JD Vance’s Guru Wants to Air Tag and Control You

Project 2025 Video Offers Rare Glimpse into Right Wing Dystopia 

As a student of right-wing extremism, the one lesson I hope people absorb is that these fanatics are often worse than they seem. Occasionally, they let their guard down, revealing the full extent of their psychotic vision for America’s future.     

Truth Wins Out’s research project, Behind the Mask, examined a video by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which was part of a new series, Project Cosmos. ISI is one of 114 organizations on Project 2025’s Advisory Board.

The video featured ISI President Johnny Burtka interviewing four modern right wing “luminaries”. The first was Christopher Rufo, who is best known for his role with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ censorship and anti-DEI crusade.

The second participant was Christopher Caldwell, a contributing editor for the white nationalist Claremont Review of Books. In his 2020 book The Age of Entitlement, Caldwell argues that the U.S. civil-rights movement that emerged after the 1960s effectively became a second constitution—one incompatible with the original.  

The third panelist was University of Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, who is the author of Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change: Toward a Post-Liberal Future.

The final panelist was computer programmer and “Dark Enlightenment philosopher Curtis Yarvin, who believes that American democracy has failed and should be replaced by a technocratic dictatorship.

Yarvin originally published an influential online blog under the name “Mencius Moldbug”. Although, Bigoted Bedbug might have been more appropriate.

Yarvin once wrote, “I am not a white nationalist, but I do read white-nationalist blogs, and I’m not afraid to link to them…I am not exactly allergic to the stuff” and “If you ask me to condemn [mass murderer] Anders Breivik, but adore Nelson Mandela, perhaps you have a mother you’d like to fuck.”

What’s profoundly troubling is that Yarvin is more than just a crackpot. Vice President JD Vance has cited him as an influence.  Yarvin’s startup, Urbit, reportedly received early funding from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who also is skeptical of democracy.

Given the pedigree of putridness, I was not expecting to be surprised by the participants’ rantings and ravings. Yet, by the time I finished watching the 2-hour discussion, I was slack jawed.  

Yarvin aggressively called for a total reordering of American society that coercively relied, “on the state and state power.” Yarvin waxed nostalgic for England’s Victorian Era, when “you were required to go to church every week. You were actually fined. Your name was written down in a little book. It was in a way it was a system of you know you would almost call it totalitarian in a way.” Yarvin continued:

“They certainly did not have a free press at that time and yet you know Elizabeth and society you know produced the most you know amazing you know sort of artistic works of all of history…and so when you imagine basically like you know sort of uses of state power that really go far beyond uh anything that we’ve sort of considered here.”

Remember, ten seconds ago when conservatives believed in limited government and personal liberty? Those days are long gone. In its place is Yarvin’s perverse fantasy world, which is an amalgamation of the ayatollah’s Iran and the Handmaid’s Tale. On the video he shared his vision:

“Your relationship with the state is intermediated through your church and basically your minister can drug test you. He can assign you work. He can put an air tag on you. He can tell you where to go, where not to go.”

I was fully expecting at least one of the panelists to jump in and say, “Hey, Curtis, you sound fucking CRAZY.” But not a single participant batted an eye and instead they collaborated to try to figure out the most effective method of implementing Yarvin’s fever dream.

Led by Christopher Caldwell, they floated the idea of repealing the 14^th Amendment—which includes providing citizens due process, birthright citizenship, and equal protection under the law. In other words—the freedom that separates America from nations like North Korea and Russia.   

Patrick Deneen chimed in that the 14^th Amendment didn’t actually have to be repealed. Instead, the conservative movement could simply campaign to “reinterpret” it, just like they did with abortion rights and the 2^nd Amendment.

ISI’s Burtka—the moderator–seemed to agree that the 14^th Amendment was a nuisance to the right wing’s dystopian plans. However, he was skeptical of repeal or redefinition, adding, “I just don’t think that’s ever going to happen absent like a cataclysm.”

Of course, this helps explain why the Republican Party, habitually engages in cataclysmic behavior, such as the January 6 insurrection, the ICE invasion of Minnesota, the weaponization of the Justice Department to punish political foes, Trump’s idea to federalize elections and his nefarious efforts to sabotage NATO.

One idea repeatedly floated was having American states separate into two camps: Modern and traditional. California, for example, would be a modernist stronghold, and Texas, a bastion of tradition.

“Let’s sort ourselves”, Deneen pronounced. What about those stuck in a state hijacked by the opposing faction?

