The Rise of Techno-Fascism

Speaker 1 [00:00:10] Hey fam, it’s me, Imara. Welcome to the TransLash Podcast, a show where we tell trans stories to save trans lives. Silicon billionaires aren’t just shaping technology as we can clearly see day-to-day with the leadership of Elon Musk and Doge. They are using that technological power and the billions generated from it to push an extremist vision for the future, one that is genocidal in nature and in which trans people take center stage in their plans for erasure. So we started digging into the beliefs and motivations of some of these actors like Elon Musk in our episode on the threat of digital authoritarianism. So now we’re going to take an even deeper look at him and the wider political strategies and the end game of some of these techno extremists behind him, many of whom you may not have heard before. We’ll be talking about how they are using their wealth and influence to destroy our democracy and society, and even the very concept of human dignity. Guiding us through all of this is journalist Gil Duran, who’s been tracking the rise of techno-fascism and its consequences for our country.

Speaker 2 [00:01:26] I think this ends with tens of millions of Americans in the streets demanding a halt to this authoritarian project. And I think when people become that active, I think we’re going to win.

Speaker 1 [00:01:38] Before we get to that important and illuminating conversation, let’s start out as always with some trans joy. Thanks for watching! In a moment when technology shapes so much of our daily lives, we can find hope in the members of our community who are reclaiming it for liberation rather than control. Coraline Ada Emke is a software engineer, activist, and creator of the Contributor Covenant, a tool that has made open source spaces more inclusive. She’s also the founder of the Organization for Ethical Source, which pushes for technology that centers human rights and social good. Here she is to tell us more.

Speaker 3 [00:02:38] The long career I’ve had in tech justice let me work side by side with a lot of really amazing people. And we made a lot of change in the tech sector during that time. And I was really afraid of the stories kind of going untold. So I ended up writing a book called, We Just Built Hammers, Stories from the Past, Present and Future of Responsible Tech, which examines the kind of neutrality of technology that we hide behind a lot over the time and traces the origins of responsible tech movement all the way back to the atomic age in the Manhattan project, to the present-day hackers who are using community and culture as tools against techno-fascism.

Speaker 1 [00:03:18] Coraline, you are trans joy. Do you know someone like Coralina who embodies trans joy? Well, send us an email at trans slash underscore podcast at transslash.org and make sure to include their name, contact information and why you think they should get a shout out in the future trans joy segment. And with that, let me get into my critical conversation with Gilderan. As technology becomes a tool of authoritarian control, it’s critical to examine who holds power and how they wield it. There’s no better person to do that than with journalist Gil Duran. Gil has served as opinion editor for the Sacramento Bee and led editorial strategy at the San Francisco Examiner. He’s also spent over a decade in California politics, overseeing communications for governor Jerry Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris during her tenure as attorney general. Now through his writing and media work, Gill exposes the unchecked influence of tech billionaires, the failures of mainstream journalism, and the growing threat of techno-fascism. Gill, thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 [00:04:31] Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 [00:04:33] One of the things that I think that is really important is that we see the impact and the works of Doge. People understand behind that is Elon Musk. They may understand that Elon Musk is connected to Peter Thiel, who is a part of what they call the PayPal mafia. These sort of South African immigrants, I guess is the best way to say it, who became billionaires and are in community with each other, but they may not know a person who’s behind them, Curtis Yarvin, who you have helped to bring to the world. Can you just explain who this person is and how radical the ideas that he’s putting forth are?

Speaker 2 [00:05:21] Sure, Curtis Yarvin is a San Francisco software programmer who in the early 2000s was a very well-known internet troll, riding under the pseudonym of Minxious Moldbug. And as Minxuous Mold bug, Yarvin began laying out this whole sort of theory that democracy was bad, democracy was outdated, and that what we needed to do was to replace democracy with a different kind of governance, something that looked a lot more like a corporate dictatorship with mass surveillance to ensure security, and with pretty extreme measures taking to make sure that so-called unproductive people would no longer be a part of society. For example, as Minchus Moldbug-Yarvin wrote that in San Francisco, which he called Friskorp in his futuristic dystopia universe, unproductive people, whatever those are, could be potentially turned into biodiesel to fuel the Muni bus system. But he said, well, since most people probably wouldn’t want to live in a city where the busses are fueled by the remains of dead, unproductive people, we could instead seal them into virtual reality honeycombs and make them live out their lives sort of in a virtual prison where they think they’re having a good time, but they are actually just rotting away in this cell. Very extreme stuff. And normally it’s not the kind of stuff we would still be having to talk about today. except that certain people in Silicon Valley, chief among them, Peter Thiel, thought that Yarvin was a brilliant thinker and somebody whose ideas deserved to be taken seriously. And Peter Thiele sort of becomes the godfather or the sugar daddy to Curtis Yarvin, funding his companies. And Yarvin becomes known as Peter Thiels, quote, house philosopher, though I might call more of Peter Till’s court jester. He seems to be the guy who says out loud a lot of what he’s hearing, maybe at parties and in the background, but he has continued to develop this anti-government philosophy. And now we see him being quoted by JD Vance, who has now become vice president of the United States. So, Jarvin, internet troll with very extreme ideas about ending democracy. We shouldn’t have to care about him except these billionaires and the vice president consider him a very important thinker.

