Nick Hauselman is out and about, leaving Jared Yates Sexton to fly solo once more. For this Patron-exclusive episode, Jared uses the Right Wing "war on tech" to explore the history of civic society and how authoritarians are salivating over the prospect of using the internet to retake power and institute a neo-feudal state wherein they control power without challenge. To access the full-episode and support the pod, head on over to http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast, the Weekender Edition.
I'm Jared Yates-Exton, flying solo once more with a muck of coffee.
My partner Nick Halsman is out for this episode.
He is out and about in the American space leaving me here all by my lonesome on a chilly Thursday morning to talk to you and I wanted to use this opportunity to Get into the weeds a little bit, which is something I kind of enjoy doing when I fly solo on the weekend or addition.
So first and foremost, thank you to everybody for your support.
If you are listening to this full podcast, you are one of our patrons and you are what keeps this show editorially independent, keeps us ad free and basically the backbone of this entire venture.
So thank you for that.
For those of you listening to the preview, I urge you to come along.
This is going to be a little bit different of an episode.
I'm going to basically go through the history of politics, society if you will, and get into the weeds quite a bit into a crisis that we're facing and sort of the The ramifications of what we're dealing with.
So if you want to listen to the whole episode, go over to patreon.com slash mcraig podcast.
Uh, that way you can hear this episode and all the weekenders and all of the additional content.
And again, support this show.
So today I wanted to talk, like I was saying a little bit about this history.
And the reason that I wanted to do that was because of something that's sort of been happening sort of in the background in in recent years.
It's something that, like so many other aspects of our political discourse, it doesn't get put into full context.
Like we have all this sort of floating
Elements out there that all interconnect and create when you actually start to connect them a fuller picture of what is going on and what's worse the consequences of the crises that we are currently facing and I want to point out that While we're having this conversation There is a parallel conversation that is taking place among the right-wing
And one of those spaces that we have focused on over the past couple of months, because it has grown louder and more influential, is this burgeoning, authoritarian, idealistic group that is sort of pushing the Republican Party, which as we always talk about is merely a public relations front for this ideology,
And pushing the American public further and further to the right through think tanks, through institutions, through these clandestine attempts to not only frame public discourse, but to start radicalizing Republican Party supporters and members
To go out into the world and intimidate and take over lots of local institutions such as school boards, local governance, making sure that anybody who wants to put in a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate or who simply wants to have a curriculum in their schools that teaches actual history and actual information, that those people will immediately be met
With at the very least giant protests that overtake meetings that disrupt actual conversations that again radicalize on the local level spread misinformation and at worst.
Put these people in real and present danger.
And we've talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but it is an implied threat that if you do not go along with the wishes of this very, very vocal and raucous minority, not only might you lose your position, But your personal safety and the safety of your family and your friends and your loved ones could very well be compromised.
This is, of course, why we see extremists, militias, separatists, fascists showing up to legislatures, public events, elections with weapons and a violent intent to disrupt and intimidate.
Now, a lot of what's happening during all of this is also focused, and maybe focused isn't the right word, maybe it's closer to an obsession, with digital spaces.
And I've been thinking about this over the past couple days, because on the episode that Nick and I taped for Tuesday, we got into a discussion a little bit about the psychology of Trumpism and the right-wing movement, and this idea that there is an entitlement at the heart of it, right?
And I talked about how Donald Trump Jr.
Who has an incredible platform on the right, regardless of how ridiculous and sad he is.
You know, he enjoys millions of people who follow him and hold him up as some sort of leader or voice to be listened to.
And on January 6th, which ended up becoming an attempted coup, he used the rally before The attempted coup to complain about how he wasn't getting enough likes on Instagram or shares on Instagram or retweets on Twitter, which is incredibly pathetic, but also really telling about what's happening, particularly in the Trumpist sector of the right wing.
Trump's like this, too.
He complains about not having enough followers.
He brags about ratings.
He is obsessed with not just the material comforts of his life, but also this constant need to be reinforced via these absolute bullshit ridiculous memes.
And the right gets angry when it comes to tech because they believe when things are made into numbers, when your post has a certain number of retweets, a certain number of likes, and you can look at the number and it's on display for the world and you have X number of followers that goes up or down.
When that is made manifest, when they can see that, it is the visual representation of their own entitlement at work.
It doesn't matter how many likes or retweets or impressions that they would get on social media, they would always want more.
Because that's part of what motivates the right.
Is that no matter how much wealth, no matter how much power, no matter how much influence, They always want more, which is the infection at the heart of all of this that capitalism didn't create, but it harnessed and it used in order to, you know, systematically order society based around the need to always have more, that that will motivate people.
Well, that's what the right is obsessed with.
And as a result, social media has become this Very strange universe for them in which they are excelling.
Of course, when it comes to Facebook, that is where, you know, the right wing just absolutely thrives.
Because Facebook made a decision a while back that a lot of their profits were going to be driven by right-wing ideas and right-wing misinformation and posts.
And so, as a result, this dwindling party, the Republican Party, has found a means by which it can control reality for the people within its orbit.
Even as their numbers drop, their strength over those people has grown.
Meanwhile, they look at things like Twitter, which of course has banned Donald Trump and has gotten rid of many right-wing provocateurs.
People pushing conspiracy theories, misinformation, putting people in danger, and radicalizing people.
You know, they've been banned.
Which, to this entitled class, feels like the worst possible thing that could ever happen to a human being.
Now, a lot of what has taken place since this conflict has started to develop within the online space has focused on a conspiracy theory that is now being propagated not just by Donald Trump, not just Donald Trump Jr., and not just by people like Alex Jones.
But it has become more and more popular among what we would call the establishment right wing.
