The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate.

[Fred Steeves]

I guess the mantra of "Trump bad", "vote blue no matter who", is all I can expect from this conversation?

MSNBC comes to mind...

[Peter Lemkin]

I guess the mantra of "Trump bad", "vote blue no matter who", is all I can expect from this conversation?

MSNBC comes to mind...

Again, I do NOT see your point, your aim, your goal with your posts. I, yes, feel Trump, his staff, his hidden backers [Project 2025, Heritage Foundation, Christian Nationalist Groups, neo-Nazi groups/militias, racist-groups, Mormons, ultra-Right-Rich, etc. are entirely dangerous and intent on setting up a authoritarian semi-dictatorship and removing all progressive political actions since the end of WWII.
I personally am very critical of many of the Democrats, but as a group they are so less egregious than MAGA/Trump/Musk/Miller et al. that comparisons fail.

I have some problems with MSNBC, but they tower above all the Right-wing media. I mostly listen/watch Midas Touch and other progressive INDEPENDENT news media. That said, Maddow, Hedges, O'Donnell, and a few others do real news coverage compared to Fox and the even further right Propaganda Machines. MSNBC is still owned by a huge corporate giant and they are interested in profit over truth or journalistic honesty.

Again, what is your point? If you expect me to say anything good about what the Republicans have become, what MAGA and Trump are, don't hold your breath. Trump belongs in prison, not in the White House!

What is your point?

[Peter Lemkin]

Easy does it I'm not here to troll you, just once again trying to wrap my head around how deep researchers in alt/indy media, can still wind up convinced that heavily partisan cable news is a place to find reliable information.

As I scroll down "Meidas Touch" videos, I'm immediately struck that it's nothing but endless hyperbolic Trump hate, with snarling images to boot for maximum effect, while pumping up these ridiculous hyper partisan dems like they're our knights in shining armor. This guy has such a case of TDS he puts MSNBC to shame. It's just the flip side of MAGA rhetoric.

You're entitled to your biased views, but I think your real prejudices are showing. First, MTN is not 'cable news'. It has NO big corporate or other backers - the viewership are the 'backers'. If you don't like it, don't watch it! Ben sometimes gets a little excited; sometimes more than I would wish - BUT, he and his brothers came up with the idea. I personally think he's better when speaking more coolly, as others on the network do. You seem to have a problem with people being apoplectic about Trump/MAGA/Christian Nationalism/Racism/Mysogeny/Kleptocracy and governance by illegality - with a fascist state as its goal. I find that curious. I'm alarmed that Trump wasn't impeached twice and wasn't put in prison for his illegal putsch to take over the government illegally on Jan. 6. That people like you want to find and point out imperfections in those who point out this  ongoing travesty and the dangers we all now face, to me, is very odd. Which is more upsetting - that Ben sometimes gets upset or that Trump is trying to become a dictator of a fascist state in which all social/political/ethical progress made since the Civil War are reversed? There are very calm and better voices IMHO on MTN - such as the following shows: Shan Wu; Miss Trial; On Democracy; Uncovered (especially); The Weekend Show (especially); 5 Minute News (especially); Majority 54; the branch of MTN called Legal AF (especially); a separate show weekly by two psychologists called Shrinking Trump - and others.
People, I suggest those shows and a lot of good information that gets posted on BlueSky Social Media. Grumblers over style [rather than substance] like Fred are missing the point while saying they get the point.
Trump/MAGA/Musk/Miller/Project 2025/Christian Nationalists/White Nationalists/etc. are an existential threat to Democracy, to the USA, to more than half of the population of the USA, to life on this Planet! A little shouting about it doesn't bother me. I'm more bothered that it bothers Fred who can't see the forest for the trees, the important facts for the style in which it is presented. I can find things to be critical of with MTN, but I don't post them, because unlike Fred, I want the urgent message out that Trump/MAGA/Musk/Miller/Project 2025/Christian Nationalists/White Nationalists/etc. are an existential threat to Democracy, to the USA, to more than half of the population of the USA, to life on this Planet!, and it is long past time to start shouting, screaming, even sometimes ranting about it. Yes, presenting it in a cool, calm manner is my preference and I listed shows on MTN that do that consistently - even Ben does sometimes. We are facing erasure of hundreds of years of progress made against hate, prejudice, and privilege - rapidly heading to territory that frightens me and ought to frighten anyone of good morality and sense in the USA and around the World. Much of the World is 'freaking out' too about Trump/MAGA/Musk/Miller/Project 2025/Christian Nationalists/White Nationalists/Tech Megacompanies which spy on us/the Corporatism/the 0.1% taking over, etc. et al. The USA is going totally in the wrong direction and needs to be reversed by the PEOPLE!
We have already lost most of the mainstream media to Rightwing Propaganda networks and podcasts. The information on MTN is the important part, not the manner that SOME shows and SOME few on it take, IMO!

[Peter Lemkin]

You are new here and have missed the many past years, including when this Forum was the hottest one on the topic anywhere. We are trying to revive it, after is was more-or-less shut down although online. If you spend some time reading my older posts you will see I am NO 'fan' of the 'USA' and their actions/hidden power-structure/history - yet you choose to attack me. You apparently attack for the sake of attack, facts a far distant second. I don't even consider myself a Democrat. However, I'm a realist and before we can get to a bottom-up humanistic progressive polity, I believe TEMPORARILY we must use the Democrats to remove the Fascist threat already actively destroying out polity and Nation. Once accomplished, I'd be the first to want to dump or completely transform the Democrats. That doesn't change my political views nor heroes - it is just my sense of the only realistic path available in the time we have [little].

May I suggest you abandon your primary [and only] style of nay-sayer attack, and instead offer your own ideas for how to move forward in this existential mess we face. I think we have little time and the odds are not on our side - even if most people lean more toward my  views than Trump/Musk/Project 2025/Christian Nationalist/Neanderthal racist/sexist/environmental/political/ethical/anti-uno-Mundo/proto-fascist views.

I am not your enemy, but you insist on attacking. You don't have the faintest idea of my views or ACTIONS throughout my life. I suggest you spend some time to catch up in the older material here.

Watch any Chris Hedges video. His view are closer to my own than many. I could name others. You have me pegged incorrectly and the bias of this Forum pegged incorrectly. If you don't stop the attack for the sake of attack / criticism only for the sake of criticism I will ignore you moving forward.

Look at my tens of thousands of posts on JFK's assassination, 911 and other false-flag attacks, our endless invented imperialistic wars, rule by the elites, propaganda to fool the masses, etc. Read what I had DONE and not just talked about. Just post, if at all, what you think the solution is. Constant attacks seemingly just for the sake of attack do start to feel like trolling. The Forum was just re-opened very recently and more voices soon will help. Most of our best posters have died and tended to be the first or second wave of deep political researchers. There once were hundreds of new posts here each day and I am working to get back to that. It will take some time.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yesterday to stop Elon Musk’s extraordinary and ongoing crime spree in the nation’s capital 19 state Attorneys General filed suit challenging Musk’s wildly illegal breach of The Treasury Department. This morning a Federal judge blocked Musk’s access and ordered that any information removed from Treasury be immediately destroyed. 

NEW YORK — A federal judge issued an emergency order early Saturday prohibiting Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service from accessing personal and financial data on millions of Americans kept at the Treasury Department, noting the possibility for irreparable harm.
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer’s decision also ordered Musk and his team to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”
The conditions are in place until another judge hears arguments on the matter on Feb. 14.
The ruling came hours after attorneys general from 19 states sued to stop Musk’s team from dealing with sensitive files during its review of federal payment systems — an unprecedented effort that skirted firm security measures that permitted access to systems only to trained Treasury employees.
In a four-page order, Engelmayer said the states that sued the Trump administration “will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.”
“That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” Engelmayer wrote.
He adopted arguments by the states that Treasury records from the agency’s Bureau of Fiscal Services can only legally be accessed by specialized civil servants “with a need for access to perform their job duties.”
Under the order, the Trump administration is prohibited from giving access to political appointees, special government employees or government employees that are not assigned to the Treasury Department. The White House has said that Musk has been designated a special government employee.
The lawsuit, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), says DOGE, a group operating under the direction of President Donald Trump, had no authority to access the Treasury Department’s systems and that doing so was a potentially massive cybersecurity and privacy risk.
“Defendants’ new expanded access policy poses huge cybersecurity risks that put vast amounts of funding for the States and their residents in peril,” says the lawsuit filed late Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. “All of the States’ residents whose [personally identifiable information] and sensitive financial information is stored in the payment files … are at risk of having that information compromised and used against them.”
James and the other state law enforcement officials warned that DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, has reportedly used a third-party, open-source artificial intelligence system to process data from other agencies recently, sparking fears that Treasury Department records could be mishandled.
In addition to New York, the states involved in the lawsuit are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

While we’ve had other wins in court this week this is a very big one. For those living in these 19 states that filed this suit please call your Attorney General first thing Monday morning and thank them. Praise and tag them on social media. NY AG Attorney General Letitia James was the lead on the suit, and released this short video yesterday explaining why they went to court:

To understand the gravity of the Musk’s illegal cyber breach of Treasury, yesterday we learned that Treasury’s internal threat teams viewed Musk and his malicious posse as “the biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of Fiscal Services has ever faced.”

[Peter Lemkin]

Twenty Four Hours
The gradual normalization of Elon Musk's unprecedented power concentration reveals a dangerous erosion of democratic norms. We must confront this reality to preserve our constitutional order.
[/url]
Mike Brock   https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/twenty-four-hours
Feb 04, 2025






In Brief: What You Need to Know
This essay examines the current constitutional crisis in the United States through the lens of a simple, irrefutable fact: there are only twenty-four hours in a day. It uses this truth to expose the impossibility of Elon Musk's simultaneous management of multiple major companies and his role in reorganizing the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Key points:

1. The physical impossibility of Musk's claimed roles exposes a broader pattern of reality distortion in current politics.
   
2. A coup is in progress, evidenced by private citizens seizing control of government functions and systematically dismantling civil service protections.
   
3. Conflict-of-interest laws are being flagrantly violated, with Musk's multiple roles creating unprecedented legal and ethical concerns.
   
4. Musk's connections to China, his drug use, and his messianic complex as additional factors compounding the danger.
   
5. Accepting these impossibilities and violations represents a broader failure to maintain grip on reality in the face of power.
   

