vanity fair usa_vol_

["Green Gold declined interview requests from Vanity But what united many of these Gertler-affil- Fair.) Nikanor shares attracted $800 mil- iated corporate entities and trades was their C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 8 2 visit, the group lion when they began trading in July 2006 utter opacity, making it hard for anyone to passed kids\u2014some looked barely past adoles- on London\u2019s Alternative Investment Market, learn how his businesses had won access to cence\u2014digging in piles of discarded mining instantly making it the exchange\u2019s most valu- prized Congolese mines, when exactly they by-products, known as tailings, or carrying able business. On paper, Gertler\u2019s 15 percent had traded, or where the dollars (or euros or sacks of a cobalt ore called heterogenite. A of the company was suddenly worth around Congolese francs) ultimately ended up. The video taken from inside the KOV pit in 2006 $225 million, borne of an initial investment unwelcome attention that shoddy mining shows two children standing close to two adult that has never been disclosed\u2014but on paper operations have drawn over the years con- locals, described by the man filming as \u201carti- was zero. (Gertler did not comment.) tinues to scare major miners and investors sanal\u201d miners\u2014independent contractors who away from the country\u2019s mineral riches and is sell their mined ore to roadside cobalt traders. Problems quickly emerged. Bateman, a indirectly driving the discovery efforts 6,500 One of the children in the video throws a rock consulting firm owned by one of Gertler\u2019s miles away, in Greenland. toward a Nikanor group and other visitors. fellow shareholders, Beny Steinmetz, had That same summer the NGO Global Witness conducted the feasibility study prior to the KUUPIK KLEIST WAS one of the last children published a report that called for a strength- public offering, but after the IPO, it became born in Qullissat, the result of a Danish ening of regulations against child labor in the apparent that \u201cthe methodology for doing the craftsman\u2019s union with a local woman. He Congo, where \u201cthe presence of children in the costing was not accurate,\u201d Nikanor\u2019s head of was adopted by an aunt and uncle, the town\u2019s mines is so visible,\u201d the authors wrote, \u201cthat funding at the time, Brian Scallan, told Van- telegram operator, who punched out a final it is very unlikely that companies would not ity Fair. Lowball projections may have helped message to confirm the settlement\u2019s clo- be aware of the problem.\u201d (A source close to entice U.K. investors, but now they meant the sure on his own way out of town. Like many Gertler told Vanity Fair that he would never company would require hundreds of millions Greenlanders of his generation, Kleist was approve of children working in danger, not in further funding to get off the ground. The dispatched at an impossibly young age to least because he has 11 of his own. A spokes- news incensed the J.P. Morgan team, who felt a boarding school hundreds of miles away, person for Glencore, which took control of they and their market clients had been hood- where he pursued his education assiduously, the mine in 2009, emailed the magazine that winked. After failed talks with a potential all the while internalizing his anger over the \u201cthere are no teenagers under 18 working for Chinese suitor and as Nikanor\u2019s stock price unilateral closure of his hometown. He later our operations in the DRC. We do not toler- started sliding, Gertler and Steinmetz sought led Greenland\u2019s negotiations with Denmark ate any form of child, forced, or compulsory to take the company private again, with help over autonomy and in 2009 became the first labor anywhere in our business or our sup- from Glencore, which increasingly wanted prime minister of the self-governed nation, at ply chain.\u201d) Gertler meanwhile introduced not only to sell metals to a global market but the time publicly welcoming foreign invest- the bankers to local officials, including the to mine them too. The privatization plan was ment at every opportunity. People from governor of the province, whom he referred a highly unusual and controversial move for Scandinavia had arrived on a Greenland to as a \u201cbrother.\u201d a recently listed business and prompted inhabited by Inuits in the mid-13th century, more angry recriminations. So, facing stiff and the impacts of colonialism linger to this Future trouble may have been foreshad- resistance from executive chairman Leslie day, with the current secondary school syl- owed, but the J.P. Morgan team worked to and J.P. Morgan executives, Gertler and labus still taught in Danish rather than the minimize Gertler\u2019s role and focused instead his original partners used their controlling native Greenlandic tongue that is used in on the abandoned pit\u2019s potential, forging shares to instead vote through a $736 mil- primary schools. Smaller settlements often ahead with plans for Nikanor\u2019s imminent lion cash injection that left Glencore with lack educational provision for older children, IPO. Buried in the prospectus shared with a sizable stake and significant control over making high school prohibitively expensive. potential investors was an acknowledge- Nikanor\u2014including the ability to decide its On several domestic flights in Greenland, I ment that Gertler had by then already faced top executives and the right to sell all mined sat beside a young teenager returning home allegations of \u201cimproper dealings with the material. Part of that cash included a $297 from school or visiting a parent in a far-off Government of the DRC\u201d (that lawsuit million Glencore loan to a Gertler-controlled settlement. A Greenlandic education his- was dismissed) tied to the country\u2019s dia- company in the Cayman Islands, which torian estimates that by the end of colonial mond mines. The implication was that he massively expanded Gertler\u2019s share in the rule in 1953, there were just only a \u201cfew\u201d col- had helped very senior officials line their business and unpicked the previous efforts lege graduates in Greenland, all with Danish pockets. As the IPO\u2019s sponsors, the bankers of the J.P. Morgan team to downsize his role. degrees. Today, only around one in eight ensured he was kept away from the London Gertler\u2019s increased shareholding wasn\u2019t dis- students who enter primary school finishes boardrooms where they pitched pension closed until several hours after the sale had secondary school. trusts and hedge funds, and they recruited gone through (and only then under duress), Jonathan Leslie, a former head of copper at and Glencore\u2019s loan to Gertler\u2019s company While formally an autonomous territory, mining giant Rio Tinto, to act as executive was only incidentally disclosed months later, Greenland remains part of the Danmarks chairman, alongside a new finance direc- in a separate firm\u2019s financial filings. Rige, or Danish realm. Its government must tor, Peter Sydney-Smith. (Both executives still defer to Denmark on matters of defense It was the first of more than a dozen trans- and foreign affairs, and it relies on Danish actions between Gertler and the Swiss firm taxpayers for roughly half its $600 million that revolutionized global cobalt production, annual budget. For some time Greenlan- generating geysers of cash\u2014and collateral dic nationalists have argued the potentially damage. Many of the sales, loans, and divest- lucrative revenues from mining could help ments involved companies incorporated in replace that subsidy and strengthen the case offshore jurisdictions like the British Virgin for full independence. But Kleist, now retired Islands, where ownership is unidentifiable. from politics and working as a consultant to Some had Congolese names\u2014Ruwenzori is a foreign mining company, disagrees. \u201cIt\u2019s a mountain range that borders Uganda. Oth- not a means to liberate the state of Green- ers, like Ellesmere Global Limited, offered land,\u201d he told me when we met in Nuuk, the a patina of British-sounding respectability. M AY 2 0 2 2 93","Green Gold has to happen if we\u2019re to make a significant African ports, destined for yet more pro- impact on the production of greenhouse cessing, primarily in China. Rusting freight fast-growing capital city. \u201cMining would nev- gases,\u201d he says, while virtually all batteries train carriages lie in piles beside the rutted er kind of pave the way for independence.\u201d used toward that effort today still require road, on land still controlled by G\u00e9camines, cobalt mined in the DRC under \u201cconditions the Congolese state-owned mining company The father of Naaja Nathanielsen, Green- that I don\u2019t think any of us would be com- that is a nonoperational partner in most of land\u2019s current mining minister, was also fortable with.\u201d Within the next few years, if the company\u2019s larger mines. Clint Donkin, born in Qullissat, then sent to Denmark at enough new deposits have been discovered Glencore\u2019s top copper executive in Africa, six when his mother died. \u201cHe never went elsewhere\u2014in Greenland, or Australia, or explains how complex it has proven to be to home,\u201d Nathanielsen told me one morning maybe Canada\u2014it still will not solve that run a professionalized operation here. \u201cThe when we met near the parliament building problem fast enough. But the desire to make concession is spread out over a large area,\u201d he in Nuuk. Greenland has limited experience money may ultimately be the only solution says, and \u201cin amongst it is the infrastructure negotiating with well-funded foreign mining available. As Toone says, \u201cThe kind of capi- from the original workings.