On January 18, 2025, supporters from Action Française and other French monarchist groups paraded around Paris to mourn the death of King Louis XVI, who was executed at the start of the French Revolution. Chanting “anarchy today, monarchy tomorrow,” the torch-bearing monarchists represent a small but vocal ripple in France’s body politic. Generally conservative, these groups tend to exist alongside mainstream political parties with which they have historical affiliations. The now dominant French conservative party, National Rally, for example, has its roots in the old Action Française that emerged during the late 1800s, and which later supported the Vichy government during the Second World War.
These French monarchists are certainly not alone: there are monarchist movements in most European countries, even those that did not exist with their current borders or names when there were thrones to sit on. Sometimes these movements are dangerous, as the Reichsburger movement in Germany, which sought to overthrow the government several years ago, demonstrates. Others are incredibly niche. The Danubian Restoration Movement (DRM), for example, is a youth-led organization of students in the United States, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria that seeks to resurrect the Austro-Hungarian empire by organizing Habsburg descendants. They might not march through Paris, but they do organize on Discord, a gaming and messaging board app, on Facebook and Reddit, and advertise on YouTube via “The Monarchist Channel.”
And now these European movements, which seek to resurrect a glorious past over the tumultuous present, have been joined by a growing number of American monarchists. These groups are seeking to install a kingly (or Caesar-like) ruler in the Land of the Free. Though the historical contrast with Europe is striking, American monarchists have also found a good number of historical, legal, and political precedents to work with. That, combined with anarcho-capitalist visions of a decentralized, federalist state, gives the monarchist movement in the United States a distinctly—and terrifying—American character all of its own.
Though the historical contrast with Europe is striking, American monarchists have also found a good number of historical, legal, and political precedents to work with.
Curtis Yarvin and Neoreaction
No one has a better claim to having kick-started the American wing of modern monarchism than tech-advocate and far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin (sometimes better known by his old pen name, Mencius Moldbug). Yarvin, who has catapulted into mainstream political discussion over the last 10 years, started out as a blog writer in the early 2000s by discussing the downsides of modern culture, rejecting democracy in favor of monarchism, and advocating for the necessity of embracing corporatization and technological revolution as a means of fixing global politics. The impact of his ideas on the New Right is hard to overstate. Most notably, the concept of “the Cathedral,” which he argues is the amalgamation of mainstream liberal news media, universities, politics, and national institutions, has become a powerful rhetorical construct within the illiberal right’s lexicon. “The Cathedral” has been echoed by now powerful Silicon Valley tech giants like Peter Thiel, and politicians like Vice President J.D. Vance, who have cited Yarvin as an influence, and are currently working hard to dismantle the ephemeral “deep state” that “the Cathedral” embodies.
His early writings, which were picked up by and expanded on by far-right figures like accelerationist Nick Land, became the foundation of the “Dark Enlightenment” philosophy that has swept its way across the intellectual milieu of Western right-leaning political thought. The advancing wave of “postliberal” thinkers, who espouse a variety of illiberal ideals, both draw on and influence the broad umbrella of “Dark Enlightenment” thought that people like Yarvin helped craft. Patrick Deneen, a prominent postliberal thinker, has recently articulated a vision for how a techno-populist (or DOGE-MAGA) alliance might work.
Curtis Yarvin advocates for a monarch-like figure who acts as a corporate CEO for the country, making unilateral decisions and running what he calls the “gov-corp.”
The Dark Enlightenment movement, also sometimes called the “neo-reactionary movement,” or NRx, is not a single entity. Yarvin’s advocacy for monarchism, which became one of the flashpoints that differentiated him from many other right-leaning commentators of the 2000s, has also shifted over time, reflecting Yarvin’s chimerical nature. Moreover, not all modern monarchist movements are the same. If you were to compare Yarvin with the members of Action Française, for example, the overlap between their ideas would be significant, but not totalizing. Fundamentally, Yarvin advocates for a monarch-like figure who acts as a corporate CEO for the country, making unilateral decisions and running what he calls the “gov-corp” as a preference over the messy realities and inefficiencies of democratic government. Action Française wants a genuine return to the righteous monarchs of their national history—whether that is realistic is an entirely separate discussion—and so the concepts are not perfect parallels. This does not mean, however, that Action Française is unaware of the far-reaching changes currently happening within the American government.
Yarvin’s advocacy for a kind of corporate, tech-driven, monarchical system has caught on with some Silicon Valley-adjacent CEOs.
Yarvin’s advocacy for a kind of corporate, tech-driven, monarchical system has caught on with some Silicon Valley-adjacent CEOs. Elon Musk, who is currently wielding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a chainsaw to cut through a swathe of government bureaucracies, is an obvious example. But Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan have all joined in the chorus of tech voices emulating Yarvin’s call for a cutthroat, corporate-style government. As Action Française members write in their newsletter, the emergence of technocrats like Musk as a new aristocracy provides a strange, but for some, welcome, bridge between public and private entities. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and others represent, they argue, a “new dynasty” of American politics oriented around high-tech postliberalism. The extent to which the Europeans want to emulate the American tech monarchists, however, is far less than their desire to make political inroads in the unsettled political geography of Europe.
