"The Gray Areas," an Interview with Nick Allen of the Lower East Side's Sovereign House
Part I: "It Can Just Be That Group B Wins"
Along the highway from Brooklyn to Philadelphia numerous digital billboards showed advertisements for Trump 2024 this past October. The template for each ad was the same, that ubiquitous white-lettered banner across the top, but what stood out on each one was the endorsement at bottom: Trump 2024 **Endorsed by Kanye West**; Trump 2024 **Endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.**; Trump 2024 **Endorsed by Nikki Haley**. Further, this brand of rightwing identity politics looked to be geared precisely to the neighborhoods found off the highway at the site of each billboard. Meaning West’s name appeared near Germantown and a Black working class population; Kennedy’s in proximity to whiter working class neighborhoods; Haley’s in more affluent outlying environs. Across the country, I imagine that there were still other variations yet. Taking, for example, the gasp-inducing swing toward Trump reported out of Michigan among both orthodox Jewish American and Muslim American voters: given the radically opposing hopes for what each population believed Trump might do if restored to the presidency, someone clearly got had.
And imagine that. Trump, a confidence man! The candidate’s celebrity branding, Shrewd Skyscraper Dealmaker, as cobbled together by reality TV producers from assorted footage of their addled, repeatedly bankrupt subject, allowed his campaign to build a micro-targeted appeal to specific demographic groups off the penetration in public consciousness of that IP. One more 1980s reboot in a cultural landscape rife with them. Yes, “the Border” and “the Economy” marked an unmistakable drumbeat, no matter that Trump 2024’s proposed policies toward the one (camps to detain and expel twelve million undocumented migrants) threatened to undermine the other (the cost of groceries, a recovering economy). Meanwhile, the sum of his endorsers’ characters and ostensible political platforms amounted to a spaghetti of contradiction, whose only coherence was to be found in the figure Trump serves up on our screens. Another way of saying, in our ever more silo-ed age, what pushed Trump’s campaign over the top was not a unified message, but the capacity to peel voters in his direction by meeting them in their silos, capturing their attention with a targeted emotional overture, and seeming to stand against what most pisses them off. It didn’t matter if the interests he was purporting to serve were in radical opposition to one another; no serious interviewer was ever permitted to hold him to account.
Cynicism ascendant, and of the cruelest kind. Laying the groundwork for the cognitive dissonance required to believe that ‘Trump Will Fix It’ is perhaps the man’s sole claim on greatness, and many, many Americans saw through that (Black women, most of all). If consensus reality in this country were stronger, we can imagine Donald Trump would have been sent packing to enjoy retirement with an ankle bracelet at his beachside vanity hall. But we live in fractured times and subject to a broken public trust, which the incoming administration appears primed to “repair” with a sledgehammer.
Young people did not break in the necessary numbers for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. That writing has been on the wall in New York City dating back to the pandemic when a right-wing curious arts contingent began to emerge from what was perceived as oppressive governmental overreach. One distinct off-shoot of that scene is Nick Allen’s Lower East Side-based Sovereign House, a basement level social space near Seward Park that regularly hosts arts-minded events: readings, screenings, talks. Rumors of backing by Peter Thiel (whose political philosophy “border[s] on fascism,” in the view of biographer Max Chafkin) have persisted. Over the past year I attended a handful of events in the space, and generally speaking, a brooding masculine energy pervades it, bearing some distant resemblance to the grunge rock scene of the ’90s.
I spoke with Allen at Sovereign House on the afternoon following the Vice Presidential debate, featuring Thiel-minted JD Vance. Then, after ten days of knocking on doors in Philadelphia and Chester County for a hospitality union that favored Harris-Walz and, eventually, an election result that went the other way, I met Allen to talk again, at the Swan Room.
While he disavows direct backing from Thiel or the like, Allen does subscribe to the ideology propagated by Thiel pal Curtis Yarvin, which casts universities, media elites, and their associated political caste (read: Hollywood and Democrats) as “the Cathedral,” a univocal hegemon bent on squeezing all real freedom from our collective lives. Tough, a reader would think, to square with the abortion-bans, book-bans, anti-queer rhetoric, and fascist-curious tilt of the Republican Party under their elected champion Donald J.
Perhaps even a case of terminal projection.
