Pro-progress needs to avoid Trumpian aesthetics

Pro-progress should not become the Gooncave

This is not primarily a politics blog, and commenting on specific candidates is not something that I want to make a habit of. However, with the upcoming election and the recent debate, I think it has become somewhat unavoidable to discuss the way in which the current political landscape impinges upon what I do actually care about: advancing a pro-abundance agenda. Last month I argued that Pro-progress will win when it wins women. Whatever the path to that is, one can take a lesson in “what not to do” by looking at the current state of the Republican party, which is actively repelling women, as

Richard Hanania

poignantly points out in his recent tweets and articles. And it is not only women that are repelled, but educated, respectable upper middle class people in general.

A few months ago I wrote about political polarization by gender. I hypothesized an extreme scenario where political parties embody exaggerated stereotypes associated with each sex. To illustrate the hypermasculine end of this spectrum, I focused on a subset of right-wing anonymous Twitter users. I characterized this group as "The Gooncave," representing an amplified version of stereotypically negative male traits in political discourse.

As someone deeply online and an amateur anthropologist, I've observed such male-centric groups, often brought together by shared grievances. These groups form what I like to term 'Intellectual Gooncaves' - sordid communities characterised by anger and bitterness (if you do not know what a Gooncave is, you have the opportunity to google it now).

An example of such a 'Gooncave' is the Right Wing anonymous community on Twitter. If you have spent any amount of time lurking there and you are a sane person, you will come away with the feeling that it’s a deeply insalubrious place, devoid of any decorum, where cruelty for the sake of cruelty and edginess reign supreme. Despite its facade of being logical and adhering to the principle that "facts don't care about your feelings," this group ultimately lacks true epistemic credibility. In contrast to "The Longhouse⁵," which it frequently criticizes for prioritizing comfort and safety, its motivations are not to safeguard emotions. Instead, it is driven by a relentless pursuit of transgression and a need to affirm feelings of anger and hostility.

At the time I also pointed out that adopting such aesthetics is the wrong way forward for any movement that desires to be functional:

Some salute this with enthusiasm. In a twitter post, Balaji Srinivasan, investor, start-up founder and noted libertarian, has declared that The Republican Party has become the party of “Strong Men” and will usher a new era of Nietzschean strength. I beg to differ: educated people, including men, are disproportionately fleeing away from the Republican Party and Conservatism more broadly. The thing is, most decent educated men do not want to be associated with The Gooncave either, regardless of what they think about taxes. The men who openly embrace the Gooncave are often those who, quite frankly, belong there (so not high quality men). On the other extreme of the spectrum you also have those who are so successful and secure in their success (6 sigma level), that they have completely transcended the status hierarchy. And on top of that, maybe a few nerds who follow their intellectual interests wherever it leads them. But as

TracingWoodgrains

details at length in his excellent post, you cannot properly govern based on these demographics. He outlines the challenges the Republican Party faces in losing appeal among educated individuals.

I do not want to sing my own praises too much, but I think the relevance of the observations I made back then has only increased, as the Gooncave aesthetics have fully escaped internet containment and made their way into the very real world, a process catalyzed by the current election season. One of the vice-presidential candidates (I am thinking here of JD Vance, of course) has quite literally been influenced by The Gooncave, as detailed in this very good article. He regularly repeats talking points coming directly from the most sordid corners of twitter and is perhaps best known for his “childless cat ladies” quip, which has further galvanized women against Republicans. Trump himself has repeated silly and low-level internet memes about immigrants eating pets during the presidential debate and picked on Kamala’s racial identity. These tactics are not only ethically questionable but also strategically flawed. As I anticipated in my previous analysis, such behaviour alienates a significant portion of the electorate: women, but also decent men who find these tactics distasteful or offensive.

Women do not like the “childless cat lady” epithet

So what does this all have to do with the progress movement?

At a broader level, it’s a cautionary tale about what not to do as a cultural/ideological/political movement. But it’s particularly relevant to the progress movement for three reasons:

1. pro-market positions, which are already in peril across the Western World, have been traditionally associated more with the right. As I detailed in another piece, most people, including elites, passively adopt views that are considered popular in their circles, based mainly on vibes. It is no longer respectable in many educated circles to identify as a Republican. And everything they stand for, including good things, like pro-market positions, risks going down with them in the eyes of the educated elites. We must not let these be tainted by the aesthetics of the Gooncave and become casualties of whatever it is that the modern right is becoming. I think in the short term at least, the future of how pro-tech/pro-market positions are seen by the elite will depend on the ideological fight that is happening between the centre-left (as exemplified by pro-markets followed by redistribution commentators like Ezra Klein¹ or Matthew Yglesias) and the more degrowth enamoured part of the left, which rejects market forces by principle. If you think this is not important, I am telling you, as an European: it is!

2. certain parts of Silicon Valley have openly declared themselves in support of Trump. Silicon Valley is in the eyes of many people the ambassador of innovation, so the image it has will automatically impact how people think about technological progress.

3. certain cultural enclaves that I would classify as broadly aligned with me in terms of factual beliefs are already adopting a Gooncave-y aesthetic. I am thinking here of the e/acc and accelerationist circles, also largely born on twitter. I think this represents a step in the wrong direction.

   

   The recent Warp controversy does not bode well for “the vibe” of some part of Silicon Valley

Whatever happens in this election, I hope that the next president will pursue a pro-abundance agenda and will enact policies aimed at fostering as opposed to inhibiting scientific and technological progress. For those of us thinking about progress more broadly, I think it’s worth taking a moment and reflecting on how the aesthetics of the movement should look like.

1. Ezra Klein is the co-author of an upcoming book on abundance.