CONTROL, DELETE

Technofascists are moving fast to break democracy.

- By Tim Murphy

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency was many things in the first months of the second Trump administration. It was a chain saw, a wood chipper, and "a way of life, like Buddhism," according to Elon Musk, its fearless leader according to everyone but the president's lawyers. It was a funnel of disinfo, a conflict of interest, a bureaucratic mystery, and a tired meme. But above all, was the realization of a dream.

For all the talk of changing demographics and new coalitions, the most important development in US politics last fall involved money and power: The billionaires who believe their technology will save civilization found common cause with authoritarians who hoped that same technology could help them control it. They realized that, in the end, the things they wanted were mostly the same. The problem was democracy; the solution was technofascism.

The idea that a post-liberal, “merit-based” ruling class should use new technologies to govern the rest of us has been building on the right for years. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist and former Musk business partner whose condemnation of vacuous startup culture nudged Vice President JD Vance toward Catholicism, once questioned whether “freedom and democracy are compatible.” (This skepticism of the democratic process did not stop him from spending tens of millions of dollars to influence it.) He was neither the first nor the last to suggest that our current political system had set a trap that only a few skilled visionaries could free us from.