To Andrew Klavan, the Darkness Over America is Beginning to Lift

Andrew Klavan is an author, screenwriter, and host of The Andrew Klavan Show on The Daily Wire. He authors a Substack called The New Jerusalem and is releasing a new book titled The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, which can be preordered here.

This interview was edited for clarity.

Ari: When I think about AI, it feels very revolutionary. It's a big force. And conservatives are usually pushing back against this type of thing. A lot of people are concerned, but I sensed in the way you talk about it, there's a little bit of optimism, right?

Could you expand on what we should and shouldn’t be optimistic about in terms of AI and the conservative movement?

Andrew: Yeah. In terms of the things I'm worried about, it's pretty easy. I'm worried about two things. One is that six months ago, Elon Musk was telling us AI was the most dangerous thing that had ever happened, and six months later, he's telling us, "Full speed ahead."

And I'm wondering what happened in those six months because I can't tell that there's any difference between then and now. So that's a little suspicious.

And look, the problem is never any machine itself — it's the choices people make. The thing that worries me is that the ease of AI could end up supplanting some of the spiritual depth we need.

If you turn to AI for your poetry, if you turn to AI for stories, you're going to get the kind of rote, formulaic content we're already getting out of Hollywood. So when Hollywood screenwriters tell me they're worried about being replaced by AI, my feeling is: you probably should be replaced by AI if you can't produce anything better than Spider-Man 12.

That said, if we make the right choices, there's no reason AI can't be used for good. For instance, I used AI the other day — Elon Musk’s new Grok model — and it was really effective at replacing Google. Google used to be a great search tool, but now it’s become useless because of political bias.

I was looking for an obscure fact from about 30 years ago that reflected poorly on Democrats — not in a major way, just a minor thing — and it simply did not exist on Google. I went through every single page they offered me, and nothing. Grok had it in 35 seconds, with links so I could verify the accuracy.

So yeah, AI is a machine. The problem is always going to be how we use it. The internet is an amazing tool, but if you spend your time on it watching pornography, you’ll destroy your soul. It’s about choice. If you get addicted to it, if you let it control your life, if you allow its biases to override facts, that’s on you.

Of course, there are people who abuse these tools — TikTok, for example, is used to peddle garbage to children. It’s up to us to shut that stuff down.

Ari: I'm curious about your thoughts on the spirituality component of automation. I was in Phoenix recently, and they have these automated cabs everywhere. You can still get an Uber with a human driver, or you can hop into a Waymo and it just drives itself.

When I was in an Uber, I kept thinking: If a robot can do this, is it really good that a human is still doing it? It feels like a job that can be easily automated.

How should we think about that? Should we welcome automation as a way to free people up for more meaningful, spiritual work? Or is there value in maintaining these jobs, as many on the right argue?

Andrew: I don’t think you can ever say across the board that automation is bad. Some jobs will naturally be done better by machines.

Look at the Industrial Revolution. It changed everything. It decimated families, stripped women of their cottage industries, and ultimately helped ignite feminism. If you look at the Bible’s description of a virtuous woman, she’s not just a homemaker — she’s an economic force. She plants orchards, trades goods, makes clothing.

Before industrialization, women were called the "distaff" because that was the tool used to spin thread — an essential part of the economy. The Industrial Revolution stripped them of that role and, in doing so, created a vacuum that feminism filled.

Of course, feminism then got hijacked by leftists and radicals, which, I believe, made women’s lives immeasurably worse. But that doesn’t mean the initial problem wasn’t real.

Again, it comes down to the choices we make. People on the right sometimes resist regulation outright, but everything in life is regulated. You and I can have an argument, but I can’t start strangling you because I disagree — that’s a regulation.

So when conservatives were being censored on social media, I was in favor of regulation. You cannot silence half the country — it’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not American.

We shouldn’t be afraid to humanize technology, whether through laws or thoughtful discussion. But we also need to be careful. When someone offers you an easy answer, always ask: What’s the real question? And does this answer actually solve it?

Ari: Shifting gears — one of the things that makes you unique is your deep understanding of culture. You’ve worked in Hollywood, you’re a writer, and I think storytelling is one of the most impressive art forms.