\u201d firms, but \u201cbeing late to the party,\u201d as she tal that\u2019s necessary to do what we want to do puts it, may provide advantages never avail- here is going to come from investors who are He was referring to various plots of land able to a country like the DRC. \u201cWe were very seeking to earn a return.\u201d and aging facilities that separate Glencore\u2019s much aware of what has been done around underground mine from the vast pits and the world\u2014and what has been done wrong WHILE I WAS reporting this story, Glencore the refinery, which uses a chain of pro- around the world,\u201d she said. invited me to see KOV firsthand. It is cur- cesses, including towering crushers, mills, rently the world\u2019s largest source of cobalt and concentration systems, to convert ore In November Nathanielsen spearheaded and is still a cash tap for Gertler, with Glen- into shining squares of copper and moun- a ban on uranium extraction that may sink core\u2019s KOV-anchored complex netting him tains of cobalt hydroxide. Back in 2006, the a joint Australian-Chinese mining project $20,000 every hour or so in mining royalties. refining and concentrating facilities Donkin focused on rare earth elements. Months ear- The vast canyon of minerals stretches more showed me were the only ones in the area lier, she and her ministerial colleagues had than a mile across and more than 1,000 feet but belonged to a Canadian competitor of also ended oil and gas exploration because of deep. A geological kaleidoscope of oxida- Nikanor called Katanga. Its CEO, Arthur \u201csevere\u201d risk of a potential spill. The World tion fans out from beneath an observation \u201cArt\u201d Ditto, was not initially interested in Wildlife Fund\u2019s project coordinator for deck on its northeastern flank; flaming red pooling resources with Nikanor, but over Greenland approvingly described the prohi- and bright lilac tinged with dark green. My time the capital-intensive nature of restart- bition as a \u201cgutsy\u201d move, particularly given December visit followed torrential rain, ing a mine depleted Katanga\u2019s funds, just as the potential for tax revenues. But Nathan- and black pipes as thick as culverts snaked credit markets tightened ahead of the 2008 ielsen insists it was a no-brainer for a nation into multimillion-dollar pumping stations financial crisis. with a pristine Arctic environment where to combat the streams of water. Every hour fishing provides thousands of jobs and a huge in the dry season, hulking shovel machines What came next was almost a transac- chunk of economic output. She is broadly dump 3,000 tons of earth into enormous tional replica of how Gertler had gained supportive of the mining sector but plans trucks that trundle up sloped roads cut into control of Nikanor: His offshore firms grew to update transparency and environmen- the mine\u2019s walls; radar dishes scan for any his stake in Katanga; Glencore kicked in $265 tal requirements. Currently, just two small concerning movement. Several years ago, million in loans to Katanga while also loan- mines operate in the entire country, extract- seven workers died in a wall collapse. In ing money to Gertler\u2019s companies, again ing rubies and preparing to mine anorthosite, 2019, more than 40 local creuseurs\u2014French undisclosed at the time. Within two years, a mineral used in manufacturing. for \u201cdiggers\u201d\u2014died when a section of KOV all the original partners and competitors they were excavating without the mine oper- saw their shares diluted to the point of irrel- All this might make Trump\u2019s pseudo- ator\u2019s permission collapsed. Of the 9,000 evance. \u201cI couldn\u2019t trust Dan further than I imperial fantasy of buying Greenland not staff and contractors Glencore employs could throw him,\u201d said Eric Lilford, a former sound like such a lark, though that pro- around Kolwezi, some 1,200 now work in Nikanor board member Beny Steinmetz had posal ultimately ended up as a $12 million security, and the company has clearly made brought in who resigned when the merger economic grant to encourage mining coop- and continues to make significant efforts to was announced, for \u201cpersonal reasons,\u201d eration. At Greenland\u2019s only mining school, stop similar intrusions. calling Gertler \u201cas crooked as they come.\u201d where students learn to dynamite rocks and Ditto, who resigned as Katanga\u2019s CEO soon build pit roads, the director has developed a Just outside Glencore\u2019s concession, now after the merger, said Gertler and Glencore million-dollar partnership with U.S. counter- largely ringed by 24 miles of concrete blast executives had operated \u201clike they were in parts to help construct a training facility for walls like the ones that surrounded U.S. mili- the Wild West,\u201d avoiding disclosure to mask an underground mine\u2014the kind that might tary installations in Iraq and Afghanistan, an their long-held ambition to combine the vari- be built on Disko. Well before that, though, enthusiastic team of Congolese community ous mining assets. These were guys, he told Bluejay will need to sign an \u201cimpact benefit liaisons greeted me and took me on a tour me by phone from his retirement home in agreement\u201d with the local community that of a clean but empty new maternity clinic in Arizona, \u201cwho play the game under different could include employment guarantees. And Kamoto, a village that abuts the pits. Depart- rules, a different way, in a way that I wouldn\u2019t, given that any mine would be dozens of miles ing the clinic, we passed clusters of workers I couldn\u2019t.\u201d Nikanor had burned through from the nearest residents with no roads in scavenging chunks of ore from a small pond cash as well, though, and \u201cwould have been sight, as one Greenlandic investment expert at the village edge. an abject failure for J.P. Morgan and the peo- speculated, \u201cwithout foreign labor you will ple who put money in\u201d without the merger, not be able to run projects like this.\u201d The trucks from KOV dump their loads one mining executive told me, \u201cbecause it near the pit\u2019s edge, where miles of conveyor was no chance of ever being mined.\u201d (The Toone, the technical lead at Breakthrough belts carry the material to a complex that DRC\u2019s mining minister, whose department Energy Ventures\u2019 investment committee, transforms it into sheets of copper metal or had once chosen to separate the two projects, says the hardest\u2014and fastest\u2014race will be powdery blue-green cobalt hydroxide, which welcomed the \u201cmilestone\u201d transaction.) to complete the global energy transition is then poured into vast piles of 1,300-pound before it\u2019s too late. \u201cThe electrification of white canvas bags and trucked to East But by the time of the merger\u2019s comple- transportation is something that absolutely tion in late 2007, almost a decade of fuzzy 94 VA N I T Y F A I R","and sometimes iniquitous purchases by that he made around $100 million in bribe 2013\u2014who was replaced as BP CEO after the foreign investors of the country\u2019s most valu- payments between 2005 and 2015. Deepwater Horizon disaster\u2014stepped down able mining rights\u2014including at KOV\u2014had last summer and was replaced by Kalidas begun drawing international scrutiny. Pres- In December 2017, the U.S. government Madhavpeddi. He\u2019d led the Chinese mining sure from foreign NGOs in particular led the directly accused Gertler of having \u201camassed giant China Molybdenum, which had been government to reexamine deals struck in his fortune through hundreds of millions of racing to match Glencore\u2019s Congolese cobalt the early years of the Kabila administration, dollars\u2019 worth of opaque and corrupt mining output\u2014until this winter, when local authori- a review that eventually led many foreign and oil deals,\u201d and the Treasury Depart- ties seized its largest asset. firms to pay sizable rebalancing payments ment\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control back to the government to cement their added him to a sanctions list, alongside a raft As a confidant of then President Kabila, existing rights. At a Zurich airport hotel of his businesses. In February 2017, Glencore Gertler played a role in bringing peace to conference room in mid-2008, Katanga\u2019s paid $534 million to buy out Gertler\u2019s remain- the DRC in the early 2000s, according to board gave Gertler the mandate to lead nego- ing shares in Katanga and another mine, one former U.S. assistant secretary of state, tiations with Congolese authorities over its but he was still left holding some previously even traveling to Washington in an effort own settlement payment. In just two weeks acquired royalties. The office of the DRC\u2019s to end the drawn-out conflict. But almost he negotiated down the requested total pay- president announced that one of Gertler\u2019s two decades on, he has been fighting his ment from $585 million to $140 million. The companies will return some $2 billion of oil own kind of rearguard action for influence eventual settlement for KOV, his first big and mining assets to the country\u2014more than in the U.S. capital, hiring former FBI direc- asset in the region, dropped from an initial 2 percent of its GDP. The Israeli newspaper tor Louis Freeh\u2019s lobbying firm in late 2019, request of $240 million to just $5 million. Haaretz reported that, according to \u201csourc- with Dershowitz as part of his team. In the es with knowledge of the proceedings,\u201d chaotic days following the January 6 insur- And on it goes: Gertler bought a stake in Gertler\u2019s representatives proposed he serve rection at the Capitol last year, the Trump another cobalt mine called Mukondo Moun- time in an Israeli prison in exchange for the administration granted Gertler a yearlong tain, and almost immediately work there closure of the investigations against him. exemption from the earlier sanctions, allow- halted while he renegotiated profit sharing Gertler\u2019s lawyer told Haaretz that \u201cno nego- ing him to transfer any funds that had sat with the mine\u2019s operator, a firm called Camec. tiations are being conducted on Gertler\u2019s frozen in U.S. accounts. Treasury Secretary Not long afterward, Camec\u2019s CEO, Andrew behalf with any law enforcement authority.