The Dark Enlightenment’s Path to Technocracy
AT A GLANCE
• The Dark Enlightenment, the new philosophy of American techno-elites
• Technocracy and its roots
• The influence of technocracy and the Dark Enlightenment among American political leaders
• Technocracy’s philosophy opposed to that of the Founders and the Enlightenment
The Dark Enlightenment (DE) — once a fringe philosophical theory — is now the White House playbook. It is techno-tyranny in motion, gutting before our eyes what remains of our constitutionally protected rights. If we don’t understand and stop DE now, we risk losing our humanity forever.
Here we’ll explore DE’s philosophical foundations, contrast them with America’s principles of inalienable rights and popular sovereignty, and examine how they enable modern techno-authoritarianism — revealing profound threats to constitutional governance and human free will. Because figures such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen wield unprecedented influence — evident in 2025 initiatives such as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Stargate Project, and the AI Action Plan — their DE alignments risk turning fringe critiques into policy. Comprehending this trajectory is vital for safeguarding human essence in the digital age.
The Philosophical Foundations of the Dark Enlightenment
The Dark Enlightenment emerged in the early 2000s through the writings of Curtis Yarvin — blogging under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug” — and was later systematized and named by British philosopher Nick Land in his 2012 essay “The Dark Enlightenment.” Yarvin’s core insight reimagines government through a corporate lens, arguing that we could fix the inefficiencies of democratic systems by treating states as profit-maximizing corporations. Citizens are recast from sovereign actors to customers or shareholders, reshaping the ruler-ruled dynamic into a market-driven contract. Yarvin’s ideas stemmed from an autodidactic intellectual path after leaving academia, where he explored thinkers such as Thomas Carlyle, James Burnham, and Albert Jay Nock via early digital archives such as Google Books. As detailed in Ava Kofman’s June 2, 2025 New Yorker profile, “Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America,” his “red-pill moment” occurred during the 2004 presidential election, sparking doubts about established narratives: “Facts no longer felt stable. How could he be confident in what he’d been told about Joseph McCarthy, the Civil War, or global warming? What about democracy itself?” Skepticism, rooted in his family history — paternal grandparents who were communists from Brooklyn and a father disillusioned with government service — bred deep institutional cynicism, steering Yarvin toward technocratic alternatives.
JBS Member?
Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account.
Subscribe Now
- 12 Issues Per Year
- Digital Edition Access
- Digital Insider Report
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically
Subscribe Now
- 12 Issues Per Year
- Print edition delivery (USA)
*Available Outside USA - Digital Edition Access
- Digital Insider Report
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically