Dark MAGA: how tech billionaires plan to kill democracy

What if the biggest threat to democracy wasn’t a populist uprising from below — but a hostile takeover from above?

Not tanks in the street. Not foreign hackers or rogue generals. But a cabal of tech billionaires in designer hoodies and black MAGA hats, quietly building a CEO-kingdom while the rest of us doomscroll into oblivion.

It’s not science fiction. It’s not even subtle. It’s happening in real time, and they’re calling it something straight out of a dystopian comic book:

Dark MAGA.

The origin story: PayPal, power, and a shared ideology

To understand Dark MAGA, you have to start with a group of tech founders who made a lot of money, very quickly — and never really stopped trying to reshape the world in their image.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel co-founded what would become PayPal. After they sold it to eBay in 2002, their alumni group — dubbed the “PayPal Mafia” — scattered across Silicon Valley like a network of sleeper agents. You’ve heard of the companies they built: YouTube, LinkedIn, Palantir, Yelp, Affirm, Reddit. You’ve likely used most of them today.

But this was never just about startups. Thiel, especially, had bigger plans.

He didn’t just want to fund companies. He wanted to fund civilizations. Or more specifically: dismantle the one we have and build a new one on top of its rubble.

Enter the ideology behind Dark MAGA.

Enter: the Dark Enlightenment

At the heart of it is an obscure but influential figure: Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug — a former software engineer turned political philosopher whose blog became gospel in certain techno-libertarian circles.

Yarvin’s thesis? Democracy is obsolete. The institutions that support it — media, academia, government — are all part of a coordinated illusion he calls “The Cathedral.” An invisible hand that maintains control by making the masses think they’re in charge.

His solution?

Replace democracy with a CEO-led monarchy. Break the U.S. into privatized “patchworks.” Give power to those smart (read: rich) enough to run things efficiently. Dismantle bureaucracy by retiring all government employees (R.A.G.E. — Retire All Government Employees), and use confusion and chaos as a smoke screen while power consolidates.

The idea is deeply anti-democratic. It’s also seductive to billionaires who see themselves as philosopher-kings. And Thiel, for one, was all in.

From theory to playbook

Peter Thiel didn’t just read Yarvin. He funded him. He popularized him. Then he went looking for foot soldiers.

He found one in JD Vance, a Yale Law grad turned venture capitalist, whose memoir Hillbilly Elegy sold the myth of the “forgotten working-class white voter” to liberal and conservative elites alike. Thiel helped bankroll Vance’s Senate run in Ohio, despite the fact that Vance had no political experience — and had once publicly bashed Trump.

Didn’t matter.

Thiel had a long game. And it worked: Vance won.

Now, reports suggest Thiel and Musk have pushed Trump to name Vance as his 2024 running mate — dangling a war chest of billionaire dollars in exchange. That’s not loyalty. That’s leverage.

Because here’s the thing: they’re not Trump fans. They’re not MAGA. They’re something much darker.

Trump is just the useful idiot who kicks in the door. Vance is the one who walks through it with a new Constitution in hand.

The symbolism of the black hat

Elon Musk didn’t wear a red MAGA hat to the Super Bowl.

He wore a black one.

It wasn’t just a color swap. It was a signal. A meme for those who know. A wink to the idea that MAGA has evolved — into something sleeker, colder, and far more dangerous.

Call it what you want: techno-authoritarianism, digital feudalism, billionaire nationalism.

Whatever the label, the goal is simple: gut democracy, privatize governance, and rule from the top down.

And it’s already underway.

What’s already happening

Here’s what makes this so terrifying: it’s not a hypothetical plan. It’s not a manifesto buried in the corners of the internet.

It’s a real-world strategy backed by billionaires with unlimited reach.

• Thiel and Musk are funding candidates who share their worldview — or can be shaped by it.
• JD Vance is rising as the “MAGA heir,” but with elite grooming and tech backing.
• Musk is gutting trust in public institutions, from the press to public health, using X (formerly Twitter) as a digital flamethrower.
• They’re installing loyalists, stripping regulations, and laundering radical ideas through think tanks and newsletters until they seem “reasonable.”

And they’re doing it while the public is too distracted by AI, TikTok drama, and partisan bloodsport to notice.

The endgame: democracy without the demos

This isn’t your grandfather’s fascism. There are no jackboots. No military coups. Just venture-funded coups in Patagonia vests.

Dark MAGA doesn’t need to win elections. It just needs to convince you they don’t matter anymore.

That the government doesn’t work (so why vote?).

That public schools are broken (so privatize them).

That journalists are biased (so trust influencers instead).

That democracy is inefficient (so let the “smart people” take over).

It’s not a revolution. It’s a product launch. With killer UX, sleek branding, and no customer support.

So… what do we do?

If this sounds alarmist, good. Alarm bells are supposed to be loud.

The good news? Authoritarianism is like mold — it thrives in darkness and shrinks under scrutiny.

The more we call this out, connect the dots, and resist the normalization of these ideas, the harder it is for them to spread.

Because for all the money and power behind Dark MAGA, it still depends on one thing:

Our silence.

Break it.

References

Almgren, S. (2024). The Trumpland Diaries. Retrieved from https://lnkd.in/eCHvt4Cj

Financial Times. (2023). Peter Thiel: Power, ideology, and influence. Retrieved from https://lnkd.in/ed_7Fv8Q

The New Yorker. (2023). Curtis Yarvin and the DarkEnlightenment. Retrieved from https://lnkd.in/e7XDZFyV

Yarvin, C. (2008–2020). Unqualified Reservations [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/

Levy, S. (2020). Facebook: The Inside Story. New York: Penguin Press.