“The Nerd Reich”: Author Gil Durán on Big Tech Fascism, Peter Thiel, JD Vance & the War on Democracy

Story August 17, 2026

A new book by longtime Bay Area journalist Gil Durán investigates “tech fascism” and its mounting influence on U.S. politics. The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy follows the rise of Vice President JD Vance, the former venture capitalist whose “outsider” campaign for Senate was bankrolled by the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, Peter Thiel. Durán traces the ideological lineage of the current Trump administration back from Vance to Thiel and the far-right-wing monarchist Curtis Yarvin, whose “right-libertarian” political theory has long made the rounds among Silicon Valley elite. “These guys were never libertarians,” says Durán. “Now that they are the government, we see their true face: They’re fascists, and they’re authoritarians.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat.

ANJALI KAMAT: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. That’s the name of a new book by our next guest, the journalist Gil Durán. The book looks at how tech billionaires, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are pushing what Durán calls “tech fascism.”

Gil Durán also documents how Thiel had played a pivotal role in JD Vance’s rise to power. Durán writes, quote, “Vance is almost entirely a creation of Thiel who bankrolled his brief stint as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and United States senator. With Vance at Trump’s side — Silicon Valley had one of their own in the White House — a tech venture capitalist one heartbeat away from the presidency.”

AMY GOODMAN: Gil Durán joins us here in New York. He’s the former opinion editor of The Sacramento Bee and editorial page editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He now publishes two newsletters: The Nerd Reich and FrameLab.

Welcome to Democracy Now! So, let’s start with the title, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Why’d you choose it?

GIL DURÁN: Well, in 2024, I wrote a series for The New Republic about the extremist ideological beliefs coming out of Silicon Valley. And after I’d written a story that went really viral and got me under attack by one of these guys, someone reached out to me from the crypto world and said, “You know, we’ve been calling these guys 'the Nerd Reich' for years.” And that blew my mind. And I saw that no one was really using that title, and so I rebranded my newsletter, which had some boring other name, as The Nerd Reich, and that became the main message of it. But I thought it was amazing that from within their own community, this was a label that was applied to them. People understood it was fascist and was echoing Nazism in nature.

Mamdani's historic speech on Mandela and...himself

Η ιστορική ομιλία του Μαμντάνι για τον Μαντέλα αλλά και για τον...ίδιο.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good evening. Before I say anything else, allow me to first say thank you. What a privilege it is to be together to honor the leadership of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. For 27 years, this organization has insisted that Madiba's legacy belongs not only in museums, but in movements for freedom too. Thank you for the work you have done and for all you will continue to do. I want to thank Mbongiseni Buthelezi for organizing this evening and for inviting me to speak tonight. Above all, I would like to recognize a man whose legacy lives on in the millions that he inspired.

Madiba lives in every protest for justice, every call for democracy, every march with a righteous demand. Madiba lives in every township and slum where dignity remains just out of reach, and he lives in each person who reaches for that dignity, who works all day and then returns home with food for the hungry and medicine for the sick.

The War That Changed the Iran Question

by Siyavash Shahabi*

The war against Iran was supposed to simplify the problem: military pressure, Tehran’s retreat, negotiations from a position of weakness, and perhaps even regime change. But war rarely obeys the fantasies of those who launch it. Instead of simplifying the Iran question, it has changed it.

Iran after the war is not the same Iran as before. The United States is not the same controlling power it imagined itself to be. The Strait of Hormuz has moved from being a geopolitical chokepoint to becoming a central bargaining instrument. Distrust is no longer just rhetoric in Tehran; it has become part of the structure of decision-making. And the Islamic Republic, wounded by foreign attack, has also used the atmosphere of war to rebuild and intensify its internal security logic.

'Auschwitz Is Only Sleeping': What Ceija Stojka's Art Told Me About Gaza

The Romani Holocaust survivor painted boots, barbed wire, smoke and smiling soldiers. As the daughter of survivors, the images felt horrifyingly familiar

Amira Hass*

The paintings and drawings of artist, activist, writer, lyricist and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka are currently on display at The Drawing Center in New York City.

Comprising more than 60 works, the exhibition "Ceija Stojka: Making Visible" is gripping from the moment your eyes fall upon it. Surprising, yet familiar. Each piece on its own, and all of them together. From the figurative to the expressive and almost abstract, the paintings convey the horror Stojka experienced as a child: the boundless cruelty and power she faced, the beauty of nature desecrated and corrupted by that evil, and the erasure of every living person.

Israeli Navy's criminal attack on Gaza flotilla: Ukrainian team among detained crews. Release them all now!

The European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU) has learned that the vessel carrying the Ukrainian team as part of the Sumud Global Flotilla 2026 was one of those illegally seized by the Israeli Navy early this morning.

According to an Al Jazeera report seven out of the 58 vessels were captured by Israel near Crete, over a thousand kilometres from the coast of Gaza.

ENSU coordinator Szymon Martys described the raid as "a blatant and cynical attack on unarmed vessels navigating peacefully in international waters”. He demanded the immediate release of the detained crews, which include the Ukrainian team of Nina Potarska and Andrii Movchan (pictured).

Martys said that ENSU, which is supporting the two Ukrainian peace and human rights activists, had no information as to their situation, but assumed that they, along with other crews, were being held illegally on an Israeli navy vessel.

"They must all be freed immediately", he added, and called on the Ukrainian government, along with the governments of all the kidnapped crews, to demand their immediate release. “ENSU also supports the demand that the Greek Coast Guard protect the flotilla, some of whose ships have had their engines disabled by the Israeli Navy.”

