It is hard to imagine two more radically different figures sitting down to debate Ukraine. On one side was Ambassador John Herbst, a quintessential statesman from an era of American consensus that no longer exists. On the other was Curtis Yarvin: co-founder of Urbit, brilliant computer scientist and architect of the “Dark Enlightenment,” a radical worldview gaining influence across the Western right.
Two Visions of the West
The debate took place on the sidelines of “America’s Adversaries: The Russia Reality,” a conference organized primarily by the Independent Women’s Forum to explain to conservative and MAGA audiences why the United States should support Ukraine. Most of its arguments did little to persuade Yarvin, a man whose preferred dividing line between “Us” and “None of Our Beeswax” appears to run somewhere across the English Channel.
That was precisely why he needed to be matched with someone like Ambassador Herbst. Few people possess Herbst’s breadth of experience, from serving in diplomatic posts during the twilight of the Soviet Union to shaping US foreign-policy debates today as senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
Herbst, born in 1952, represents a mid-century archetype that even Yarvin can respect: the old-school establishment figure for whom immense responsibility and institutional competence were accompanied by the freedom and gusto of a generation that never had to answer to HR. That world possessed a candid, unvarnished authority conspicuously absent from today’s sanitized and risk-averse elite. Put differently, John Herbst is based - and, on the Soviet Union at least, most definitely red-pilled.
Yarvin, born in 1973, embodies a very different archetype: the deeply skeptical counter-intellectual of the hard right, emerging from what his political milieu regards as the ashes of Western civilization. The West has not yet burned down, of course, although many within his circle never tire of counting the kindling stacked around the dry husk of its institutions.
Perhaps it is Yarvin’s Generation X suspicion of authority that shaped this outlook. But he has taken institutional disillusionment far beyond mere cynicism, toward something resembling government by an all-powerful technocratic CEO. Just as the Bishop of Rome stepped into the vacuum left by the collapse of imperial authority in the West, Yarvin surveys today’s political landscape, sees the disappearance of figures like Herbst and recoils at the sight of the inmates running the asylum.
Yet Yarvin has no faith that competent administrators will ever return. His answer is therefore to abandon the classical liberal framework altogether and hand control to a preferred inmate - one who, at the very least, knows how to run the facility.
The Strange Alliance Against Liberalism
This rejection of classical liberal institutions creates a strange convergence between the movement routinely labeled the “far right” and elements of the radical left. Third Worldist movements and the Kremlin both benefit from the same two outcomes: deepening distrust of Western institutions - including those resisting the Russia-China-Iran axis - and promoting an anti-interventionism that places the United States and Russia on roughly equal moral ground.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this worldview could produce a future American strongman who regards Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping not as adversaries, but as models to emulate. This phenomenon recalls Alexander Dugin, the Russian theorist and principal architect of Neo-Eurasianism. At gatherings in Spain, Dugin addressed ultranationalists and far-left radicals alike, welcoming both into the same anti-liberal coalition. His message was essentially this: do not hesitate to join us, because we share the same enemies - imperialism, capitalism and liberalism.
This is not to suggest that Yarvin is a Duginist or a Kremlin ally. The connection lies in the broader convergence between otherwise incompatible political movements united by their hostility toward liberal institutions and the existing Western order. The failure of liberalism’s defenders to take Yarvin’s critique of contemporary political and social dysfunction seriously only makes this convergence more likely. By dismissing the diagnosis because they reject the proposed cure, they leave Yarvin surrounded by “fellow travelers” interested primarily in making the dictator-CEO part of his vision a reality, and with neither the incentive nor the courage to challenge him.
Breaking the Echo Chambers
Break The Rules was created to disrupt precisely this kind of intellectual isolation. I introduced Yarvin to Vladislav Davidzon, then a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an unlikely friendship developed. That relationship eventually helped pave the way for this debate.
Davidzon later joined forces with Adrian Karatnycky - an Atlantic Council senior fellow who served as president and executive director of Freedom House from 1993 to 2004 - to help organize “The Russia Reality” conference.
The conference itself was made possible by Meaghan Mobbs, director of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for American Safety and Security. Mobbs is the daughter of Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who served first as President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia and later as special envoy for Ukraine. Like her father, whose support for Ukraine often placed him at odds with the anti-interventionist wing of the MAGA movement, Mobbs has been willing to defend a position she believes will help determine the trajectory of the West.
The stage was therefore set for these two worlds to meet face-to-face. The purpose of the debate was never simply to convert Curtis Yarvin to the Ukrainian cause. A small part of me still hopes that something he heard that day prompted him to reconsider his view of Russia. But its real value lay elsewhere. This cross-generational, cross-ideological encounter created a rare point of intellectual contact, one that could never have emerged had both men remained confined within their respective echo chambers, as has increasingly become the norm.
The Battle for the West
This is precisely why such cross-tribal connections must multiply. A noticeable shift is already taking place among parts of the online right, as commentators abandon Russian narratives and move toward supporting Ukraine. Laura Loomer has openly described undergoing such a transformation herself.
The same realignment can be seen among figures such as Captive Dreamer, John Doyle, Patrick Casey and Matt Forney, the latter two of whom have appeared on Break The Rules. They deride what they call “the Retard Right,” an online faction they believe is being led astray by pundits such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. It may be that their audiences’ disgust at the dysfunction and arbitrary cruelty of authoritarian states will ultimately generate more support for Ukraine than any conventional moral or strategic argument.
Recognizing what stands against the West - both at home and abroad - may help us rediscover, by contrast, what makes Western civilization worth defending. The challenge is to harness that understanding before disillusionment gives way to the search for a dictator ruthless enough to seize power and impose order.
Time is running out. Figures with Herbst’s experience, institutional knowledge and sense of responsibility are becoming increasingly rare. In their place, political movements on both the populist right and the radical left are producing more performers, provocateurs and ideologues, and fewer people capable of governing. The West cannot afford to wait for its institutions to collapse before deciding that they were worth defending.
This piece originally appeared in Lev’s Lens.
