They're not making white supremacists like they used to

In The Guardian, there’s a new hit piece by Jason Wilson, the guy who doxxed Lomez. But will anybody get the joke about the demographics of his long list of guilt-by-association white nationalists?

Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back

The Guardian reveals FTX trustees, in charge after the CEO’s downfall, allege payments were made with looted funds

Jason Wilson and Ali Winston

Sun 16 Jun 2024 06.00 EDT

Multiple events hosted at a historic former hotel in Berkeley, California, have brought together people from intellectual movements popular at the highest levels in Silicon Valley while platforming prominent people linked to scientific racism, the Guardian reveals. …

At these events, movement influencers rub shoulders with startup founders and tech-funded San Francisco politicians – as well as people linked to eugenics and scientific racism.

… But recently filed federal court documents allege that in the months before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, he and other company insiders funnelled almost $5m to Lightcone, including $1m for a deposit to lock in the Rose Garden deal. …

Last weekend, Lighthaven was the venue for the Manifest 2024 conference, which, according to the website, is “hosted by Manifold and Manifund”.

Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund, a prediction market – a forecasting method that was the ostensible topic of the conference.

Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like … Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri). …

Alongside these guests, however, were advertised a range of more extreme figures. …

Another, Razib Khan, saw his contract as a New York Times opinion writer abruptly withdrawn just one day after his appointment had been announced, following a Gawker report that highlighted his contributions to outlets including the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine and anti-immigrant website VDare.

The Michigan State University professor Stephen Hsu, another billed guest, resigned as vice-president of research there in 2020 after protests by the MSU Graduate Employees Union and the MSU student association accusing Hsu of promoting scientific racism.

Here’s notorious white nationalist / theoretical physicist Steve Hsu with his mentor in white supremacism, who was probably named after Wagner:

Brian Chau, executive director of the “effective accelerationist” non-profit Alliance for the Future (AFF), was another billed guest. …

Another advertised guest, Michael Lai, is emblematic of tech’s new willingness to intervene in Bay Area politics. Lai, an entrepreneur, was one of a slate of “Democrats for Change” candidates who seized control of the powerful Democratic County Central Committee from progressives, who had previously dominated the body that confers endorsements on candidates for local office.

… In an email, [Austin] Chen, who organized the conference and is a co-founder of Manifund, wrote: “We’d scheduled Michael for a talk, but he had to back out last minute given his campaigning schedule. …

Democrats for Change received significant support from Bay Area tech industry heavyweights, and Lai is now running for the San Francisco board of supervisors, the city’s governing body. He is endorsed by a “grey money” influence network funded by rightwing tech figures like David Sacks and Garry Tan. …

“The presence of Stephen Hsu here is particularly alarming,” HoSang concluded. “He’s often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people like Ron Unz, Steven Sailer and Stefan Molyneux and more mainstream figures in tech, investment and scientific research, especially around human genetics.”

In contrast to all these white supremacists, here’s the Guardian’s Jason Wilson: