What happens when you put four major Trump rights intellectuals in one room? You see what the political movement looks like when it gets higher and higher on its own supply.
The conversation in question is a two-hour video posted recently Roundtable chaired by intercollegiate institutesan organization dedicated to educating and connecting young conservatives. The group members are a tech monarchy Curtis Yarvin“liberal” political theorist Patrick Deneencultural war activist Chris RufoAnd Global Reporter Christopher Caldwell.
Before Trump, Caldwell was a group member, claiming to have real influence. But, because, everyone has become the decisive number of the pro-Trump league. Yarvin’s Thoughts Helps inspire Doge. Deneen is a Significant impact on Vice President JD Vance. Rufo shape Trump’s war against senior EdAnd Caldwell’s thoughts Influenced attacks on civil rights law.
In casual watches, their conversation seems to be a debate about American experiments. Yarvin opposes, repeatedly suggesting that the United States learns lessons from French dictators such as Louis XIV and Napoleon. Other panelists disagree, believing that a better U.S. could be built by making the current system more right.
But actually, four of them are important agree Regarding what the “more right-wing” America should look like.
“We all have strong opinions – agreements, differences, but it seems we are heading in the same direction,” Rufo said near the roundtable. “We can get rid of our own ideas.” [because] We had a huge debate between 2020 and 2024. I think we have won this debate effectively. ”
It is obvious that this overall direction gives Donald J. Trump more and more power. The spokesperson praised Trump’s consolidation of power over the executive branch over time and urged him to go further, ignoring or ridicuing concerns about legitimacy and democracy. Yarvin’s authoritarian provocation was not immediately dismissed or ridiculed by his associate professor, but instead a focus of conversation that allowed others to indulge their own radicalism. Their shared ambitions are clearly revolutionary, not targeting only To change the government, we must also reshape the souls of American citizens.
“I don’t think the goal should be just for dismantling, but for replacement,” Deneen said. “It replaced not only the government, but the United States, in a sense raising the government and bringing it into existence.”
But this is abstract. Not only to understand radicalism Strange Pro-Trump rights have become three moments in the conversation:
1) Turn black people into wards of state-approved churches
After about 20 minutes of discussion, Yarvin proposed the difference between the two types of Americans that other panelists liked (they returned repeatedly within two hours).
Yarvin says, on the one hand, you have “modern” Americans who thrive in a society where they can control the direction of their lives. On the other hand, you have “pre-modern” Americans who “can’t take care of themselves in a civilized society.” He chose an example of the latter, “a Gamponger in Baltimore” and went on to propose a blatantly illegal plan to keep their lives under control by the local church:
You will receive a welfare check from the Minister. And you are part of that community. You don’t pay taxes – Basically, your relationship with the country is mediated through the church. Your minister can do drug tests on you, he can assign your job, he can put an Airtag on you, he can tell you where to go [and] Don’t go anywhere.
Yarvin never said the word “black”, but we all know who should refer to “Ganban of Baltimore”. In short, what he described is the government’s black men labeled “gangangers” turned into serfs whose lives were filled with the traditional churches of the state. This is not a call to re-establish slavery, but damn it is very close.
No one objected to this! No one said, “Hey, you’re talking about serious human rights violations, and you’re racist again.” In fact, the rest of the panels took Yarvin’s idea and ran it with them.
The first response from Caldwell was that under the First and 14th Amendments, Yarvin’s plan would be unconstitutional. The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from establishing religion, and Article 14”merge“The first is to apply legal terms protected by the Bill of Rights National Government. Maryland cannot legally convert Baltimore’s population into church property because it will effectively establish religion.
After pointing this out, Caldwell suggested repealing the 14th Amendment. It is unclear whether he thinks it is a good idea or suggests that for Yarvin it is a big problem that his plan needs something as big as a repeal of the amendment.
Before Caldwell fully clarified, Deneen made a different proposal: the Supreme Court ruled the First Amendment. He very clearly hopes that the courts allow states formally and privilegedly, describing it as a way for people to live together in a divided country.
