“Fascism for sport,” or something like that, is what I was planning on headlining my scene report of Thursday’s meetup of the Bay Area New Liberals. The neoliberal social club was fresh off their first viral stunt, the March for Billionaires, where some 20 of their most feverish, billionaire-supporting members goaded nearly as many journalists into quoting several brainless and irony-poisoned takes on why the proposed California Billionaire’s Tax is bad.
“People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier. We’re beautiful, we’re smart, we’re strong,” one protestor, an edgy and extremely online software engineer named Annie, told Mission Local. Another one named Pablo told The Atlantic that, in terms of popularity, billionaires “are probably the among worst-off in the whole world.”
They’d brandished signs with slogans like “Tip your landlord” and “We <3 you Jeffrey Bezos.” More brain-rotted content creators came to ask them, “Do you think anti-billionaires are chopped uncs?” and “Do you mogcel them with your foid exterior and charisma?” Rambunctious counterprotestors wearing monocles and crowns and holding a giant papier-mâché Swedish Chef puppet ran around causing chaos. The whole thing was a farce.
But the vibes at Thursday’s happy hour were nowhere near as ridiculous. They were, on the other hand, the average vibes of a group of millennial centrists: earnest, geeky, awkward but nice enough. Eleven neolibs, as they call each other, had gathered at a long table at the back of The Irish Bank in Union Square drink beers and gab; the cheekier ones drank Amaro Montenegro-based cocktails called Tax Havens.
At the table were 10 men between the ages of 25 and 40, and one 25-year-old woman. (The group’s co-leader, a 40-year-old product manager named Jeremy Linden, said this tends to happen because the New Liberals are most active on X and Reddit.) Notably absent was Derik Kauffman, the 26-year-old self-described AI founder who organized the Billionaire’s March.
No one seemed to know him well. “He’s in our circles and comes around sometimes,” Linden said of Kauffman.
Linden said Kauffman just showed up in the group’s Slack channel one day, but he and the other co-lead, a 33-year-old software engineer named Kevin Gray, aren’t really sure who let him in.
The group, the regional chapter of a national center-left organization called Center for New Liberalism, seemed torn on how to feel about the Billionaire’s March. It appeared to be a sort of fringe spinoff from the New Liberals’ regular programming. The virality of the march had attracted two new members to Thursday’s gathering, but none of these neolibs actually went to the march.
Considering the current political climate, with such stark wealth disparity and tech billionaires cozying up to the Trump administration, the Billionaire’s March had a bit of an alt-right edge to it, however incoherent its message. The co-leads seemed split on whether to distance the group from Kauffman and his gang of edgelords.
Some members called the stunt “too tacky” for their taste, but Linden was mostly okay with the notoriety. It got the word out about their club, but “definitely no one at this table likes Trump,” he told me, before explaining that he’s noticed a lot of Gen Z-ers joining the tech industry these days are far more right-wing than neoliberals are. Then, several members started defending their own tech jobs to me; they worked in biotech and cybersecurity and wanted me to know that they were doing pro-social and not evil work.
Gray seemed the most put-off by Saturday’s spectacle. “The name was provocative,” he said of the Billionaire’s March. “Which I guess was kind of the point, but it doesn’t add to the goal.”
So what is the goal of the Bay Area New Liberals?
They tweet a lot and make a few flaccid attempts at engagement-baiting, but they don’t actively recruit new members. Almost all of them are middle managers in tech, and the way they make moves politically is generally unprovocative. Usually, they just meet up to hang out and debate a little policy.
They think wealth taxes are stupid but love the Georgist concept of land taxes. (They made sure to explain Georgism to me in great detail.) They argued politely over whether they would consider themselves libertarians. They like billionaires and the innovations that made them their fortunes, but they don’t like the way the tech giants have cozied up to Trump. They want a redemption arc for Sam Altman. During campaign seasons, they canvass for Scott Wiener.
“We’re just a bunch of depressed millennials,” one member named George said.
Immediately, Rebecca, the lone, well-kempt Gen Z woman, told him to speak for his goddamn self.