American Monarchism’s Deep Roots
The critical distinctions between American monarchists and their European counterparts lie in their respective histories. The phrase “American monarchist” conjures images of loyalists during the Revolutionary era. After all, when else did Americans of any stripe yearn for a king? By contrast, European countries generally have long histories that stretch back through the feudal era and the fall of the Roman Empire, where monarchical government was the only form of political organization, and where faith and law extended only as far as a king or queen’s purview spread. Which is to say, monarchism has a long history in Europe, one that merges national identity, religious affiliation, and political ideology in ways that Americans cannot easily relate to directly. Since the founding era, Americans’ civic attachments have been forged by republican norms and a republican constitution.
And yet, few though they may be, there have always been Americans who have entertained the idea of a monarch, or some kind of less democratic system, to overcome what they see as the limitations of democratic governance. Prominent early debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, such as those between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson over the United States’ banking system, reflect the inherent tensions within the American political system over the size and scope of the executive branch’s power. Prominent monarchists, like famed American architect Ralph Adams Cram in the early 1900s, drew on anti-Enlightenment ideas and Romantic-era notions of medieval history to justify their disdain for democracy. Dissent over the creeping power of the presidency since the founding has often evoked discussions of whether the President could become a de facto king and has led to robust debate over the role of the executive branch.
There have always been Americans who have entertained the idea of a monarch, or some kind of less democratic system, to overcome what they see as the limitations of democratic governance.
These are debates that went on even as presidential power steadily increased over the last hundred and fifty years of American history. As Cram enthused when President Franklin D. Roosevelt began to exert muscular executive power during the crises of the New Deal, it was about time a powerful president grabbed “the bull by the horns” to fix the problems America faced, democracy be damned. Yarvin himself has echoed this view, arguing that FDR’s muscular presidency during the New Deal, which pushed against the boundaries of executive power, is exactly the kind of interventionist, monarchical presidency one would need to emulate in order to course correct the country and erode democratic norms. The historical reality that FDR was constrained by several waves of electoral losses and Congressional pushback against his ambitious New Deal plans is less discussed by Yarvin or the coterie of illiberal voices that draw on FDR as an unusual inspiration.
The umbrella of NRx and Dark Enlightenment supporters is vast, and some within legal institutions and think tanks have indeed spent the last several years advocating more and more vocally for an “imperial” presidency in the style that Cram would have backed. Buttressed by legal interpretations, namely the “unitary executive theory,” which allocates vast amounts of authority to the executive branch, advocates like law professors Christopher S. Yoo and John Yoo, and thinkers like Michael Anton at places like the Claremont Institute, have carved out the idea of a theoretical executive that could easily sidestep other branches of government. Legal scholars Adrian Vermeule and Eric Posner have especially leaned on this reasoning, arguing that the Constitutional framework is already in place to allow a powerful executive, because the system of checks and balances inherent to the American government has been “broken” for decades. In the face of the tumult of the modern world, they argue in Executive Unbound (2011), the United States has allocated more and more power to the executive branch through organic debate and necessity. Ultimately, they claim, populist responses to bad presidents are the natural check on a truly unfettered executive, not the glacial mechanics of the legislature or the courts—a line of reasoning that seems to be playing out in real time.
Visions for the Future: Caesar Meets Techno-Anarchism
Michael Anton has made waves within far-right circles by proposing a theoretical “Red Caesar.”
Anton, who is on friendly terms with Yarvin and who recently became President Trump’s Director of Policy Planning Staff, has made waves within far-right circles by proposing a theoretical “Red Caesar.” Such a figure would suspend peace time law, unilaterally sweep aside the established American federal government, the bureaucratic state, and any forms of dissenting resistance on the Left, and usher in a conservative paradise—the exact qualities of which are up for debate.
Just as with the actual Julius Caesar, this Red Caesar would be a king in all but name, and the logical casualty of their rise would be the American Republic. Anton argues that such a Caesar would, in fact, restore a “semblance” of American unity through unilateral action, cutting through the chaotic democratic process and ending the sociopolitical unrest of what he calls a “cold civil war” between the Right and Left. Doing so, he claims, could involve eviscerating the “unmanageable” bureaucratic state or enforcing legal bindings on democratic norms to achieve the defeat of left-leaning cultural ideas. As he phrased it to critics, conservatives simply have no choice if they are to overcome the litany of problems they identify, and radical action is needed: “Dr. Conservatism needs to do better than his habitual ‘Sorry about the cancer, here’s a bottle of aspirin.’” Some within the NRx movement are ecstatic about the idea, while others remain troubled about the full disintegration of American democracy, even if they wish to delimit it to one extent or another. For American monarchists who explicitly want a king, these avenues are attractive because, unlike monarchist movements in Europe, there are no real royal bloodlines to resurrect or a shared heritage to draw upon, and so a new dynasty would have to be created whole cloth.
