Journalist, Gil Durán, sees the merging of tech and MAGA creating an “orgy of corruption…a frenzy of open political corruption unlike anything in American history.”
By launching his Truth Social media platform in 2022, Trump himself became “a tech CEO.” The Trump Family’s net worth increased by $5 billion shortly into his second term thanks to their crypto company World Liberty Financial. In fact, “Trump and his sons transformed themselves into Silicon Valley moguls while Silicon Valley transformed itself into an arm of the Trump family.”
Peter Thiel, so important in the new administration, received a $30 million contract for designing software called ImmmigrationPS designed specifically to help ICE target immigrants for deportation. Then his Palantir company received a $10 billion contract from the Army to expand AI. Apple, Coinbase, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Palantir financed Trump’s ballroom.
Durán calls the myth that Silicon Valley was about libertarianism “dangerously obsolete” and a “fairy tale.” Freedom from government power was not their goal—rather “seizing that power for itself was the true goal.” Their end game is “to privatize the public and eliminate democracy.” Thiel put it plainly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Tech fascism, we are told, “has global ambitions.” Silicon Valley oligarchs see a “world in decline and seek to profit by hastening its collapse—and remaking it into their own image.”*
Durán names tech fascism as “a terrifying spectacle of power for the sake of power.” It aims to convert “all public services to private entrepreneurship, all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones.”
This marriage of government and business is currently playing out wherever the administration purges federal workers, immigrants, the military and even the press. Masked goons, buttressed by Thiel’s Palantir, “violently kidnap, terrorize, and kill citizens and immigrants alike.”* And certain people and families get richer and richer.
Durán, the grandson of Mexican immigrant farmworkers, is sounding a trumpet like the prophets of old calling all Americans to wake up, come to their senses, and overturn this fascist religious conspiracy that is already fully underway. Are we up to the task?
In the conclusion chapter, Durán warns that “there is no middle ground between freedom and Fascism” and “democracy’s enemies specialize in long-term strategies….They have enough money to operate in perpetuity; they are scheming for global control.”
Liberal politicians, also corrupted by Silicon Valley money, are capable of surrendering democracy without much of a fight. A political system that depends on wealthy corporations and individuals “is inherently tilted in their favor.”
Millions of people need to stand up and change the course of history. Only a “radical change…can save us.” A “tiny number of billionaires” seek to fund the end of the world rather “than risk a world of equality, fairness, and justice.”
The key is building “a world without billionaires. We can have billionaires, or we can have democracy. We cannot have both.” Extreme wealth drives people insane and transforms them into tyrants. Anti-democracy billionaires buy power to destroy the nation itself replacing it with corporate city states.
A single nuke might kill hundreds of thousands of people, but billionaires will kill millions or billions. They have already started with aid cuts and a reckless disregard for global warming. 340 million people including less than 1000 billionaires people America. Yet “we are destroying the earth to create wealth for this small group of men.”
The Silicon Valley goal is “a hyper-capitalist system without democracy.” Technology will supposedly solve all problems.
We must design all technologies with democracy and humanity as their guiding principles. (And a healthy Earth, let me add.) We need to “rethink capitalism” which has “entered the end stage.” We can have a world that works for all.**
* The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, pp. 10f.
** Ibid., pp. 255-258, 260-263.
Banner image: Net worth of the world’s billionaires, 2021. Photo. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you imagine a world run by billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel where technology will solve all problems? What are we doing to stop it? What alternative visions do we harbor?
Related Reading by Matthew Fox
Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
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8 thoughts on “Durán on the Silicon Valley Apocalyptic Dream, continued”
FAITH in Our Source~Co-Creator’s Spirit of Divine Love~Wisdom~Truth~Peace~Justice~Healing~Transformation~Strength~Freedom~
Compassion~Creativity~Loving Diverse Oneness… working within and among Us in many Lightworker Souls, spiritual communities/organizations, including All physical/non-physical spiritual dimensions/Beings, in Sacred Mother Earth and Our evolving Humanity and Cosmos in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….
Given the importance of this communication I’m disappointed to learn that it would cost $70 for me to listen to the conversation between Matthew and Gil. Why would this not be available at a much lower cost, if not free?
I’ve been listening to Riane Eisler lately and I appreciate her differentiating between DOMINATOR mentality and PARTNERSHIP mentality. She suggests that Capitalism vs Socialism are archaic ways to think about our economic choices. What increases Partnership and decreases Domination is a better way to look at where we need to go.