\u201d Mnuchin approved the special license with- Groves, tried to buy Katanga before Gertler A representative told V.F. the report is \u201cutter, out the knowledge of several senior State and Glencore could, and saw that effort utter nonsense.\u201d For Brad Brooks-Rubin, a Department officials. Biden reimposed stymied when his firm\u2019s mining permit was lawyer at OFAC during the George W. Bush sanctions quickly after taking office, follow- unexpectedly suspended by the Congolese administration and at the State Department ing condemnation from several Democratic government. Within months, Gertler and under President Obama, the announcement senators and representatives. Glencore controlled the combined Nikanor- highlighted concerns that sanctions can Katanga, and Camec had announced a joint often come \u201ca few steps behind what actors Meanwhile, Gertler or his proxies began to venture with Gertler at Mukondo; Groves like Gertler are trying to do.\u201d Brooks-Rubin, register new companies, often in Kinshasa, hailed him in a press release as \u201cone of the currently a senior adviser at The Sentry, an rather than the Caribbean. He also began vis- leading and most successful investors in investigative and policy organization found- iting a Congolese branch of a Cameroonian DRC.\u201d Days later, Camec\u2019s permit suspen- ed by John Prendergast and George Clooney, bank, Afriland First Bank, which business- sion was lifted. Over a recent breakfast in says enforcement requires greater action. men with links to Hezbollah and the North London, Groves told me that he suspected Korean government have allegedly used to interference from competitors led to the The government investigations have kept evade their own U.S. sanctions by ensur- permit threat, but he didn\u2019t criticize Gertler, on coming, though, even if they take years to ing that international transfers from that calling him a fellow \u201cfighter.\u201d resolve. A senior Glencore executive, Aristo- bank\u2014including via the SWIFT system\u2014do telis Mistakidis, who had been appointed in not share identifying details of transactions. One of the most thorough delineations 2008 to the board of Katanga, faced penal- (Gertler has denied trying to evade sanctions of Gertler\u2019s modus operandi came in 2016, ties in a December 2018 settlement with the and any wrongdoing.) when the Department of Justice reached a Ontario Securities Commission, as Katanga settlement with Och-Ziff Capital Manage- was on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Navy Malela, a former auditor at the bank, ment Group for $213 million and the hedge commission accused Katanga\u2019s officers of told me that when he saw the freshly sanc- fund\u2019s admission of guilt in a scheme to bribe having \u201cfailed to disclose material risks to its tioned Gertler walk past his office in 2018, officials in the DRC and Libya. (Och-Ziff has business,\u201d specifically \u201cpublic sector corrup- it was like seeing a \u201cphantom.\u201d Malela since rebranded as Sculptor Capital and is tion in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u201d called a trusted colleague into his office and publicly traded\u2014NYSE: SCU\u2014with more and \u201cthe nature and extent of Katanga\u2019s warned the coworker that if the man who than $37 billion under management.) That reliance on individuals and entities associ- had just walked down the corridor began to agreement obliquely referred to a \u201cDRC ated with Dan Gertler.\u201d Glencore delisted frequent their business, \u201cwe will have prob- partner\u201d throughout\u2014widely reported to be Katanga from the exchange just as the pan- lems.\u201d Malela and the colleague worked to Gertler. (Gertler did not comment.) Accord- demic was exploding, in April 2020, and still alert the bank\u2019s board to the presence of ing to the Department of Justice, Och-Ziff faces the American, British, and Swiss inves- Gertler-linked accounts and suggested they had an agreement with the DRC partner to tigations. In its past two financial reports, be frozen, but in response both received fund mine acquisitions in the DRC and was Glencore had said it was \u201cnot possible to pre- threats from upper management. The two aware that the tactics likely involved pay- dict or estimate\u201d the size or scale of the fines, men eventually became whistleblowers in a ment to public officials, which would be a penalties, or subsequent lawsuits that could series of sprawling accusations that involved violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practic- stem from these various investigations. But in foreign nationals and entities. Fearing for es Act. \u201cThe DRC landscape is in the making February, the firm announced it was putting their lives, they fled Kinshasa and now live and I am shaping it\u2014like no one else,\u201d the aside $1.5 billion to resolve U.S., U.K., and in undisclosed European locations. (Lawyers DRC partner emailed a London-based Och- Brazilian enquiries, while Swiss and Dutch for Afriland have accused the men of stealing Ziff partner in 2008. Gertler has continued authorities continued their own probes. and falsifying bank data.) to deny the settlement agreement\u2019s premise Tony Hayward, Glencore\u2019s chairman since \u201cDan Gertler inserted himself into every bloody mining transaction, he took an equity M AY 2 0 2 2 95","Green Gold period after the civil war, when others had to a local interviewer that Gertler\u2019s wealth abandoned the DRC. was \u201cthe fair reward for taking the risk.\u201d And stake or a royalty or both,\u201d says Lilford, the while a businessman with long experience former Nikanor director. But Gertler has Gertler visits the DRC less frequently in the DRC\u2014and with Gertler\u2014told me that said his dealmaking has attracted unprec- nowadays, spending more time at his home \u201csince everyone is corrupt, everyone holds edented investment to the country, pushing outside Tel Aviv, but he did travel to Kinshasa hands\u201d to protect one another, there are signs up tax revenues and supporting local com- in late February to sign an \u201camicable agree- that a new DRC administration is seeking to munities. He told one journalist that he ment\u201d with the country\u2019s justice minister to change that status quo. During a speech in should be offered a Nobel Prize, while his end ongoing litigation between the two sides. Kolwezi in May 2021, Tshisekedi told his old friend Kabila\u2014whose father once fought DRC president Felix Tshisekedi, as well as audience he was \u201ctired of the situation I\u2019ve alongside Che Guevara in an earlier Congo- the DRC\u2019s finance and mining ministers, been seeing in this country for years now\u2026. lese conflict\u2014said Gertler had \u201cbraved the refused repeated interview requests. People are coming here with nothing in their hurricane\u201d during the country\u2019s difficult pockets but they go back to become billion- One of Kabila\u2019s most influential appoin- aires, while we ourselves still remain poor.\u201d n tees, the wealthy former chairman of the state mining company, Albert Yuma, once insisted Free Radicals \u201cnational CEO, [or] what\u2019s called a dictator.\u201d married and have kids,\u201d to email him so they Yarvin now shies away from the word dictator could set up a Zoom date. aC O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 6 5 p r o f e s s o r and seems to be trying to promote a friend- tends to affirm their worldview, or frighten lier face of authoritarianism as the solution to \u201cHis writing doesn\u2019t really represent who them, or both at the same time. The more our political warfare: \u201cIf you\u2019re going to have he is,\u201d Laurenson told me. \u201cSo I answered attention you gain in the Cathedral system, a monarchy, it has to be a monarchy of every- this email and I was just like, \u2018Hi, I\u2019m a liberal, the more you can influence opinion and gov- one,\u201d he said. but I have a high IQ. And I want kids, and I\u2019m ernment policy. Journalists and academics actually just really curious to talk to you.\u2019\u2009\u201d and thinkers of any kind now live in a desper- By the time TechCrunch publicized The two are now engaged. ate race for attention\u2014and in Yarvin\u2019s view, Yarvin\u2019s identity, in 2013, he had become this is all really a never-ending bid for influ- influential in a small circle of the disaffected Laurenson told me she\u2019d had a gradual ence, serving the interests of our oligarchical elite. In 2014, The Baffler published a lengthy awakening that accelerated during the regime. So I may think I write for a living. But look at his influence, titled \u201cMouthbreath- upheavals of the early pandemic and the pro- to Yarvin, what I actually do is more like a ing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich.