The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

The Rise of the Counter Elite

Barry MacDonald

Bari Weiss recently had a remarkable conversation with Marc Andreessen on an episode of her podcast, Honestly.

Weiss is a journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She left The New York Times in July 2020, when she was repelled by the radical takeover of the news and editorials. She founded the media company The Free Press, and she hosts the podcast Honestly.

Marc Andreessen is a software engineer, entrepreneur, billionaire, venture capital investor, and political activist. He voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden (in 2020), and for Donald Trump in 2024. He sits on the board of Meta (formerly Facebook) and is involved with other tech companies.

Marc Andreessen’s views can be summarized as follows:

• Andreessen was in the meeting when the Facebook board decided on the definition of hate speech. They determined that hate speech is that which makes people “uncomfortable.” Andreessen compares the power to censor speech to the use of the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: The use of the One Ring inevitably corrupts and turns to evil. Facebook’s definition inevitably leads to the establishment of commissars who rule over speech for the benefit of an autocratic elite.
• Andreessen cites James Burnham. Burnham was a Trotskyite who became a Cold War conservative writer and co-founded of The National Review with William F. Buckley. Burnham believed that government always takes the form of an oligarchy. Andreessen believes that America is not a democracy, but an oligarchy. The question is whether the American oligarchy is benevolent or repressive to the American people. Andreessen spoke about Burnham’s view of the “managerial class,” that explains much of the power of the federal bureaucracy today: A few people in advantageous positions may control many because they are able to come together and cooperate. Burnham also wrote about the “circulation” of the elite, which means that a “counter elite” rises from the ranks of the elite to contest for power. The counter elite is more inventive and productive than the elite. A resistance to the Biden/Harris campaign, and to the radical Democrats of Washington, D.C., arose composed of discontented Democrats who could no longer stomach the deranged agenda of the radicals.
• The Biden Administration expresses “seething contempt” for the tech industry. Andreessen and his business partner, Benjamin Horowitz, met with officials of the Biden Administration in Washington, D.C. They were told not to invest in startup AI tech companies. The Biden Administration would suppress a free market for AI. Only two or three companies would be allowed. The government would “cocoon” and control them. The Biden people would classify the mathematics underneath AI, just as the federal government classified entire sections of physics and atomic science during the Cold War. The Biden Administration wanted total control of AI. AI control of society would be 1,000 times worse than social media censorship. AI would control banks, health care, education, and the economy for the benefit of the elite. AI control would be like the Chinese totalitarian, social credit system. The meeting with the Biden crew horrified both Andreessen and Horowitz. They decided to endorse Trump for president.
• Donald Trump’s escape from an assassin’s bullet was the turning point of the 2024 election. The moment when Trump rose with a fist in the air to shout “fight, fight, fight” was iconic. Trump wore a blue suit, red tie, and a white shirt — the colors of the country. An American flag was in the background. Americans don’t see that kind of courage except on a battlefield in wartime. Afterward, the photo of a bloodied Trump went viral on the Internet. Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump after the attempted assassination. Musk’s endorsement was a cascading event that gave permission to others. Andreessen and Horowitz endorsed Trump after the shooting. Andreessen and Horowitz had met with Trump on the weekend prior to the shooting.
• The 2020 election of President Biden was a dark turn in American history. Questions linger. Did Biden compromise with radical progressives to get the nomination? Was he fully cognizant of the viciousness of his government? Has Biden been in charge all along? Or did the aggressive young White House staffers take advantage of Biden’s senility to seize control of policy? To what extent is Biden complicit?
• The Biden Administration is incredibly repressive. To them, capitalism is bad. Technology is bad. Their attitude is a radical departure from the progressive movements of the Clinton administration, from the first term of the Obama administration, and from the thought of moderate Democrats. They don’t even want economic growth. Before 2020, Democrats wanted America to succeed. The Biden team is anti-business, anti-growth, anti-technology, anti-liberty, anti-American.
• Andreessen is appalled by the “soft totalitarianism” of the Biden people. They weaponized social media and the Department of Justice to go after their enemies. Andreessen cites: 1) the destruction of the crypto currency industry; 2), the threats against startup AI companies; and 3) the proposed tax on unrealized income, that he believes would obliterate business formation and capital enterprise. Andreessen cites the systematic and punitive process of “de-banking” that emerged in the Biden years. Political opponents and disfavored individuals discovered that they were denied access to their bank accounts, and that no other banks would do business with them. Melania and Barron Trump were de-banked. Thirty CEOs of crypto companies were de-banked. The Biden people went after the families of their “enemies,” which is a move that is evil, totalitarian, and Stalinist. People were unable to obtain loans for homes or businesses. Car insurance and home insurance were denied to them. When the federal government acts through the agency of private companies to punish political opponents, federal laws are violated. Andreessen said that the Trump people are aware of the problem, and that he hopes to see prosecutions.
• Andreessen commented on John Stewart’s comedy. Stewart joked about the coincidence of the name of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the emergence of the COVID virus in close proximity. The official narrative was that COVID-19 came from a wet market in Wuhan, and not from the Wuhan lab. Stewart punctured the propaganda. Andreessen’s tech friends laughed about the monologue and on the spot, they decided not to censor the lab-leak theory. Stewart instigated a cultural shift in acceptable opinion and the tech barons responded.
• Andreessen has spent half of his time since the November 5 election in Palm Beach. He is in consultation with the future Trump Administration. In association with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, he will be an unpaid volunteer in the department of government efficiency (DOGE).

