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Stuart S's avatar

Kudos to you Mike for yet another excellent analysis. I am surprised your viewer numbers are comparatively low. You are on par with Thom Hartmann, Robert Reich and, though different, Heather Cox Richardson. I hope you can reach a wider audience. Submit your pieces to some of the well known writers to get referrals? I am not sure how this works….

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Linda Lee Sand's avatar

Could you submit this piece to a larger network outside of Substack? The Atlantic, the Guardian, the New Yorker, etc., an interview with the Meidas Touch Network? etc.

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George McNeely's avatar

Thank you so much for yet another clear eyed piece. What a relief in this crazy world.

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Henry Bachofer's avatar

¡qué sorpresa! Niall has always had difficulty distinguishing between nation, state, market, and 'the people'.

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David S's avatar

Maybe I'm late to the party but I stopped taking Ferguson seriously when he dedicated an entire piece in the FP comparing Biden's economy to the economy of late stage USSR.

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Jack Barbeau's avatar

Considering the shock therapy and oligarch feeding frenzy we’re in the first stages of, he might have been right in ways he didn’t understand lol

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David S's avatar

Right - he was off by a year or 2 and had the wrong president!

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Chad Hazzard's avatar

Question:

How does the “techno-libertarianism” square with the Christo-Fascist Project 2025? It seems like that is what Trump

Et al are doing, but the 2 concepts don’t seem to line up for me.

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Curtis's avatar

It reminds me of the coalition that was built in the US in the 20th century between Catholics and Protestants that used to be at odds and didn't seem like they could go together, but they found common cause and ended up leading to the Religious Right, Reagan, etc. Unlikely allies that eventually became a unified political force. Seems like we're seeing that happening now with Silicon Valley and the vestiges of the same Religious Right folks.

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Anthony May's avatar

The techno-feudalists, Christian Nationalists, and white supremacists/fascists don’t have much in common, other than having found in Donal Trump their bulldozer: to abolish as much as possible of the federal government (while privatising what remains necessary) and replacing democracy with something else; it’s not clear to me where they’ll all be seated finally at that table once the destruction is done.

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Curtis's avatar

Yup, that's a good point. They've formed a coalition for the first phase, but it won't last because they're not all actually working towards the same long term goals.

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Rain Robinson's avatar

Project 2025 details the what and how to do away with governments. The techno libertarians provide the philosophical why of erasing democracies, and instituting Patchworks, smaller feudal entities, supplanting nations.

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-positive-vision-part-1/

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Kim Shaw-Williams's avatar

Mike, here in NZ there is a wide-spread bland ignorance, combined with an underhand adherence, to the neo-fascist political forces in America that you so clearly expose. As George Bernard Shaw said when he visited NZ in the 1930's, "Far, far, far too many sheep"... I suppose now one could say "Far, far, far too many landlords", or "contented cud-chewing dairy cows"!

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Doug Mobley's avatar

OMG I was screaming amens as I read this. Hallelujah for such clarity. I am an atheist but I am down for this gospel.

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Michiel Nijk's avatar

God, how I hate Ferguson, and his equally opportunistic Princess Hirshi Ali.

But now we can revel in the spectacle of Ferguson being ousted by Hippo Don and his MAGAots. Turn-abouts, however subtle or mild, are not smiled upon in Ferguson's circles...

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Rain Robinson's avatar

The Free Press with Bari Weiss is fascist thought pinned to libertarian anarchy. Not a pleasant world view. Thanks for this essay, Mike. The breakdown of democracies is the center piece of Yarvin and Thiel and Vance's vision of technocracies called Patchworks. These are modern feudal fiefdoms run by corporations' tech bros. The vision is solid dystopia. For more detail, see below.... it is frightening in its fanaticism. The Wikipedia bio of Yarvin is also alarmingly informative.

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-positive-vision-part-1/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

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Eric T Banks's avatar

Brilliant on so many levels!

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F.R.'s avatar

One must also thus ask why 'The Free Press' is promoted continuously by Substack?

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Anthony May's avatar

Substack’s founders bootstrapped substack with these types of half-blind ideologues like the FP, Shellenberger, Taiibi, Doomberg, et. al.

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Curtis's avatar

Because they'te probably a big money maker for Substack via their cut of the subscription money. So they promote it.

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Zibon Wakboj's avatar

The techno-libertarians are into breaking the system and putting "their guy" (which guy that is depends on which tech-ahole you ask) in charge fir life. Thete's no Chr

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Kevin  Green's avatar

Frank Fukuyama has a similar analysis that reaches similar conclusions

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Lisa Chambers's avatar

Nice byline 😂

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