---

There are twenty-four hours in a day. This isn't a matter of political opinion or technological disruption—it's as immutable as the fact that two plus two equals four. No amount of genius, innovation, or reality distortion can create a twenty-fifth hour. This basic truth, so obvious it seems almost foolish to state, exposes something profound about our [url=https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/a-coup-is-in-progress-in-america]current constitutional crisis.
Consider what we're being asked to believe about Elon Musk. That he is simultaneously managing Tesla, a global automotive manufacturer facing fierce competition and complex production challenges. That he is overseeing SpaceX, a company conducting human spaceflight and handling critical national security contracts. That he is running X/Twitter through a tumultuous transformation affecting global discourse. That he is developing experimental brain implants at Neuralink under federal investigation. That he is competing in the most sophisticated artificial intelligence race in human history through xAI.
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And now, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we're asked to believe he is also reorganizing the entire federal government. His twenty-something operatives are gaining unprecedented access to Treasury payment systems. Career civil servants are being purged for following security protocols. Congressionally established agencies are being illegally shuttered.
This isn't just implausible—it's physically impossible. Each of these companies requires intensive, full-time executive attention. Tesla alone, with its global manufacturing operations and fierce competition in the rapidly evolving electric vehicle market, would fully occupy any normal CEO. SpaceX, dealing with literal rocket science and human lives, demands constant high-level oversight. Yet we've collectively suspended our disbelief, accepting an obvious fiction because we've been conditioned to believe in the mythology of the tech genius who transcends normal human limitations.
Let's be clear about what's happening while we debate the impossible fiction of Musk's supposed role: A coup is in progress in the United States of America. This isn't hyperbole or partisan rhetoric—it's as demonstrable as the fact that there are twenty-four hours in a day or that two plus two equals four. Private citizens have seized control of Treasury payment systems. Security officials are being removed for following classification protocols. Congressionally established agencies are being illegally shuttered.
The obvious impossibility of Musk's supposed management of multiple companies serves the same purpose as Trump's flood of disinformation—it creates an epistemic fog that makes reality harder to grasp. While we argue about whether Musk is really running all these companies effectively, while we debate sophisticated legal theories about executive authority, while we parse complex arguments about government efficiency, the machinery of constitutional governance is being systematically dismantled.
We're drowning in plausible-sounding legal fictions about presidential authority and emergency powers, in complex theories about executive discretion and administrative law. But these sophisticated arguments serve to obscure basic truths that any first-year law student would understand: The president cannot legally shut down agencies established by congressional statute. Private citizens cannot legally access classified systems without authorization. Civil servants cannot legally be punished for following the law.
The fog of manufactured complexity hides something much simpler and more dangerous: Musk, a man who appears to view the United States government as merely another acquisition target for his interplanetary ambitions, is participating in the dismantling of constitutional governance. While we're distracted by his tweets and his technological promises, while we debate his management style and his vision for efficiency, he's helping to convert democratic institutions into instruments of private power.
Tesla revolutionized the electric vehicle industry. SpaceX transformed space flight. These are real achievements that deserve recognition. Musk's role in building these companies demonstrates genuine entrepreneurial talent and vision. Acknowledging this isn't at odds with questioning the current reality—in fact, understanding the true complexity of these companies strengthens the argument about physical impossibility.
Consider Tesla: It's now a global automotive manufacturer producing millions of vehicles annually. The complexity of its operations—from manufacturing to supply chain to regulatory compliance—requires intense executive attention. Anyone familiar with automotive manufacturing knows that CEO involvement in production and quality decisions isn't optional. The same holds true for SpaceX, where human lives literally depend on rigorous oversight and engineering decisions.
This is precisely why the current situation strains credibility. These aren't small startups anymore—they're sophisticated enterprises operating in highly regulated industries with critical safety requirements. Each company has grown to a scale where effective executive oversight would demand full-time attention. The more successful these companies become, the more implausible it becomes that a single individual could meaningfully run all of them while simultaneously reorganizing the federal government.
Yet society has failed to update its narrative as these companies grew. We're still operating with a mental model from when these were scrappy startups, even as they've evolved into complex global enterprises. Our collective failure to acknowledge this evolution—to ask basic questions about the plausibility of simultaneous executive oversight—has enabled the current constitutional crisis.
The conflict-of-interest at the heart of Musk's position as DOGE co-director represents more than just an ethical concern—it strikes at basic principles of constitutional governance. Federal conflict-of-interest laws weren't created arbitrarily; they emerged from centuries of understanding about how democracy can be corrupted when private interests capture public authority. These laws establish bright lines between public service and private gain precisely because such separation is essential for maintaining democratic accountability.
Consider how this plays out across Musk's various roles. As DOGE co-director, he has significant authority over federal contracting and procurement. Yet he simultaneously controls SpaceX, which receives billions in government contracts for national security launches. This means he's effectively sitting on both sides of the negotiating table—representing both the public interest in efficient contracting and his private interest in maximizing profit. This isn't just inappropriate; it's explicitly prohibited by federal law.
The conflict becomes even more profound when we examine his control of X/Twitter while serving as a government official. A platform that plays a crucial role in public discourse is now effectively under government control through Musk's dual position. We've already seen how this creates direct First Amendment violations—when Musk uses the platform to censor discussion of government employees, he's acting simultaneously as platform owner and government censor. This is precisely the kind of merger of private and public power that constitutional safeguards were designed to prevent.
Tesla presents another stark example of illegal conflict. As a federal official with broad authority over government efficiency and procurement, Musk oversees policies that directly affect the electric vehicle industry. Yet he simultaneously runs the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in America. This means his official actions—whether about environmental regulations, government fleet purchases, or infrastructure decisions—inevitably affect his private interests. Federal law prohibits this arrangement because it makes it impossible to determine whether decisions are being made for public benefit or private gain.
The foundational law here is 18 U.S.C. § 208—Acts affecting a personal financial interest. This criminal statute prohibits federal employees from participating in matters that affect their financial interests. The law is crystal clear: A federal employee cannot participate in any “particular matter” that affects their financial interest or the interests of their companies. Every time Musk makes decisions about government efficiency or procurement while controlling Tesla, SpaceX, or his other companies, he's potentially violating this criminal statute.
The Ethics in Government Act builds on this, requiring extensive financial disclosure and establishing specific restrictions on how federal officials can interact with matters affecting their private interests. The Act was passed after Watergate precisely to prevent the kind of private-public power merger we're witnessing.
Then there's the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits federal officials from using nonpublic information gained through their position for private profit. Given Musk's role in DOGE gives him unprecedented access to government information while he runs multiple public companies, this law becomes particularly relevant.
The Hatch Act also comes into play regarding his control of X/Twitter while serving as a government official. When he uses the platform to censor speech about government employees or promote particular political interests, he's potentially violating restrictions on federal employees using their position to influence political discourse.
These aren't obscure regulations—they're fundamental safeguards designed to maintain the separation between public authority and private interest that democratic governance requires. Just as there are twenty-four hours in a day, these laws mean what they say: You cannot simultaneously serve as a federal official and maintain control over companies directly affected by your official actions.
Through DOGE, Musk has gained access to incredibly sensitive government systems and information—including Treasury payment systems, classified materials, and internal agency data. This means every conflict-of-interest statute is triggered at its highest level of concern. Here's why:
When Congress passed 18 U.S.C. § 208, they were imagining scenarios where federal officials might have access to some information that could affect their private interests. But Musk's situation goes far beyond anything the drafters likely contemplated—he has gained access to the actual machinery of government while simultaneously running multiple companies directly affected by that machinery.
Consider what this means in practice: Through DOGE, he has access to sensitive Treasury data while running public companies whose stock prices could be affected by that information. He can see classified materials while controlling SpaceX, which competes for national security contracts. He has visibility into federal agency operations while owning a social media platform that shapes public discourse about those agencies.
The Ethics in Government Act and STOCK Act were designed to prevent federal officials from using nonpublic information for private gain. But Musk isn't just getting occasional access to sensitive information—he's gained unprecedented access to core government systems while maintaining control of companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The potential for using this access to benefit his private interests isn't incidental—it's systematic and structural.
This is why the normal remedies for conflicts of interest—like recusal from specific decisions—become inadequate. When someone has this level of access to government systems while controlling major companies affected by those systems, the conflict can't be managed through traditional means. The only solution consistent with federal law would be complete divestment from his private interests or resignation from his government role.
We're watching the illegal seizure of government power by private interests in real time. Full stop. There's no complex legal theory that makes this okay. No presidential waiver or executive order can override these fundamental conflict-of-interest laws any more than they can make two plus two equal five.
When a private citizen gains control of Treasury payment systems, accesses classified information without proper clearance, maintains control of major companies while serving as a federal official, uses a private platform for government censorship while simultaneously claiming to run multiple massive corporations—what we're actually talking about is the systematic dismantling of the barriers between private power and public authority. This isn't about government efficiency or reform— it's about converting public institutions into instruments of private power.
Trump's constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” means exactly what it says. He can't waive fundamental conflict-of-interest laws any more than he can waive laws against murder or theft. These aren't optional guidelines—they're basic safeguards against corruption of public office for private gain. Congress passed these laws. Former presidents signed them into law. We are a nation of laws. Not men.
This point cuts to the heart of constitutional government. When Congress passes laws and presidents sign them, those laws bind all future presidents—that's what separates a constitutional republic from autocracy. The conflict-of-interest statutes aren't suggestions or guidelines that can be waived away by presidential preference. They represent the accumulated wisdom of democratic governance, enacted through proper constitutional process.
Consider the profound implications: If a president could simply ignore conflict-of-interest laws because they find them inconvenient, then no law passed by Congress would have real meaning. The entire system of checks and balances, the very concept of constitutional constraints on power, would collapse. If Trump can waive these fundamental safeguards for Musk, what prevents him from waiving any other law that stands in the way of private interests capturing public power?
This connects back to our core theme about mathematical truth: Just as two plus two equals four regardless of who's doing the calculation, laws mean what they say regardless of who occupies the White House. When Congress prohibits federal officials from participating in matters affecting their private interests, that prohibition doesn't become optional because a president finds it inefficient or because a tech billionaire claims to be improving government.
The phrase “a nation of laws, not men” isn't just a slogan—it's the fundamental principle that separates constitutional governance from personal rule. Every time we pretend these conflict-of-interest laws can be ignored or waived, we're not just enabling specific corruption—we're attacking the very concept of constitutional government itself.
The reality is brutally simple: What's happening is illegal. Not in some technical, debatable way, but in the same way that two plus two equals four. We're watching private interests seize control of government functions while pretending the laws designed to prevent exactly this don't exist or don't apply.
The Wall Street Journal's reporting on Musk's extensive ketamine use isn't just celebrity gossip—it raises profound questions about judgment and stability. Consider what it means that someone actively using psychedelics is simultaneously claiming to run multiple major companies AND has gained unprecedented access to government systems including Treasury payments. This isn't about personal choices —it's about basic fitness for responsibilities that affect millions of Americans' lives.
The “Pedo Guy” case reveals something equally troubling about character. When Musk baselessly accused a cave rescue diver of being a pedophile, he demonstrated a pattern that we see playing out now in government: Using his platform to attack critics while claiming his words shouldn't be taken seriously. The same person who called a rescue hero a “pedo guy” now declares USAID a “criminal organization” that should “die” while his operatives gain access to classified systems.
These aren't separate issues from the constitutional crisis—they're directly relevant to understanding the danger. We have someone who regularly uses drugs, has a documented pattern of reckless accusations, shows contempt for truth and professional reputation, claims impossible levels of executive oversight, has gained unprecedented access to government functions.
And this same person is now, through DOGE, participating in the systematic dismantling of civil service protections while maintaining control of companies directly affected by his government role.
Musk's troubling connections to China add yet another layer of concern to an already alarming situation. His consistent praise of the Chinese Communist Party, including writing an op-ed in a party mouthpiece celebrating their anniversary, stands in stark contrast to his criticisms of other countries and leaders. This discrepancy becomes even more troubling when we consider China's status as America's primary geopolitical adversary.
