Has the rolling coup d'etat begun?

A New Machiavellianism is Digging a New Deep State

Mar 18, 2025

Might America become a monarchy? Might America lose its democracy and replace it with a CEO style monarch advised by an oligarchical board of billionaires? Even if the “deep state” of the past is merely a contrived social imaginary, a new breed of Machiavellians are digging the foundations for a new and deeper non-state state.

Actually, I hypothesize that there are two forms of Neo-Machiavellian ideology at work, one for the Oval Office and one for the imminent new deep state. Both rely on a gradual monty-by-month coup d'etat to become effective.

Oval Office Neo-Machiavellianism? Really?

My term for the actual ideology dictating what otherwise appears to be chainsaw craziness is Neo-Machiavellianism. The original Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), author of The Prince, bequeathed to us the sobriquet, Machiavellian, which connotes heartless and ruthless governmental rule. “We live in a Neo-Machiavellian age,” writes Jesse Russell. I doubt that this is true. Yet! Nevertheless, we may be on the brink of the first chapter in a new Neo-Machiavellian story.

Author of 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene, is painstakingly trying to revive the original Machiavellian pragmatism and nihilism with a modern update. For an uncanny game plan that maps out the strategies of the 47th President of the United States, brush up on Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. “When looking for sources of power to elevate you,” says Law 23, “find the one key patron — the fat cow — who will give you milk for a long time to come.” Who is that fat cow? Silicon Valley reincarnated as DOGE.

Now, the Neo-Machiavellianism of der Oval Office Führer is not the one I wish to dwell on. Rather, I’d like us to test the second form, namely, the fat cow’s variant.

DOGE Neo-Machiavellianism? Really?

It is my hypothesis that the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiencey) variant of Neo-Machiavellianism we are witnessing most likely originates with self-promoting philosopher Curtis Yarvin, pseudonomously Mencius Moldbug in the blog, Unqualified Reservations. Yarvin is a voice for the Dark Enlightenment, the resurgence of brutal conservatism. The basics of Yarvin’s philosophy are adumbrated in a wandering and incoherent interview with Fox Nation’s Tucker Carlson.

“So I’m not telling you that democracy is bunk. I’m just suggesting you might want to consider the possibility,” Yarvin posts. This means the scope of political change Yarvin wants for America is total. “I don’t think it’s too crazy to say that all options—including restructuring and liquidation—should be on the table,” he declares on his blog site. Liquidation of democracy? Yes.

Right represents peace, order, and security; left represents war, anarchy, and crime. . . . The left is chaos and anarchy, and the more anarchy you have, the more power there is to go around.

What we’ve come to know as liberalism and progressivism should be liquitaded right along with democracy. What should replace them? A techno-monarchy. Bring back the king!

The new American king would mimic the qualities of a CEO in a Silicon Valley start-up. Complete with a board of directors made up of techie billionaires, the US government would become privatized and made more efficient. What Yarvin advocates to solve the problem of Left dominance, reports Charles Haywood, is the destruction of our current political system and the creation of a system based on what Yarvin variously calls by names such as “neocameralism” and “joint-stock republic.” This, in effect, is a monarchy where the monarch is viewed as a chief executive. But, like a chief executive, his power can be removed at will only by a group of stockholders.

Monarchy plus oligarchy. That’s what should replace the current sham government we think of as democracy.

Social Darwinism? Yes, even if this name is not used. The rich have a right to dominate the poor. The intelligent have a right to rule over the average and the stupid. And because white people have a higher IQ than black people, even slavery of black people is justified.

At least to my reading, that’s what Yarvin’s philosophy — to the extent that it could be called a philosophy — looks like. Correct me if I’ve misinterpreted Yarvin.

Now, who might fall for such vicious tripe? How about Steve Bannon? Elon Musk? Peter Thiel? Other Silicon Valley billionaires that stood in front of the camera on Inauguration Day? Yes, indeed. And Tucker Carlson as well.

In his article on Yarvin, “The Red Pill Prince: How computer programmer Curtis Yarvin became America’s most controversial political theorist,” Jacob Siegel surmises.

Like Niccolò Machiavelli, to whom he is sometimes compared, Yarvin defines himself as an amoral realist who invented a new theory of government that upends established doctrines of political morality…. Shortly after he[ entered the White House, reports started to circulate that Yarvin was secretly advising Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

Pay-Pal co-founder Peter Thiel, mentioned above, not only donated to Yarvin’s blog but also funded the rise of J.D. Vance to political prominence. Thiel’s Sillicon Valley syndicate presented an offer during the 2024 campaign to the MAGA Republicans: nominate Vance for Vice President and we will pay for the election win. Hence, the creation of DOGE. What a deal!

The current fireworks surrounding DOGE — “waste, fraud, and abuse” —do not identify the endgame. The endgame is rendering the government disfunctional so as to warrant a revolutionary takeover by the new monarch. Well, that’s where the evidence seems to be pointing at the moment.

Profoundly Anti-Christian?

Writing back in 2018, Charles Haywood was critical of both Yarvin and the liberal/progressive tradition.

Such an instrumentalist and utilitarian view of humans, profoundly anti-Christian and Machiavellian, with no moral core or attempt to encourage virtue, is also at the center of Yarvin’s thought. But it is indistinguishable from the center of Progressive thought, which also views humans as mere instruments for achieving change and ultimate utopia. The utopia may differ, but all ideologies will ultimately build their utopias on top of human skulls.

Does this fit “the center of Progressive thought”? Mmmmm?

Also I ask: does Neo-Machavellianism promise utopia? If so, for whom? A handful of techie billionaires? Anybody else?

“Good Samaritan” by Domenico Campagnola. The cardinal principle of Neo-Machiavellianism is this: the Good Samaritan should walk by on the other side.

Where is compassion?

There are four major social drivers: politics, economics, culture, and communication. Neither public theologians nor their respective churches have political or economic influence. Religion and thinking about religion are relegated to culture and, perhaps, communication.

Culturally speaking, what is being displaced in today’s America is compassion and its institutional commitments to justice, health care, senior services, child protection, and assistance to victims of famine and war. Communicating compassion might be the first priority for those wishing to turn the tide against the Washington takeover.

Compassion sounds weak. Yet, whatever resistance to Neo-Machiavelliansim could be mustered dare not mirror the heartless tyranny it opposes.

Conclusion

In my previous blog posts, I recommended that the public theologian employ the term, sin, in discourse clarification. I thought this would be more illuminating than Roger Olson’s category of ideology. I have now changed my mind. What Dr. Olson astutely asks for is greater precision than the abstract notion of sin can offer. Even so, my suggested improvement on Olson is to replace his Neoliberalism and Social Darwinism with Neo-Machiavellianism.

What seems to be a transparent fact is that the US President’s unelected advisors, now in charge of DOGE, are directed by a Neo-Machaiavellian ideology aimed at nothing short of a rolling coup d'etat and the establishment a new deep state within which they will hold all the power.

For those of us Americans who yearn for a healthy future for democracy, we need to understand with clarity and precision just what forces of destruction are at work. The tasks of the public theologian through discourse clarification is to contribute to that understanding.

Now what?

For Substack, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3^rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

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