Who Got Duped?
-- MAGA Activists Worry That Nativism And Tech Oligarchy May Not Go Hand In Hand

Over the past few days, a fight has erupted within the MAGA right over legal immigration, specifically about whether the country should admit more high-skilled immigrants.
On the one side, you have opportunistic tech oligarchs like Elon #Musk and David #Sacks.
These are incredibly wealthy figures who are open about using their newfound influence in government to serve both their ideological and their private business interests.
On the other are figures like Laura #Loomer, Nick #Fuentes, and other nativist
(and often openly racist) online personalities who had been vocal Trump supporters long before the Silicon Valley right joined the coalition.

The two sides began to argue on Sunday, after Donald Trump appointed #Sriram #Krishan,
a partner at Andreesen Horowitz,
White House policy adviser on Artificial Intelligence
to work with Sacks, the Trump administration’s #crypto and #AI #czar.
This may seem like a relatively minor White House appointment.
However, Krishan has also been a proponent of removing country caps on green cards and H1-B visas,
-- which allow American companies to hire foreign workers for certain specializations.

To the far-right, nativist influencers that have from the start glommed onto Trumpian scapegoating of immigrants,
Krishan’s position crossed a line.

Loomer, an anti-immigrant provocateur who traveled with Trump during his campaign, called it
“deeply disturbing.”

Sacks replied, perhaps not fully understanding his audience,
by noting that Indian immigrants face an 11-year wait for green cards.

This was catnip for Loomer,
who replied by suggesting that Sacks was in on a new version of the great replacement theory,
and spent the next several days making vile statements about immigrants,
accusing those who disagree with her on H1-B visas of hating Americans,
and demanding that senior Trump officials denounce their Silicon Valley allies.

Sacks, whose recent political positions have included strident opposition to American support for Ukraine, denounced the “crude” attacks.

Soon, other Trump-involved tech oligarchs,
like Elon #Musk and Vivek #Ramaswamy, jumped into the fray.

Musk wrote that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.
Think of this like a pro sports team:
if you want your TEAM to win the championship,
you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.
That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

Ramaswamy swooped in on Thursday to explain his view that American companies were forced to hire foreign skilled labor due to a deficit in homegrown American culture itself.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ,
or the jock over the valedictorian,
will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote,
adding later:
“More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers.”

As you might imagine, MAGA nativists of various stripes regard this Silicon Valley defense of skilled immigration with a paranoid and often racist eye.

#Fuentes, the groyper leader, described Ramaswamy’s position as an attempt to get
“500 million indians to move here.”

Others reacted to Ramaswamy’s premise that there may be something wrong with America.

Jeremy #Carl, a senior fellow at the nativist Claremont Institute,
pushed back in a gentler fashion while still suggesting that Ramaswamy’s vision would “destroy the things that actually make America great.”

In a very obvious and over-the-top way,
this imbroglio illuminates a real divide among the most vocal members of Trump’s coalition:
-- tech oligarchs who want foreign labor for their businesses,
-- and nativists who take Trump’s rhetoric on immigration very seriously and who in many cases want to apply it to nonwhite immigrants.

But there’s another thing that’s taking place here on a deeper level.

Ramaswamy explicitly (and Musk implicitly) laid their supposed inability to find engineering talent at the feet of American culture.

Ramaswamy was very blunt about this,
calling for “fewer Saturday morning cartoons.”

Musk complained that the number of
“super talented” and “super motivated” engineers in the U.S. is “far too low.”

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/who-got-duped-maga-activists-worry-that-nativism-and-tech-oligarchy-may-not-go-hand-in-hand