Consider the implications: We have an individual with unprecedented access to sensitive government systems and information, who simultaneously controls companies crucial to American technological competitiveness and national security, and who has shown a consistent pattern of praising an authoritarian regime that represents our most significant strategic challenge. This isn't just a potential conflict of interest—it's a national security nightmare.
Let's be clear about what we're seeing: Musk has extensive business interests in China, including a major Tesla factory in Shanghai. He has consistently praised Chinese efficiency and governmental approach, often in ways that seem to criticize American democratic processes. He has refrained from criticizing China's human rights abuses or authoritarian practices, in stark contrast to his willingness to attack other governments and leaders. Through his role in DOGE, he now has access to sensitive government information and systems.
The question we must ask is as simple as it is troubling: Is Elon Musk compromised by his connections to China? This isn't partisan speculation—it's a basic national security concern that any responsible government would prioritize.
Imagine if any other federal official with access to classified information and critical government systems showed such consistent praise for an adversarial power while refraining from any criticism. They would be immediately flagged as a security risk. Yet Musk's technological celebrity seems to have insulated him from this basic level of scrutiny.
This situation becomes even more alarming when we consider the nature of the Chinese government's approach to business. The CCP maintains significant control and influence over private enterprises operating in China. Musk's extensive praise and business ties raise serious questions about what compromises or agreements he might have made to maintain his access to the Chinese market.
Moreover, Musk's role in critical industries like electric vehicles, space technology, and artificial intelligence makes his Chinese connections even more concerning. These are areas of intense technological competition between the U.S. and China, with significant national security implications. The idea that someone with such extensive Chinese business ties and who has shown such consistent praise for the CCP now has unprecedented access to U.S. government systems should set off every possible alarm bell.
This isn't about xenophobia or unnecessary paranoia. It's about applying the same basic security standards and concerns that would apply to any federal official or contractor. The fact that these questions aren't being loudly and persistently asked by every major media outlet and government oversight body is a testament to how thoroughly Musk's carefully cultivated image has distorted our collective judgment.
When we add this Chinese connection to everything else we've discussed—the impossibility of his claimed roles, his messianic complex, his substance use, his erratic behavior, his blatant conflicts of interest—the picture becomes even more disturbing. We're not just dealing with a domestic threat to democratic norms and institutions. We're potentially looking at a significant national security vulnerability, created by giving unprecedented government access to someone with clear and troubling foreign entanglements.
The simple truth—as undeniable as the fact that two plus two equals four—is that Musk's praise of China and his refusal to criticize their authoritarian practices, combined with his extensive business interests there and his new role in the U.S. government, represent a clear and present danger to American national security interests. This isn't a partisan issue. It's not about whether you like Musk's companies or agree with his vision. It's about recognizing a basic, glaring security risk that's hiding in plain sight.
We must demand answers and accountability. How can someone with such clear ties to and praise for an adversarial power be given access to sensitive government systems? What safeguards, if any, are in place to prevent the transfer of sensitive information? How can we trust that decisions made through DOGE are in America's best interests rather than serving Musk's extensive Chinese business interests?
Musk's messianic complex adds another troubling dimension to this already alarming situation. His frequent pronouncements about “saving humanity” through Mars colonization, his claims of being humanity's best hope against AI risks, and his self-portrayal as a visionary leader fighting entrenched interests all point to a deeply held belief in his own exceptional importance. This isn't just ego—it's a worldview that sees Musk as uniquely qualified and perhaps destined to reshape human civilization. This should be an alarming observation to any reasonable observer.
This messianic self-image becomes particularly dangerous when combined with the unprecedented power and access he's gained. Consider the implications: We have an individual who believes he alone can save humanity, who dismisses expert consensus across multiple fields, who shows contempt for democratic processes and institutions—and this same person now has direct access to core government functions and classified information.
The pattern is clear: Musk consistently prioritizes his vision and interests over democratic norms, expert consensus, or legal constraints. His treatment of workers' rights at Tesla, his dismissal of COVID-19 public health measures, his capricious management of Twitter/X—all demonstrate a willingness to bulldoze opposition and ignore rules that don't suit his goals.
When we add this messianic complex to the impossibility of his claimed roles, his documented substance use, his pattern of reckless behavior, and his blatant conflicts of interest, a disturbing picture emerges. If two plus two equals four—and it does—then we must confront an uncomfortable truth: Elon Musk is an incredibly dangerous man whose interests are clearly his own, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.
This isn't about partisan politics or debates over specific policies. It's about recognizing that we've allowed an individual with clear megalomaniacal tendencies to gain unprecedented power over both private industry and public governance. His DOGE role isn't about improving government efficiency—it's about reshaping American governance to suit his personal vision and interests.
The danger here goes beyond specific policy decisions or even potential corruption. What we're witnessing is an attempt to fundamentally alter the relationship between private power and public authority in American society. Musk's actions, supported by the current administration, represent a direct assault on the very concept of democratic accountability.
We must stop pretending that this is normal or acceptable. No amount of technological innovation or promises of efficiency can justify the dismantling of democratic safeguards. Musk's messianic complex, combined with his actual power and influence, creates a volatile situation that threatens the very foundations of constitutional governance.
The simple truth—as undeniable as the fact that there are 24 hours in a day—is that we are watching a man who believes himself to be humanity's savior actively participate in the erosion of democratic institutions. His interests are not aligned with preserving constitutional checks and balances or maintaining the rule of law. They are aligned with consolidating his own power and advancing his personal vision, regardless of democratic consent or legal constraints.
This is the reality. Not the carefully cultivated image of a quirky genius, not the promises of technological utopia, but the actions of a man who has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to flout rules, dismiss expertise, and prioritize his interests over democratic norms. When such a person gains unprecedented access to government power while maintaining control over vast private enterprises, the threat to democracy is not theoretical—it is immediate and existential.
Musk's threats to weaponize his vast wealth add a chilling new dimension to the dangers we've been discussing. This isn't just about normal political donations or advocacy—it's a direct attempt to leverage immense financial power to shape legislative behavior and policy outcomes. By threatening to primary lawmakers who don't support Trump's agenda, Musk is effectively trying to undermine the constitutional role of Congress as an independent branch of government. This pressure could lead to legislators prioritizing Musk's (and Trump's) interests over their constituents' needs or their own judgment.
What we're witnessing is an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a private citizen. Musk's government role, his control over major companies, his media influence through X, and now his explicit threats to use his wealth to shape political outcomes—all of these factors combine to create a perfect storm of anti-democratic forces. The conflicts of interest we discussed earlier become even more problematic in this light. Musk isn't just passively benefiting from his government role; he's actively using his wealth to shape the political landscape in ways that could benefit his companies and ideological goals.
The idea of a “naughty list” for lawmakers based on their votes is a direct assault on the principles of representative democracy. It suggests a system where loyalty to Musk and Trump trumps legislative independence and constituent representation. This approach, if successful, could fundamentally alter how American democracy functions, creating a system where wealthy individuals can effectively dictate policy through threats of primary challenges.
We must also consider the national security implications. Given Musk's connections to China that we discussed earlier, his ability to potentially shape Congress through financial threats raises additional concerns. Could this influence be used to shape policies in ways that benefit China or other foreign interests?
What's particularly troubling is how traditional checks on this kind of influence—like campaign finance laws or conflict of interest regulations—seem inadequate to address the scale and nature of Musk's involvement. By framing this as normal political involvement, Musk and his allies are attempting to normalize what is essentially autocratic behavior within a democratic system.
This development reinforces our earlier points about the danger Musk poses to democratic institutions. It's not just about his government role or his companies—it's about his apparent willingness to use every lever of power at his disposal to reshape American governance according to his vision. The combination of his messianic complex, his vast wealth, his media control, his government access, and now these explicit threats to use his resources to punish political opponents creates a situation that our democratic systems were not designed to handle.
Elon Musk, now wielding unprecedented influence within the federal government, is simultaneously threatening his business competitors. This isn't just about market competition anymore—it's about the potential abuse of government power to tilt the playing field in favor of Musk's interests.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment isn't just about individual rights—it's a fundamental guarantee that the government will treat all persons and entities equally under the law. When someone with Musk's level of government access and influence starts making threats against competitors, we have to ask: Are we still operating in a system where all companies have equal protection and opportunity under the law?
Consider the implications: Musk's xAI is competing directly with OpenAI and other AI companies. Now, through his role in DOGE and his close relationship with the Trump administration, Musk has potential influence over regulatory decisions, government contracts, and even law enforcement priorities. The threat this poses to fair competition cannot be overstated.
This situation goes beyond normal concerns about monopoly power or unfair business practices. We're looking at the potential for government power to be wielded as a weapon in private business disputes. Suppose Musk can use his government influence to disadvantage competitors like OpenAI. In that case, we're no longer operating in a free market system—we're edging into a form of state capitalism where political connections determine business success.
The ethical questions surrounding Sam Altman and OpenAI, while important, pale in comparison to the systemic threat posed by Musk's concentration of power. We're not just talking about one company's practices anymore—we're talking about the fundamental rules of the game for our entire economic system.
This brings us back to our core theme: If two plus two equals four, then we must acknowledge that Musk's position represents a clear and present danger not just to democratic governance, but to the very foundations of our market economy. The combination of his government role, his vast personal wealth, his media control, and now his threats against competitors creates a situation where the lines between public power and private interest have been dangerously blurred.
We must ask ourselves: In a world where Elon Musk can threaten competitors while simultaneously shaping government policy, can we still claim to have a system of equal protection under the law? Can we still pretend to have a free and fair market? Or are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of oligarchy, where a select few wield both economic and political power to reshape society according to their personal vision?
This isn't just about Musk or any single company. It's about preserving the basic principles of fair competition, equal protection, and the separation of economic and political power that underpin our entire system. If we fail to address this concentration of power, we risk fundamentally altering the nature of both our democracy and our economy.
We have indeed boiled the frog with Elon Musk. The gradual accumulation of power, the steady erosion of norms, the incremental breaches of law and ethics—all of these have happened so slowly that we've failed to recognize the danger until we're already immersed in crisis. The most alarming aspect of this situation isn't just the actions of Musk or the complicity of the administration, but our collective failure to be shocked by what's happening.
Every point raised in this essay is factual, easily verifiable, and largely undisputed. Most informed observers would agree that this is an accurate accounting of Musk's roles, actions, and the conflicts they create. Yet somehow, we've arrived at a place where these glaring violations of law, ethics, and democratic norms are met with a collective shrug.
This is the true danger we face: We've been conditioned to accept the unacceptable, to normalize the abnormal, to rationalize the irrational. We've been slowly convinced that two plus two might equal five if a powerful enough person says it does, if it's wrapped in promises of innovation and efficiency, if it's justified by claims of necessity or genius.
But here's the undeniable truth: Two plus two equals four. It always has, and it always will. No amount of technological prowess, financial power, or political maneuvering can change this fundamental reality. And just as surely as this mathematical truth holds, so too do the laws that govern conflicts of interest, the principles that separate public authority from private gain, and the constitutional safeguards that protect our democracy.
Saving our democracy—indeed, preserving the very foundations of our republic—requires us to recognize and reassert these basic truths. We must shake off the cognitive dissonance that allows us to simultaneously acknowledge Musk's accumulation of power and influence while failing to be alarmed by it. We must reject the false choice between innovation and democratic governance, between efficiency and the rule of law.
What we're witnessing isn't just a series of ethical breaches or legal violations—it's an existential threat to the very nature of our democracy and our market economy. If we fail to act now, we risk transitioning from a nation of laws to a nation where power and wealth dictate reality, where the lines between public and private interests blur beyond recognition, and where our most fundamental democratic principles become mere suggestions to be ignored at will.
Will we continue to accept the gradual erosion of our democratic norms and institutions, lulled into complacency by promises of innovation and efficiency? Or will we reassert the basic truths upon which our republic was founded, recognizing that no individual—no matter how wealthy, influential, or ostensibly brilliant—stands above the law or the Constitution?
If we continue to pretend that two plus two might equal five, we may wake to find that we no longer live in a democracy at all, but in an oligarchy cloaked in the language of progress and innovation. The truth is as simple as it is urgent: Two plus two equals four. And there are only twenty four hours in a day.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Plot Against America
How a Dangerous Ideology Born From the Libertarian Movement Stands Ready to Seize America
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Mike Brock    https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the...st-america
Feb 08, 2025







