The Secret Clubhouse for Reactionary Plutocrats
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris Lehmann on the group chats where billionaires scheme and moan.

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On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris Lehmann joins Jeet Heer to discuss the Group Chats where billionaires scheme and moan.
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Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016, at Pier 48 on September 13, 2016.
(Steve Jennings / Getty Images for TechCrunch)Silicon Valley has moved to the right in the last few years, with Elon Musk being the public face of a larger trend of tech lords aligning themselves with Trumpism. We now have a window into just how reactionary Silicon Valley has become thanks to reporting about private group chats where the tech elite gather to complain about wokeness and celebrate Donald Trump’s plutocrat-friendly policies.
My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann wrote about these group chats in a recent column. He joins the podcast to explain exactly why these wealthy leaders are becoming open supporters of autocracy.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
The Trump administration has released a new National Security Strategy that is a marked shift
not only from earlier administrations but also Trump’s first term in office. While the new policy
statement eschews the goal of global hegemony, it promotes culture war in Europe by
promising support of anti-immigration political parties, economic rivalry in Asia with China, and
a renewal of US military hegemony in the Western hemisphere. To survey this document and
Trump’s often contradictory foreign policy, I spoke to frequent guest of the show Stephen
Wertheim who is American Statecraft senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
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