And yet I remain sympathetic to aspects of Allen’s project, the space he has opened up outside the commercial realm and his support, as he oddly put it, of “what you call arts.” I am most definitely against any regimentation of ideology as far as what gets uplifted in the arts—whether from the ostensible left or the right. The arts, I believe, are always bound to solicit a self-expressive churn from those seeking to make a name for themselves, and for gatekeepers to lock a certain ideology over the top of those efforts is to incur, all but inevitably, a furious reactionary wave. Well, folks, here the wave comes. If Allen, who was present at Jan. 6th, in an “anthropologist’s” role, as he prefers to think of it, is a representative of that reaction, he’s at least willing to wrestle out loud with the role he plays; he doesn’t act as if he’s above it all. Even if, in some of the particulars, he more than elicits push-back. Those of a progressive-minded mentality could perhaps stand to dig in on how he understands himself, and, by proxy, appeals to those who congregate to the scene he has fostered.
- J.T. Price
Part I
JTP: How long have you been running Sovereign House?
NA: I got the space in February of 2023. And our first event was in March. So it’s been like a year and a half.
JTP: And what was the genesis for doing this?
NA: A couple of things. Geographically, there was a need for a venue in the Lower East Side.
JTP: Following how people coped during the pandemic or…
NA: Sure, following all that, but also I’ve lived in what’s known as Dimes Square for the past five years. And so I got to see this emergent art scene pop up. You have a place that isn’t attractive to developers or many retail spaces. Naturally, it attracts artists, not tech workers or people working in finance. Where Canal and Essex and Orchard and Division come together is blocked off where a lot of people can hang out and restaurants don’t have to get the permits. You’re creating a proper square, a town square. During Covid, you had this arts scene where you had plays in people’s apartments and readings, and so the people who were left in the arts scene were more dissident.
JTP: You participated in that scene?
NA: Yes. I don’t consider myself an artist other than having a venue. I like facilitating what you call arts.
JTP: A patron of the arts?
NA: Sure. But yeah, I lived here and went to the events and I have many friends who were artists, and are artists, [who were participating] in the scene.
JTP: When did you arrive in New York?
NA: I moved to New York eleven years ago. I left the US for a while [before that]. And I was in India and in Hong Kong. And I bought a ticket to JFK and I’ve been here ever since.
JTP: On a lark?
NA: I grew up moving around, and lived in Atlanta and DC. And wanted to go to the next ‘tier one’ city in the US. New York has always fascinated me.
JTP: It hasn’t disappointed you since you’ve been here.
NA: Oh, no. And now I think can call myself a New Yorker. I think it takes ten years.
JTP: That’s right. That’s what they say.
NA: Just to finish about why I started it. You have the dissident artists who are left. And there were not venues, proper venues, ground floor retail, 2000 square feet. Sometimes you have events in bars, but again, the bars were closed because of Covid. Then quickly after Covid there’s drink minimums and you have to pay a lot of money to be able to present—whether a screening, or reading, or play, you have to pay, like, $2000 for one night to show to one hundred people. That’s not viable for artists. I saw the lack of a venue and I decided that I was gonna find one. And so…
JTP: Do you know the history of the space here?
NA: There’s a lot of history to the streets, to East Broadway itself, to the Forward Building. These blocks were printing presses at one point. They would print newspapers. Also, in the biography of Commodore Vanderbilt, he gives a lot of addresses of places he’s lived on East Broadway. Madison Street. Henry Street.
JTP: And this particular basement?
NA: A printing press.
JTP: The renovations… did you guys put in the bar?
NA: Yeah, a lot of it was removal of debris in the backyard. And removal of drywall. And cleaning up the ceilings. It was more restoration. We cleaned the floors but we didn’t paint anything.
JTP: You have partners in this?
NA: No, it’s just me. When I say ‘we’ it’s the team…
JTP: The people working with you. So, again, the name ‘Sovereign House.’
NA: Right, so… it’s a word that carries a lot of weight. And some people use it like the book titled Sovereign Individual. There’s also a whole movement called the Sovereign Citizens. And I think people are attracted to the weight of the word, and just the meaning stands alone. ‘The one who is the exception to the rule’ is what it means. And so when it comes to naming a space like that, it’s really an island away from the rest of the—from commercial venues. That’s what I’m going for with the name.
JTP: Are you a subscriber to the ‘Sovereign’ movement, so-called?
