Far-Right Influencers Are Hosting a $10K-Per-Person Matchmaking Weekend to Repopulate the Earth : inthenews

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Organizers behind a pronatalist conference with far-right ties in Austin, Texas, this weekend have set up matchmaking events for attendees that include the option of getting married onsite as part of their greater effort to repopulate the world, WIRED has learned.

According to its website, the sold-out Natal Conference, taking place March 28-29 at a hotel operated by the University of Texas at Austin, has "no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren." But the event, an earlier version of which was promoted by Elon Musk, features speakers like Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and Crémieux, an online pseudonym linked, according to The Guardian, to Jordan Lasker, who discusses falling birthrates and promotes eugenics.

Natal Conference organizer Kevin Dolan, a father of at least six, according to Politico, has previously stated that eugenics---the belief that white people are genetically superior---and the pronatalist movement are "very much aligned."

Publicly available details about the Natal Conference are scant, with the vague online conference agenda promising closed-door sessions to address collapsing birth rates.

However, an email obtained by WIRED promoting a preconference mixer held Thursday night reveals matchmaking may play a significant role at the conference and in the pronatalist movement more widely.

"This is a special email to NatalCon attendees who indicated they were highly interested in finding the missing puzzle piece for singles, matchmaking, marriage, and family formation," reads the email, sent by an event producer named Luke, who did not sign with his last name.

"We were stunned to receive many emails saying, 'NatalCon needs to be focusing on this, right now!' And we're here to serve you. This is coming from all sectors: singles, parents with dating-age children, grandparents, newlyweds that want to help their friends start families, and more," the email said.

Attendees are instructed to register to learn the exact venue (though it is listed elsewhere on the website), and registration was listed as costing $10,000 for the full weekend---an increase from earlier this year when the cost was 90 percent cheaper. (A Saturday-only ticket is $500.) Last year's VIP package was $1,000, according to the NatalCon website. After credit card details are handed over, organizers vet potential attendees, requiring them to submit their social media handles. The website says prospective attendees aren't charged unless they're approved.

NatalCon organizers, including Dolan, did not respond to messages from WIRED seeking comment.

Single registrants are directed to fill out a survey that asks their desired number of children (listing 1 to over 7 as options), "religious, spiritual, cultural, lifestyle" values, and whether they would be open to a "Q&A with a NatalCon speaker to introduce yourself to the room."

Speaking to Edward Dutton---who has been described as a "proponent of pseudo-scientific 'race science,'" by anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate---on a Jolly Heretic podcast in 2023, Dolan described his alma mater, Brigham Young University, as a "breeding program" for smart Mormons. He said his pronatalist events are a counter to the "perverse incentives in the dating app market."

In the email to NatalCon attendees, Luke noted the conference had set up multiple sessions throughout the conference to strategize on the issue of matchmaking.

The email concludes by noting that there will be "some ministers attending if anyone decides to take the leap at the conference!" Luke also instructed attendees to "come up with great ideas" regarding matchmaking, which will be passed on to him "for implementation."

Other conference guests include Indian Bronson, the pseudonymous founder of AI dating app Keeper, which aims to help people start a family, and influencers Simone and Malcolm Collins, who have four kids and say they plan to have up to 13.

The pronatalist movement, which views declining birth rates around the world as an existential threat, has seen a boom in recent years, propelled by famous and powerful tech elites, including Musk, who has 14 children. Tweeting about the 2023 Natal Conference, Musk said, "If birth rates continue to plummet, human civilization will end."

Even tech elites who have not explicitly associated themselves with the movement seem generally aligned with its aims: Sam Altman, for instance, has invested in multiple fertility startups and said he would like to have a family with "six or eight" children.

The movement gained even more momentum during the 2024 election, when comments surfaced of then vice presidential candidate JD Vance calling Democrats "childless cat ladies" around the time of his Senate run in 2021; he also previously said people with children "should have more power" than "people who don't have kids."

However, the pronatalist movement has been criticized as being racist and classist, with some startups catering to adherents by even offering to screen embryos used for in vitro fertilization for IQ.

Dolan told the Jolly Heretic podcast his pronatalist events weed out "stupid people."

"Some of the debates that I hear about natalism [are] like, 'We can't have natalism, we have too many stupid people.' But in my opinion the only people who are going to respond to any of our natalism conferences, natalism conversations, are going to be on the higher end of the distribution," he said.

Despite criticism of the conference, University of Texas at Austin spokesperson Mike Rosen told WIRED the school rents out its spaces indiscriminately. "The AT&T Hotel & Conference Center leases space to non-University groups for their events without regard to their viewpoint consistent with the First Amendment," Rosen said.

The venue also hosted an Ayn Rand conference in February.