The Propaganda Network of Tech Fascism
Venture capitalists and tech billionaires are building a complex media network. This "parallel" media includes major social media platforms, podcasts, video hosting, new publications, artificially installed arts & culture scenes, and a vast web of venture-funded events and conferences around the world.
Many of these media operations are funded and staffed by venture capitalists associated with Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. They include X, Rumble, Hereticon, Pirate Wires, Evie, the American Dynamism conference, a number of Network State events and pop-up cities, and the Sovereign House scene in New York, among others discussed in this document.
Accelerationism, the dark enlightenment, anti-democracy, techno-optimism, "free speech", IQ supremacy, the Network State and culture war against leftism: these are themes and ideologies that pervade the new media landscape.
Parallel media spreads propaganda, promotes extremist views, and grows and radicalizes the base of tech fascism. These platforms provide the backbone for a global uprising of tech fascism, a recipe for an arts and culture renaissance of fascism worldwide, and the rise of a new fascist intelligentsia. With a large culture and media void, there is little competition or counter to these developments from the left. Meanwhile, tech fascists are creating a movement that threatens to explode on the world stage.
"We Are the Media Now"
The faux-populist meme "We are the media now" illuminates the new media strategy of tech elite. Elon Musk popularized the phrase following his hostile takeover of Twitter, now X. The phrase also went viral on right-wing hosting site Rumble on Trump's election; per the New York Times, "As soon as President-elect Donald J. Trump won the presidential race, influencers on Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube, flooded the platform with a simple catchphrase: 'We are the media now.'"
Parallel media is a key component of the Network State, which features a variety of parallel institutions: institutions built by and for venture capitalists and the tech class outside of the mainstream and the nation-state. These parallel institutions are seen as a critical mechanism for tech fascists to establish sovereign power.
Parallel institutions are described by Network State evangelist Balaji Srinivasan: "You can conceptualize many crypto protocols and tech companies as fixing individually failing Western institutions. For example, Ethereum and Solana are building parallel financial systems, Synthesis and Replit are providing parallel education, and Farcaster and Substack are developing parallel media ecosystems." Substack and Farcaster are both funded by Andreessen Horowitz. The inaugural Network State conference featured five speakers on parallel media.
Reactionary Roots of Parallel Media
Marc Andreessen and other tech oligarchs have lashed out at media critical of them throughout web 2.0. These grievances have been key motivations in their creation of an alternate media ecosystem.
From a podcast for The Free Press, Marc Andreessen:
"There was basically something that nobody ever wrote down but everybody understood, which I call 'the deal'. The deal was somebody like me could basically start a company, could invent a new technology... everybody would think that that was great, and by the way we got glowing press coverage, everybody loved us... and then at the end of your career you would be left with this giant pot of money and then what you would do is donate it to philanthropy. That washes away all of your sins, reclassifies you from a sortof suspect business mogul to a virtuous philanthropist... along the way the press loves you... you get to sit with the NY Times editorial board, the dinner parties are speculator... and basically what happened, what I experienced, was 'they', the people in charge of all this basically broke the deal...
Every single thing I just said is, for the last decade, has been now held to be presumptively evil... technology of course is held to be presumptively evil, tech companies are held to be presumptively evil, tech people are held to be this evil class, anybody who's rich is evil... so basically its like okay, every single part of that deal no longer works. So basically the entire thing has been jettisoned out of the airlock, so for me it kindof raised the question of, okay, if none of that is true, then what world am I living in, what role do I play?"
Venture capitalists have turned to creating parallel media. They have vast experience in creating media platforms, experience that can be now be brought to bear on building and breeding extremist content on new platforms. Andreessen Horowitz was a top investor in web 2.0 media companies like Buzzfeed, Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, Slack, Skype, Pinterest and others. In Web 3.0, venture capital focuses on creating a new media landscape that explicitly supports the rise of tech fascist power.
New Platforms of Tech Fascism
Rumble
One of the largest and most important parallel media platforms is Rumble, a video hosting platform for the right wing. It was funded by Peter Thiel, and JD Vance through his venture capital firm Narya. Narya itself was funded by Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.
In its company history, Rumble states "the recent rise of ‘cancel culture’ accelerated the need for a social platform that supported diverse opinions, authentic expression, and open dialogue. As dominant platforms continued to change their content policies, cancel creators without explanation, and destroy the trust of the creator community, Rumble stood tall in the fight for free speech and never wavered on its principles." The site has hosted far-right extremists including Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, Russell Brand, Ben Shapiro, Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza and others.
