Curtis Yarvin (
) is a dissident American political philosopher and theorist of power.In 2022 he published an essay on
that ignited ferocious debate within the online right, entitled ‘You Can Only Lose the Culture War’. In this piece, he identified two classes on the right: ‘hobbits’ - powerless people who should avoid political fights they cannot win - and ‘dark elves’ - undercover elites who are building power but are not yet ready to challenge the progressive regime.The essay accrued hundreds of likes, hundreds of hostile comments, and spawned a thousand Twitter threads.
The central metaphor of the essay was crude (and condescending) but pointed to a truth. Here I attempt to resolve the positions of his advocates and critics - and to lay out a path to power for the disenfranchised.
BACKGROUND ON YARVIN’S THOUGHT
Yarvin’s body of work is extensive and quite unlike conventional political theory. Many of my readers will already be familiar with his positions (they can skip this section), but to briefly summarize the relevant aspects for those who are not:
Conventional wisdom about political power in Western countries is wrong. The idea that ‘the people’ hold power, since politicians are elected by popular vote, is deceptive. Your average person holds a negligible amount of power.
This is because power is not uniquely concentrated in elected offices, but is largely dispersed across a network of non-democratic institutions, including the media, academia, the civil service, the arts (Hollywood), and ‘civil society’ (activist NGOs). Together, these institutions hold more power to shape political realities than elected politicians.
These institutions, unelected and opaque to the average citizen, have structural incentives to move - gently but ceaselessly - in a progressive direction, including:
Evolutionary pressures at an organizational level: organizations that have the loyalty of highly mobilized activist minorities - a hallmark of the left - are more effective at forcing change than those that do not;
Personal incentives for leadership, like prestige: progressives receive flattering profiles in the New York Times, gain tenure at elite universities, and so forth. This progressive monopoly on prestige within the elite class is what leads to bizarre signaling like Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron describing the introduction of gay marriage as the proudest moment of his career. This is his ticket to being welcome in polite society for the next few decades.
The fact that this network of powerful institutions are aligned in their progressive orientation creates a leftwards political consensus that is broad and deep enough to resist all current challenges, including the election of conservative politicians. This is why society becomes more progressive over time no matter who is elected.
This means that attempts by the masses to impose rightward political change are, at best, ineffective, and, at worst, harmful and punished. To illustrate this, consider mass immigration. For a century, this has been unpopular among the masses of the West, and they’ve voted against it. Despite this, mass immigration has continued ceaselessly, because it is necessary to the institutional network. Dissenters are tarred as racists.
The opponents of progressive programmes - like the initially popular Enoch Powell in the United Kingdom - are then destroyed by character assassination in the media and sidelined by political machinations. Trump has recently received the same treatment; this is what David Cameron was seeking to avoid. Conversely, the New York Times would never attack Harvard; and the most prestigious civil servants go to Harvard and read the New York Times, and the leftwards march continues.
To learn more about Yarvin’s political theory, good starting points are his book ‘An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives’, or
’s video “A Gentle Introduction to Mencius Moldbug”. You can find a description of the British equivalent to the progressive network, ‘The Blob’ of civil servants, journalists, and unions, by , here.SUMMARIZING ‘YOU CAN ONLY LOSE THE CULTURE WAR’
The essay we’re discussing today, You Can Only Lose the Culture War, is an entreatment to ‘hobbits’ - the culturally conservative masses from red states who are unfortunately powerless to resist the leftwards march of progressive elites - to stop engaging in doomed and counterproductive thrashing (throwing money at toothless Republicans, rioting, etc.).
Instead, the fight must be won at the level of the elites, who ultimately set the political agenda due to their control of the various institutions that hold real power. Yarvin subdivides the elites into ‘high elves’ (progressive elites) and the secretive emerging class of ‘dark elves’ (undercover elites who hold counter- or post-progressive views). It is these elites that will decide the future of the West:
The Soviet empire was not overthrown by any centrifugal, secessionist force. Earlier rebellions in the outer provinces were suppressed easily. The Soviet empire was overthrown by its own leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had the same job as Stalin—and by the cadre of young officials who had come up with Gorbachev.
The path to the future did not run through the workers and peasants; it ran through this small elite. Once this elite was corrupted with Western doctrines, once it lost its unswerving faith in the socialist future, it and the regime it powered were doomed.
The hobbits are your Fox-watching suburban neighbors, your local tradesmen, the non-college educated whites who inhabit red states and vote R.