I think it’s a very real problem but one that will not endure as it is utterly contrary to Spiritual Laws. However, that is not to say it will not bring forward dire conditions including massive unrest and upheaval, global war and a future that is totally different to our entire past. Should it come down to an atomic war those who do survive will be very few in number living in extremely primitive conditions. It’s a nightmare scenario and, quite frankly – as I implied yesterday – I think that the only thing to prevent it will be extraterrestrial intervention. This has traditionally been jeered at but humanity is on the cusp of awakening to this consciousness-shifting reality. Stephen Spielberg’s latest film, “Disclosure Day” is not based on pure fiction; nor is the US Congress randomly investigating the subject but rather cross-examining highly professional witnesses from the military as well as other highly credible people including astronauts. Crop Circles were not all faked. The subject of extraterrestrials visiting and even interacting with humanity is the biggest game-changer in our collective evolution and, in my own opinion, it is about the only thing capable of altering the trajectory of the human race.
The idea that technology will solve all problems is laughable at best. It creates more problems than it solves. After a 37 year career using technology every day, and watching it evolve, I can say with confidence that we are not entirely better off! Some things are better – many are worse. I have been slowly peeling back my personal use of emerging technology and find it a relief.
But I’m afraid there’s no stopping this train. It can’t become day in the middle of the night. We’ve a long ways to go before enough people are dissatisfied enough to take action and collectively change our circumstances. I mean we in the US just elected a billionaire to be president – TWICE! Clearly we want them to be in charge.
We are in rough shape. But everything is born from darkness. There will be light again. But before that light we are likely to see war on US soil with tens of thousands dead, at least one nuclear detonation, economic collapse, etc… I fully expect a repeat showing of all the worse things humans do to one another. It’s already happening.
A number of millionaires (equivalent to today’s billionaires) were on board of the Titanic and perished in the sinking. Today’s Titanic is called Planet Earth and despite the scientific evidence that a massive “iceberg” is ahead, no one in the navigational control room is willing to change course. Addiction to power is the only possible explanation.
Addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs, money, adrenaline, prestige, or anything else rests on a thick denial that requires some catastrophic event (illness, accident, divorce, loss of employment, etc.) to be broken. Often, even a catastrophe does not suffice and death is the outcome.
In his comment, Mark evokes a runaway train and writes that “there’s no stopping this train.” Runaway train, Titanic or out-of-control plane, the big reckoning lies ahead and billionaires will not be spared. Geographic cure is a common delusion among addicts, that may explain the desire of a few to migrate to Mars.
What may sound pessimistic to some is delayed optimism to others: “to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.” In the meanwhile, there is much to do on board and idleness would be cowardice.
Several of our fellow writers above expect disaster from the trends they correctly note. Here’s one voice who trusts and loves in and with the power of the Risen Christ. The Resurrection was not simply a unique miracle but the archtype of God’s divine providence. Spring follows winter each year in both hemispheres. This and other natural patterns of death and rebirth give ordinary people some hope. Horrible epochs don’t last forever, as history shows. Gradually, and sometimes with painful suddenness, liberty defeats tyranny, freedom overcomes slavery; favoritism is left behind by egalitarianism or equity. The spasm of the Industrial Revolution is gradually being understood by masses of people (from more to less educated) as a period of misspent ambition and corrupt profit making. The new common sense is fighting for care of the earth before the globe burns up and humane relief for the billions of people impoverished by folly and greed. The lessons of solidarity and mobilization are noticably being applied all over the world. Victory is not assured but within reach. With God good is probable.
“Spring follows winter,” but some winters are longer than others (e.g. 536, and 1816). When danger grows faster than our ability to understand and eliminate it (e.g. AI), a long winter lies ahead.
“The workman’s tool is the continuation of his arm, the tools equipment of humanity is therefore a continuation of its Nature, in endowing us with an essentially tool-making intelligence, prepared for us in this way a certain expansion. […] Now, in this body, distended out of all proportion, the soul remains what it was, too small to fill it, too weak to guide it. […] We must add that the body, now larger, calls for a bigger soul…” [1932, Henri Bergson]
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” [1946, Einstein]
“We are becoming inhuman to the extent that we become supermen. […] the superman suffers from a fatal flaw. He has failed to rise to the level of superhuman reason which should match that of his superhuman strength. […] Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.” [Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1954]
In 1962, Rachel Carson quotes Albert Schweitzer in Silent Spring: “Man has the lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.”
Luke 16:31 sums it up.