JD Vance is the bookie’s choice to be the next president of the United States. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is the all-important money man behind JD Vance.
But just as important as the money behind the cash are ideas. Vance may be the political cart wagon. Money from Thiel and other Silicon Valley Billionaires provide the dogged mule to pull it. But the wagon needs to filled with ideas if the journey is to have any meaning. And the fresher the better.
The ideas are coming from 51-year-old American Curtis Yarvin and 63-year-old British Academic Nick Land. Their political plans are truly scary.
The two men cloak their thinking in a convoluted jargon which includes phrases such as “accelerationism,” “dark enlightenment,” and “speculative realism.”
But basically they reject the ideas of the 18th century Age of Enlightenment which are the philosophical bedrock of the US constitution and current liberal Western democracies. They are also racists, ultra-capitalists and autocrats.
They advocate using technology to “accelerate” capitalism in such a way that destabilises existing social and political structures and creates a new strong man rule guided by a handful of technocrats. Democratic equality, in their opinion, is a parasitical brake on world order.
So far the philosophy of Land and Yarvin has been confined mainly to America, and US-based Yarvin has become the more prominent advocate of the Dark Enlightenment. Through his work as a blogger (under the pseudonym of Mencius Moldbug), he has influenced not only Thiele and Vance but is also said to be the guiding inspiration behind Michael Anton, Trump’s Director of Policy Planning.
Yarvin is particularly controversial on the subject of race. He claims that he is not a racist but insists that White people have a higher IQ than Blacks. “IQ is real,” he wrote. “Race is real. Their correlation is real. Deal with it.”
Yarvin also goes out of his way to defend the slavery of America’s Ante Bellum South. “It was neither cruel nor inefficient,” he wrote. “In fact it may have worked well in its time. Certainly the slaves were treated better than industrial workers in the industrial north.”
As for the abolitionist movement, Yarvin says it was not “a moral crusade but a self-righteous liberal crusade which was less about justice and more about power and ideological control.”
Perhaps more controversial are Yarvin’s views on liberal democracy and how to deal with it. He argues that democracy is “inherently corrupt, inefficient and prone to decay. Public opinion is shaped by the media and academia (A combination which he and Land call the “Cathedral”) which creates an illusion of consent.”
Countries should not be governed as states responsible to their citizens but as a private company headed by an all-powerful CEO. “A country” writes Yarvin,”is not a family. It is a business.”
Yarvin’s CEO is not elected by the citizens. There are no elections. Instead the leader is chosen by “shareholders.” The goal of the CEO is to “maximise, order, efficiency and stability.” If he fails to do so than the shareholders—whom Yarvin expects will be tech entrepreneurs—fire him much as the shareholders in a private company would fire any Chief Executive who fails to perform.
The citizens are denied the vote. They are reduced to the role of “customers” of the state. The only right they retain is the right to leave the country, or, as Yarvin says, “the right of exit.”
The politics of Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land are scary, and many prominent US Republicans passionately oppose them. But the fact is that they are gaining traction as more people become disillusioned with the ability of the existing political establishment to solve their problems.
This failure has created a political vacuum into which the likes of Yarvin and Land have rushed. Their views are untested and likely to lead to increased instability rather than the order which they—and a large section of the voting public—crave.
But they are listened to because they at least have ideas and ideas are the basic fuel of political discussion.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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12 Comments
Thank you for a disturbingly relevant article!
There are two types of economist, politician and influencer:
1) Those who present truth
2) Those who present what benefits them
The propaganda produced by Messrs. Harbinger and Land is fundamentally flawed and so made wrong for real use because it presents an obsessive market/commercial model for the state whilst omitting the fundamental essential of the market/commerce. Such is real, root competition which is only secure with structural difference-competition.
An assertively democratic and all-citizen and family caring government provides such essential competition.
Alas, recently and currently, our form of “democracy” provides neither of the two.
Might L.D leadership embrace Social Democratic Liberalism or the like and embrace the essential “Mixed Market Economy”and so benefit themselves, the party and the regular citizens and their children?
“But they are listened to because they at least have ideas and ideas are the basic fuel of political discussion.”
So what do we learn from that? Surely it is that there is a lot more to political success than making policy promises to outbid our opponents.
We are, in my opinion, consistently guilty of not telling the UK public what Liberal means, that our policies are a support for that philosophy and all its ramifications.
We seem to operate in a vacuum – people do not understand what sort of society we wish to support, nor do they understand the threats to their democratic rights that populists represent.
Do people even value democracy nowadays? Perhaps they see the lack of cohesion by our governments as a type of weakness best resolved by not having democracy?!! Would they be prepared to fight for democracy?
I knew Nick Land in the early 1990s during his time as an academic at Warwick University. His central thesis then was that capitalism was a series of material processes initiated by a coming Singularity—a God-like artificial intelligence he predicted would emerge in 2012, coinciding with the end of the Mayan calendar.
Amongst his many bizarre ideas was that HIV came from the future and functioned as a “Singularity technology” designed to remake human beings. He would express regret at not having contracted the virus himself, viewing it through his accelerationist lens as a transformative force.
