Wait, Wasn't Peter Thiel a Libertarian?

The Tech Billionaire and his contrarian circle are developing new nationalist visions for American's future.

- By Brian Doherty

ELEVEN DAYS AFTER the first case of an American suffering from COVID-19 was reported, an essayist at an online journal run by the Claremont Institute—whose stated purpose is to “restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life”—argued that a sensible response would be to prohibit humans from crossing oceans. “The obvious solution to an emerging pandemic,” wrote Curtis Yarvin in The American Mind, “is cutting off flights to China, then all air travel across the Pacific, then across the Atlantic.”

This was more than an extreme emergency reaction to an extreme emergency crisis. Yarvin was using COVID-19 as a news hook to push the long-term strategic goal, common among a curious new subset of conservatives, to “refute internationalism” and replace it with an “isolationist vision.” Imagine a world, he mused, “where travel between hemispheres is cut off next week—and stays cut off for years, decades, centuries.... Would this be a disaster? No—it would actually be fine.” After all, Yarvin averred in a trollishly insincere pivot, unmolested global wandering destroyed the vibrant cultures of the mysterious Far East, reducing their unique citadels to just more tawdry simulacra of Boston.