The word demotism (meaning ‘rule in the name of the people’) isn’t used much nowadays, but it had a lot of currency in the 2010s neoreactionary blogosphere that influenced the present-day dissident right. It dates from an early post by Mencius Moldbug (i.e. Curtis Yarvin) at Unqualified Reservations, which contained some very questionable speculations on the evolution of demotism from divine right. This post reconsiders the issue and reveals the true antiquity of the demotist tradition in the West.