Girard and Yarvin: two thinkers of Trumpian populism

One reveals how societies unite by naming culprits. The other wants to put an end to violence through power without checks and balances. Everything seems to oppose them, but their ideas form an intellectual foundation for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance's conception of the people.

René Girard and Curtis Yarvin have recently become references in the upper echelons of American power. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance cites both among his major inspirations, as does Peter Thiel, the influential Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was also Girard's student at Stanford University.

Why is the American right so fascinated by a religious anthropologist and a monarchist, technophile computer scientist? What does this dual interest say about the vision of the people held by the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement? And above all: how can