Lists of thinkers and books being named in credible academic materials on dangerous emerging anti-democratic trends. No intended equivalences are drawn but researchers should be exploring these singly and in consort.

Peter Thiel

  • Overview in progress: Based on a neocon misreading of Leo Strauss and an instrumental deployment of aspects Girardian mimetic theory, Thiel moves in related ways: (1) an interest in anarcho-capitalist corporate domination, (2) radical free speech and radical free market free for all (‘may the best man win’), tied up with (3) use of mimetic* dynamics to gain control of large groups — for fiscal and political advancement. *Re mimetics: (3a) On the one hand, Thiel and Yarvin — following James Burnham — see current day democracies as oligarchies run by a small group who use mass mimetic magic (propaganda and other sleights of hand) to make the average person think they’re living in a democracy; and (3b) Given Thiel’s resources and contacts with tech-bro know-how it seems plausible that Theil and his colleagues have already successfully prototyped a mimetic sweep (e.g. social medial meets mainstream press mimetic takeovers ; i.e. if you and your people know how the tech details work, then you can accomplish Gamestop level takeovers, only much bigger and using social media and other influence / mimetic tech so that suddenly, you can have everyone talking about, say, red umbrellas; modern-day magicians able to mesmerize large portions of a population; disproportionate power with strong economic implications and, as such, strong implications for the future of democracy)

Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug)

  • ‘Anarcho-capitalist’ | Hobbesian Leviathan (takes power more seriously than libertarians) | computer programmer turned political theorist | ‘red pill’ phrase / meme to describe the myth of no real democracy / democracy in decline– related to the mimetic structures of universities, news, press, mass media (which he calls “The Cathedral”) | Here’s his (weak) explanation of why he thinks monarchy gives the average person more control than democracy.
  • Monarchy- e.g. Elon Musk to rule
  • Seems inspired by Carl Schmitt in various ways and taking advantage of the fact that his readers don’t realize this thought is derivative; e.g. he talked early on about the ‘CryptoCalvinism’ of US politics a la Schmittian ‘political theology’; etc.
  • Picked up as Dark Enlightenment in transhumanist neoreactionary Nick Land
  • Picked up by alt-right anarchic nihilist digital fascism
  • “Why I am not a White Nationalist” (2007)
  • “Why I am not an Anti-Semite” (2007)
  • “The Red Pill Prince: How computer programmer Curtis Yarvin became America’s most controversial political theorist,” by Jacob Siegel (Tablet; 3.30.22): “What Yarvin is, if one wants to be accurate, is the founder of neoreaction, an ideological school that emerged on the internet in the late 2000s marrying the classic anti-modern, anti-democratic worldview of 18th-century reactionaries to a post-libertarian ethos that embraced technological capitalism as the proper means for administering society. Against democracy. Against equality. Against the liberal faith in an arc of history that bends toward justice. Instead, neoreactionaries subscribe to the classical idea that history moves in cycles. In an era when the iconic Shepard Fairey portrait of Barack Obama captured the HOPE of the nation, Yarvin and his followers were busy explaining why liberal democracy was already doomed.”
  • Also from Siegel’s essay: “While conservatives who have come to embrace Yarvin speak of restoring natural rights and using state power to direct the common good, for him, “it is impossible to go directly from hypocrisy to morality. A cleansing bath of amoral realism must intervene.” Yarvin is not a nationalist or a populist, nor even a conservative. Rather, he is the signature example of a political theorist born after the death of 20th-century mass political movements, on the unsettled terrain of the internet.”
  • Siegel: “What Yarvin is, if one wants to be accurate, is the founder of neoreaction, an ideological school that emerged on the internet in the late 2000s marrying the classic anti-modern, anti-democratic worldview of 18th-century reactionaries to a post-libertarian ethos that embraced technological capitalism as the proper means for administering society. Against democracy. Against equality. Against the liberal faith in an arc of history that bends toward justice.”
  • Turns to: anarcho-capitalist Austrian School economics Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s 2001, Democracy: The God That Failed; “From Hoppe, Yarvin took the idea that “all organizations, big or small, public or private, military or civilian, are managed best when managed by a single executive.””
  • Also: Austrian School – Murray Rothbard – libertarian; free market anarchism (which he called anarcho-capitalism); co-founder of Mises Institute)
  • And: Ludwig Von Mises | Austrian economist d. 1973; free-market capitalism; opposes socialism and interventionism.

Steve Bannon

  • He likes the book The Fourth Turning (1996) which claims to forecast inevitable, destined historic trends, including a time of ‘crisis’; in short, it’s an iffy book about ‘destiny’ and he uses it to support his sense of a necessary violent revolution on the horizon
  • “The Man Who Wants to Unmake the West,” by Michael Crowley (Politico, March/April 2017)
  • “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” by Joshua Green – book excerpt (Vanity Fair, 7.17.17)
  • “Inside Steve Bannon’s Apocalyptic Ideology,” by Andrew Prokop (Vox, 7.21.17)

Michael Anissimov: A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries (2015)

  • Arguments against democracy

Nick Land; British philosopher; neoreactionary | goodbye democracy hello monarchism | Dark Enlightenment transhumanist accelerationism | inspired by Deleuze and Guattari and Bataille | humans are doomed and we should just accept that

Walter Kirn

Rod Dreher

Michael Anton, “The Flight 93 Election” (2016)

Blake Masters (funded by Peter Thiel)

Josh Hawley (vs big tech; conservative populism)

  • On fatherhood and against big tech (interview, May 2021)

Alexander Dugin (‘Putin’s brain’) | The Fourth Political Theory (2009)

Additional books

Leaving aside the intention of the authors, these books are currently being cited by anti-democratic figures.

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny (1996) | Authors: William Strauss and Neil Howe

  • From Publishers Weekly: “The authors’ simplistic framework makes newspaper astrology look like a pure science. The book’s appeal lies in the way they link an all-embracing theory of history to current strivings for self-actualization and to the average person’s desire for peace and prosperity.”
  • Web overview
  • While I myself find this book dangerous (especially given its influence on Steve Bannon), I like artist Van Neistat’s short video summary of the book’s main ideas:

See too: Spengler’s The Decline of the West in 1918/1922

Some Websites, Orgs, et al.

Turning Point USA (org)

Human Dignity Institute (org)

Breitbart News (website)

Bannon’s War Room (podcast)

QAnon (movement)

National Policy Institution (think-tank)

Some Political Figures

Blake Masters
provocative pro-guns campaign ad about the right to kill people

‘He ran Thiel’s personal investment fund and his foundation and co-wrote Thiel’s business memoir, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. He parlayed his Thiel connections into a long-shot Senate run, starting with a generous $10 million super PAC contribution from his former mentor’ (from Max Chafkin’s writeup in Bloomberg, August 2022)

Also from Chafkin 2022:

  • “Masters is the proud owner of a 3D-printed “ghost gun.” He called it “very legal and very cool.””
  • Masters finds the Unabomber’s ideas “underrated.”
  • Masters supports “creating a “strategic reserve of Bitcoin” known as “Fort Nakamoto”—effectively arguing that the US government accelerate the adoption of a virtual currency in which Thiel has invested—and praised Thiel-backed defense contractors.”
JD Vance

“Like Vance, Masters promoted a version of the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats were deliberately trying to “import” immigrants in an attempt to “replace Americans who were born here” (from Max Chafkin’s writeup in Bloomberg, August 2022)

TRUMP-THIEL GOP ALLIANCE

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt– Thiel funded

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