As I write this in early 2025, a quiet revolution is unfolding within the U.S. government. Inside the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), teams of young tech operatives are systematically dismantling democratic institutions and [url=https://www.wired.com/story/federal-workers-sue-over-doge-server/]replacing them with proprietary artificial intelligence systems. Civil servants who raise legal objections are being removed. Government databases are being migrated to private servers. Decision-making power is being transferred from elected officials and career bureaucrats to algorithms controlled by a small network of Silicon Valley elites. This isn't a spontaneous coup—it's the culmination of a dangerous ideology that has been meticulously developed since the 2008 financial crisis, one that sees democracy itself as obsolete technology ready to be “disrupted.” To understand how we reached this critical moment, and why it threatens the very foundation of democratic governance, we need to trace the evolution of an idea: that democracy is not just inefficient, but fundamentally incompatible with technological progress.
DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes.
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What follows is not speculation or dystopian fiction. It is a carefully documented account of how a dangerous ideology, born in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, has moved from the fringes of tech culture to the heart of American governance.
The story of how it begins starts sixteen years ago.
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, marking the largest failure of an investment bank since the Great Depression. This event catalyzed the global financial crisis, leading to widespread economic hardship and a profound loss of faith in established institutions.
In the aftermath of the crisis, several key figures emerged who would go on to shape a new movement in American politics.
Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, had been developing a critique of modern democracy on his blog Unqualified Reservations since 2007. As the financial crisis unfolded, Yarvin applied his unconventional analysis to the economic turmoil.
In a 2008 post, “The Misesian explanation of the bank crisis,” Yarvin wrote:

Briefly: the fundamental cause of the bank crisis is not evil Republicans, lying Democrats, 'deregulation,' 'affirmative-action lending,' or even 'ludicrous levels of leverage.' A banking system is like a nuclear reactor: a complicated piece of engineering. If it's engineered right, it works 100% of the time. If it's engineered wrong, it works 99.99% of the time, and the other 0.01% it coats the entire tri-state area in radioactive strontium.

Yarvin argued that the crisis was fundamentally an engineering failure caused by a deviation from what he called “Misesian banking,” based on principles outlined by economist Ludwig von Mises. This approach advocates for a strict free-market system with minimal government intervention in banking. He contrasted this with the prevailing “Bagehotian” system, named after Walter Bagehot, which supports central bank intervention during financial crises. Yarvin argued that this interventionist approach was inherently unstable and prone to collapse.
Yarvin's writings during the crisis period continued to develop his broader critique of modern political and economic systems. His ideas, while not mainstream, began to resonate with a growing audience disillusioned with traditional institutions and seeking alternative explanations for the economic turmoil.
For decades, libertarian thinkers had argued that free markets, left unrestrained, would naturally outperform any system of government. But what if the problem wasn’t just government interference in markets—what if the very concept of democracy itself was flawed?
This was the argument put forward by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a student of Mises's protégé Murray Rothbard, who took libertarian skepticism of the state to its extreme conclusion. His 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed landed like a bombshell in libertarian circles. Published at a moment when many Americans still saw democracy as the “end of history,” Hoppe argued that democracy was an inherently unstable system, one that incentivized short-term decision-making and mob rule rather than rational governance. His alternative? A return to monarchy.
But this wasn’t the monarchy of old. Hoppe envisioned a new order—one where governance was privatized, where societies functioned as “covenant communities” owned and operated by property-holders rather than elected officials. In this world, citizenship was a matter of contract, not birthright. Voting was unnecessary. Rule was left to those with the most capital at stake. It was libertarian thought taken to its most extreme conclusion: a society governed not by political equality, but by property rights alone.
By the 2010s, Hoppe's radical skepticism of democracy had found an eager audience beyond the usual libertarian circles, but through a different mechanism than simple market disruption. While Silicon Valley had long embraced Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation—where nimbler companies could outcompete established players by serving overlooked markets—a more extreme form of techno-solutionism had begun to take hold. This mindset held that any societal problem, including governance itself, could be “solved” through sufficient application of engineering principles. Silicon Valley elites who had built successful companies began to view democratic processes not just as inefficient, but as fundamentally irrational—the product of what they saw as emotional decision-making by non-technical people. This merged perfectly with Hoppe's critique: if democracy was simply a collection of “feeling-based” choices made by the uninformed masses, surely it could be replaced by something more “rational”—specifically, the kind of data-driven, engineering-focused governance these tech leaders practiced in their own companies.
Peter Thiel, one of the most outspoken erstwhile libertarians in Silicon Valley, put this sentiment in stark terms in his 2009 essay The Education of a Libertarian: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel had already begun funding projects aimed at escaping democratic nation-states entirely, including seasteading—floating cities in international waters beyond government control—and experimental governance models that would replace electoral democracy with private, corporate-style rule. Hoppe's vision of covenant communities—private enclaves owned and governed by elites—provided an intellectual justification for what Thiel and his allies were trying to build: not just alternatives to specific government policies, but complete replacements for democratic governance itself. If democracy is too inefficient to keep up with technological change, why not replace it entirely with private, contractual forms of rule?
The notion that traditional democratic governance was inefficient or outdated resonated with those who saw themselves as disruptors and innovators.
This intellectual throughline—from Mises to Hoppe to figures like Yarvin and Thiel—helps explain the emergence of what some have called “techno-libertarianism.” It represents a dangerous alignment of anti-democratic thought with immense technological and financial resources, posing significant challenges to traditional conceptions of democratic governance and civic responsibility.
From Silicon Valley to Main Street: The Spread of Techno-Libertarian Ideas

