In this Part II of our series on “Sad Francisco,” we continue our deep dive into the history of the tech executives, crypto billionaires and venture capital/incubator heads who have attempted a (relatively successful) coup in San Francisco and now appear to be organizing a coup on behalf Donald Trump and JD Vance, who worked in San Franciso for Peter Thiel’s Mithril. Long time Bay Area journalists D. Scot Miller and Kevin L. Jones, with the Doom Loop Dispatch podcast weigh in on the connections between Thiel and other VC and tech execs like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Garry Tan, Balaji Srinivasan, Ron Conway and others who, aligned with the YIMBY movement, have tilted San Francisco politics right of center and are now allied with MAGA. How might this impact Santa Cruz, CA or your own “Blue” city? Just what do these people want? Is anti-Blackness at the heart of this agenda?

Links and Resources:

David Talbot and a Season of the Witch interview

Emily Mills on Twitter, formerly known as Prince, now known as Cr*p. (Yes, we are dead-naming Twitter)

Gil Duran’s essential article at The New Republic, from April, 2024

Gil Duran on Twitter

Gil Duran on Substack.

The Sad Franciso Podcast, with Toshio Meronek

The Doom Loop Dispatch Pod

Strive CEO Matt Cole on Linked In (funded by JD Vance’s Narya)

The Phoenix Papers report (Part I) on Big Money in SF Politics

Peter Thiel’s Praxis Co. plans an autonomous city in the Mediterranean

International “Network State” projects

Kelly Hayes on Christo-nationalism and Techno-fascism

News outlets reporting on all this:

48 Hills

Mission Local

The San Francisco Standard (note funded by billionaire Michael Moritz, who is also allied with California Forever, etc.)

One of our early shows with Ali Collins, a recalled School Board Trustee in San Francisco