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Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas

Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator’s benefactor. But they’re both inspired by an obscure software developer who has some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society.

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The New Republic
Jul 29, 2024
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Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas
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by

Gil Duran

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.”

Yarvin, a self-described reactionary and extremist who was 35 years old at the time, c…

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