NA: Sovereign Citizen? No, definitely not.
JTP: Something you’ve taken an interest in in the past or…?
NA: I’m fascinated by how cults form and how movements form. That’s more of a fascination with the patterns running throughout all of them. But I don’t know any ‘sovereign individuals’ or where they’re located or what they’re up to right now. I don’t support them.
JTP: Have you thought about starting a cult or two here?
NA: No… if cults were to emerge again, as they did in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, I would take a stance to attempt to counter them. I’m not a fan of cults.
JTP: Yours is a more rational-minded outlook? You want to bring people out of their obsession?
NA: Yeah, that’s right. I think that with cults you are not getting exposure to a lot of different ideas and opinions. And the way I look at Sovereign House is… it’s a Cambrian explosion of different ideas and opinions. And different art. And different messages. It’s more like exposure to ‘different’ than going into a narrow commune where you’re trying to create ideology that you adhere to.
JTP: Interesting. When you say ‘different,’ are you saying different as opposed to a perceived orthodoxy?
NA: Yeah! So it would be heterodox. It would be the things that get some people in trouble. Mostly, it’s a stance that is not promoting anything, not promoting an ideology. But people clearly know when there’s novelty in what is mainstream and what is not. I think distancing yourself from the mainstream is important if you want authenticity because we’re in an extremely globalized world now where there’s one—where there are ruling trends, trends that are sort of forced on you. And so, taking the stance of ‘Anything But That’ is important if you want to find out what you really believe, or find authenticity.
JTP: How would you describe, or define, what you see as the ruling trends that Sovereign House is positioned against, or providing an alternative to?
NA: If I was going to define it without explaining what those narratives are... look at where activity takes place outside of work or the home. Just to take New York, for example. You have pretty much three options: One are the libraries. This is something that New York City has decided to shut down on the weekends.
JTP: Although I believe Adams reversed that. Under pressure of public outcry.
NA: Yeah, that’s right. But it’s not for professional adults, the libraries. There’s a lot of youth activities, a lot of public services that are informationally distributed through there—about, for example, homelessness. Or voting. So it’s not really a great place to meet people.
JTP: And you’re not supposed to speak either, right?
NA: You also can’t speak. [laughter] So, that’s one of them. Another are bars or nightclubs. They more exist to extract value from the people that go there. Whether that’s through a cover or DJs, with drone music, there’s no messaging there. You can meet people, but it isn’t a space for intellectual activity. [That’s] no longer a viable option. And then you have things like, if you look at SoHo, a place where there were all these artist lofts in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s… and now you have the Museum of Ice Cream. And a Slime exhibit. And this thing called Color Factory where you have to pay $60. These are Instagram venues, where people hang out, and they hang out to take pictures, and put it online. And again, no messaging. Not a lot of space for intellectual activity if you’re seeking that. In public life. And then you take the example of colleges, where just to have the luxury to discover new ideas and talk to people you have to take out a 50 thousand dollar loan.
JTP: Unless you’re a scholarship kid. And some state schools are barely affordable. Would you say the people in your orbit—you said ‘we’ as in a team—who you work with in running the show here, do you think there’s… do you guys think in the same ways?
NA: Basically, we’re trying to have as many events as possible. It’s purely operations. There’s not a lot that goes into identifying which events are ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ There’s a natural organic bringing up to the surface of quality events. And that’s been… the quality has built over the last year and a half, and will increase, because there’s more reach. There’s reputation involved. There’s been only a desire from an operations standpoint to continue to put on good events.
JTP: Do you consider Sovereign House almost a philanthropic endeavor?
NA: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people talk about rumors of investors, but no smart investor would invest in anything like this because it is purely money-losing.
JTP: Well, but an attraction could be a cultural cache, or something like that, right?
NA: Social capital. And that’s what philanthropy is for, sure. But then I’m putting myself at risk of the mission getting tainted.
JTP: OK, so I think you’re alluding to… and we’ve talked before at events… I’ve been here a handful of times, and have a memory of these conversations, and I’ll draw on them here and you can bring it out or not as you see fit. It seems like you’re alluding to… there are perceptions of Sovereign House as rightwing. I could drop some names: Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin. How do you respond to that? What is your feeling about being perceived that way?
