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🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
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The New Yorker staff writer Ava Kofman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her recent Profile of the iconoclastic right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin. They discuss Yarvin’s desire to end American democracy by installing a monarch, whether his provocations can be seen as trolling, and how his writings have found a receptive audience among conservative politicians and the tech élite. “Obviously, Yarvin’s influence on the right is great, and maybe can’t be overstated,” Kofman says. “But, at the same time, a lot of these ideas he’s getting from having conversations with powerful people in Silicon Valley and with powerful people in Washington.”
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0:00.0 | Hey, Ava, thanks so much for being here. |
0:11.0 | Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. |
0:13.4 | You just finished spending a bunch of time with Curtis Yarvin. Is there a specific experience that you had with Yarvin? |
0:19.6 | Or is there a specific thing that he said that you just can't get out of your mind? |
0:24.0 | Like, what's keeping you up at night after reporting this story? |
0:27.2 | That's such a great question. |
0:28.4 | To me and everyone else I've been talking to and the news reports I've been reading, you know, it seems like we're living in a constitutional crisis. |
0:36.1 | And again and again, I was really struck by |
0:39.9 | how disappointed Yarvin was about the current Trump administration's actions. In our conversations, |
0:48.2 | Yarvan kept emphasizing that he felt like the actions that the administration were taking were |
0:52.7 | kind of baby steps or weak tea. |
0:55.0 | There was almost this kind of contemptuous or wounded tone that he took when talking about the administration, |
1:00.0 | as though he'd kind of been betrayed by the kind of half measures of autocratic takeover that had happened so far. |
1:07.0 | That was a theme we kept returning to and that I think has kind of continued to |
1:12.1 | kind of stay with me, this idea that actually, for some people, what's happening might not be |
1:16.6 | enough at all. So the kind of question for the piece and the reason to do the piece was to wonder |
1:21.1 | how the Overton window shifted and how these ideas that seemed so far out there were now |
1:25.8 | becoming part of the mainstream. |
1:32.2 | And part of that is through some of the kind of powerful figures that have created this vibe shift on the tech right for a more candid and troubling embrace of authoritarian rule. |
1:42.8 | That's Ava Kaufman. She's a staff writer for the New Yorker, and she just finished profiling Curtis Jarvin, |
1:49.0 | one of the most polarizing figures in the far-right ecosystem. |
1:52.0 | Yarvin's a computer scientist turned blogger, who's been calling for an American monarchy, |
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