{"id":33230,"date":"2024-04-28T12:40:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T19:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=33230"},"modified":"2024-04-28T12:41:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-28T19:41:19","slug":"the-tech-baron-seeking-to-ethnically-cleanse-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/04\/28\/the-tech-baron-seeking-to-ethnically-cleanse-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tech Baron Seeking to \u201cEthnically Cleanse\u201d San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gray Pride Parade takes San Francisco by storm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gil Duran<\/a>\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 26, 2024 (newrepublic.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE DYSTOPIANS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Balaji<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

BRYAN VAN DER BEEK\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balaji Srinivasan speaks during the Singapore Fintech Festival in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what\u2019s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot\u2019s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBalaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji\u2019s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country<\/em>. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji\u2019s ideas in two previous stories about Network State\u2013related efforts in California\u2014a proposed tech colony called California Forever<\/a> and the tech-funded campaign<\/a> to capture San Francisco\u2019s government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times<\/em><\/a> story headlined \u201cSilicon Valley Roused by Secession Call\u201d described a speech in which he \u201ctold a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become \u2018the Microsoft of nations\u2019: outdated and obsolescent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe speech<\/a> won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,\u201d reported the Times<\/em>. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet<\/a> after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tan\u2014the current Y Combinator CEO who\u2019s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco\u2014participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting \u201cdie slow motherfuckers\u201d<\/a> at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in \u201cmoderate\u201d politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,\u201d he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (\u201cspiritual father\u201d of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. \u201cAnd if you see another Gray on the street \u2026 you do the nod,\u201d he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. \u201cYou\u2019re a fellow Gray.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Grays\u2019 shirts would feature \u201cBitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos \u2026 Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.\u201d Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly \u201cpoliceman\u2019s banquets\u201d to win them over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,\u201d said Srinivasan. \u201cWhat does that mean? That\u2019s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman\u2019s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: \u201cDid you want to take the sign off of Elon\u2019s building?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This refers to the August 2023 incident in which Elon Musk illegally installed<\/a> a large flashing X logo atop Twitter headquarters, in violation of building safety codes. City inspectors forced him to remove it. This was the second time Musk had run afoul of the city in his desire to refurbish his headquarters: In July, police briefly halted his attempt<\/a> to pry the \u201cTwitter\u201d signage from the building\u2019s exterior. But in Balaji\u2019s dystopia, he implies that officers loyal to the Grays would let Musk do as he pleases (democratically inclined officers, he suggests, can be paid to retire).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, there is a ton<\/em> of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and \u201cmerge the Gray and police social networks.\u201d Then, in a show of force, they\u2019ll march through the city together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA huge win would be a Gray Pride parade with 50,000 Grays,\u201d said Srinivasan. \u201cThat would start to say: \u2018Whose streets? Our streets!\u2019 You have the A.I. Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation…. You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers.\u2026 You have the police at the Gray Pride parade. They\u2019re flying the Anduril drones \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march\u2014everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city\u2019s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (\u201cReds\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,\u201d said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. \u201cNo Blues should be welcomed there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: \u201cIn addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.\u2026 There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balaji goes on\u2014and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. \u201cEthnically cleanse,\u201d he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first). The idea, he said, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cElon, in sort of classic Gray fashion … captures Twitter and then, at one stroke, wipes out millions of Blues\u2019 status by wiping out the Blue Checks,\u201d he said. \u201cAnother stroke \u2026 [he] renames Twitter as X, showing that he has true control, and it\u2019s his vehicle, and that the old regime isn\u2019t going to be restored.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who try to downplay Balaji\u2019s importance in Silicon Valley often portray him as a \u201cclown.\u201d But Donald Trump taught us that clowns can be dangerous, especially those with proximity to influence and power. In the nearly 11 years since his secession speech at Y Combinator, Balaji\u2019s politics have become even more stridently authoritarian and extremist, yet he remains a celebrated figure in key circles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has one million followers on X-Twitter, where Musk regularly boosts him. Tim Ferriss<\/a> and Lex Fridman, two influential podcasters, have interviewed him. \u201cBalaji is a friend of mine and is neither a dumbshit nor a clown,\u201d tweeted economics blogger Noah Smith<\/a> last June, defending Balaji from critics. Alex Lieberman, co-founder of the Morning Brew newsletter, recently listed Balaji at the top of what appears to be his ranked wish list of guests<\/a> for an upcoming How to Start a Startup podcast (Musk and Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg ranked sixth and fourteenth, respectively). Last week, he headlined Token2049<\/a>, a sold-out conference in Dubai that bills itself as the \u201cpremier crypto event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more disturbing, however, is Balaji\u2019s tight connection with Tan, the Y Combinator CEO who has publicly aligned himself with the Network State for years. \u201cI legit believe [Y Combinator] is a prototype model for what @balajis<\/a> talks about when he says the Network State,\u201d wrote Tan<\/a> in August 2022, shortly before he was named CEO. Over the past two years, as Musk has transformed Twitter into a right-wing information weapon, Tan has used the platform, along with his bully pulpit at Y Combinator, to wage all-out war for political control of San Francisco. This fits with Balaji\u2019s recommendation that, as an alternative to forming new cities, tech zillionaires can use elections to seize existing governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasingly, Tan has also pursued another key Network State goal: attacking journalists. Balaji portrays the press, especially The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, as the chief enemy of the Network State ideology.  