Rumble has branched out into offering cloud services that can be used by other right-wing companies and applications, offering services like object and block storage, load balancing, Kubernetes, virtual private clouds and the promise to host extreme content that is against the terms of service of other major cloud services providers.
In 2021, Truth Social, from Trump Media & Technology Group, announced "a wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement with Rumble, Inc. As part of the partnership, Rumble will deliver video and streaming for TRUTH Social." In a quote for the press release, Donald Trump stated: “As part of our mission, TMTG continues to align with service providers who do not discriminate against political ideology. Therefore, I have selected the Rumble Cloud to serve as a critical backbone for TMTG infrastructure... America is ready for TRUTH Social, and the end to cancel culture.”
Per the same release, "Rumble has created rails and independent infrastructure that are designed to be immune to cancel culture." Rumble demonstrates that venture capitalists are not just backing individual media applications, but building out foundational computing infrastructure for the advancement of the far-right.
Substack
Substack is a popular newsletter app funded by Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz. It has raised over $100 million. As of April, 2025, they have over 5 million paying subscribers on the platform. In a recent interview, its co-founder stated:
"Media is changing. The whole system is changing. It’s not just some old institutions going out of business or struggling, or that people spend a lot of time on social media now. The whole system is changing — whether you like it or not, it’s just real that the old institutions represented by what’s going on at the White House correspondents’ dinner are not in the same health as they once were. They’re based on a model that made sense 100 years ago. It doesn’t make sense for 2025... Substack expands the media ecosystem, expands what’s possible for who can participate, who can have a voice, who can be heard, who can be influential in how the discourse takes place."
In 2023, The Atlantic published an exposé on the site's use by Nazi groups:
"Substack’s leaders also proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ, albeit with spotty results, to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website and of extremist Telegram channels that circulate Substack posts turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack... At least 16 of the newsletters that I reviewed have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics... Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack..."
Substack joins Rumble as a haven for right-wing extremism. Since these platforms also provide monetization to extremist influencers and groups, they are a key source of capital to the growing tech fascist movement. While the Substack platform is used by liberal media and writers, many of them aren't aware that the site is funded by tech fascists. Ghost is one alternative tool to create independent blogs and newsletters.
New Publications of Tech Fascism
Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Founders Fund, runs a parallel media publication called Pirate Wires, a tech news and gossip magazine. The site regularly features racist and misogynist content as well as tech fascist propaganda, glorifying autonomous weapons companies like Anduril, promoting "supersoldiers" created with biotech, marketing Palantir, interviewing right-wing tech icons and promoting zionism.
Pirate Wires has stated: "For years, and especially by 2020, the notion our country needed new media institutions was not uncommon, and in tech the question of how such an institution should properly operate was a popular subject of discussion... By the mid-2010s, the instability of social media was obvious to everyone, but for most huge players it was way too late to adapt. Once Substack democratized the bootstrapped newsletter, which guaranteed the most popular writers and publishers ownership of their readership by way of the email, a fresh media Renaissance was inevitable, and random online shitposters quickly became more influence than Vox or Vice or any of the other huge encumbants..."
Tech fascism is spreading into areas like women's media, with the backing of a site aimed at young women, extorting them "Celebrate your femininity." Evie is funded by Peter Thiel. Some article titles: "Liberal, Lonely, and Lost: The Modern Crisis of the Gen Z Woman", "The Real Reason Masculine Men Aren't Interested in Marrying You", "The Art of Oral Sex: A Wife's Guide to Giving Incredible Head", and "5 Things Every Woman Should Know About Bitcoin."
"Evie has published misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, as well as transphobic content and articles critical of feminism and the body positivity movement. Articles in Evie have urged women to stop using hormonal contraception. Evie has also published conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 United States presidential election. In 2023, Rolling Stone described Evie as 'like a Gen Z Cosmo for the alt-right' and 'a girlboss-ified Breitbart', and reported that it uses the traditional format of women's fashion publications, including Met Gala slideshows and breakdowns of Taylor Swift's Eras tour outfits, to attract a Generation Z audience."