\u201d tests of the summer of 2020. \u201cI started really weird combination of intelligence-gathering The piece warned that Yarvin\u2019s ideas were getting drawn to NRx ideas,\u201d she said, using and propagandizing. Which is why no one I spreading among prominent figures like a common online abbreviation for the neo- was talking to at NatCon really thought it Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, formerly the reactionary fringe, \u201cbecause I was tracking would be possible for me to write a fair piece CTO of Coinbase, and that it was possible for the riots,\u201d by which she meant the violence about them. an intellectual fringe to \u201cseize key positions that erupted amid some of the Black Lives of authority and power\u201d and \u201ceventually Matter protests. You won\u2019t hear people use the Cathedral bring large numbers of people around,\u201d just term a lot in public, although right-wing Twit- as the Koch brothers once had with their pro- \u201cI have a background in social justice,\u201d ter lit up with delight when Yarvin sketched business libertarianism, a position that Thiel she said. But she was \u201chorrified\u201d by \u201chow the concept on Tucker Carlson\u2019s Fox Nation was quickly moving away from. the mainstream media covered the riots.\u2026 It show last September. People who\u2019ve opened was just such a violation of all of my values.\u201d their eyes to this system of control have taken In 2017, BuzzFeed News published an the red pill, a term Yarvin started using back email exchange between Yarvin and Milo She\u2019d had a strange realization after she in 2007, long before it got watered down to Yiannopoulis in which Yarvin said that he\u2019d and Yarvin started dating, discovering that generally mean supporting Trump. To truly watched the 2016 election returns with Thiel. some of her friends had been reading him be red-pilled, you have to understand the \u201cHe\u2019s fully enlightened,\u201d Yarvin wrote. \u201cJust for years. \u201cI found out that all these people workings of the Cathedral. And the way con- plays it very carefully.\u201d Masters soon had an had been reading NRx stuff just like me. They servatives can actually win in America, he office in Trump Tower. He and Thiel worked, just never told anyone about it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has argued, is for a Caesar-like figure to take generally without success, to install figures has been very striking to me,\u201d she said, \u201chow power back from this devolved oligarchy and like Srinivasan, whom they proposed to head cool this world is becoming.\u201d replace it with a monarchical regime run like the FDA, and who himself often talked about a start-up. As early as 2012, he proposed the the \u201cpaper belt,\u201d in an echo of Yarvin\u2019s Cathe- Yarvin had given people a way to articu- acronym RAGE\u2014Retire All Government dral concept, and made common cause with late a notion that somehow felt subversive Employees\u2014as a shorthand for a first step figures like Steve Bannon, who wanted to to say out loud in America\u2014that history was in the overthrow of the American \u201cregime.\u201d pick apart the administrative state, an idea headed in the wrong direction. \u201cSomebody What we needed, Yarvin thought, was a that at least had a hint of Yarvin\u2019s RAGE pro- said something earlier that captured it for posal. Yarvin eventually stopped working as me,\u201d Laurenson said, just before they had to a programmer and left the Bay Area, mov- leave to go to a slightly hush-hush private din- ing with his wife and two children to Nevada. ner with Vance and a few others. \u201cThey said, His wife died in April 2021, and he seems to \u2018You can be here and know you\u2019re not alone.\u2019\u2009\u201d have been devastated, publishing search- ing poems about her. But last September, a PEOPLE AT THE conference seemed excited month before we spoke, he posted a dating about being in a place where they weren\u2019t call, inviting women who were \u201creasonably alone. I skipped most of the talks\u2014which pretty and pretty smart,\u201d as he put it, and ranged from sessions about confronting the \u201chave read my work and like it,\u201d and who threat of China to the liberal influence on pop thought that \u201cthe purpose of dating is to get culture to \u201cWorker Power.\u201d Hawley gave a keynote on the \u201cassault on the masculine virtues,\u201d and Cruz offered up a traditional stump speech, evoking Reagan and saying 96 VA N I T Y FA I R","he thought conservatives would soon prevail considered strange if not downright evil. She The Red Scare hosts are only the best- at the ballot box. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure a lot of the thought something had radically changed known representatives of a fashionable 20-somethings rolled their eyes at that,\u201d since 2015, after she went to film school at dissident-y subculture, centered in but not Yarvin said to me afterward with a smirk. The USC and started working in Hollywood, exclusive to downtown Manhattan. \u201cEvery- 20-somethings had a bigger vision. before she suddenly dropped everything to one dresses like a duck hunter now,\u201d a work for Trump\u2019s campaign in Nevada, even- bewildered friend of mine texted recently. Up by the bar every night, hordes of young tually landing a job in his State Department. People use the derisive term \u201cbugman\u201d to men, mostly, would descend to drink and describe liberal men who lack tangible life bear-hug and spot favorite podcasters and \u201cWhat this is,\u201d she said, \u201cis a new thought skills like fixing trucks or growing food\u2014guys writers. You could see Dave Rubin, and Jack movement. So it\u2019s very hard to put your finger who could end up spending their lives behind Murphy, who hosts a popular New Right\u2013ish on and articulate what it is outside of Trump- the bug-eyed screen of a V.R. headset. YouTube channel and is trying to build a fra- ism. Because it really is separate from the Women wear clothes from Brandy Melville, ternal group of men who believe in \u201cpositive man himself, it has nothing to do with that.\u201d which you can hear described ironically as masculinity\u201d that he calls the Liminal Order. fashionwear for girls with \u201cfascist leanings,\u201d Pretty much everyone had the same trimmed She argued that the New Right, or what- and which named one of its lines after John beard and haircut\u2014sides buzzed short, the top ever you wanted to call it, was, paradoxically, Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged. longer and combed with a bit of gel to one side. much less authoritarian than the ideology People are converting to Catholicism. \u201cIt\u2019s that now presented itself as mainstream. \u201cI a good thing I have a girlfriend,\u201d my friend I didn\u2019t see a single Black person under get the feeling, and I could be wrong,\u201d she texted. \u201cBecause casual sex is out.\u201d the age of 50, though there were attendees said, \u201cthat the right actually at this point is like of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent. almost in this live-and-let-live place where Yarvin has mused that the liberal regime In March, the journalist Jeff Sharlet (a Van- the left used to be at.\u201d What she meant spe- will begin to fall when the \u201ccool kids\u201d start to ity Fair contributing editor who covers the cifically: \u201cThe idea that you can\u2019t raise your abandon its values and worldview. There are American right) tweeted that the \u201cintellec- kids in a traditional, somewhat religious signs that this may be happening, though not tual New Right is a white supremacist project household without having them educated all the so-called cool kids involved in this vibe designed to cultivate non-white support,\u201d at school that their parents are Nazis.\u201d shift would want to be colored as the van- and he linked it to resurgent nationalist and This apparent laissez-faire obscures some- guard in a world historical rebellion against authoritarian politics around the world: \u201cIt\u2019s what the intense focus that some people the global order. part of a global fascist movement not limited in this world have on trans issues\u2014or what to the anti-blackness of the U.S. & Europe.\u201d they might say is the media\u2019s intense focus on \u201cI\u2019m not, like, into politics,\u201d the writer Yet many on the New Right seem increasing- trans issues, one of a suite of \u201cmimetic virus- Honor Levy, a Catholic convert and Ben- ly unfazed by accusations that they\u2019re white es,\u201d as Kaschuta, the podcaster, put it, that nington grad, told me when I called her. \u201cI nationalists or racists. Masters in particular spread a highly individualistic liberal culture just want to have a family someday.\u201d seems willing to goad commentators, believ- that is destructive to traditional ways of life. ing that the ensuing arguments will redound But the laissez-faire has helped win unlikely Levy, who was a leftist recently enough to his political advantage: \u201cGood luck converts. Milius brought up Red Scare, a pod- that she cried when it became clear that [hitting] me with that,\u201d Masters told the pod- cast that has become the premier example of Bernie Sanders wouldn\u2019t be the Democratic caster Alex Kaschuta recently, arguing that this attraction\u2014she\u2019d actually cast one of the presidential nominee, is friendly with Yarvin accusations of racism had become a politi- hosts, Dasha Nekrasova, in the film she made and has had him on the podcast she cohosts, cal bludgeon used to keep conservative ideas as her senior thesis in directing school at USC. Wet Brain\u2014\u201cYeah, the Cathedral and blah outside the political mainstream. \u201cGood luck blah,\u201d she said when we got to talking about criticizing me for saying critical race theory is The Red Scare hosts both started out as political media. But she said she\u2019d never even anti-white.