Curtis Yarvin

Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American far-right political blogger and software developer. He is known, along with accelerationist philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx), which originated in the late 2000s.

In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations. In 2002, Yarvin began work on a personal software project that eventually became the Urbit networked computing platform. In 2013, he co-founded the company Tlon to oversee the Urbit project and helped lead it until 2019. He made a return to the company in 2024, described as having a "wartime C.E.O." role.

Yarvin has been described as a "neo-reactionary", "neo-monarchist" and "neo-feudalist" who "sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy". He has defended the institution of slavery, and has suggested that certain races may be more naturally inclined toward servitude than others. He has argued that whites have inherently higher IQs than black people, and opposes U.S. civil rights programs.

Yarvis is a notable figure in American conservatism, having influenced people such as Steve Bannon, JD Vance, Michael Anton and Peter Thiel.