Live data from Hacker News

The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

simonandschuster.com

211–220 of 298 posts

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is exactly what I mean with inflation of the term fascism. Surely there are lots of things wrong in US society, and surely some of them can be seen as part of a fascist society. But really this is nothing compared to self declared fascist regimes such as Franco, Mussolini or Hitler. Yes the current Trump regime is trying to suppress other opinions, sometimes quite openly. But luckily there is still plenty o…

"What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?" In what year? 1933? 1937? 1945? People conflate Nazi Germany with murderous, full-borne authoritarianism, but it took a decade to actually get there. They were just as much fascists at the start as at the end -- it's just that their ideology had room to fully metastasize.

Not true. Long before Hitler rose to power, the militant section of his movement, the SA, was already physically attacking political opponents. That started in the early 20's.

When he finally became head of the government, in 1933, that violence immediately became much more official: the SA was officially deputized as 'Hilfspolizei' and attacks on e.g. communists became legalized. In that same year the first concentration camps were established.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#212
post #2

I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric, but I gotta admit, the title is a stroke of genius.

The uncomfortable reality is that there does exist an 'us vs them' situation in every other aspect of society today, and those who ignore it end up on the losing side.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#213
I'm no historian, but has there ever been a society in world history that wasn't dominated by a 'privileged few'?

Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?

As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#214
post #212
post #2

I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric, but I gotta admit, the title is a stroke of genius.

The uncomfortable reality is that there does exist an 'us vs them' situation in every other aspect of society today, and those who ignore it end up on the losing side.

It's not new. Quoth one of the best lyricists of the past century:

> There is a war between those who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't

- Leonard Cohen, 1974

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you want about "woke" (assuming you can define it), but its worst excesses were curbed by democratic elections. What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?

Do you mean that the things like annulling the elections when the "wrong" candidate won [1] or barring the opposition candidates from running [2],[3] are not the worst excesses? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

Are these "woke" or just "events that negatively impacted far-right candidates"?

Le Pen is a particularly egregious example, given it's an embezzlement conviction and not some kind of "too racist" penalty or whatever we're imagining

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#216
post #65
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…

I think Elon Musk just wants to be Tony Stark and cultivates the appropriate image for that. And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.

He thinks he's Tony Stark but he's actually Justin Hammer.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#217

My cousin suddenly has been very captured and obsessed by an area of opinion I didn’t have a name for, fixed money supply, all inflation inherently bad, Elon Musk is badly treated, longer government terms (which sounds reasonable initially until you actually think about just having LESS democracy), no minimum wage. After some research it’s definitely coming from influencers linked to the SV techno feudalists - it’s j…

Sounds loosely libertarian, but the longer terms one is new. Its long appealed to technical folks because of its simplicity and ability to address a wide swath of policy issues. It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, tha…

[deleted]

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#218
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.

See: banality of evil

it's almost like the people you call evil are just regular people

anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically

so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea

unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore. Sure, I don't disagree. I just put that in to prevent people from claiming he was a jock now because of that (which would clearly be absurd).

The nerd/jock dichotomy is at best loosely pointing at some genuine clusters of interests and predilections that exist among people in the world, and is more often taking a set of tropes from 80s Hollywood movies about high school and using them to try to explain how real people in the world are today, which is stupid. (Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms ! Who acted in them? Theater kids !)

Life imitates art. The dichotomy is stronger than ever especially with the rise of incel rhetoric in mainstream circles.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#220
post #170

It seems nicer than the Woke Reich

This exact thought is the human death drive externalized and is responsible for a lot of human misery in the world. Shame on those who unironically believe it.

The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.

Post reply on HN