The New Fascism Is Here – And Big Tech Is Running It

Since Trump’s inauguration as the 47th U.S. president, Elon Musk has been touring federal agencies in Washington with a retinue of tech engineers and executives from his various companies, gaining access to buildings, data, and computer systems. Together with a planned mass dismissal of federal employees, this amounts to a takeover of the technical and operational levels of the U.S. administrative apparatus. In this process, actors from the Big Tech industry are positioning themselves as beneficiaries and operators of a new technological government infrastructure—hooked into it via access to computer and payment systems that Musk is currently securing.

This development represents a qualitative leap in Trump’s political project. It is best described with the word fascism. This new fascism does not look exactly like its historical predecessors in many respects—yet it is still fascism. Its defining feature will be its exploitation of the specific capabilities of data analysis and AI technology to dismantle the rule of law and replace it with a stripped-down administrative apparatus based on automation and preemption.

The original version of this article was published in German by verfassungsblog.de.

1. The Takeover

On the day of his inauguration, Donald Trump appointed Elon Musk by executive order as head of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).” Since then, Musk seems to have taken it upon himself to seize control of the administrative apparatus not through political means but through a mix of surprise tactics, intimidation, and hacking strategies. The first target was the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the administrative unit overseeing the workforce of federal employees in the U.S.. Musk gained access to its computer system and a plethora of sensitive data, locked out parts of the staff, and installed his loyalists in strategic positions. He also personally ordered a list of all Chief Information Officers across federal agencies to be compiled, likely with the intent of quickly sending an email to all 2.2 million federal employees across various institutions. This Email announced drastic staff cuts, stricter loyalty criteria, and performance reviews—and an offer of “deferred resignation” to anyone who doesn’t agree.

The target of this form of power takeover appears to be the administrative infrastructure itself. Alongside the OPM, Musk’s team also took control of the General Services Administration (GSA) and other agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Particularly alarming: Musk secured access to the central payment system of the U.S. Treasury Department, which processes trillions of dollars annually in social benefits, salaries, federal expenditures for services, and subsidies. The access was gained over the weekend after the initial refusal of the head of the system, who was swiftly forced into retirement. Musk himself boasted about the coup on X: “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!”

This pattern of infiltrating the operational level of the federal administration—not through political decisions, but through rapid action, intimidation, and the takeover of control over technical systems—continues day after day. Agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and even the intelligence agency CIA, where a similar email with resignation offers was sent, are now in focus. All of these events represent an unprecedented development, giving Trump’s regime the character of fascism.

2. Fascism

Defining fascism is not easy, and it is futile to engage in purely conceptual debates about whether Trump and his regime are fascist. Moreover, the dead end of forcing new fascist-like movements into old definitions and historical examples of fascism has already been criticized. A new fascism in the 21st century does not have to look like Nazi Germany. Instead of understanding it as a precisely defined state or political system, I consider the following three characteristics to be particularly striking in terms of what we should recognize as fascism today:

1. Fascism is a political action aimed at the destruction of the rule of law, administrative processes, and the parliamentary and democratic order. Fascism does not act agonistically but antagonistically, and in the particularly pronounced form seen with Trump, it is both cynical and destructive. Specifically, fascist politics does not simply represent another position within the spectrum of political positions (e.g., “far-right”); rather, it embodies a destructive stance toward parliamentary democracy and the principle of the rule of law, seeking to overcome the very system of competing political positions. In the cynical variant that is particularly evident in the U.S. today, the destructive impulse serves the unrestrained (economic) self-enrichment of fascist actors and their at times purely profit-driven loyalists.
2. Fascist action is characterized by a personal propensity for violence and malice on the part of its actors, whether in speech, media, physical acts, or politics. This potential for violence is based on a hierarchical view of humanity and an epistemologically deep-rooted dehumanization (which includes racism, antifeminism, and sexism). Fascists perceive life as a permanent social struggle, in which one must assert oneself antagonistically (not through arguments, but through strength), subordinate, exploit, and strip others of their fundamental right to exist. Fascism is the psychological and character disposition of its actors to discard the long-fought struggles for recognition, integration, and equality of minorities in favour of the rule of the strong. The potential for fascist violence also includes the deception of the masses through cynical narratives, the incitement of resentments, and the provocation of social division. Much of this violence today takes place in the online world rather than in the streets.
3. Fascism also includes the cunning enlistment of the latest technology as an instrument of power—often in collaboration between industry and regime. This was the case with the Nazis and is no different today. Fascism is characterized by a cold willingness to achieve its destructive political goals, and the power and violence necessary for them, through technological and logistical means. In the social Darwinist, antisocial mentality in which everyone sees themselves in a struggle against everyone else, other people cannot be trusted. As a result, technologically realized power and control become the means of choice. In the present case, this sentiment is driven by a belief known as solutionism, which assumes the superiority of technology as a solution to societal problems and implies a willingness to subordinate humans, culture, and society to a technologically realized logic of efficiency, profit, and supremacy.

