The Nerd Reich
14/3/25 11:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alphistia posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpolitics Although trump won the 2024 presidential election, and he is quickly implementing far right policies since his inauguration, the core ideology behind his misrule isn’t really “Project 2025”. It is a neo-fascist playbook by people working behind-the-scenes, inspired in particular by a schlubby nerd by the name of Curtis Yarvin, a fairly obscure software developer. He has had a lot of influence on “Broligarchs”, techbros and politicians affiliated with them, primarily Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, J D Vance, Josh Hawley, and the grandson of Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman. Sometimes they are called “The Nerd Reich”.
The core of the ideology, called the NRx (Neo-Reactionary ) or “Dark Enlightenment” movement, is that democracy is outdated and needs to be replaced. An amalgamation of corporate power and political government, controlled by a non-elected “monarch” (ie dictator) and business/tech elites, is desirable and inevitable. Instead of large nation-states, there would be city-states (“The Network State”, “Freedom Cities”). They would be anti-democratic, autocratic, with minimal civil rights and no social rights.
The society most like this already is Singapore, which has pretend elections that only one party can win, and where the government controls the media "softly", and sues the hell out of anybody who dares to oppose the government. Thiel points to Singapore as a place he'd love to replicate, but by comparison to what the broligarchs would like to create, Singapore is more like a kind of Sweden...
Although they like to think of themselves as “libertarian” it is not that in the slightest, it's all about control. That's what the oligarchs crave and that's what the ideologues like Curtis Yarvin and Thiel are trying to create.
The Republican Party, MAGA, and especially trump, are simply TOOLS for them to access the power they want to have. Elon Musk is a sui generis fascist, only distantly connected to Yarvin and Thiel, but his general ideas are aligned with theirs. He is the most dangerous of all of them currently, because he is unelected and his behavior in the current trump Administration is autocratic.
As far as trump's imperialist fantasies of annexing Canada, Gaza, Panama, Greenland, any other valuable land he might want, the broligarchs think they are old-fashioned and useful only to be disruptive. They feel city-states will be easier to control, with corporate-dominated non-elected rulers, with no elections at any level of government.
If people don't like that, they can EMIGRATE. The ideologues ultimately guarantee that is the ONLY civil right a person will have in their envisioned society...the Right to Exit. Otherwise they are expected to shut-up and do as they are told.
The MAGA masses would be irrelevant. Most of them would be replaced by AI within a few decades, and they would be a very large “lumpy” proletariat controlled by AI-generated bread and circuses. When necessary they would be used as orcs in wars to distract any discontent domestically. It would be a techno-feudalist order, with “monarchs” ruling in perpetuity.
Where would dissenters go, to exercise their only civil right? Perhaps they’d flee to city states built up according to Solarpunk or Hopepunk ideals, in isolated parts of the world, or in spots where they could buy off local technofascist entities in order to be left alone. And some traditional countries along authoritarian NATIONALIST lines would likely survive, such as Russia and China.
Technofascist city-states could very well replace the EU and the USA though, which would survive only as loose economic and military alliances of smaller “countries”. The Broligarchs have no real need for the gigantic United States or the EU, at least politically. They'd prefer to have fiefdoms with hundreds of mini-Musks subjecting the population to Caligula-style dictatorships.
Like fascist regimes of yore, this system would be unstable. The Nazis begin in 1923 and were defeated in 1945, Mussolini ruled for about 20 years as well. Such tight control breeds resentment and is never based on popularity. Not everyone opposing the New Order would emigrate and there would be opposition no matter what. A repressive apparatus would need to use totalitarian methods to ensure compliance. A society of bee-like drones might satisfy the tiny ruling elite, but is not a long-term guarantee of stability. Far from it.
The ideology has many contradictions. Techno-capitalism is not “green”, so of course such a system would continue to rape the environment and exploit resources until they are exhausted. Such a system would be extremely corrupt at every level of society since there would be no rule of law, except the whims of the dictator issuing edicts. And the city-states of course would fight amongst themselves, and mini-wars would inevitably erupt. China and Russia would never give up nuclear weapons, and neither would any replacement entities for the USA.
It's a very Grimdark future, but the people behind this (particularly like Yarvin)...Thiel, Vance, Andreessen, non-tech bros like Steve Bannon, Project 25 apparatchiks, and other far right allies...they all want that. They want power for themselves and domination over all the rest of us. All these toxic MEN (and the vast majority of them ARE males) are fascist to the core. The Nerd Reich would ultimately fail, if it doesn’t destroy the world first.
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