Anyone who's just now picking up on a real right-wing vibe from today's Silicon Valley set probably hasn't been paying too close attention to the tech bros over the past few decades—because hints of "technofascism" have been popping up in that demographic for years. So says Becca Lewis in her latest column for the Guardian, arguing that Mark Zuckerberg's recent gushing over "masculine energy" and Elon Musk's rants on X about the "woke mind virus" aren't some kind of "blip or an anomaly." Instead, Lewis writes, they're part of "a crescendo of forces central to the tech industry, and the current wave of right-wing tech titans are building on Silicon Valley's foundation." Lewis writes that the tech industry's "reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning," stretching back to the 1990s, with conservative investor and writer George Gilder behind much of that reaction.
Gilder "was one of Silicon Valley's most vocal evangelists," extolling the virtues of entrepreneurship and capitalism—but he was also virulently anti-feminist, decried the loss of the nuclear family, and tied successful entrepreneurship to masculinity, writes Lewis. Although Silicon Valley didn't initially present explicitly as being chauvinistic, "the reactionary elements of the entrepreneurial ideal became visible whenever the growing power of tech entrepreneurs was challenged," she notes—including with pushback against political correctness and diversity in tech. Today, "the Silicon Valley titans of 2025 are following the same blueprint," Lewis writes, noting that folks like Musk, Peter Thiel, and others are "ready to put their stamp on the future, guided by reactionary dreams of the past." Her essay in full here. (More Silicon Valley stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
