The Swarm and the Influencer

Royalists are rare in modern democracies. Aside from a few fringe groups (like Moldbug’s NeoReactionaries), almost no one is calling for a return to the monarchical system, in which supreme authority is vested in an individual ruler. To be a royalist today is, in a sense, to renounce politics altogether. In fact, Moldbug’s ‘First Step’ for regime change is to eschew ‘any involvement with any activity whose goal is to influence, coerce, or resist the government, either directly or indirectly’. Similarly, Philippe Hemsen argues that the far-right French writer, Jean Raspail, is apolitical insofar as he is a royalist:

For Jean Raspail, if royalism is undoubtedly political, it is so far removed from the political politics of his time that it offers him the greatest freedom. In short, for Jean Raspail, to call himself a royalist is to be elsewhere on the political spectrum, and it is an excellent way of cutting short any debate of a political nature, without however turning his back on reflection on the politics, on the exercise of power, its embodiment, its link (or lack of link) to the sacred

Royalists may be rare, but this does not mean that the monarchical system has disappeared. On the contrary, it’s just given a different name. In his description of this system, Thomas Hobbes refers to it as ‘that great Leviathan’, the head of which is the Sovereign, the body = the…