The advantage of disgust is that it leaves you with a clear conscience, without any need for further analysis. The words spoken by Elon Musk at the “United Kingdom” rally, organized by right-wing activist Tommy Robinson last month, have caused disgust among politicians. Downing Street condemned the tech mogul for “dangerous and inflammatory” language, after he told the crowd that “violence is coming” and that “you either fight back or die.” Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey appealed to other political forces to “put aside party politics” and join him in condemning Musk’s call to dissolve parliament. Even Peter Kyle, the business secretary, who has previously distinguished himself by his unquestioning submission to the tech powerhouses, took the position of the cheated spouse, calling Musk’s statements “a little incomprehensible” and “completely inappropriate.”
Still, the Tesla boss's behavior is not in the least bit incomprehensible, and anyone who thinks that his words, and his unwavering support for right-wing movements around the world, from Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro to Germany's AfD, are the result of the eccentricities of a South African-born billionaire would be making a huge mistake. The truth is that Musk's approach reveals something far more fundamental, one that goes beyond the inclinations of a single, albeit extremely powerful, tech oligarch.
Until recently, the economic elites, financiers, entrepreneurs and managers of large companies relied on a political class of technocrats, or those who wanted to become them, from the right and the left, moderate, prudent, more or less identical to each other, who governed their countries on the basis of liberal democratic principles, in accordance with market rules, sometimes tempered with social considerations. That was the Davos consensus. A place where politics was reduced to a competition of PowerPoint slides, and the most transgressive thing you could do was wear a black turtleneck instead of a light blue shirt to a cocktail party.
Today, however, that order is broken. The new technological elites, the various Musks, Zuckerbergs, and Altmans of this world, have nothing in common with the technocrats of Davos. Their philosophy of life is not based on the competent management of the existing order, but, on the contrary, on an indomitable desire to blow everything up. Order, prudence, and respect for rules are anathema to those who have made a name for themselves by “moving fast and breaking things,” in the famous first motto of Facebook.
In this context, Musk's words are just the tip of the iceberg and reveal something much deeper: a battle between ruling elites for control of the future.
By their nature and origin, the tech masters are more like nationalist-populist leaders, the various Trumps, Milleys, Bolsonaros, and the leaders of European far-right movements, than they are like the moderate political classes that have governed Western democracies for decades. Like these leaders, they are almost always eccentric characters who have had to break the rules in order to advance. Like them, they are distrustful of experts and elites, of anyone who represents the old world and who might prevent them from pursuing their vision. Like them, they are prone to action and are convinced that they can shape reality according to their wishes: virality prevails over truth, and speed serves the strongest. Like them, they have nothing but contempt for politicians and bureaucrats: they see their weakness and hypocrisy and believe that their era is coming to an end.
The re-election of Donald Trump marked a turning point, as the tech titans finally felt strong enough to engage in open conflict with the old elites. Until then, the alignment of interests between extremist leaders and technologists had been masked by the fact that the latter did not feel powerful enough to openly challenge the supremacy of the Davos bloc. For years, the tech lords had had to practice diplomacy, even as they burned with a desire to assert their supremacy over the dinosaurs of politics. Before Musk, there was Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, whose help in targeting voters in key states played a role in Obama’s re-election in 2012 that was no less important than the South African billionaire’s role in Trump’s re-election last year. Only, unlike Musk, Schmidt mostly stayed behind the scenes.
Moderate politicians, for their part, failed to realize that the advent of digital technology was not just a business project, but laying the foundation for a real political revolution and, ultimately, regime change.
In every capital city, the scene is always the same. An oligarch steps off a private jet, disgruntled at having to waste time with a tribal chieftain when he could be spending it far more productively on some posthuman endeavor. After being welcomed with the honors of a state visit, the politician spends most of the meeting begging him to open a research center or lab for the development of artificial intelligence, only to settle for a quick selfie on the way out. Thus, the harmless nerds who promised us a future of universal brotherhood in the late 1990s have managed to transform themselves into terrifying monsters, engaged in a merciless war for planetary and intergalactic supremacy, with no rules or responsibilities to balance their disproportionate power.
The stunning passivity of the ruling elite will not be enough to guarantee its survival. After pretending to respect its authority for a while, the tech oligarchs have gradually imposed their dominance to the point of challenging the last attributes of sovereign rule: currency and the monopoly of force. Today, it is not worth accusing Schmidt of hypocrisy when he presented himself as a mild progressive democrat in 2012. Several tech moguls still consider themselves such.
Thus, the harmless nerds who promised us a future of universal brotherhood in the late 1990s managed to turn into terrifying monsters, engaged in a merciless war for planetary and intergalactic supremacy, without any rules or responsibilities to balance their disproportionate power.
But it is clear that, beyond individual sympathies, the rapprochement between digital moguls and national-populist leaders has a structural character. Both groups draw their power from digital rebellion, and neither is prepared to tolerate any limitations on their desire for more: the old world and its rules are their natural enemies, a target that must be destroyed so that the new world can flourish.
Of course, Trump and other populist leaders seem to have emerged from the past, not the future. They are impossible to understand if we rely on the political sciences of recent decades, while it is enough to open a Roman classic, Tacitus or Suetonius, or even one of the satires of Juvenal or Petronius, to encounter characters very similar to those who dominate the political scene today. These are figures accustomed to operating in a world without limits, who draw strength from the unexpected, the unstable and the belligerent.
