Bonus Sample: Manners, the Machine, and Malaparte’s Technique de Coup d’État
What do we worry more about: the far-right beliefs of trolls, or the coding skills of the trolls?
The split focus on Marco Elez and Elon Musk—are they Nazis, or hackers, or Nazi hackers?— highlight two prongs of emergent fascism. The ideological/aesthetic/psychological on one side, and the technocratic on the other. We can call them the manners and the machine.
First, Matthew unpacks a century-old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, but that ultimately, the coup d’etat is about seizing control of the machine.
Then he rounds off with a rant about how easy it is liberal-centrist discourse about manners to distract from the reality of the machine. Why? It’s because in the absence of a clear analysis of how capital and power work—it’s in the sphere of manners—that liberals feel they have a fighting chance. But it’s also exactly where Musk and Elez and Vance and Trump can ignore them.
Show Notes
A Doomed Democracy | STANFORD magazine
The October Revolution - Introduction | Marx Memorial Library
Alexander Kerensky Dies Here at 89 - The New York Times
Curzio Malaparte | Italian Author, Journalist & Politician | Britannica
Reading the Eccentric Italian Writer Who Tried to Cover Up His Fascism ‹ Literary Hub
Curzio Malaparte: The Illusion of the Fascist Revolution
The Californian Ideology
The Californian Ideology Personified - Truthdig
Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology on JSTOR
175: Diagonalism (w/William Callison and Quinn Slobodian) — Conspirituality
Opinion | Don’t Believe Him - The New York Times
Welcome to Neokayfabe — Abraham Josephine Riesman // Writer
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists — Spencer Sunshine
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
Or, in other words, your daily news feed.
I'm Matthew Remski.
We are on Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
So this is a Patreon bonus episode.
It's called Manners, the Machine, and Malaparte's Technique de Coup d'État.
I'm sure at this point you've heard of Marco Elez, the 25-year-old doge bro who resigned after the Washington Post revealed his connections to far-right internet holes and his disgusting racist shitposts.
Now here's a question for you.
Did you notice what Musk did in response to the hue and cry?
Alongside threatening the journalists who named Elez and other staffers, Musk posted a poll on the platform he owns about whether the kid should be hired back on.
And right on cue, Vice Bro J.D. Vance chimed in with the argument of, of course we should not be ruining young men's lives.
Instantly seemed to pivot to debates about cancellation and white victimhood, all while the techno-fash coup proceeded.
Now, a similar thing happened a week before when Musk tied up attention for days by giving a Nazi salute at an inauguration event.
Did you see that?
How could he?
But wait, did he or didn't he?
Was he trolling?
Was it ironic?
Why, oh why, isn't he explaining himself?
Whatever could this mean?
Is this who we are as a nation?
Have we fallen so far?
So, some folks end up arguing about just how shiny Musk's jackboots are as he marches into the treasury with a duffel bag full of hard drives laughing.
And by the way, of 400,000 responses to Musk's totally scientific X-poll, 80% said that he should be rehired, and so Vox Populi, Vox Dei, the bright young engineer with the naughty online footprint, has been re-employed.
Now, what do we worry more about?
The far-right trolling or the coding skills of the trolls?
This split focus and these bait-and-switch moments, is he a Nazi or a hacker?
or is he a Nazi hacker?
It all highlights two prongs of emergent fascism.
On one side, we have the ideological aesthetic psychological, and on the other side, we have the technocratic.
I'm going to call these the manners and the machine.
And later, I'm going to unpack a century old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, but that ultimately, the coup d'etat is about seizing control of the machine.
So, manners and machine.
What are the manners of fascism?
We know them.
We feel them.
That first line from Robert Paxton's definition in Anatomy of Fascism that I've been quoting for the last couple of weeks rings really true here.
He says, We know and feel this.
We understand the bigotry, the racism, the great replacement theory, the gender essentialism and white pronatalism.
We know the white victimhood.
We know about the trad wife fetish, the raw milk guzzlers.
We know all about panics around children and all the hatred for queer and trans people.
We know the power of conspiracy theories.
And we know that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, wielded by demagogues who need scapegoats and accepted by working class folks immiserated by capitalism who need someone else to be humiliated instead of them.
Manners also means that fascism has an aesthetic.
And Paxton points this out and says that it's unique to each fascist iteration.
You don't have to have Lenny Riefenstahl on your payroll to be properly fash.
The Nazis were not the Italians, the Italians were not Vichy, and none of them really predicted the eclecticism of Trump.
I mean, we can detect a coherent Americana vibe in the mishmash of red hats, cargo shorts, ill-tailored suits, normie haircuts, but most of all, I think, how elite MAGA women have to conform to Texas beauty pageant standards.
You've been listening to a Conspirituality bonus episode sample.
To continue listening, please head over to patreon.com slash conspirituality where you can access all of our main feed episodes ad-free as well as four years of bonus content that we've been producing.
You can also subscribe to our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
