Chuck Darwin<p>Anton and Yarvin’s May 2021 conversation was recorded for the podcast of the American Mind, <br>a publication of the powerful rightwing <a href="https://c.im/tags/Claremont" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Claremont</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Institute" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Institute</span></a>, <br>where Anton is a senior fellow, <br>and whose growing influence during the Trump era has seen it described as the “nerve center of the American right”.</p><p>💥On 8 December, Trump’s transition team announced that Anton would be appointed director of policy planning at the state department. </p><p>Anton also served in a communications role in Trump’s first-term national security council from February 2017 until April 2018, <br>resigning the day before neoconservative John Bolton assumed the role of national security adviser.</p><p>After leaving the first Trump administration, Anton did not abandon Trump, <br>but continued writing about US liberal democracy in bleak terms.</p><p>In "Up from Conservatism", <br>a 2023 anthology of essays edited by the executive director of Claremont’s "Center for the American Way of Life", Arthur Milikh, <br>Anton wrote that <br>“the United States peaked around 1965”, <br>and that Americans are ruled by <br>“a network of unelected bureaucrats … corporate-tech-finance senior management, ‘experts’ who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion, <br>and media figures who police those boundaries”.</p><p>Anton continued the discussion in sections headed <br>“The universities have become evil”, <br>“Our economy is fake”, <br>“The people are corrupt”, <br>“Our civilization has lost the will to live”.</p><p>His and Yarvin’s conversation was ostensibly about his 2020 book, <br>"The Stakes". </p><p>That book was controversial even on the right for its prolonged consideration of autocratic “Caesarism” <br>as a means of resolving American decadence.</p><p>In the book, he defined <a href="https://c.im/tags/Caesarism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Caesarism</span></a> as a “form of one-man rule: <br>halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.</p><p>He adds, though, that <br>“Caesarism is not tyranny, which, strictly understood, <br>is a regime that usurps a legitimate and functioning government”, <br>whereas Caesarism implements “authoritarian one-man rule partially legitimized by necessity” </p><p>– that is, <br>“the breakdown of republican, constitutional rule”, <br>adding that <br>“a nation no longer capable of ruling itself must yet be ruled”.</p><p>He writes that a <br>💥“Red Caesar” could be attractive to <br>“the reds” in the Republican coalition, <br>who he says are <br>“under constant rhetorical, political, and, increasingly, physical attack, <br>especially in blue states”, <br>-- making them “more likely to turn to a Caesar”.</p><p>Anton stops short of openly calling for authoritarian rule, <br>but in general, he writes that the advantages of Caesarism include <br>“continuity and stability” <br>and “the prospect of avoiding conflict”, <br>and that it “tends to engender calm”.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/CurtisYarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CurtisYarvin</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/MichaelAnton" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MichaelAnton</span></a><br><a href="https://c.im/tags/RedCaesar" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>RedCaesar</span></a></p>