NA: The two names you mentioned, they both seek to have contrarian views. When you’re dealing with an ideology that is global and the goal is to distance yourself from that, you are seen as a heretic. And so they definitely are. And I view myself in the same way. I am trying to distance myself from participation in the mainstream. You have to be careful about the message you then put out when you have tried to distance yourself. So, for example, Curtis Yarvin distances himself by explaining the power structures that exist in the mainstream and that’s done by defining what’s called “The Cathedral,” which are institutions that govern public life in the way that they speak for what should be the constituents to the actual power holders, who are the representatives. And so they act as a way to—
JTP: What do you mean when you say ‘the representatives?’
NA: Actual elected representatives.
JTP: OK, so, government.
NA: You take institutions—meaning, like, universities and think tanks—and you produce policy reports directly to the representatives. And skip the constituent process. So the constituents don’t actually have an ability to be represented, because there are these institutions that are filled with experts and PhDs who are taken to be more credible than the general public.
JTP: Do you not see part of that disconnect being about money in politics? So, you know, having representatives who are running around spending all their time raising money?
NA: Absolutely.
JTP: And Citizens United, the Supreme Court.
NA: Yes, definitely. All those things are big problems. And I don’t think they’re big problems because there are evil people involved, but because of the scale. It’s a math problem. We have 350 million Americans. We have 600 representatives.* We used to not have 350 million Americans. But we did have 600 representatives. You’re dealing with a scale of representation. So then you have to have institutions pop up that claim to consolidate constituent interest. If you were to look to solve this math equation you would end up fixing this by having many more representatives, but… so we have 3000 counties in the US. On the federal level, 3000 representatives [would be] better than 600. I’m not going to go as far as to say the federal government should be abolished or anything like that. But we clearly need to fix this math equation if we don’t want institutions engaging in constituent opinions that are essentially laundered through other interests.
JTP: Could you go into a little more detail there? You’re saying, because there aren’t enough representatives, these cultural institutions work as constituent groups speaking for those who feel they have no voice otherwise.
NA: You could look at the role of Ivy League universities. They started out as seminaries. They were there to create pastors that would go and start churches. You can see the ideological roots there, it’s just they are no longer seminaries. They’re producing other types of ideology. Ideology goes out into the world that’s to some degree essential-ized at those universities.
JTP: Do you really see the Ivy League as producing a univocal ideology? Do you not view the college experience as being one of trying on many different ideologies? Maybe there is a prevailing group at any given time, a prevailing point of view, that’s kind of the nature of trends, right?
NA: I don’t think universities are idea factories anymore. You’re there to figure out together one degree of difference. There’s not a big Overton Window on accepted, novel thought.
JTP: When did you graduate?
NA: I didn’t go to school.
JTP: Oh, OK. What was your path?
NA: I worked at a hacker space. And learned how to develop. So I’m a CTO, and that’s been my route of ‘Exit.’
JTP: Right, and I want to talk about ‘Exit.’ But you had the skills, I’m guessing from a younger age, high school.
NA: Yes.
JTP: And there are all these legends of the big tech founders who maybe did a year or two of college and dropped out. Were you seeing yourself in that mold, just ‘I can go do what I want to do’?
NA: The hacker space that I worked at, and I taught courses, it’s located right outside of DC. There’s a lot of recruitment from agencies. I decided not to go that route. You only have a few options when you’re 18. I saw my way out as learning how to develop. That was a common trope back then, and still is now. It’s worked for a lot of people. It worked for me. But there was also, this was the time period when Snowden leaks came out. And there was just general fear of… this was around when Bitcoin came out. And the ‘End the Fed’ movement. A focus on monetary policy. The zeitgeist was ‘Don’t trust these institutions.’
JTP: Meaning the Fed. And the universities.
NA: More the Federal Reserve, which was Bitcoin. And Snowden against the surveillance state. And Big Tech’s government alignment. Those were the things that motivated me to stay out of the normal path.
JTP: Without going into detail, were you a hacker back in the day?
NA: [long pause] Yeah.
JTP: Not trying to get you arrested.
NA: [laughter]. But yeah, I found a positive outlet and I was able to also teach courses at a hacker space. Hacker spaces are one of these third spaces where some intellectual activity can happen, experimentation can happen. I am attracted to gray areas intellectually. But this is also where novelty comes from. The world hasn’t been the same forever. We do need to think of new ways of governance and new types of community. So… yeah. I’m always in favor of being on the intellectual frontier, or at the boundaries.
