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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.

Jeet Heer

May 4, 2025

Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016, at Pier 48 on September 13, 2016.(Steve Jennings / Getty Images for TechCrunch)

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The Secret Clubhouse for Reactionary Plutocrat | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

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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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.

The Nation Podcasts

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 Imperial Presidency and the Iran War w/ Matt Duss | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

Writing in Foreign Policy, Matt Duss argues that Donald Trump’s rush to war is both

stupid and illegal. It is also wildly unpopular with the public. But he also observes that

congress has been reluctant to challenge Trump’s policy, although some progressives

have now forced the issue to a vote. Matt is a frequent guest of the show and foreign

policy expert. I talked to him about the dangers of a new war and also the larger

systematic problems of the imperial presidency.

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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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