The tech bro style in American politics

IT SEEMS hard to believe now, but in 2021, Time named Elon Musk its Person of the Year. True, that designation doesn’t necessarily equate to a stamp of approval. But the magazine’s coverage of Musk at the time was very favourable, almost fawning, highlighting his assertion that “my career is Mars and cars”.

A lot of people would disagree with that declaration now. Of course, Tesla and SpaceX remain big businesses. But Musk himself is largely defined in many minds by the way he changed X, the site formerly known as Twitter – making more room for right-wing extremists, including a substantial number of pro-Nazi accounts, and his own embrace of anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories.

Musk’s right-wing turn isn’t universal or even typical: Reporting suggests that even with the rightward turn of several boldface names, Silicon Valley remains heavily Democratic. Political contributions from the Internet industry, in particular, remain strongly tilted towards Democrats. But right-wing tech bros are exerting a significant and, I’d argue, malign influence on the political landscape.