JTP: Would you consider yourself a libertarian, or some off-shoot of libertarianism?
NA: It’s ironic that libertarians have a party. So, yes, spiritually, libertarian, for sure. But I don’t think that we’re ever going to change government by participating in the two-party system. I’m in favor of looking at other options [beyond] just the creation of a new party.
JTP: I’ll bring this back to Thiel. You’re not filled with hope at the prospect of Trump-Vance in the White House? Vance, a heartbeat away from the Oval.
NA: Yeah, I will not be voting. Yeah, I won’t be voting. [laughs]
JTP: Say more about that. Why not?
NA: I don’t—this goes back to the representation issue.
JTP: We’ve talked before about ‘Exit.’ Which was new to me as you were elaborating it at one of these events.
NA: Yes, I am in favor of ‘Exit.’ Under a system of government you have two options, if you’re not one of them [the elected representatives]: one is through Voice, and the other is through Exit. Voice means using all the democratic tools to attempt to be represented and get your voice heard and have policies of change that are implemented to help you. That includes voting. If you’ve chosen Exit, which is to create something different, you have to choose one or the other. And so…
JTP: One could, theoretically, do one and then do the other, moving back and forth, be inconsistent ideologically.
NA: People can evolve. Yeah. And so Exit is more of a—if it’s done at a non-individual level, if it’s done at a community level, you actually have a better chance of making whatever governance system identify you and make changes. There is a book called Voice, Exit, Loyalty where this is first put forth, the idea of Voice and Exit. And there’s a diagram in there that shows a return, once you’ve exited, to making the authority over you actually change because there’s a threat of a big portion of the community leaving and creating a parallel institution. A threat.
JTP: The idea is exiting in numbers. Where one tries to draw other people into non-participation and once you hit critical mass…
NA: Right. You can exit individually, but you’re going to end up alone, and you’re going to end up feeling like you’re taking on this fight, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere except for feeling like you’re ideologically pure. If you want to actually make change, you do have to exit with others.
JTP: How would you describe what your goals would be? Maybe a total fantasy, but what changes to “the system” would you like to make?
NA: We’re talking domestically?
JTP: Or in any respect. If your interest is globally, then, sure, go there. But I’m talking in the context of the United States and changes to the United States.
NA: Sure, yeah. We can look at the smallest unit here locally. In New York, and what I’ve tried to do in New York is create a space where there can be cultural exit. So, non-participation in the culture around us that is too commercial and too mainstream. [A culture that] wants to convince you to vote for somebody. That’s on a local level. Making a social club, making a cultural space, things like that. And if we were to look one level above, where you’re looking at cities, entire cities, the charter city movement has largely been a failure in the last twenty years.
JTP: I’ve heard of these, but I’m not super-familiar. Famous one recently that people have been talking about-
NA: Prospera? Yeah, that’s off of Honduras... Roatan Island.
JTP: And another one in Europe?
NA: There’s one called Palau and they issue you ID cards, but it’s a series of small islands, so you can’t really live there. Charter cities are a natural example of Exit. And the reason why this is done—charter cities aren’t really used for cultural exit, it’s more for exiting regulations. And of course people can use that for ill. But it’s up to city founders and the charter holders to make sure that that’s not happening. A good example of using a charter city to gain more favorable regulations would be Prospera. Because you can go in there and propose common law, civil law. You have to adhere to the criminal law of the host nation. But what does this allow you to do? It allows you to set up banking regulations from scratch. There’s a lab in Prospera conducting human trials, and so you have to make sure that it’s not as exhaustive and time-intensive and expensive as FDA regulations in the US. But you can tinker with the law directly—of course it has to be passed by committee—and you have a much better chance of being represented in one of these new cities.
JTP: That has an attraction for you, yet you think they’re failures?
NA: I think that they’re maturing. There is a collaboration between these charter cities on how to do this best. The reason I call them ‘failures’ right now is because of the success of Hong Kong getting a charter and becoming the great city that it became. So… definitely we could be on a path for these nascent, immature cities to become great cities. I’m just saying, we’re not there.
JTP: Have you spent time in Prospera?
NA: Yes. I actually own a place there.
