Claiming that different races have different evolved racial traits is 100% classic, textbook “scientific” racism. The recent surge in eugenicism has caused actual geneticists to write books on the matter in order to debunk the way “race realists” abuse science to advance a particular political agenda.
I mean, if you can't see racism when it's staring you right in the face, I don't know what else I can say.
And you're unironically linking to a Thiel-funded network, though that's the least of your issues.
Either way, this entire exchange has been a case study of how neoreactionaries spread their abhorrent views using seemingly benign, centrist proxies with a veneer of scientific credibility.
A conspiracy hypothesizer in this sub once recommended this book. Wouldn't mind reading it with you chaps, if folks are interested.
> However, buying that narrative distracts from the core issue that this brand of right wing politics is far more popular in the US than expected (a pill we are still trying to swallow almost six years after the election of Trump).
I'm not sure what "this brand" is, because I don't agree that there is a brand, but many have tried to put a pin on it. Matt McManus's writing on postmodern conservatism ([one essay], [book]) is one of the better attempts in my book.
Either way, here's one Peter Thiel commenting on his political thinking:
> I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.
I don't know how deeply Thiel subscribes to Yarvin's ideals towards a corporatist monarchism, but for the little I've tried to look, there aren't many differences. It openly seeks to overthrow the government and the existing political system. You could say Trumpism wants the same and I'd believe it (though it can't do it so publicly), but if this is a type of "conservative libertarianism", it's certainly one I've never heard of in an post-industrial democracy.
> false belief that the right is evolving.
Hence, here we disagree. I'm not sure whether I'd qualify this as "the right", of today at least -- perhaps it might be in a similar sense as Bernie Sanders is a Democrat, that is, Nancy Pelosi would assassinate Bernie over letting him run for president. Neither am I sure of all the implications of "evolving", but surely developing a new language for cultural and political critique fits many such markers for a the political far-right that has been basically dead of intellectual content in the 21st century. There's more to say, but sorry, I've got to run. Might fill this up a bit later.
> > His influence is in narrativizing Russian geopolitical interests which he has done nothing to invent
Well, guess what? That was the appeal of Fascist, proto-Fascist, and even some Plain Jane--if such a breed exists--authoritarians for the likes of Mussolini and Hitler.
Obviously, not a straightforward narrative, but a case can be made that the ideological mumbo-jumbo was secondary to "Great Power" obsession for the top leaders and that they could have even discarded it for another ideological fig leaf if that served to get them what they felt they deserved, i.e. being the top-dog in their part of the World and "A place in the Sun" over rest of the planet (China's example is illustrative).
He was an associate professor from Portland State University who wanted to get fired so he could say he had been cancelled, and when they didn't do it he resigned from his job and still called the faculty too woke to work with last September. Which might also hint at when he had received word that the IDW wanted to set up the university.
He is also a friend of Stefan Molyneux who is a ~~holocaust denier~~ holocaust defender and he wrote the preface to his book while lavishing praise on him as a truth-speaker just because he happens to be an atheist. In short, he's someone who realized he could make more money and have more readers from a career of sanitizing far-right pundits and culture war topics. His career is about brandishing his degree in philosophy and then saying that in his professional opinion extremely reactionary gurus are just rational "philosophers." Just like Sam Harris, he'll then attack liberal critics in the media and label them as hysterical, too woke, or too uncharitable to see the forbidden philosophical truths, and will pontificate a thousand times about the need to earnestly look at and believe in race science or transphobia. Because normalizing bigotry and making fun of scholars and publications that don't agree with his views are Peter's most pressing issues and he uses many tactics to accomplish those goals.
(I'd guess that much of this behavior comes from deep frustration at never having being promoted to a higher position and given more title and respect, because his first book went on an unnecessary rant about how he was denied advancement at his university for unexplained "political reasons.")