The Nerd Reich
Book by Gil DuranWikipedia
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Search complete. 118 mentions across 41 episodes found for "The Nerd Reich".
Oct 19, 2026
Tali EdutHOST
earth.
Tali EdutHOST
You know, I am reading a book called The Nerd Reich.
Tali EdutHOST
Get it? Get it? Instead of The Third Reich, The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran.
Tali EdutHOST
And it is...
Tali EdutHOST
Oh, so I opening of an expose on all the tech bros. I'm only on the second chapter.
11 MINS LATER
Ophira EdutHOST
I think it's because the world is so weird and cruel and also AI-ified that we're like, Doubling down on our humanity more than ever.
Tali EdutHOST
Yeah.
Tali EdutHOST
So, you know, the, the nerd Reich thing, I want to know, I want to, you know, I'm reading it because I'm super interested in what's going on behind the scenes, but I also think that.
Steven HassanHOST
But I want to add one more tweak to this conversation.
Steven HassanHOST
I just finished a book called The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran.
Steven HassanHOST
Have you heard of it
Kate CohenGUEST
yet? I think I've read the little blurb.
Mél HoganGUEST
There's also Cecilia Recap, who wrote a book called The Rulers, which I think it really unpacks the political economy of this and just provides a different angle.
Mél HoganGUEST
And then Gil Duran, whose book I haven't read yet, it's next up on my list, but who wrote The Nerd Reich, which I think is also about the techno state and the very, very sort of planned route to where we are today.
Mél HoganGUEST
Like this is not just sort of like a series of circumstances.
Mél HoganGUEST
It's like a real plan that is...
Jennifer WelchHOST
I want to welcome to I've Had It Weekend, Gil Duran.
Jennifer WelchHOST
He is the author of a new must-read book, and the title is incredible, The Nerd Reich.
Jennifer WelchHOST
Are you kidding me? That is so good.
Jennifer WelchHOST
And it's about the Silicon Valley fascism and the war on democracy.
40 MINS LATER
Jennifer WelchHOST
We're gonna tax you 5%," then they're in this state of vic- victimhood, and it just repeats over and over.
Jennifer WelchHOST
All right, final question.
Jennifer WelchHOST
The title of your book, The Nerd Reich, is so brilliant because I believe that that one thing that Democrats or anti-fascist movements need to do is shame these people.
Gil DuranGUEST
Mm-hmm.
Charlie HigsonGUEST
Um, but as I say, particularly his ones he wrote in the '80s were good.
Charlie HigsonGUEST
Um, [lips smack] a new book I have r- uh, I am reading actually at the moment is The Nerd Reich by a guy called-
Joe HaddowHOST
[chuckles]
Charlie HigsonGUEST
...
Jacques BoulayHOST
That's right, meanwhile dropping any semblance of democracy in a real sense and accelerating and what I call cementing in the power imbalances between haves and have-nots for people and between nations.
Jacques BoulayHOST
And as Gil Duran's book The Nerd Reich so scarily documents, The rather few multi-billionaires owning and controlling AI platforms and their chatbot agents are all part of Silicon Valley's fascism and the war on democracy, which is the subtitle of the Nerd Reich book.
Jacques BoulayHOST
Or even more explicitly, one of Duran's informers, Franciscan priest Paolo Bernanti, who is the AI advisor to Pope Leo.
Jacques BoulayHOST
He suggests, and I quote, a neo-medieval future is emerging in which democratic politics is no more than a vestige.
Jennifer BurrellHOST
Yeah.
Jennifer BurrellHOST
And it's quite a dark picture.
Jennifer BurrellHOST
And it does have resonances of the book we covered a while ago, Technofutilism.
Jennifer BurrellHOST
That's right.
Chuck MertzHOST
She has a book out soon, Deep Unlearning, next year.
Chuck MertzHOST
Gil Duran has a book out now, The Nerd Reich, about the fascist tech billionaires.
Chuck MertzHOST
And Paris Marx has a book out next year too, Hyperscale, about the AI industry at large.
Chuck MertzHOST
Timnit is probably the best to get there since she's been in the thick of this BS and would probably have the best insights." She writes other stuff too.
Chuck MertzHOST
Timnit's book is out in February of twenty twenty-seven.
Chuck MertzHOST
Paris Marx's Hyperscale is not being published next year, but it's being published Tuesday, and we've sent an interview request.
Chuck MertzHOST
And the publisher of Gil's book, the one with the best title, The Nerd Reich, which we are really looking forward to, is ghosting us despite us telling-- despite Gil telling us personally.
Chuck MertzHOST
He emailed us personally.
Gil DuranGUEST
They could feel what I was feeling at that age when I was lost in the world or in need of guidance.
Gil DuranGUEST
What the nerd reich preaches, what these tech fascist billionaires preach, is that everyone is on their own, and they have the completely ridiculous belief that somehow they became billionaires of their own accord and by pulling up their own bootstraps, when most of these people got rich because of government investment and government contracts.
Gil DuranGUEST
Which means we're the ones who gave them the money.
Gil DuranGUEST
Their success depended on our investment.
Richard CurranHOST
Our next guest is a journalist and former political advisor who has spent some years writing about the right-wing and often bizarre ideology that comes out of Silicon Valley.
Richard CurranHOST
In his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, he argues that big tech has seized economic and political control in the US, has lost interest in democracy, and is steering everyone towards a very uncertain future.
Richard CurranHOST
Gil Duran, some of the details in the book are quite extraordinary, but let's look at Peter Thiel first, the man at the heart of Silicon Valley's move to the right and the first tech figure to back Donald Trump.
Richard CurranHOST
In two thousand and nine, he said that capitalist democracy was impossible because of the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women, and he's a big backer of J.D. Vance.
Richard CurranHOST
Can you tell us some more about him?
Gil DuranGUEST
And so these openly anti-democratic statements from a billionaire who is very wrapped up in our government military industrial surveillance complex really got my attention.
Gil DuranGUEST
And so I went down the rabbit hole of Peter Thiel's beliefs to see that he has created this cult of Silicon Valley apocalypse capitalism with these billionaires who believe that technology will render democracy obsolete in the twenty-first century.
Gil DuranGUEST
My book describes J.D. Vance as entirely a creation of Peter Thiel.
Mary LouHOST
Okay.
Steven HassanGUEST
But I, I continue-- I literally read this book called The Nerd Reich this week, and I knew 80% of it, but it, it was presented in such a scholarly, journalistically solid way, and it's been on The New York Times bestseller list for six weeks, and it deserves it.
Steven HassanGUEST
It shifted my perspective because I didn't know this when I wrote-
Chad CultgenHOST
Yeah
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