(@Boss Man pinging because late reply)

Razorfist has a series of sourced videos on Red Hollywood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOtinTlx7yo
Well, to be frank, I find the style of this particular "youtube personality" quite off-putting so I'll pass this one. (His channel just seems like an echo-chamber – and that's not a surprise considering his quite... vocal way of mocking whatever group he has a distaste for at the moment)
Also, whilst it is indeed true that there were communist spies inside the US government and I wouldn't be surprised of their existence in Hollywood, I'm quite positive McCarthy didn't know even a fraction of them and the bulk of the people he accused were innocent. Hence McCarthy was one of the cleanest models of demagoguery up to recent memory. Feel free to prove me wrong.

You haven't pointed out bad variables you basically missed the point
How come? I think his idea of "the Cathedral" requires some global scale co-operation, don't you think so? If that is true, then his whole idea "is busted" as he clearly lacks knowledge of the political systems of the world and his explanations are riddled with false information.
more attempted character assissination
You are throwing the word "alt-right" around like this is 2016, simply character assassination
Apparently if you wish to point out that there are a group of people, loosely connected but who share similar ideologies this is somehow makes you a demagogue, interesting...
How is that "attempted character assasination"? You stated that he wasn't popular, I stated otherwise (that he was popular amongst Alt-Right groups.) I didn't say anything about the qualities of the mentioned Alt-Right groups – though I do, of course, agree with very few ideas of Alt-Right and think that they're almost outright dangerous. But that isn't the point. I didn't even say that our "Moldbug" Yarvin belongs to Alt-Right himself, I just stated that he's popular in those circles.
His demagoguery I deduced from completely different areas: his actual arguments.
Again even in systems where you don't have a two party system you generally have a consensus on most issues among the majority parties which they won't stray from, it is true that it appears many countries have reached their breaking points with regards to immigration, but how come this was not addressed in the 70's (in the US anyway). Generally the overton window is constantly moving to "the left" in the UK the "conservative" party legalized gay marriage, not a thing conservative about that. They are simply labour party lite
Well, even in systems with multiple parties you generally have a consensus amongst the majority parties that killing humans is morally wrong. So what? What is so strange about social development? What is so strange about legalizing gay marriage? Do conservatives have to uphold every single value since the 18th century? According to this poll https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/poll-gay-marriage the majority of conservative voters supported gay marriage at the time of the legalization (46% + 18% = 64%), so it would've even been against the values of democracy not to legalize it.