\u201d But for all the chatter of looming diffident socialists, back when it was still pos- heard of J.D. Vance or Blake Masters. dystopia, no one I spoke to raised one of the sible to think that socialism represented an most dystopian aspects of American life: our edgy political stance, in the little interlocking Levy is an It girl in a downtown Manhat- vast apparatus of prisons and policing. Most spheres of America\u2019s media and political set. tan scene\u2014The New Yorker has published people seemed more caught up in fighting One of them, Nekrasova, actually became her fiction; she is named in a New York Times what they perceived as the cant and group- known in media circles for a clip that went story that tries to describe that scene\u2014where think among other members of the political megaviral in 2018, when she cut dead a report- right-wing politics have become an aesthetic media class, or the hypocrisy of rich white lib- er for Alex Jones\u2019s Infowars trying to ambush pose that mingles strangely with an earnest erals who put up Black Lives Matter signs in Bernie Sanders supporters at a festival in Aus- search for moral grounding. \u201cUntil like a year front of multimillion-dollar homes, than they tin. \u201cI just want people to have health care, and a half ago I didn\u2019t believe good and evil were with the raw experience that has given honey,\u201d she deadpanned. \u201cYou people have, existed,\u201d she told me, later adding: \u201cBut I\u2019m shape to America\u2019s current racial politics. like, worms in your brains. Honestly.\u201d not in a state of grace, I shouldn\u2019t be talk- ing.\u201d I asked if she would take money from Milius was a sardonic and constant pres- Fast-forward to November 2021, and Thiel and she cheerily said, \u201cOf course!\u201d ence, easy to find smoking as Yarvin stood Nekrasova and her cohost Anna Khachiyan She also described her cohort as a bunch of and talked at warp speed in his unmistak- were posting photos of themselves with \u201clibertines,\u201d and on her podcast you can get able voice. She was by far the most strikingly Jones\u2019s arms wrapped around them under a window into a world of people who enjoy dressed person there, favoring Gucci and an evening Texas sun. Nekrasova now has a a mind-bendingly ironic thrill by tut-tutting Ralph Lauren and lots of gold jewelry and big role on HBO\u2019s Succession, playing a P.R. rep each other for missing church or having pre- sunglasses. She is the daughter of the con- working with Kendall Roy; the show itself marital sex. \u201cMost of the girls downtown are servative director John Milius, who cowrote set \u201cright-wing Twitter\u201d\u2014a sphere heavily normal, but they\u2019ll wear a Trump hat as an Apocalypse Now and directed Red Dawn. She populated by 20-somethings who work in accessory,\u201d she said. The ones deep into the grew up in Los Angeles, and it turned out that tech or politics and seem to disproportion- online scene, she said, \u201cwant to be like Leni we\u2019d both gone to the same tiny liberal arts ately live in D.C. and Miami\u2014alight with Riefenstahl\u2013Edie Sedgwick.\u201d college in Manhattan, so, like pretty much delight when an episode in the latest season all the people there, she was used to living in included a litany of key New Right phrases Like Levy, Milius is in the funny position social spaces where conservative views were such as \u201cintegralist\u201d and \u201cMedicare for all, of being at the intersection of many of these abortions for none.\u201d crosscurrents, having worked in mainstream politics but appearing on so-called dissident M AY 2 0 2 2 97","Free Radicals Masters often says he\u2019s not as black-pilled how \u201cdegrading and debasing\u201d it could be and pessimistic as some in the New Right to human lives. podcasts and being on the periphery of a cul- spheres. He seems, unlike many New Right- tural scene where right-wing politics have ers, to still earnestly believe in the power of I asked whether he thought the core of taken on a sheen approximating cool. electoral politics. But he does think that the his project was a fight against a consumerist culturally liberal and free-market ideology techno-dystopia that many on the left have She said she was too \u201cblack-pilled\u201d\u2014a that has guided America\u2019s politics in recent also come to fear. He said yes. I asked why, very online term used to describe people years is a hopeless dead end. \u201cA country is not if this was the case, it almost never came who think that our world is so messed up that just an economy,\u201d Masters told the dissident- across in his mainstream media appearanc- nothing can save it now\u2014to think much about right outlet IM\u20141776 recently. \u201cYou also es. \u201cThat\u2019s interesting feedback,\u201d he said. what it would look like for her side to win. need a conception of yourself as a nation, as \u201cThat it\u2019s not coming through.\u201d \u201cI could fucking trip over the curb,\u201d Milius a people, and as a culture. And that\u2019s what said, \u201cand that\u2019s going to be considered white America is increasingly lacking today.\u201d \u201cI go on, and it\u2019s the tail end of the B block, supremacism. Like, there\u2019s nothing you can and I\u2019ve got two minutes to talk about Kyle do. What the fuck isn\u2019t white supremacism?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s true that I\u2019m incredibly hopeful,\u201d he Rittenhouse,\u201d he\u2019d said earlier, talking about said to me. \u201cI think it\u2019s really bleak, I think the his spots on Fox News. \u201cAnd it\u2019s like, \u2018Well, \u201cThey\u2019re going to come for everything,\u201d default is continued stagnation, and maybe the left is insane, and this kid shouldn\u2019t have she said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s sinister\u2014not that I you get the crisis in 5 years or maybe it\u2019s 30 been on trial, and they\u2019re punishing him for think that people who want to pay attention years from now.\u201d being a white guy who defended himself with to race issues are sinister. But I think that the an AR-15.\u2019\u2009\u201d Conservative media seems to globalization movement is using these divi- He told me that he didn\u2019t like to use terms thrive on culture-war touch points as much sive arguments in order to make people think like the Cathedral and used \u201cthe regime\u201d less as all the rest of it. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m willing to that it\u2019s a good thing.\u201d often than Vance, although I later noticed go there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you can\u2019t do that on that he used this latter phrase frequently with Laura Ingraham sound bites.\u201d This is the Cathedral at work. interviewers on the dissident right. He was a little less rosy about the future A FEW WEEKS after NatCon, I drove from \u201c\u2009\u2018The regime\u2019 sounds really sexy, right?\u201d with some interviewers than he was with me. California to Tucson to meet Masters, a very he said to me. \u201cIt\u2019s a tangible enemy\u2014if you \u201cWe need someone with their hand on the tall, very thin, very fit 35-year-old. I wanted to could just grapple with it in the right way, you tiller who understands where we\u2019ve been and see how all this might translate into an actual can topple it. And I think it\u2019s actually just a where we need to go,\u201d he told the podcaster election campaign, and I\u2019d been watching a lot less sexy and a lot more bureaucratic,\u201d Alex Kaschuta recently. \u201cOtherwise we will lot of Fox News, including Yarvin\u2019s stream- he said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve read that stuff, and I see get just totally owned by the progressive ing interview with Carlson in which he gave what it means.\u201d left. And the progressive left just remains a swirling depiction of how the Cathedral the enemy. It\u2019s the enemy of true progress. produced its groupthink. \u201cWhy do Yale and I asked him about the term Thielbucks, It\u2019s the enemy of everything that is good.\u201d Harvard always agree on everything?\u201d he and how true it was that the Thiel Foundation asked. \u201cThese organizations are essentially was funding a network of New Right podcast- I asked if he could give me a vision of what branches of the same thing,\u201d he told a mes- ers and cool-kid cultural figures as a sort of he thought victory for his side would look like. merized Carlson. \u201cYou\u2019re like, \u2018Where are cultural vanguard. the wires?\u2019\u2009\u201d He sketched his vision of (as \u201cIt\u2019s just families and meaningful work,\u201d he calls it) a \u201cconstitutional\u201d regime change \u201cIt depends if it\u2019s just dissident-right he said, \u201cso that you can raise your kids and that would take power back from this oligar- think-tank stuff,\u201d he told me, \u201cor if anyone worship and pursue your hobbies and fig- chy\u2014so diffuse most people hardly knew it actually does anything.\u201d ure out what the meaning of it all is.\u201d Pretty was there. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes it so hard to much anyone could agree with this. And kill,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how that became a meme,\u201d pretty much anyone could wonder how it is he said about Thielbucks. \u201cI think I would that this sort of thing has come to seem radi- At a coffee shop near the house he\u2019d know if those kids were getting money.\u201d cal, or distant from the lives of many people bought when he moved back home to Tuc- growing into adulthood today. \u201cIt just feels so son from the Bay Area, Masters and I went \u201cWe fund some stuff,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut networked,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s so in-the-matrix.\u201d through the tenets of his nationalist platform: we\u2019re not funding an army of meme posters.