Ali Breland, a writer for the progressive magazine Mother Jones, has published an investigative piece into a startup with connections to the far-right. This startup was funded in part by Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research. I think this is a significant case-study of EAs doing harm (even indavertently) and should be used by the Effective Altruist community to identify other similar but yet-unidentified harmful support for far-right causes, and to exercise greater care about where it donates money to.

The key points Breland raises are that:

  • Former employees of Praxis Society allege its CEO is "interested in fascist authors and occultism and has touted a book that argues Black people are intellectually inferior to whites"
  • The startup's key product is a free-market Mediterranean city-state designed to appeal to anarcho-capitalists
  • Alameda Research invested alongside other cryptocurrency investors in Series A round funding, totalling $15 million. Other investors include Emergent Ventures, a Thiel-backed fund led by economist Tyler Cowen. EV is known to cofund the Charter Cities Institute which has similar stated aims.

 

A spate of other recent perceived connections between Effective Altruism and the far-right have been published in various outlets:

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