Three Postliberal Paths to Autocracy: A Video Roundup
Our late-June collection of clips on where tech monarchists, NatCons, and Catholic integralists want to take America
Dear Readers:
Liberalism is facing a vehement attack. And the forces lining up against it aren’t just loud but ambitious, offering far-reaching proposals for shifting society in a postliberal—or, more accurately, illiberal—direction.
There is, of course, no one road to illiberalism. Every version of postliberalism has its particular preoccupations, each of them cloaking its dangerous ambitions in a language of its own. Yet they all share a core conviction, namely, that liberal democracy has outlived its usefulness and needs to go.
In this video roundup, we present clips on three influential postliberal strains, each vying to replace liberalism with divine will, dominant-group nationalism, or tech ubermenschianism.
Watch and then follow/subscribe to our YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram pages to get our latest clips as soon as they’re released.
Landry Ayres
Senior Producer
The Tech-Monarchist Enemies of Liberalism
June 20, 2025
Reactionary tech elites like Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel envision a future in which liberal democracy is replaced by “startup governance”—efficient, unaccountable, and run by founders with monarchic powers. Their vision blends Silicon Valley hubris with old-world hierarchies (imagine a CEO-ruler for life, running a charter city built on autonomously generated code).
This is anti-liberal and anti-democratic futurism in which: elections are inefficient, democracy is obsolete, and AI might be our god. In the following video, I expound on what makes this reactionary tech monarchist strand of postliberalism so dangerous.
Watch it below or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
NatCons' Divisive Notion of Unity
June 19, 2025
National Conservatism—led by figures like Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony—offers a model that leans heavily in the direction opposite the tech monarchists. That is, towards tradition—not away from it. Hazony and allies argue that the nation-state is not just a useful institution, but one divinely ordained to support a single ethnic, religious, and linguistic identity.
For NatCons, the only real political community is one bound by shared blood, faith, or other similarly arbitrary feature. And ensuring that level of cohesion, as my video on this strand of postliberalism points out, means giving the state the power to trample on basic rights.
Watch it below or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
These Catholic Intellectuals Want the State to Define What's Good For You
June 17, 2025
This brand of postliberalism seeks a return to religious rule—not metaphorically but literally. Catholic integralists like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule, who in many ways go further than National Conservatives, want to reintegrate church and state and reconfigure institutions so that they conform to their distinctly Catholic interpretation of “the highest good.”
As far as they are concerned, liberal individualism is not merely wrong—it’s offensive to God and the divinely-created order. In the end, they want their moral vision to be enforced by state power.
Watch my video covering this strand of postliberalism below or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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"Liberalism is facing a vehement attack. And the forces lining up against it aren’t just loud but ambitious, offering far-reaching proposals for shifting society in a postliberal—or, more accurately, illiberal—direction."
I hate to burst your bubble, but this began in the campuses 40 years ago. The left paid lip service to "liberalism" while undermining it for decades with cancel culture, speech code, and postmodernism. Adrian Vermeule's proposed isn't original to Vermeule, it goes back to Gramsci's "Long March". Gramsci's tactics were largely successful as the past 100 years have seen a complete and total capture of nearly all elite institutions. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and its way overdue.
You read Vermeule much differently than I do. Check out my unabashed postliberal common good political theory. New post just dropped. I would love to dialogue with you and your audience.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwwright77/p/postliberal-common-good-politics?r=68ujg&utm_medium=ios