In terms of the form of political movement, three currents are often distinguished, which claim for opportunistic reasons to have nothing to do with one another but in a fascist constellation, in fact, enter into mutual synergies and reinforcements: (1) Right-wing populism—which typically focuses on political mass mobilization (especially in online media) as well as the infiltration and sabotage of parliamentary processes; (2) Alt-right ideology—which is mostly spread via internet media in the form of anti-immigration, anti-trans, and anti-feminist resentments, nationalist myths, extinction threats, and conspiracy narratives; (3) Right-wing extremism—the mobilization of violent right-wing groups, which can be active both on the streets (see the storming of the Capitol) and on the internet.

While the Trump regime during its first term was not classified as fascist by numerous commentators, the interplay of these three elements, with Trump as the central ringleader, intensified up to the storming of the Capitol. The dynamic that has unfolded since then fulfills all the prerequisites for a fascist system to emerge. This fascism has begun to materialise since two additional conditions have been met over the past few years or, more recently, in the past few weeks: on the one hand, broad backing from the economy, and on the other, access to state infrastructure.

First, the economic elite, particularly in Silicon Valley, which in 2022 was still said to “hardly support [Trump’s] project,” has since begun to shift en masse and align itself with the fascist dynamic. A now hegemonic convergence of alt-right political milieus, Silicon Valley CEOs, and venture capitalists is creating a fundamentally new situation compared to Trump’s first term, during which significant parts of Silicon Valley still sought to shield themselves as a liberal bubble against his politics, with Trump being moderated and eventually banned by major social media platforms. This recent alignment is fatal, as the economic elite has now realized that it can economically profit from Trump’s destructive actions—as long as it plays along. As a result, Trump’s project is gaining significant momentum.

A prominent example of the now openly alt-right reorientation in Silicon Valley in recent weeks has been Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Although Zuckerberg was well known for his neoconservative stance, he has drawn attention for openly endorsing alt-right resentments by dismantling the fact-checking and moderation infrastructure of his social media platforms. By contrast, it is hardly surprising that more hardline alt-right supporters in Silicon Valley, such as Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen, or Elon Musk, are now loudly championing Trump. These figures have, for decades, been intellectually preparing and spreading a widely accessible ideology in tech circles—disguised in pseudo-philosophical theories like longtermism, effective altruism, and transhumanism. This ideology is now increasingly revealing itself as a political force of racism, social Darwinism, and 21st-century eugenics.

Secondly, the seizure of state infrastructure in recent weeks is a material development that turns the bundle of ideologies, pre-election blustering, and political mobilization into action. And these are not actions within the framework of the rule-of-law, where a change of government typically involves the replacement of some (politically appointed) civil servants. Rather, what is happening here stands in antagonism to the system itself—it is intended to destroy the rule-based legal order. The planned mass dismissal of career civil servants (beyond just political appointees) and—most crucially—the takeover of computer systems and datasets by tech engineers from Musk’s companies undermines the separation of powers and constitutes a political takeover of the technological and operational layer of the administrative apparatus. In the history of fascism, it is not unknown that the beginning of such regimes involves the takeover of administrative infrastructure—specifically through the physical occupation of buildings and systems, the installation of political loyalists, and the dismissal and purging of political opponents and other undesirables within the apparatus.

In an article about the rising fascism of Trump, one could also speak of racism, sexism, and transphobia, which were translated into repressive and violent actions through executive orders on his first day in office. One could mention Trump’s authoritarian bluster in relation to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza or the threatened takeover of Greenland or the Panama Canal. One could highlight the strategy of chaos politics and methodological unpredictability, which is evident in measures like import tariffs. However, one must emphasize that Trump does not pursue a coherent political agenda but rather uses oppression, uncertainty, and arbitrariness as displays of power, which in turn instill fear in international politics, the general population, and economic elites within his own country. All of this happens right now—against the backdrop of international law, human rights, the liberal value system, democratic processes, and, incidentally, the interests of many voters. And all of this constitutes repressive acts, “boundary crossings,” and “unexpected proposals,” as helpless media commentators have described Trump’s actions from the perspective of the rule-based societal order established since 1945.