Speaker 1 [00:07:38] Well, one of the things I think people don’t understand is that these are not ideological conversations for them, It seems as if Yarvin, through his writing, understands that in order to transform a system that widespread death and destruction will be essential elements of that, right? He’s quoted in a piece that you wrote, citing him. that we need to find, you know, quote, humane alternatives to genocide, close quote, right? Like that a part of this is not kind of philosophical debates about, you now, the rights of man versus nature, or you know even conservative conversations from people like Bill Buckley about the role of the state. Like a part their radical reimagination to undermine and transform democracy and to put corporations at the core. is the idea that widespread death and cruelty will be essential elements in that.

Speaker 2 [00:08:35] Yeah, to understand Jarvan, you have to understand that he’s largely derivative of a book that came out in 1997 called The Sovereign Individual, a very apocalyptic book that basically said that in the coming information age, in the 21st century, technology would eliminate many, many jobs, the majority of jobs. And this would lead to chaos and violence and crime as people no longer had a way to earn money or to survive. But that amidst this chaos and collapse would rise a cognitive elite. who would be the people who become wealthy off technology and are now the new masters of the universe. And the cognitive elite would then become the rulers and create their own territories and their own governments as everything outside of their digital castle walls devolved into chaos and into violence. So you have this apocalyptic belief system where everything is headed toward destruction, chaos, and violence. And as crazy as that book sounds, it was written by two Oxford-educated gentlemen. It had such a profound effect on Peter Thiel that when it was reissued in 2020, he wrote the preface to this book. And so I would challenge anybody who wants to understand this stuff or who has questions about whether this is a bit, you know, too scary to be real, go and thumb through a few chapters of The Sovereign Individuals starting with Peter Thiels preface and tell me what you see. Because these guys have a very dark vision of the future. And Jarvin makes that comment about a humane alternative to genocide. in the piece that I was talking about, where he talks about turning unproductive people, which I would assume he’s talking about the unhoused or other people who are considered not good and productive in society, into biodiesel, right? And throughout his writings, even now, he wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago complaining about how Elon is carrying out this revolution, his writing is full of metaphors and references to genocide and violence in a way that is very conspicuous, not accidental, and very concerning.

Speaker 1 [00:10:31] These people believe it. And so I think that one of the things that people are perplexed by is why DOGE seems to be so bent on destroying things. Why it is so inoculated, seemingly, against the harm that it is causing by removing the access to life-saving medications for 40 million people in Africa, for example. Or why it is potentially set to destroy Medicaid. Bye! You know, it’s firing people at random and putting the healthcare of veterans at risk. And that’s because built into the philosophy behind an organization like Doge is this kind of dark destructive vision. Like, it helps you decode why they’re doing what they’re

Speaker 2 [00:11:18] Yeah, they want chaos. They’re not afraid of people dying, of systems falling apart. You know, I worked in government for a very long time, and I worked for administration under Jerry Brown, where we had a massive budget deficit, and we had to cut a lot from the budget. And when you start cutting government, you very quickly find yourself up against programs that really matter to people, life-saving programs that decide whether someone gets healthcare, whether someone has enough to eat. And so. It’s not something to wantonly do. There’s a real moral question of what you cut and what you don’t. And the way that Elon is celebrating with a chainsaw and seeming to have zero idea of how much these programs mean to people. And these are not government handouts. These are things that people pay into. Social security is an investment we make in the future and threatening to cut programs like that, which would hurt seniors, hurt people in other countries who because we’re trying to create democracy and have influence in those countries, right? The programs they’re cutting are not just handouts. Those are things that make the United States a stronger country. It’s part of our diplomatic approach to the world. And so at the heart of this is a lack of fear for hurting people, even to the point that they die or have diminished lives, but also weakening American influence around the world, we don’t have USA because we are so good and we wanna just help people. That’s a massive tool of soft power that the United states has. And what they essentially see because of the sovereign individual and their belief system is that the United States of America needs to collapse as a world power so that we’re just one among many other countries and that democracy is no longer the main program we’re pushing in the world, but that United States becomes an autocracy like China or like Russia and the era of thinking that democracy as the way that the world should work is over. And I think that’s the more pernicious heart of it. But it starts off with this. Destruction and people think it’s chaos. It’s not chaos It’s a strategy for the most part a strategy of destruction and they don’t really care what happens because they don’t care about people is Musk keeps saying empathy is a weakness except when he’s crying his little eyes out because people are Protesting against Tesla that that’s something that lists tears from Musk But he doesn’t seem to be able to feel that about other people who are being harmed by this So I would keep that in mind that they don’ t care about hurting people and they especially want to weaken this country.