Hobbits just want to grill. Hobbits just want to be governed sensibly, in a way that makes sense to hobbits, so that they can just grill. Hobbits have little desire for power and no great talent for it, which is what makes them so easy for the elves to rule. And hobbits are not—not in their hearts—into telling elves how to live their lives.
Hobbits do not need to be in charge. Hobbits do not want to rule the world, should not want to rule the world, and could not rule the world. Hobbits do not even need to be governed by hobbits—they just need to be governed as hobbits.
(Again - for now, put to the back of your mind the natural instinct to recoil at how insulting this metaphor is - we’ll return to that shortly.)
Yarvin asks you to place your hope instead in the (supposed) caste of dark elves, who are not hobbits themselves (they’ve been to elite universities, they’ve walked the corridors of power), but would govern in a mode that would allow the hobbits to flourish:
The goal of the dark elves is to become and remain influential in narrow circles; to accumulate prestige, a secret prestige which is more tangible because it is secret; ultimately, to create cells and networks which can invisibly advance dark-elf careers—a method tested by the Freemasons in many countries and periods.
THE PROBLEMS
The central metaphor here is clearly a crude one, and problems abound.
First of all, there’s the question of how the dark elves - to the extent they exist - will seize power from the high elves that control all institutions of power (including the military and law enforcement). Yarvin’s answer?
The dark elves cannot win by using the coercive power of the hobbit peasant armies; and they have no coercive power of their own. Their only form of power is subversive. They fight by subverting and seducing their enemies, the high elves…
This war is not fought with bombs and bullets, or even laws and judges. This war is fought with books and films and plays and poems. It is still a savage war!
Yarvin believes that the seductive power of dissident art has the key role to play here, slowly convincing high elves that the dark side is more beautiful, more exciting, more full of life. The problem: I’ve been to invite-only, dissident art events - and let me tell you, I’m not holding my breath for this art to seduce anyone. The ‘art’ is truly crap. Really bad.
also notes the all-or-nothingism inherent in asking ‘hobbits’ to sit around and not attempt to wield what populist weight they do have (achieving limited but real victories) until the invisible dark elves have seized total power:"Sure, you've captured one power center, but you can't use its powers until you have the others - sorry, pro-lifers, can't reverse Roe because we haven't seized the downtown arts scene and the Harvard faculty yet."
From my perspective, the most problematic element of Yarvin’s prescription is that currently, to the extent that these dark elves exist at all, they’re vanishingly few in number. I’ve walked various corridors of power, and the based are few and far between.
So how do we change this? How can we grow our initial stock of dark elves? Who seduces the seducers?
And this question makes clear the greatest flaw of a flawed metaphor: in Tolkien's universe, hobbits cannot become elves. They’re separate races entirely.
notes, in a discussion with that I’d recommend listening to for a comprehensive critique of Yarvin’s original piece: “... he says basically, you have to convert these elves, right? That's the only thing you can do. You can't elevate hobbits to elf status. You can't take right wingers and turn them into the aristocracy; you only can convert the existing aristocracy.”Yarvin concedes this flaw in a later response to his critics: “There is one big issue with the Tolkien system: elves, hobbits, dwarves, orcs and zombies are roles, not races. (We could say classes, but that word has a lot of baggage.) These roles tend to be hereditary, but do not need to be. The course of a human life often includes a shift in role.”
Now we see the emergence of a potential path to unification between Yarvin and his critics: we must find a mechanism by which sufficient numbers of ‘hobbits’ can be elevated to the status of ‘dark elves’ in order to radically expand the power of the dark elves.
This allows Yarvin to retain his (valid) assertion that it is the elites that really matter in changing political realities, while providing his critics a more compelling proposition than doing nothing but wait.
Critics should set about elevating as many hobbits as possible, and forming new elites. This ennoblement of the humble but wholesome hobbit is a key theme of Lord of the Rings. In recognizing this noble potential in the hobbit class, much of the condescension of Yarvin’s piece would be negated.
ACTION
Now we must find our method for elevating loyal hobbits. We are faced with the question of how to create a new elite. If you are interested in this question, please subscribe to this publication - providing this answer is its central objective.
First let's take stock of what the more enterprising members of this intellectual sphere are currently doing.
The major recent push in translating online discourse into real world effects has focused on the concept of ‘basket-weaving’. This is an idea that came to prominence with an
video entitled ‘A Sketch Towards Some Solutions’.Basket-weaving stems from the recognition that embodied relationships are richer, healthier, and more human than those between avatars. It is the attempt to form enduring real-world networks of like-minded individuals through meetups.
