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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?
This is just installment #9000 in ‘democracy means thé center-left gets its way on all the important issues and wins most of the elections’. Not far-left, these people backed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But they really tipped their hand after dobbs with stuff like ‘the Supreme Court is now illegitimate’ and ‘abortion rights are the number one correlate of democracy expanding’.
So with that unconventional definition of democracy, of course thé tech types are opposed to it. The center left likes passing tons of regulations that add up to making it impossible to build anything, which is a pretty big threat to their businesses.
I more or less agree with this. I argued in another post that it's similar to the phrase "Our Democracy" which was bandied about after the first time Trump was elected. The claim was, in substance, that Trump and his supporters were a threat to "Our Democracy." Which doesn't make literal sense, since Trump was elected democratically.
But yeah, once you realize that "democracy" means that a certain set of liberal people and values get to set public policy, things kind of fall into place.
I remember 2016- I remember the same freak out, and I remember the commentary from experts in actual democratic backsliding, you know, coup’s and civil wars and the like, that Trump Was Not A Good Sign but that he was very unlikely to personally strike much of a blow against democracy. Indeed, that’s largely what we’ve seen- Trump has engaged in lots of poliorketic bloviation and policies that are objectionable to the elites of society, sûre, and his personal behavior is quite bad and there’s legitimate corruption issues(if perhaps overstated), and he’s willing to disregard the mos maiorum. But none of those things are unknown to democracy and none of those things end democracy in themselves. They may not be good signs(and many aren’t). But to the extent they are ill omens for democracy they’re symptoms, not causes. Berlusconi didn’t overthrow democracy in Italy.
I have long said that the actual threat to democracy in our country is the hyper partisan attitude that led to calling Trump a threat to democracy. I still believe that, and I think we are likely to see that continue to erode our democratic government even after Trump is out of office.
That is a major issue but there was a preexisting slide(which this is doing nothing to arrest). One even more subtle issue is that the pro-democracy elites shy away from Trump due to all this 'he's anti democracy' BS and you wind up with more and more people in senior positions who don't care about democracy either way. Meanwhile normal mainstream democrats become more and more willing to give carte blanche to these types who think 'democracy is when the center left gets its way', regardless of the constitutional implications. Merrick Garland seems to have been caught in that trap.
Figures like Brett Devereaux have it backwards in deciding that getting rid of Trump will save democracy. But equally there are issues there that he's gesturing at; America really is hurtling towards a non-democratic future, and Trump's definitely a sign.
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