\u201d on-shoring industrial production, slashing He told me that he and Thiel had met with We drove a long way into the desert legal immigration, regulating big tech com- Khachiyan, one of the cohosts of Red Scare. before we arrived at the campaign meet-and- panies, and eventually restructuring the \u201cWhich was cool,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir podcast greet, which was being hosted by a former economy so that one salary would be enough is interesting.\u201d CIA official in a comfortable retirement to raise a family on. I mentioned Yarvin and community. The crowd of a few dozen was his line of arguing that America\u2019s system had I asked if there was a world in which they mostly sweater-wearing retirees, immersed become so sclerotic that it was hopeless to might get funding from Thiel. \u201cMaybe, in a media culture in which the people who imagine making big systemic changes like yeah,\u201d he said. \u201cWe fund some weird stuff repeated the most incendiary and Trumpist these. \u201cIn a system where state capacity is with the Thiel Foundation.\u201d talking points tended to gain attention and very low\u2026\u201d I started the question. political support. This kind of groupthink We drove together to a campaign event, was not just a phenomenon of the liberal \u201cAlas,\u201d he said, with a twinkle in his eye. talking about everything from how technol- media, and this fact has hampered the \u201cDo we need a crisis to get there?\u201d ogy is reshaping our brains to environmental campaigns of both Masters and Vance, who I asked him. policy, both of us circling from different polit- are often seen as Trump-aligned culture \u201cMaybe, maybe, maybe,\u201d he said. It wasn\u2019t ical directions to an apocalyptic place. \u201cI do warriors, and who have had a lot of trouble where his immediate thinking was. \u201cI\u2019ll have think we\u2019re at a moment of crossroads,\u201d he working their more complicated policy ideas the proverbial machete,\u201d he said. \u201cBut yeah, it said. \u201cAnd if we play it wrong, it\u2019s the Dark into our fervid political conversation. He may take some kind of crisis to get us there.\u201d Ages.\u201d Masters has publicly said he thinks talked through his proposal to regulate tech He paused. \u201cBut we\u2019re already sort of in \u201ceverybody should read\u201d the Unabomber\u2019s companies as common carriers, like America one, right?\u201d anti-tech manifesto, \u201cIndustrial Society and once regulated phone companies. The crowd Its Future,\u201d which may sound strange for a seemed interested but hardly electrified. young tech executive running to serve in When he took questions at the end, they were the United States Senate. But to Masters, Kaczynski\u2019s critique was a useful analysis of how technology shapes our world and 98 VA N I T Y FA I R","mostly the usual ones about the supposedly an intellectual himself, even if he\u2019s not cur- to the entire constitutional order\u2014\u201cthe chief stolen 2020 election\u2014a view that Masters did rently playing one on TV. But he thinks that justice has made his ruling. Now let him not push back on\u2014the border wall, vaccine our universities are full of people who have enforce it.\u201d mandates. One man raised his hand to ask a structural, self-serving, and financial inter- how Masters planned to drain the swamp. He est in coloring American culture as racist and This is a description, essentially, of a coup. gave me a sly look. \u201cWell, one of my friends evil. And he is ready to go to extraordinary \u201cWe are in a late republican period,\u201d has this acronym he calls RAGE,\u201d he said. lengths to fight them. Vance said later, evoking the common New \u201cRetire All Government Employees.\u201d The Right view of America as Rome awaiting its crowd liked the sound of this and erupted Yarvin and Laurenson bounded out of the Caesar. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to push back against in a cheer. crowd as the cheers were still ringing. They it, we\u2019re going to have to get pretty wild, and were giggling, seeming to have had some pretty far out there, and go in directions that ON THE LAST afternoon of NatCon, a few wine. \u201cNixon\u2014Nixon!\u201d Laurenson said, still a lot of conservatives right now are uncom- hours before he was set to give the keynote laughing. I couldn\u2019t tell if she was delighted fortable with.\u201d address, Vance showed up. He spotted or horrified. \u201cIndeed,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cAmong some of me drinking a beer at the bar and came my circle, the phrase \u2018extra-constitutional\u2019 over to say hello. \u201cI still have no idea what A couple of hours later I found Vance has come up quite a bit.\u201d I\u2019m going to say,\u201d he said, though he didn\u2019t standing up by the bar, surrounded by a cir- I\u2019d asked Vance to tell me, on the record, seem worried. cle of young and identical-looking fanboys. what he\u2019d like liberal Americans who thought I went over. He asked what I\u2019d thought of that what he was proposing was a fascist take- I wandered down to the ballroom to wait the speech, and he suggested we find some- over of America to understand. and ended up sitting with the U.S. corre- where to talk. He spoke earnestly. \u201cI think the cultural spondent for the German newsmagazine world you operate in is incredibly biased,\u201d he Der Spiegel. I knew that some of the reporters He asked me to turn my recorder off so we said\u2014against his movement and \u201cthe leaders there might have been under the impression could speak candidly. I agreed, with regret, of it, like me in particular.\u201d He encouraged that this was all mostly just tweedy MAGA because the conversation revealed someone me to resist this tendency, which he thought pageantry. He had a more complex view, who I think will be hugely influential in our was the product of a media machine leading having just spoken to Yarvin, and asked me politics in the coming years, even if he loses us toward a soulless dystopia that none of us to explain his philosophy. I found myself at a his Senate primary, as both of us thought want to live in. \u201cThat impulse,\u201d he said, \u201cis loss. I said that there were these things called was possible. fundamentally in service of something that the regime and the Cathedral and that Yarvin is far worse than anything, in your wildest was \u201csort of a monarchist.\u201d It also revealed someone who is in a dark nightmares, than what you see here.\u201d place, with a view that we are at an ominous He gave me an imploring look, as though \u201cA monarchist?\u201d he asked. He seemed turning point in America\u2019s history. He didn\u2019t to suggest that he was more on the side of taken aback to learn that what this hero fig- want to describe this to me on the record. But the kind of people who read Vanity Fair than ure of the New Right dreamed of was a king. I can show it anyway, because he already says most of you realize. it publicly, and you can hear it too. If what he was doing worked, he said, \u201cit Vance showed up, wearing a suit and will mean that my son grows up in a world bright red tie, looking relaxed for a person That night, I went up to my hotel room where his masculinity\u2014his support of his who was about to give a speech to hundreds and listened to a podcast interview Vance family and his community, his love of his of people who viewed him as possibly a last had conducted with Jack Murphy, the big, community\u2014is more important than wheth- great hope in saving the American nation bearded head of the Liminal Order men\u2019s er it works for fucking McKinsey.\u201d from global corporatist subjugation. He\u2019d group. Murphy asked how it was that Vance At that, we called it, and the crowd of shot up in the polls and at that moment was proposed to rip out America\u2019s leadership class. young men who wanted to talk to him imme- second in his primary, helped by regular invi- diately descended on the couches. People tations from Carlson. Vance described two possibilities that kept bringing drinks, and there was a lot of many on the New Right imagine\u2014that our shit talk, and it went on late. I remember I asked how he was feeling about the system will either fall apart naturally, or that thinking at one point how strange it was that speech. He looked impish. \u201cI think I\u2019ve got a great leader will assume semi-dictatorial in our mid-30s Vance and I were significantly a good topic,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to talk powers. older than almost everyone there, all of whom about college.\u201d thought they were organizing a struggle to \u201cSo there\u2019s this guy Curtis Yarvin, who has change the course of human history, and all What he meant was that he was about to written about some of these things,\u201d Vance of whom were now going to get sloppy drunk. give a genuinely thunderous speech, titled said. Murphy chortled knowingly. \u201cSo one The next morning, wrecked, I put on \u201cThe Universities Are the Enemy.\u201d People [option] is to basically accept that this entire sweatpants and a hoodie and tried to smug- immediately pointed out that it was a varia- thing is going to fall in on itself,\u201d Vance went gle myself out of the hotel without having tion on something that Richard Nixon said to on. \u201cAnd so the task of conservatives right to talk to anyone. I gave my chit to the valet Henry Kissinger on White House tapes back now is to preserve as much as can be pre- and looked around to find Vance and Yarvin in 1972. Vance denounced elite colleges as served,\u201d waiting for the \u201cinevitable collapse\u201d standing there waiting for cars. \u201cHow do you enemies of the American people; he has long of the current order. guys feel?