Project 2025 Video Offers Rare Glimpse into Right Wing Dystopia
As a student of right-wing extremism, the one lesson I hope people absorb is that these fanatics are often worse than they seem. Occasionally, they let their guard down, revealing the full extent of their psychotic vision for America’s future.
Truth Wins Out’s research project, Behind the Mask, examined a video by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which was part of a new series, Project Cosmos. ISI is one of 114 organizations on Project 2025’s Advisory Board.
The video featured ISI President Johnny Burtka interviewing four modern right wing “luminaries”. The first was Christopher Rufo, who is best known for his role with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ censorship and anti-DEI crusade.
The second participant was Christopher Caldwell, a contributing editor for the white nationalist Claremont Review of Books. In his 2020 book The Age of Entitlement, Caldwell argues that the U.S. civil-rights movement that emerged after the 1960s effectively became a second constitution—one incompatible with the original.
The third panelist was University of Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, who is the author of Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change: Toward a Post-Liberal Future.
The final panelist was computer programmer and “Dark Enlightenment philosopher Curtis Yarvin, who believes that American democracy has failed and should be replaced by a technocratic dictatorship.
Yarvin originally published an influential online blog under the name “Mencius Moldbug”. Although, Bigoted Bedbug might have been more appropriate.
Yarvin once wrote, “I am not a white nationalist, but I do read white-nationalist blogs, and I’m not afraid to link to them…I am not exactly allergic to the stuff” and “If you ask me to condemn [mass murderer] Anders Breivik, but adore Nelson Mandela, perhaps you have a mother you’d like to fuck.”
What’s profoundly troubling is that Yarvin is more than just a crackpot. Vice President JD Vance has cited him as an influence. Yarvin’s startup, Urbit, reportedly received early funding from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who also is skeptical of democracy.
Given the pedigree of putridness, I was not expecting to be surprised by the participants’ rantings and ravings. Yet, by the time I finished watching the 2-hour discussion, I was slack jawed.
Yarvin aggressively called for a total reordering of American society that coercively relied, “on the state and state power.” Yarvin waxed nostalgic for England’s Victorian Era, when “you were required to go to church every week. You were actually fined. Your name was written down in a little book. It was in a way it was a system of you know you would almost call it totalitarian in a way.” Yarvin continued:
“They certainly did not have a free press at that time and yet you know Elizabeth and society you know produced the most you know amazing you know sort of artistic works of all of history…and so when you imagine basically like you know sort of uses of state power that really go far beyond uh anything that we’ve sort of considered here.”
Remember, ten seconds ago when conservatives believed in limited government and personal liberty? Those days are long gone. In its place is Yarvin’s perverse fantasy world, which is an amalgamation of the ayatollah’s Iran and the Handmaid’s Tale. On the video he shared his vision:
“Your relationship with the state is intermediated through your church and basically your minister can drug test you. He can assign you work. He can put an air tag on you. He can tell you where to go, where not to go.”
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