Speaker 1 [00:13:41] How did Elon Musk get involved in this ideology? It’s very clear, as we say, it’s Yavin to Teal, and then Teal is the big proponent, the wind in the sails behind the rise of JD Vance, right? There’s essentially no rise of J.D. Vance without Peter Teal. How does Elon Musk kind of get pulled into that orbit? Was it just a matter of him being a part of the PayPal mafia and just through association, Or is there? sort of a wider appeal, something in him that this really spoke to that didn’t find expression before this contact with Jarvan and his ideas.

Speaker 2 [00:14:21] Well, I think Elon Musk’s politics are only based on one thing, what Elon Musk considers his self-interest. And as with most things, Elon Musk didn’t invent the dark enlightenment or the neo-reactionary movement, but he jumps in late in the game and tries to put his name on it and take the most credit for it because it was going to happen.

Speaker 1 [00:14:39] Like he did with Tesla.

Speaker 2 [00:14:41] Tesla and many other things. Elon is not really an inventor. He’s a guy who jumps on things and tries to take credit. And so he’s made himself the center of the story. But you really have to look deeper and see that it’s Peter Thiel, who’s been funding this idea and this movement for a long time, and who is not on the middle of every TV station or jumping up and down on the couch at the White House, who is more in the shadows. He does do occasional interviews, though he seems to. not be very telegenic anymore and really struggle to get words out. He has a very big struggle talking. So I think he avoids speaking because there’s something preventing him from being as articulate as would be necessary. So I thinks it’s important to understand that background. I think with Elon Musk, he has become radicalized over the past few years. I think always had bright wing leanings because he’s a rich guy from South Africa. For a long time, it was in his best interest to hide, to appear to be sort of liberal, the guy who wants to solve climate change. He needed massive investment from the Obama administration. So he coded himself as somebody who might be a progressive liberal who wants to save the world. But he’s gotten so rich now that he doesn’t have to hide anymore. He was sort of in the closet as a right winger. And now he’s just coming full on out. And I think he’s been radicalized by a few things. I think Black Lives Matter scared the hell out of these people. They saw that people were standing up and that society was going to continue to shift against white supremacy and police brutality and racism, and that scared them. I think that the pandemic scared them because we suddenly had to be in a collective behavior situation where we had to work together to save lives. And there’s no question that Musk has also been radicalized by his own bigotry against his trans daughter and that he blames that on. leftists on Marxism, on the Democratic Party, on anybody he hates. And so I think he’s fully gone off the edge and I think has become more openly embracing of this destructive, even to himself, self-destructive politics. There’s no reason for him to be in the middle of everything like he is. I think that he has sort of lost his ability to gage reality to some degree.

Speaker 1 [00:16:56] Yeah, it’s so interesting. It reminds me of a lecture I heard once from Lord David Owen, who was a member of the British establishment, who came up with the idea of something called the Huber syndrome that people develop as they rise. And at the highest level, there is a disconnect from reality that he had said that he has seen throughout his career and said that it needed more attention. And it just struck me that you know, what you’re talking about, what you are describing in a way, like his inability to kind of associate with the world around him in a way that would be logical has lessened the higher that he’s risen.

