!")
Carlyle had no problem with brutality, but recognized a PR crisis when he saw one. He published a pamphlet in 1849, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.” He said the pamphlet sought to convince the reader to “abolish the abuses of slavery, and save the precious thing in it.” In 1853, furious he wasn’t being heeded, he republished the pamphlet with a different n word. By the way, the Nazis loved Carlyle. I am sure that doesn't surprise you.
An excerpt from By Design
In 1908, she published a paper in The American Journal of Sociology explaining how to meet that need. It is titled, A Suggestion on the Negro Problem. Gilman wrote that Black people living in America caused "social injury.”
She argued that Black people "should be taken hold of by the state” and “enlisted” into forced labor camps spread throughout the United States. She called it a labor corp and thought uniforms should be designed for the Black people kidnapped by the state.
Black “men, women, and children, all should belong” to her “proposed organization.” The “enlisted” would be made to labor on farms, in mills, and in building roads and harbors. Gilman suggested the state build “a training school for domestic service” at each enlistment base.
Once trained, “individuals could be sent….on probation...to remain out in satisfactory home service. In case of unsatisfactory service they should be reenlisted.” In Gilman’s ideal world, Black people were “free” to clean Gilman’s house or face enslavement.
Yarvin’s pro-slavery ideology is Thomas Carlyle meets Ancient Roman Empire meets Founder Mode. Weep all ye who enter here, basically.
Yarvin argues that some people are meant to have all the authority and some people are meant to be completely dependent. And every time he says “dependent,” he’s obviously talking about subjugation. Who gets to have all the authority? The elite - mostly wealthy men. And who gets to be utterly dependent/subjugated? Children, women - especially wives, and people who are enslaved.
Who is enslaved? Well, anyone can be enslaved! But Yarvin writes that some people are “natural slaves.” He's trying to reference Aristotle here? But, for all his failings, Aristotle was not a racist conspiracy theorist. And Yarvin is. His ramblings are full of race science bullshit and - surprise, surprise - he’s thinks some races are better at being slaves than others. And weirdly! According to his good slave rubric, the white race doesn't appear to one of those better at being dependent races. Can't imagine why that is. (cough nazi cough)
Yarvin writes that some people are natural slaves and some people are naturally masters. This natural state of things must be managed through a master-slave, or patron-client, relationship. In this “natural relationship” the slave is wholly dependent and the master is wholly authoritative. This imbalance “obliges" them to one another.
The slave is obliged to obey and serve the master. The master is obliged “care for and protect” the slave. This obligation can be made voluntarily - a person can sell themselves into slavery. Or involuntarily - a person can be forced into slavery, especially those who are “natural slaves.”
Yarvin’s well-ordered society is a network of nodes of obligation. Yep, Yarvin loves the network effect! Surprise surprise. Each patron governs his slaves, his children and his wife. Yes! According to Yarvin, marriage is another “natural human relationship.”
And if you’re not getting it yet - every “natural human relationship” requires authority on one side and total subjugation on the other. The state exists only to enforce obligations. If a slave runs away, the state returns the slave. If a wife leaves a marriage, the state returns the wife. If the salad is on top, I send it back.
And now JD Vance’s very weird no more divorces thing begins to make a lot of sense, right? Like, A woman simply can’t possess the right to divorce her husband because he has all authority and she has all dependency, in you know, JD Vance’s mind.
Yarvin thinks slavery has gotten some bad press because of dysfunctional master/slave relationships. But insists that it can be functional. And indeed has to be functional, because humans are “biologically adapted” to exist within a master/slave relationship.
….by defining the word [slavery] as intrinsically abusive, like marriages in which one party beats the other, we conveniently define away all the instances of slavery in which the relationship is functional” - Curtis Yarvin
Doesn't this sound so much like when JD Vance was like, eh some marriages are violent but that doesn't mean banning divorce is bad, because marriage is just like...a thing that you can't get out of you know?
Oh! Okay! And yeah, it’s totally normal that these people keep being like, not only is slavery super great but a married woman and an enslaved person have the same right to not have rights and that’s actually just what nature wants, if you think about it?
Vance is against no-fault divorce, for “even violent” marriages! No-fault divorce has been a crucial right for women. ESPECIALLY women who need to flee abusive marriages. Do you know how hard it is to “prove” abuse in this country? No-fault divorce means that nothing has to be proved for a person to get a divorce. They can just get a divorce! This man does not think women should have the right to leave violent marriages. Please sit with that for second. - Trump, Vance and the Bidening
Yarvin also thinks it's super cool that a master is "mobile" and can take his slaves with him. And also, guys! He wants you to know that a master/slave relationship can be impersonal!
If the client is not one of Aristotle’s natural slaves, has an IQ over 90, is an adult, and can provide his or her own personal guidance…The master may maximize his economic benefit by simply allowing the slave to negotiate his own employment and living arrangements, and taxing him. - Curtis “have I mentioned I’ve read Aristotle but only the parts where he's talking about slavery” Yarvin
There it is. We found it. This is the slavery that appeals to the billionaires. The slavery that scales. The one that allows them to financialize your very existence, involuntarily, preferably on the blockchain because they’re fucking up to their eyeballs in crypto investments and if they don’t make crypto work they might not be billionaires anymore someday and then what? They don’t get to enslave people?! Not on their fucking watch.
Next time
So let’s say a bunch of billionaires formed a coalition with a bunch of retrograde Christian Nationalists and disaffected do-nothings. And let's say that group was like, "let's do a coup!" And they wanted to impose one-man rule and at the very least oppress all of us and then maybe, as a treat, enslave a bunch of us “impersonally” through something like, I don’t know…a network-state built on the blockchain where all contracts are encrypted and enforced. Isn’t that impossible? No one has the authority to get close to doing any of that…right? (Not right. The authority structure is already in place. We’ll go over it Sunday night.)
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