2008 did not just destroy the economy—it shattered faith in democratic institutions themselves. Libertarians saw an opportunity. And in Silicon Valley, a new belief took hold: democracy wasn’t just inefficient—it was obsolete. Over the next decade, the ideas incubated in this period would evolve into a coherent challenge to the foundations of liberal democracy, backed by some of the most powerful figures in technology and finance.
As millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs in the years following the crisis, these ideas began to gain momentum. The Tea Party movement emerged in 2009, channeling populist anger against government bailouts and the Obama administration's response to the crisis.
As the Tea Party gained momentum, it fostered a broader cultural shift that primed many Americans to be receptive to alternative political and economic theories. This shift extended beyond traditional conservatism, creating an opening for the tech-libertarian ideas emerging from Silicon Valley.
The movement’s emphasis on individual liberty and skepticism of centralized authority resonated with the anti-government sentiment growing in tech circles. As a result, concepts like cryptocurrency and decentralized governance, once considered fringe, began to find a more mainstream audience among those disillusioned with traditional political and financial systems.
The convergence of populist anger and techno-utopianism set the stage for more radical anti-democratic ideas that would emerge in the following years. The Tea Party, while not directly advocating for these ideas, inadvertently prepared a segment of the population to be more open to the notion that traditional democratic institutions might be fundamentally flawed or obsolete.
However, the ideological impact of Silicon Valley's economic performance on movements like the “New Right” was not immediate or direct. The tech industry's growing economic and cultural influence gradually became more pronounced in the 2010s as tech leaders like Peter Thiel began to more actively engage in political discourse and funding.
The financial crisis didn't just create political movements like the Tea Party—it spawned entirely new media platforms that would help spread these anti-democratic ideas far beyond their original circles. One of the most influential was Zero Hedge, founded in 2009 by Daniel Ivandjiiski. The site, which adopted the pseudonym “Tyler Durden” for all its authors—a reference to the anti-establishment character from Fight Club—initially focused on financial news and analysis from a bearish perspective rooted in Austrian economics.
Zero Hedge's evolution from a financial blog to a political powerhouse exemplified how anti-democratic ideas could be laundered through technical expertise. The site gained initial credibility through sophisticated critiques of high-frequency trading and market structure, establishing itself as a legitimate voice in financial circles. But this technical authority became a vehicle for something more radical: the idea that democratic institutions themselves were as broken as the markets they regulated.
By 2015, Zero Hedge was advancing a comprehensive critique of democratic governance that paralleled Yarvin's, but packaged for a mainstream audience. Its technical analysis of market failures seamlessly evolved into broader arguments about the failure of democratic institutions. When the site argued that central banks were rigging markets, it wasn't just making a financial claim—it was suggesting that democratic institutions themselves were inherently corrupt and needed to be replaced with more “efficient” mechanisms.
This methodology—using technical financial analysis to justify increasingly radical political conclusions—provided a blueprint that others would follow. The site demonstrated how expertise in one domain (financial markets) could be leveraged to advocate for sweeping political change. When Zero Hedge declared that markets were manipulated, it wasn't just criticizing policy—it was building the case that democracy itself was a failed system that needed to be replaced by technical, algorithmic governance.
What made Zero Hedge particularly effective was how it straddled multiple worlds. As Bloomberg noted in 2016, it remained an “Internet powerhouse” with real influence in financial circles even as The New Republic characterized it as “a forum for the hateful, conspiracy-driven voices of the angry white men of the alt-right.” This dual identity—technically sophisticated yet politically radical—made it a crucial bridge between mainstream financial discourse and emerging anti-democratic ideologies.
The site's true innovation wasn't just in mixing finance and politics—it was in suggesting that technical, market-based solutions could replace democratic processes entirely. This aligned perfectly with Silicon Valley's emerging worldview: if markets were more efficient than governments at allocating resources, why not let them allocate political power as well?
While InfoWars would later adopt some of Zero Hedge's anti-establishment positioning, it abandoned the pretense of technical expertise entirely. But Zero Hedge's more sophisticated approach—using financial expertise to justify anti-democratic conclusions—proved more influential in tech circles, where it reinforced the growing belief that democracy was simply an inefficient way to make decisions compared to markets and algorithms.
Zero Hedge's transformation from financial analysis to anti-democratic ideology previewed a broader pattern that would define the next decade: how technical expertise could be weaponized against democracy itself. While Zero Hedge used financial analysis to undermine faith in democratic institutions, InfoWars would take a cruder but arguably more effective approach: pure epistemic chaos.
As media scholar Yochai Benkler noted in a 2018 study, this period saw the emergence of a “propaganda feedback loop,” where audiences, media outlets, and political elites reinforce each other's views, regardless of the veracity of the information. Zero Hedge was an early example of this dynamic in action, demonstrating how traditional gatekeepers of information were losing their influence. This erosion of trust in established institutions, combined with the proliferation of alternative information sources, set the stage for what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt would later describe as “a kind of fragmentation of reality.”
As we moved into the 2010s, this fragmentation accelerated. Social media algorithms, designed to maximize engagement, amplified sensational and divisive content. The resulting flood of competing narratives made it increasingly difficult for citizens to discern truth from fiction, with profound implications for democratic discourse and decision-making.
The Zero Hedge model—mixing expert analysis with speculative political commentary—became a template for numerous other outlets, contributing to insular information ecosystems where narrative consistency trumped factual accuracy. This presaged how information would be produced, consumed, and weaponized in the age of social media and algorithmic content distribution.
While Zero Hedge pioneered this approach, InfoWars took it to the extreme. Founded by Alex Jones in 1999, InfoWars gained significant traction after the 2008 financial crisis, abandoning any pretense of conventional expertise in favor of sensationalism and conspiracy theories.
“The financial crisis created a perfect storm for outlets like InfoWars,” explains media scholar Whitney Phillips. “People were looking for explanations, and InfoWars offered simple, if outlandish, answers to complex problems.”
By 2015, InfoWars was generating an estimated $80 million annually, monetizing its audience directly through the sale of supplements and survival gear. This business model, which saw sales spike during crises, demonstrated how post-truth narratives could be converted into profit.
InfoWars' impact extended beyond its immediate audience, providing a playbook for a new generation of alternative media outlets. However, its promotion of baseless conspiracy theories had real-world consequences, from harassment of Sandy Hook victims' families to the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. As these tactics were adopted by a wide range of actors, the post-truth era posed unprecedented challenges to democratic discourse.
The parallel evolution of Zero Hedge and InfoWars revealed two complementary strategies for undermining democracy. Zero Hedge showed how technical expertise could be used to delegitimize democratic institutions from within, while InfoWars demonstrated how raw chaos could make democratic deliberation impossible. But it was Silicon Valley that would combine these insights into something even more dangerous: the argument that democracy's replacement by technical systems wasn't just desirable—it was inevitable.
This epistemic chaos wasn't an accident—it was a crucial tactic in undermining democracy itself. As Curtis Yarvin and his neoreactionary allies saw it, political legitimacy depended on the existence of a shared reality. Break that consensus, and democracy becomes impossible. Steve Bannon called it “flooding the zone with shit.” And by the time Trump entered office, the full strategy was in motion: destabilize public trust, replace expert analysis with endless counter-narratives, and ensure that the only people who could wield power were those who controlled the flow of information itself.
Figures like Yarvin didn’t just critique democracy—they sought to undermine the very conditions in which democratic deliberation is possible. By weaponizing media fragmentation, they hacked the cognitive foundations of democracy itself, ensuring that political power would no longer rest on reasoned debate but on the ability to manipulate information flows.
This is what makes the convergence of crypto, AI, and neo-reactionary ideology so dangerous. If people can’t agree on basic facts, who gets to decide what’s true? The answer, in Yarvin’s world, is the sovereign executive—a singular, unchallenged ruler whose legitimacy derives not from elections, but from sheer control over the information landscape.
James Pogue's remarkable piece of investigative journalism—Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets—traces the movement of these ideas fringes into a sophisticated political movement backed by some of the most powerful figures in technology.
Reporting from the 2022 National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Pogue encounters everyone from “fusty paleocon professors” to mainstream Republican senators, but his focus on the younger cohort is particularly illuminating. They are highly educated young elites who have absorbed Yarvin's critique of democracy and are working to make it political reality.
As Pogue documents, Yarvin's writings during the crisis period didn't just diagnose economic problems—they offered a comprehensive critique of what he called “the Cathedral,” an interlocking system of media, academia, and bureaucracy that he argued maintained ideological control while masking its own power.
The fusion of Austrian economics, techno-libertarianism, and Yarvin's critique of democracy found its perfect vehicle in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. As Pogue documents in Vanity Fair, Balaji Srinivasan emerged as a key figure who helped translate these abstract ideas into a concrete vision for restructuring society.
However, his thinking increasingly aligned with neo-reactionary ideas, particularly around the concept of “exit”—the ability to opt out of existing political structures entirely. This shift from techno-libertarianism to neo-reactionary thought isn't as large a leap as it might seem. Both ideologies share a deep skepticism of centralized authority and a belief in the power of technology to reshape society.
The pipeline from techno-libertarianism to neo-reaction often follows a predictable path: It begins with a libertarian critique of government inefficiency and overreach. This evolves into a broader skepticism of all democratic institutions, seen as slow and irrational compared to the speed and logic of technology. Eventually, this leads to the conclusion that democracy itself is an outdated system, incompatible with rapid technological progress. The final step is embracing the idea that democracy should be replaced entirely with more “efficient” forms of governance, often modeled on corporate structures or technological systems.
This vision resonated deeply with Silicon Valley elites who had been influenced by Yarvin's critique of democracy but were seeking concrete mechanisms to implement alternative governance structures. Cryptocurrency offered not just a way to circumvent state monetary control, but also a model for how digital technology could enable new forms of sovereignty.
This wasn't just theoretical—as Pogue notes, there were actual attempts to implement these ideas, like the Peter Thiel-backed “network state" project called Praxis in Greenland.
The Sovereign Individual: Blueprint for a Post-Democratic World

