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JD Vance’s political career has been defined by an apparent paradox. On the one hand, Vance is a member of the upper echelon of America’s ruling elite — a graduate of Yale Law School, a New York Times best-selling author, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a United States senator. On the other hand, he has become a vociferous conservative critic of that same elite on behalf of disaffected Middle Americans, a role he can claim by virtue of his upbringing in post-industrial Ohio and his family’s roots in Appalachia. At various points throughout his career, Vance has acknowledged this tension — without really trying to resolve it.
“It’s the great privilege of my life that I’m deep enough into the American elite that I can indulge a little anti-elitism,” Vance said in one of his first major interviews in 2016, on the heels of the publication on Hillbilly Elegy.
But now that Vance is accompanying Trump on the top of the Republican ticket, this paradox has become a political problem for the GOP. Trump’s selection of Vance was designed to bolster Trump’s populist credentials, but instead it has opened Republicans up to fresh criticisms. How populist can Vance really be while cozying up to billionaires in Silicon Valley? What does a Yale-educated attorney and ex-venture capitalist understand about the lives of Trump’s blue-collar voters? Is a guy who owns not one but two million-dollar houses a credible mouthpiece for the GOP’s fledgling economic populism?
This tension between Vance’s elite credentials and his populist appeal has bubbled to the surface throughout my extensive reporting on Vance and the political undercurrents that shape his worldview, which combines economic nationalism, hard-line social conservatism and foreign policy non-interventionism with a forthright belief that liberal democracy is leading to the crack-up of America. But the deeper I’ve dug into this world — often referred to as the “New Right” — the more I’ve come to see Vance’s split identity as a feature, rather than a bug, for his ideological supporters.
In fact, Vance increasingly embodies a much-discussed archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the New Right and MAGA, Vance, according to this reading, could be the vanguard of a new political elite that, though not popular itself, would institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary social order.
The details of this alliance differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step blueprint for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the conservative elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, leverage that alliance into political power, and then unleash the New Right elite to carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to use populism to constrain the popular will (though Vance and his allies of course don’t see it that way) — and Vance increasingly fits the part of its executor.
In fact, Vance has articulated his own political strategy in terms that closely echo those found in the pages of the New Right thinkers who have influenced him.
“One of the ways in which I’m very much populist is that I think people need to have elected representatives [who] try to channel their frustrations into solutions that will make their lives better,” Vance told me when I interviewed him in his Senate office in December 2023. “One of the ways I’m very much not a populist is that I think every populist movement that has ever existed has failed unless it’s captured some subset of the people who are professionally in government.”
He added: “You can’t just run a political movement purely with voters — you need voters, you need bureaucrats, you need lawyers, you need business leaders, you need the whole thing.”
As Vance hits the campaign trail, parsing this blueprint is essential for understanding Vance’s political trajectory — and what underlies his support for Trump. Given his past criticisms of Trump, Vance’s new-found affection for Trumpism and the MAGA movement has been chalked up to a “moral collapse” or rank opportunism. But read against the strategic blueprint found in the writings of the conservative intellectuals close to Vance, it begins to appear like something else: the first step in a much broader plan.
On a summer evening in 2023, Vance strode into a marble-lined ballroom at the Catholic University of America, where a crowd of 250 had gathered for the launch of a new book by the Catholic political philosopher Patrick Deneen, a political theorist at the University of Notre Dame, hosted by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Vance, then just a few months into his first term as a United States senator, made a beeline for Deneen and wrapped him in a big hug, both men smiling as they greeted each other like old friends.
That hug served as a vivid metaphor for Vance and the New Right’s embrace of Deneen’s work as a kind of intellectual blueprint for their emerging political movement — a process that Deneen spoke to me about at length for a POLITICO Magazine profile in 2023.
In his breakout book Why Liberalism Failed, published in 2018, Deneen argued that small-L liberalism is inevitably self-destructive; that a political system predicated on the expansion of individual rights and autonomy will eventually undermine the collective institutions — like family, organized religion and local communities — that make political life possible in the first place.
In his next book, Regime Change, Deneen laid out his vision of an ideal “postliberal order” that would jettison liberalism’s protection of individual rights in favor of a social order that promotes “the common good” — a purportedly objective set of social conditions, borrowed from Catholic social teaching, that “undergird human flourishing. In lieu of liberalism’s phony egalitarianism — which has allowed corrupt (and left-leaning) elite to pursue its own interests at the expense of the interests of the downtrodden (and right-leaning) masses — Deneen’s postliberal order would allow the new elite to foster collaboration between “the few” and “the many” in pursuit of the common good. This new order would look the same and be governed by the same institutions as the current one, but it would be infused by a “fundamentally different ethos.”