Deneen declared: “In the original constitution, religion was formally established.”Suspect). “The First Amendment is to allow the establishment of religion in the states.”
The purpose here is not only that these ideas are wild rather than free (for example, imagine the Southern Baptist Church commands enjoy the power of the law). Yarvin’s strange magazine about Baltimore, should be dismissed by any wise person, but instead used as a starting point for all kinds of other The radical plan aims to change the social contract in the United States.
2) Ron DeSantis should be more like a dictator
At about 40 minutes, the conversation turned to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – his tenure, which almost everyone agreed, predicted the active use of political power Trump is currently deploying. Rufo worked closely with DeSantis, especially his attempt to impose state control on senior EDs and spent most of the conversation singing the governor’s praise.
In fact, his biggest criticism is that DeSantis makes strategic mistakes by competing with Trump.
“He would be better off saying, hey, I’m very popular, Florida should abolish term limits, I’m going to rule Florida for 25 years,” Rufo Moots said.
Yarvin proposes that DeSantis should exacerbate his “hereth of American liberalism” by “10 times” or even “100 times”. He suggested that DeSantis should establish “a branch of the Boy Scouts, who are Florida Boy Scouts, who wear Florida uniforms.”
Deneen immediately replied, “It’s a good idea” – as Rufo pointed out, causing some nervous laughter. I think this is a reference to Hitler youth, although Yarvin quickly clarified that he was considering the young pioneer groups of the Soviet Union and communist China.
Like the Baltimore discussion, no one is willing to directly attack Yarvin for obvious reasons: in this case, totalitarian youth indoctrination should not be a role model for American policy in the 21st century. It is worth noting that Rufo By restoring Florida State GuardA state militia that has been ineffective since 1947.
Caldwell did have some challenges to Yarvin and argued that “not every reform benefited from being fired.” But note that his opposition was not the direction of change—the dictator, but the scale and speed of change.
3) Doqi is the purging of ideology – is it good?
Nearly an hour and a half in the video, panelists began a debate over Elon Musk’s government efficiency division. It is generally believed that its true purpose is not efficiency, but ideological elimination. Their debate is about the wisdom of using “efficiency” as curtains.
Caldwell believes Musk talks about efficiency as a “necessary smoke screen” that can hide its true purpose from the public. If the Trump administration is honest about Doge’s true purpose, the purpose is to fire anyone who disagrees with it, they will face significant resistance.
“Stories to the public are less acceptable than ‘we save money,” he said.
Rufo is largely supported by Deneen and Yarvin. He claimed that Trump and Musk should have publicly claimed that they had the task of removing liberals from the state and “systemically extinction” of anyone in the federal government who might have questions about their agenda.
“President Trump won. He can determine who is in the administration,” Ruver said. This efficiency speech was “a mistake Elon made because he thought Doge was a clever meme…and he was a liberal.”
Again, the sharing premise here is more important than surface divergence. In most cases, ideological purge is a common feeling Basically a good idea. Like the discussions of Florida youth cadres, the panelists believed that such behavior was widely seen as a sign of democratic anti-sliding and authoritarian mismanagement in other countries.
In the conversation, it sometimes seemed as if Caldwell was willing to question this premise. “Say, if you believe this, it’s working in the federal government, it’s a corrosive thing,” he said.
But he, under Rufo’s challenge, clearly confirmed the challenge of the political test of public employment, and he restored the argument of public relations – saying that the problem with Rufo’s position was “it does not control the majority support”.
Caldwell is not gentle. He wrote again and again About foreign right-wing authoritarianssuch as Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi. He wrote in his book on civil rights that whites “was caught in their own sleep, people who were building the country, and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom of the official racial hierarchy.”
However, in this conversation, he was obviously a restrained voice relative to the other three team members. His willingness to raise the Duge question reflects that he is actually No medium – He is a thoroughly enterprising cultural warrior, just a person who is more open to his authoritarian means than Yarvin or Rufo (who clearly describes his professional propaganda in his conversations”.
I call it the mask moment of the “right intellectuals”. But I think the mask has been extinguished for a while.
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