Sep 26, 2026 · 2 hr 46 min · 16 segments
Featuring Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian on their book *Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed*. What the world’s bizarre richest man reveals about our financially fabulist, hard tech, far-right…
Quinn SlobodianGuestBen TarnoffGuest
Daniel DenvirHost
Is this technological dimension what makes Musk's particular brand of far-right politics different from garden variety, far-right, racist authoritarianism that we unfortunately see everywhere in the world today? Today, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that comes to mind when you think of the Hindutva right or the AFD or Marine Le Pen or Bolsonaro.
But then on the other hand, looking back, according to Enzo Traverso, fascism was a project that combined on the one hand this irrational ideological project with this Rationalism of the cutting edge of capitalist technology, productive forces, scientific techniques, means of destruction.
the rise of far-right politicians and parties in situations where there's a relative decline of existing sectors of economic activity.
And there's a fear of falling on the part of people who have means enough to support a party, but not enough wherewithal to transform their economies to capture the leading edge of wherever capitalism is going.
So it's pretty common to find far-right parties kind of appealing to people who had enjoyed a certain kind of security and now feel like they had lost it.
It's a bit less or in more recent years, we see far right parties appealing to populations that have experienced decades of precarity and uncertainty.
And so find the kind of social Darwinism that is at the heart of far right politics, you know, quite understandable and relatable.
book, Anatomy of Disintegration, which I hope that you'll talk to him about Brazilian far-right and how it kind of led the way, especially in its online instantiations to a lot of far-right politics later.
What's, I guess, a little bit less common is to have extremely retrograde politics being allied so closely with what remains the kind of leading edge of the leading sector of global capitalism.
Because that is, for all of its problems with profitability and so on, what Silicon Valley remains.
It is the leading It is the locomotive in many ways, if you think about a lot of the financial valuations being downstream from people's faith in it.
And for that sector to have not just made peace with, but made common cause with, what was basically a very nostalgic and backward-looking version of far-right Trumpism is was, I think, a shock, right? It was startling.
I remember talking to you about this at the beginning of, or right before the inauguration of Trump for the second time.
And what I said at the time, I would still say now, which is like the addition of someone like Musk into the coalition of MAGA was an enormous shot in the arm, right? I mean, it gave a sense of futurity to what had been previously a backward looking political project.
It gave a plausible claim to the need to completely renovate mainstream consensus on a bunch of social issues to be able to break through and defeat global competitors, specifically China.
I think there was, you know, for that year and a half from that moment until recently, very good reason to think that there was something not necessarily totally singular, but historically still pretty exceptional about what we were looking at.
Because in the past, yes, fascists worked with leading sectors of industry.
But if you look at the German case and certainly the Italian case, these were often, you know, sectors that were in very, very tight competition with other firms and brands abroad or already, you know, globalized to a certain extent and had to withdraw to national borders as a result of their alliance with fascist projects.
And I think the fear was that it would become a replicable template, right? And I think that was certainly the motivation of someone like Musk or his hope and belief.
was that he would be able to replicate kind of Muskism in this mold, you know, a kind of a national economic digital fusion based on ethnic exclusionary belonging that he could then export, in effect, to Germany.
Is this technological dimension what makes Musk's particular brand of far-right politics different from garden variety, far-right, racist authoritarianism that we unfortunately see everywhere in the world today? Today, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that comes to mind when you think of the Hindutva right or the AFD or Marine Le Pen or Bolsonaro.
But then on the other hand, looking back, according to Enzo Traverso, fascism was a project that combined on the one hand this irrational ideological project with this Rationalism of the cutting edge of capitalist technology, productive forces, scientific techniques, means of destruction.
the rise of far-right politicians and parties in situations where there's a relative decline of existing sectors of economic activity.
And there's a fear of falling on the part of people who have means enough to support a party, but not enough wherewithal to transform their economies to capture the leading edge of wherever capitalism is going.
So it's pretty common to find far-right parties kind of appealing to people who had enjoyed a certain kind of security and now feel like they had lost it.
It's a bit less or in more recent years, we see far right parties appealing to populations that have experienced decades of precarity and uncertainty.
And so find the kind of social Darwinism that is at the heart of far right politics, you know, quite understandable and relatable.
book, Anatomy of Disintegration, which I hope that you'll talk to him about Brazilian far-right and how it kind of led the way, especially in its online instantiations to a lot of far-right politics later.
What's, I guess, a little bit less common is to have extremely retrograde politics being allied so closely with what remains the kind of leading edge of the leading sector of global capitalism.
Because that is, for all of its problems with profitability and so on, what Silicon Valley remains.
It is the leading It is the locomotive in many ways, if you think about a lot of the financial valuations being downstream from people's faith in it.
And for that sector to have not just made peace with, but made common cause with, what was basically a very nostalgic and backward-looking version of far-right Trumpism is was, I think, a shock, right? It was startling.
I remember talking to you about this at the beginning of, or right before the inauguration of Trump for the second time.
And what I said at the time, I would still say now, which is like the addition of someone like Musk into the coalition of MAGA was an enormous shot in the arm, right? I mean, it gave a sense of futurity to what had been previously a backward looking political project.
It gave a plausible claim to the need to completely renovate mainstream consensus on a bunch of social issues to be able to break through and defeat global competitors, specifically China.
I think there was, you know, for that year and a half from that moment until recently, very good reason to think that there was something not necessarily totally singular, but historically still pretty exceptional about what we were looking at.
Because in the past, yes, fascists worked with leading sectors of industry.
But if you look at the German case and certainly the Italian case, these were often, you know, sectors that were in very, very tight competition with other firms and brands abroad or already, you know, globalized to a certain extent and had to withdraw to national borders as a result of their alliance with fascist projects.
And I think the fear was that it would become a replicable template, right? And I think that was certainly the motivation of someone like Musk or his hope and belief.
was that he would be able to replicate kind of Muskism in this mold, you know, a kind of a national economic digital fusion based on ethnic exclusionary belonging that he could then export, in effect, to Germany.
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