Wie Tech -Lords und Populisten die Regeln der Macht veränderten (Financial Times – Wochenendaufsatz)

**How tech lords and populists changed the rules of power (Financial Times – Weekend Essay)**

*Digital moguls and strongman leaders are far more than disrupters of the old liberal order. Together they seek to sweep it away, writes Giuliano da Empoli.*

[https://www.ft.com/content/85ee3be0-c9a6-4a1d-baf9-8b2ca9e46a85](https://www.ft.com/content/85ee3be0-c9a6-4a1d-baf9-8b2ca9e46a85)

The advantage of indignation is it leaves you with a clear conscience, without any form of further analysis. The words spoken by Elon Musk at the “Unite the Kingdom” rally organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson this month sparked widespread outrage among politicians. Downing Street condemned the tech boss for using “dangerous and inflammatory” language, after he told the crowd that “violence is coming” and “you either fight back or you die”. The Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has appealed to other political forces to “put party politics aside” and join him in condemning Musk’s call for a dissolution of parliament. Even Peter Kyle, the business minister who had distinguished himself for his unapologetic submission to tech bosses, adopted the attitude of the betrayed spouse, judging that Musk’s comments were “slightly incomprehensible” and “totally inappropriate”.

Yet the Tesla boss’s conduct is anything but incomprehensible, and anyone who thought his words — and his unwavering support for far-right movements around the world, from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to Germany’s AfD — were due to the eccentricities of a South African-born billionaire would be making a huge mistake. The truth is that Musk’s approach reveals something more fundamental, which goes far beyond the preferences of a single, albeit extremely powerful, tech oligarch.

Until recently, economic elites, financiers, entrepreneurs and managers of large companies relied on a political class of technocrats — or aspiring technocrats — from the right and left, moderate, reasonable, more or less indistinguishable from each other, who governed their countries on the basis of liberal democratic principles, in accordance with market rules, sometimes tempered by social considerations. That was the Davos consensus. A place where politics was reduced to a competition between PowerPoint slides, and the most transgressive thing you could do was wear a black turtleneck instead of a light blue shirt at cocktail hour.

Today, however, this arrangement has been upset. The new technological elites, the Musks, Mark Zuckerbergs and Sam Altmans of this world, have nothing in common with the technocrats of Davos. Their philosophy of life is not based on the competent management of the existing order but, on the contrary, on an irrepressible desire to throw everything up in the air. Order, prudence and respect for the rules are anathema to those who have made a name for themselves by moving fast and breaking things, in accordance with Facebook’s famous first motto.

In this context, Musk’s words are just the tip of the iceberg and reveal something much deeper: a battle between power elites for control of the future.

By their very nature and background, the tech overlords are more akin to nationalist-populist leaders — the Trumps, Mileis, Bolsonaros and leaders of the European far-right movements — than to the moderate political classes that have governed western democracies for decades. Like these leaders, they are almost always eccentric characters who have had to break the rules to get ahead. Like them, they distrust experts and elites, all those who represent the old world and who could prevent them from pursuing their vision. Like them, they have a taste for action and are convinced that they can shape reality according to their desires: virality prevails over truth, and speed is at the service of the strongest. Like them, they have nothing but contempt for politicians and bureaucrats: they see their weakness and hypocrisy and believe that their era is coming to an end.