PALANTIR, VANCE, AND THE POST-TRUMP RETURN OF THE DENIABLE DOG WHISTLE

Yesterday, for some reason, Palantir's X account tweeted out a 22-point summary of CEO and co-founder Alex Karp's 2025 book, The Technological Republic. Some of this summary reads like the work of a basement-dwelling underachiever recycling fourth-generation Reagan-era talking points ("it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet"). Some is Palantir essentially saying, Civilization won't survive unless you build an Orwellian hellscape using our technology ("The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose"; "Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime").

And then there's point #21:

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures ... have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

This is ... really racist. It's Bell Curve-level racist.

But it's not Trump-style racist or groyper-style racist. It's vague enough that it slides under many people's anti-racist radar.

I think this and not the open bigotry of Nick Fuentes and young-Republican message boards is the future of the post-Trump GOP. I addressed the subject of GOP anti-Semitism in a post last month: Despite the popularity of open anti-Semitism among young right-wingers, I believe the party will still remain friendly to right-wing Jews and Christian Zionists, while quietly sending signals to bigots reassuring them that they're welcome in the party. That's what likely 2028 presidential nominee J.D. Vance does every time he downplays the seriousness of chat-group bigotry among young Republicans and refuses to condemn bigots. Vance has also told us in multiple speeches that he believes some people just aren't Americans, even if they come to America and believe in American ideals.

America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life....

You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect America to remain unchanged. In the same way, you can’t export our Constitution to a random country and expect it to take hold.

That’s not something to lament, but to take pride in. The Founders understood that our shared qualities—our heritage, our values, our manners and customs—confer a special and indispensable advantage.

As Josh Kovensky recently noted at Talking Points Memo, a Texas group that campaigns against Muslims says it fights on behalf of "heritage Americans." It's a term that doesn't raise the same alarms as overt racial slurs or open declarations of white superiority. I think the post-Trump GOP will focus on euphemisms like this rather than the open insults of the groypers and the message-board youth -- and get away with it.