Book Club: American Caesar (w/Brad Onishi)

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Matthew welcomes friend of the pod, Brad Onishi, back to Conspirituality. Brad is the co-host of Straight White American Jesus, and he’s got a new book out called American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy. 

Onishi’s scholarship charts the Frankenstein alliance of reactionary Catholic integralists, Protestant Reconstructionists, and Silicon Valley monarchists who find a common vein of worship in their rejection of democratic rule and a preference for an unbound executive.

But: How will the trad-Caths out-maneuvre Pope Leo? Why do Paul Weyrich and Leonard Leo see  Trump as a wrecking ball who precedes a Vance-type successor? How do they justify their openly minoritarian strategy? 

And: can these post-liberal believers really subordinate markets to a "common good"? Or is that impossible, given the wrath of their true deity, capital itself?

Show Notes

American Caesar by Bradley OnishiPeter Thiel calls Greta Thunberg a servant of the Antichrist (CTV News/AFP)Thiel's Nashville Antichrist lectures target Pope Leo XIV over AI (Gizmodo)Paul M. WeyrichBarre Seid's $1.6 billion donation to Leonard Leo's Marble Freedom Trust (JTA)US government takes 10% stake in Intel (CBS News)Kevin Roberts and Dwarkesh Patel, "Tech and the American Republic"Catholic Land Movement gaining momentum (The Catholic Register)Jeff Bezos on AI and a three-day work week (VnExpress International)Review of David Harvey's The Enigma of CapitalKarl Marx, Capital, Volume One (Marxists Internet Archive)

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