“If you don’t like what’s happening…we are a society in which you can move,” Deneen breezily offered, as if most Americans want to—or can even afford—to pick up and start over.  

The ISI production had a number of other weird and disconcerting moments, such as Rufo strangely admitting, “I’m good at, in a sense, what is propaganda.” I wholeheartedly agree with his moment of candor.  

Rufo then went off the rails on his burning desire to abolish the Department of Education. “If this building [DOE] is still standing physically at the end of this president’s term, uh you know, we haven’t achieved the objective…just level the building.”

Are these conservatives or anarchist vandals trying to burn down our institutions in the most nihilistic ways imaginable? 

An infamous trans-basher, Rufo also proclaimed: “The trans community is not a community in the traditional sense of the word.”

During a debate on the effectiveness of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Rufo flippantly said, “We’re going to reduce the cost of transgender surgeries for minors and save taxpayer money you know with a pile of uh you know you know teenage genitalia this high.”

How bizarre, as well as a deeply concerning indication of what occupies Rufo’s diseased mind. Rufo also revealed how far his movement wants to drag America back into the past.

“People were sick of this and the reaction against BLM [Black Lives Matter] mania, kind of an aggressive capture of the institutions…[Once Trump won reelection MAGA wasn’t] only going to snap back to 2019, we’re going to snap back parts to 1964 essentially.”

Later in the show, Yarvin declared that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida is not conservative enough and wants a leader like DeSantis, but on steroids.

“Can we have a picture of what Ron DeSantis 10x, Ron DeSantis times 100x is? You know, is Ron DeSantis going to start, for example, a Florida branch of, you know, the Boy Scouts where they’re the Florida Scouts where they wear Florida uniforms?”

Christopher Rufo, who has worked with DeSantis on implementing censorship in Florida, responded, “Yeah, He did start the Florida militia, right?” Rufo later added that rather than unsuccessfully running for president, “He [DeSantis] would have been better off saying, ‘Hey, I’m very popular. Florida should repeal term limits, and I will like rule Florida for 25 years.’”

The panelists seemed sympathetic to the Confederacy and appeared to be disappointed the Union won the Civil War. Caldwell lamented that with the “benefit of hindsight they [The South] should have marched on Washington.”

The show also provided comic relief. The guests vigorously competed to brownnose President Donald Trump. At one point, they laughably portrayed him as an honest man. Rufo absurdly said, “If you get beyond the verbal” Trump doesn’t lie. Yarvin farcically leapt into add, “Trump is a very honest person, actually.”  

How do we not chuckle at Yarvin when he attempts to look like a legitimate academic, while slouching on the couch and saying with profound seriousness:

“I mean, Napoleon is really a startup CEO. He’s just like exactly a Silicon Valley CEO. And so, the question of what would a Silicon Valley CEO do with power over Washington, is like, look at Napoleon.” 

The right’s new dime store philosophers are clearly unserious quacks dressed up as “experts”. Unfortunately, there are incredibly wealthy, connected, and influential ideologues who want to disseminate their worldview.

For example, in 2025 ISI launched a “$25 Million initiative to expand programs that educate rising leaders for liberty.” I shudder to contemplate what radicalized conservative youth—raised on the theories of Yarvin and Rufo—will mean for the future of our country.

This is even raising alarms within the traditional conservative moment. The Washington Times reported in November 2025:

Christopher Long and Thomas Lynch said they resigned at the end of Friday’s board meeting after the panel rejected their call to fire ISI President Johnny Burtka over what they describe as the institute’s shift from “educating for liberty” to platforming unorthodox figures hostile to the nation’s founding principles.

“ISI has largely abandoned its on-campus philosophical programming, which equipped future leaders to better uphold American ideals,” they wrote in an open letter posted on X.

“Instead, it focuses on ideological and political podcasts that introduce audiences to alt-right online personalities, such as Tucker Carlson and others who seek to undermine the liberal ideas of the American Founding.” They said the “fundamental shift in ISI’s focus was done behind the board’s back.”

I’m still amazed by what MAGA personalities reveal when they think no one is looking. As bad as they are on social media and FOX, there is always another level of depravity. If you keep digging, you’re bound to discover an underbelly that advocates enabling Christian preachers who have the power to “air tag” you and “tell you where to go” and “where not to go.” This is ultimately the dystopian world that MAGA desires and it’s why we continue ferociously defending freedom.