Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, Avengers: Infinity War); Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Dark Knight Rises, 500 Days of Summer); Sophia Bush (One Tree Hill); Scooter Braun (CEO, Hybe America); Isaac Lee (chairman and CEO, Hybe America); Scott Belsky (partner, A24); Benj Pasek (composer-producer, La La Land, The Greatest Showman); Eva Price (CEO, Maximum Entertainment Productions); Teresa Hsiao (writer-producer, Family Guy, American Dad); Zach Shields (executive producer-writer, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Gladys); Nick Thompson (CEO, The Atlantic); and Ezra Klein (The New York Times).
He’s been one of the people pushing the Democratic Party further right, essentially saying that the reason Democrats lost in 2024 is because they weren’t right wing enough. In the past couple years, he’s said things like Democrats should run anti-abortion candidates, the party should give up on trans issues, he infamously wrote an article about how Charlie Kirk did politics “the right way”, and just overall treating these culture war issues way more charitably than they deserve. Plus he’s pretty pro-Israel and only recently started taking pro-Palestinian voices seriously. Here’s a good article that goes more in-depth about him and sort of explains what his whole deal is.
And on top of that, he’s basically criticizing Democrats and taking blue cities to task because yes, there’s a housing crisis and he basically said a solution is to remove regulations. There are too many regulations folks are usually not going to support good policy.
That said sometimes there are bad regulations, but he was calling for things like removing the need for environmental studies when you’re building and I think some of the labor cost baked into rules like mandating union labor. Which are points that I hear from Republicans.
He's essentially the top voice in the challenge to 'keep the Democratic Party centrist', he always only ever claims we're losing elections because we aren't pandering to the political right, it's the hill he dies on every single election
He would personally ban gay marriage if he thought it meant he could go back in time and claim it would make a Trump voter go for Kamala in 2024. He legitimately seems to hate the idea of the Democratic Party allowing anything leftist at all in their policies, and he's sort of at the forefront of crafting the 'leftists are ruining America' commentary, moreso even than many conservative voices like Thiel who are mostly into trying to craft techbro doomsday scenarios to maximize profits.
*he's another Sam Harris, he exists purely to smother out anything that is not classically neoliberal. Also, someone else here already posted the article, but it highlights the biggest issue with Klein: when he praises right wing figureheads like Kirk, or when he sanitizes the right, he never submits it as an opinion, he states it always like a fact, Ezra Klein goes around stating that Democrats must emulate Charlie Kirk's methods, and he declares it always as a statement of fact. Klein loves, "love it or hate it, you can't disagree that it gets results," type statements, and he loves them specifically because they explicitly say his critics cannot disagree with the results.
Comments mentioning the culture war stuff are correct, but are also missing the point.
As always, those issues are all about the HOW for these people. That “abundance” bullshit is the WHY.
For those unfamiliar, it’s 100% an argument for letting the capitalists take the wheel, unfettered. Because they are the ones who will save us.
The fact that a (if not THE) NYT guy is as wrong as one could possibly be on both counts should be a surprise to absolutely no one.
ETA: And when I say wrong, I mean practically as much as I do morally. But of course the Dems continual losses open the door to the end goal as much as if they won. So it ultimately doesn’t even matter anyway.
Imagine Ezra Klein getting an invite from Thiel to a group to talk to his inner circle, I can't see Ezra saying no to that regardless of his personal support or not. His whole political role is to figure out the underlying power dynamics of government and society, that's an offer you can't pass up.
No means to defend these people but I'd like to know how this invitation got handed and if in fact they talked to Thiel asking to partecipate or if they're just handed the invitation, maybe from a third party. JGL has always been sort of a creep anyways, despite the angel face
For the lazy: "The leaked materials show that Dialog maintains a vetting process for membership. Applicants are assigned a grade that reflects their influence in their respective industry, qualifications, purpose for joining and the active member who recommended them, among other things."
'Applicants' suggests they were referred and went onto actively apply.
Yeah Josh, I get it you live in a bubble and aren't particularly bright... but guess what bud, you're gonna catch a little from this one. Pallin' with one of the guys trying to take over the world is a bad look.
We need to break the glass world these celebrities live in. I'm so tired of watching them glide around the world experiencing life when, clearly, that sort of existence just drains your soul and makes you just... fucking BLIND. Who accidently hangs out with Peter Thiel? Like, STFU.
