last March, Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters was asked To name an ideological influence. Instead of responding to Ayn Rand or French philosopher René Girard (favorite of Masters philanthropist, tech billionaire Peter Thiel), Masters cited Ted Kaczynski.
Yes, this would be the same person who killed strangers via mail as the so-called “Unabomber”.
His answer surprised many. Why would a tech venture capitalist who co-authored a book on building the future cite a maniacal terrorist? It was, however, an unorthodox irony fitting for a member of the Thielverse.
Just like his patron, Masters set himself up with a seemingly contradictory personality in his quest for political power. Kaczynski was a reactionary—a trait that seems more important to Masters than attitudes toward technology. Confusing though it may be, Master’s endorsement and approval of his rhetoric (along with other Thiel alternatives) makes odd sense.
Ted Kaczynski wasn’t a bad hippie, as some believe, and his manifesto was not an extreme interpretation of the entire Earth’s environmentalism in the 1960s. Anyone who bothered to read even the first pages of his manifesto would know that Kaczynski was a fanatical cultural warrior and reactionary conservative, both social and technological.
While mainstream conservatives have been concerned about feminism and multiculturalism, they see them as left-wing ideological constructs (as Thiel argued in a 1995 book he co-authored with Diversity legend), Kaczynski placed more emphasis on technological progress as the mother of these movements. For him, political correctness was a deviation from modern life, the result of not independently satisfying basic human needs. He posited that technology inevitably becomes a tool of authoritarian and communist central planners, and thus, technology and freedom are mutually exclusive.
Whether it’s the scourge of political correctness, the threat to “awaken” Big Tech or the rise of the technologically savvy Chinese Communist Party – you can probably see why parts of Kaczynski’s manifesto appear in the Thielverse. On the other hand, Kaczynski’s overall basic thesis is in direct conflict with Thiel, who in 2009 was infamous Kato is not joined article On the other side (which imagines a non-state, libertarian utopian society on man-made boats and islands) he stated that “we are in a deadly race between politics and technology” and that our destiny “may depend on the effort of one individual building and deploying the machine of freedom”.
This diametrically opposed thesis, which more broadly assumes that technological stagnation leads to societal conflict, is something Thiel continues to explain, newly Blame it for the “political madness” of our time.
This begs the question: Why do Thiel’s political agents seem to operate on the platform of neo-populism? They are contributing to political madness rather than selling solutions to the recession it has caused.
Aside from his outspoken endorsement of Ted Kaczynski, The Master also recently lamented Automated Teller Machines, Demanding Us to ‘Return the Humans’ and Ignore a plus Demand and employment in preparing the food you created. Masters also opposed COVID vaccine mandates — which are not necessarily anti-vaccine when discussed from a libertarian perspective — but went further, calling them “evil.” He came out against abortion, a medical procedure that was once supported. it seemed that blaming School shooting on antidepressants. he is Call outside the search engine rankings on Tucker Carlson (who was also positive Quote Unabomber), and seems to forget Point The search engines rank the results.
“By eschewing optimism and embracing the new Latakia narratives, Thiel and his collaborators miss a significant political opportunity to move the Republican political narrative in a new direction.“
The Masters are not isolated in his neo-Ludity discourse. J.D. Vance – Another Thiel replacement running for the Ohio Senate –Wants to ban pornography To “save” families. Texas Senator Ted Cruz –Long Thiel patronee–Blame Mass shootings of modern innovations such as video games and prescription drugs. Cruz was in the past too attack Cryptography, an essential technology to protect individuals from surveillance, which has long been attacked by well-intentioned techno-phobes. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley –Still another candidate in Thiel’s orbit– called to CCP-style time limits on social media – strange level of government overreach –While also warning about the impact of CCP on TikTok.
The idea that technology is an instrument of communist control and the root of society’s evils is Kaczynskiesque, and a common theme among Thiel’s political agents. Masters’ direct citation of it suggests that these similarities may be more than a coincidence. Even Thiel himself put forward similar ideas, in particular In 2018 when he said, “Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) is communist. Cryptography is libertarian.” Then in 2021, Thiel wondered if Probably Bitcoin may also be a communist instrument.