\u201d Yarvin asked. Vance was wearing proposed cutting off their federal funding a hoodie too and looked like I felt. \u201cI feel hor- and seizing their endowments. The speech He said he thought this was pessimistic. \u201cI rible,\u201d he said. \u201cNot good.\u201d was later linked in alarmed op-eds to \u201canti- tend to think that we should seize the insti- Yarvin asked what I\u2019d thought of every- intellectual\u201d movements that had attacked tutions of the left,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd turn them thing. I said it would take a long time for institutions of learning. But that doesn\u2019t against the left. We need like a de-Baathifica- me to figure that out. We all shook hands, quite reckon with what an apocalyptic mes- tion program, a de-woke-ification program.\u201d and they waved as I got into my car and we sage he was offering. Because Vance and all resumed our usual battle stations in the this New Right cohort, who are mostly so, \u201cI think Trump is going to run again in American info-wars. n so highly educated and well-read that their 2024,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that what Trump big problem often seems to be that they\u2019re should do, if I was giving him one piece of just too nerdy to be an effective force in mass advice: Fire every single midlevel bureau- politics, are not anti-intellectual. Vance is crat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.\u201d \u201cAnd when the courts stop you,\u201d he went on, \u201cstand before the country, and say\u2014\u201d he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge M AY 2 0 2 2 99","Confessions of a Mob Chef so as not to enrage the explosive Gotti. The following week, the Times and New York dinner turned out to be Gotti\u2019s last birthday magazine published rave reviews. Le Chan- C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 9 1 Gotti\u2019s coup as a free man. The FBI arrested the Teflon tilly became one of the city\u2019s hottest tables. was perilous for Ruggerio because Rugge- Don two months later on racketeering Money poured in. rio was aligned with Marino, a Castellano charges. He was convicted and sentenced loyalist. \u201cJohn despised Danny,\u201d said for- to life in prison without parole. He died of But the restaurant was still in bankruptcy. mer FBI agent Mouw. A few months after cancer in 2002. Ruggerio said he conspired with Moneypen- Castellano\u2019s murder, according to inves- ny, who died in 2007, to rig the auction and tigators, Marino approved a revenge plot As Ruggerio gained food world status, buy the restaurant for $100,000. \u201cThe cel- to kill Gotti with a car bomb. (The device hiding his Mob life was becoming increas- lar alone had half a million dollars of wine blew up Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco ingly difficult. In January 1992, Bryan Miller in it,\u201d Ruggerio said. The plan was simple, instead.) Fearing reprisal, Ruggerio hid from awarded Maxim\u2019s three stars in the Times. according to Ruggerio. Legally, Moneypenny Gotti\u2019s crew. \u201cWe changed our habits and Ruggerio should have scaled back his Mob needed to advertise the auction in a newspa- didn\u2019t frequent places that we normally activity. Instead, he plunged deeper into per. So he advertised it in the Staten Island did,\u201d Ruggerio said. gangland. \u201cI was a tortured person. I knew Pennysaver, where few buyers would see it. right from wrong, but at times I couldn\u2019t stop However, a day before the auction closed, Ruggerio\u2019s vaunted place in the restaurant myself,\u201d he said. Ruggerio learned a guy in the garment dis- scene would wind up protecting him from trict offered $150,000. Ruggerio said he sent Gotti\u2019s wrath because Ruggerio was a guy IN THE SUMMER of 1992, the restaurateur three \u201cfriends\u201d to reason with the bidder. Gotti wanted to know. \u201cThe thing you gotta Camille Dulac courted Ruggerio to take Ruggerio got the restaurant. understand is, when wiseguys get together, over the kitchen at Le Chantilly on East 57th you know what\u2019s the first thing they talk Street. Dulac hoped Ruggerio could revive The purchase kindled Ruggerio\u2019s ambi- about? What\u2019d you have for dinner last night? his venerable French restaurant, which had tions of restaurant moguldom. \u201cPeople What\u2019d you have for lunch? What wiseguys slipped in recent years. Ruggerio modern- bowed down to me when they found out I do most of the time is they talk about food,\u201d ized the menu with Italian influences such owned the place,\u201d he said. In the spring of Ruggerio said. as crab ravioli and quail risotto. Not long after 1994, Ruggerio checked his judgment at hiring Ruggerio, Dulac got good news: The the door and partnered with Dulac to open In April 1990, the fashion mogul Pierre Times and New York magazine were going to an Italian restaurant called Nonna. I asked Cardin hired Ruggerio to reinvent Cardin\u2019s publish reviews. Ruggerio why he continued to work with restaurant Maxim\u2019s. \u201cGotti loved Maxim\u2019s,\u201d Dulac if, as Ruggerio claims, Dulac had Ruggerio said. The Madison Avenue loca- One afternoon in early February 1993, hidden Le Chantilly\u2019s bankruptcy. \u201cIt was tion was a virtual reproduction of the Belle Ruggerio said he was preparing dinner a huge mistake,\u201d Ruggerio said. Ruggerio\u2019s \u00c9poque Parisian dining room, with its Art service when the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 burst into the much bigger error was, he said, accepting Nouveau woodwork, pink table lamps, and kitchen and informed him that police were a six-figure investment from Marino. It vio- rose-colored banquettes. In October 1990, in the dining room and a locksmith was at lated Ruggerio\u2019s bedrock rule: Never borrow Gotti asked Ruggerio to cater his 50th birth- the front door changing the locks. Rug- money from the Mob. \u201cIt was pure stupidity day at Maxim\u2019s. Ruggerio remembered gerio ran to investigate. A man in a trench and ego on my part,\u201d Ruggerio said. Marino papering over the windows so FBI agents coat approached. He identified himself as a was about to do six years in federal prison surveilling Gotti couldn\u2019t peer inside, court-appointed auctioneer and said he was on a murder conspiracy conviction. Rugge- where 25 of the city\u2019s most powerful gang- there to liquidate the restaurant. Le Chantilly rio said Marino warned him that if Nonna sters toasted Gotti with jeroboams of 1961 had been in bankruptcy since 1991; Ruggerio folded, Ruggerio and Dulac would repay Lafite and magnums of Cristal Ros\u00e9. \u201cIt was said Dulac hadn\u2019t told him. \u201cI was furious,\u201d him in full. a fucking shindig,\u201d Ruggerio said. Rugge- Ruggerio recalled. Ruggerio glared at the bar rio\u2019s menu started with a buffet of Beluga where Dulac was forlornly sipping cr\u00e8me de Ruggerio and Dulac\u2019s partnership unrav- caviar, roasted loins of tuna, swordfish, and menthe. He needed a way to keep the restau- eled almost immediately after Nonna aged prime beef. For the main course, Rug- rant open until the reviews ran in a few days. opened, as both Ruggerio and multiple for- gerio served a Gotti favorite, loup de mer, A positive review would fill up the reservation mer employees of Le Chantilly told me. In whole braised bass with fennel, butter, and book for months. August 1994, Ruggerio said he discovered flamb\u00e9ed with Pernod. As Ruggerio carried Le Chantilly owed New York State tens of the flaming platter into the dining room, he Ruggerio looked at the auctioneer again. thousands of dollars in back taxes. (New York felt a searing pain in his hand. The sous-chef I know this fucking guy, he thought. Then it City and State records show a series of tax had inadvertently splashed too much Per- clicked: He was a low-level hoodlum from judgments against the restaurant throughout nod on the fish, and it set Ruggerio\u2019s hand Brooklyn named Bob Moneypenny (yes, the 1990s.) Ruggerio said he wanted to cut on fire. \u201cThe flames leaped in the air, and the that\u2019s really his name). Ruggerio leaned over ties with Dulac right then, but he couldn\u2019t scent of fennel was mixed with slight odors and whispered that he was a friend of Joe without getting Marino\u2019s permission. Rug- of my burning flesh,\u201d Ruggerio recalled. He Watts. \u201cThe blood drained out of his face,\u201d gerio went down to Ashland, Kentucky, to said he fought every urge to drop the platter Ruggerio recalled. Joe \u201cThe German\u201d Watts visit Marino in federal prison and explain the was a Gambino member and one of the most situation. Marino was not pleased, Ruggerio feared gangsters in the city. (According to remembered. According to Ruggerio, Marino prosecutors, Watts was a backup shooter on reminded him that Ruggerio had vouched for Gotti\u2019s hit squad that whacked Castellano.) Dulac. Ruggerio promised he would get all of Phil Scala, the former FBI agent, told me Marino\u2019s money out. Watts would have been the family\u2019s boss if both his parents had been Italian. \u201cHe was a On the afternoon of New Year\u2019s Eve, brilliant criminal,\u201d Scala told me. Ruggerio and Dulac\u2019s troubled partner- ship ruptured for good. Ruggerio said he Moneypenny apologized profusely and caught Dulac on the sidewalk taking a case called the court for permission to pause the of Cristal Champagne from Le Chantilly. liquidation. \u201cWe opened at 5:30 like noth- Ruggerio said he punched Dulac in the ing happened,\u201d Ruggerio recalled. The face, causing the bottles to smash on the 100 VA N IT Y FA IR","sidewalk. \u201cI couldn\u2019t contain my rage,\u201d Rug- be in the streets, you gotta have a black in 1995. Cardin had lured Ruggerio back to gerio recalled. Dulac denies this, though a heart. When you turn that switch, there can Maxim\u2019s the following year and made him former Le Chantilly employee confirmed be no emotion. You have no pity. You gotta a co-owner. Ruggerio was planning to open parts of Ruggerio\u2019s account. Ruggerio said just do it.