On the latest episode of the Outsider Theory podcast, host Geoff Shullenberger talks with Jacob Siegel, senior writer at Tablet and co-host of Manifesto! A Podcast, about the rightward trajectory of certain insights of Frankfurt School–derived critical theory, especially in light of the history of the Telos and its founder and editor, Paul Piccone. The discussion also turns to Piccone’s friend Paul Gottfried, the continued relevance of Herbert Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance,” the Thiel-affiliated New Right’s cultivation of a counter-elite, the recent Vanity Fair profile of the Thielverse, and more. Listen to the podcast here. For a limited time, save 20% on individual subscriptions to Telos and on Telos Press books by using the coupon code OUTSIDER20 in our online store.
Host Geoff Shullenberger and Jacob Siegel, senior writer at Tablet and co-host of Manifesto! A Podcast, articulated a persuasive theme on the creation of a disenchanted group of intellectuals in Telos who felt betrayed by both the New Left (by the mid-1970s) and later by a portion of the Right due, in part, to the increasing bureaucratic dynamic of artificial negativity increasingly operating through the Executive Branch, State Department, intelligence community, and Big Tech.
Paul Piccone in a selection of his essays from “Confronting the Crisis” (2008) defined Artificial Negativity as a tool used by executive circles “…. administratively attempting to constitute that negativity needed by the system as a control mechanism for a bureaucratic apparatus mired in growing internal involution,” and seemingly content with growing concentration and centralization.
On April 1-3, 2022 Telos sponsored a conference in New York City “featuring four foreign policy advisors to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the theme of Civilizational States and Liberal Empire—Bound to Collide?” which seems to endorse a growing tendency within Telos to support artificial negativity in the realm of American foreign policy as well as domestic economic, political, and cultural affairs.