Book Review: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy
by Gil Duran
In this book, Duran readily demonstrates that the tech bro ecosystem is just ordinary fascism pretending to be cool. The disturbing part is their determined efforts to skew the outcome in their favor if not electorially then by any means possible—with corruption clearly on the table. The alliance of convenience between tech bros and theo bros (i.e. religious nationalists) that is part of this effort is a remarkable exercise in self-justified mutually deceptive transactional cooperation between unlikely partners. This is a movement that was implemented from a 1990s concept of a sovereign individual that goes far beyond justified human agency and launches into futurist fantasies of using digital technology to weaken nation states and replace them with network states of, by, and for wealthy and powerful individuals. Proponents of this concept are taking tangible action to implement it worldwide—with notable success. If you have doubts about whether you’re among the chosen ones, you’re most certainly not in the club—and those not in the club are considered expendable by this group, some of whom are atheists who adopt Christian apoaclyptic eschatology both for their own manufactured moral justication and to deceive the gullible.
One tech world fantasy is that of dividing the world into three tribes: The blue tribe (liberals), the red tribe (conservatives), and the gray tribe (extreme libertarians enabled by technology). The gray tribe sees the blue tribe as wild animals to be hunted and eliminated, similar to the way farmers remove groundhogs from their property. The grays see the red tribe as livestock, to be kept around as long as they’re useful and disposed of like livestock when they’re no longer useful. Eventually, the fantasy goes, only the gray tribe remains as children of the new realm—a world free of all restraints (on the oligarchs) with tech utopia and eternal life via technology then fully achieved. Even if essentials can be provided by tech, such as food production (which might be done with bots) and environmental stewardship (even in the face of the uncanny amounts of energy required for AI), this fantacy omits something essential for human existence—they don’t seem to provide room for people to be human, such as creating art, making music, and people simply enjoying each others’ company for its own sake. Gray is indeed an appropriate choice of color for such a world—the fantacy appears gray as a cloudy day. There’s conspiculously no love or even human concern in this concept—I for one don’t want to live there, and getting there requires the ongoing tech billionaire influence campaigns to persuade government, business, and the public to at least not oppose their maneuvers.
Bankrolling these influence operations with tech-billionaire resources is done because it produces results. The people it influences are not only government, business, and societal leaders, but it includes also a vast swath of the population that doesn’t live and breathe politics their every waking hour—many people who are “just not into politics” are struggling to simply live their lives, with no time or energy for wolves that aren’t (yet) at their doorstep. Unfortunately no one has the luxury of not paying attention anymore—just as email recipients must increasingly be alert to scams deliberately designed to look like they’re from a reputable source, voters unfortunatley must pay attention to political scams (including those laundered through mainstream media) designed to get them to support and vote for people and proposals that are harmful to them and the society we all live in.
How to counter this toxic cocktail of obsession and influence? Although reaching non-political people without billionaire resources seems impossibly formidable, it must be done by all effective means available—it’s encouraging that populist progressive politicians are prevailing at increasing rates against both opposition billionaire funding and established leadership promoting the oligarchy-aligned responses of the past. Preaching at people has repeatedly proven to get nowhere (something equally true for tech bros, justice warriors, and everyone else)—most people respond only when they feel listend to, and then they may be open to hearing different ideas, espescially those that are alternatives to a tech oligarchic dystopia. Once in power, common sense leaders must act decisively and effectively to remove tech bro and theo bro fascism from their influence in societal governance—timid half measures from officials and advocates alike will not do. Duran’s book the Nerd Reich provides at the end some practical steps that may taken by governments, business, society, and individuals to counter the corrupt tech billionaire chicanery aimed at denying life itself to all but their self-selected elite—it’s past time to get to work to deny the network state the hegemony it pursues.