In practice, Deneen’s policy prescriptions for fostering the common good would be even more far-reaching than Trump’s: sweeping protectionist trade measures to promote domestic industries; aggressive trust-busting of corporate monopolies; a robust “pro-family” welfare policy to promote the formation of traditional families; strict limits on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The crux of Deneen’s book, however, was his blueprint for the transition from the liberal order to the postliberal order — what he called “regime change,” echoing the title of his book. This “peaceful” transition, Deneen argued, would not happen on its own. Instead, it would require the creation of “a new elite” and “self-conscious aristoi” (or aristocracy) who could enter the halls of government, academia and the media, take them over and repurpose them toward conservative and illiberal ends. While drawn from the upper echelons of society, this new elite would effectively act as class traitors: Having replaced the old, corrupt liberal elite, they would rule in the interests of the “many,” using their power to foster conservative values like “stability, order [and] continuity.” Deneen called this political arrangement “aristopopulism” — an alliance between a “genuinely noble elite” (the “aristoi”) and the populist masses, working together to replace secular liberalism with a postliberal system grounded in a “forthright acknowledgment and renewal of the Christian roots of our civilization.”
Vance — whose background and biography make him a living embodiment of Deneen’s “aristopopulist” vision — has not hid his interest in Deneen’s ideas. During a panel discussion at the launch event for Deneen’s book, Vance — appearing alongside Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — identified himself as a member of the “postliberal right,” adding that he “sees[s] his role and his voice” in Congress as “explicitly anti-regime.” In response to a question from the moderator about how he balances the interests of “the few” and “the many” in practice, he answered like a card-carrying member of Deneen’s new elite.
“I guess I think that things in American society are so tilted toward the ‘few’ that I just focus on the ‘many,’” he said, “and let the rest of it figure itself out.”
Curtis Yarvin’s ideas do not garner formal discussions in the marble-lined halls of America’s universities, but they are no less influential in the intellectual ecosystem that fuels JD Vance’s worldview. And much like Deneen, Yarvin — a computer programmer turned arch-reactionary blogger whom Vance has identified as a friend — offers a blueprint for an alliance between conservative elites and the populist masses that would also transform the current political order.
Yarvin rose to prominence on the online right in the early 2000s as the leading voice of the “neo-reactionary” movement, or NRx, while blogging under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug.” The premise of the movement, which Yarvin unspooled in his signature meandering and irony-laden prose style, was that “democracy is bunk” — both as a philosophical system and as a principle for organizing modern society.
In fact, America in the 21st century is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense, according to Yarvin. Instead, it has degenerated into a corrupt oligarchy run by an interconnected network of academics, media elites and government bureaucrats that Yarvin calls “the Cathedral.” Although most Americans have carried on believing the elections and the popular will continue to be the source of political power and legitimacy, Yarvin argues that the real decision-making in America — including the critical power to determine what is true and what is false — rests with the Cathedral, regardless of who occupies the White House or which party holds a majority in Congress. (At the National Conservatism Conference in 2022, Vance gave a speech — titled “The Universities are the Enemy” — that was effectively a layman’s explanation of “the Cathedral.”)
To a point, Yarvin’s critique of this system can sound like a more traditional libertarian or conservative critique of the “administrative state” or “the deep state” — that a set of unelected bureaucrats have usurped power from the sovereign American people. But unlike traditional conservatives, Yarvin does not advocate for a return to small or limited government. Instead, he argues that America needs a “national CEO, [or] what’s called ‘a dictator,’’’ who could implement a type of centralized American monarchy, run on the model of a Silicon Valley tech startup. (Yarvin’s model for this style of leadership is, half ironically, FDR, whose presidency he as described as “a personal executive monarchy.”) Yarvin has laid out an extensive (though not always clear) blueprint explaining how a democratically elected president could claim monarchical power — a process that would involve a smartphone app to organize voting, reinforced by police forces in red armbands.
Here and elsewhere, Yarvin’s plans diverge sharply from Deneen’s — and Vance has not endorsed the most radical parts of Yarvin’s vision. But they share one essential element: Like Deneen and Vance, Yarvin believes that the transition away from progressive liberal democracy will be led by a self-conscious cadre of conservative elites who gain power through an alliance with the popular masses — yielding, eventually, to the rule of a single “national CEO.”
Yarvin’s description of this dynamic is much stranger than Deneen’s. Borrowing from the universe of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Yarvin describes American society as divided into several classes: “Elves,” (the highly educated urban ruling class); “hobbits,” (the average middle-class red-state American who, Yarvin says, “just wants to grill and raise kids,”); and “dwarves, orcs and zombies” (the working- and lower-classes). According to Yarvin, America is run by elves, who control the most powerful institutions of politics and culture. But mixed in among the elves are “dark elves” — conservative elites like Yarvin who oppose “the regime” and sympathize with the hobbits.
The only way to realize a “pro-hobbit” regime, Yarvin argues, is for hobbits to form an alliance with the dark elves to defeat the normal elves, and then to allow the dark elves to rule on their behalf.
This is, in effect, a description of Deneen’s “aristopopulism” in much dorkier terms: An alliance between anti-liberal elites and the right-leaning masses, directed at seizing control of “the regime” and using it to create an illiberal social order. On a popular conservative podcast in 2021, Vance cited Yarvin in support of his view that a second-term Trump should “fire every mid-level level bureaucrat and every civil servant in the administrative state and replace them with our people,” thereby allowing conservatives to “seize the administrative state for our own purposes.” (Yarvin has recently distanced himself from Vance, calling him “a random normie [politician] whom I’ve barely even met.”)
