JD Vance said a funny History at the American Summit of Dynamism in Washington this week. He recalled a Silicon Valley dinner to which he and his wife USHA attended, before becoming vice-president, where the speech had been machines replacing humans on the labor market. According to Vance, an anonymous director general of a giant technology company said that unemployment of the future could still find a goal in completely immersive digital games. “We have to get out of hell here. These people are crazy,” a text to Usha under the table.
Why thought it was a good idea to tell this story is confusing, since it contradicts the central theme of his speech – but at least he laughed. As Usha Vance implicitly involved it, the world vision of techno-libertians and ordinary workers seems antagonistic. But the main message of her husband was the opposite: that the technological sector and ordinary workers had a common interest in promoting the “great American industrial renaissance”.
Vance’s speech was a clear attempt to reconcile the two belligerent wings of the political movement of President Donald Trump: the technological oligarchy – or the Broligarchy – led by Elon Musk, and the nationalists Maga animated by Steve Bannon. Bannon denounced globalist technology leaders as anti-Americans and Musque describes Like a “really bad person” and an “parasitic illegal immigrant”.
Vance declared himself “proud member of the two tribes”. He may be right to say that Musk and Bannon have a lot in common despite their spicy differences. They are both elitist anti-elitists with a shared mission to reverse the power of the administrative state and the consumer press.
Historians formerly described the three ancient areas of power such as clergy, nobility and commoners. A fourth domain – La Presse – was added later. And a fifth area – social media – has since emerged. But the fifth area could be considered a software update of the third: the communals armed with smartphones. From this point of view, Bannon can be a platform in the third area while Musk is a fifth champion. In the Trump movement, the two merged.
In his book The fifth area, William Dutton argued that social media represented a new form of mainly positive power allowing individuals to access other sources of information and mobilize collective action. He sees Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who emerged as a global environmental activist, as his poster child. “It is the extent of technology that changes the role of the individual in politics and society,” he told me.
Mark Zuckerberg, Managing Director of Meta, also said that the fifth area was a good public public giving the voice to the wish. “People with the power to express themselves on a large scale are a new type of strength in the world”, ” He said in 2019.
All this sounds well in theory. But the negative effects of social media have become more and more striking: disinformation, incitement to hatred and emergence of an “anxious generation” of adolescents. Social media is transferred from a release technology to one of manipulation. He corroded the political process and was diverted by anti-establishment populists.
A study of 840,537 people in 116 countries from 2008 to 2017 have found that global mobile Internet expansion tended to reduce government approval. This trend has been particularly marked in Europe, undergoing support for outgoing governments and stimulating anti-establishment populists. “The propagation of mobile Internet leads to a decrease in confidence in the government. When the government is corrupt, people are more likely to understand that the government is corrupt, “said one of the co-authors of the Sergei Guriev newspaper, now dean of London Business School.
Populist politicians quickly exploited the dissatisfaction of voters aroused by social media and use the same technology to mobilize support in a cheap and interactive manner. “It is normal for anti-elite politicians to use new technologies that are not yet adopted by the elites,” explains Guriev.
The fifth area has certainly shook the former information guards in politics and the media. But new digital guards have emerged who controls who sees what on the internet. Trump’s “first boyfriend” bought Twitter, Now X, which promotes or demotes publications inexplicably. Absoluists free of speech which denounce the moderation and “censorship” of the government often provide coverage for more insidious forms of algorithmic control.
Progressive activists recognize that they are on the bottom of social networks, but they have not abandoned hope. “It is more important than ever to fight for the future. We must use these tools as well as possible, ”explains Bert Wander, Managing Director of Avaz, a global campaign platform funded by crowdfunding. With 70 million members in 194 countries, Avaaz mobilizes action against corruption and the campaigns for algorithmic responsibility, such as the inclusive in the EU digital services law. “We have to communicate in Technicolor with all the emotion and resonance that nationalist populists use,” explains Wander.
For such progressives, three counterweight truths emerge from this debate. The power of the fifth area is a disruptive force that does not disappear. Populists were particularly intelligent in their use. And to compete, progressives radically needed to set up their game.
John.thornhill@ft.com
