The Nerd Reich vs. Catholic Right in Trump’s Circle

‘At some stage a civil war is coming to the Trump movement. And I think Musk and Vance will be on two very different sides of that civil war.’

Gil Duran

10 May 2025 — 3 min read

JD Vance, the Peter Thiel-created bridge between theocracy and technocracy. (shutterstock)

The Wall Street Journal just published an insightful essay on ideological tensions within the Trump regime. From the piece by Joshua Chaffin and Zusha Elinson:

On one side are tech bros racing to create a new future; on the other, a resurgent band of conservative Catholics who yearn for an imagined past. Both groups agree that the status quo has failed America and must be torn down to make way for a new “postliberal” world. This conviction explains much of the revolutionary fervor of Trump’s second term, especially the aggressive bludgeoning of elite universities and the federal workforce.

But the two camps disagree sharply on why liberalism should be junked and what should replace it. The techies envision a libertarian world in which great men like Musk can build a utopian future unfettered by government bureaucrats and regulation. Their dark prince is Curtis Yarvin, a blogger-philosopher who has called for American democracy to be replaced by a king who would run the nation like a tech CEO.

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The article quotes me on the role of Yarvin's extremist ideas in American politics:

Yarvin’s school of thought has been called the “Dark Enlightenment” or the neo-reactionary movement. The “Nerd Reich” is how Gil Duran, a veteran Democratic staffer who is now an independent journalist, describes it.

“These are crazy ideas that should have been lost in an internet chat forum,” Duran said. “But when billionaires decide that they’re good ideas, we all have to deal with them.”

This marks the WSJ's most significant mention of Yarvin to date. Coming on the heels of a full Washington Post story, it further demonstrates how these extremist tech ideologies — once relegated to the conspiracy theory bin — are a key part of the Musk-Trump regime. (Though it is important to remember that Yarvin's anti-democratic gobbledygook is just one facet of Silicon Valley fascism.)

What's most interesting about the WSJ piece is how it illuminates a schism in the Trump regime. The religious zealots have joined forces with the tech zealots in a shaky authoritarian alliance. But one side purports to believe in God while the other side purports to be gods (or to be creating God), hence the possibility of disaster.

JD Vance is the bridge between the two sides. He's a recent Catholic convert who is largely a creation of Peter Thiel, a tech surveillance billionaire who has lately tried to meld the apocalyptic fantasies of tech with the apocalyptic traditions of Christianity. But it's not clear that will work.

Earlier this year, I wrote about military analyst John Robb, a pro-Trump observer who warned that internal divisions in the regime could help ensure its failure. “Since the Red Tribe isn’t cohesive, there’s a high likelihood of fractures between the large accounts implementing different approaches to ‘change,’” he wrote in February.

The WSJ piece highlights a key conflict in the authoritarian project: Theocrats vs. Technocrats. Of course, certain elements of Silicon Valley are busy trying to create their own scary new religions to replace the gods of old. More to come on that, soon.

While I appreciate the WSJ's deep analysis, I believe these groups have strong incentives to choose unity over division. After all, this may be their best chance to collapse liberal democracy in the early 21st century. But the divisions could prove fatal to their project—unless they find a way to fuse faith and futurism into a single fascist vision.