'Be a Caesar': Right-wing philosopher has a radical blueprint for Trump's second term

The Guardian recently wrote a profile of a right-wing philosopher named Curtis Yarvin who is highly influential among many top Trump allies, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, as well as big tech investors such as Peter Thiel.

As the publication explains, Yarvin is explicitly anti-democracy and instead advocates a form of "Caesarism" that he describes as a "form of one-man rule: halfway... between monarchy and tyranny."

But how would such a "Caesarism" play out in real life during a second Trump presidency?

According to the Guardian, Yarvin outlined his basic blueprint for a second Trump term during a 2021 podcast with former Trump national security official Michael Anton.

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During their conversation, Anton told Yarvin, "You’re essentially advocating for someone to... gain power lawfully through an election, and then exercise it unlawfully."

Yarvin objected slightly to this characterization.

"It wouldn’t be unlawful,” he said. "You’d simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address... You’d actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to do.'"

Yarvin elaborated on what such an emergency declaration would entail.

"It means the president is basically taking direct control over all law enforcement authorities, a state of emergency in basically every state," he said.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Yarvin advocated that an "American Caesar" completely shut down The New York Times, Harvard University, and other purportedly adversarial institutions within months of taking power.

"The idea that you’re going to be a Caesar and take power and operate with someone else’s Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd," he explained. "Machiavelli could tell you right away that that’s a stupid idea."