But destroying consensus was only the first step. The true revolution would come through technology itself. In 1999, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg published a book that would become the blueprint for this technological coup: The Sovereign Individual. Published at the height of the dotcom boom, the book read like science fiction to many at the time: it predicted the rise of cryptocurrency, the decline of traditional nation-states, and the emergence of a new digital aristocracy. Taxes will become voluntary. Regulations will disappear. The most successful people will form their own private, self-governing communities, while the rest of the world is left behind.
Libertarianism, when fused with this kind of technological determinism, takes a sharp turn away from classical liberal thought. If you assume that government will inevitably be outcompeted by private networks, decentralized finance, and AI-driven governance, then trying to reform democracy becomes pointless. The more radical conclusion, embraced by the figures at the forefront of this movement, is that government should be actively dismantled and replaced with a more “efficient” form of rule—one modeled on corporate governance rather than democratic participation.
This is precisely where libertarianism morphs into neoreaction. Instead of advocating for a constitutional republic with minimal government, this new strain of thought pushes for a private, post-democratic order, where those with the most resources and technological control dictate the rules. In this vision, power doesn’t rest with the people—it belongs to the most competent “executives” running society like a CEO would run a company.
This is how Curtis Yarvin’s argument that democracy is an outdated, inefficient system became so appealing to Silicon Valley elites. It wasn’t just a philosophical argument; it aligned with the way many in the tech industry already thought about disruption, efficiency, and control. If innovation constantly renders old systems obsolete, then why should governance be any different?
Figures like Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan took this logic a step further, arguing that rather than resisting the decline of democratic institutions, elites should accelerate the transition to a new order—one where governance is voluntary, privatized, and largely detached from public accountability. The rhetoric of “exit” and “network states” became the libertarian justification for abandoning democracy altogether.
This mindset is deeply ingrained in Silicon Valley, where disruption is seen as not just a business model, but a law of history. Entrepreneurs are taught that old institutions are inefficient relics waiting to be displaced by something better. When applied to government, this logic leads directly to Yarvin’s argument: democracy is outdated “legacy code” that can’t keep up with modern complexity. The future, he and others argue, will belong to those who design and implement a superior system—one that runs more like a corporation, where leaders are chosen based on competence rather than elections.
This is why neoreactionary ideas have found such a receptive audience among tech elites. If you believe that technology inevitably renders old systems obsolete, then why should democracy be any different? Why bother fixing the government if it’s doomed to be replaced by something more advanced?
This is where the transition from libertarianism to neoreaction becomes clear. Classical libertarians at least paid lip service to democracy, arguing that markets should exist within a limited but functioning democratic system. But the Silicon Valley version of libertarianism, shaped by The Sovereign Individual and reinforced by the rise of cryptocurrency, started to see democratic governance itself as an obstacle. The question was no longer “How do we make government smaller?” but rather “How do we escape government altogether?”
The answer, for people like Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and Balaji Srinivasan, was to replace democracy with a new system—one where power belongs to those with the resources to exit and build something better. And as we are now seeing, they aren’t waiting for that transition to happen naturally.
Srinivasan, like others in this movement, had undergone an ideological evolution that exemplifies a broader trend in Silicon Valley. As a former CTO of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he initially approached cryptocurrency from a techno-libertarian perspective, viewing it as a tool for individual empowerment and market efficiency.
However, his thinking increasingly aligned with neo-reactionary ideas, particularly around the concept of “exit”—the ability to opt out of existing political structures entirely. This shift from techno-libertarianism to neo-reactionary thought isn't as large a leap as it might seem. Both ideologies share a deep skepticism of centralized authority and a belief in the power of technology to reshape society.
The pipeline from techno-libertarianism to neo-reaction often follows a predictable path: It begins with a libertarian critique of government inefficiency and overreach. This evolves into a broader skepticism of all democratic institutions, seen as slow and irrational compared to the speed and logic of technology. Eventually, this leads to the conclusion that democracy itself is an outdated system, incompatible with rapid technological progress. The final step is embracing the idea that democracy should be replaced entirely with more “efficient” forms of governance, often modeled on corporate structures or technological systems.
Srinivasan's journey along this ideological pipeline is reflected in his evolving views on cryptocurrency. What started as a tool for financial freedom became, in his vision, the foundation for entirely new forms of governance outside traditional state structures. This transformation—from seeing crypto as a means of individual empowerment within existing systems to viewing it as a way to build entirely new political entities—mirrors the broader shift from techno-libertarianism to neo-reaction in Silicon Valley.
As I wrote last year, what makes the Sovereign Individuals's influence particularly concerning is its epistemically authoritarian nature. By presenting technological change as an unstoppable force that would inevitably dissolve traditional democratic institutions, the book provided Silicon Valley with a deterministic narrative that justified the concentration of power in the hands of tech elites as historically inevitable rather than a choice that deserved democratic deliberation.
As Pogue documents, figures like Peter Thiel began to see cryptocurrency not just as a new financial instrument, but as a tool for fundamentally restructuring society. The technology offered a way to make the abstract ideas of Yarvin and The Sovereign Individual concrete. If traditional democracy was hopelessly corrupt, as Yarvin argued, then perhaps blockchain could enable new forms of governance built on immutable code rather than fallible human judgment.
This vision found its perfect technological expression in Bitcoin. Launched in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis by an anonymous creator using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin seemed to validate The Sovereign Individual's core thesis—that technology could enable individuals to opt out of state monetary control. The timing was perfect: just as faith in traditional financial institutions had been shattered, here was a system that promised to replace human judgment with mathematical certainty.
Bitcoin's philosophical underpinnings drew heavily from Austrian economics and libertarian thought, but it was Saifedean Ammous who most explicitly merged these ideas with reactionary politics in his 2018 book The Bitcoin Standard. What began as an economic argument for Bitcoin based on Austrian monetary theory evolved into something far more radical in its later chapters. Particularly telling was Ammous's critique of modern art and architecture, which mirrors almost precisely the fascist aesthetic theory of the early 20th century. When he rails against “degenerate” modern art and architecture in favor of classical forms, he's invoking—whether intentionally or not—the exact language and arguments used by fascists in the 1930s. One German friend's observation to me is that it is "far more striking in the original German."
The Bitcoin community's embrace of figures like Ammous reveals how cryptocurrency became not just a technology or an investment, but a vehicle for reactionary political thought. The idea that Bitcoin would restore some lost golden age of sound money merged seamlessly with broader reactionary narratives about societal decline and the need for restoration of traditional hierarchies.
While figures like Ammous attempted to claim Bitcoin for a reactionary worldview, the technology itself—as Bailey, Rettler and their co-authors argue in Resistance Money—can equally serve liberal and democratic values. The key distinction lies in how we understand Bitcoin's relationship to political institutions.
Where reactionaries see Bitcoin as a tool for replacing democratic governance entirely, the liberal perspective presented in Resistance Money understands it as a check against overreach and a means of preserving individual autonomy within democratic systems. This frames Bitcoin not as a replacement for democratic institutions, but as a technological innovation that can help protect civil liberties and human rights—particularly in contexts where traditional financial systems are used as tools of surveillance or oppression.
This tension between reactionary and liberal interpretations of Bitcoin reflects a broader pattern we've seen throughout our narrative: technological innovations that could enhance human freedom being co-opted into anti-democratic frameworks. Just as Yarvin and others attempted to claim the entire trajectory of technological development as inevitably leading to the dissolution of democracy, figures like Ammous tried to present Bitcoin's monetary properties as necessarily implying a broader reactionary worldview.
From Theory to Practice: The Implementation of Anti-Democratic Ideas

From Yarvin's early writings during the financial crisis to today's constitutional crisis, we can trace a clear intellectual evolution. What began as abstract criticism of democratic institutions has become a concrete blueprint for dismantling them. But the key accelerant in this process was cryptocurrency—it provided both a technological framework and a psychological model for opting out of democratic governance entirely.
But what makes this vision dangerous is not just its hostility to democracy—it’s the way it frames the collapse of democratic governance as an inevitability rather than a choice. This is precisely what I have described as epistemic authoritarianism. Rather than acknowledging that technology is shaped by human agency and political decisions, the Network State vision assumes that technological change has a fixed trajectory, one that will naturally dissolve nation-states and replace them with digitally mediated governance structures. This deterministic thinking leaves no room for public debate, democratic decision-making, or alternative paths for technological development. It tells us that the future has already been decided, and the only choice is whether to embrace it or be left behind.
This deterministic framing also explains why so many libertarians found themselves drifting toward reactionary politics. If democracy is doomed, then why bother defending it? If technology is going to replace governance, then why not accelerate the process? This is how techno-libertarianism became a gateway to neoreaction—it replaced the classical liberal commitment to open debate and incremental progress with an absolutist vision of history that justified abandoning democratic ideals entirely.
When Musk gains control of Treasury payment systems, or Trump declares he won't enforce laws he dislikes, they're implementing ideas incubated in the crypto world. The notion that code can replace democratic institutions, that technical competence should override democratic negotiation, and that private power should supersede public authority—these ideas moved from crypto theory to political practice.
Both Srinivasan's “network state” and Yarvin's critique of democracy see technology as a means of escaping democratic constraints, but they approach it differently. Yarvin advocates for capturing and dismantling democratic institutions from within, while Srinivasan proposes building parallel structures to make them irrelevant. We're now witnessing the convergence of these approaches—using technological control to simultaneously capture and bypass democratic governance.
The financial crisis created the conditions for anti-democratic thought to take root in Silicon Valley, but the actual transformation occurred through a series of distinct phases, each building on the last. Let's trace this evolution carefully:
The institutional context for this transformation is crucial. Gallup polls show trust in the media fell from 72% to 31% between 1976 to 2024, while distrust in government hit 85% post-2008, according to Pew Research. This erosion of institutional trust created fertile ground for alternative power structures. As the Brookings Institution noted in a 2023 analysis: “Tech leaders increasingly adopt neo-feudal framing of users-as-serfs, reflecting a broader shift away from democratic conceptions of citizenship.”
The danger lies not just in what these operatives are doing, but in how their actions systemically dismantle their capacity for democratic resistance. What we are seeing is an exact implementation of Curtis Yarvin’s “RAGE” doctrine—Retire All Government Employees—that he first proposed in 2012. But what makes this moment particularly significant is how it combines multiple strands of neoreactionary thought into coordinated action. When Yarvin wrote about replacing democratic institutions with corporate governance structures, when he argues that technical competence should override democratic process, he is describing precisely what we’re now watching unfold.
Consider how this maps to Yarvin’s blueprint: First, remove career officials who might resist on legal or constitutional grounds. Then, install private technical infrastructure that makes oversight impossible.
The goal isn’t just to change who runs government agencies—it’s to fundamentally transform how power operates, shifting it from democratic institutions to technical systems controlled by a small elite.
But what makes this implementation particularly dangerous is how it combines Yarvin’s institutional critique with Balaji Srinivasan’s technological vision. Where Yarvin provided the theoretical framework for dismantling the democratic institutions, Srinivasan’s “network state” concept provided practical tools and training. Many of these young operatives came through programs explicitly designed to build parallel governance structures outside of democratic control, operated by Srinivasan.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just a power grab—it’s the culmination of an ideology that has been incubated, tested, and refined for over a decade.
First, these thinkers argued that democracy was inefficient. Then, they created technological tools—cryptocurrency, blockchain governance, and AI-driven decision-making—to bypass democratic institutions entirely. Now, they’re no longer experimenting. They are seizing control of government infrastructure itself, reprogramming it in real-time to function according to their vision.
This is why focusing solely on the technical aspects of what's happening inside agencies misses the deeper transformation underway. Every unauthorized server, every AI model, every removed civil servant represents another step in converting democratic governance into what Yarvin called “neocameralism”—a system where society is run like a corporation, with clear ownership and control rather than democratic deliberation. The infrastructure being built isn't meant to serve democratic ends—it's meant to make democracy itself obsolete.
The strategy of “flooding the zone with shit” was never just about controlling the news cycle—it was about reshaping the conditions of governance itself. The goal was not just to mislead, but to create an environment so chaotic that traditional democratic decision-making would become impossible.
First, they disrupted journalism, replacing truth with engagement-optimized feeds. Now, they are disrupting governance itself. Your news, your politics, your very reality—automated, privatized, and controlled by those who own the network.
And then, once the public lost trust in government, the tech elite could present the solution: a new, AI-driven, algorithmically optimized form of governance. One that wouldn’t be subject to human irrationality, democratic inefficiency, or the unpredictability of elections. Just like social media companies replaced traditional news with algorithmic feeds, these technocrats sought to replace democratic governance with automated decision-making.
What’s happening inside the Department of Government Efficiency is the final phase of this plan. The old democratic institutions, weakened by years of deliberate destabilization, are being replaced in real-time by proprietary AI systems controlled not by elected officials, but by the same network of Silicon Valley operatives who engineered the crisis in the first place.
We are not heading toward this future—we are already living in it.
Government functions that once belonged to democratically accountable institutions are already being transferred to proprietary AI systems, optimized not for justice or equality, but for efficiency and control. Already, decisions about financial regulation, law enforcement priorities, and political dissent are being made by algorithms that no citizen can vote against and no court can oversee. Your rights are no longer determined by a legal framework you can appeal—they are dictated by a set of terms of service, changeable at the whim of those who control the network.
Resistance and Alternatives

