Is Silicon Valley Turning Fascist?

Capitalisn't

University of Chicago Podcast Network

Stigler Center, Chicago Booth, Socialism, Antitrust, University Of Chicago Podcast Network, Growth, 087667, Policy, Monopoly, Professors, Distortion, Research, Competition, Capitalisnt, Inequality, Promarket, Politics, Policymaking, Special Interest, Economics, Efficiency, Regulations, Chicago, Business, Markets, University Of Chicago, Kate Waldock, Capitalism, Friction, Bethany Mclean, Government, Macroeconomics, News, Education, Waldock, Georgetown, Microeconomics, Luigi Zingales, Zingales, Finance, Ucpn

4.5 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Silicon Valley’s traditionally Democratic tech leaders are turning toward President Donald Trump, but are the reasons as straightforward as lower taxes and favorable regulations? Perhaps not, if we consider the influence of a convoluted political philosophy called the “Dark Enlightenment.” Washington and Silicon Valley power players, including Vice President JD Vance, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, have all cited the philosophy’s ideas and one of its leading developers, Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin was reportedly present at Trump’s inaugural gala as an informal guest of honor. In a nutshell, Dark Enlightenment rejects liberal democracy as an outdated software system incompatible with freedom and progress. Instead, it argues for breaking up the nation-state into smaller authoritarian city-states, which Yarvin calls “patchworks.” These patchworks will be controlled by tech corporations and run by CEOs. The theory is attached to another idea called accelerationism, which harnesses capitalism and technology to induce radical social change. In fact, Yarvin proposed a plan he called “RAGE”—or “Retire All Government Employees”—as far back as 2012. So, how did this obscure and oxymoronically named philosophy reach the highest echelons of business and political power? Bethany and Luigi trace the theory from its origins to its practical manifestations in Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Silicon Valley’s race to develop artificial intelligence, and the growing push for “Freedom Cities” unfettered from federal regulations. Are the people embracing Dark Enlightenment espousing its ideas because they genuinely believe it is the way forward for humanity? Or do they believe it because it's a way for them to make money? What does it mean for capitalism and democracy if the administration runs the federal government like a tech company?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Bethany McLean.
0:03.3	Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?
0:08.6	And I'm Luigi Zengalis.
0:10.0	We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
0:15.4	And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.
0:19.4	First of all, tell me, is there some society
0:22.1	you know that doesn't run on greed? And most importantly, what isn't? We ought to do better by the
0:27.1	people that get left behind. I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process.
0:32.2	So there's a line that I found chilling in a recent story in the New York Republic. It read, superficial analyses
0:39.1	of why certain tech billionaires are aligning with Trump tend to fixate on issues like taxes
0:44.9	and regulations. But that's only part of the story. Stay with me. Stay with me. I know this sounds
0:50.1	bland, but it actually leads into a pretty disturbing rabbit hole that is based around an oxymoronic sounding idea, an idea that might actually be oxymoronic, called the Dark Enlightenment.
1:00.6	It sounds like something out of a dystopian science fiction book. And in some ways, it is. The idea is convoluted as is its intellectual history, but the phrase itself comes from
1:12.1	a philosopher named Lickland.
1:15.3	The essence is to reject liberal democracy in favor of more authoritarian forms of government
1:20.6	and to leave humanists behind in favor of accelerating technology and capitalism to induce radical changes in society and the economy.
1:31.3	Land wrote this stuff in 1992, and he wrote that capitalists had never been properly unleashed,
1:37.0	but instead had always been held back by politics, the last great sentimental indulgence of mankind. He has argued that the so-called
1:46.5	accelerationists should support figures like Donald Trump to blow up the current order as quickly
1:53.1	as possible. And so this thinking leads directly into something called accelerationism,
1:58.2	which basically, as best I can tell, means speed everything up. And if it all
2:02.5	breaks, that's good. Lans thinking has intersected with that of another philosopher of sorts
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from University of Chicago Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of University of Chicago Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.