Bay Area libertarian crypto fascism

It’s far too easy to point fingers at “red states” and rural areas of “swing states” for the return of Donald Trump and his surging brand of white nationalism. The truth is that the Bay Area deserves far more credit than is typically acknowledged. 

Silicon Valley is where some of Trump’s biggest backers, billionaire nihilists Elon Musk and Peter Theil, are headquartered. We are rarely reminded that Musk (who recently threw up blatant back-to-back fascist salutes at Trump’s inauguration) is South African, grew up benefitting from apartheid and is now the world’s single largest financier of global white supremacy. 

Or that Peter Theil, born in Germany to German parents, including a father who mined uranium in colonial Namibia, is not only deeply involved in the military intelligence industry but has an uncanny reverence for Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. He also bankrolled the political ascent of Vice President J.D. Vance, whose world view is largely influenced by the self-described monarchist Curtis Yarvin.

But it’s not just these high-profile fascist immigrants to Silicon Valley who should be raising eyebrows – yes, immigrants, the irony is thick, and in the case of Musk, an illegal immigrant no less. During a recent holiday party, I was confronted by a local crypto bro who took it upon himself to defend Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Mind you, Hegseth is a former Fox News commentator and white supremacist with tattoos all over his body to prove it. 

When people like this end up in officialdom, at the head of the world’s most powerful military, you know you have a serious problem on your hands. And when it’s your neighbor in San Rafael backing him, you can’t just blame evangelical Christians in the heartland for the dark places the nation is headed. It wasn’t too hard to discern the real reason this libertarian crypto bro was so bumptiously normalizing white supremacy. Trump is good for his bitcoin.

While many people are currently contemplating what resistance to American fascism looks like, it may be worthwhile to start by identifying the enemy in your own backyard. While the Bay Area prides itself for being at the progressive vanguard, there is an outsized contingent of libertarian crypto fascists in our midst that we tolerate at our own peril. 

As a recent California-led transatlantic crossing on the Ritz Carlton’s new luxury mega yacht billed as “Earth One” exemplifies, the worst elements of crypto culture are part and parcel of a niche zeitgeist that is busy Om-washing casino capitalism while virtue signaling about saving the planet. 

It is hard to fully enumerate all the things that were wrong about this event including the organizers’ bizarre Star Wars jedi outfits to their double speak about “diversity” on board, but a fairly balanced account can be found on-line here from which the worst can be readily inferred. 

Fact check: Of the roughly 370 people who attended, no more than a couple dozen were people of color and that includes about 10 Native American elders who were invited to help lead ceremonies. By all accounts, “diversity” referred to the fact that 82 countries were represented (overwhelming from the Global North) and that there were political conservatives there with whom the bulk of white liberal passengers had never interacted.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are people involved in the crypto movement who have genuinely good intentions and noble aspirations about the technology’s liberatory and beneficial potential. The allure is that it falls outside the mainstream economy (for now) and offers anonymity to users and investors. 

This entails a kind of freedom that technologists have long savored with associated potential for activists and revolutionaries to dodge Big Brother and operate outside of Wall Street domination. But even those with the most righteous designs have trouble articulating how the technology itself provides any benefit to the world. 

Most are simply buying and selling coins with the hope of striking it rich and using the proceeds to “do good.” If crypto currency is just another method of capitalist wealth accumulation with the downstream potential for trickle down philanthropy, there is nothing particularly radical or liberatory about it.

The deeper philosophical problem is that freedom, as a libertarian political value, has no inherent connection to social-economic equality or environmental sustainability, and promises of freedom with new technology rarely materialize. 

Just ask Jaron Lanier whose early internet activism for “freedom of information” has transformed into the regret expressed in his Who Owns the Future. Or consider the purported freedom from traditional media that social media was supposed to usher in, a paradox brilliantly captured in the 2020 documentary film The Social Dilemma. Or take heed of Tristan Harris’s and Asa Raskin’s dire warnings about “the AI dilemma.” 

The fact is that crypto, today, is preponderantly used to facilitate arms, narcotics and human trafficking and that it is extremely environmentally damaging as the massive constellations of servers needed to “mine” it suck up enormous amounts of energy from primarily fossil fuel powered grids.

But misguided libertarian fantasies are one thing and open support for fascism and white supremacy because Trump is good for crypto is something else entirely. When I speak of Bay Area libertarian crypto fascism, I mainly refer to this latter set. 

When contemplating what resistance looks like today, do not overlook the supposedly vanguard libertarian technologist at your local café whose support for Trumpian deregulation and rationalization of everything else that comes with him is based on the one-dimensional conviction that nothing else matters but the success of crypto. 

These folks are just as responsible for the rise of American fascism as “red state” and “swing state” voters. They deserve just as much attention in any diagnosis of our national political trainwreck and viable strategies for overcoming it. Whether they can be educated or whether alternate means are necessary to reckon with them, I leave to readers’ discretion and imagination.  

Julian Davis is a California attorney based in San Francisco. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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