He accuses the venerable paper of upholding something called \u201cWoke Capital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWoke Capital is the ideology of America\u2019s ruling class as explicated by America\u2019s ruling newspaper, The New York Times<\/em>,\u201d writes Balaji in his book. \u201cIt\u2019s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture, and American empire.\u201d Times<\/em> publisher A.G. Sulzberger, whom Balaji characterizes as a \u201crich white male nepotist,\u201d especially irks him. \u201cWhat if Sulzberger is more like Keyser S\u00f6ze?\u201d writes Balaji, comparing Sulzberger to the mysterious criminal mastermind in 1995\u2019s The Usual Suspects<\/em>. \u201cWhat if his employees are highly self-interested professional prevaricators? What if they\u2019ve always been like that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo long as you aren\u2019t running a corporation based on hereditary nepotism where the current guy running the show inherits the company from his father\u2019s father\u2019s father\u2019s father, you\u2019re more diverse and democratic than the owners of The New York Times Company. You don\u2019t need to take lectures from them, from anyone in their employ, or really from anyone in their social circle\u2014which includes all establishment journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution, he says, is to create rival media outlets\u2014\u201cparallel\u201d forms of journalism controlled by tech plutocrats. Both he and Tan point to Musk\u2019s transformation of Twitter as a perfect example of parallel media: a propaganda machine that smears real journalism as \u201cfake\u201d while aggressively promoting disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past year, Tan has ramped up his attacks on reporters at The<\/em> San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, The<\/em> San Francisco Standard<\/em>, and Mission Local<\/em>. \u201cIf you want to understand why we got here, you have to understand three things,\u201d Tan wrote in an anti-media Twitter screed last year. \u201c1\/The local political machine and the local media (Chronicle, Mission Local) are complicit in keeping it this way, supporting the worst, most corrupt candidates and repeating their propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody likes this article,\u201d he tweeted at the Standard<\/em>, owned by billionaire Michael Moritz, after the site published a feature about a progressive leader last year. \u201cFix your headline,\u201d he commanded in a tweet after itpublished a story about a Cruise robotaxi hitting a pedestrian in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMission Local besmirches the city with unbalanced coverage that only emboldens Preston, Peskin, Chan,\u201d he wrote in November, name-checking three of the elected officials upon whom he would later wish a \u201cslow death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid his drunken tweet scandal, Tan paused such attacks. He hired a public relations consultant, apologized, and ceased sending out caustic tweets\u2014temporarily. Then, on March 29, the Times <\/em>published a favorable profile<\/a> of him. Written by former Chronicle<\/em> columnist Heather Knight, it characterized him as a \u201cmiddle-of-the-road\u201d Democrat agitating for \u201ccommon sense\u201d ideas. Tan came across as contrite and humble, a civic-minded centimillionaire who let his passion for political change get the best of him. \u201cMr. Tan has tried to learn from his online mess\u2014or says he has,\u201d wrote Knight. \u201cIn person, he speaks kindly and calmly and smiles often, frequently bowing to people while making a prayer gesture with his hands.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressives groaned at what they saw as a conspicuous whitewashing of Tan\u2019s behavior. Tan proudly shared the piece on social media. He has nevertheless returned to his old antics. \u201cSF legacy media is dishonest and lies to you,\u201d he wrote to his 428,000 followers on April 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s stunning, however, is the degree to which coverage of Tan has been quite evenhanded and fair, if not positive. The press has unquestioningly accepted the framing that he represents moderate or \u201ccommon sense\u201d politics. Not one local story has mentioned his long affiliation with Balaji or the Network State cult that is currently trying to create tech-controlled cities around the globe, and which maintains a fascination with<\/a> an alt-right, neofascist movement known as the \u201cDark Enlightenment<\/a>.\u201d (In 2021, Cade Metz of the Times<\/em> wrote that Balaji had suggested targeting journalists<\/a> who mention these connections. \u201cIf things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to *their* advertisers\/friends\/contacts,\u201d wrote Balaji in an email viewed by the Times<\/em>.) In a twisted way, these omissions almost lend credence to claims that mainstream press outlets don\u2019t tell us what\u2019s really going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath of Tan\u2019s death threat tweets, both the Chronicle <\/em>and the Standard<\/em> hesitated for at least a day before publishing full stories. For a moment, it seemed unclear whether they would cover it at all. Yet despite the local media\u2019s generally fair approach and the puffy Times<\/em> glow-up, Tan continues to rage against the press. Nothing less than absolute control and fealty seems acceptable to the Network State types.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo not hire PR,\u201d tweeted Balaji on April 4, days after Tan\u2019s P.R.-wrangled Times<\/em> profile. \u201cThey want to \u2018train\u2019 you to talk to journos. But journos hate you! So this is an obsolete model. Instead, just hire influencers. Build your own channel. And go direct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tan boosted the message to his feed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gil Duran<\/a> @gilduran76<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gil Duran is a San Francisco journalist<\/a> who previously served as editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee<\/em> and The San Francisco Examiner<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gray Pride Parade takes San Francisco by storm Gil Duran\/ April 26, 2024 (newrepublic.com) THE DYSTOPIANS If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay. BRYAN VAN DER BEEK\/GETTY IMAGES Balaji Srinivasan speaks during the Singapore Fintech Festival in 2022. To fully grasp the… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33234,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230\/revisions\/33234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}