Despite the growing influence of these anti-democratic ideas, they have not gone unchallenged. Scholars like Evgeny Morozov have critiqued the “technological solutionism” that underpins much of this thinking. Grassroots movements advocating for digital rights and democratic control of technology have gained traction. Some tech workers themselves have begun organizing against the more extreme visions of their employers.
However, these resistance efforts face an uphill battle against the immense resources and influence of those pushing for a post-democratic future.
And if we do not act now, we may wake up one day to find that democracy was not overthrown in a dramatic coup—but simply deleted, line by line, from the code that governs our lives.
And yet, the most terrifying part? Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.
But those around him? They understand perfectly.
J.D. Vance, the Vice President in waiting, has studied Curtis Yarvin’s work. Peter Thiel, his longtime patron, has been funding this vision for over a decade. Balaji Srinivasan is writing the blueprint. Elon Musk is laying the infrastructure. And the young operatives now wiring AI models into the Treasury Department—disbanding civil service, bypassing traditional government, and replacing democratic accountability with technological sovereignty—are working toward a future that will long outlast Trump himself.
This is not about Trump. This is about what comes after him.
Actuarial realities do not favor an aging leader with a declining grasp on policy. But they favor the thirty- and forty-somethings laying the foundation for the post-democratic order. The men who have spent the past decade engineering an exit from democracy are no longer whispering in the dark corners of the internet. They are in power, with money, AI, and a plan. And democracy, in its current form, has never been closer to the brink.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei, Elon Musk declares from his digital throne—the voice of the people is the voice of God.
But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei. They whisper it, as they lock the gates.

[Peter Lemkin]

Part II

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our conversation with Jason Stanley, author and professor of philosophy at Yale University. His new book is titled Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. He’s also the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
Thanks so much for staying with us. In this part of the conversation, I want to get into Project 2025 and also the great replacement theory. But I want to start off, for those who didn’t hear perhaps Part 1, by you just laying out the thesis of your book.
JASON STANLEY: The thesis of my book is that a certain kind of erasing history justifies actions by authoritarian leaders, such as cutting down voting for minority populations, such as justifying state violence — in the case of the United States, against immigrants; in the case of, say, India, against Muslims; and in Israel, against Palestinians.
Vladimir Putin recently blurbed my book. He said, “Wars are won by teachers.” You can see that from the Russian textbooks in 2022, for example. They completely justify the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They justify it by representing Ukraine as fake. They eliminate all Ukrainian history. They justify it as representing the West, as threatening traditional “European values.”
So, textbooks have an enormous role to play in authoritarianism. When we look at the United States, what we see is the same people attacking voting are attacking public schools. So, what I’m trying to do is explain that link between authoritarianism and attacking education.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, that’s really interesting, which takes us right away to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In 2022, he signed into law House Bill 7, also known as the Stop WOKE Act, which he claimed would take on critical race theory in the workplace and in schools.

GOV. RON DESANTIS: We believe an important component of freedom in the state of Florida is the freedom from having oppressive ideologies opposed upon you without your consent, whether it be in the classroom or whether it be in the workplace, and we decided to do something about it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Governor DeSantis. Explain exactly what’s happened in Florida.
JASON STANLEY: So, first of all, let me note his invocation of the term “freedom.” Toni Morrison said that freedom in American rhetoric is far too often a white notion, contrasted with the unfreedom of Black Americans. Ron DeSantis sells this bill as promoting freedom, but whose freedom are we talking about? It’s supposedly the freedom of Americans to be free from oppressive literature. However, if you’re a Black student, a Black child in those schools, your history is not being represented. Are Black parents free to complain about the curriculum as representing the normative American family as white? Are Black parents free to complain about the fact that the history of Black agency is being eliminated, Black Lives Matter no longer allowed to be taught in Florida schools? What about LGBT families? Are they free to complain about the representation of heterosexual families as the norm, as Project 2025 tries to impose on a federal level? Think about how this makes LGBT families feel. Think if your parents are in a same-sex relationship and their relationship is banned from the schools. That’s not — freedom here means the freedom of white Christian men.
So, in Florida, what we have, the result of this, people down —
AMY GOODMAN: White Christian men who aren’t gay.
JASON STANLEY: Who aren’t white Christian cis men, exactly.
So, now in Florida, these laws have created a culture of fear and intimidation. They’ve made public school teachers public enemy number one. The universities are under dire attack. No one has reported on the fact that the University of Florida, in their post-tenure review, almost 20% of the professors have failed it and face loss of their jobs.
Similar bills have been passed in Ohio and Indiana. We’re talking about Ohio State and the University of Indiana, two of the world’s greatest public universities. Now professors face penalties, from loss of their positions to loss of their salaries to civil penalties for teaching concepts like white privilege, for teaching Black history, for teaching LGBT perspectives. Students are being encouraged in these states to turn their professors in, like in an authoritarian society. Tennessee has an online reporting form to turn in not just public school teachers, but professors, for teaching basic concepts of Black history and LGBT perspectives, so — or American history.
So, this attack on history has created, especially in Florida, a culture of fear and intimidation, encouraging people to turn their fellow citizens in for violating the official ideology of the state.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re in an election year. We were at the Republican National Convention, covering it. Among those who spoke was Tucker Carlson. Media Matters has accused Tucker Carlson of being responsible for, quote, “single-handedly introducing the white supremacist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory into mainstream American politics.” This is a clip of Tucker Carlson when he was still hosting a nightly show on Fox News.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, into that, you throw millions of brand new people who have no connection to America whatsoever, people who broke our laws to get here, who don’t speak our language, who have no idea what the U.S. Constitution says and don’t care. And what do you have when you put all of that together? You have a recipe for social collapse.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you also have written a piece in Slate, “Donald Trump is openly running a Great Replacement Theory campaign.” Talk about what Carlson said, what Trump repeatedly is saying, and why you think this is so dangerous.
JASON STANLEY: I was recently talking to my — some of my relatives who are Orthodox Jewish, who are parroting this line about how our family came in legally. However, many, many thousands of Jewish refugees from Germany weren’t able to come in illegally — come in legally. They would have had to come in illegally. Many of them were turned away. Their ships were turned away, and they died in concentration camps. What my fellow Jewish Americans are saying when they’re saying we should only accept people who come in legally is they are supporting the mass murder of Jews who were turned away from America’s shores. And that is something that I will never do. I will never turn away the victims of genocide.
So, this great replacement theory is the core of the message of MAGA Republicanism, in this election and previously. It links to the education framework, because in education, what you do is you eliminate the history of nonwhite Christian cis men, and you instead elevate the stories of great white Christian men, who are supposedly what — the people who make our country great. And that way, you can represent nonwhite immigration as an existential threat to the nation.
And what we know from history is that great replacement theory motivates mass violence. It motivates mass violence on the state level and the individual level. We have many, many mass shootings since Anders Breivik in 2011 justified on the basis of great replacement theory about immigrants ruining the greatness and innocence of the nation. And it justifies, of course, mass violence, as we’re seeing in India, when they represent Muslims as sort of foreign invaders, and, you know, there’s regular lynchings. And it, of course, was the core of Nazi ideology, when Hitler had this crazed conspiracy theory that Jews lost World War I to — betrayed Germany in World War I in order to bring in Black Senegalese soldiers into the Rhineland to mate, have children, rape and seduce German women, to undermine the white race. So, that’s what we’re seeing. We know from history and the present what it justifies.
AMY GOODMAN: And what’s so interesting is that, look, when you had the white supremacists marching in the University of Virginia, they were marching chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
JASON STANLEY: Yeah. So, I always ask my students a quiz when I’m teaching this material. Are they saying Jews will numerically replace Christian Americans? No, they’re saying Jews are behind the engineering of this replacement. What we’re now seeing is we’re seeing the Republicans say Democrats are behind this great replacement. And that is actually aiming political violence not just against immigrants, but at their political opponents.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Donald Trump in his debate with Kamala Harris, hosted by ABC News.

DONALD TRUMP: Because they’re destroying the fabric of our country by what they’ve done. There’s never been anything done like this at all. They’ve destroyed the fabric of our country.

AMY GOODMAN: “They’ve destroyed the fabric of our country.” And, of course, this is the same debate where he said that Haitians are eating your pets.
JASON STANLEY: Yeah. So, when you have accurate history, if you knew, for example, that Haiti had the only successful slave revolution in human history, then you might be able to see what the demonization of Haitian immigrants is doing. The demonization of Haitian immigrants has multiple aspects. It’s racist, of course. It’s saying that — exactly like Hitler did with the Senegalese soldiers, it’s saying that Black immigrants are going to undermine the character. So, hint, hint, what is the character of the nation? And it’s singling out Haitians is particularly dangerous. And that’s a shoutout to history, as it were, since Haitians have been being punished by the world for their revolution for hundreds of years.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Project 2025 and how that fits into Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. President Trump has had to distance himself from this, even though something like well over a hundred of his allies and aides were involved with writing Project 2025. It was done under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation. The head of it has just written a book. It has a foreword by JD Vance, and it’s been postponed for publication ’til after the election. But talk about the significance of it.
JASON STANLEY: The significance of Project 2025 is that it calls for what in the Nazi parlance is called Gleichschaltung, the systematic replacement of civil servants by loyalists, by party loyalists, and the systematic replacement of teachers in schools and universities and, in general, institutions throughout society by party loyalists.
In the case of education, it’s completely implausible that Trump is ideologically distant from the goals of Project 2025. Trump has repeatedly said he’s going to target critical race theory, which, let’s face it, is simply Black history. The Project — he’s targeted — he said he’s going to replace education with patriotic education — namely, representing the United States as an exceptional grand nation whose exceptionality is due to its white Christian heterosexual men, who have defined the nation.
So, in Project 2025, the civil rights agenda is to base civil rights enforcement on a proper understanding of the laws and eliminating critical race theory and gender ideology. In other words, civil rights law in schools is entirely there to make sure that there’s no racism against nondominant groups, against Black Americans. Civil rights law is there to make sure that LGBT children or the children in LGBT families are not discriminated against. In other words, this is a mandate to eliminate civil rights enforcement.
Project 2025, in a bizarre kind of quasi-fascist way, targets funding for disabled students. Of course, fascism involves privileging nondisabled people, privileging sort of supposedly producers to the nation. And that, I find a bizarre kind of resonance of fascist ideology, to slash funding for disabled students.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stanley, tell us who JD Vance is. I mean, he went to Yale Law School. You’re a professor of philosophy at Yale. He is the real attack dog for Trump in, just this weekend, seizing on the apparent assassination attempt, the second one in two months of Trump. He went after Democratic rivals for their rhetoric. This is Vance at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Atlanta on Monday.