Speaker 2 [00:17:35] There are studies that show that the more power and wealth you have, the less empathy you have. You become very arrogant, very hubristic. He doesn’t allow anyone to contradict him or to rein him in. And there have been studies that showed that wealthy people suffer from a very particular element. Nobody will tell them the truth. Everybody tells them what they want to hear. And that tends to be where the incentive is, to tell them what want to here. And so they don’t realize when they’re being ridiculous or completely disconnected from reality. You know now we see this alleged move by Trump to rein in Musk, they’re saying, oh, he’s going to leave the administration in a few weeks, mission accomplished. I don’t think he’ll leave. I think he will still be as involved as ever, but he has created a situation where he’s bringing everybody down. He’s doing things. I spent a lot of time in politics. You don’t want to have some insane drug-addled billionaire out there as the spokesman on everything. And he jumped in the middle of that Wisconsin Supreme Court race. what’s the ten point race in the end and your side loses. you should have known that in a poll and you wouldn’t go and jump in the middle of that. Did he think that he was going to make the 10-point difference? Does he think he is beloved by the people? That’s massive, dangerous delusion. And so I think he’s still going to be involved, but I think he sort of flunked the audition of being president as he has been for the past few months. But now we enter a more pernicious phase where it may be less obvious how crazy it is, and they try to do things a little more quietly. We’ll see. He may continue to be in the middle of the story, but I do think that Elon Musk, his instability may be the saving grace here. Part of what’s amazing to me, the stuff I’ve written about these guys is not something I got from secret documents or from insiders who were trying to let me in on a secret. This stuff they’ve been saying out in the open. They’ve been writing it in books and saying it in long podcast interviews. They even have a conference once a year dedicated to this idea of the post-America They are not being quiet about it. And I think their inability to be quiet and their instability in terms of people like Elon is what is giving us a chance to wake up to what this really is and to act in time to save the country and save ourselves.

Speaker 1 [00:19:44] Yeah, it reminds me in a lot of ways of the anti-trans movement, who moves in very similar ways in terms of being out in the open. On that point, let’s go back to what you just mentioned a minute ago about Elan. I mean, one of the things that’s fascinating to me is how eugenicist this world is, right? It really believes that there are people who are biologically worthy of living and everybody else should die or at a minimum be subjugated. And one of things that… What fascinates me is the way in which they are unitarily, virulently anti-trans in this Like, they have an obsession like Elon, every single one of them, right? What do you think is that interplay between this idea for them of techno-fascism, eugenicism, and anti-trance-ness? Like, why is that a focal point of their ideology?

Speaker 2 [00:20:39] Fascism always needs out groups and minority groups to persecute. That’s how they unite their own side in the cause. And I think to some degree, their attack on trans people also unites them with the right wing and the Republican Party, which has made trans people a scapegoat. You know, we’re talking about a very, very small minority of people, but somehow they are obsessed with making sure those people can’t exist and can’t have rights and respect. A lot of their strategy is based around scape goading, finding scape goats. And I think in trans people they see, because the concept is something many Americans are still coming to grips with or learning about, it’s easy to demonize and scare people and make this seem like a threat, as we’ve seen happen throughout history. You know, 60 years ago, a white person and a black person couldn’t get married because of all the terrible things that would happen in society if we allowed that to happen. So at every phase, you create this demonization, this thing that cannot. When they do it to other groups as well, but they are particularly obsessed with trans people, I think with trans people, it’s sort of a twofer. You both exploit and persecute a group, but fascists also always play up tensions around sex and gender, right? And so it’s a two-fer with transpeople. You have sex, sexuality, gender, identity, and you also have a minority group to persecute. So I think that’s why it’s important to them. straight out of the fascist playbook and I’ll say… It’s interesting to me that they are so hung up on this particular issue because a lot of them are what you call transhumanists. They believe people should become part machine now and that our brain should merge with AI. Some of them were injecting the blood of younger people into themselves in an effort to stay younger and live longer. Elon Musk is a bald man who identifies as a man with hair. That’s like hair plugs. If you look at him 25 years ago, he’s bolder than me. where did the hair come from? Right? Here’s a man who couldn’t accept. I mean, it’s painful. I went through it myself. It’s, you know, dark time in your young life when you realize you’re going to be a bald guy. You think life will never be the same, but most of us get over it. You find a healthy way to cope and life gets better. So in many ways, they’re all about changing what it means to be human. They want to mate with machines and do all kinds of genetic experiments to extend life and live forever. It seems to me that transgender should be the least of their concerns. It should be something they’re accepting of in this universe where everything is possible and even being human itself doesn’t have one definition. So it’s a very conspicuous contradiction and hypocrisy in their ideology.

