Turns Out, There Is a Cabal of Elite Crazies Trying to Control the World

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a71619211/peter-thiel-dialog-club-wired-report/

215 58 1 month ago

Avicebron2• 1 month ago

Anyone check in on Ezra?

ddxv• 1 month ago

"Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So:

–Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret.

–My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog.

–Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks.

–You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society.

–The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent.

–In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.)

....

first half of his comment about it from X

JeremyNT• 1 month ago

Link: https://xcancel.com/ezraklein/status/2068479476309151771

fuzzfactor• 1 month ago

I guess if it comes full circle the trend among conspiracy theorists will have them touting how there's no possible way there can be a "cabal" of any kind.

johnea• 1 month ago

Ha Ha! That's funny 8-)

"Turn's Out..."

There's been a psycho cabal of the idiot wealthy trying to run the world since the invention of currency...

Before that, there was a murderous cabal of warlords. They haven't gone away, they've just been joined by the idiot wealthy...

SpicyLemonZest3• 1 month ago

I guess Esquire didn't read far enough into the Wired article to discover that this is a tech industry version of similar gatherings like Bilderberg or various WEF side events that have long been known to exist. They're not generally called "cabals" (you'll note Wired did not use this term) because, as far as we know, they don't seem to be much more than glorified social clubs.

throwaway81523• 1 month ago

Yeah I probably should have linked the Wired article instead if it hasn't already been here. I spotted it a couple days ago but didn't get around to reading it.

CPLX2• 1 month ago

Bilderberg, the World Economic Forum, and Bohemian Grove are also cabals of elite crazies trying to run the world.

Animats• 1 month ago

Plus the Carlyle Group, Temple Emanu-El in NYC, the Rothchilds...

If any of them are running the world, we're not seeing the results. The current level of competence at world-running is very low. Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Xi, and whomever is running the UK this month are all worse than average for their job.

directevolve• 1 month ago

Author is primarily a sports blogger and political pundit. Esquire’s lead political blogger since 2011.

Charles P Pierce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Pierce

felooboolooomba• 1 month ago

This is not a conspiracy theory. It's actual documented evidence. The Epstein files also shed light on this, Bannon traveling around Europe to fortify alt-right alliance and seed unrest.

pfannkuchen3• 1 month ago

Was he trying to seed unrest or was he sabotaging organic right wing movements that have less dumb shit in their program?

EDIT: Keep in mind that the right wing movements on which you have trained your impressions are almost always by definition the popular ones. Do people typically dig into niche groups that don't get traction for ideologies they already disagree with? Probably not, right?

kgwxd• 1 month ago

The less dumb shit gave him a platform for his dumber shit. Which is why sane people try to stop the right wing shit at the less-dumb-shit level, before it gets out of hand. It's the clearly marked path to hell on earth. An inch in that direction is the WRONG WAY.

karmakurtisaani• 1 month ago

The less popular the right wing group, the more dumb shit they have. And the popular ones are already so so full of dumb shit.

SecretDreams• 1 month ago

I think it hurts more knowing that it's in the public, but nothing will be done and they'll continue to smother the general public all the same.

j3th9n• 1 month ago

No shit, Sherlock.

bobbytheblkbear2• 1 month ago

I don't buy this personally. The leaks of Peter Thiel's 'Dialog' society demonstrate to me that the bell curve™ (or normal distribution as cool cats refer to it) exists at every level of wealth and society. (Look up the banality of the topics if you're curious as to what I mean here) What this means to me personally is that there is a certain level of baked-in/read-only reaction to being in certain types of social circles, and those circles tend to act according to Nature™ and try to preserve themselves while spreading. Practically the upshot here is that what we interpret as a "cabal" is actually the self-preservation of a system that is not publicly available for observation. Moreover, in many cases, the only means of admission to this class is purely by luck/chance/birth into a certain family group. In many ways these systems are counter-intuitive; wealth is typically used as a means to have a "nice life", while forcing the rest of the world into a state of decay, which ruins of the value of the wealth. As one group continues to grow in their ability to extract resources, they also place pressure upon their own relationship between themselves and those extracting the resources for them as the pyramid scheme breaks down with less people to pull into it over time. (Chasing infinite gains in terms of corporate stock or private gains from equity investments IS a pyramid scheme, however legal it may be.) Thus, what's interpreted as a "dangerous cabal" is more like the relationship between animal groups, and new elements in the natural hierarchy have displaced resources between the groups, which will cause a correction to slowly occur in terms of the overall patterns. Ideally, these groups would recognize the signalling occurring and attempt to bring things back into a natural stasis pattern. (i.e. many people are complaining about wealth/billionaires, it may be strategic to invest in bettering society and creating homogeneity so that things remain as an enjoyable Epcot™-esque collective as opposed to a globally-connected & self-hating/billionaire-hating slave class)