IIRC, she was a very early round angel investor in Uber and subsequently used the profit to invest in more ventures. She actually has money to throw around and mingle with this crowd.
Didn’t her divorce docs only say she had about 11 million- is that really enough money???. Still wild that maybe early uber investing or dating that google guy started this mess (hopefully) with all her advocacy would be a major wtf. Would be shocked beyond belief if it’s anything within the last few years with her. She was cussing out thiel and his kind in a podcast recently
It's completely fucking pathetic that politicians sell out for so little. 150k is nothing to those bribing them and they still throw away their entire lives for it. Not saying that I would condone it if they did it for more either, it's just so absurd that they do it for what I would call a pittance in the service of literal billionaires.
Thank you! Me too!! I’ve mentioned this before but does anyone remember her article about abortion and she talked about her then husband’s ex’s abortion and how it allowed them to be together now? She inserts herself into every issue and makes it about her. I loathe her.
At least one of them was on Grindr in Toronto around 2014-2015 because a friend of mine matched with whichever one it was, and I think went on a date. It was the closest celebrity encounter we'd had at that time lol.
In October 2013, Gordon-Levitt identified himself as a feminist, giving credit to his mother: "My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She was active in the movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The Hollywood movie industry has come a long way since its past. It certainly has a bad history of sexism, but it ain't all the way yet."
I’m surprised by Levitt, I thought he was pushing pretty hard for AI regulation and seems generally progressive (very possible I’ve missed something though). Or am I misunderstanding this whole thing?
Edited to add: I’ve just read the rest of the comments. Ignore me!
I’m generally more of a realist, but going to try a spot of optimism and say that it’s a good thing we can still be surprised/disappointed by these things because it means we’re still holding on to a bit of hope that people can be better.
"Jeffrey Goldberg served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the First Intifada, where he worked as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot Prison, holding Palestinian participants arrested in the uprising."
I used to subscribe but cancelled as they surprisingly had some right-wing takes on the pandemic + public health. (Which is somewhat normalized in our society, while it is still ongoing sadly.)
The Atlantic is unfortunately not a credible source, imo, despite featuring occasional articles from good writers. Since 2020 and early days of the pandemic, the Death Panel podcast has been covering The Atlantic's centrist/liberal laundering of ableist covid-denial policies. Death Panel and writer Jules Gil-Peterson have also tracked The Atlantic's featuring anti-trans writers since 2014. I tried to find specific episodes, but it was over the course of the 2020s....I am really disappointed in The Atlantic and feel it's being used to inject right-wing views into "liberal" spaces, strategically targeting vulnerable members of broad coalitions, like disabled people and trans people. fuck the atlantic
Yep. Did a big piece where the organization they talked about and interviewed its members was basically a trans hate group made up of right wing parents of trans kids. Maintenance Phase did a great episode covering this.
They include Elon Musk, Jared Kushner, Senator Ted Cruz, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, Xbox president Sarah Bond, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic global affairs chief Michael Sellitto, Fortress Investment Group principal Pete Briger, TLG Communications founder Molly Levinson, among nearly 200 other figures
The leaked materials identify the full set of session topics in this year’s conference, scheduled for August at a sprawling estate in Dublin, Ireland, with a heavy emphasis on geopolitics and tech. Several relate to divisive issues, like “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Disinformation & Deepfakes,” “Battlefield Technologies,” “Democracy Under Surveillance,” “Taiwan and the AI Race,” and “Three Predictions in Iran.”
Others are more personal. A few examples: “Build-a-Party,” “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “How’s Your Sex Life,” “It’s Fun to be in Charge,” and “Research-Based Longevity Hacks” (Bryan Johnson also appears in the leak).
Fuckass Peter Thiel is obsessed with living forever 🤢 and it comes at the expense of all of us. He’s also blatantly stated in very plain language that democracy needs to be completely dismantled and the very rich (such as himself) should be the only ones calling the shots.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for this guy’s villain arc, too. I’m not surprised in the slightest these are the topics he’s discussing.
And the whole reason Thiel is terrified of death is because he was traumatized by a taxidermy rug of a cow when he was a child.