The First International Antifascist Conference of Porto Alegre: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Antifascism or Anti-Westernism?

by BELLAVITA Sergio

The First International Antifascist Conference, held in Porto Alegre in late March 2026, drew delegations from over forty countries in what was, by any measure, a significant act of left internationalist assembly. Italian trade union and political activist Sergio Bellavita attended and offers an assessment that is candid about both the conference’s achievement and its failure. The gathering, he argues, succeeded in mobilising — but failed in analysis, substituting rhetoric for critical self-examination. Most damning: the conference’s final document erased Russia’s war in Ukraine and the repression of Iranian protesters from its account of the world’s barbarism, revealing a political thread that is less antifascist than anti-Western. [AN]

Comme pour chaque numéro, une table des matières très riche sur l'Ukraine et la solidarité qui donne la voix aux organisations de gauche, aux syndicats, aux mouvements féministes. 128 pages d'analyses, de documents et d'illustrations. A télécharger gratuitement. 

This is not regime change, but change of behaviour by a regime’

US: an old-new imperial doctrine

by Gilbert Achcar

The United States has grown wary of long term occupations. Abandoning the pretence of exporting democracy, the Trump administration has chosen to force existing powers to comply with its rule.

It would require a highly selective memory to regard the abduction of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife on 3 January as Washington’s return to an imperialist policy that it supposedly abandoned in 1945, or even 1918.

There’s something disingenuous about the sudden reappearance of the term ‘imperialist’ in Western media outlets which previously applied it only to Russia. For – to limit ourselves to the post-cold war era – it is in a very similar manner that Washington returned to largescale military operations in 1989 under President George HW Bush, after long years of ‘Vietnam syndrome’. Like the recent intervention in Venezuela, the invasion of Panama and the abduction of its dictator Manuel Noriega, in blatant violation of international law, were also presented as an anti-drug police operation.

GREENLAND: The lost bet of Camp Century

By Ben Cramer

In the service of NATO - To confirm the strategic value of the Danish colony in the early days of the Cold War, the US military presence was reinforced in 1951 as part of NATO. But the 1951 Greenland Defense Treaty made no mention of ballistic missiles, portable nuclear reactors, or H-bombs... obviously.

In 1993, declassified U.S. Air Force documents revealed that, for most of the 1960s, Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers carrying nuclear weapons regularly flew over Greenland. However, this territory of more than 2 million km² is subject to Denmark's ban on the presence of nuclear weapons on its territory, according to a protocol established in 1957. This led to negotiations between Washington and Copenhagen on shared responsibilities, which were analyzed by experts including Hans Christensen 
https://fas.org/expert/hans-kristensen/

The Bureaucracy of Killing in Iran, and Orientalism

by Siyavash Shahabi

The news is horrifying for all of us. Not only because of the people who have been killed, but because of the shape of death itself. Seeing the bodies of hundreds of people in black bags. Seeing death being “processed” like an administrative file. Like a queue. Like an invoice.

In the middle of an internet blackout, Islamic regime state TV anchors speak with confidence about “terrorists killing people.” It’s an inversion of reality: turning the victim into the aggressor, flipping the roles of killer and killed, swapping the street with the prison.

In those same hours, the few people who could get through the Internet were saying this: they’ve set up a monitor at the cemetery so families can look at images of the bodies. When they see a number on the screen, they go forward to collect the body. As if human beings have been reduced to a “code.” A “turn.” A “case file.” And then they charge families money to receive their loved ones: the price of the bullet, the price of “services.”

The Price of Truth

Al Jazeera’s journalists risk everything to report on Israel’s war on Gaza, enduring adversity, displacement, and the deaths of their colleagues and families. 

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/al-jazeera-world/2025/11/5/the-price-of-truth

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: 
NEW YORK IS NOT FOR SALE

Live from Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. Sunday, October 26, 2025.

The Disappearance of Dr Abu Safiya

Fault Lines investigates the assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital and Dr Hussam Abu Safiya's illegal arrest by Israeli forces

For more than two decades, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya served as a paediatrician in northern Gaza, rising to lead Kamal Adwan Hospital. Though he had many chances to leave, he chose to stay with his patients even as Israeli attacks escalated.

Le nouveau pays du mensonge déconcertant

Adresses – internationalisme et démocr@tie n°15

Les articles réunis dans ce numéro témoignent que ce qui se cache derrière cette « fédération » est en réalité une nouvelle prison des peuples. Même si les gardiens de cette prison déploient beaucoup d’énergie pour se faire passer pour les champions anti-impérialistes du tiers-monde, ils ne sont que les gardes-chiourmes d’un régime d’oppression et d’exploitation qui, à défaut d’être nouveau, à des caractéristiques propres.

Ce numéro d’Adresses présente une particularité : la plupart des articles ont été rédigés par des auteur·es qui combattent ou ont combattu au sein même du ventre de cette bête-là.

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Assassination of Memory

As Israel ticks off its list of Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians, including mass starvation, it prepares for yet another – the demolition of Gaza City, one of the oldest cities on Earth. Heavy engineering equipment and gigantic armored bulldozers are tearing down hundreds of heavily damaged buildings. Cement trucks are churning out concrete to fill tunnels. Israeli tanks and fighter jets pummel neighborhoods to drive Palestinians who remain in the ruins of the city to the south.

It will take months to turn Gaza City into a parking lot. I have no doubt Israel will replicate the efficiency of the Nazi SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who oversaw the obliteration of Warsaw. He spent his final years in a prison cell. May history, at least in terms of this footnote, repeat itself.