Speaker 1 [00:23:21] I mean, I also think that in this kind of mix, they also get to use and figure out how to possibly use technology to identify small groups of people to begin to exclude people over time. And once they, because it’s such a small group of people, you can figure out the right kind of, mix of laws, regulations, kind of like they’re doing with people who are immigrants right now. And you can roll that out to larger groups of society as you need to see fit, you you know, to bring about this world that they. that they have to construct in terms of winners and losers. This is a broader question that I have on so many things, but how did the establishment miss this and why don’t they take it seriously, right? Because the irony is that these guys can be stopped, right. Like there’s nothing that’s inevitable about their power and their rise. So for example, the irony of them hating and wanting to destroy the government. Elon Musk is highly dependent upon the government, and the entire technology sector is reliant upon the government, even for its existence, right? It wouldn’t exist without the investment of the American people and the United States government. So it’s not like these are, they’re invincible, right. What about the way that this country is working, you think, given your experience in politics, that has allowed us to get to the point where kind of genocidal eugenicists who are obsessed with technology, now hold the keys to the entire country unchecked.

Speaker 2 [00:24:55] Yeah, well I think the problem is that mainstream journalism and mainstream democratic politics reward conventional thinking. Everything has to be poll tested to be safe, everything has to be something that we know people will respond to or know about. And we live in an era where unconventional thinkers have seized power. And if you’re a conventional thinker in a system that rewards conventional thinking, it’s going to be really hard for you to see and understand what’s actually happening. and it’s going to seem like a conspiracy theory to you. But it’s not a theory if it’s happening. It’s not theory if the only explanation for what otherwise seems like indescribable, senseless, illogical chaos. And it’s a theory if it is what these guys have been saying they’re going to do for years, if not decades. And what I often say to people who are skeptical, because I deal with some skepticism from… journalism colleagues, although that’s reducing a lot, a lot more people are calling me now to get briefed on, okay, what do I need to understand to cover this? It’s starting to change. The New Yorker interviewed me a few weeks ago, the New York Times interviewed me, and more stuff like that is starting to happen. But if you’re a conventional thinker, it’s going to be hard for you to see. But it’s not a theory if you can point to these guys saying it. And look, maybe it’s all a coincidence that what’s happening is what they’ve been saying they’re going to do. But I think at the very least we have to tell people about the coincidence, don’t we?

Speaker 1 [00:26:21] Yeah, I mean, I say all the time that I believe in coincidence, but I don’t trust coincidence. So I think at a minimum, that’s what’s required. Talk to us a little bit about what the future of this movement may be as embodied by JD Vance. You know, it is clear that amongst this crowd, JD Vans is being positioned as the heir apparent. But he seems to be fighting for attention with Elon, who right now is the person who is the most in power in terms of their vision and the ability to execute it. I’m wondering if you can just talk about the role of JD Vance here and the degree to which people should be focused on him in a way that they’re not.

Speaker 2 [00:27:08] First, I want to say that, you know, we should give credit where credit’s due. It’s not every man who has the guts to go on the national stage with an eyeliner. And JD Vance has really made some strides there in terms of normalizing that. and

Speaker 1 [00:27:22] Next up may be painted fingernails.

Speaker 2 [00:27:24] Hey, who knows, you know?

Speaker 1 [00:27:25] It would advance the erasure of the gender binary, so I’m here for it.

Speaker 2 [00:27:29] In five years when he’s on Dancing with the Stars, we’ll see who he really is. I’d say that this movement has a serious existential problem, which is what comes after Trump. Trump was a marriage of convenience for them, an acquisition that made sense because regardless of all of his warts and criminal convictions and lies and lack of ethics, he still has a cult around him, a political cult that has put him back into office. But there’s no one else on the scene who has that kind of cult power that Trump has. this. We don’t like him. right? But he has a charisma. The guy’s been in our brains for 50 years. I remember in the 80s, he was always in the Enquirer when I was a kid. My mom would read the Enquirer and there’s Donald Trump doing something. He was on TV as this gold-plated idea of an American rich guy in the 80’s, you know, lifestyles of the rich and famous. Then he’s got the apprentice. So this is a person who’s in our brain and in the brains of tens of millions of Americans in a way that no one else is. And that explains, I think, lot of his power. J.D. Vance doesn’t have any of that. J. D. Vances is the most unpopular vice president, I think, in history, if not decades, right? He’s an angry, whiny, anti-charisma guy. And I don’t think he can really carry the load or have the same power that Trump has. It’s certainly not going to be Elon, who A, is a foreign born billionaire and who’s just flopped and his poll numbers have dived. Nobody wants that. So what comes after Trump? And these guys have put their bet on JD Vance, who was largely a creation of Peter Thiel. Basically at every step of the way, Peter Thiele has been JD Vances sugar daddy since he left law school. I mean he invested in his business, gave him a job in venture capital, spent I think more money than had been spent up to that point to get him elected to the Senate and made the peace with Donald Trump when he wanted Vance on the ticket because Vance had previously referred to Trump as America’s Hitler, which was apparently a compliment. So they’re putting a big bet on JD Vance, but I’m not sure he can really pull it off. Even Trump has been asked a few times if Vance is his successor, and he’s like, well, there might be others, right? When you’re not committing that your vice president is your successor, that’s pretty telling. So I think they have a big existential problem there, which is who comes next. Of course, the Democrats are so out to lunch and hiding under a rock and not putting anything up. It’s not clear who our champion will be to defeat these guys. assuming there’s a free and fair election. So I do think they have a problem there. Vance was an investment teal made, but I don’t think most Americans really like Vance and he’s just very dislikeable and angry and petulant and I’m not really sure he will make the grade, although he’s very dangerous, in a way more dangerous than Trump because Vance is an ideologue. And if you look at his trajectory going from the hillbilly elegy guy who said that Trump was Hitler to what he is now. This is a man who will become anything he needs to become in order to get more power. And that kind of man is very, very dangerous in politics.