JTP: Sovereign House South?
NA: Sovereign House Surfside. Sovereign Surfside. [laughs]
JTP: Do you run it the same way? Is it a social space?
NA: No, it’s purely—I let people stay there and really get exposure to a young charter city. But we have a really good chance, I mean, I love America and I think you can do this middle-ground exit. Where if you have the ability, [you can] attempt to create new cities in the US. There are so many great cities in the US that were built at the same time that industry was created in parallel. You have Detroit: automaking. Toledo, Ohio, that was glass. You have Chicago, which was a lot of commodities. Pittsburgh, for steel. So, you have a lot of cities that at the same time industry was maturing, you would need to build cities. We can do that again in the US. Especially as we’re moving away from the whole social layer of the web and ‘software as a service,’ the whole past twenty years. And now that we’re moving away from that and into real industries like alternative energy, robotics, defense, we have a chance to carve out new cities in the US. Maybe each one has a specialized industry that’s being built along with it.
JTP: Do you mean entirely new cities? It goes back to my original question, which was, What fundamental changes would you make to the US? Essentially what I hear you saying is that you want there to be more deregulated cities that would allow the blossoming of one particular industry which could become a major part of that city’s identity. Are you imagining cities from scratch, like, let’s be Bugsy Siegel and found a city in the desert somewhere, or are you talking about allowing individual cities—I mean, there are deregulated cities that exist…
NA: There’s a cool trick that can be used which is there’s the Department of the Interior, and within that, the Bureau of Land Management that owns 20% of United States land. So you can select sites that are owned by the federal government, and I’m talking a hundred thousand acres in five states-
JTP: From scratch?
NA: Yeah. I don’t think it can be done privately. You need government funds, government land. There is a city that is attempting to do this entirely privately, which is California Forever, close to San Francisco. To me, that is looking more like a retirement community. That’s not Exit.
JTP: I guess it’s exit of a sort. Just not as you define it.
NA: Yeah, not regulatory exit. Of course, it’s people moving, getting a new house. But there has to be some sort of regulatory or ideological exit that’s happening in order for it to classify as proper Exit.
JTP: I will say, so Vance, and Trump even, in his deranged way, have alluded to this idea of building on federal lands. Vance said ‘housing on federal property’ last night at the VP debate. Do you see this desire of yours as coming out of a conversation with that contingent in some way?
NA: No, this is entirely bipartisan because of the fact that there are many acts that have gone through Congress. Like the CHIPS act. Which is industry-specific to deregulate or attempt to fund the industry. And we can go industry by industry and do that. Or we can create a special economic zone inside the US that can be utilized by any industry. And that is a much faster and thorough rule-making that would allow this to happen. Also, we have 20% of the land, so why not attach that to the policy? We’re talking about competing with China, we’re talking about national security issues. I’m a fan of city-building. I’m a fan of building communities. And so I just look at it as a natural progression.
JTP: Were you a SimCity kid growing up?
NA: Rollercoaster Tycoon. That’s as far as I got.
JTP: And this doesn’t really follow, but I’ve seen promotional materials for him around here a lot. Have you met RFK Jr.?
NA: Yes.
JTP: What’s your view of his role as a political actor?
NA: I think that through—I wouldn’t say that running for president is a form of Exit—but there is a middle ground that he’s coming to terms with.
JTP: Do you find his platform, or the many beliefs he’s espoused with respect to science and health, do you find the beliefs to be sound?
NA: [exhales] There’s a lot that’s come out the last several months. I think that he’s being a proper skeptic. And so that’s good. Why should science, or the scientific method, be afraid of skepticism?
JTP: We could go into more detail, but I’ll just leave it there. Because it’s a whole can of worms, so to speak. But are you disappointed that he’s now aligned himself with one of the major candidates? Or is that just sort of ‘whatever’ to you?
NA: I don’t have too much to say on the details of a political race that is ultimately pro uni-party, except that I hope there is a way for him to Exit productively. If he is in charge of the FDA or something, it would not be business as usual at the FDA and that would be good. But [overall] it’s almost an example of Exit-to-return, Exit to get accepted by the governing authorities. That’s a pattern that looks like it might work for him. You have to ask, Is it authentic? And if it is, then it’s good.
JTP: What is your impression of him just as a person, having met him?
