Aristopopulism

Seminal movement of illiberal politics used to correct the non-sophistication of Trump's method by aligning populism, illiberal elites, lawyers, and business leaders into a happy illiberal posse - [1]

• One of those influences was the Austrian libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises and two of his American disciples, Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. That trio formed the core of a group of thinkers known as the “paleolibertarians”: For von Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe, real political freedom required shrinking — and eventually abolishing — the centralized state, making way for an “anarcho-capitalist”
• John Ganz - Book - When the Clock Broke - the fall of America after Reagan.
• Peter Thiel - infamously declared in 2009 that he “no longer believe[d] that freedom and democracy are compatible.” [2]
  • Distinction between natural law and positive law - important distinction to understand - [3]
  • Cato Unbound folded in 2021. Did they run out of ideas? [4] Or switched to aristopopulism?
• On the surface, Deneen, Yarvin and Thiel want different things — a postliberal order grounded in Catholic social teaching; a monarchy styled after a tech startup; a stateless techno-libertarian paradise in which the only rights are property rights.
  • But they are united both by their opposition to liberal democracy and by their fundamental elitism — their shared belief that America is and always will be run by elites, but that it is currently ruled by the wrong type of elite.