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At Donald Trump’s inauguration, they were all there. Elon Musk as expected, but also Meta’s Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Bezos, Google’s Pichai, OpenAI’s Altman and Apple’s Cook. Even TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew was present. Each worth one or more billions of dollars, each impacting billions of users.
Surrounded by Trump’s family and far-right celebrities, the tech moguls witnessed a presidential speech laced with fascist tropes: promises of a prophetic “golden age”, attacks on minorities, the expansion of “our” territory through colonisation, and a new era of “law and order”, meaning pardons and protection for supporters and military force against proclaimed inner and outer “enemies”. No doubt his turn towards fossil fuel and promises to cut taxes was music to their ears.
Colossal investments in the AI bubble and the deregulation of crypto was another win for the tech billionaires with potentially disastrous implications for the climate and humanity more broadly.
At no point in history have so few people controlled so much of global communication, while also being so closely aligned with an authoritarian leader. At no point in history have oligarchs become this powerful. At the podium bedecked with the Presidential seal, Musk chose to thank his supporters with a full Roman salute, making his symbolic connections to fascism anything but subtle.
This is the age of reactionary tech oligarchy. And it is urgent for all who silently watched their ascend to unprecedented wealth and control over global communication to wake up and help fight back.
Beyond Plausible Deniability
Since taking over Twitter (since re-named X), Musk has become the caricature of a Bond villain: the evil billionaire whose thirst for power cannot be quenched. This picture, while tempting, is problematic as it underplays how deeply ingrained these politics always were for Musk, but also how his success was enabled by those who now claim to oppose him.
It simultaneously exceptionalises what is far more than an individual’s ‘radicalisation’ and prevents us from examining the broader trends in tech and capitalism — including the failure of liberal institutions to respond — which have produced the threat to democracy we are now facing.
Of course, Musk’s personal role should not be underestimated as both his wealth and drive to impact politics and embolden extremists have played a significant role in hastening the resurgence of far-right authoritarianism.
His acquisition of Twitter was a clear political move reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s tried-and-tested media strategy. Rather than profit-driven, the aim was to acquire one of the most important social media platforms to shape it to his image as demonstrated by algorithmic changes to X that give his views priority.
While he successfully muddied the waters, painting himself as a libertarian and even a former liberal, it was always clear his politics were on the far and extreme right.
His behaviour now unashamedly caters to neo-Nazis, as when he changed his X profile to Kekius Maximus with a Pepe the Frog image. While right-wing media reported on this as simply referencing a cryptocurrency project, this clearly signalled in-group sympathy if not allegiance to, among others, the violent Unite the Right protesters who flew these symbols alongside Nazi flags.
For far too long, Musk was given the benefit of the doubt. His clear ideological signals were covered as separate, random incidents emerging from a clumsy free speech advocate. The personalisation of Musk’s politics has concealed wider trends. It forces discussion and analysis down a fruitless route exploring the psychology of individuals and intentionality behind their actions, away from politics and ideology and their impact deriving from their power.
The Tech Oligarchs
It would be a grave mistake to paint Musk as simply a ‘monster bully’ and make him responsible for what is clearly a wider trend. For a time, some viewed Zuckerberg as a liberal or apolitical pendant of Musk, despite the macho display around the possibility of a cage fight.
Trump directly threatened Zuckerberg, saying he could soon “spend the rest of his life in prison”. As late as in September 2024, a New York Times article proclaimed that Zuckerberg was “done with politics”, a statement that would age like ripe avocados.
Zuckerberg throwing his full support behind Trump as soon as it was clear he would win and announce a series of major changes to Meta’s platforms is unsurprising. As scholars have long pointed out, Zuckerberg was never a committed defender of democracy, but rather an unrelenting entrepreneur whose