Know Your Enemy
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"Exit From Within" (August 2022)
🕑 Added 2025-03-05 13:00:19 +0000 UTCIn a bonus episode from August 2022, Matt and Sam were discussing Sam's profile of Arizona Senate hopeful and Peter Thiel-protégé Blake Masters when we found ourselves imagining how a future union of MAGA nationalism and Silicon Valley libertarianism might try to run the government. A listener flagged it for us, noting that the description — which we call "exit from within" — sounds remarkably similar to what we are now experiencing with Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the tech right. We had totally forgotten about this, and thought the rest of you might like to hear it. We'll be back to our regular programming, with the Elon Musk episode, next week.
The full episode: "Masters of War."
Readings:
Sam Adler-Bell, "The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters," NYTimes, Aug 3, 2022.
Albert O. Hirschman, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States," (1970)
Comments
Aaron Deveson
Thank you so much for replying: I’m really looking forward to the episodes you’ve adumbrated there!
Know Your Enemy
Thanks Aaron, for now I'll respond to your second point: we do have more on the NR crowd coming in the months ahead! If it seems like we haven't done as much on them recently, I think it's because we've been keeping our powder dry a bit for the episode on Buckley we'll definitely do around the time Sam Tanenhaus's big, authoritative biography on him comes out in early June. Also, we're planning an episode on James Burnham in the months ahead. (Matt)
Heather Lukes
I am sorry, but you need to do more. If we and our parents have to rely on Heather Cox Richardson and Ezra Klein, this podcast is nothing. Boys! Pundit away! You are the voice of a generation.
Aaron Deveson
I admire you lads for confronting the present emergency head-on in your recent new episodes, but (a) I’d be interested to hear to what extent you are swayed by any of the non-right wing reasons for seeking to guarantee Ukrainian and Taiwanese self-determination in the face of neo-imperial expansionism and (b) the side of me that started subscribing to your Patreon partly to dissolve idyllically within the history of bad thought told well (very well!) wants to ask if there will be more on the National Review crowd quite soon.
Chad Bailey
https://youtu.be/d-N8oKV9DUU?si=URFtSA4W94CGDvpA
Chad Bailey
You guys are brilliant!
JDF
It’s a negative world, baby, and we’re all living in it
JDF
Obviously we now need an ep on Aaron Renn and his pedestrian friendly, sexual minority unfriendly, warmed over Kellerist “theology “
ꕷዛᕔᙡᙁ
Gil Duran's "The Nerd Reich": https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/ This essay from Max Read: https://maxread.substack.com/p/is-curtis-yarvin-influential
William Schmidt
Behind the Bastards did a solid dive into him. Just be ready to skip through a bunch of ads.
David Behrens
Good to know. I suddenly started hearing the name everywhere and it seemed more prominent than that. Thanks!
Adam Cassidy
yavin isn't that deep of a thinker his wikipedia page will pretty much cover it for you
David Behrens
I keep seeing Curtis Yarvin’s name pop up as the person whose “theories” are behind Thiel and some of these other new oligarchs. Any suggestions on where to go to learn more, either in the KYE backlog or elsewhere? Always appreciate the insights.
dougsm
I’d love to hear a guest that is well versed in the kind of tech adjacent libertarian lore hinted at here. I’m personally interested in the old whole earth review/wired/mondo 2000 styled guys and how they (which sort of included the “libertine”/cosmopolitan end of libertarianism) related to/were in conversation with the rw transhumanist/randian/paleo/thiel/Yarvin style tech bros. Hope this makes sense!
Joseph Markus
As an organizer trying to get ordinary folks in formation to fight this American dictatorship, y’all’s conversations and writing is so influential. This clip in particular…feels like y’all just unlocked a framing that communicates the scale and depth and means and ends of the MAGA fascist project. Keep it up! You’re on our radios in the trenches
Joe Ruffell
Very good, the bit about democracy and totalitarianism reminded me of Claude Lefort's classic essay 'A Question of Democracy'
