The gravitational pull of ordinary social mores seems weakened up here. After dinner the next evening, I ask the 40-year-old Alex Soros in the tea salon what he – someone Trump loves to hate, the son of investor George Soros, whose life's work has been the global strengthening of democratic, progressive institutions – makes of the fact that an anti-democrat like Curtis Yarvin has been invited. "He was actually very nice," says Soros. He sat with him yesterday, he says, and they talked about The New Yorker, specifically about the profile of Yarvin from a few months ago, which both of them had found quite good. In that piece, Yarvin is described as "one of America’s most illiberal thinkers." Which may well be accurate. The 52-year-old software developer has, in recent years, built a remarkable career as an ominous media figure, declared democracy a failure and proposed in its place a CEO-led monarchy. JD Vance has cited him. Peter Thiel has promoted him.
When I tell Soros that Yarvin, before coming to Elmau, spoke before far-right Identitarians in Vienna, he shrugs. He doesn't know Yarvin well, he says. "People can change, evolve. His interactions here might change his views," he says. Change? I think about the fact that Yarvin tweeted at 5 a.m. this morning, from this very hotel: "Destroy everything that exists." What about his friends, I ask Soros, won't he be criticized by his own camp, which fights against everything Yarvin stands for? "Good, good, good!" Soros exclaims enthusiastically. "People who are certain of their views are the most dangerous." The fireplace crackles; string music plays in the background. The Elmau experiment in pluralism is actually succeeding surprisingly well. Some of the debates hum with the intellectual tension of opposing views.
