That Funny, Fash-y Feeling
Creepy, eerie, gnarly, sneaky
Hi folks,
Let’s have another community call this week. I apologize as I intend to hold these on a regular schedule. We will get there. This week’s call will be at Thursday, 3 pm EST. As an experiment, this one is open for all subscribers, paid and unpaid. I will close future ones to paid subscribers. We can discuss ideas and paths about the upcoming “vibe shift” with Trump’s inauguration. I may invite a special guest or two.
Register here for Thursday 3 pm EST Community Call
Yesterday I posted an interview with Far Right MAGA zealot and investigative journalist Laura Loomer. We talked about her background, tech censorship, the Dark Enlightenment, and the prospect of moving into dystopian technocracy — ironically, exactly the fate that many Trump followers were trying to avert, as they believed “Deep State” conspiracy theories around Karl Schwab, the WEF, Bill Gates, lizard people, and so on, and thought the only way to rescue American Democracy was to vote for Orange Man. Please watch it here:
Some subscribers were initially displeased by my attempt to make a “diagonalist” intervention. One wrote:
I am so sorry I paid for a subscription to your channel. Although, I appreciate hearing others POV LL is privileged and so un-self-aware and only can she speak to this because it hit her directly. She speaks of nothing new. Only new to her. Please help me understand this podcast b/c there are many, many more credible ‘journalists’ that can speak to the points in this discussion. V disappointed, Daniel.
I responded in a way that allayed her concerns:
I totally understand why you react like this and I am glad that you did so. I was planning to write a follow up post to explain more of my thinking. We are, I believe, in a massive political and even civilizational crisis right now. Not only are a very dangerous Right Wing taking power, the liberal and progressive world seems to have flatlined intellectually and in terms of its capacity to offer any resistance to what’s coming. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.
From my perspective, the most severe danger is efficient technocratic authoritarianism that could be pushed on us via digital surveillance platforms. One of Musk and Trump’s allies is Larry Ellison, CEO of oracle, who has said he wants to build a total digital surveillance system using AI to keep the population entirely in line and on their “best behavior.” This would be like the Chinese social credit system.
The MAGA base has been cheated and deceived about what’s happening and what their leaders plan for our future and they are waking up to this. I would like to support any rifts or ideological splits in that movement to slow down, obstruct or even stop the worst potential outcomes like technocratic totalitarianism. I think it is great that Loomer agrees with this, even if we differ almost entirely on many other issues, which I can also explore in greater depth. This is a political strategy that Jared Sexton explores in a new episode of Muckraker podcast - will provide the link later. We need to create new imperfect alliances as strange and off putting as this may seem as the outcome we are hurtling towards will be devastating for all but the super wealthy.
For those who aren’t aware, I also post my podcast interviews on Liminal News on YouTube. My “reach” there is still quite small, but we intend to build it over time. You can help by subscribing to the Youtube channel, sharing the videos, etcetera. I realize we are all swirling in an endless vortex of media and content right now (I know I am). However I think that the Liminal News channel could become a valuable resource. Below are some of my recent interviews, in case you want to catch up:
I am a huge fan of Brett Scott, and appreciate his willingness to rain on the Bitcoin parade from an informed, grounded, wry perspective. Scott writes the Altered States of Monetary Consciousness newsletter and is the author of a few books, including Cloud Money: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets and The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money.
Jonathan Taplin’s career in film, rock and roll, and television is legendary. He was Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band in 1969. In 1973, he produced Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Between 1974 and 1996, he produced 26 hours of television documentaries and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. As a media critic, he studies the rise of the tech bro oligarchs. He recently published The End of Reality, on how we reached this extreme point.
Melik Kaylan has written about international politics and culture for the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Forbes for more than two decades. He has regularly reported from conflict zones throughout the world, from the North Korean border to the Caucasus, the Middle East, and the former Iron Curtain countries. I found this discussion very clarifying on a number of issues, particularly on the rise of Trumpism as a local manifestation of a global trend.
Software designer, intellectual and political theorist, Yarvin has become famous in some ways and perhaps infamous in other ways, depending on where you sit, as a philosopher of the neo-reactionary or "dark enlightenment" movement who's been credited by The New Republic and Vox and other publications for inspiring Peter Thiel and JD Vance with some of their more extreme ideas around monarchy and technocracy. Essentially, the necessity of shifting from democracy to something that's more authoritarian or autocratic. Watch me try to get a word in edge-wise (or should I say, Edge-lord-wise?).
I was so happy to interview my old friend Carolyn Elliott about her great book, Existential Kink, transmitting Crowley-esque occult ideas in a populist form. Carolyn specializes in helping people use shadow integration and the alchemy of the psyche to create tangible, concrete results in their lives along with profound spiritual growth. You can see her technique in our interview.
There are more — but those are some of my favorites.
Regarding Loomer and the idea of engaging with MAGA adherents, my initial, visceral response is one of revulsion. I don't think I am alone in this response and I think it's perfectly natural and healthy, given the grotesque moral spectacle that defines MAGA. (Indeed, "grotesque moral spectacle" has been Donald's brand as a politician for this past decade). However, my secondary and more reason-based response is that the desperation MAGA voters (if not MAGA pundits) feel has many of the same root causes as the desperation that we on the progressive left feel. Namely, the sense that the most crucial aspects of our lives are out of our control, have been hijacked by the billionaire corporatist class and their servants in federal government and that there is nothing on god's green earth that these actors are not willing to sacrifice on the altar of corporate profit. To use the term employed by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco in their highly relevant book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, everywhere on Earth - from our individual bodies to the bayous of Louisiana - represent potential “zones of sacrifice” to the corporate class and, indeed, to the corporate mentality. The difference between the progressive left & MAGA is not in the desperation we feel but to what we attribute this tragic state of affairs.
As a neo-fascist movement, MAGA has conjured an unoriginal set of boogeymen on whom to pin the crimes. They are, as it were, the usual suspects: immigrants, non-Christians, nonwhite people, women, the gender non-conforming, public school teachers, the "extreme" or "communist" left (by whom they mean underground radical Nancy Pelosi), even - interestingly - "big pharma," "big tech," "neocon warmongers (!)" and other “elites." Remarkably, among that last batch of actual corporate-aligned criminals, MAGA still doesn't quite connect the dots between them and Trump/Musk/Vivek/Donald's Cabinet of Corporate Creeps. However, perhaps Donald's very public alignment with the tech and finance oligarchs Elon and Vivek is lifting the veil from the eyes of some of MAGA regarding the long-running fusion between Donald and the oligarch class. Or, perhaps, that is bit naive and unrealistic on my part. Maybe all that is happening is that MAGA is having a xenophobic, nativist tantrum related to immigrant visas, and the colossal deception under which they suffer - the notion that Donald fights for the common citizen - is, finally, impenetrable.
In any case, I can't blame you for trying to seize the moment and introduce reason and critical thought into discussions with MAGA. Rather than merely find common ground with neo-fascists, however, I think it's also important to try to get them to see the very basic connections identified above and to accept 0% of their facile and morally hideous "usual suspects” arguments. Whether or not Loomer is someone with whom one can do this - I guess I'll see when I try to watch the interview. My sense of her is that she is not at all a good faith actor and has built a career on WWF-style screaming bullshittery. But life is full of surprises and every so often a tiger may even change its stripes.
I so appreciate your willingness to engage ‘the other side’ (in many ways), it’s so important if we want to re-build society and not keep fracturing it into a million camps, divided by two (although doesn’t that sounds like the brain itself?). I’ll see if I can make it thurs