While political competition took place in the real world, in squares and in traditional media, the customs and rules of each country determined its boundaries, but now, when it has moved to the internet, public debate has turned into a jungle where anything is allowed, and the only rules are those set by internet platforms.
Today, however, the reconstruction of such premodern figures is based on an ecosystem developed by technological “brothers.” As long as political competition took place in the real world, in squares and in traditional media, the customs and rules of each country defined its boundaries, but now, when it has moved to the Internet, public debate has turned into a jungle where anything is allowed, and the only rules are those set by the Internet platforms. As a result, the fate of our democracies is increasingly being decided in a kind of digital Somalia, a failed state the size of a planet, subject to the laws of digital warlords and their militias.
This is a logic with which military historians have long been familiar. There are periods in history when defensive techniques advance more rapidly than offensive ones. These are periods when wars become less frequent, because the cost of aggression is higher than the cost of defense. At other times, however, offensive technologies are the ones that develop most. These are bloody periods when wars multiply because attack is much cheaper than defense.
On the Internet, a campaign of aggression or disinformation costs nothing, while defending against it is almost impossible. As a result, our republics, our large and small liberal democracies, risk being wiped out like the small Italian republics of the early 16th century. And characters who seem to have stepped out of Machiavelli’s “The Prince” to follow his teachings come to the fore. In a situation of uncertainty, when the legitimacy of power is shaky and can be questioned at any moment, those who do not act can be sure that changes will come to their detriment.
This approach is particularly effective in the face of a public opinion that is increasingly convinced that the system is stuck and that it makes no difference who they vote for. If in theology a miracle corresponds to the direct intervention of God, who bypasses the normal rules of existence on Earth to produce an extraordinary event, the logic of Trump and other national-populist leaders is similar. Breaking the rules, and very often the laws, in order to influence the problems that plague their voters: that is the promise of a political miracle.
Hence Najib Bukele's strategy in El Salvador to fight criminal gangs by replacing the penal code with a manual on tattoos and throwing 80.000 people in prison without trial. Hence Javier Milley's chainsaw in Argentina to fight waste, as well as the illegal measures that Trump has implemented to crack down on illegal immigration or impose his own tariffs.
Obviously, decisive action alone is not enough to produce a miracle of power. It must also be a thoughtless act, for what value would there be in an action that is merely a rational response to necessity? It would be merely the gesture of a technocrat, one of those gray and cruel public officials who act in the name of higher obligations, claiming to be the only ones capable of restraining them. The essence of power lies in precisely the opposite. Goethe tells of an old Duke of Saxony, an original but stubborn man, who is told by his advisors to think and deliberate before making an important decision. “I neither want to think nor deliberate,” he replies, “for otherwise, why should I be Duke of Saxony?”
The height of power coincides not so much with the action itself as with the rash action, the only kind capable of producing the shock on which the power of the Ruler rests. A chaotic environment requires magnificent decisions that capture the attention of the public and leave opponents stunned. Influence is essential. As Millais rightly said: “What is the difference between a madman and a genius? Success!” This is the motto of populist leaders and technological brothers, shared today by the majority of voters who have stopped considering rules as a guarantee of freedom and have begun to see them as a great fraud, not to mention a conspiracy of elites to subjugate the people.
“The first thing we will do is kill all the lawyers,” says Shakespeare. More precisely, Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, to provoke an uprising against the government of the English king. In Dick’s view, lawyers are mercenaries of the government, devoid of morals and ready to support anything and everyone. They do not solve problems, they create them; they always have some legal loophole at hand to further complicate matters. They are interested in form, not substance; they speak an incomprehensible language with the sole purpose of defrauding the poor and the uneducated; in the end, they only care about their own business.
Populist leaders focus on substance, not form. They promise to solve the real problems that people everywhere face: crime, fear of immigration, the cost of living. And what do their opponents, liberals, progressives, and well-meaning democrats, mutter in response? Rules, democracy at risk, protection of minorities.
Last year, Janan Ganesh noted in his column for the Financial Times that since 1980, of all the Democratic candidates for president and vice president of the United States, Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, was the first to not have a law degree. During the same period, none of the four Republican presidents had a legal background: the first, Ronald Reagan, was an actor, and the other three were businessmen.
In the United States, the only people less popular than lawyers are politicians. Is it any wonder, then, that the “party of lawyers” has been crushed? That a platform designed entirely by lawyers, focused on defending democratic procedures and respecting minority rights, whose main argument was a series of lawsuits against the Republican candidate, has been swept away by the accusations of Trump supporters: inflation, illegal immigration, class contempt?
In Europe, the technocrats who run the European institutions and most of the EU member states share the same lack of understanding of the offensive they face. They prefer to pretend that Trump's challenge is reduced to negotiating a few technical agreements, rather than admit that the goal of both Trump and his technological "brothers" is to impose regime change on this side of the Atlantic as well.
Populist leaders and tech bros don’t share the same vision of the future — one of the most uncomfortable moments in Musk’s speech at the Tommy Robinson rally was when, his eyes glistening, he invoked a future of robots like those from “Star Trek.” The push for regime change unites pre-modern characters, who look as if they stepped out of the annals of the late Roman Empire, with technological conquistadors who are already looking toward posthuman horizons. The dispute over H-1B visas for highly skilled workers in the US is just one of countless issues that divides them.
What they have in common, however, is both an enemy and a strategy: “kill all the lawyers.” Together, political predators and digital conquistadors have decided to wipe out the old elites and their rules. If they succeed, it will not only wipe out the parties of lawyers and technocrats, but also liberal democracy as we have known it.
Translation: NB
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
