The industry’s liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies – celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity – have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990s

An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a Black civil rights leader’s calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the “PC police”.

No, this isn’t Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It’s the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for “technofascism”. Despite the industry’s (often undeserved) reputation for liberalism, its reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning. As Silicon Valley enters a second Trump administration, the gendered roots of its original reactionary movement offer insight into today’s rightward turn.

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This rising “technofascism”, as critics of the time had called it, was temporarily staved off by the dotcom stock market crash of 2000. George Gilder’s reputation was badly damaged after he failed to predict the crash. And much of the hype around digital tech was temporarily tempered after hundreds of startups went bust. But a younger generation of aspiring tech hopefuls had already come to the valley, seeking fame, riches, and power. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others had absorbed the lessons of the 90s. At the start of the new millennium, they were ready to put their stamp on the future, guided by reactionary dreams of the past.

The Silicon Valley titans of 2025 are following the same blueprint. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was ending its DEI programs and changing its platform policies to allow more discriminatory and harassing posts. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg made his motivations clear: he claimed that corporate culture had moved away from “masculine energy” and needed to reinstate it after getting “neutered”. Elon Musk has reshaped Twitter into X, a platform in large part operating as a response to claims of a “woke mind virus”– the newest iteration of “political correctness”. And Marc Andreessen himself, the “boy genius” of the 1990s, has increasingly drawn inspiration from the Italian futurists, a movement of fascist artists in the early 20th century who glorified technology while seeking to “demolish” feminism.

But the history of the valley suggests this isn’t a blip or an anomaly. It’s a crescendo of forces central to the tech industry, and the current wave of rightwing tech titans are building on Silicon Valley’s foundations.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    191·
    1 day ago

    https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-tpot-on-twitter-grey-tribe-twitter-and-its-connection-to-suspected-uhc-shooter-luigi-mangione-explained

    This goes back to the Crypto Markets of the pre-COVID era and the libertarian dream of an entirely privatized form of techno-segregation. Peter Thiel’s vision for the future involves a fully automated apartheid regime the likes of which even Israel has yet to achieve. Guys like Zuck and Musk are ultimately just along for the ride.

    The most recent news-media engineered screaming fit over DEI is just one more assault on the liberal barricades, as these parasites infiltrate the upper echalons of the bureaucratic world and weed out anyone who isn’t fully pilled on a techno-feudal white supremacy.

    One side-effect of the movement is guys like Luigi who come out of the cult-like social atmosphere with very revolutionary ideas for change rooted in very reactionary understandings of the status quo. Killing Brian Thompson as an act of Longtermism touched a libidinal urge within the public at-large to throw down the scholoratic old dynasty of corrupt administrators. But it came out of Luigi’s time basting in an ideology that venerated strict hierarchies only to convince himself that the wrong people were in charge.

    Jokes aside

    https://www.dailygrail.com/2024/10/the-technocratic-conspiracy-how-tech-tycoons-plan-to-disrupt-democracy-and-become-the-new-rulers-of-the-world/

    This is serious shit.

  • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
    112·
    1 day ago

    While it most likely started way before, the sale of Twitter was the turning point. Twitter was (albeit is NeoNazis allowed to flourish under Jack’s ownership for engagement) the digital public square, much moreso than Facebook, or anything else that had come before, in that Politicians, Entertainment figures, World leaders, News orginizations, Federal and State agencies the world over, joined regular joe schmoe internet user, in releasing pertinent up to date information, new, and engaged in conversation. It was a miracle. It was babel before the fall.

    Twitter was bought by Musk at the behest of Saudi royals who never again wanted to be raked over the coals globally for doing something like butchering Kashoggi, the blowback cost them face which they were not prepared for spending billions on things like soccer leagues and stadium to curry favor with the west, and Elon wanted Saudi markets open for his rocket ships and electric cars, they invested, he invested, but mostly he took out loans from sucker banks which had made money from Tesla and Space x. I don’t think he intended to become the nazi poster child when he bought twitter, but water finds it’s own level, and this was always his. Musk has used his position as owner of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter to sway the US election, and install himself at the very highest level of actual government.