Vance’s citation of Yarvin has attracted much attention since he landed on the top of the Republican ticket — especially Vance’s suggestion that Trump should ignore the Supreme Court if they step in to block the mass firings. But the public scrutiny has overlooked one critical part of Vance’s plan. When Vance is talking about installing “our people” in the government, it’s fair to assume that he’s not talking about enlisting the hobbits. He’s talking about promoting the dark elves.
All of these threads come together in the thinking of Vance’s primary political patron and close personal friend Peter Thiel.
Thiel and Vance met in 2011 after Vance attended a talk by Thiel at Yale Law School — an encounter that Vance later called “the most important moment of my time at Yale.” Vance later went to work for Thiel’s venture capital firm, Mithril Capital — the VC company is, fittingly, named after Lord of the Rings — and later founded his own fund with Thiel’s backing. Along the way, though, Thiel became a sort of tutor to Vance, introducing Vance to the intellectual influences shaping the politics of Silicon Valley’s right-leaning cohort.
One of those influences was the Austrian libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises and two of his American disciples, Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. That trio formed the core of a group of thinkers known as the “paleolibertarians”: For von Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe, real political freedom required shrinking — and eventually abolishing — the centralized state, making way for an “anarcho-capitalist” system governed exclusively by markets and the forces of social competition.
Even as libertarians gained political momentum and support throughout the 1970s, the paleolibertarians remained relatively marginal on the right, and its followers knew that their program wasn’t popular enough to gain widespread support. By the 1990s, Rothbard in particular had given up on building a broad-based electoral movement based purely on libertarian principles. Instead, he began calling for libertarians to devote their energy to a new style of “right-wing populism,” based on an alliance between libertarian intellectual elites and the middle- and lower-class masses who felt oppressed and disillusioned by contemporary American life. “This two-pronged strategy is (a) to build up a cadre of our own libertarians, minimal-government opinion-molders, based on correct ideas; and (b) to tap the masses directly, to short-circuit the dominant media and intellectual elites,” Rothbard wrote in a 1992 essay titled “Right-Wing Populism,” which the writer John Ganz has called “the Ur-Text of Trumpism.”
Over time, this coalition would consolidate behind “inspiring and charismatic political leadership … who will be knowledgeable, courageous, dynamic, exciting and effective in mobilizing and building a movement,” Rothbard wrote. (The rabid anti-communist Joseph McCarthy offered one historical example of what this leadership might look like, Rothbard argued — but looking to the future, he pinned his hopes on Pat Buchanan.) Once this movement had concentrated power under its charismatic leader, it could seize political control from “the unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites,” dismantle the American state and usher in a new hyper-libertarian order.
Under this new order, Rothbard presumed, the natural elite would inevitably rise to the top.
Although the paleolibertarians’ goal was in theory the opposite of a strong centralized state or reactionary monarchy, it nevertheless attracted thinkers with authoritarian inclinations, in part because it espoused a frank skepticism of liberal democracy. For the paleolibertarians, Democracy existed to protect markets, and once it had ceased to do that, it became expendable. (Yarvin, for instance, has cited Rothbard and Hoppe as major influences, as have key figures on the alt-right.) This view had a decisive influence to Thiel, who has spoken at an organization founded by Hoppe, and who infamously declared in 2009 that he “no longer believe[d] that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
On the surface, Deneen, Yarvin and Thiel want different things — a postliberal order grounded in Catholic social teaching; a monarchy styled after a tech startup; a stateless techno-libertarian paradise. But they are united both by their opposition to liberal democracy and by their fundamental elitism — their shared belief that America is and always will be run by elites, but that it is currently ruled by the wrong type of elite. Their goal is not to abolish elite rule but to replace America’s current elite with a purportedly different, more conservative one, and they share a blueprint for doing so. Implicitly recognizing that their ideas are not popular enough to win broad-based political support, they advocate for an alliance between reactionary elites and the alienated masses, channeling popular frustration against the democratic order they hope to eventually replace. The “hobbits” are the engine of this transformation, but they are never its leaders.
Forging this alliance, all these thinkers agree, will take time — but the crucial first step is identifying and cultivating a new conservative elite. This new elite must be made up of people who are steeped in elite culture and reactionary ideas but who understand “the people” and can credibly claim to govern on their behalf. They must have one foot in the world of the elite and one foot in the heartland. They must think like elves but be able to talk like hobbits.
In other words, they must look like JD Vance — and their first task is to build a bridge between the elite reactionary circles and the right-leaning masses.
“Maybe the most important role that I have to play from the New Right’s perspective is to help build institutions and to get people engaged in politics who weren’t previously engaged in politics,” Vance told me when we spoke earlier this year, referring to his role in founding a handful of new institutions devoted to the nationalist-populist cause.
“It’s definitely an interesting thing,” he said, “but it’s going to take a long time.”
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