Despite these extreme ideas, Land was quite likeable —charismatic and intellectually stimulating — provided you didn’t take him too seriously. When 2012 arrived without the promised “planetary techno-sentience,” I can’t say I was surprised.
The story goes that he turned to the dark side after a drug induced breakdown but the truth is he always had nihilistic and far-right tendencies.
I imagine he would like to see himself as a new Nietzsche —a radical philosopher pushing thought to its limits. But really his project over the last thirty years has been to build a religious cult with himself as the prophetic figure at its centre.
This Tom is worrying for us in the UK too, because of the lack of vision and the ideas for proper change that need to go with that vision to give people hope in a situation where so many are fed up with the status quo in politics. There are some ideas around in the Labour government but they are not big enough, do not form a coherent programme, let alone vision. Can our party formulate and proclaim something better? We do not get media attention and although we react well to what is going on in Parliament it tends to be reaction rather than a vision and national programme and we need to communicate more to the general public outside Parliament so we are not seen as part of the establishment.
Nigel, I couldn’t agree with you more. After the last election I expressed the view that Labour had to deliver across a wide front or we were in trouble. Like it or not, the British voting public think of the political establishment as Labour and Conservative with the Lib Dems as the also-rans. The conservatives have clearly failed. Labour has failed so far, but has a few more years to pull the rabbit out of the hat. But at the moment its inability to produce has turned the voters to Reform. Not because they support their policies. No, people are shifting to Reform because they crave something different because old ideas– the old parties, the old people– have failed to deliver. There is a possible opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. We have been out of power for a century (except for the unhappy coalition with David Cameron). So we can claim to be largely untainted by the failure of the “political establishment.” But that is not enough. The party needs different, bold, off-the-wall, exciting policies and ideas and words that express them in a way that captures the imagination. No sign of it yet.
Trump’s removal is,irrelevant but the defeat of the Republicans is essential.
As the saying goes when thinking of removing Trump, ‘Be careful what you wish for!’
“But at the moment its inability to produce has turned the voters to Reform. Not because they support their policies. No, people are shifting to Reform because they crave something different”…On immigration Reform are pulling in considerable votes. Labours failure to so far smash the gangs is costing them support where it will really matters come the GE. With Reeves having to find billions to plug a funding gap – and taxes will no doubt rise. This coupled with voters concerns about the rapid demographic changes in towns which far too many politicians are ignoring won’t bode well in any economic downturn.
The Reform bubble has been losing hot air fast since the peak after The May Elections, no doubt they will level out at some point, my guess is around the low twenties.
By the Autumn they could well be abandoned by The Media, back in third place & no longer “New” & exciting.
“The politics of Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land are scary, and many prominent US Republicans passionately oppose them…….”
They are scary. I don’t believe, though, that the situation in Britain is quite the same. It’s important to know what we are up against. In America there is a widespread view of the Government as an enemy. So, a message of cutting back the government to a fraction of its size is appealing to a large section of the population.
That appeal is not so great here. As far as I can make out, from conversations with relatives and chats to other Reform supporters of my acquaintance, they want a large reduction in immigration numbers. Apart from that they usually want what the rest of us want. Functioning schools and hospitals etc, affordable housing, a lower cost of living and a more equitable society.
They want a different government rather than a smaller government.
I do my best to make the case that they aren’t going to get this from Reform. There are too many in Reform at the higher levels who think along similar lines to Yarvin, Land and others.
It’s not at all unusual for the working classes to be attracted to the far right when times are difficult. A common term in pre war Germany was ‘beefsteak’. This described those who wore brown uniforms on the outside but were said to be red on the inside.
I have to say that I like Tom Arms’ articles very much, as they have been almost universally interesting, well argued and soundly based, but one comment he has made here has cast severe doubts on my assessment. It is where he says in his comment “I expressed the view that Labour had to deliver across a wide front or we were in trouble”. Where on earth has the we in we are in trouble come from?
Yes, I can agree Labour are in dire trouble, but we, the Liberal Democrats, are not – Unless of course we are coming to accept the naive dream that an overarching movement exists, where we the Liberal Democrats are in fact as one with Labour, all under the same all encompassing, but totally ill defined, banner of the “Progressive Left.”
To me this marks a total misunderstanding of the fundamental difference between Labour, which is at its heart an authoritarian, centally driven and controlled power hungry organism, and Liberal Democracy which is instinctively a power sharing body, despite conferences’ occasional tendency to do as it is told by a few key figures.
I do hope we, as party members, never forget this, that we not are nothing like the power hungry, centralised, Labour behemoth telling people what to do while hiding behind a progressive mask but instead a dynamic band of devolving, power sharing Lib Dems who actually believe that diversity is a strengh and that balance is the glue that holds us together.
David, Thanks for the praise. As for the “we” I was referring to, I did not mean Liberal Democrats. I meant the British public as a whole.
Thanks Tom,
I thought you might have meant that. Thanks for the clarification. Just goes to show how careful we need to be with pronouns!
David