Conservatives have vigorous new allies in our battle against the radical, Orwellian, Marxists. They are Democrats who have been driven out of the moderate Democratic party. They include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Bari Weiss, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Joe Rogan, and others. They will disagree with us on certain issues.

Our new allies are refugees who fled totalitarianism, just as the Russians did when they fled the Soviet Union. Our new allies include reporters, scholars, and intellectuals such as Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger. Taibbi and Schellenberger were invited by Elon Musk to audit the operation of Twitter (presently named X) prior to Musk’s purchase of the social platform. In the “Twitter Files,” Taibbi and Schellenberger exposed the pervasive and unconstitutional suppression of free speech on social media by the government. The FBI, CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security pressured Facebook and Twitter to suppress valid counternarratives to Biden policy on school closures, the efficacy of masks and vaccines, the lab-leak theory, and more during the years of the COVID pandemic.

We should be grateful for our new allies. They have shifted the arena of civilized debate to the right — toward us and away from the radicals. They have helped to stigmatize the Marxist, Machiavellian, Saul Alinsky-inspired, sadistic Left.

On the other hand, we in the conservative movement must consider who we are and what we believe as conservatives. In this issue of The St. Croix Review, we will consider how we might better align conservative principles with the evolution of American society. Is the conservative movement up to the task of the ongoing defense of America? How should conservatives approach AI, social media, foreign policy and defense, the education system, trade, the state of our courts and the law, health care, bureaucracy, social services?

Did Trump win the election because Americans were just fed up with the obvious lies and incompetence of the woke Left? Did Americans just have enough of the brutal and intolerant censorship? Did the radicals go only a couple of steps too far? Doesn’t the Left retain 90 percent control of the cultural highpoints of American culture? Can the Left bide its time and return with renewed vigor and better strategy? Did the radical Left lose a battle, or the war?

How should we attempt to reform the rotten Ivy League colleges? Should we tax their endowments? Should we, and could we, cease government support for elite universities? Should we reconsider the issuance of student visas for foreigners who partly compose the anti-Semitic mobs on campus? Will a degree from Harvard suffer continuous loss of prestige due to the infection of woke ideology? Will student debt and profitless degrees dissuade potential students? How may we influence the graduation of indoctrinated students into elite positions inside bureaucracy, law firms, and Fortune 500 corporations? How do we heal the continued blight of education in America? Could we foster a competitive network of private schools to compete with public schools — enough to reap the benefits of competitive discipline?

Perhaps the most pivotal figure of this election cycle, besides Trump, was Elon Musk. Before the 2024 election, Musk was a Democrat. Musk provided permission for intellectuals and entrepreneurs to publicly abandon the radical Democratic party. Would Trump have won the election if Musk had not bought Twitter and revealed the Left’s machinery of censorship? It is doubtful.

Musk’s brilliance is invaluable. Will Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy manage through DOGE to minimize and humble the federal bureaucracy? Will they achieve more than the Reagan Administration? The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives during the Reagan years. The next two years of Republican control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency will be decisive: Will the entrenched cooperation between corporations, too-big-to-fail banks, and the federal government be weakened or ended?

The American people have much to be grateful for. The arena of debate is now recentered on shared ideals of honesty, decency, patriotism, prosperity, and liberty. Good-hearted Americans may sigh in relief. Patriotic, productive Americans may relax. We are free of tyranny for now.     *