blurbleblurble2• 1 month ago

You're getting hung up on the idea of a "cabal" being some kind of formal thing that has explicit membership rules. But what we're talking about is simply the collusion of hyper-wealthy people in their various schemes. That's the cabal.

bobbytheblkbear2• 1 month ago

The concept of wealth is predicated upon the idea that one may "play at the table in the Casino and win". In reality entry to this system is barred but it only exists in such a way because people believe in the promise/concept that they will be allowed to succeed if they continue to try.

What you're defining as a "Cabal of Wealth" is an allowance by the people because they believe in the concept of joining it. If this isn't clear I'm happy to expand upon it.

jcgrillo• 1 month ago

I feel like based on the amount of power these people wield in the world I should be afraid of them, but then I read this:

registrants returned again and again to the same theme: that AI will reorder work, war, education, and belief within a few years.

lmao. nvm. they're idiots.

tty456• 1 month ago

registrants returned again and again to the same theme: that AI will reorder work, war, education, and belief within a few years.

These things are already happening, whether we want them to or not. Elites will no doubt benefit from the destruction of all of it.

cryo322• 1 month ago

It’s basically just a large circular hand job of people who have been told they are visionaries by sycophants.

asmodeuslucifer3• 1 month ago

I don't know if this is true any more, but esquire used to have an extremely good journalistic reputation. If someone said the the sun rose in the east, they would verify the sun rose in the east before printing it.

asmodeuslucifer3• 1 month ago

I have attracted the downvote bot, it seems.

asmodeuslucifer3• 1 month ago

again

angelobattaglia• 1 month ago

This sounds a lot like the Deus Ex (2000) plot.

groan• 1 month ago

There always has been. The only people discrediting it are those that don’t want you to know it exists.

DivingForGold• 1 month ago

Title sensationalism

nstents• 1 month ago

It would be irresponsible in the extreme for the wealthy and powerful to not unite in common cause for extending sway into the future even while still competing with each other in the present. It's what social units from families to small businesses to trans-national businesses to countries do all the time. This is just another example, and since the tendency of co-operative behavior even among competing interests extends into the distant past of life's evolutionary history it's unlikely we'll see it go away.

joshcsimmons• 1 month ago

I liked my take better. News outlets are hypersensationalizing this and running with it.

https://youtu.be/CSJUnm_rGKo

halfcat• 1 month ago

The most surreal part of this from the Wired article [1]:

The records sit in Airtable

A secret cabal running the world. On AirTable.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-th...

gaigalas• 1 month ago

a shared preoccupation with artificial intelligence, longevity, and the near future

There are strong historical trends (going thousands of years) associating obsession with those three items (human mimicry, living forever, predicting the future) with terrible outcomes for those who pursue them. In stories, religion, myths and all sorts of blurry ancient ruins of people who exist no more.

I don't know if there's a cabal or not, but there's always a bigger fish (and it's often some unforseen social dynamic).

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 month ago

https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-private-dialog-...

culi• 1 month ago

From a Guardian article that always stuck with me about super rich preppers:

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...

sershe• 1 month ago

I wish there was! Remember that the alternative is that the bozos officially in charge, worldwide, are actually in charge! A scary thing to imagine.

Turns Out, There Is a Cabal of Elite Crazies Trying to Control the World

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