Speaker 1 [00:30:43] people jokingly talk about this world of the dark enlightenment or techno-fascism or so many other names as the nerd rike. And I am wondering if that’s part of the problem of not taking a cold hard look at people like J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, that there’s just this idea that these are just nerds, you know, just like tech guys. who are bumbling around and just playing around and tinkering in the garage and then coming up with something good, like that there’s something embedded in our idea that nerds are not dangerous, right? That nerds our innocuous, that nerd’s are kind of bumbling and can’t really be a threat. Cause there’s some thing in all of this as we’ve spoken about all of these people, you know, as this conversation proceeds, I was already alarmed cause I read your work and follow it, but I’m even more alarmed if that’s possible. No, that’s okay. That’s okay, no, I get it. I get it from my own work. Like, a lot of times, like, I’m a dame of doom, so I get it. But I, this idea that these are just nerds, they’re not really a threat, even though they’re, like, burning down the house. I mean, you’re in Silicon Valley. Can you just talk a little bit about the idea that we have of who these people are versus who they actually are?

Speaker 2 [00:32:06] The name the NerdRyke, people think I came up with that, but I didn’t. When I had stories going viral last year, someone reached out to me from the tech world, from the crypto world, someone who knows these people, and said, well, you know, we’ve been calling these guys the Nerd Ryke for years. And I thought, well that’s a catchy name, and so it wasn’t in much use, so I named my newsletter that. This was in my newsletter, had very few readers, and I didn’ think that I’d be sitting here doing all these interviews today because it seemed like most people were content back then to ignore her. the storyline, at least in the mainstream media, and I do think the history of authoritarian movement shows that you need to be able to mock these people. One of the most powerful things you can use against them is humor. But I do it’s important for people to understand that what we’re talking about is tech fascism. If you go down the checklist of what makes a fascist movement, these guys meet every single line of that checklist. And so the name is kind of catchy, is a way to get people into the conversation. What I tend to do is pivot to exactly what they are, which is this is tech fascism. And that’s why they’re in such alignment with crystal fascism and with the Republican party and the MAGA movement, which was entirely fascist. I mean, you could go down. Professor Jason Stanley wrote a book called how fascism works. And it has these 10 main things that constitute fascism and by any cut, it’s a fascist movement. One thing people often say is that, well, there’s just not this militaristic nationalistic part of it. Well, I don’t know, we’re talking about invading Greenland. And a lot of these tech guys are now going into weapons development. Did they want all the DOD and military contracts? So I would say that that part is very much getting developed when we’re threatening our own allies with invasion because America needs to take care of Greenland, which has a bunch of resources that they want and is strategically located. That is imperialism, tech imperialism or what Balaji Srinivasan, one of the main thinkers in this movement, calls tech Zionism. So, I think that it’s important to realize. A, we do need to mock them and have a little fun because this is some dark stuff, right? But we always have to pivot to reminding people why we have to fight and what they really represent, which is fascism, which a very dangerous idea. And just because they are computer nerds doesn’t make them any less dangerous. You know, just because their awkward and weird, they seem to have this desire for revenge on society. and on the very nation that gave a lot of them their wealth. Remember, these guys are trying to dismantle our government and a lot them have gotten super wealthy off of government contracts and now they wanna dismantle that, so.

