I’ve finally finished reading Gil Durán’s The Nerd Reich, and I recommend it highly. Not that it’s not a tough read in spots – the extreme agendas and immense power and wealth of some of those he’s writing about are hard to take in.
But it’s worth your while, because in addition to the immediate dangers we face from the right-wing extremists now running our government, the risks posed by the broligarch crowd must be dealt with. And defeating them will not be as simple as Democrats winning the next election (not that that’s all that simple), especially when some of those Democrats are all too willing to play footsie with the broligarchs.
Although the book requires you to spend a lot of time with some very unpleasant people (Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, just to name two), Durán does not mince words about the wrongness of their approaches or actions. Having just finished reading Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards for our Strike Debt book club, I found that necessary and comforting.
(While Slobodian’s book is a very detailed recounting of right-wing extremist economists, it is written on the assumption that readers are aware of how awful these people are, so it just recounts what they have done. I would have preferred it if he had interjected something from time to time to show us the damage the people did, even when I was aware of it, just to relieve the unrelenting pressure of their presence.)
Durán is a reporter by training and the book shows just how much effort he’s put into understanding the broligarch crowd and what they want to do. He documents what he says thoroughly and, likely due to his journalism background, he writes very well and very clearly. Continue reading “Reading The Nerd Reich“…