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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.

Jon Ossoff and the Georgia Battleground w/ Joan Walsh / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

My Nation colleague Joan Walsh recently profiled Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff for the magazine. Georgia is very much a purple state. The fact that Ossoff won there and stands a good chance at re-election is evidence of his political talent, turning him into an increasingly prominent national figure. Joan and I talked about Ossoff’s background and the long struggle to transform Georgia, a formerly red state where Democrats are making headway.

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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 Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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