The discourse of Thiel’s political subjects—whether it be the account of al-Kivabi, al-Sadiq, or both—is a repetition of the political movement. It’s a trump with a dash of Kaczynski, a 1 to n political innovation. Ironically, it’s the kind of disappointing iterative change that Masters and Till warn of in their book Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future.
The populist right sees an “American massacre” rather than an “American innovation”. This is part of the reason that the new Latakia – rather than technological advances – was the political discourse that Thielverse chose. It is almost certainly rooted in Thiel’s pessimism about optimism. Till told Mitt Romney in 2016: “I think the most pessimistic candidate will win, because if you are too optimistic it indicates that you are out of reach.”
He was right then, as a political predictor, but that doesn’t mean he is now.
By eschewing optimism and embracing the new Latakia narratives, Thiel and his collaborators miss a significant political opportunity to move the Republican political narrative in a new direction. They can, if they so choose, work to end the “political madness” and zero-sum battles that the memory struggle brings, caused by technological stagnation. They forgot that the next Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t build a social network (to paraphrase Zero to oneThe next Donald Trump will not build a wall. The new coming Republican torchlight will build something new, new, and weird. Instead, they do…this.
Masters and Vance, in particular, had painfully clear opportunities to shape an alternative path to political appeal, framed through the lens of technological progress. But only regarding issues Cryptocurrency And nuclear power did that they Takes This approach. With regard to the latter, they have taken upon themselves the undeniable failure of the progressive environmental movement, whose hostility to nuclear weapons has directly led to the burning of more fossil fuels, and is contributing to increasing climate change today.
The college case was another obvious opportunity, one for which a master with experience stemmed from his time managing the Thiel Fellowship (a charitable effort that questioned the value of college by paying children to drop out of school and become entrepreneurs). Professors, in particular, could have expended political energy in pointing out that higher education in America is a system that Democrats want to fully support, but also a kind of pseudo meritocracy that the left detests, perpetuating the systemic type of system. discrimination decry.
Employers screened for a diploma exclude Roughly 80 percent are Latinos, nearly 70 percent are African Americans, and 70 percent are rural Americans (the demographic J.D. Vance needs to win a Senate seat).
An opportunity to make a nonsensical thing to “build a wall!” (and less divisive), it was all ignored while attracting swing minority voters. Instead of taking on an oligopoly in hiring and offering new, technology-enabled pathways to employment that don’t favor Democrats, Masters instead Blame Blacks for gun violence, and with them Vance Promotion The “Great Replacement Theory” of racism. Both continue to promote the Trump border wall as a solution of opportunity in a world where employment and location have become increasingly irrelevant.
Foreign policy saw a similar squandering of opportunity, but it did offer some substantial subjective advantages. Instead of saying “Who cares about the Ukrainians,” J.D. Vance would have hailed a new age of war, in which cheap drones beat expensive tanks — and where leading and defending the free world does not necessarily mean a ballooning deficit and an increase in the U.S. military abroad. Presence.
Instead of blaming antidepressants for gun violence, they could blame mental health and the barriers the FDA has erected to drug access. This would double as a means to Protect Access to Abortion – A plural But it is an ostensibly unspoken issue among Republican women – without having to enter into politically contentious grounds.
If Peter Thiel’s political influence process was more technologically progressive, he might have been pressuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis not to remove Disney’s jurisdiction over the Reddy Creek gentrification area, the site of a dormant Disney project futuristic city: EPCOT. This will be the kind of future corporate and industry dominance that Thiel said is only possible on platforms built in international waters in his aforementioned book. Kato is not joined article.
For every issue caused by scarcity, technological progress offers a third method – a purple pill as an alternative to the usual red and blue. Something less divisive, more constructive, and more gradual.
It won’t be clear until November whether Thiel’s pessimism about optimism (and vitriolic populist pandering) will succeed or will produce lackluster results and cost him the political influence he desires. Whether that is the case or not, it can depend on Democrats — and some Republicans — seizing the political opportunity of an optimistic tech-progressive platform.
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