What’s up with incredibly successful geniuses having embarassing & confusing public meltdowns? What’s up with them getting into naziism in particular?
Does this refer to anyone other than Elon?
But maybe the real question intended, is why any part of the tech world would side with Trumpian populism? You could start by noting that every modern authoritarian state (that has at least an industrial level of technology) has had a technical and managerial elite who support the regime. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Japan all had industrial enterprises, and the people who ran them participated in the ruling ideology. So did those in the British empire and the American republic.
Our current era is one in which an American liberal world order, with free trade and democracy as universal norms, is splintering back into one of multiple great powers and civilizational regions. Liberalism no longer had the will and the power to govern the world, the power vacuum was filled by nationalist strongmen overseas, and now in America too, one has stepped into the gap left by the weak late-liberal leadership, and is creating a new regime governed by different principles (balanced trade instead of free trade, spheres of influence rather than universal democracy, etc).
Trump and Musk are the two pillars of this new American order, and represent different parts of a coalition. Trump is the figurehead of a populist movement, Musk is foremost among the tech oligarchs. Trump is destroying old structures of authority and creating new ones around himself, Musk and his peers are reorganizing the entire economy around the technologies of the “fourth industrial revolution” (as they call it in Davos).
That’s the big picture according to me. Now, you talk about “public meltdowns” and “getting into naziism”. Again I’ll assume that this is referring to Elon Musk (I can’t think of anyone else). The only “meltdowns” I see from Musk are tweets or soundbites that are defensive or accusatory, and achieve 15 minutes of fame. None of it seems very meaningful to me. He feuds with someone, he makes a political statement, his fans and his haters take what they want, and none of it changes anything about the larger transformations occurring. It may be odd to see a near-trillionaire with a social media profile more like a bad-boy celebrity who can’t stay out of trouble, but it’s not necessarily an unsustainable persona.
As for “getting into naziism”, let’s try to say something about what his politics or ideology really are. Noah Smith just wrote an essay on “Understanding America’s New Right” which might be helpful. What does Elon actually say about his political agenda? First it was defeating the “woke mind virus”, then it was meddling in European politics, now it’s about DOGE and the combative politics of Trump 2.0.
I interpret all of these as episodes in the power struggle whereby a new American nationalism is displacing the remnants of the cosmopolitan globalism of the previous regime. The new America is still pretty cosmopolitan, but it does emphasize its European and Christian origins, rather than repressing them in favor of a secular progressivism that is intended to embrace the entire world.
In all this, there are echoes of the fascist opposition to communism in the 20th century, but in a farcical and comparatively peaceful form. Communism was a utopian secular movement that replaced capitalism and nationalism with a new kind of one-party dictatorship that could take root in any industrialized society. Fascism was a nationalist and traditionalist imitation of this political form, in which ethnicity rather than class was the decisive identity. They fought a war in which tens of millions died.
MAGA versus Woke, by comparison, is a culture war of salesmen versus hippies. Serious issues of war and peace, law and order, humanitarianism and national survival are interwoven with this struggle, because this is real life, but this has been a meme war more than anything, in which fascism and communism are just historical props.
I was thinking Kanye as well. Hence being more interested in the general pattern. really wasn’t intending to subtweet one person in particular—I have some sense of the particular dynamics there, though your comment is illuminating. :)
Does this refer to anyone other than Elon?
But maybe the real question intended, is why any part of the tech world would side with Trumpian populism? You could start by noting that every modern authoritarian state (that has at least an industrial level of technology) has had a technical and managerial elite who support the regime. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Japan all had industrial enterprises, and the people who ran them participated in the ruling ideology. So did those in the British empire and the American republic.
Our current era is one in which an American liberal world order, with free trade and democracy as universal norms, is splintering back into one of multiple great powers and civilizational regions. Liberalism no longer had the will and the power to govern the world, the power vacuum was filled by nationalist strongmen overseas, and now in America too, one has stepped into the gap left by the weak late-liberal leadership, and is creating a new regime governed by different principles (balanced trade instead of free trade, spheres of influence rather than universal democracy, etc).
Trump and Musk are the two pillars of this new American order, and represent different parts of a coalition. Trump is the figurehead of a populist movement, Musk is foremost among the tech oligarchs. Trump is destroying old structures of authority and creating new ones around himself, Musk and his peers are reorganizing the entire economy around the technologies of the “fourth industrial revolution” (as they call it in Davos).
That’s the big picture according to me. Now, you talk about “public meltdowns” and “getting into naziism”. Again I’ll assume that this is referring to Elon Musk (I can’t think of anyone else). The only “meltdowns” I see from Musk are tweets or soundbites that are defensive or accusatory, and achieve 15 minutes of fame. None of it seems very meaningful to me. He feuds with someone, he makes a political statement, his fans and his haters take what they want, and none of it changes anything about the larger transformations occurring. It may be odd to see a near-trillionaire with a social media profile more like a bad-boy celebrity who can’t stay out of trouble, but it’s not necessarily an unsustainable persona.
As for “getting into naziism”, let’s try to say something about what his politics or ideology really are. Noah Smith just wrote an essay on “Understanding America’s New Right” which might be helpful. What does Elon actually say about his political agenda? First it was defeating the “woke mind virus”, then it was meddling in European politics, now it’s about DOGE and the combative politics of Trump 2.0.
I interpret all of these as episodes in the power struggle whereby a new American nationalism is displacing the remnants of the cosmopolitan globalism of the previous regime. The new America is still pretty cosmopolitan, but it does emphasize its European and Christian origins, rather than repressing them in favor of a secular progressivism that is intended to embrace the entire world.
In all this, there are echoes of the fascist opposition to communism in the 20th century, but in a farcical and comparatively peaceful form. Communism was a utopian secular movement that replaced capitalism and nationalism with a new kind of one-party dictatorship that could take root in any industrialized society. Fascism was a nationalist and traditionalist imitation of this political form, in which ethnicity rather than class was the decisive identity. They fought a war in which tens of millions died.
MAGA versus Woke, by comparison, is a culture war of salesmen versus hippies. Serious issues of war and peace, law and order, humanitarianism and national survival are interwoven with this struggle, because this is real life, but this has been a meme war more than anything, in which fascism and communism are just historical props.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I was thinking Kanye as well. Hence being more interested in the general pattern. really wasn’t intending to subtweet one person in particular—I have some sense of the particular dynamics there, though your comment is illuminating. :)