Out with the old Bohemian Grove, in with the new.





The Wagon DAO
A Network Node in the Mountain West



Remote Wyoming vacation lodge emerges as haven for US ‘dissident’ right
Wagon Box Inn, founded by Paul McNiel, attracts figures with ambitions to push politics and culture rightwards

The current version of a document explaining the [Wagon Box] DAO aligns the project with the network state movement, claiming that “the grand project of liberalism is crumbling, and that in its wake people are looking for new avenues of allegiance and interdependence”.

The document continues “Balaji Srinivasan, among others, has identified this shift and suggested a process for uniting modern technologies with ancient human trends of association to create network states”, providing a link to Srinivasan’s self-published 2022 book of the same name.

According to founding documents on its website, Wagon Box is run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a term for organizations managed in part via decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts.

A 2021 Wyoming law allows DAOs to incorporate in the state, despite their often anonymous ownership structure. The sparsely populated state is notorious for a “cowboy cocktail” of loose financial regulations and opaque company ownership.

The Guardian contacted the Wagon Box founder and owner Paul McNiel for comment. He did not respond directly but instead posted a screenshot of the request to X appended with commentary.

Paul McNiel @pbdmcniel

Dear @awinston

Thank you for your email (below). Of course its intent was not in good faith nor was it evidence of genuine curiosity, but it did cause me to reflect on the scope of @thewagonbox project and the growing constellation of characters around it. And I had to think about you, and Mr. Wilson, and how one should respond to the sort of witch hunts for political wrong-think that have become your cottage industry (one that I'm afraid is dying.)

To your first point: an interesting aspect of the Wagon Box, and particularly our Doomer Optimism events, is the breadth of the politics represented. Seneca Scott is  a ‘90s democrat who wants a safe community for his family and goats. James Pogue, like me (and Jesus), has anarchist sensibilities, cares about the habitat for the trout he fishes and is leery of the global hegemonic machine. Ashley Fitzgerald is a suburban mom who likes regenerative agriculture and healthy neighborhoods. The event has largely focused on a suspicion of “The Machine” and ways to live humanely and harmoniously with the natural world. The idea that it is some hotbed of “hard/far right” ideology, or that we are promoting “corporate governance” is laughable.

To the question of the “ties” I have to Ryan Payne, or Jonathan Keeperman, or D. C. Miller, or any other person you may see as a “smoking gun” evidence of nefarious ideology, I have a few comments. First of all, you have left out other characters who have graced the Wagon Box, some of whom you might even consider even worse! And of course there are others hard to place politically, like Walter Kirn, Patrick Deneen, Paul Kingsnorth, or Max Foley. All these characters differ quite widely, have deep disagreements, but all have something in common: I find them interesting and care about what they have to say, and they see enough in me to take me up on my invitation.

You ever get to talking to someone and you see their eyes glaze over? They do not care what you have to say, they are not listening. It’s no fun. It is death. What’s the point? Good faith curiosity is the lifeblood of any relationship, of any conversation, of journalism, and of self governance. There are swaths of folks who have had good faith curiosity driven from them, and it has been done largely by people like you, who paint in caricatures and come to stories with an agenda, who live on fear and suspicion. You send a guy like me some sort of hostage note instead of an invitation to a real conversation. It’s sad.

At the root of the Wagon Box project is my personal curiosity in people, and at the root of that is a conviction that we will all be together eventually at a large table in a conversation that will never end. Our enemy is no person, but the stale impulse of death that preys on love, on connection, on community. It thrives in the Machine of mass delusion of which, regrettably, The Guardian is a mouthpiece. It has forced you to have a narrower view of people, a static view, and one that lacks curiosity. But I really do care about you, as you too are on a journey and I’d love to hear about it. Let’s grab coffee and talk sometime. No deadline.