CPAC and ProNatalism

Yes, they're all weirdos and the weirdos are in power

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It’s CPAC week. Generally, CPAC is when the MAGA Right lets their freak flag fly. This year has been no exception. Highlights so far include MAGA OG Steve Bannon ending his speech by copying Elon Musk with his own Nazi salute. While American media hemmed and hawed once again over whether to call a literal Nazi salute a Nazi salute, Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, canceled his planned appearance over it.

Meanwhile, Bannon’s frenemy Elon Musk (Bannon’s current pet name for Musk is ‘parasitic illegal immigrant’) wielded a chainsaw on stage and rambled incoherently in a way that made half the internet ponder what substance he might be high on.

While Musk was on stage, the pop singer Grimes, mother of three of his children, took to Twitter begging Musk to contact her about one of their children’s “medical crisis.” She tweeted, "Plz respond about our child's medical crisis. I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention." And "If you don't want to talk to me, can you please designate or hire someone who can so that we can move forward on solving this."

Grimes’ pleas felt similar to those of Ashley St. Clair, a far-right personality who recently revealed that she and Elon Musk had a baby together. St. Clair tweeted to Musk that she’d “been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded.” Apparently, if you have a child with Elon Musk, the only way to get his attention is to post everyone’s business all over the platform he owns and hope to get enough of his fanboys to notice so he’ll be forced to respond.

Musk is a pronatalist, an ideology born out of Silicon Valley that believes creating more children (and more children with superior genes that the tech bros believe they possess) is a societal imperative due to a global decline in fertility rates. A recent Washington Post profile of a pronatalist couple offers insight into the insanity that is this movement and the people who subscribe to it. The wife, Simone Collins, who is preparing for her 6th pregnancy (using IVF and genetic selection), declares, “I’m happy to die in labor” for the cause.

Collins and her husband believe encouraging people to have more babies requires a massive cultural shift, and they have fashioned themselves as the poster family for this shift. It seems lost on both of them how weird they come off and how they are likely harming their cause rather than helping.

Which brings me back to CPAC and what a weird event it’s become in the age of Trump. Where the Elon Musk wing and the Bannon wing mingle with the Evangelical base. The Evangelicals have made a deal with three devils (Trump, Bannon, Musk) and twist themselves into rhetorical knots to make their alliance make sense. But, of course, it does. At the end of the day, all of these movements seek power control and hate women who they view as mere incubators. Simone Collins declaring that she would happily die in labor for the cause fits right into what Evangelicals expect from women. The details might be different, but the underlying misogyny is the same.

News coverage of CPAC tends to treat it as a freak show, a collection of oddities and curiosities. But these folks are the people in power. Yes, their beliefs are weird. But what matters is that collectively, the MAGA coalition seeks to force the rest of us to exist in a society created by their bizarre fetishes and ideologies. This movement has fantasized about destroying government and civil society to rebuild the world in their image. CPAC and Musk’s constant family drama is the best illustration of what they seek to build once their destruction is complete.