The most radical futurist visions arguably come from people more fully aligned with the NRx movement, like Thiel, Andreessen, or Srinivasan. They might not agree with the necessity for a monarch but still wish to fracture American democracy by default through extensive corporate ascendancy. Srinivasan, for example, has argued extensively for the creation of independent corporate states. Thiel and Andreessen have endorsed the “Freedom City” concept, where corporate power would establish and maintain cities on federal land dedicated to innovation, housing promotion, and other solutions to what they see as an over-regulated and anemic American economy. The extent to which a “Freedom City” would be subject to primarily corporate rather than federal oversight has led to fierce debate over the idea, though then-candidate Trump did endorse it in 2023.
The surge of tech influence over American politics, particularly among technocrats aligned toward NRx ideals, has deeply changed the tenor of illiberal discourse and opened up possibilities for disruption that seemed remote even just a few years ago. Yarvin, who has always been deep inside technology spaces, is also the founder of Urbit, a decentralized computer operating system and server platform that echoes the intentionality of the “Freedom City” by deregulating and privatizing online spaces. While libertarian idylls of the early 2010s focused on trying to prevent the government from taking over healthcare, the hyper-technological reach of the present day leans into almost anarcho-capitalist spaces.
The surge of tech influence over American politics has deeply changed the tenor of illiberal discourse and opened up possibilities for disruption that seemed remote even just a few years ago.
Musk, Thiel, and others leverage artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies to justify gutting the federal government and privatizing critical segments of the economy and political life in ways that neoliberal politicians had never dreamed of doing. It echoes, ironically, the systems of control that the medieval era epitomized: feudal land holdings by private individuals who also embody the state, giving heft to the claims by some scholars that we have entered into a “neofeudal” era of economic and political life. The tech wing of the NRx movement argues that CEOs, as Yarvin has often claimed, are in fact the most qualified individuals to run the complexities of a powerful country—after all, they ran complex companies. The blurry line between a CEO-president and a king is not something America’s political systems are well equipped to debate.
All-American Neo-reaction
Perhaps what is especially surprising about the efficacy of monarchical thinking on the illiberal right in recent years is just how easily it can mesh with stereotypically “American” frameworks, institutions, and cultural touchstones. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. first coined the term “imperial presidency” six decades ago, around the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal, to describe the advancing power of the executive and its threat to American federalism. Executive power has only increased since then, however, and the various factions of illiberalism have all offered justifications for a powerful, energetic executive that fits the imperial label Schlesinger so disdained.
What is especially surprising about the efficacy of monarchical thinking on the illiberal right in recent years is just how easily it can mesh with stereotypically “American” frameworks, institutions, and cultural touchstones.
For religiously affiliated illiberals, and social conservatives such as Patrick Deneen, the necessity of limiting progressive causes, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and LGBTQ rights feeds into, and justifies, their drive to exalt a powerful executive to sweep aside liberal foundations and build a new cohesive, conservative American culture from the ground up. In this regard, they tap into the same drive that powered the religious Right in the 1970s and 1980s but bring it to new heights. Yarvin and the more tech-oriented wing of the NRx elevate the corporate monarch as a knowledgeable decider: someone with an anarchic, extremely capitalist bent who can cut through the bureaucratic red tape to deliver boardroom-defining positions and eradicate resistance—like any good CEO would within a company. New technology like AI facilitates the process but also gives justification to the powerful executive and the corporate wing: they have, after all, initiated the creation of wondrous new things. Imagine what else they could do for the country at large! This speaks to the influence that corporate magnates and industrial power-men have always had when it comes to defining periods of American history and culture, whether it be an Andrew Carnegie in the Gilded Age, or the heyday of the 1980s fervor over Wall Street culture personified by characters like Gordon Gecko.
Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian debates over the role of the executive seem comparatively tame when juxtaposed with the suggestions of a Red Caesar or a CEO-king. Yet they speak to the same basic dynamic: a tension that has always existed at the heart of the American system over what power the President should have, and the scope and role of democratic governance through Congress and the rule of law. The fact that illiberal proponents have so flagrantly and quickly advanced their ideas does not mean their ideas are necessarily foreign to American intellectual soil. In fact, the rapid advancement of illiberal politics into the core of American governance speaks to how quintessentially American those ideas have always been in our history, and in the continued debate over rejecting or accepting them in turn.
Christian Ruth is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida. He is currently working on his second book, which is on the long history of monarchism and medievalism in American life and its effects on the United States’ foreign relations. His first book, One-Third Rich and Two-Thirds Hungry: Development and Neoliberalism in the Late Cold War, will be released later this year with Cambridge University Press. You can find his academic work in places like Diplomatic History, The Journal of Cold War Studies, and a forthcoming article on monarchism in The Journal of Right-Wing Studies, as well as public-facing pieces in The Conversation, TIME Magazine’s Made by History section, and ReMedia.
Image made by Aaron Irion using “Statue of Julius Caesar in Via dei Fori Imperiali (Roma),” by Monticiano licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. All other images used are in the public domain or otherwise free to use without attribution.
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