Speaker 1 [00:34:42] Let’s try to see if we can turn to some glimmer of hope, because there is always hope, right? I mean, the fascinating thing is that they can be beaten and there’s some times when already, you know, people power or an outcry has kind of slowed them down or has caused them to U-turn. I’m gonna ask you two questions along this, given your experience, what do you think that we should do? The first is, you now, if powerful people called you into a room, let’s say it was Chuck Schumer. and Hakeem Jeffries. And they said, you know, look, we clearly have missed a trick on what these people are up to and how far they’re willing to go. We’ve been out to lunch and we’re not where we need to be. From everything that you know about them, how should we respond in order to preserve democracy and to prevent the worst from happening? Like, what are the things that we need to do even as we are in the minority too. to try to slow them down or stop them. What would you say?

Speaker 2 [00:35:45] think you have to tell people what’s really happening. There’s this conventional narrative that this is somehow just Trump or that they don’t know what they’re doing and it’s incompetence. And these are some conventional narratives. People need to know there’s a group of people with a dangerous ideology and they’re trying to make the thing happen. They’re trying to weaken the country and in democracy as we know it. And Trump is a part of that. You know, I often say that trying to talk about what’s happening without talking about these tech fascists and people like Yarvin. is like trying to talk about 9-11 without talking about Al Qaeda. This isn’t just randomly happening. This is an ideology. This is a group of people trying to make a very specific set of things happen. And so if you don’t tell people that, how are they supposed to know? And so that’s the number one thing I would say, and there’s a lot of exploitable material there. I’m old enough to remember when we had to spend months listening to everything that Obama’s preacher Jeremiah Wright had said that might be offensive to white people. They played it over and over and over again. We haven’t done the same thing for Jarvin or Teal and all the crazy things that they say. There’s no opposition party right now. There were a lot of exploitable things, a lot of exploitable material here that could really reach people, especially dims who stayed home or unactivated swing voters who were trying to figure out how to make sense of this. So that’s part of it too. There has to be a campaign. The curtain strategy seems to be if we just hide out and don’t do me think. everybody will figure out that this is bad and they’ll vote for us next time. And polls show Democratic voters are angry at the party and they want them to get up and they want them fight. So fight, tell people what’s happening. Those are two things. As we saw in Wisconsin in the recent Supreme Court election, Musk can be defeated. He can be beaten. He’s not that smart. He is an idiot when it comes to politics, I would say. Making himself the face of that, jumping into a race that he was going to lose by 10 points. Here he is wearing a cheese head and handing out million dollar checks. I mean, this is bizarre. This man has gone over the edge. He has overplayed his hand. He has shown that he can be defeated. And imagine what’s going to happen when Americans activate, get angry at the destruction happening in our economy right now and decide to take to the streets. I think this ends with tens of millions of Americans in the streets demanding a halt to this authoritarian project. And I think when people become that active, I think we’re going to win. and I think there’s going to be a massive backlash. and a pendulum swing. And I think we’re learning an important lesson right now about the fact that we can either have billionaires or we can have democracy, but we apparently cannot have both.

Speaker 1 [00:38:20] One of the things that’s fascinating to me is that, if that’s what’s necessary, right, if ultimately what defeats this is essentially people power, like solidarity, what that we saw in Poland, that movement, you know, what happened in the Philippines, like people essentially taking to the streets, is the democratic leadership afraid of that? Like, are they afraid to kind of galvanize that type of power? Because if that what’s needed, you would be thinking that these people, if it was Schumer and… Jeffrey’s in a room that they would be like, okay, let’s go to work. Let’s activate, you know, our communications networks and let’s start talking to groups of people to get them kind of to say the light is green to go to hit the streets. But that hasn’t happened. They’re not kind of doing that. So do you think there’s a fear in the democratic establishment of that?

Speaker 2 [00:39:09] I think there’s some fear. I think part of it is the Democratic Party itself is partly corrupted by this stuff. Chuck Schumer has become a champion of crypto. And what the hell does he know about crypto? Nothing, right? But they also want the money from these tech guys. They also want this establishment millions and billions to be spent on their campaigns. So I think that there’s a real hesitancy on the part of the Democratic party to take on the oligarchs too much. because they’re okay with a different level of oligarchy. They just don’t want this fascist destructive oligarchy. And so I think they’re struggling to find their place because I think that the revolt we need against these wealthy elites is also gonna include some segments of the democratic party. And that’s what I think there are afraid of. And unfortunately, if you’re a mainstream Democrat, the only people out there right now really speaking about this in a powerful way are Bernie Sanders and- and AOC and everyone else is taking some kind of middle path. I mean, Cory Booker tried to stand up and it’s good to see people trying something, trying anything, uh, to realize that you have to meet the demand from people for opposition or else where can we go if not the Democratic party? So if the Democratic party is just going to lay down and play dead, then we’re going to have to find some other vehicle to carry the hopes and the political aspirations of people who are opposing this, and so I think that’s an existential problem for the Democratic Party. They’ve got to wake up and they’ve got take this on or I think we’re going to need something beyond the Democratic Party. And I say that as somebody who is not considered a far leftist and who spent most of my career working for mainstream Democrats, there is no excuse for their complete cowardice and abdication at this moment of crisis. You know, when you choose silence, you choose the side of the oppressor. And right now… the Democratic Party has chosen the side of the oppressor.