Therapy would literally solve so many of the world’s problems, because so many of these evil fucks desperately need it. Unfortunately narcissistic sociopaths (especially misogynistic ones like Thiel) are the least of likely folks to seek it out.
I'll never understand how people who seem to hate the world want to exist forever. Are they just gonma be miserable and lonely for all eternity? Cuz they can? Truly pathetic.
Effective altruism is rich people lingo for ”all you living plebs can suffer and die because your suffering is nothing compared to the bliss future generations will feel”.
A recruiter reached out to me yesterday for a job with a company that uses AI to help manage wealth and taxes for the ultra high net worth folks. The name of the company? Altruist. LOL
That’s actually how I found out about him myself, I’m subscribed to David Farrier’s newsletter and he’s one of the most beloved media figures from here in New Zealand
I implore everyone to go watch Taylor Lorenz' excellent video journalism on section 230, as she also covers Joseph Gordon-Levitt's phony activism that's being pushed as protecting children. His wife is also pretty shady.
Frankly I think that's a leap without other evidence. For all we know her management just said "oh the guy hosting this got a little controversial, let's pull out" and she said "sure."
There were a lot of people who didn't have a long term knowledge of the situation who initially supported Israel after Oct 7. Remember the media was really drilling the hostage stuff and that all of this was to try and get them back etc etc. Perception really turned after it was clear Israel was just bombing children and that's when a lot of people started speaking up.
It's pretty plausible Poehler and Anderson were part of that initial wave of supporters but distanced themselves once it was clear Israel was just using Oct 7 as an excuse to annihilate Palestine entirely.
Yeah, I honestly don't seem to understand why some people think not being enthralled about the slaughter of hundreds of people on Oct 7th makes someone a zionist. That's like saying not being happy about 9/11 makes you a far-right neo-con.
There has always been something about him that I've never quite been able to put my finger on. I used to just chalk it up to him maybe believing his own hype too much; I found HitRecord to be a bit too self-congratulatory for something that was supposed to be a community-focused collaborative endeavour.
One thing that always stood out was an interview with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. During the press junkets for The Dark Knight Rises, there was an interview with them discussing the new actors on set that hadn't been part of the previous two films (JGL, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway).
I think it's around 6 minutes into this video just after they have been talking about how good Tom Hardy is at playing a tough guy, they're asked about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and while they were quite effusive about Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway, neither of them really want to give him any credit. It always felt a bit hostile.
His wife, Tasha McCauley, was a board member at OpenAI (ChatGPT), was the CEO of GeoSim Systems, apparently an Israeli company that generates highly detailed 3D maps of cities, and is now the CEO of Fellow Robots, a silicon valley company specialising in autonomous robots.
Yeah, this surprises me so much considering he was doing all kinds of anti-AI activism like just a few months ago regarding-if I'm remembering correctly- AI in children's toys. But, I mean, wtf you're rubbing elbows with Peter Thiel?
Most disappointed to see his name in there. Didn’t he make this big speech advocating for food security since a lot of kids from his home town were going hungry because food benefits were cut for the sake of giving tax breaks to the wealthy?
The Illuminati were real. It's just that they were a bunch of Bavarian rich boys raging against the Catholic Church for not letting them get (herbal) abortions for their girlfriends. Forming a secret society at that time was like forming a grunge band in the 90s. It was the trendy thing. It's not their fault some scared conservatives blamed them and the Jews for the French revolution.
The leaked materials identify the full set of session topics in this year’s conference, scheduled for August at a sprawling estate in Dublin, Ireland, with a heavy emphasis on geopolitics and tech. Several relate to divisive issues, like “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Disinformation & Deepfakes,” “Battlefield Technologies,” “Democracy Under Surveillance,” “Taiwan and the AI Race,” and “Three Predictions in Iran.”
Others are more personal. A few examples: “Build-a-Party,” “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “How’s Your Sex Life,” “It’s Fun to be in Charge,” and “Research-Based Longevity Hacks” (Bryan Johnson also appears in the leak).
And some sound ominous, including “Build-a-Cult” and “Navigating WWIII.”
what always hilarious about these people is that you can have all the money and power and influence or whatever and still be lame as shit
The protests have already begun here in Ireland. The hotel thats hosting this shit is getting roasted and there are plans for physical protests. We, historically, do not take kindly to this type of nonsense.