The existence of Evie suggests venture capital propaganda goes beyond disaffected men in their 20s and the tech and crypto class, and is targeting teen markets and young girls.
Crypto Media
Cryptocurrency has provided a platform for a new range of Bitcoin and crypto focused publications that pump tech fascist propaganda about cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Magazine was founded by Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum. Dedicated to the promotion of Bitcoin, the magazine has propped up dictator and human rights abuser Bukele of El Salvador, a fanatical Bitcoin supporter who is turning the country over to tech fascists while operating a prison state and instituting slave labor. Coindesk is another crypto-focused magazine. Both also hold events and conferences.
Bored Ape Yacht Club, a crypto project from Yuga Labs backed by Andreessen Horowitz, shows another extreme vision of parallel media, this one unfolding in the metaverse. Per Yuga Labs on its product offerings: "All roads lead to Otherside – the first metaverse that includes the community in the development process. Otherside rejects the walled gardens and closed networks of traditional gaming spaces in favor of interoperability and access, inviting everyone to play and create."
The company has come under fire for racism and fascism, with one analysis stating "we found what we believe to be definitive evidence that the group behind the creation of these images are intentionally embedding Nazi dog whistles throughout their project... The BAYC logo looks very similar to the Nazi Totenkopf emblem, even containing the same amount teeth in the skull, 18, a number the ADL has identified to mean Adolf Hitler. The logos also both have a ragged edge, something very uncommon in other circular emblems."
Conferences and Events
The same venture capitalists behind Pirate Wires and Evie put on the Hereticon Conference: "Right at the peak of our last pandemic, Founders Fund hosted the first Hereticon, a 'conference for thoughtcrime.' Our thinking was simple: dissent is worth protecting... no topic was off limits: genetic modification, natalism, parapsychology, artificial consciousness, defense, pharmacology, virology, sex, God... In the spirit of Hereticon, we invite you all — technologists, entrepreneurs, and every manner of creative dissident — to come and share your wildest dreams, with a special invitation for the most dedicated doomers and recklessly-accelerating techno-utopianists..."
Hereticon states "Maybe if you aren’t trying to destroy the world, you aren’t trying hard enough."
The latest Hereticon was held from October 28 - 31st, 2024, in Miami, and featured an "Apocalypse Ball". One Hereticon attendee wrote up a positive account of the event, providing important details:
"One of the speakers discussed the reality, genetic component, and importance of IQ. Research on IQ tests and their significance as predictor variables is one of the few areas of social science research that is consistently replicable.... Another talk focused on the importance of fossil fuels... at the Apocalypse Ball—which was followed by a late-night DJing performance by Grimes—costumes were not policed with inane statements such as 'my culture is not your costume.' Thus, there was a doctor of eugenics costume... one person came as a Haitian chef with a bloodied toy cat hanging out of his apron."
Andreessen Horowitz has developed a conference series to support the build-out of its weapons startups, defense programming and political lobbying. The third American Dynamism Summit was recently held on the heels of Trump's inauguration. It featured an address by JD Vance, whose venture capital firm was funded by Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel. The conference also featured a discussion on "the kill chain" with an Anduril executive, as well an interview with the CTO of Palantir. Previous conferences have hosted the CEO of Andreessen-backed Network State project California Forever, and featured talks on "the China Threat", Palmer Luckey of Anduril, Marc Andreessen on techno-optimism, as well as a number of politicians from both parties.
The American Dynamism Summit showcases how venture capitalists operate conferences ranging from openly hedonistic fascist trolling, to professionalized events which platform their portfolio companies, investments, projects and political agendas. In all cases, these projects are based around the elevation of their startups and the Network State.
----> Venture capitalists have also launched an "anti-DEI" job board. It advertises "Jobs at mission-oriented tech companies committed to hiring based on merit" and has available positions at Coinbase, Anduril, xAI, Scale, SpaceX and others associated with the venture capital cartel of Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund.
Another developing component is the creation of an arts and culture scene centering around Sovereign House in New York City, an event venue where tech fascist and far-right events are held by the growing tech right. Since Trump's election, the space has hosted a DOGE Appreciation Party. It has also hosted an event for the launch of Frontier Magazine, which echoes tech fascist propaganda, stating: "No culture war essays and turgid op-eds about the way things should be. We’re focusing on the men and women building and creating on the frontiers of America." It lists Curtis Yarvin, a key figure in the Network State, as a contributor.