Your claim that the way we live in <current year> is completely normal is total bonkers 
Well, that is one of the most debatable statements of this whole argument :smile:
I am also not claiming that everyone is brainwashed
I'm saying that there is a group of "managerial elites" like Neil Ferguson in the UK for example. It is clear that many people have not been brainwashed (except students) as we saw the huge opposition to immigration and a rejection of the managerial elites with the Brexit vote in the UK and Trump in the USA.
I was referring to the brainwashing of scientists in particular, as I have not even heard of this particular idea and never heard of any research supporting it. However, it seems that the idea is indeed backed by some prominent philosphers (you mentioned James Burnham). I think that you'd be better off quoting actual primary sources (such as Burnham here), I don't particularly like shady Youtube-videos :smile: (As you've probably realized already)
This is all political theory that is taught in universities, it's a variation of elite theory out of the italian political realists, the same ones that Althusser got his inspiration from. If he wants a good book on the subject he could start with "The Machiavellians" by James Burnham. The video (Academic Agents vid on managerial elites) in question simply updates the theory to fit in line with modern times and does it quite well likewise the Cathedral by Moldbug is a combination of Elite theory and Gramsci's Base/Superstructure with a bit of input from Chomsky.
Huh, I know almost nothing about the political theory taught in universities (although I do of course know of "elite theory", just not by name), and Chomsky I know only by his work in the field of linguistics. However, I found some online articles to compensate for my lack of knowledge: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2002/9/the-power-of-james-burnham, https://newrepublic.com/article/138250/nostalgia-flawed-thinkers-wont-solve-crisis-conservative-intellectual, and most importantly https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/02/james-burnhams-managerial-elite/ (I will be basing most of my argumentation on that article) And yes, those are indeed just secondary sources, but I sadly do not have time to read whole books!
Anyway, as stated in the four articles (even in the one most supportitive of Burnham), the realization of his political visions actually never saw the light of the day. The managerial elite simply does not exist. It is true, that the group of people he describes as "the managers" may indeed exist, but the rest of his theory falls quite short. For example, a significant portion of companies are still led by their "bourgeois" owners (about 7% of all companies with market capitalizations of >$500 mil. and 30% of all companies that have listed IPOs globally in the last 5 years, according to Bloomberg). I'd say that the absolute largest tech companies are also mostly led by their founders (for example Amazon, Facebook, Google/Alphabet till Dec. 2019, Microsoft [Bill Gates is a "technical advisor", not the CEO though]). Therefore, the "transfer of property" Burnham envisioned has just simply not happened in the scale he thought. That's not to say that it hasn't happened at all – it has. But... Honestly, who says that managers didn't control most of the companies even before 1940?
Nonetheless, I think there are other, way more important areas where his ideas fail: firstly, the idea that the previous entrepreneurial "bourgeois" owners were more moral because... that way they'd be more productive(?!?) whereas the ethic of managers is one of "consumerism" and "hedonism" is laughable at best. That just makes no sense. The article of Amercan Affairs Journal states:
Increasing consumerist appetites makes the managers more necessary and, therefore, more powerful.
How on earth does that not apply to the bourgeois owners too? There's simply no way the above argument doesn't apply to both the "entrepreneurial bourgeois elite" and the "managerial elite" – both gain more power by increasing consumerist appetite. In general, the whole ideology fails because it seems to believe that bourgeoisie have some sort of "self-imposed ideological limitations" – as if they'd adhere to them if they restricted their ability to turn profit!
And while it's true, that the "managerial elite" base their whole existence in the company on the increase of consumerist appetite (as a class, definitely no. The shareholders will always need managers, no matter the increase in consumption), it's also true that what's at stake at the highest levels of power is much greater for the "entrepreneurial bourgeois elite": the "entrepreneurial bourgeoisie" will potentially have enough pure money to influence even the government, whereas the benefit to the "managerial elite" is miniscule (i.e. the fact that they get to keep their job).
The same article states:
In classical liberalism, the legitimacy of the government is based upon its ability to secure the rights of individuals under the social contract, most especially their right to acquire property—which is both the right to labor or “produce” freely, and to enjoy the fruits of their labor or to consume freely. The legitimacy of managerial society, by contrast, rests solely upon the managers’ ability to provide for the “right” to increasing consumption—to ensure “freedom from want.”
Forgive me, for I do now know much of anything about economics, but... I just don't understand what this is based on. I don't understand this sentence. How can a society be "legitimate"?
The selection of the managerial elite itself is similarly unmoored from either democratic or traditional political processes. The managers themselves, “through the possession of privilege, power, and command of educational facilities, will be able to control, within limits, the personnel of the managerial recruits.” As a result, the managerial elite becomes increasingly self-selecting, self-perpetuating, and self-referential.
Again, the article (and Burnham) fails to distinguish this from the "bourgeoisie" – in my opinion, the same applies to both of the "elite classes" (bourgeoisie can "select" the people amongst them though coercion. En plus, the selection of the "managerial elite" will, or at least is currently, be limited by the law. Nepotism is illegal.)
The separation of political power from the political community naturally follows from this separation of ownership and control. Increasingly, power is shifted away from individuals elected to represent the political community toward unelected officials qualified to hold the positions responsible for administering the government—that is, providing for consumption. Like all managers, they derive their power from the administrative expertise and credentials that qualify them for office rather than from democratic legitimacy. They are accountable, that is, not to the political community but to the other managers that define their qualifications.
This is just plain false. Unless the democratic system is completely displaced, the elected representatives will have the absolute power. The managers in corporations and the assistants of politicians are simply not the same, the selection process is not even nearly similar, they do not belong to the same social class, and they, therefore, will not work in each other's benefits.
As the managers consolidate their power, commercial activity transitions away from a competitive market of profit-making firms toward a cartelized economy of large corporations operating under state regulation and coordination, to which the principles of classical economics often do not apply.
Again, this will just simply not happen. Absolutely nobody in modern politics thinks that monopolies or cartles are a good thing. (well, at least over here – I doubt it's that dissimilar over there either)
Because the managers’ power is derived not from their individual ownership of property, guaranteed by political rights, but rather from their positions in the bureaucracy that controls economic activity, the managers are not compelled to limit the power of those positions in order to preserve the liberties of property owners.
This is way too black-and-white. Just because the managers do not directly own the property they are operating, that doesn't mean that they can't directly own other property. There's no reason for managers to lobby against individual ownership, because unless they're completely homeless, propertyless and friendless, that'd play against them too.
I will not adress the statements made about "Protestant" and "Puritan work ethic" because I don't know enough about those topics and can thus neither confirm or refute them. I do still think they're a tad too westcentric, though. And while I do agree that "the cultural, if not moral, justification of capitalism has become is hedonism", I don't think that's because of a transition from individualistic "entrepreneurial bourgeois" society to "mass society" – that property of capitalism has simply existed from the beginning. It has only strengthened during the last few centuries, along with the strengthening of capitalism itself.
All in all, I think that the ideas of Burnham are undeniable intriguing – and contain a suprisingly large bit of truth in them as well. The transition of the economy from a more bourgoisie-led one to a managerial one truly is something I haven't thought of before, and thus the analyzing of his points via these articles has indeed been fruitful :slight_smile: However, my points still stand: I think his ideas fail to point out the negative consequences of this transition. I don't think there's much reason to believe that the previous bourgeoisie were any more moral than the "managers" that replaced them – I'd say they were even less moral. Also, I think the ideology is wrong in grouping all even remotely "manager-like" people under his umbrella class. Assistants to politicians are not the same as the CEOs of corporations. (This can be seen in all his points' concerning political control of the "managerial class" failing.) It's also very unclear what even constitues a "manager": only the CEOs? Every single manager, even to the lowest of levels? The larger the umbrella class is, the harder the ideology becomes to justify, but the smaller it is, the less dissimilar it is to the previous "bourgeois" clas. En plus, if one wanted to be fatalistic, it's pretty clear that a transition back to the previous entrepreneurial economy is virtually impossible. Simply put, the managerial corporation is more efficient and capable.

