I'm writing from the Left here, although that's not the dramatic admission that it might once have been, now that I'm committed to finding more in common with "liberals" in the broader sense than with the illiberal Left. I concur with Andrew Hazlett's remarks, below. I _enjoy_ Perlstein's writing, but he's chosen glibness as a style and …
I'm writing from the Left here, although that's not the dramatic admission that it might once have been, now that I'm committed to finding more in common with "liberals" in the broader sense than with the illiberal Left. I concur with Andrew Hazlett's remarks, below. I _enjoy_ Perlstein's writing, but he's chosen glibness as a style and therefore as a substance. Some more serious writers on the subject of the illiberal Right might be John Ganz and David Austin Walsh. Walsh, IIRC, pointed out on the Know Your Enemy podcast that Willis Carto had more subscribers than WFB. This does _not_ mean Carto was what conservatism was all about. It simply means that unsavory crackpots like him were far more important than even liberal historians of the Right acknowledged until recently ("recently" meaning since 2020).
Ganz in particular could talk about technofascism: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-enigma-of-peter-thiel. Peter Thiel is a fascist. End of story. Maybe you and he could compete to see who hates Marc Andreessen more. I sort of have to live with Andreessen, since I may very well have to feign excitement at the prospect of going to work for a startup that he funds. I've heard him speak about Ross Perot, and I have to say, our memory of this guy as an amiable crank is wrong. I used to work at a stamping plant, and I remember the shop guys praising him in populist-authoritarian terms, so Trump's appeal to the _white_ working class was not a surprise to me.
You can't hate Peter Thiel more than I do. I worked at Palantir for eight years, which I'm not entirely ashamed of, but the memory of seeing my coworkers cozy up to this guy, or talk about him as a deep, deep, deep thinker is almost nauseating to me.
I'm writing from the Left here, although that's not the dramatic admission that it might once have been, now that I'm committed to finding more in common with "liberals" in the broader sense than with the illiberal Left. I concur with Andrew Hazlett's remarks, below. I _enjoy_ Perlstein's writing, but he's chosen glibness as a style and therefore as a substance. Some more serious writers on the subject of the illiberal Right might be John Ganz and David Austin Walsh. Walsh, IIRC, pointed out on the Know Your Enemy podcast that Willis Carto had more subscribers than WFB. This does _not_ mean Carto was what conservatism was all about. It simply means that unsavory crackpots like him were far more important than even liberal historians of the Right acknowledged until recently ("recently" meaning since 2020).
Ganz in particular could talk about technofascism: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-enigma-of-peter-thiel. Peter Thiel is a fascist. End of story. Maybe you and he could compete to see who hates Marc Andreessen more. I sort of have to live with Andreessen, since I may very well have to feign excitement at the prospect of going to work for a startup that he funds. I've heard him speak about Ross Perot, and I have to say, our memory of this guy as an amiable crank is wrong. I used to work at a stamping plant, and I remember the shop guys praising him in populist-authoritarian terms, so Trump's appeal to the _white_ working class was not a surprise to me.
You can't hate Peter Thiel more than I do. I worked at Palantir for eight years, which I'm not entirely ashamed of, but the memory of seeing my coworkers cozy up to this guy, or talk about him as a deep, deep, deep thinker is almost nauseating to me.