Speaker 1 [00:41:08] Yeah, I think the only other person I can think of on that list is maybe Jasmine Crockett, but besides that, I can’t. It’s a very short list of people. Lastly, what do you say to average people, right? So that’s the guidance to the institutions, but I think ultimately you’re right. This is going to come down to people, as I say all the time, that the ultimate guarantee of democracy in a democracy are the people, it’s not the institutions. It’s not politicians. So, for everyday people. what do you say to them that they need to do in order to stop the worst from happening and to push back? To stop these people from literally their idea of carving up the country, as you say, techno nation, carving up country into regions that are ruled by monopoly corporations. Like how, as a person, everyday person who’s not a part of the institution, what should they be doing to stop them?

Speaker 2 [00:42:02] Well, the most important thing I think people need to do is to remember that you have power, you have agency, your voice matters, and that when you gather with others and decide to take action, whether it’s at a protest or online or using your voice in your own way, that adds up to the cascade that’s going to eventually be needed to defeat this thing. Another thing I thinks is important is for people to learn what’s happening, to be aware of the ideological project that’s being imposed on us, and to share that information. with their friends and their family members and their colleagues. Don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. Most people learn about these things from people they know. And so you have a tremendous amount of power to spread awareness. If you can activate even one or two other people in your circle, and then they go on to activate more people, you know, that’s how these things work. And I think also it’s important to remember because it gets kind of dark and it feels depressing. And I know a lot of people who are like, I’m just gonna leave the country. Not all of us can do that. You know, not everyone can just up and leave the country. To remember that this country was built by generations and generations of Americans, tens of millions of people who struggled and worked hard, and some of whom sacrificed everything to build this country. It’s not going to be dismantled overnight by a handful of billionaires, and it may cost us some sleep and some tears and maybe even some blood, but we’re going to win in the end because this is a country of, by, and for the people, not of, buy, and for the billionaires. And so as dark as it is. People should also feel hope and feel a bit special and inspired that we get to be a part of a generation that is going to save this country and will hopefully build something better after the lesson we’ve learned to make sure that we’re protected and strong going into the future. Because this threat doesn’t end with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin. This is an ongoing threat. Now that we have a situation, we’re wealthy people. can try to buy our entire political system to do with it as they please and so we’re an important generation of Americans here because everything’s on the line and it depends on us.

Speaker 1 [00:44:06] I mean, I think that that’s the right place for us to put a pin in this conversation for now that the price for freedom is constant vigilance. Gil, thank you so much for joining us. We’ve been chasing after you for months because you are very much in demand and finally got our net around you. So thank you much and I hope that you will come back and again, so appreciative for you and your insights and your work. Thank you so. That was journalist and political expert, Gil Duran. Thank you for joining me on the TransLash Podcast. Now listen all the way through to the end of the show for something extra. If you like what you heard, make sure to go leave a comment on Spotify or a five-star review on Apple Podcast. You might just hear me read it out on the show. You can listen to TransLash wherever you get your podcast. Check us out on web at translash.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Follow us on TikTok, Blue Sky, and Instagram at TransLash Media. Like us on Facebook and tell your friends. The Translash podcast is produced by TransLash Media. The TransLash team includes Oliver-Ash Kleine and Aubrey Callaway. Xander Adams is our senior sound engineer and a contributing producer. The show gets to your ears with the help of our social media team, including Morgan Asprey and Hillary Esquina. The music you heard was composed by Vendraghi and also courtesy of ZZK Records. The TransLash podcast is made possible by the support of Foundations and listeners like you. April 10th, I’m really looking forward to dancing to the music of Kaytranada. This week, it’s gonna be great. Gonna go to one of Kaytanada’s shows and shake my tail feathers. In this moment, I have realized that actually going out and reconnecting with people and existing in a world outside of thinking about everything terrible is really good for me. So that’s what I’m going to do.