Marco Rullkoetter/Getty.
Before Gamergate, Larry, the Google software engineer, was “a standard Democrat straight-voting person,” as he puts it. But reading about the movement in the tech press and on pro-Gamergate websites “did highlight some of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies with positions on the left,” he says. A comment in a Gamergate thread led Larry to the Unz Review, a website run by Palo Alto tech entrepreneur and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz. There, Larry says he was exposed to treatises on “human biological diversity” expounding on the supposed cognitive differences between intellectually superior and inferior races.
Human biological diversity has also gained currency in the Valley through computer scientist Curtis Yarvin, who writes under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. Starting in 2007, in series of blog posts often cited by alt-right followers, Yarvin laid out a political philosophy known as neoreaction or the “Dark Enlightenment.” Combining a technocratic sensibility with reactionary political thought, neoreaction rejects Enlightenment concepts—such as democracy and equality of the races and sexes—and instead advocates something much closer to authoritarianism. Yarvin believes government would work much better if run like a tech company and helmed by an all-powerful CEO president. He spoke admiringly Napoleon, whom he considers to be “kind of the Steve Jobs of France.”
Yarvin’s blog combines dorky programmer lingo with dense references to obscure, proto-fascist political texts. “When I started blogging 10 years ago, the availability of completely unorthodox written content [online] was mostly confined to the pre-1923 corpus, which Google did such a nice job scanning,” Yarvin told me in an email. He believes that software programmers are attracted to his writings because they “are always looking for something to do with their restless, fidgety brains. Especially if it’s weird and doesn’t involve dealing with physical humans.”
Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who reportedly gave Trump more than $1 million during the campaign and was an adviser on Trump’s transition team, has circled neoreactionary ideas. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote on the Cato Institute’s blog in 2009, adding that women and “welfare beneficiaries” have through their voting habits “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron” (He clarified two weeks later that he supports women’s suffrage and redirected blame for the supposed demise of democracy on “unelected technocratic agencies.”)
That’s just part of an in-depth article on all the dyed-in-wool bigots infesting the tech sector. I’m sure this wouldn’t come as news to anyone who works in the industry, and certainly not news to women and people of colour. Recommended Reading.
I imagine these idiots think this way because they count themselves among the ones who would be doing the ruling instead of the ones ruled.
Yarvin believes government would work much better if run like a tech company and helmed by an all-powerful CEO president.
Typical boot-licker: the always imagine either that they’re going to be wearing the boot, or that the boot is not going to be on their face.
A running sentiment seems to be:
Along with “women and PoC don’t make it because they are subpar, it’s nothing to do with discrimination!”
Trahison des Ingénieurs.
Eh what? This is the guy who after a disastrous failed invasion of Russia that left France in dire financial straights came back to be defeated by getting into a fight with the British and the Prussians. Mind you, I have heard Steve Jobs described as the man who gave us less for more.
Marcus @2
I have worked for too many companies that have been driven off a cliff by more ego than brains CEOs to ever think that would be a good model of government.
With regards to racial superiority have they ever found a measure of intelligence that ranked whites higher than blacks that didn’t rank Asians higher than whites. Leaving aside the ambiguous definition of races of course.
women and “welfare beneficiaries” have through their voting habits “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron” (He clarified two weeks later that he supports women’s suffrage and redirected blame for the supposed demise of democracy on “unelected technocratic agencies.”)
So,which is it? Is democracy the problem, or ‘undemocratic’ aspects of government?
I think we all know this, but let me state it explicitly:
Of course if you run a state with a same logic as a company you may get a profitable state (or a bankrupt one) in a short term, but at least I wouldn’t want to live in either one. A state is supposed to strike a balance over conflicting interests without private warfare and protect the residents while a company is out to make profit for the actual owners, who control the company. So, from a progressive perspective, Mr Yarvin is full of shit.