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Ari's avatar

This is very insightful. I would argue that some of the most influential ideological warlords are figures far below the level of Koch or Soros though: the YouTube personalities, the professional Twitter activists and many others whose livelihood or social status/role is tied up in their ability to maintain an energized and outraged constituency are a far better fit for the term. Their power isn't the result of external financial resources but is directly related to their ability to maintain a constant sense of mobilization. This results in a much less ideologically coherent structure for mass politics, as it's motivated less by ideology or even mass interest and more by parasocial relationships with a band of followers.

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Gabriel's avatar

I like this comparison a lot. It reminds of C. Thi Nguyen's writing about how online echo chambers are like cults in the way they involve and require manipulating people's trust. Seems to me that various online grifters are practising their own kind of ideological warlordism in the following way: the collapse of post-politics and the resulting legitimacy crisis for political institutions have created fertile terrain for people to gain followers. Would-be warlords then start randomly exploring the terrain mixing and matching different ideas according to what gets them followers. Social media helps immensely because it gives immediate feedback. So a health blogger realizes he gets tonnes of traffic when he writes about vaccines. Maybe one of his commenters mentions some conspiracy, he looks into that, writes about it, gets more follows and likes and responds to that feedback.

Since the whole process plays out randomly (based on where a would-be warlord starts and what resonates with their audience) these constituencies develop organically and also incoherently. And none of this requires any vision or planning. All that you need to get the process going is a person who wants lots of followers.

Seems like this process in turn shapes the constituencies that people like the Kochs have to appeal to. "The people" have gotten more incoherent because of small-time warlords and as a result, the would-be big time ideological warlords have to be more incoherent themselves and have a harder time establishing hegemonic control.

Now that I've written this comment, this whole thing seems obvious and banal. Anyway, your post generated some new thoughts for me (even if they are mundane and probably wrong). Thanks

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