#119 - Curtis Yarvin - The Tyranny of Democracy - The Illusion of Choice
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2025
⏱️ 128 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Curtis Yarvin — aka Mencius Moldbug — is the most controversial political thinker alive. In this interview, he lays out his honest analysis of how the modern West is ruled: not by democracy or elections, but by an entrenched oligarchy of institutions, academia, media and the permanent bureaucracy.
We explore:
– Why democracy is an illusion & always was
– The Fabian takeover & the myth of progress
– Harvard as the ruling class of America
– The origins of managerialism & regime control
– Virology, censorship & the corruption of science
– Revolution, monarchy & the path to reform
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CONNECT WITH CURTIS YARVIN
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:04:36 – What Is Democracy Really?
00:10:18 – The One-Party State Thesis
00:14:55 – How the Cathedral Works
00:20:05 – Why the Right Always Loses
00:26:40 – Democracy Is a Religion
00:34:12 – Voting as Ritual
00:39:20 – Replacing the Operating System
00:43:45 – Why Revolutions Don’t Work
00:47:22 – Monarchy vs Anarchy
00:52:16 – The Problem With the Constitution
00:56:50 – Censorship & Institutional Capture
01:02:37 – Why the System Can’t Be Fixed
01:08:04 – Trump, the Regime & the Illusion of Power
01:13:39 – Who Should Rule and How
01:21:11 – The Case for a CEO King
01:29:18 – What Bitcoin Reveals About Governance
01:36:07 – Technocracy, AI & State Collapse
01:43:29 – Why Progress Isn’t Real
01:51:53 – The Myth of Enlightenment
01:57:42 – Why Yarvin Still Has Hope
02:03:25 – Final Thoughts
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everybody who believes democracy is great believes either that populism is great or the meritocracy |
| 0:06.3 | is great. But they also, all of them believe that either populism is awful or meritocracy is |
| 0:12.5 | awful. And so actually, just splitting the word in half into its reality and not letting it |
| 0:18.5 | retain this fatal ambiguity allows you to basically sort |
| 0:24.4 | of defeat each of these things into tail. |
| 0:26.8 | You know, here's the problem. |
| 0:27.9 | You have this couple who's right about each other. |
| 0:31.7 | And as Aristotle said, there's only two forms. |
| 0:34.2 | Oh, wait. |
| 0:35.1 | There's a third form of government, which has been used basically by 98% of |
| 0:39.2 | regimes for all of history. |
| 0:41.1 | Moreover, this third form of governance, which is monarchy, which is basically just a |
| 0:46.2 | description of an org, of a pyramid-shaped org chart, is not only used by 98% of governments |
| 0:51.4 | in history, it is used by all effective organizations in the world today. |
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| 1:34.1 | iron.com, which is iran.com. That is iron.com. All right. Curtis, good evening. Hello. I was in, |
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