Founders, funders, führers: Is techno-fascism on the rise?

The oligarchs have descended upon Washington D.C.

At Trump’s inauguration, a photo makes headlines. The three richest men in the world – not to mention the CEOs of Google and Apple – sat in a row. Elon Musk was, and remains, Donald Trump’s most ardent general. But for Bezos and Zuckerberg, the post-election period has seemed more a period of following the crowd than true belief.

But despite the Silicon Valley class trip to the Capitol that day, most tech billionaires are slightly libertarian-leaning, not authoritarian or fascist. It is rather through J.D. Vance, his mentor Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk that authoritarianism has returned to the halls of power in Washington. Techno-fascism is just emerging into the public view now, but its ideas have been stewing in Silicon Valley for decades.

There is a hardy strain of individualism that has run through Silicon Valley since its inception

The coalition that elected Trump in November was unprecedentedly broad. But it was the ‘tech right’, and their embrace of Trump that truly swung the pendulum. This gave him access to a modernised campaign infrastructure and a media ecosystem, in X (formerly Twitter), where his main ally Musk could control the algorithm at will.

The tech right is not monolithic. Unlike Musk, an early convert to Trumpism, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are not ideologues. Rather, they seem to be going with the post-election zeitgeist, defined by a belief that the American left has overreached culturally, and that the election of Trump reflects the cultural mood of the country as a whole. The death of wokeness has thus been proclaimed.

Zuckerberg’s move to end content moderation seems mostly to be an example of this, as well as bending the knee to appease a potentially vengeful Trump. Bezos using his ownership of the Washington Post to block the paper’s endorsement of Harris is in the same vein.

These men run trillion-dollar companies. They cannot afford to be in the visor of a notoriously capricious president. Trump has also shown himself susceptible to displays of bootlicking – a repeated feature of his first term.

Certainly, there is a hardy strain of individualism that has run through Silicon Valley since its inception. The ideal of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur, who drives relentless progress for the benefit of all, is the creation myth of the American tech industry. A 2004 study by Nordhaus estimating that innovators only captured 2.2% of the consumer surplus from innovation has only emboldened this view.

It is no surprise, then, that when this myth is made flesh, embodied in the capital F ‘Founders’ of the tech giants of our time, that they expect to be revered. This vision of entrepreneurs as necessarily benevolent actors, envisioning the future and dragging humanity along, results in the expectation of a cult of personality.  

This is the mindset of Peter Thiel and his ilk. 

Many of these men greatly identified with Trump, a man who attempted a coup, was involved in half a dozen criminal and civil cases, and then got reelected

These disruptors see themselves as übermensch – and they resent any barrier in their path. They reject anything that would rein in their wealth or power. They dream of scientific and technological progress that we cannot yet fathom. They assume that progress will be distributed to society as a whole, but reject having obligations to the rest of society.  

Some of these entrepreneurs simply reject the idea of constraints – even that of death. 

Thiel, although he has become much less overt about the subject of late, values his freedom as an übermensch so highly that he no longer believes it is compatible with democracy. He blames the decline of his prized libertarian ideology on the extension of the franchise to women and the expansion of the welfare state. 

Thiel goes as far as describing capitalist democracy as oxymoronic. That he would choose capitalism over democracy is sheer hubris. These Californian übermensch see themselves as pursuing superior goals, which makes them superior beings. They do not believe they should be subject to politics, or even to the rule of law. 

It comes as no surprise that many of these men greatly identified with Trump, a man who attempted a coup, was involved in half a dozen criminal and civil cases, and then got reelected. They must also have greatly identified with Mr Trump’s comments on the Access Hollywood tape, as, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” This is surely a mindset to admire. 

One of Thiel’s first essays, The Straussian Moment, greatly influenced Curtis Yarvin, who has become a prominent anti-democracy figure on the new right, advocating for a CEO-style monarch of the US. Yarvin’s theory that democracy necessarily leads to social decline is fascist-adjacent at best. Yarvin has further stated that Americans “need to fix their dictator phobia” if they want to change their government. 

Attending the inauguration of a president well known for bouts of corruption does not legitimise his presidency any more than his election

J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, is a self-proclaimed disciple of Yarvin and Thiel. A talk on the failure of elite institutions was one of Vance’s formative moments at Yale, and he worked at Thiel-backed VC funds until getting elected to the US Senate. Thiel even contributed $15m to his campaign fund and secured him an endorsement from Trump. 

The influence of Yarvin and Thiel does not stop here. Elements of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – now adopted as the blueprint for government operations – are uncannily similar to Yarvin’s suggestions on how to install a Caesar-like figure to rule the US. Yarvin has suggested overtly running as an autocrat (check), purge the federal bureaucracy (Musk is doing his best), and ignoring any court rulings that seem to constrain the administration.  

Trump, so far, has stated that he will abide by court rulings. A potential President Vance, however, would prefer to hasten the US’ descent into fascism; he has endorsed imitating Andrew Jackson and  telling the judiciary to “let them enforce it”.  

It is a disservice to the tech industry to call these people techno-fascists. Attending the inauguration of a president well known for bouts of corruption does not legitimise his presidency any more than his election. Rather, it is more surprising that the billionaires of our age – unlike the robber barons of the Gilded Age – have taken so long to establish a presence in the nation’s capital. 

Similarly, it is a disservice to call Musk, Vance and their ilk techno-fascist. They may run tech companies, but their ideology is no different to 20th century fascism. We should call them fascists – they may take it as a compliment.