NA: He is an authentic person. He’s willing to risk making statements and challenging the dominant views politically. I like the contrarian nature of that. And he’s a nice guy, personally. Most people are nice guys personally.
JTP: Define Exit just a little bit more in terms of your lived philosophy of it. I mean, you said you’re not going to vote. Are you encouraging other people not to vote?
NA: Definitely.
JTP: And you feel there’s no difference for you in the outcome of this election?
NA: One is a realization of what state you’re in.
JTP: OK. Sure. Important caveat. If you were in a swing-state would you do it differently?
NA: No, I would still not vote. So, I mean, there’s two parts to it. Understanding how little you matter. And not deceiving yourself into taking a performative action that disarms you from having to find an alternative.
JTP: It’s a concrete thing, a number, it’s counted. Individually, sure, one could feel one’s vote is meaningless, ‘I’m one of however many.’ But it is an actual thing as opposed to posting on social media or other ways that people find to express themselves performatively.
NA: It’s an actual thing insofar as your number matters in the bigger number. But it’s a meaningless thing in thinking that your number, you know, ‘I have one out of 10 million in New York City,’ it’s a meaningless thing to think that no matter what I do the outcome is going to be different.
JTP: You’re younger than me. I alluded earlier to Citizens United. This is just my own view here: we have extreme gerrymandering. We have Citizens United. Other major structural elements that have been in place now for going on a few decades. And from my own point of view it seems like a lot of people in the younger generation, it becomes inconceivable for them that there’s a way we could inhabit a different structural framework. The Supreme Court conceivably could change, swing back the other way. There are two arch-conservative justices, Thomas and Alito, who are old. If Trump were to replace them, we’re talking about two or three decades of this locked-in arch conservative majority. If Harris is elected, and again, who knows, this court could swing the other way, you could get significant changes with respect to money in politics and otherwise. To you, though, that doesn’t meet what you most desire as far as political change?
NA: You would have to be banking on representation by justices. And I can’t bank on representation. It’s a delusion to think, They’re going to do what’s right for me. I keep up with Citizens United and attempts to—other than reversing that—attempts to amplify voices. Are you familiar with matching funds? I’m sure you’ve seen every election cycle there are these invites passed around. You can go to a dinner, you can take a picture, and it’s a schedule, a menu. There are menus being passed around.
JTP: You’re talking about a fundraising dinner.
NA: Yes. [laughs]. Nothing illegal. But the access there is access. All you’re doing is increasing your representation. There are many ways to increase your representation.
JTP: Well, according to the current Supreme Court, money is speech.
NA: Right, of course. But the only thing you can do for sure, with Exit, is have a more direct correlation with your values being represented, either by yourself or by a small community.
JTP: You did allude to your theory of Exit being a middle ground within the political system. You’re talking about growing enough of a faction who aren’t participating and then you can exert your—what I’ve heard from you, as far as what you’re looking for, are these regulation-free cities, built up from scratch.
NA: Write your own laws.
JTP: What you think of as spaces for innovation. OK, so when you describe it, it sounds like you’re putting it in absolute terms: ‘Representation, it can’t work, it can’t work.’ But if you’re talking about a middle space for exit, essentially what you’re attempting is to pull representation toward you and your chosen community. Exiting enough that you can exert influence on the entrenched political landscape. And I’ll say, too, that you see this type of mentality performed on Twitter and also [enacted] in very concrete ways, to take one glaring example of the moment, the Gaza vote, Uncommitted. It seems like it’s a variation on the philosophy you’re talking about. It’s, ‘We’re withholding our approval because we feel ignored, we feel not represented, and we want to bring you towards us.’
NA: Yes, but it’s a lot different than just ignoring, because you’re actually going and potentially competing with whoever you’re removing yourself from. The competition is the important part.
JTP: And that’s where a project like Prospera matters, because it’s ‘We’re not going to participate and we’re going to go do this, over here, until such time as you guys allow what we’re doing over here to exist within your framework.’
NA: Yes, exactly. But it doesn’t have to be Group A, which is the ruling authority, notice Group B leave and say, ‘OK, we’re going to change now,’ so that there’s a better Group A. It doesn’t have to be that. It can also just be that Group B wins.
—> click for Part II of the interview
* per Wikipedia: “Since 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435.” Plus, the one hundred senators = 535 total representatives in Congress.