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I haven't seen the show, but this rings true. The elitist-oriented contingents of the DR are aware that such a person gaining political influence would require elite patronage and support from at least some powerful institutions. Those things are so far out of grasp that nobody smart enough for that role would be willing to martyr himself in such a hopeless endeavor.
There is definitely a shift in the smarter corners of the DR towards skepticism of populism. The strategy is no longer "redpill the normies" it's "redpill some billionaires or influential figures who could really shake things up." As the mainstream center-right continues to collapse there's greater opportunity for the political radicalization of potentially sympathetic elites.
You only need a couple Tucker Carlsons to normalize radical political perspectives, and a couple billionaires to give a platform to taboo thinking to really change the landscape. That would have to happen first before any Jeryd Mencken worth his salt would try to lead a movement.
But if the DR got a few Tucker Carlsons and one or two George Soros, then a non-populist right could emerge and present an alternative to the defeated conservative movement.
Peter Thiel appears to be. He has definitely thrown money at Moldbug, and he backed Trump until it became clear that the candidate on the ballot was Trump-the-reality-TV-star and not Trump-the-real-world-CEO.
But I don't think the Dissident Right is aligned with Peter Thiel for the obvious sexual morality reasons.
Robert Mercer was a key early investor in Breitbart, which I think counts as dissident right, though obviously of the populist rather than the elitist variety. He tends not to boast about his political spending, and I doubt his opponents know everything he is doing - I would not be remotely surprised if he was throwing a few million at high-IQ dissident right projects on the quiet.
Very few people had heard of Harlan Crow before he turned out to own a Supreme Court Justice, and most people don't buy a Supreme Court Justice as their first politician, so I suspect he has other things going on that we don't know about, and given his taste in landscape art I imagine some of them are dissident right aligned.
In general, anyone doing high-IQ dissident stuff seriously is going to be doing so secretly for the obvious reasons (Moldbug also strongly recommends this), so I don't think the absence of declared billionaire support means an absence of actual billionaire support.
It's actually one of the big divisions there. The elitist side (your NRXes and BAPs) is fully ready to look past that (in part because it's already full of homosexuals) and focus on growing a counter-elite while the more populist side (Groypers et al.) is suspicious of his influence and will readily call anyone who isn't sufficiently denouncing their pet issue a Thiel plant and controlled opposition.
Everyone in that sphere that I've seen seems to be inherently suspicious of anyone who has ties with the existing power structure though. For obvious reasons.
Interesting. That would imply that Thiel is a fully paid up member, and “no billionaires on the dissident right” is a No True Scotsman of the word “dissident”
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