Why do millions of Americans support a system that is making them poorer, sicker, and lesssecure every day? If modern capitalism routinely exploits working people, then why do so manyflock to its most reactionary defenders in personalities like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, andAndrew Tate? Or, as the philosopher Baruch Spinoza asked, why do we fight for slavery as if itwere our salvation? Confidence Men: The Duping of the American Mind provides a compellinganswer to those questions.Mere journalistic accounts of these hucksters have pointed out their many lies and inaccuracies,their personal failings and rank hypocrisy. Confidence Men does something different. Instead oftreating these sensational figures as individual bad actors, it identifies a common philosophythat animates them all. Each of them are, in their own ways, irrationalists – believing in thepower of a strong will to overcome ordinary reality (and ordinary people). Objective facts,nature, and even “human nature” melt away before the creative genius or the mystical hero.Today’s “confidence men” are the cheerleaders of hierarchy and domination, where thesupreme value is one of unhinged belief in oneself. As against reactionary forms of self-help,Confidence Men proposes a rationalist alternative – neither wishing our problems away, nor“manifesting” success – but instead, understanding the world so that we can change it for thebetter.