Also, in my opinion, the "managerial class" or the "managerial revolution" aren't really that objective as terms. I think the "managerial economy" is simply an enhancement of more traditional forms of capitalism. It's nothing new, really – the so called "managers" are only natural to appear when corporations turn larger. This applies to all human institutions: decentralization of control inherently makes operation more effective.
I think you'd do yourself a favour by reading some of the chapters towards the end of the American Affairs Journal's analysis. (Don't worry, it's a conservative journal) They point out the shortcomings of the modern conservative movement: Reaganism has only boosted the "managerial classes" influence.
The contradiction of contemporary conservatism is that it is an attempt to restore the culture and politics of bourgeois capitalism while accelerating the economy of managerialism. Because of its failure to recognize this contradiction, “much of conservative doctrine is, if not quite bankrupt, more and more obviously obsolescent,” as Burnham wrote in 1972.
All of the points mentioned apply strictly to "anglosphere" or American politics, though. The conservatives (and liberals) in other parts of Europe (and in Finland) seem to be much less illusioned.
No more from me as I don't like walls of text. We can agree to disagree
How come? Walls of texts are what you'll have to utilise if you wish for any remotely serious conversation about politics, philosophy etc. At least I've learnt quite a lot by writing all this, you should try it too :D

I'd like to see how you throw universities into the mix.