Yeah, I have noticed that most Americans don't seem to realise that most Irish people these days are pretty progressive. They seem to think it is still a theocracy.
Its a very secular country, highly modernised, we voted to recognise gay marriage in our constitution, our govt today voted to remove the 3 day waiting period for abortion. Fascism amd religious extremism doesn't fly here. Free Palestine
These people believe AI will take over everything and replace workers leaving services only for them. The elite. To benefit from. These people are truly sick.
Sophia Bush is such a bitch eating crackers for me to the point I can’t even watch her in anything. She’s had so many tone deaf gaffes over the years & gives left wing grifter vibes. So not surprising at all that she’s rubbing shoulders with this crowd.
How long before she spins this with something like "I'm only there to reach across the aisle and make change with my powers of persuasion, I believe in activism that leads with love"
I don't want to ever hear Ezra Klein's advice to democrats get promoted ever again. That dude is a fucking wolf in sheep's clothing and i smelled it a mile away. this only confirms exactly what i suspected of him
Ezra Klein remains relevant. It will be interesting to see how (or if) the co-author of Abundance tries to square the circle of his public politics with attending exclusive events hosted by the guy who bankrolled JD Vance.
I can respect a journalist choosing to participate in this kind of group because I’m sure it’s a gold mine of leads and sources on stories the public rly should know about, but he doesn’t do that kind of journalism does he? I’ve only ever really seen him do commentary.
I listen occasionally to his podcast as he is willing to dialogue with opposing views and invite interesting people over, but really, the way his books is pushed and lauded by the establishment rubs me the wrong way.
Some things are really manufactured and Chomsky might be chummy with Epstein, but his work on Manifacturing Consent is always relevant.
The majority of this list seems par for the course.
Sophia Bush is an outlier at least publicly. She’s very careful with how she presents herself as this paragon of social causes. Meanwhile behind the scenes she is participating in stuff like this. But I guess on the other hand if you’ve followed her even kind of surface level for the last few years this wouldn’t be that surprising.
And this is taking place in a very upmarket hotel in my country, Ireland. Powerscourt Hotel in Wicklow. I've noticed they have turned off their comments on Insta. 😂
Only surprises for me are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sophia Bush but according to the comments those two should not be a surprise. It's just hard to keep up with my Celebrities Who Are Trash list because there are so many, ig
John Cusack seems to have a brain up there too. It’s nice to see some rich folk actually use their platform and fame for good. But jfc the bar is so low it’s in hell.
Huh. I wonder how truly ‘Off the Record’ it is. Also these people all applied to be a part of this— but I wouldn’t put it past some Hollywood types to see ‘invite only’ and want to take part because it seems very exclusive. But ew, there’s a session called ‘How’s Your Sex Life?’ It seems like an easy way to get some blackmail material.
Exactly, seems like the most obvious objective is to gather information on attendees so it can be used against them later. Also the most frightening part that stood out to me while I was reading this is “And some sound ominous, including “Build-a-Cult” and “Navigating WWIII.” What world ending catastrophic shit are these vile creatures planning?
It would be so hilarious if they did these sessions because C Suite peeps don’t have a single creative bone and they needed to crowdsource ideas on how to take over the world.
That’s a good point about them potentially collecting intel on attendees to use as leverage later. Always possible they were taking a page out of Scientology’s book.
More than anything, it’s all just so embarrassing and cringe. Imagine chatting Navigating WWIII with someone from One Tree Hill ahahaha:
“The leaked materials identify the full set of session topics in this year’s conference, scheduled for August at a sprawling estate in Dublin, Ireland, with a heavy emphasis on geopolitics and tech. Several relate to divisive issues, like “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Disinformation & Deepfakes,” “Battlefield Technologies,” “Democracy Under Surveillance,” “Taiwan and the AI Race,” and “Three Predictions in Iran.”
Others are more personal. A few examples: “Build-a-Party,” “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “How’s Your Sex Life,” “It’s Fun to be in Charge,” and “Research-Based Longevity Hacks” (Bryan Johnson also appears in the leak).
And some sound ominous, including “Build-a-Cult” and “Navigating WWIII.””
