Thread by @mclumpen

Pretty surprised nobody seems to be discussing this, but Grimes' most recent music video "we appreciate power" explicitly has far-right ideas in it. Specifically it draws inspiration from the "neoreactionary" (NRx) movement. It's kinda complicated so give me a moment to explain:

Neoreactionism or the "dark-enlightenment" is a right-libertarian ideology that was developed primarily by individuals in the tech industry. It argues that libertarian society will be impossible to achieve by democracy and that authoritarian measures are necessary.

Freedom and democracy are incompatible, and proponents of this theory argue that the seemingly apolitical task of developing AI will bring about their imagined right-libertarian society, which will be a matrix-like simulation or transhumanism under AI rule.

This AI, they argue, will become autocratic and retroactively punish those who worked against it and reward those that helped bring it about. Check this 2017 (pre-dating musk..) article for more info viewpointmag.com/2017/03/28/the…, and this quote in particular:

all society will be structured as one big corporation based on maximizing profit, under a the rule of a "CEO"--a computer or technology-augmented individual. Leading developer of this theory and noted fascist Curtis Yarvin favors Elon Musk as his pick for god CEO.

You might think these ideas would be too absurd to have any influence, but you'd be wrong. Yarvin's startup is backed by Peter Tiel, NRx ideas have had currency among sections of the tech elite, and were foundational to the development of the alt-right. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Ya…

Now that you know all this, watch Grimes' music video for "we appreciate power:"

Here's the lyrics if you don't feel like watching it

Here's how grimes explains the purpose of the song, in a press release that accompanied it:

So to me this song reveals 2 things. One, that Yarvin's ideas have apparently had some influence on Musk, and two that Grimes apparently is dutifully using her cultural platform to advance the cause of our future autocratic AI libertarian overlord...

The is confused rn over Grimes new album, but her turn towards tech-accelerationism explains it. In it she is "Miss anthroposcene," a "goddess of climate change" made of "ivory and oil" who "relishes in the end of the world." Shes said she "wants to make climate change fun again"

Wow apparently I'm hella ignorant. Grimes and Musk actually met when they "discovered they had made the same pun on twitter involving rococo and roko's basilisk" damn

So she just wrote this. Looks like this was uh, pretty accurate. Nick Land is the other big inspiration, didn't initially mention him in this thread