Far more important, however, is that these calculated “boundary crossings” not only call into question the legitimacy of national and international laws but are intended as a demonstration of power through the active dismantling of this order. This is why the potential for fascism becomes especially evident not just when the rule-based order is attacked through political rhetoric and the rights of minorities are restricted by repressive decrees—all of which we already saw during Trump’s first term—but when there is also a seizure of power at the level of infrastructure and administrative processes. In the interplay between Trump’s authoritarian, unhinged politics and his henchman Musk’s appropriation of bureaucracy, a theorem of Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt is being realized in textbook fashion: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception”—meaning he who dismantles democracy and the rule of law at the procedural and operational level. What already served as the playbook for the German NSDAP is now being applied once again: the goal of fascist politics is the takeover of the apparatus itself, not the pursuit of a specific policy within it.

3. What Comes Next

How much “classic” fascism the United States will experience—how much dictatorship, abolition of the separation of powers, dismantling of the rule of law and political pluralism, persecution, deportation, or murder of minorities and political opponents, censorship and political influence over the media and science, militant terror, and expansive military interventions—remains anyone’s guess. One development, however, has become apparent in recent weeks, and it urgently deserves our full attention: The takeover of infrastructure by Big Tech actors will lead to an unprecedented use of automation, predictive data analysis, and AI technology in administrative operations. Why else would Musk be deploying his highly paid tech engineers for this task? Through the access to computer systems that is currently being secured, highly sensitive and comprehensive datasets are flowing into the hands of private corporate actors, who have long distinguished themselves by their ruthlessness in exploiting such data. The consequences will be inequality, preemptive persecution, terror, and the exploitation of marginalized groups by the apparatus. The automation will primarily disadvantage socially and economically vulnerable minorities (the sick, the precarious, undocumented migrants, and political opponents). Administrative procedures will gradually evade the principles of the rule of law, becoming opaque and non-transparent through the use of proprietary AI systems.

What is qualitatively new in this unscheduled and authoritarian “AI coup” against the U.S. democracy, particularly in historical comparison to the use of IBM punch card technology by the Nazi regime, is the element of prediction. The strength of AI lies in its ability to “estimate” missing information from incomplete datasets—information that individuals have every right not to disclose about themselves, such as their political beliefs, sexual orientation, health conditions, substance use, or psychiatric disorders. AI analysis of administrative data enables the preemptive unequal treatment of individuals: One is denied insurance, employment, or entry into the country, social benefits are revoked, one is searched by the police, suspected of welfare fraud or child endangerment—all because an opaque computer system has made a prediction based on behavioral data.

The use of the technologies of predictive knowledge will be a defining feature of the new fascism in one of the world’s leading technological industrial nations: This fascism is based on a synergy between the political regime and the tech industry, resulting in a new dimension of social sorting, exploitation, oppression, and persecution—up to and including deportation and the murder of people.

If you like the text: Share on BlueSky

Download options and bibliographic data

1. 

   Mühlhoff, Rainer. 2025. „Trump und der neue Faschismus: Warum der Griff nach dem Verwaltungsapparat so gefährlich ist“. Verfassungsblog, Februar. doi:10.59704/854f51e58c05b98e.

   Full text bibtex

   ×

   @article{Mü2025:TrumpFaschismus,
     title = {Trump und der neue Faschismus: Warum der Griff nach dem Verwaltungsapparat so gefährlich ist},
     author = {Mühlhoff, Rainer},
     date = {2025-02-09},
     journaltitle = {Verfassungsblog},
     issn = {2366-7044},
     doi = {10.59704/854f51e58c05b98e},
     url = {https://verfassungsblog.de/trump-und-der-neue-faschismus/},
     urldate = {2025-02-24},
     langid = {german},
     web_group = {aktuell},
     web_fulltext_nonpdf = {https://verfassungsblog.de/trump-und-der-neue-faschismus/},
     web_thumbnail = {/assets/images/publications/Mü2025:TrumpFaschismus_screenshot.jpg}
   }