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Notes -
The new book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism And The War On Democracy has been making the rounds. In lieu of reading it, here's an NPR interview.
At the core of this is a middle-school-cafeteria psychodrama that remains unresolved. The lived-experience of "computer nerds" is that of being instrumentally valuable to many, terminally valuable to none. As a result, anti-capitalist rhetoric that disparages money as a source of moral value is received by them as a personal attack. The computer nerd feels deep down that his earning-potential is the only thing he brings to the table in the status game; as far as he's concerned, his value on all other axes might as well be rounded off to zero.
Therefore, the computer nerds wants nothing more than to get away from all those teeming masses with their grabby hands who want to take all his stuff and leave him with nothing. If it takes moving to one of Balaji Srinivasan's seasteads, or to Elon Musk's space colony, then so be it.
Huh? Is it a zone, or the whole world? There's a big difference - but hold on. That comic is the story of nerds simpliciter, not just computer nerds. And the people most outspoken against "The Nerd Reich" are also nerds - "theater nerds" to be precise. To continue the cafeteria picture, the theater nerds are (if anything) even more autistic, more put-upon, and more bullyable than the computer nerds, while the bullies themselves (the "jocks" and "popular kids") don't even figure in to the dialectic at all. So what's going on?
I guess it comes down to the different coping mechanisms each group employs. The theater nerds find solidarity with each other at least, whereas the computer nerds have no need for each other because they have their toys to play with, which can incidentally eke them out a living independent of anyone else. But the theater nerds have no such refuge, and so, being poor in both financial and social capital, have been forced over generations to build up an elaborate alternative system of social capital which is a lot more off-putting to outsiders but seems to form much deeper personal relationships within itself than any within the computer club. This, at least, levels the playing field between the two nerd factions somewhat.
But then, if some computer nerds start getting uppity and decide to form alternative solidarity groups of their own, now this upsets the balance. I suppose the theater nerds believe there's only so much space for nerds in this world, and so any ascendancy of computer nerds will leave less for them.
Honestly, I'm really just spinning a yarn at this point. There are a lot of holes in this story that I don't know how to patch up. In particular:
But I can't shake the feeling that all of this debate about "techno-fascism" (or whatever) is operating at a high simulacrum level, concealing the true reasons why people get so animated about this and why they choose the sides that they do. But what are those true reasons?
The Bulverist take is just the occlusion of small-d democracy-as-a-voting-thing, and large-D Democratic as a member of the Democratic Party. It's... pretty explicit in the interview:
The Tech Industry now includes any open support for The Wrong People, and that means the entire sphere is an enemy. No hidden agenda, no complex story.
The more practical take is just that it's wrong, and it's not intended to be something interacted with on a factual level. The summary of The Sovereign Individual is missing the point, the analysis of Thiel's position and logic is a parody, the Balaji 'secede' call comes from media reporting rather than the actual speech. I'm not going to speak about whether it's intentional or a mistake: I'd consider myself duty-bound to check my central claims before publishing a book or going on NPR, but that doesn't speak anything to NPR and Duran's morals or capabilities.
At the risk of borrowing from nydwracus, it's the fnords. The Bulverist take is, if any, too slow behind the power curve: the goal here is solely to produce and reinforce the belief that anyone in the Tech World not slavering at the bit over today's Everything Politics is a moral mutant, and, downstream of that, a valid target.
Why do you think "The Nerd Reich" is the title, when the book's aimed and written by people who fashion themselves as intellectuals and demonstrate themselves to be incapable of checking their own claims?
I've heard of the politician's strategy of "If you don't like the question they asked, imagine a better one and answer that instead". I didn't think journalists were supposed to do "If you don't like the speech they gave, imagine a better one and report on that instead".
Assuming that there wasn't a different speech that he's referring to, it's just straight-up lies stacked on top of uncharitable extrapolation and deceptive framing. Who wouldn't want an alternative to that?
When the journalist likes the politician in question, this is called sanewashing. When they dislike him, it's called "dog-whistle politics".
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