SEN. JD VANCE: Well, you know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have — no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down their rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is pretty amazing. He was following what Elon Musk had said — you know, why haven’t people tried to assassinate Biden and Kamala? Why just Trump? And then he had to delete that tweet. Now he’s being investigated by the Secret Service. Tell us about JD Vance and also what is being said about him at Yale.
JASON STANLEY: Yeah. So, first of all, Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was beaten on the head with a hammer by someone who — affected by Republican conspiracy theories. So, that that gets erased is kind of shocking.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you had Don Trump Jr. mocking Paul Pelosi being hammered on the head, something he is suffering from to this day.
JASON STANLEY: Absolutely. So you have a congratulations for violence.
AMY GOODMAN: And also, you have Trump saying these are two far-left people who tried to assassinate him, when I think in both cases — I mean, the mental health problems of both men, you know, have yet to be fully laid out, but they were originally Trump supporters. And this last one, Rauth, voted for President Trump.
JASON STANLEY: Right. Misrepresentations of reality, as we know, are no barrier to the campaign that the Republicans are waging.
Now, JD Vance, I think he should be thought of as one of the emerging intellectuals of this authoritarian movement. Initially, people said, “How could it be fascism when you don’t have intellectuals, the fascist intellectuals?” I think that’s what we’re starting to see. JD Vance is a Yale man. When I came to Yale soon after he left, everyone spoke glowingly about him. He is someone that Yale loves, like Ron DeSantis, like Tom Cotton at Harvard. These leaders of this movement come from the very elite institutions that they are supposedly decrying. Both Vance and his spouse are Yale graduates.
Now, Vance is entirely inconsistent. Hillbilly Elegy is a book about how poor whites reject meritocracy and the promise of America to wallow in self-pity and resentment. And now Vance is running a campaign about self-pity and resentment, saying to the dominant group, “You’re being replaced by immigrants. Your misery is not your fault. It’s the fault of the very institutions that trained me to become the vice-presidential candidate of the United States and connected me to billionaires like Peter Thiel, who are supporting me, who are my mentors.” So, JD Vance comes from the billionaire world of private equity and hedge funds. So, he is being supported by billionaires who are exploiting, who want him to exploit resentment to elect an administration that’s going to cut their taxes and eliminate regulation against them.
So, JD Vance, I think his internal ideology is a far-right, anti-woman ideology that is based around great replacement and natalism, the idea that women should be having large families, to replace the true Americans, the real Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: And then going after, of course, the childless so-called cat ladies.
JASON STANLEY: Absolutely, because in this ideology, in this kind of far-right fascist ideology, that draws in both social conservatives, anti-democratic social conservatives, as the — as well as sort of macho men, who think men should be men, sort of Musk, who also has a lot — you know, goes in for we have to replace our populations.
There’s a simple solution to dealing with declining birth rates in the United States, and it’s on the southern border. It’s immigration. If that’s really what you care about, is declining U.S. populations, then you’re going to open the floodgates to immigration. Really, JD Vance is asking for there to be more immigrants. But because what is meant are non-Black immigrants specifically, because what is meant are Christian immigrants — well, because, sorry, what is meant are Black immigrants and non-Christian immigrants as a threat to the nation, JD Vance is calling for rigid gender roles, denouncing women who don’t have children. And that’s the ideology here. That’s the ideology that sweeps in — that sweeps in social conservatives. They see women’s rights being then diminished along the lines that democracy allows. It’s an anti-freedom agenda. Women’s rights are central to the democratic value of freedom. And attacking women’s rights is the most central way — attacking the freedoms of 50% of the population is the most central way to attack freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to switch gears and go to Israel. You’re the son of Holocaust survivors. I wanted to talk about the situation. You have the college campuses, encampments across the country, and you have what’s directly happening in Gaza and the West Bank. Last year, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke at a conference in Paris, France, where he said there’s, quote, “no such thing as Palestinian people.”

BEZALEL SMOTRICH: [translated] There’s no such thing as a Palestinian people. … Do you know who’s Palestinian? I am Palestinian. … My late grandfather, who is 13th-generation Jerusalemite, is the true Palestinian. … The Palestinian people are an invention that is less than a hundred years old.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what Smotrich is saying?
JASON STANLEY: Smotrich is paving the way for genocide. If there are no Palestinians, then there are no Palestinians to evict, there’s no Palestinians to starve, there’s no Palestinians to kill. So, I think it’s mistaken to get bogged down in the question of whether Israel is a colonial country, colonialist country. It’s completely obvious that Israel is engaging in colonialist practices. And that’s what we should focus on.
They’re erasing the history of Palestinians in order to evict them from the country, to restrict their rights. One would — what liberal Democrat would countenance the idea of a country that must remain as — have as a majority one ethnic or religious group? That’s not something that we would stand for in Western Europe, for example. So, this erasure of Palestinian people, this representation of them as lacking a historical claim and rights, it allows for stereotypes, such as Palestinians are unjustifiably reacting to the conditions they’re in. And now, I don’t want to justify the actions of Hamas, which are horrific, and the terrorist activities of October 7th. But to erase the Palestinian people from history is what underlies what we’re currently seeing, which is an active genocide in progress.
AMY GOODMAN: You have JD Vance saying that “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Your response?
JASON STANLEY: Well, we know the people in question were not motivated by that. I think they were motivated by trying to get themselves in history books by assassinating some famous person, because, ideologically, they were not — they were, if anything, Trump supporters, so apolitical or Trump supporters. So that’s an entire mischaracterization. And at the same time, you’re targeting your political opponents, the Democrats, as the people who are behind the supposed replacement of Americans, and, therefore, an existential threat to the greatness of the nation. We have to remember that this targeting of political opponents is extremely dangerous and a characteristic of authoritarian regimes about to engage in either violence or other court methods, using the justice system to target their opponents.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you end your book by exploring how reclaiming history is an act of resistance against authoritarian regimes that seek to erase the past. Why don’t you wrap up with your final thoughts?
JASON STANLEY: So, when you — authoritarians need to create a situation where we all fear each other, the different groups in a country all fear each other, so we need an authoritarian leader. So, the dominant group needs an authoritarian leader to protect them against predators targeting their family or immigrants replacing the nation.
What reclaiming history and reclaiming perspectives does is it humanizes the people that you’re supposed to fear, that the authoritarian sets you up to fear. It explains their perspective. And since democracy is a system where we all need to understand each other’s perspectives in order to have a democracy at all, especially the perspectives of nondominant groups who have been denied the democratic ideals of freedom and equality, reclaiming history, reclaiming perspective, saying this is what it feels like to be a Black American in the United States, this is what it feels like in Hungary to be the child of Holocaust — to be a Holocaust survivor. Like Toni Morrison is being banned in the United States, Imre Kertész, his work, a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor, is being removed from schools in Hungary. So that’s very typical. So, placing those perspectives in —
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Donald Trump continually, right through this presidential debate, holding up Orbán as a great leader.
JASON STANLEY: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: The Hungarian ruler.
JASON STANLEY: Orbán is their model, which is using the courts to target universities, taking over the courts, using the courts to buttress this kind of kleptocracy and crony capitalism that the billionaire class in America is hoping for, I think mistakenly. They’re hoping to get a leg up, the regulations slashed, and they’re hoping to, early on, align themselves with this —
AMY GOODMAN: Why mistakenly?
JASON STANLEY: Mistakenly because just look at Vladimir Putin’s Russia. How well has it worked out for the oligarchs there? This is always a mistake that oligarchs make. They think that they’ll be able to control their little dictator. And that is a profound error.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us and also writing this book. Jason Stanley, author and professor of philosophy at Yale University. His new book, just out, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. He’s also author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

Donald Trump is busy seizing power through executive orders and letting Elon Musk and his gang of racist DOGE bros run amok through America’s government agencies. It’s an unprecedented upending of the separation of powers, an authoritarian reshaping of America.
While Trump and his henchmen deconstruct the administrative state, his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship. The core argument emerging in their legal filings and executive orders — one without support anywhere in the Constitution or the law — is that simply by being elected, Trump has the power to do whatever he wants.
The issue is not the use of executive orders as such. The authority to issue them comes from Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive power in the president and requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Executive orders are meant to tell the executive branch how to implement existing laws. However, in part because Congress is now so routinely deadlocked, every president in the 21st century has issued scores of them that attempt to implement policies outside of the legislative process.

But executive orders aren’t laws, and the authority of presidents to issue them is not absolute. They can’t contradict or overturn existing statutes. Subsequent presidents can undo executive orders just by issuing a new executive order saying so. And federal courts have routinely struck down EOs for being unconstitutional or for exceeding the scope of the president’s authority.
When executive orders are challenged in court, government attorneys typically point to the underlying laws that give the president the authority to issue the order. Trump seems to have dispensed with that requirement, however.
Trump’s imperial ambitions have made for some laughably thin legal theories. As Just Security noted, the government’s argument in defense of Trump’s birthright citizenship EO does not reference any citizenship statutes nor point to any authority that would give Trump the right to undo birthright citizenship via the stroke of a pen. Instead, after quoting the relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment — ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — the EO just goes on to state that it “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
The problem for Trump is that the Fourteenth Amendment has absolutely historically been interpreted to do just that. The EO attempts to say that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are magic words that have always excluded people whose parents were not citizens when they were born, but that’s nothing but a recent crackpot theory from election denier attorney John Eastman. <aaronrupar.substack.com><aaronrupar.substack.com><aaronrupar.substack.com>