These meetups do not need to be expressly political in nature; they can center around any enjoyable activity (like the somewhat ironic example of basket-weaving, after which the concept is named).
THE LIMITATIONS OF BASKET-WEAVING
Basket-weaving is healthy and should not be discouraged, but we should not fail to recognize its substantive limitations. Meeting up with friends for drinks and activities remains squarely in the hobbit domain of activities.
I describe networks that are formed in this way as incidental as opposed to intentional. Their composition is random, their objective is networking for networking’s sake, and their participants are intellectual-types who have found each other through a common interest in political theory.
This activity will not move the needle of power.
Only philosophers believe in philosopher kings. We should have a healthy skepticism of the notion that if we merely increase attendance at this type of meetup, our political power will grow. This ‘enough bodies will make a difference’ line of thought would be an internalization of democratic principles, even as participants claim to reject them.
In fact, this type of meetup will fail to attract the highest value candidates for ‘dark elves’.
A few years ago, I attended a closed-door meetup of people in our sphere, and quickly decided that I wouldn’t attend another. At that time, the risk/reward calculation made no sense for me, as I worked for a high-profile organization, and precisely because of this, I was vulnerable as a target for cancellation if I was doxed. Taking on that risk didn’t make sense just to have a few pleasant discussions. I needed a greater incentive. (Happily I’m now financially independent and no longer work for that institution, so I can take on more risk).
I believe that rewards of this magnitude - rewards that are seductive to elites - can only come from intentional networks. This reflects the often forgotten second part of the original Academic Agent presentation, in which he notes: “We need to aim to create VERTICAL relationships with powerful investors who will help to back vanguard institutions.”
FORMING INTENTIONAL NETWORKS
The ideal network shape, which will take some time to build, would be a differentiated network of multiple classes and skill sets, under a specific elite leadership, that is aligned on a course of action. This would involve targeted meetings, with specific high trust individuals and a specific operational thesis.
Without progress towards establishing this kind of network - even if slow at first - you will fail to capture and hold elites. Elites care about their status and prestige with regards to other elites. In a thread critiquing Yarvin’s original article, Lomez noted something similar:
The key is not to convince the peasants to follow the elites, but to convince those elites who've ascended from the peasantry to stay loyal to their people rather than be seduced by all the raiments and beliefs of the globohomo pseudo aristocracy being promised to them…
So the animating question is, how do you reverse this? How do you produce comparable status rewards for staying loyal to the peasantry even after you've ascended? What can you offer the Cathedral Law grad from the hinterlands that competes with what globohomo is offering him?
This is why someone like Blake Masters is so compelling. He's demonstrating the possibility for an elite that is not at all seduced by or enthrall to globohomo. There is a totally independent status economy being produced around figures like him. This is the counterelite we need.
The Thiel-adjacent network (Masters, Vance, etc.) provides useful inspiration for what such a network might look like. Jeremy Carl expands:
J.D. Vance’s GOP primary win in Ohio was largely built on his appeal to working-class Republicans. But while Vance’s focus on the real needs of working-class Americans is a laudable model for the party, it is not that focus that will make Vance an effective power broker. It is not the J.D. Vance of the holler, but the Vance of Yale Law, the venture capitalist with deep connections to billionaire Peter Thiel and media powerhouse Tucker Carlson, whose wife was a clerk for Chief Justice Roberts, who can exercise power within the American system. As the writer and conservative podcaster
wrote, “all politics is elite politics. The only thing that changes is the client class and their level of obligation felt to it.”
Naturally, forming a network with this level of power (backed by a billionaire, composed of elected officials) is exceptionally difficult to replicate, and a long way off for most of us. But it is absolutely possible to begin forming intentional networks on a more approachable scale. An example would be the excellent work that
is doing with the EXIT group ().This is not to counter-signal basket-weaving; by all means, please keep doing it. Human relationships are essential, and I intend to get more involved myself. But we should be clear about what we’re doing, what its limitations are, and we should recognise that basket-weaving is likely just a healthy first step towards the cultivation of more intentional, elite networks that meaningfully generate and sustain power.
This blog is devoted towards identifying actionable paths towards the cultivation of elites, and providing avenues to realize the above theory. Please subscribe to join us on this journey.
Sic transit imperium,
Johann