Right now, everyone is talking about a “vibe shift.” They’re saying that young people, after listening to Joe Rogan, are now shifting to the right. Do you think this shift is real and permanent? And on a related note, is Hollywood dead? Is the political world taking over?

Andrew: Oh, there’s definitely a vibe shift. I knew it the moment Trump won — not just because he won, but because new media triumphed over old media.

The legacy press spent years relentlessly attacking him. He was a felon, a Nazi, everything he did was a crisis. If he said “good morning,” the media would spin it as a disaster because “for some people, it’s not so good.”

It was comically corrupt.

New media doesn’t have the reporting power of The New York Times, but what we could do was expose the bias — fast. We did it in real time, again and again, until the old media was completely discredited. That was the shift. We pulled their pants down, showed everyone their lying backsides, and people woke up.

No one ever actually believed a man could become a woman. But in our corrupt culture, people were pressured into pretending they did, afraid they’d lose their jobs if they didn’t comply. That illusion is breaking.

And I think this shift is long-term. Maybe not “permanent,” but significant. Because it’s happening alongside something else: the slow death of atheism.

For decades, we were told we lived in a purely mechanical universe — no need for God, no higher purpose. But Newtonian physics turned out to be incomplete. The deeper we look into reality, the more we see that consciousness and reality interact at a fundamental level.

You can’t have reality without consciousness.

Which raises the question: Where did reality come from?

So if these two things happen simultaneously — the pushback against censorship and a renewed interest in faith — I think we’re in for a major, long-lasting cultural shift.

Ari: Personally, I became more religious about three years ago as I got deeper into politics.

The more I saw these foundational aspects of society breaking down, the more I realized secularism was causing it. A lot of my friends had the same experience. They saw the wokeness on campus and thought, If I don’t find deeper meaning, this is my future — and my kids’ future.

A lot of people just said: This is not right.

Andrew: Exactly. If there's no God, then all of this — gender ideology, moral relativism — it all makes sense. Without God, the left wins every argument.

That’s why this shift is happening. People are waking up. And that’s why I think it’s here to stay.

Ari: Yeah, I realized that when I first got to college. It was orientation day, and they handed us name cards and asked me to put my pronouns. And I was like, what is a pronoun?

This was about nine years ago. From that moment, I knew something was up. But I didn’t really start speaking out until I left college because it was so bad — you couldn’t say anything.

Last question for you. You brought up new media versus old media. Right now, we just had the news that Bezos is trying to reshape The Washington Post opinion section, shifting toward free markets and individual liberty.

This follows other moves — the LA Times is hiring conservatives, CNN is putting conservatives on air. Do you think this will actually make a difference? Or is this just performative, something they’re doing for show now that Trump is back in the picture?

Andrew: No, I think this is real.

That letter Bezos wrote was impressive. Just saying, I’m an American, and I’m proud of it — you don’t come back from that. Once you say something like that publicly, it signals a real shift.

Look, these guys are insanely rich, but even they can be pressured by the government. The Biden administration and the left had a stranglehold on the culture, and I think these tech moguls were afraid. But that fear is breaking.

I actually think Mark Zuckerberg’s recent shift — saying he regrets suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, for example — is more reflective of who he really is. Back during the censorship era, he was just doing what he had to do to stay in good standing with the left.

Same with Bezos. He built Amazon, which I’d argue is one of the greatest websites in existence. Someone who builds something like that obviously believes in free exchange, commerce, and ideas. So why would a guy like him suddenly say, Yeah, I support socialism? It never really made sense.

Ari: And he’s of Cuban descent.

Andrew: Right. So all of this has felt very dreamlike.

The darkest part of these last few years for me was talking to rational, intelligent people and realizing they were completely detached from reality.

I would say to them: Mutilating a child because a radical professor has a gender theory — that’s an atrocity. That’s a war crime. That’s Nazi-level evil.

And instead of agreeing, people would go into this fugue state — eyes glazed over, reciting the talking points. And I realized: Oh, this is how it happens. This is how civilizations collapse.

But reality has a voice, too. And I think it’s spoken up.

All the chaos we’re seeing today is shaking some people, but the fundamentals aren’t changing. This woke stuff is not coming back anytime soon. If Europe isn’t too far gone — if it hasn’t already been taken over by mass migration — I think even they will start to reverse course.

Ari: I love the optimism.