\u201d Pastis in Le Parker Meridien hotel with a the next day he called Dulac into a private dining room designed by architect David room at Le Chantilly and put a dollar bill on One way Ruggerio rationalized his law- Rockwell. He published cookbooks, taped the table. \u201cConsider yourself bought out,\u201d he lessness was that the hospitality industry was a PBS series, and was signed by Food Net- told Dulac. \u201cYou have an hour to clear out. not exactly a bastion of upstanding behav- work. \u201cAfter the credit cards, the press just When I come back, if you\u2019re still here, I\u2019ll kill ior. \u201cThere are more thieves and deviants categorized me as a moron because I fucked you.\u201d While Dulac denies this as well, former in the restaurant business than there are up my TV career. I had five restaurants, 650 employees recalled that Dulac didn\u2019t have a wiseguys in the street,\u201d Ruggerio said. He employees. And it was gone,\u201d he said. regular presence at the restaurant following also observed powerful New Yorkers act the conflict. appallingly, sometimes violently so. \u201cThey The more painful thing Ruggerio lost was judged me, but they were no better,\u201d he said. the respect of the gangsters that cooking Still, this wasn\u2019t the street, and elbowing Ruggerio recalled attending a meeting with had given him. Shortly after the credit card an unwanted partner aside took more than Pierre Cardin and Maxim\u2019s landlord, the late bust, Marino was released from prison and words. Ruggerio seethed as the partnership real estate heiress Leona Helmsley, during went to see Ruggerio at Le Chantilly. \u201cWe took its time to formally unwind. When which Helmsley called Cardin a \u201clittle fuck- sat in the back of the restaurant and he said another money matter arose between the in\u2019 French fag.\u201d He said La Caravelle owner to me, \u2018I gotta ask you a question. Don\u2019t lie two, something inside Ruggerio snapped. Robert Meyzen once put the world-famous to me. Why the credit cards? What the fuck \u201cWhen I lost it, I didn\u2019t get crazy. I got quiet cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard in a possessed you to do this shit? You had things and cold,\u201d he said. headlock during an argument over whether that none of us could have had.\u2019 I just sat Barnard should be seated despite arriving 25 there. There was nothing left to say,\u201d Rug- According to Ruggerio, he assembled a minutes late for his reservation. gerio said. crew from Brooklyn. One night in early 1995, they followed Dulac to the West Village and IN THE END, they got Al Capone on tax eva- After that, Ruggerio drifted. He co- pulled him into a van and sped off. \u201cAt first he sion. David Ruggerio got pinched for credit owned a strip club for a while. He ran a was indignant. He kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to card fraud. On Thursday afternoon, July 2, Jewish deli, a sushi bar, and a doughnut shop call the police!\u2019\u2009\u201d Ruggerio recalled. Rugge- 1998, Ruggerio was filming a cooking seg- on the Upper West Side until those closed by rio said he drove Dulac to a remote beach in ment at Macy\u2019s when he got the news police 2014. That same year, Ruggerio was arrested Breezy Point, Queens, where, earlier that barged into Le Chantilly with a search war- for allegedly forging a check during a real day, one of Ruggerio\u2019s guys had dug a hole in rant. He raced to the restaurant and found estate deal gone bad. (He said he pleaded the sand. \u201cIt was pitch-black when we drove officers in orange \u201cGambino Squad\u201d vests guilty to one count of possession of a forged out there. When we pulled in, the headlights removing the restaurant\u2019s financial records. bank instrument and avoided jail time.) On from the van shined on the hole. We dragged The Manhattan D.A. wanted to indict Rugge- the morning of June 21, 2014, he got a call Camille from the van and marched him over rio and two employees for stealing hundreds that his oldest son, Anthony, was dead. \u201cHe to the hole. By this time, he was on his knees, of thousands of dollars from Le Chantilly\u2019s did a lot of OxyContin and drank. He went begging for mercy.\u201d It was the middle of credit card processing company by inflating to sleep and never woke up,\u201d Ruggerio said. winter, but Ruggerio said he told Dulac to tips. \u201cI didn\u2019t do the credit card crime,\u201d Rug- Ruggerio knew his life in the Mob was over take off his shoes and socks, which Rugge- gerio told me. There was enough evidence, when Marino didn\u2019t attend his son\u2019s funer- rio threw into the Atlantic Ocean. Ruggerio though, that Ruggerio said famed Mob law- al. Ruggerio told me he stopped returning said he then pulled out a contract he had had yer Charles F. Carnesi told him to take a deal. Marino\u2019s calls. The Mob had cost him the a lawyer draw up for Dulac to sign. \u201cI kicked On March 11, 1999, Ruggerio pleaded guilty only two things that gave him joy: cooking him into the hole, we got in the van, and we to attempted grand larceny. and his children. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have wished left,\u201d Ruggerio said. Dulac denies this inci- my life on anyone. I hate to sleep. The nights dent ever took place. It was a ridiculously stupid thing to get are very long and filled with nightmares,\u201d caught for. Ruggerio didn\u2019t need the money. he told me recently. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a Ruggerio said he regrets what happened. Vintner Robert Mondavi named Ruggerio criminal. I want you to understand that. I \u201cI did things when I was pushed that I\u2019m one of the 13 best young chefs in America loved being a chef.\u201d n not proud of,\u201d he said. \u201cBut to really, truly VANITY FAIR IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT \u00a9 2022 COND\u00c9 NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. VANITY FAIR May 2022, VOLUME 64, NO. 5. VANITY FAIR (ISSN 0733\u20118899) is published monthly (except a combined issue in July\/August and December\/Holiday). PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Cond\u00e9 Nast, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Roger Lynch, Chief Executive Officer; Pamela Drucker Mann, Global Chief Revenue Officer & President, U.S. Revenue; Jackie Marks, Chief Financial Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885\u2011RT0001. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. 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THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY VANITY FAIR IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A SELF\u2011ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE. M AY 2 0 2 2 101","\u2009Proust Questionnaire JAMIE LEE CURTIS The actor and advocate on living well, letting go, and learning to play the drums What is your idea of perfect happiness? Knowing that each day I have lived wisely and loved well. What is your greatest fear? Not doing the above. What is your greatest extravagance? I am a replicant. I buy multiples of things I love. Bandolier phone cases. Anatomie clothes. Fleece Birkenstocks and fleece Merrell clogs. Armani lip balm. What is your favorite journey? Psychoanalysis. Which talent would you most like to have? I am currently taking drum lessons. Which historical figure that guy.\u201d And eight months later I did, 37 years ago. When do you most identify with? Eleanor Roosevelt. If you and where were you happiest? When I am in a creative flow. What is your current state of mind? To thine own self be true. could change one thing about your family, what would Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Lee from East of Eden. it be? I should have insisted on family dinners. What do If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? you regard as the lowest depth of misery? February 2, 1999, when I realized I would die from opiate addiction. What A Lagerfeld rose. Where would you like to live? The do you consider your greatest achievement? My sobriety. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, but place it Which living person do you most admire? Greta Thunberg. in the places I already live. What is your favorite occupation? What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Judgment. Divesting. What are your favorite names? Runi, Lulu, What is the trait you most deplore in others? Superiority. Ruby. What is your most marked characteristic? I hope kindness. What do you most value in your friends? Seeing What do you consider the most overrated virtue? and being seen. What is your most treasured possession? My Cathy Waterman child charm with Annie\u2019s and Ruby\u2019s Order\/neatness. What do you dislike most about your names engraved. Who are your favorite writers? John appearance? My ankles. Which living person do you most Steinbeck, James Clavell, P.D. Eastman (Go, Dog. Go!), despise? I try to remember that hurt people hurt people. Mark Nepo. Who are your heroes in real life? Bill and Lois Which words or phrases do you most overuse? \u201cFar out.\u201d Wilson, Debra Hill, Dr. Bob Silkworth. What is it that you What is your greatest regret? Squandered time. What most dislike? Liars. How would you like to die? ALIVE!!!! or who is the greatest love of your life? Christopher Guest. What is your motto? If not now, when? If not me, who? n Whose picture I saw in Rolling Stone in 1984 and I said to my friend, who was sitting next to me, \u201cI\u2019m going to marry 102 VA N I T Y FA IR ILLUSTRATION BY R I S KO M AY 2 0 2 2","","","",""]