And this is the idea that social media companies represent a technical elite who are working hand-in-glove with their left-wing enemies.
And that these tech innovators and CEOs and you know all the people who make the machine run That they have a liberal bias.
And that they have a left-wing bias.
And as a result, they are trying to silence these people.
I know that that's a term that you are no doubt familiar with.
But that they are trying to create a new system of control.
Now I've got here, I've been paying attention to this for a while, and I boiled this down.
It's basically a quote from one of these sort of ideologues, but it boils down here to the idea that tech is looking to control the world through censoring ideas and weaponizing gender and race in order to turn us into the Borg from Star Trek The Next Generation.
You know, one of these groups that we've kept an eye on is the Claremont Institute, which is the group that in a past Patreon episode, undoubtedly you heard me talk about Caesarism, or the idea that a dictator needs to take control.
This is also the group that produced John Eastman, who wrote the memo for Mike Pence that basically explained how to carry out a coup and steal the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, the Claremont Institute and its affiliated quote unquote thinkers and groups has become increasingly powerful on the right wing.
They are taking extremist ideas, authoritarian ideas, and dressing them in classical philosophy, legal opinions.
Basically, they are taking the wishes of autocrats and making them a reality.
So, this idea that they are pushing, and again, this is tech as a project to control people, to censor ideas, and weaponize gender and race in order to turn us into the Borg.
An assimilated population where, you know, there's an orthodoxy that cannot be breached and nobody could ever possibly have a thought outside of mass thought.
Well, so that idea, I think, opens up something that we need to take a look at.
And I want to break this down very quickly before we get deep, deep, deep in the weeds.
I promise you, we are going to go back way, way far into human history, and then we're going to bring it back around.
Let's break this down.
The idea that tech controls people is absolutely correct.
Installed within it are algorithms and ideas that are meant to order society and it's supposed to push people in certain directions and act upon unconscious desires and thoughts and wants.
That's 100% right.
Tech is absolutely about controlling people.
It has turned into a science of navigating human control.
That is absolutely correct.
Does tech censor ideas?
Absolutely it does.
Basically, tech has shown from its basic emergence in this new internet world, it has shown a constant Ability to go with any sort of autocratic system and enable any type of demagogue who will give them profit as long as there is a promise of cooperation.
You know, we see left and right, all of these tech firms and companies, they'll sit around and they'll talk about how tech is about free speech, and tech is about expression, and tech is the democratization of the world.
And then meanwhile, they're in meetings with a place like China, or Russia, or even in India, we've seen this happen now.
Where they say, oh, that's absolutely fine.
In order to open up your markets to us, we're more than willing to help you censor the news and direct opinion.
So absolutely, they have an interest in censoring ideas.
Now the idea of it weaponizing gender and race to turn us into the Borg is a paranoid fever dream.
Tech is not liberal.
Tech is not left-wing.
That idea has been propagated for a very long time, but technically at the heart of Big Tech is an Ayn Randian idea of the world being maneuvered through selfishness.
This is Adam Smith.
This is capitalism at its core.
It's the idea that this libertarian paradise is achievable if only the most powerful and most intelligent were allowed to do what they needed to do and that they could order society based on what they saw as right.
That's not a liberal idea.
That's not a left-wing idea.
That's not socialist.
That's not communist.
That's capitalistic.
And that's what's at the heart of big tech.
Now, this fear that the right has of what tech might become or could become is underwritten with something that they only talk about basically when they think that you and I aren't listening.
And they like to frame this to people.
As if they are going to destroy this system, right?
This is the the Bannon special which is that these elites have control over the world system and that so it hurts their followers and if they have the chance if they can just bring together the right coalition and the right movement with the right energies they will smash it and and raise it to the ground and then on its ruins they will build something better
But that's not what's actually happening here.
What's actually happening here is that the right wing, through radicalization and through fear-mongering, is attempting to raise up that movement with the right energies, not to destroy the system that we've been talking about and the system that you and I are now going to dive deep, deep into the weeds to discuss, The actual intention is just to take it over.
This is as old as a game of capture the flag.
They don't want to burn the flag.
They want to waive it.
They want to put up their own flag.
The right sees the possibilities that the internet holds, that social media holds.
They understand, based upon the established maneuverings of what big tech and big tech thinkers and social media leaders and internet consumer leaders, what they've been able to do for autocrats, what they've been able to do for authoritarians.
It represents A new possibility.
It represents a burgeoning way of establishing what they have always wanted.
And this is about the history of conservativism versus liberalism, which has always been about control and power and who wields it.
Now, based upon the earlier conversations that we had about neoliberalism, liberalism is based on the idea that there should not be hereditary power, that there should be a quote-unquote meritocracy set up, whether it's real or just an illusion, and then there will be representative government and free markets, and as those things spread, the world will just get better.
Now, that has at its heart an aristocratic idea, which is that there's a certain class which is better, and maybe it's not via hereditary, but they're smarter, they're more educated, they're more... they grip power and understanding more than others, which is the enlightened idea.
That those people who are enlightened, those people who have power, They should be able to craft a better society and meanwhile they'll bring everyone along with them eventually and hopefully they'll get educated and you know, maybe they can be trusted with the vote in centuries if ever.
But what is starting to come together and what we're about to jump deep, deep, deep into the weeds to discuss?
Is that the internet and the technology that these people are wielding represent to the right wing and to conservatives a brand new tool that can actually establish for them the type of control that they have been trying to resurrect now for centuries.
Because that's what liberalism did, is it seized control away from hereditary power.
And what we're talking about now, with the internet, and what we're about to dive deep, deep, deep into, is that battle, and how these people see it as the possible solution to create a new neo-feudal state.
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