Authoritarian Theory at the NYT
It's Never Been More Back
Précis/TL;DR: in which I note an interesting development in the promotion of authoritarian theory to the readers of this newsletter.
Introducing Authoritarian Theory to the Well-Heeled Masses
For those that did not catch it, a very interesting interview was released by the New York Times this weekend.
America’s most prominent contemporary authoritarian theorist, Curtis Yarvin, was interviewed for the Times’ premier podcast. You can find the YouTube of it below (as of today, with around 77k views) as well as a transcript here.
I’ve been pursuing an active research project on American authoritarian theorists for several years now. I was definitely surprised when the interview dropped - the NYT, as with many establishment media institutions, often fusses over questions of ‘platforming’ quite intensively. Still, it has been true for some time that the dam has mostly broken in keeping these ideas out of the public mainstream.
Now, for those unfamiliar with Yarvin, I have to note that he is a rather rambling commentator himself. His essays are sharper, although they too meander heavily. It is fortunate for him that the NYT interviewer was far too combative, making him seem much calmer and collected by comparison. It is hard to do ‘gotcha journalism’ when the person you are interviewing explicitly does not believe in core American ideas like democracy or voting and comes from the edgy world of 2000s internet blogging from the get-go.
Regardless, if you come away from the interview with an impression that Yarvin’s core idea - the (Silicon Valley startup style) CEO-monarchy - is a little unimpressive… you would be correct! It is a simplistic claim, and the historical examples he likes to point to are often a bit stretched or otherwise beside the point. But that really doesn’t matter.
The reason why you are seeing Yarvin in the pages of the New York Times in 2025 is that he holds the key benefit of “first-mover advantage.” He is the most successful, internet-era popularizer of the idea that democracy is actively bad and substantive authoritarian rule is good - and has by far the most reach across a variety of online and offline audiences.
His libertarian-authoritarian predecessor, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, was kooky without being engaging in the same vein, and his contemporary Charles Haywood is far less known and has his own limiting eccentricities. And Yarvin also is credited with attractive critiques (“the Cathedral,” most influentially) that have furthered his readership even among people that don’t buy the monarchy thing fully.
There will be more of course. One corollary to Yarvin arriving at the New York Times is that the groundswell of interest in non-democratic governance has clearly reached sufficient pressure as to breach online confines. We’ve been seeing it already, and this is yet another bit of observational evidence to this point. There will be more “monarchists” and Caesarists and other new-wave authoritarian thinkers in the coming years.
We have seen this more subtly in very different fora as well - this phenomenon is not confined to the right or the dissident discontented. For just one mind-boggling example, the premier journal of political science, the American Political Science Review, recently published a paper from a left-progressive political theorist arguing that authoritarianism might be necessary to save the world from climate change. Really!
So anyway, it’s here. You might as well figure out what’s going on.
A Short Reading List
For those who are new to the topic of modern authoritarian theory, I recommend my newsletter essay on the topic from last year:
On Authoritarian Theory
Précis/TL;DR: in which we discuss theorists and theories of political authoritarianism. I suggest that ‘authoritarian theory’ is 1) often underestimated as a set of traditions in political thought, especially by modern political scientists; 2) has a long intellectual pedigree that offers a deep background of past thinkers upon which to draw, as well as …
You can also find another short-form piece in Persuasion magazine, where I highlight both Yarvin and the right-wing Caesarist Haywood specifically:
If you want a broader picture, I can also suggest my short essay on illiberal political thought on the American right that may be helpful context. It is important to remember that most illiberal thinkers today are not authoritarian theorists, and most still seem perfectly capable of working within the confines of existing electoral democracy. Yarvin is an important and interesting exception in this sense.
Finally, for those that want a deep dive (with copious footnotes), take a look at this working paper on the topic. You can find it hosted here on the Social Science Research Network.
I’ve had trouble getting this paper through journal editors (it languished at one journal for a year and a half, including a round of peer-review before being rejected), and the current version is tighter than the working paper (less wordy and dropped the third case-study entirely, for those interested).
Still, it is the only academic research paper in existence to take a comparative authoritarianism approach to modern authoritarian theorists. So you should still cite it if you’re doing work on this.
With these tools in your back pocket, you too can begin exploring the wild world of ideas shaping these middle years of the 2020s. Authoritarian theory is not going away, in fact it has never been more back.
That’s all for me today. I’m going to send out another newsletter soon updating readers on how my class on “Dictators in Europe & Russia” is going (well, so far!). And more essays to come…
- Julian