Pop-Up Cities
The Network State has one of the most advanced community mechanisms in tech fascism. There is an annual conference, a number of "pop-up city" events ranging from days to several months, as well as meetups, X Spaces, and more, happening around the clock from dozens of Network State projects.
Praxis, the Network State site associated with esoteric fascism, is this year holding a "world tour" with events in "Argentina, Italy, Greece, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, Dominican Republic, Greenland, and Ukraine." Praxis also publishes a twice-yearly magazine, advertising "These aren't magazines you toss after skimming. They're 200+ page volumes printed on premium stock. Each issue is a breach in the dull monotony of modern life—a portal into Praxis. Battle plans for a parallel civilization while the current one rots from within. Between these pages: the only voices that matter. Actual doers with dirt under their fingernails. Tech dissidents building infrastructure for the worthy."
"Pop-up cities" are events that bring in gatherings of Network State-aligned people to check out a potential host city, and hold networking, crypto and educational events. Many of these pop-up city concepts travel from country to country, combining crypto tourism with Network State ideology, and look to establish a permanent hub.
Zuzalu is a major pop-up city network, associated with the Ethereum community and focusing on crypto, biotech, longevity and building the Network State. It has held a number of events, including in Montenegro, and in Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, Africa; Zanzalu has established a permanent hub "located in the Fumba Free Economic Zone". Other events include temporary settlements in Italy and India, with plans to establish "a permanent Zuzalu node" in Switzerland.
Edge City is a related hub in the Network State ecosystem, calling itself "a 'society incubator' dedicated to advancing human flourishing. We host monthlong popup villages where people at the frontiers of technology, science, and culture live and work together. Each village is an environment for running real experiments on new ideas and collaborations." Edge Esmeralda was a month-long gathering as “a first step toward a permanent new town, Esmeralda”, held in Healdsburg, California in June 2024. The 2025 calendar lists Edge City Austin, Edge City South Africa, and another Edge Esmeralda gathering.
The "Network School" is a program to indoctrinate primarily young people in the Network State and train them for a future building the Network State. It is located in Forest City, Malaysia. Per their website: "The Network School is a frontier community for techno-optimists." The program is headed by Network State evangelist Balaji Srinivasan. The first cohort began in September, 2024 and lasted for 3 months. The program is now moving to operating around the year.
"The Network School is one of the most ambitious projects yet for people interested in creating what Srinivasan calls a 'decentralized country.' The goal is for people dissatisfied with their own society to band together and create a movement spawning 'parallel' societies, special economic zones that have alternative education systems, media institutions, and currency—as well as wealth-friendly tax laws. A crucial step is having physical territory, and the Network School clears that bar... Srinivasan said he is working to 'build out the real estate' with the goal of 'scaling the school.'"
Modeled after Peter Thiel's Fellowship, the Network School is now offering $100,000 fellowships for new Network State projects. It is bringing on new members, advertising "If accepted, you'll receive access to a serviced room, healthy food, 24/7 gym, lectures by top tech founders, community events, office pods, content studios, workshops, fitness classes, makerspace, high speed wifi, and coworking — all for just $1500/month." This is similar to accelerator programs such as that offered by YCombinator and Andreessen Horowitz; these programs produce the executives and startups to fuel venture capital portfolios and projects.
The Future of Tech Fascist Media
New media platforms and outlets are relatively cheap for venture capitalists; this coincides with extreme resource constraints for liberal and leftist media that could counter the new wave of tech fascist propaganda. Venture capitalists have shown they will deploy large amounts of capital into building a robust mechanism that creates, funds and monetizes new extremist media and events. Venture capitalists provide revenue streams to right-wing content creators, journalists and artists that accord with their values.
This parallel media ecosystem is still in its early days. As venture capital power and cash flow increases, this ecosystem will continue to grow and become more and more popular. TikTok, one of the last havens for youth social justice movement, is in discussion for purchase by Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen -- like X, this would mean the takeover of a key site used by tech fascism's political opponents. Larry Ellison is also in the process of purchasing Paramount, illustrating that takeover of existing media and creation of new media are two sides of the same strategy. Liberal media and leftist media are at a huge economic disadvantage as billionaire tech fascists attack and compromise their platforms.
In the coming years, the venture capital-backed media ecosystem creates a substrate to grow tech fascism around the world.