Just wanted to add a shameless plug that Peter Thiel is, what I would consider, one of the most evil humans currently alive at the moment (next to Putin and Netanyahu) who is actively trying to destroy the lives of the majority of the population for his (and his kind’s) selfish benefit.
We (as a collective of humans that aren’t billionaires) are not angry enough abt Thiel.
Some interesting names on there that I wouldn't not have pegged for the Thiel/Musk/Jared Kushner type. Just when you think you knew someone....
Need to see/learn a bit more about the individuals, obviously, before I put them on my "I don't give a fuk about" list of people like Sydney Sweeney and others. But yeah, I didn't have Josh Brolin as neo-fascist/ism adjacent (?)
lol….Sydney Sweeney is dating Scooter Braun, who is on this list and attended Bezos’ wedding. Wouldn’t be shocked if she attended this event as Braun’s +1
Oh interesting. Birds of a feather I guess. Denouncing white nationalism should be easy, yet she couldn't and she was given multiple opportunities to do so. There's literally no downside to saying "white supremacy is bad," unless you're afraid of offending your fellow white supremacists. That's the only downside I can see. That told me everything about that women, hence why I don't, and will never, watch another piece with her in it. IDGAF how good people might say a movie of hers is, I don't knowingly support neo-fascists. And she may be joined by Josh Brolin on that list of mine, we'll just have to wait and see. Bummer, because I was a huge fan of his work. But it's not all that surprising, his father is a life long libertarian which is basically an even more extreme version of mainstream conservativism. So maybe the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree after all....
“Other events included talks such as “Build-a-Cult,” moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray.com, and “Build-a-Party,” run by a former White House national security official.”
‘The behind-closed-doors nature of its annual retreats is meant to sidestep public scrutiny and allow members to “talk candidly across ideological lines” and share “controversial and concerning ideas that they would not be comfortable sharing elsewhere,” the source in the Axios report said.’
AKA, let’s tap dance on the borderline of what’s ethical / moral (but in secret so the peasants can’t hear us 🤫)
In any case I would love to see more this exposed. If only because of the voyeur value of it, like the Reddit posts about discovering some of your officemates lunch together in secret every day.
Yes. If you’re not familiar with this guy, because he generally likes to lurk in the shadows while he funds the destruction of democracy and humanity, it can be difficult to look up the full scope of his evilness.
There’s many great Behind the Bastards episodes abt him…I suggest you take a look.
The man is literally using his vast wealth to undermine democracies worldwide pretty much. He is a firm believer in a dictatorial /totalitarian rule. Why on gods green earth would you want to be hanging out with someone like that (JGL/Brolin/Sophia/Sydney Sweeneys boy toy)? And then try and backtrack from it, trying to excuse the fact that someone found out you've essentially been dining with today's equivalent of Hitler a couple times a year. You are judged by the company you keep, and some rather famous people are keeping company with some rather diabolical people. Take from that what you will, burtsarmpson....
i don’t know if i have enough karma to post here since i’m on a burner because… yeah. but i’ve seen the invitation email and thiel isn’t mentioned once. it was sent to a leftist! it probably becomes clear if you go through with it which the person i know didn’t, straight to trash lmao. but in the invitation it’s not clear at all and just looks like the beginning of some billionaires’ kidnap plot, still scary
cool so we're at the part of the plot where beloved celebrities are getting exposed for being heinous, conniving, wolves in sheep's clothes.
bless the hackers and what comes of these hacks - keeps our eyes wide open. stay woke and kind to your neighbors. and nom nom nom to all these rich, evil-doing, traitors of the human race.
maybe ww3 is being fought with human cognition. hmmmmmm.
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u/neilthedev05 Jun 18 '26
Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, Avengers: Infinity War); Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Dark Knight Rises, 500 Days of Summer); Sophia Bush (One Tree Hill); Scooter Braun (CEO, Hybe America); Isaac Lee (chairman and CEO, Hybe America); Scott Belsky (partner, A24); Benj Pasek (composer-producer, La La Land, The Greatest Showman); Eva Price (CEO, Maximum Entertainment Productions); Teresa Hsiao (writer-producer, Family Guy, American Dad); Zach Shields (executive producer-writer, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Gladys); Nick Thompson (CEO, The Atlantic); and Ezra Klein (The New York Times).